Hey, Your Top Automobile News for 22 September, 2020

Your Daily Automobile updates From Around The World [img]  [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( [img]( [The Automobile News]( [2020 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 LTZ Z71 (car review)]( THERE’S probably a good reason our cousins in the USA call vehicles with a tray behind the cabin trucks, and not utes, like we do. That’s because their pickups are mighty big, like the 2020 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 LTZ Z71. Climbing aboard Chevy’s Silverado 1500 for the first time can be a little daunting for Aussies used to a dual cab one tonner or a Holden or Falcon ute, but you quickly adapt to the shear size, and impressive performance, handling and ride. That’s without even mentioning the amazing space they deliver in the cab and in the load bed, and this is the baby model. And so you know, the Silverado 1500 LTZ we’re testing, starts life as a left hook pickup truck. It’s imported and converted to right hand drive by Walkinshaw Group (or as you might know them, HSV). That process adds to the cost. In the US, they retail for about $80,000 Australian, but here, you’ll be paying $113,000 plus on-roads. And that’s before you dive into the extensive options list. Despite all that, US-soured pickups are growing in popularity down under, evidenced by the success of the more affordable RAM 1500 (which is converted in the same factory as the Silverado). We did call the 1500 LTZ Z71 the toddler of the range, and that’s a bit of a misnomer, especially given it’s 5585mm long and 2000mm wide, and is just shy of 2600kg in weight. Negotiating the Westfield parking lot is a challenge, but not impossible. There’s no small diesel under the hood either, the Silverado is powered by a 6.2-litre petrol V8 producing 313kW and a massive 624Nm of torque, which helps this large machine to easily get up and go when it’s called for. Despite its size and weight, it can accelerate from 0-100km/h in a very respectable time of around 5.5 seconds. The price you pay for experiencing that sort of acceleration is the fact the fuel gauge drops in the other direction almost as quickly. When driven carefully, the Silverado can be surprisingly frugal. We had average fuel consumption down to around 10.5-litres/100km on a cruisy highway trip up the Coast, with the big 6.2-litre purring along at a shade over 1000rpm. That economy is thanks to the dynamic fuel management system, which seamlessly and automatically deactivates up to six of the eight cylinders on cruise. This system is so good you barely know it’s happening. The major key to the impressive performance and fuel efficiency is the 10-speed automatic transmission, which is one of the great pieces of corporate cooperation, having been jointly developed with Ford (and is also found in the Mustang). The 10-speed auto is smooth, quiet, efficient and shifts without fuss, no matter the situation. The Silverado gearstick is a throwback to another era though, and is in fact a column shift, which is fine when you get used to it, but a little cumbersome to start with. The Z71 is a performance model, so features enhanced suspension, but don’t expect sports car-like handling. This is after all, a big and heavy pickup truck, and when pushed hard in corners you realise it takes a lot of physics to get it around the bend. Having said that, it generally handles with a flat and controlled nature, but the damping is still a little on the soft side for Australian taste. A run across the Bell’s Line of Road and on to Bathurst and Oberon revealed it can easily cruise, but it’s no track day monster. The latest Silverado 1500 rides on GM’s new T1XX platform, which makes it 200kg lighter than its predecessor, and offers better chassis engineering. It’s also aided in Australia by the fact that Walkinshaw uses its engineering smarts to apply its own suspension tune. On smooth tarmac, the big beast handles particularly well on its 20-inch alloy wheels, although on rougher broken bitumen and gravel roads there are signs of scuttle shake and excessive shudder when unladen. You have to remember though that it’s built to carry a load, so with that view in mind, it performs pretty impressively. Our test vehicle also boasted an optional Brembo brake package which significantly improved stopping power. The rear tray can handle a 712kg payload, with a towing capacity of 3500kg, with the standard 50mm tow ball or up to 4500kg with a 70mm ball. That alone makes the Silverado and other American pickups hugely attractive to caravan hauling grey nomads. The rear tub is lined with a tough sprayed-on black ripple coating that resists damage and protect the steel tray underneath. The rear tailgate also features an electric open and close function, and can even be opened from the key fob. The Silverado has selectable Autotrac four-wheel drive, with normal 2WD and a two speed electronic transfer case for 4WD. We didn’t test its off road capabilities save for a wet gravel road but its sheer size could limit the places it can go in the Australian bush. Interior space is abundant in the big Chevrolet, in fact if there was any more space inside this machine NASA would need to manage it. Seriously though, the room is tremendous, easily fitting five large adults, with enough leg room for an NBA starting roster. Squashed is something you won’t feel inside the Silverado cabin. There’s a tonne of storage space too. One clever innovation in the rear is the fold up seat squab, which can free passenger area for luggage or cargo inside the cab. There are a pile of USB charging points and a wireless charging pad in the centre console, however we had trouble making this work reliably during our time in the Chevy. The dash is alive with buttons and controls