AutoComplete: The C8 Corvette is revealed, Lexus goes off-roading, and Lotus gets hyper and electric
AutoComplete: The C8 Corvette is revealed, Lexus goes off-roading, and Lotus gets hyper and electric
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AutoComplete: The C8 Corvette is revealed, Lexus goes off-roading, and Lotus gets hyper and electric

Cars
Welcome to Roadshows Auto Complete your weekly roundup of the biggest news in the automotive world. This week, we have news on all electric vehicles from Lexus, Harley Davidson and Lotus as well as some new car emerging. but first up Corvette. One of the longest running joke in automotive journalism has finally come true and now we are all living in a world where the Chevrolet Corvette has a mid mounted engine and no manual transmission option, it is a weird time to be alive my dudes Still, despite not being available with three pedals and ignoring the protestations and wailing of angry baby boomers, the new vet looks pretty awesome. It's based model stingray has a dry sump V8 that makes nearly 500 horsepower. And it also features a bunch of cool goodies, GPS activated knows lyft and lots of lightweight composite materials. Were most surprised just how much GM's new technological tear will cost because it's offering a ton of performance where a sub $60,000 entry price. Toyota has been doing the alternative fuel vehicles Thing for a while. It pretty much single handedly popularized the hybrid electric vehicle and is likely the biggest producer of hydrogen powered vehicles for consumer use in the world. That's not enough though. And Toyota's luxury arm Lexus is going a step further with a new commitment to offer an electric version of all of its models by 2025. Now, bear in mind that electrified means, not only battery electric vehicles, but also hybrids, hydrogen and plug-in hybrid models. Volkswagen is investing big time in the [UNKNOWN] self-driving startup, ARGO AI. How How big? Well, how about 2.6 billion dollars. Yeah, billion with a b. Also of interest, is Volkswagens move to let Ford utilize it new built to purpose MEB electric vehicle architecture for future blue oval EV's That's gonna be a huge leg up for Ford, who at this point seemingly doesn't really have much in the deck for electric vehicle development. Well, we've been talking about the Harley-Davidson livewire for ages. I mean, our own Tim Stevens rode the prototype like half a decade ago. But the production version is right here so we sent Tim to Portland Oregon to see if the wait and the neon $30,000 price tag could be worth it. The answer to that could be well kind of. The bike itself is well built with nice components but at the end of the day despite these staggering of the line performance 30 grands is still a lot to ask for something with two wheels. Listen carefully. That sound you're hearing is road shows on Andrew Croc cursing the heavens and rending his garments because Volkswagen announced this week that it would be killing off the golf all track and sport wagon models at the end of the year. Now, if you're not clear on why this is a bummer than you've clearly never driven the current generation of golf sport wagon and let me tell you a friend, you're missing the hell out. The good news for Mr. croc is that he'll likely have a little padding for his retirement account should he choose to take a sport wagon to bring a trailer and a few years Tesla's been selling the idea literally a full self driving for years now. And despite countless people having plunked down many, many thousands of their hard earned dollars on the technology, the best we've been able to manage is navigate on autopilot. Which is good but it's definitely not full self driving. Now that you're suitably riled up against the man, we wanna add that Testa CEO Elon Musk announced that the price of full self driving would be going up by $1,000 on August 16th and would only continue to go up from there. Thankfully to soften the blow, he also mentioned that Tesla's long touted advanced summon features should be going live to the public around that time as well. Most electric vehicles on sale today have a single speed transmission because the massive instant torque that an elecrtic motor produces makes the need for low gear ratios redundant. it also has the benefit of simplifying the vehicle's design engineering and packaging. But that isn't to say that an EV couldn't benefit from having more gears to choose from. Which is precisely why ZF has been working on a two speed transmission meant specifically for EVS. I know, two speeds sound quant in an age where 10 speed automatics are becoming, A normal place in normal cars, but CF is saying that the overdrive gear and its autoshifting two-speed could be good for a range boost of up to 5%. Or, on the other side of things, increased performance, depending on how the vehicle manufacturer's feeling. [SOUND] Well, Lotus went and did it. It unveiled one of the best looking hypercars in