Vehicles 136

• Connected cars are great, until they’re not. A recent Detroit Free Press article shows that vehicle hacks are more common and more dangerous that most people realize.
• There were at least 150 automotive cybersecurity incidents in 2019, part of a 94 percent year-over-year increase since 2016, according to a report from Upstream Security.
• Oh, and here’s a phrase we’re loath to see, even though we’re likely to come across it plenty more in the future: ransomware for cars.

It is impossible to remotely hack into an unconnected car. But if you’re not driving the latest vehicle from Tautology Motors, your vehicle is likely at risk from some sort of digital intrusion. In fact, almost every car on the road today, if it can connect, can be hacked to some degree.

That’s the opinion of Moshe Shlisel, the CEO and cofounder of GuardKnox Cyber Technologies, a company that focuses on protecting vehicles from just these kinds of attacks.

“The more sophisticated the system is, the more connected your vehicle is, the more exposed you are,” Shlisel told the Detroit Free Press. “We have taken whatever model [car] you think of and we hack them through various places. I can control your steering, I can shut down and [start] your engine, control your brakes, your doors, your wipers, open and close your trunk.”

Shlisel isn’t the only one trying to predict and prevent hacking threats. Upstream Security put out its annual Global Automotive Cybersecurity Report that lists the top cyber incidents of 2020. These included a hacker gaining control over “Tesla’s entire connected vehicle fleet by exploiting a vulnerability in the OEM’s server-side mechanism” and hackers taking “full control of an OEM’s corporate network by reverse-engineering a vehicle’s [telematics control unit] and using the telematics connection to infiltrate the network.”

The Free Press cited Upstream’s report, which said there was a 99 percent increase in cybersecurity incidents (to 150) in 2019 and a 94 percent year-over-year increase since 2016. With more communication methods being built into new vehicles, including massive over-the-air update technologies, this trend is unlikely to reverse any time soon.

Ransomware for Cars Is Coming

All of these attacks mean automakers have to take a proactive stance in this fight. Part of the automakers’ defense strategy is to ask “white hat” ethical hackers to show them where the cars are vulnerable in exchange for monetary rewards or, in some cases, jobs. The famous hacker duo who took control of a Jeep Cherokee back in 2015 now work for Cruise, the autonomous-vehicle subsidiary of General Motors.

Michael Dick, CEO of C2A Security, an Israel-based automotive cybersecurity company, told the Free Press he expects the current trend of hackers holding digital data on computers for ransom to move to cars at some point. When this happens, driver will not be able to start their vehicle until they pay off the hacker or suffer the consequences. “There’s no way around it,” he said. “You’ll have to get it towed and get all new software to start it.”

For some transportation companies, ransomware attacks have already happened. Upstream Security’s report mentions a ransomware attack on the Australian transportation company Toll Group, which affected 1000 servers and 40,000 employees. And Honda was forced to stop production in June 2020 due to ransomware attacks on plants in Europe and Japan.

Upstream Security recommends three ways automakers can build secure vehicles, and they’re all complicated. First, security has to be part of the design of every component. Second, there needs to be a multi-layered cybersecurity solution that involves in-vehicle, IT network, and cloud security defenses. Third, automakers need to develop vehicle security operations centers “to monitor, detect, and quickly respond to cyber incidents to protect vehicles, services, fleets, and road users.” How well the auto industry builds up these defenses will define how much drivers love their connected cars as the risks are better understood.

• The 2023 Mercedes-AMG GT63 S E Performance is the first of AMG’s plug-in-hybrid models, which will also include the next AMG C-class.
• It’s powered by a twin-turbo V-8 paired with an electric motor on the rear axle, and it has 831 horsepower and 1082 pound-feet of torque.
• It will arrive in the U.S. for the 2023 model year.

Mercedes -AMG has just revealed the first in its new product lineup of E Performance plug-in-hybrids. It’s called the GT63 S E Performance. It will be joined soon by other AMG PHEVs, including the next top AMG C-class. For now, the GT63 S is the most powerful AMG road car yet—but only until the 1000-plus-hp One arrives.

The new model uses a familiar twin-turbocharged 4.0-liter V-8 that produces 630 horsepower and 664 pound-feet of torque, with a permanent-magnet synchronous AC motor and a 4.8-kWh battery pack incorporated in the rear axle. Through a two-speed gearbox, the motor adds an additional 201 horsepower for up to 10 seconds, or 94 horses continuously. The lithium-ion battery pack is charged via the 3.7-kW onboard AC charger.