too, as is the steering wheel. It’s all very well laid out though, and generally easy to use, although some of the buttons are a little small and at times difficult to hit accurately while travelling at speed. The infotainment system revolves around an 8.0-inch LED touchscreen, coupled to a superb Bose sound system, with support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. There are audio and mode control buttons on the back of the steering wheel spokes as well. [Read more…]( The post [2020 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 LTZ Z71 (car review)]( first appeared on [TheAutomobileNews.com](. [Read Full Story]( [Tesla in Making Moves To Have Presence In India: Scope Of Electric Vehicles In The Country]( The wait for seeing Tesla in India may get over soon. Indian citizens can now brace themselves for soon being able to see Elon Musk’s Tesla cars rolling down on Indian roads! According to sources in the know, on September 10th, the revolutionary car-maker Tesla initiated discussions with the government officials of Karnataka for opening up a research and development facility in Bengaluru. Currently, the talks are still at a preliminary stage. However, a follow-up meeting which is scheduled to be held later in this month will shed some light on concrete details. In the month of July, Elon Musk, the Chief Executive Officer of Tesla had indicated that the company’s series of luxury electric cars will ‘hopefully’ make a debut in India and thus following up on the same, it seems that he has set the plan in motion. Now, here the question arrives what’s in store for India if the talks do fructify? Well, for starters, India will become the second country outside of the United States wherein Tesla has a research centre. This, in turn, will obviously attract the eyeballs of other promising global carmakers as well. It is important to note here that Bengaluru is probably one of the best bets to open up its research centre for Tesla in India. The city already hosts many local and global automotive companies such as Bosch, Mahindra Electric, Daimler, and so on Bengaluru also serves as the home base for many promising EV aka electric vehicle startups Aether, Ola Electric, Sun Mobility and more. Apart from that, the state of Karnataka was the first to create an electric vehicle policy to generate EV R&D and manufacturing investments of close to Rs. 31,000 crores. Realising that need of the hour, 11 states which include Gujarat, Delhi, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Andhra also came up their very own policies. Musk tweeted out in July that Tesla is looking for opening up another Gigafactory aka car and battery factory in Asia outside of China, “but first we need to finish Giga Berlin for Europe and a second US Giga to serve the eastern half of North America”. In the same month, the company overtook Toyota to become the world’s most valuable automobile company. Tesla currently operates in Europe, Latin America, Japan, Singapore, China and Australia. Hopefully, India will soon join the list soon. Scope Of EV In India According to a report by Avendus, a financial services firm, India’s EV market is expected to touch Rs 50,000 crore by 2025, out of which, battery, motor and controller together can be a Rs 15,000 crore opportunity alone. The report further highlights how one can expect over 3 million EVs to be sold in India within the next 5 years with the majority of them being in the category of two and three-wheelers. In 2016, Tesla opened up bookings for its Model 3 EV Sedan car from India on its website, however, failed to deliver the same to its buyers. When Arvid Gupta – the former CEO of MyGOV – questioned Musk about the four-year delay in bringing the Model 3 to India, Musk tweeted out saying that he was sorry. Earlier Tesla raised some concerns over India’s FDI aka Foreign Direct Investment rules which made 30% sourcing of goods from India for single-brand companies mandatory. However, the Indian government later amended those rules in October 2019 allowing foreign companies to source goods and services through their own third-party vendors. The changed policy also helped many companies including Apple, Xiaomi, to have better footprints in India. [Read more…]( The post [Tesla in Making Moves To Have Presence In India: Scope Of Electric Vehicles In The Country]( first appeared on [TheAutomobileNews.com](. [Read Full Story]( [Uber investors are pressuring CEO to revamp the self-driving division]( When Khosrowshahi assumed Uber’s helm from ousted founder Travis Kalanick in 2017, he inherited a mess of cultural, strategic and financial problems. With deep pockets, some of the best brains in robotics and its hallmark hustle, Uber Technologies Inc. was once a serious contender in the race to build self-driving cars and revolutionize global transportation. Today, the effort is lagging far behind rivals, and investors are getting antsy about the rationale for continuing a long-term science project that isn’t helping Uber become profitable or safeguarding its future. In recent months, the company’s two largest shareholders, SoftBank Group Corp. and the venture firm Benchmark, have privately encouraged Chief Executive Officer Dara Khosrowshahi to find more investors for the division, which is expected to exhaust its funds by the end of 2021, and re-evaluate its strategy, according to people familiar with the situation. Khosrowshahi is exploring various options. One would see Uber accelerating the project by open-sourcing it to coders around the world, said the people, who requested anonymity to speak about a private matter. Or the company could continue building a proprietary car with money from existing partners, Toyota Motor Corp. and Denso Corp., and possibly new ones, they said. It’s an