the last decade, and we will be damned if it's not fully battery electric. The Evija is allegedly packing around 2,000 horsepower into it's diminutive frame and will cost multiple millions of dollars. But with looks like those, it's kinda hard to argue the price. Now, all the jokes about an electric Lotus aside, listen, we're sure they didn't let anyone from Lukas anywhere near the car lest they inadvertently curse the whole project. We're genuinely excited to see how the tiny British sports car manufacturer goes about delivering on the Evija's promise. Thankfully, now it has some sweet, sweet Chinese backing money. Thank you, Gilley. And the results should be good. Both the Subaru Outback and Legacy are getting a little love from the mothership for the 2020 model year, and that's a good thing. The cars are getting a massive interior overhaul with much improved infotainment that includes, Car Play Android Auto compatibility as standard there's a bunch of boring base engine stuff that change too but we're extra excited about the 260 horsepower XT trim levels that should make these practical people movers fun to drive. But the best part of it all and perhaps the most newsworthy is the fact that despite making all these huge changes to the vehicles themselves, Subaru isn't making any massive changes to their prices. I think I just heard the whole Pacific Northwest let out an audible sigh of relief Lexus is known for making super reliable luxury vehicles. But did you also know that it made a couple of super gnarly undercover off rotors? Sure. The Lexus LX is based on the wildly capable and lovable twit Land Cruiser but maybe you didn't know that the GX is also a VA powered full time four wheel drive having body on frame construction. Monster, to celebrate that Lexus has built what it's calling the GX off road concept which is a 2018 GX 460 that had many many thousands of dollar of totally awesome over landing gear bolted to it. And at this point it's basically just hardcore adventure porn. It makes its global debut this week in Colorado at the FJ summit event. Ferrari's 812 superfast has just about everything you could want in a supercar, including a 6.5 liter naturally aspirated V12 engine that makes damn near 800 horsepower. The only thing it doesn't really have as an unimpeded path for that V12's howling whale to get to your ears for his realize this and according to some rumors from Ferrari chat, it's gearing up to release a spider version of it super coupe. Now surely there are those of you who will whine about the last. Performance of a convertible but even if it turns into a wet noodle without a roof, it won't. It'll still have more performance than you can handle pal Ferrari. Did you know that Mercedes makes and sells a pickup truck. Yeah, it's called the X Class and it's actually pretty cool. It's basically reworked and heavily tweaked Nissan Novara, and it's sold in Europe, Australia and South Africa, among other places. Although sold maybe a really strong word because it's not exactly a volume vehicle for the old three pointed star. That's probably why Mercedes is allegedly planning on killing it off after this model year. Now what we think Mercedes really needs to do is take the new g wagon which is excellent and make it into a truck like the Jeep Gladiator Tesla's Chinese Giga factory outside Shanghai hasn't really been under construction for that long, but it's already shockingly far along its way to being ready to build cars. Or at least that's what Morgan Stanley's team of analysts found when it toward the facility recently. In fact, the Morgan Stanley people estimate that the Giga factory will be producing around 35 to 40,000 cars by the end of 2019. That's impressive. but not nearly as impressive as Elon Musk's estimates for production there, which are, shall we say, more grand. Cars built in China will initially be assembled from complete knock down kits or partial knock down kits and then will transition to full in-house production some time in 2020. And finally, it's looking increasingly like emojis are gonna be the cool new things for brands to latch on to because for to successfully petition the Unicode Consortium, aka the group that creates and approves new emoji to add a pickup truck emoji and its next big update in early 2020. Addition to that Electrify America also found itself trying to add a little charge to World Emoji Day by petitioning the Unicode Consortium to create an electric vehicle charging emoji. Now the art that Electrify America sent over is a little Shall we say old fashioned, but it would still be awfully convenient to be able to toss that emoji and an Instagram post or tweet while you're using about life as your leaf charges. That's it for autocomplete this week. But don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell icon to stay notified of all the new videos on road show and we will see you again next week. [MUSIC]

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