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Recharge Wrap-up: Smart Silvretta E-Car Rally, Uber's autonomous Teslas

Daimler took part in the 2015 Silvretta E-Car Rally with seven electrified cars from Mercedes-Benz and Smart. It is the automakers' sixth year competing in the competition in the mountains of Austria's Montafon region. Mercedes fielded two B-Class Electric Drives, an SLS AMG Electric Drive, C350e, S500e and GLE500e 4Matic alongside a Smart Brabus Fortwo Electric Drive Cabriolet. The Silvretta Rally sees some 150 vintage cars and 30 electric vehicles take part in the event, which took place from July 2 through 5 this year. Read more in the press release from Daimler below. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick says that he'd want to buy all of Tesla's autonomous vehicles if they were available in 2020. Venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson relayed Kalanick's comments from the Top 10 Tech Trends dinner in June. Jurvetson also praises self-driving cars, saying, "I believe they are already safer than my parents, and I would trust my kids with them. And they're just going to get better." Jurvetson also believes that taxi services will prosper from the use of autonomous cars in the future. Read more at Hybrid Cars. A Michigan legislator has introduced a bill that would count burning industrial solids — such as tires and plastics — toward the state's renewable energy mandate. Aric Nesbitt's bill would "remove unnecessary burdens on the appropriate use of solid waste as a clean energy source" in order to meet the state's requirement that 10 percent of energy come from renewable sources. Critics argue that these materials are not truly renewable, and that burning them causes pollution and emits greenhouse gases. The proposed bill would also repeal a law requiring utilities to work toward reducing energy use by one percent per year. Read more at Treehugger. Will the cars National Electric Vehicle Sweden (NEVS) builds in China bear the Saab name? While NEVS is the newest parent company to Saab after being acquired in bankruptcy from Spyker, there's no confirmation that the electric vehicles it builds at its Tianjin plant will be sold as Saabs. Swedish defense firm Saab AB, which held the rights to the Saab name, withheld permission to use it after NEVS declared bankruptcy last year. "The exact models and brands are not finalized yet," says a NEVS spokesman. The company says it is spending $200 million to build the new factory in China, with an expected annual capacity of 200,000 vehicles. Read more at Automotive News Europe.

The 2016 Spanish Grand Prix flipped all the scripts

The Monaco Formula 1 Grand Prix circuit and the Hungaroring fly the flag for processional races, yet Spain's Circuit de Catalunya is arguably as bad. Before this weekend, the pole-sitter won the race 19 times out of the last 25 years. The front row of the grid produced 23 winners in the past 25 years. The racing gods edited that script this year, when a first-lap crash and two mid-race strategy changes kept things open until the end of the 66-lap race. It started when Mercedes-AMG Petronas teammates Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton took each other out on Lap 1. After Rosberg passed pole-sitter Hamilton into Turn 1, Rosberg's car slowed through Turn 3, somehow in the wrong mode. Hamilton closed in on Rosberg so quickly that once the Brit ducked inside for the pass, he couldn't back out. Rosberg, however, closed the door so suddenly that Hamilton had no choice but to drive onto the grass. When Hamilton spun, he collected Rosberg and both Mercedes' ended up in the gravel trap. The stewards deemed it a racing incident. The crash put Red Bull teammates Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen in the lead, followed by Toro Rosso driver Carlos Sainz and the Ferrari duo of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen. Both Ferraris cleared Sainz by Lap 10, leaving 56 laps for them to haul in the Red Bulls. Ferrari loosely followed Red Bull's pit strategies. Ricciardo pitted on Laps 11 and 28, Vettel pitted on Laps 15 and 37. Verstappen pitted on Laps 12 and 35, Raikkonen pitted on Laps 13 and 36. Pirelli predicted a three-stop race as the fastest and that the medium tire could only go about 23 laps. Verstappen and Raikkonen didn't get those memos. So while Ricciardo and Vettel came in for third stops the Dutchman and the Finn stayed out, with Verstappen ahead of Raikkonen at the front of the race as of Lap 43. That's when Verstappen – 18 years and 227 days old – proved how good a driver he is, lapping perfectly as second-place Raikkonen closed the gap to a little more than half a second. The Finn still couldn't get past the Dutchman down the pit straight even with the help of DRS, nor under braking at the only real passing opportunity into Turn 1. At the end of Lap 66 Verstappen crossed the line ahead of Raikkonen, a victorious end to Verstappen's first race weekend after being promoted to Red Bull. Further back, Vettel and Ricciardo fought for scraps, the German staying ahead to finish third.

VW, Fiat, Mercedes could be CNG winners in Europe

Fiat ads in the US try to play up the exotic, sexy side of Italian culture. On the home front in Italy, however, passenger-vehicle sales are marked by something less edgy and quite a bit more practical: the growth of compressed-natural-gas (CNG) powered car sales. In fact, Italy is leading a group of European countries where CNG sales are on the upswing and may be benefiting automakers like VW, Fiat and Mercedes-Benz, according to Automotive News. VW started sales of its Golf TGI natural-gas vehicle this year – the company's fourth in Europe – while Mercedes-Benz added a natural-gas B-class model. Fiat accounts for about 50 percent of CNG vehicles sold on the continent. In all, Europe's CNG sales through September totaled about 67,000, up seven percent from a year earlier, Automotive News Europe says, citing research firm JATO Dynamics. And the number of CNG vehicles on Europe's roads could jump tenfold within the next decade. The draw is a combination of lower refueling prices and a CNG drivetrain that typically emits less CO2 than diesel vehicles. As for Italy, about five percent of new-vehicle sales are CNG. To put that into perspective, hybrids, battery-electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids and diesels combined to account for about 4.2 percent of US vehicle sales last year. News Source: Automotive News - sub. req.Image Credit: Volkswagen Green Fiat Mercedes-Benz Volkswagen Natural Gas Vehicles CNG