Together, they make 831 horsepower and 1082 pound-feet of torque. A nine-speed automatic transmission handles the gear exchanges, and AMG’s 4Matic+ all-wheel-drive system delivers torque to all four corners. Additionally, the electrified rear axle has an electronically controlled limited-slip differential. AMG claims the GT63 S E Performance will reach 62 mph in 2.9 seconds with 124 mph arriving in less than 10 seconds. We expect it to be much quicker as a GT63 S reached 60 mph in 2.6 seconds in our test.

Like the nonhybrid model, the GT63 S E Performance is equipped with AMG’s air springs with electronically controlled adaptive dampers. Seven drive modes are available, including an electric mode that’s good for a claimed 7 miles of driving range and speeds up to 80 mph, and four levels of regenerative braking are toggled via a button on the steering wheel. Its carbon-ceramic brakes measure 16.5 inches up front and 15.0 inches in the rear, 0.7 inch larger in the front and 0.8 inch in the rear than the nonhybrid.

You may not like your job, but take solace in the fact that you’re (probably) not one of the Tesla engineers who logged in to Twitter this week and saw their boss publicly declaring their work product “actually not great.” The software he was tweeting about is a beta, or test, version of Tesla’s so-called Full Self-Driving (FSD) program, but Tesla owners pay $199 a month for access to the non-beta FSD product, and the test software is only available to people already paying for FSD.

This Week in Sheetmetal

EV startup Lucid hasn’t yet delivered a single car in the U.S., but it’s already updating its launch edition. Lucid previously said its Air Dream launch model would have 1080 horsepower and 503 miles of driving range. Now they’re offering a 1111-hp Performance model of the Dream that is claimed to go from zero to 60 mph in less than 2.5 seconds, or a range-oriented model with 933 hp. Lucid didn’t share new estimated range figures.

Ford never officially announced that it was working on a pickup variant of the Bronco and now it never will. Reports say the company has scrapped plans for a Bronco truck to maintain focus on the forthcoming compact Maverick and the existing mid-size Ranger, with which the Bronco truck would have shared a footprint.

Acura executive Jon Ikeda confirmed that there will be a next-generation NSX—the current generation is in its swan song phase—and hinted that a future NSX might be fully electric, an evolution from the current car’s hybrid powertrain.

If an electric NSX hasn’t convinced you that EVs can be fun, too, then maybe this will do the trick: Ford has teased an electric crate motor called the Eluminator that will go on sale this fall and is designed for drivers looking to turn gas-engine cars into performance EVs.

Sales of and interest in EVs have increased rapidly in the last few years, and practically every major automaker has pledged to make significant investments in electrifying its fleet over the coming decades. But every big change comes with stumbling blocks, and this one is no exception. GM announced late last week that it was expanding a recall on Chevy Bolts to include every Bolt EV and EUV ever built. The recall is over a manufacturing defect in some Bolts’ LG-supplied batteries that could lead to fires, and which Chevy apparently can’t pinpoint to specific cars or groups of cars. Chevy has paused production on the Bolt until at least mid-September and will have to spend more than a billion dollars paying to repair the Bolts already on the road.

Meanwhile, in Japan, the number of EV charging stations has decreased for the first time since 2010, from 30,300 in 2020 to 29,200 in 2021. Toyota president Akio Toyoda made comments in June that appeared to disparage the Japanese government’s aggressive charger installation strategy. Perhaps not unrelated, Toyota still hasn’t given up on the hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles that most manufacturers have eschewed for battery-electrics. Toyota announced this week that it plans to start building fuel-cell modules for semi trucks in its Kentucky in 2023.

More, Different Chip Drama

There was, of course, the usual smattering of semiconductor shortage–related production pauses this week. But there was also microchip news of an entirely different sort, thanks to a Reuters report that the U.S. government has approved license applications for Chinese telecommunications company Huawei that would allow the company to buy automotive microchips from U.S. suppliers. Huawei’s 5G device business is the target of trade restrictions imposed by the Trump administration and upheld by the Biden administration. In response to those restrictions, Huawei shifted some of its efforts to supplying automotive components for so-called connected vehicles. U.S. Senators Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio slammed the license approvals, but the Reuters report says since the chips Huawei sought approval to buy for its automotive business were less advanced than the ones it would have used in its 5G business, the bar for approving the licenses was lower.

Further Reading

If you just can’t get enough of the intricacies of the supply chain, read this explainer from the Wall Street Journal on why everything is taking so long to build right now.

The New York Times has a deep-dive into a fatal Autopilot crash in Florida.

