2011 Bmw X3 Xdrive28i Sport Utility 4-door 3.0l on 2040-cars

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Child cobalt miners: Automakers pledge ethical minerals sourcing for EVs

BERLIN - Leading carmakers including Volkswagen and Toyota pledged on Wednesday to uphold ethical and socially responsible standards in their purchases of minerals for an expected boom in electric vehicle production. Demand for minerals such as cobalt, graphite and lithium is forecast to soar in the coming years as governments crack down on vehicle pollution and carmakers step up their investments in electric models. To cover its plans for more than 80 new models by 2025, Volkswagen alone is looking for partners in China, Europe and North America to provide battery cells and related technology worth more than 50 billion euros ($59 billion). Talks with major cobalt producers, including Glencore, at VW's Wolfsburg headquarters last week ended without a deal. More than half of the world's cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country racked by political instability and legal opacity, and where child labor is used in mines. On Wednesday, a group of 10 leading passenger-car and truck manufacturers announced an initiative to jointly identify and address ethical, environmental, human and labor rights issues in raw materials sourcing. The partnership dubbed "Drive Sustainability" consists of VW, Toyota Motor Europe, Ford, Daimler, BMW, Honda, Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo Cars and truckmakers Scania and Volvo. The alliance "will assess the risks posed by the top raw materials (such as mica, cobalt, rubber and leather) in the automotive sector," said Stefan Crets of the CSR Europe business network. "This will allow Drive Sustainability to identify the most impactful activities to pursue" to address issues within the supply chain.Reporting by Andreas Cremer.Related Video: Image Credit: Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images Green BMW Ford Honda Jaguar Land Rover Mercedes-Benz Automakers Toyota Volkswagen Volvo Green Automakers Green Culture Electric Scania ethics mining

BMW 6 Series Gran Coupe gets Bang & Olufsen Individual edition [w/video]

Not content with a bit part on the options sheet, high-end sound gets a starring role on the BMW Individual 6 Series Gran Coupe Bang & Olufsen Edition. There's no technical difference between the 1,200-watt, 16-speaker High End Surround Sound System in this run of 6 Series Gran Coupes and the $3,700 system you can order as an option on the standard Gran Coupe, but the special edition gets brushed black aluminum finish speaker grilles, a first for the range.
The packages and colors are what set these apart, exteriors available in either Brilliant White Metallic or Dark Graphite II Metallic, interiors possible in either black or Opal White and black. You'll also get upgrades like the Cold Weather, M Sport Edition Packages on the non-M car, the Competition Package and Executive Package on the M, plus piano black wood trim, special floor mats and lots of B&O badging.
This isn't just a special edition, it's a limited edition, with BMW saying only 100 will be produced. Prices start at $116,240 for the 650i B&O Edition and top out at $152,423 for the M6 B&O Edition. There's a press release below with more details, and we've included a video on the stereo itself to help understand why it might deserve a car named after it.

BMW X4 tunes up its crossover game in Germany

Except for the fancy wheels and the overly expressive fascias, the production version of the BMW X4 looks like it will carry over practically untouched from what we saw in the X4 Concept several months back. With the same fastback roofline as the concept, these spy shots show that the X4 is taking shape to be a baby version of the BMW X6.
Sharing the same platform as the X3, the lower and wider X4 will be positioned slightly more upmarket - as is the case with the X5 and X6. We hear that this could mean that the X4 will ditch the X3's base engine to give an even sportier feel right out of the gate, but word has it that an M version will being showing up down the road as well.
BMW has already revealed what it plans to show off at the Frankfurt Motor Show (i3, 4 Series Coupe, next-gen X5, refreshed 5 Series, X5 Concept eDrive plug-in hybrid and Concept Active Tourer Outdoor), so barring any surprised we definitely won't be seeing the X4 there. At this point, with as close to production as these images would have us believe, our best guess would be that we'll see the X4's official unveiling happen either at LA or Detroit.