existential decision because without a fleet of autonomous vehicles, Uber risks losing its grip on the ride-hailing market to any number of companies, from Alphabet Inc.’s well-established Waymo unit to upstarts like Amazon.com Inc.’s Zoox, which recently got the green light to test autonomous vehicles on California roads without a safety driver. PitchBook mobility analyst Asad Hussain describes a nightmare scenario where Waymo develops its own network, Amazon gives free rides to Prime subscribers, and Uber becomes irrelevant. “Self-driving is the next smartphone,” he said. “You don’t want to get left out.” When Khosrowshahi assumed Uber’s helm from ousted founder Travis Kalanick in 2017, he inherited a mess of cultural, strategic and financial problems. Khosrowshahi set to fixing the most pressing ones first, repairing Uber’s reputation and values and offloading losing bets in overseas food delivery and ride networks; the self-driving group went on the back burner. Work didn’t stop, but the division was badly demoralized by a pair of events: the conviction and imprisonment of its former chief, Anthony Levandowski, for stealing intellectual property from Waymo, and the 2018 death of a pedestrian struck by an Uber vehicle in Phoenix, Arizona, while the human driver was watching “The Voice” on her cell phone. Meanwhile, Uber’s rivals were making progress. Waymo cars have logged hundreds of thousands of miles in more than two dozen cities; Lyft recently surpassed 100,000 rides in Las Vegas using vehicles supplied by Motional. General Motors Co.’s Cruise has completed 50,000 robo grocery deliveries during the pandemic alone. By contrast, Uber is operating fewer than 10 cars a week on public roads in Pittsburgh and Washington. Last year Khosrowshahi bought himself some time by turning the autonomous driving division, called the Advanced Technologies Group, into an $8 billion subsidiary with its own set of investors, including SoftBank, Denso and Toyota, to help fund an operation that’s consuming about $500 million a year. The move helped silence critics because Uber no longer needed to bear the costs alone, but it didn’t address the more fundamental question of strategy and whether Uber should be in the business of building its own autonomous driving technology. Investors and executives including former Uber Chief Technology Officer Thuan Pham have said that open-sourcing ATG’s self-driving technology would speed development and establish Uber as a leader, similar to how Google’s open-source Android mobile operating system created an alternative to Apple. Going this route would require Uber to release the source code and grant rights to everyone interested in using, changing, studying and distributing it however they choose. Proponents say this would let Uber remain on the cutting edge while progressing faster because the work would be done collaboratively by coders around the globe. “There’s no question in my mind that [open source] is the perfect solution for a highly complex problem,” said Benchmark’s Bill Gurley, who added that the move would boost Uber’s share price by as much as 20%. “I would sacrifice whatever value there might be to lead an open-source movement to get the company to a better place faster. I’m highly confident the market would respond to that.” [Uber investors are pressuring CEO to revamp the self-driving division] Khosrowshahi earlier this year directed ATG chief Eric Meyhofer to explore the idea, according to people with knowledge of the situation, who said the conversation quickly became “contentious.” Meyhofer confirmed the conversation and, although he disagrees with that characterization, he does believe the idea of open-sourcing ATG’s technology is “too complicated.” “Open sourcing opens a can of worms,” he said. “We don’t think it makes sense for our strategy.” Amid the infighting, Uber’s partnerships with other self-driving companies have withered. The original idea was to have a backup in case Uber’s proprietary effort was late or didn’t come to fruition. That’s why Uber struck a deal with Daimler AG back in 2017 to put Daimler’s own self-driving cars on Uber’s ride network. But all new work with the German automaker has ceased, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Uber tentatively agreed to work with Motional, with tests planned for later this year, but several ATG employees advocating for the partnership have left, putting the deal in purgatory, the people said. A spokeswoman for Daimler said cooperation with Uber is ongoing but “currently on hold.” Meyhofer said ATG “remains interested in and committed to pursuing partnership opportunities that serve our mission of bringing safe, reliable self-driving technologies to the Uber platform.” He declined to comment on details of the existing Motional arrangement, but said no “deal” has been signed and nothing is set to be tested in 2020. Motional said it would be “premature” to comment on the status of conversations with Uber and other ride-share companies. Work on Uber’s own autonomous technology isn’t going well either. ATG engineers are in the midst of replacing the software platform the company has been licensing from Carnegie Melon University since 2015. Originally, the project was going to take six months, but that deadline has been pushed out to more than 18 months, according to people familiar with the work. Earlier this year, cars running on the new platform occasionally lost computing power, going just a few hundred yards before stopping, the people said. Then, just as some of those initial kinks were being worked out, Covid-19 hit. [Read more…]( The post [Uber investors are pressuring CEO to revamp the self-driving division]( first appeared on [TheAutomobileNews.com](. 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