Or, if you’re in the mood for something cheerful, watch Ken Block and friends race 2000 hp of off-road cars on a short out-and-back course.

• Reuters reports that Ford is preparing to double F-150 Lightning production for 2024 (a few years into the truck’s planned life cycle). Ford had already significantly increased production plans once, based on a rush of $100 pre-orders after the truck’s reveal in May 2021.
• The report says Ford will spend around $850 million more than previously planned to meet the updated production targets.
• This reported jump in future production comes as a global semiconductor shortage and other supplier issues have stymied Ford’s production plans for much of the last year.

A report from the Reuters news service says that Ford has doubled its production target for the F-150 Lightning electric pickup to 80,000 for 2024. The move is said to be based on strong demand from both retail and commercial customers.

Ford says it has 120,000 $100 pre-orders for the EV truck, which is scheduled to launch next spring with a 15,000-unit run for the 2022 model year. Ford will spend an extra $850 million to reach its new goal, according to the Reuters report. In a statement to Car and Driver, Ford didn’t confirm the details of its production plans but said it “will continue to look for ways to break constraints and meet customer demand.”

The constraints Ford is looking to break aren’t just the usual challenges of ramping up production of an electric vehicle: sourcing the materials, building the batteries, trying to convince customers they’re a good idea. There will also undoubtedly be roadblocks related to ongoing global supply-chain issues that have been upending automakers’ production plans for much of the past year.

Ford has been forced to make numerous production cuts because of the microchip shortage that has been affecting the whole auto industry. This spring, Ford resorted to assembling thousands of F-150 pickups sans crucial microchips and then storing them in parking lots across Metro Detroit until the chips could be sourced and installed. The company has announced multiple delays related to its much-anticipated Bronco SUV. The most recent was due to a quality issue with the available hard top (sourced from a supplier), which was found to degrade when exposed to heavy rains.

That all probably explains why Ford is planning a gradual production ramp-up for the F-150 Lightning as opposed to a market flood. The plan outlined by Reuters says Ford hopes to build 15,000 Lightnings for the 2022 model year, a relatively soft target considering the company sold 12,975 Mustang Mach-E EVs in the first half of 2021. Reuters says Ford will plan to build 55,000 Lightnings in 2023, then 80,000 in 2024. The Lightning is scheduled for a redesign for 2025, after which point Ford hopes to be selling 160,000 EV pickups each year. That would have accounted for 18 percent of F-series pickup sales in 2019, a healthy share considering EVs currently make up only a very small portion of the new-car market in the U.S. Ford is counting on orders from commercial customers to boost adoption of the EV F-150.

• Aston Martin CEO Tobias Moers tells Car and Driver that future plug-in supercars will switch to AMG V-8s, made by the company he once headed.
• A high-performance DBX and a plug-in hybrid are under development.
• Valkyrie deliveries will start this year, and an even more extreme track-only version is planned.

UPDATE 8/25/21: In an interview with Motor Trend, Aston Martin CEO Tobias Moers confirmed that a different DBX variant will debut this year before the high-performance version arrives in 2022. This new DBX model is expected to use the same supercharged 3.0-liter inline-six with a 48-volt hybrid system that is found in the Mercedes-AMG 53 models.

When Tobias Moers became Aston Martin’s CEO last August, there was no doubt the former boss of AMG would make radical changes to the crisis-hit sports-car maker. The first part of this was stabilizing Aston’s position, cutting unsold inventory, and streamlining its production process. The second, now underway, involves some radical alterations to the English manufacturer’s future model strategy.

Aston had already begun to develop two entirely new mid-engine supercars, the Valhalla and Vanquish, which were set to use a hybridized V-6 powerplant the company was to engineer itself. That new engine has now been canceled, with Moers telling C/D he arrived to find that development on it had hardly begun. “If that engine had been ready to go, I would have been happy to go with it,” he said, when we interviewed him in Aston’s Gaydon, England, HQ this week, “but it was not here, unfortunately—it was only at a concept stage.”

Instead, Moers confirmed, both Valhalla and Vanquish will use AMG-sourced V-8 engines, although these will be substantially different from the customer-spec motors the company currently uses in the Vantage, DB11, and DBX, and will effectively be built around the company’s requirements.

“We are going to create a bespoke engine for the Valhalla out of the V-8 toolbox of AMG, and the Vanquish will get another,” Moers said. “We will be able to make substantial changes, much more than before—you cannot just take a Black Series engine for example [that’s the one with the flat-plane crank] and put it into a mid-engine car. You need to change it. And we will do that ourselves.”

