Hey, Your Top Automobile News for 28 July, 2020

Your Daily Automobile updates From Around The World [img] [img]( [The Automobile News]( [Upcoming Car Launches In August 2020]( Despite the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown, we have seen several new cars coming to the market. In July alone we saw 5 new car launches and August is expected to be similarly eventful. As the nation continues to fight the coronavirus pandemic, people have started adapting to the new normal. Strict hygiene protocols and social distancing are the need of the hour and several manufacturers and industry experts believe that given this situation, there will be a growing demand for personal mobility among consumers to boost safety. This was also confirmed in the carandbike survey that was conducted earlier this year. Encouraged by this notion, a lot of manufactures have been launching new models despite the ongoing lockdown, and in July alone we saw 5 new car launches. And August is expected to be similarly eventful. 2020 Maruti Suzuki S-Cross: After discontinuing the diesel-only S-Cross, Maruti Suzuki confirmed that it will bring back the crossover with a petrol engine, and we even saw the car at the Auto Expo 2020. But due to the coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown, the launch was delayed, and now the company will launch the much-anticipated Maruti Suzuki S-Cross Petrol on August 5, 2020. Visually, the 2020 S-Cross will see no changes whatsoever, and while the cabin too will remain unchanged, it will get the new 7.0-inch touchscreen infotainment system. It’s equipped with the Smart Play Studio 2.0 interface that comes with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto smartphone connectivity options. However, the biggest change is under the hood. The 2020 Maruti Suzuki S-Cross will come with the company’s 1.5-litre petrol engine paired with the Smart Hybrid Vehicle from Suzuki or SHVS mild hybrid system. The motor is also BS6 compliant and churns out 112 bhp and develops 134 Nm of peak torque and is mated to a 5-speed manual gearbox and an optional 4-speed automatic torque converter unit. Honda Jazz Facelift: Yes, we too have been waiting for the updated Honda Jazz BS6 for a while now. Honda had planned to launch it much earlier, however, like with other carmakers, the company had to postpone launching the Jazz until production resumed, which happened earlier in June. Now, with the City and WR-V launch out of the way, the 2020 Honda Jazz BS6 is the next obvious choice. However, given the fact that production is still not at 100 per cent, the company is likely to launch the updated Jazz towards the second half of August 2020. As for the car, the 2020 Honda Jazz will come with some minor updates that include new all-LED headlamps integrating the LED daytime running lamps (DRLs) along with a revised grille and new fog lamps. The front bumper has been tweaked as well to sport those new fog lamps and looks sharper with more pronounced character lines. Powertrain wise, the Jazz will be a petrol-only model and it will get a BS6 compliant 1.2-litre i-VTEC motor tuned to churn out 89 bhp and 110 Nm of peak torque. The engine will get a 5-speed manual gearbox, along with an optional CVT automatic transmission. Mercedes-Benz EQC: While we were expecting the all-electric Mercedes-Benz EQC to be launched in July 2020, the launch appears to have been postponed to August, possibly due to the extension of lockdown. The Mercedes-Benz EQC is the first electric vehicle from the carmaker in India and will be sold under the EQ brand. It gets a futuristic exterior design featuring LED headlamps, large alloy wheels, and LED taillamps, along with a luxurious cabin with the signature single unit display with split screens for infotainment and instrumentation. Of course, the SUV will also get the company’s MBUX system with connected car technology. [Read more…]( [Read Full Story]( ------------------ [Plug-in hybrids give automakers an emissions compliance lifeline]( Automakers in Europe fear a lukewarm consumer response to the fleet of electric vehicles they are preparing to launch to comply with tougher emissions regulations, but they do have one lifeline: the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. The PHEV is in some respects an almost magical vehicle. Adding a battery and electric motor to a conventionally powered vehicle preserves most of the usability that consumers know while also allowing the automaker to reduce CO2 output by between 50 percent and 80 percent. Because of the way emissions are calculated, PHEVs are easily capable of recording a CO2 figure of below 50 grams per kilometer. That means their sales will not only help reduce automakers’ average CO2 when the 95g/km average kicks in next year, they also count as so-called “supercredit” sales until 2023, letting automakers offset purchases of their higher-emissions cars. On top of all that, the PHEV also qualifies for various tax incentives and purchase grants within numerous EU countries. In addition, they qualify for entry into many cities’ ultra-low emissions zones, where conventional vehicles will be banned from entering. But there are also huge pitfalls for automakers relying on PHEVs. Most worrying is the potential backlash among environmental groups, city mayors and ruling governments if they decide that PHEVs are nowhere near as green as the stated CO2 figure claims. “The climate credentials of plug-in hybrids are directly proportional to how much they drive on their electric motor,” said Julia Poliscanova, director of clean vehicles and e-mobility for European pressure group Transport & Environment. “If, as the evidence seems to show, most people don’t charge them, then they are worse than previous-generation cars.” As far as customers reading the label know, these cars are second only to full-electric vehicles in terms of CO2 output. The EU-mandated WLTP emissions tests, which replaced the outdated NEDC cycle, states that is the case. For example, the range of new PHEVs launched by PSA Group, including the midsize Peugeot 508 and Opel/Vauxhall Grandland X compact SUV, record figures as low as 29g/km, and that is on the WLTP cycle before it has been translated back to NEDC values, a process known as NEDC correlation. By comparison a Peugeot 108 minicar, weighing half as much as a plug-in hybrid SUV, emits 93g/km. Do not blame us for the figure, said PSA CEO Carlos Tavares at Frankfurt auto show last month. “We were not the ones that created that cycle. It was created as a consequence of the previous one, which we considered simplistic,” he said. The PHEV has often been described as a gateway technology to get consumers comfortable with the idea of plugging in their car before taking the more radical step of going full electric. The EU’s seeming generosity in classifying PHEVs as ultra-low emissions vehicles via the test cycle was a calculated decision to boost availability of electrified vehicles, believes Jeff Schuster, global forecasting director for analyst firm LMC Automotive. “I suspect it’s the EU giving the automakers a get-out clause. I don’t think anyone wants to go down the scandal road again,” he said, eluding to Volkswagen Group’s cheating on emissions tests. Even before VW Group admitted to using software that made its engines operate more efficiently during testing than on the road, it was known that automakers were exploiting loopholes in the old NEDC cycle to avoid fitting expensive exhaust cleaning technology to their vehicles. 168% increase in sales LMC predicts that PHEV sales will more than double in Europe next year to 590,000, up from a full-year estimate of 220,000 in 2019. That would give them a market share of 3.1 percent and briefly help them overtake full-electric vehicles. LMC believes that by 2025 PHEV sales will top 1 million and take a 5.2 percent share. The problem that automakers now have to deal with is that PHEVs are unavoidably costly, restricting their rollout. “The plug-in hybrid is a very expensive technology so it makes sense on heavier, bigger, higher-CO2 vehicles where it does more for CO2 reduction and the premium is not as big as small cars,” Roelant de Waard, general manager for passenger vehicles at Ford of Europe, said at the launch of the new Kuga, which will offer a PHEV variant. Fitting a battery, electric motor and the power electronics to an existing combustion-engine car adds about 5,000 euros, according to research from German engineering specialists FEV. The expense is such that a plug-in hybrid drivetrain with a battery big enough to reduce CO2 below 50g/km — the threshold automakers need to qualify for both EU supercredits and many local tax incentives –actually costs more than a drivetrain for a small electric car with a 32 kilowatt hour battery, FEV said. Getting the consumer to shoulder the extra cost will be almost impossible, Bernstein analyst Max Warburton believes. Instead, he expects that automakers will have to absorb about 60 percent of the cost of the PHEV technology themselves to be able to sell the cars at the volume required to achieve the EU’s 2020-21 CO2 targets. “It’s going to require the industry to force quite a lot of cars into the market. It’s going to require them to do very favorable fleet deals. It might require them to sell these cars to their own employees,” Warburton wrote in an August report. 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