The V-8 engines will be integrated with a plug-in-hybrid system that Aston will design and engineer itself, and which won’t come from Mercedes, according to Moers. “An electric-drive front axle will be standard in that segment by then, so we will have to create that ourselves,” Moers said, “also a gearbox which is capable of electrification.”

Adding electrical assistance to both ends of the car suggests a layout similar to that of the Ferrari SF90 Stradale and one more advanced than that of the McLaren Artura, albeit some way behind it to market.

Before coming to Aston Martin, Moers was largely responsible for the forthcoming AMG Project One, the car that features a detuned Formula 1 powerplant. As the only person in the world to have driven prototype versions of both cars, he is uniquely placed to compare them.

“They are not rivals, they are totally different cars,” he said. “The Valkyrie is, from a car perspective, not really a car; it’s a two-seat Formula 1 experience. The Project One is much closer to a normal, standard vehicle, but one with a powertrain that is very bespoke.”

Moers said he has committed more Aston Martin engineering resources into delivering the Valkyrie, which will be reaching customers this year. Production of the hypercar has also been moved to Aston’s Gaydon factory as part of a dramatic simplification of the company’s manufacturing activities. The previous plan had been to build it in a different facility. Company insiders say that the proposed AMR Pro track-only version is also being redesigned and made even more extreme. Moers admitted to also be considering other possibilities for the Valkyrie’s Cosworth-built naturally aspirated V-12 engine. “It is a huge investment [for one car]. I try to be creative about what else we could do with that.”

As for Aston’s existing sports-car lineup—the Vantage, DB11, and DBS Superleggera—Moers said these will be freshened with heavy facelifts. Expect these in early 2023. However, these will not include hybrid powerplants, he clarified. Instead they will continue with pure combustion power until they are replaced, with the company’s existing twin-turbocharged V-12 likely to retire due to tougher European emissions standards by 2027. Beyond that, Moers confirmed that Aston’s next-generation sports-car platform will be EV.

More attention will be paid to the DBX range, delivering on the promise of range expansion made by Aston executive chairman Lawrence Stroll. The first variant will be a higher-performance derivative, due next year, with Moers saying this is targeted at offering more competition to the Lamborghini Urus: “Its life at the top is a bit too comfortable at the moment.”

Beyond that, a plug-in-hybrid version will follow in 2023, and it’s set to use the same AMG V-8 plug-in architecture, which will carry “73 AMG” branding when fitted to Mercedes models.

Plans to relaunch the long-dormant Lagonda brand were put on ice before Moers’s arrival, and the new CEO says it is likely to stay there for some time longer. “We just have to focus fully on Aston,” he said. “I like the idea of doing a Lagonda, but we have to keep it to one side at the moment.”

This story was originally published May 11, 2021.

• The 2022 Mazda MX-30 electric SUV will start at $34,645.
• Mazda says it will offer an EPA-estimated 100 miles of range on a single charge.
• The MX-30 goes on sale in California in October.

Mazda’s first attempt at an electric vehicle is a quirky small SUV with RX-8–style doors, and we now know how much it will cost. Starting at $34,645, the 2022 MX-30 is slated to go on sale in California starting in October. At first, it’ll be available with a 143-hp electric motor powering the front wheels and a small battery pack—we estimate a net capacity of around 32.0 kWh—that Mazda says will provide a paltry 100 miles of EPA-estimated range. A plug-in-hybrid version with a rotary gas engine is coming later.

For now, the MX-30’s specs are a bit perplexing when compared against other affordable EVs. Despite its tiny battery and short driving range, it’s several thousand dollars more expensive than other EVs with considerably more range. The 2022 Chevy Bolt EV, for instance, starts at $31,995 and offers more than double the Mazda’s range—259 miles according to the EPA. And the 2022 Nissan Leaf, which just received a price cut, starts well under $30,000 and offers an estimated 149 miles of range in its base form.

Mazda will offer the MX-30 in two trim levels, with the better-equipped Premium Plus model starting at $37,655. It adds features such as a 360-degree camera system and a premium audio system. Other options include premium paint colors, which cost between $495 and $995.

To incentivize EV ownership—and help make up for the car’s limited range—Mazda is including a loaner program for MX-30 buyers that allows them to borrow a gas-powered Mazda from a dealership for up to 10 days per year for the first three years you own the car. Buyers also get a $500 charging credit for ChargePoint that can be used either for public charging stations or to install a home charging station.

Before the MX-30 arrives at California dealerships this October, reservations are open now with a deposit at the phone number 833–469–6930.

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