Volkswagen Passat Glx 2005 Loaded No Reserve on 2040-cars

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VW was 2018's top-selling automaker — but

TOKYO — Volkswagen Group has held on to its position as the world's top-selling automaker for the fifth year in a row, although the German group was edged out again by the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi alliance in the light-duty vehicles segment. Renault SA, Nissan Motor Co Ltd and Mitsubishi Motors Corp together sold 10.76 million passenger cars and light commercial vehicles in 2018, according to Reuters' calculations after new data released on Wednesday. The group doesn't sell heavy trucks. Nissan said on Wednesday it sold 5.65 million vehicles last year, down 2.8 percent on the year. Mitsubishi reported an 18 percent rise in sales to 1.22 million units while Renault sold 3.88 million units, up 3.2 percent on the year. Volkswagen's deliveries rose 0.9 percent to a record 10.83 million last year, including its MAN and Scania heavy trucks, the German company said earlier this month. Excluding heavy trucks, it sold 10.6 million units. Toyota Motor Corp retained its third spot, announcing on Wednesday that it had sold 10.59 million vehicles last year including its Toyota and Lexus brands, along with minicars made by subsidiary Daihatsu and light and heavy trucks produced by its truck division Hino Motors Ltd. Excluding Hino trucks, Toyota sold 10.39 million units last year. The automaker has said it expects to sell a total of 10.76 million vehicles in 2019. Many automakers are trying to boost sales volumes to achieve economies of scale and reduce costs amid soaring investments needed to develop next-generation technologies, including self-driving cars and electric vehicles. This has been a focus of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Motors group, which is looking to share more vehicle parts and consolidate production platforms to trim R&D and manufacturing costs, while raising profitability. The alliance, which brought Mitsubishi Motors into its fold in 2016, is currently in crisis with its former Chairman Carlos Ghosn arrested and indicted on charges of misconduct. Nissan has also been indicted, and Renault appointed new top management last week. Related Video: Earnings/Financials Mitsubishi Nissan Toyota Volkswagen

Cruze Diesel Road Trip reveals the good and bad, but no ugly

Most of us have strong opinions on diesel-powered cars based on our perceptions of and experience with them. I used to thoroughly dislike oil burners for their noise, smoke and lackluster performance, and the fact that they ran on greasy, smelly stuff that was more expensive than gasoline, could be hard to find and was nasty to get on your hands when refueling. Those negatives, for me, trumped diesel's major positives of big torque for strong acceleration and better fuel economy. Are any of those knocks on diesel still valid today? I'm not talking semis, which continue to annoy me when their operators for some reason almost never shut them down. At any busy truck stop, the air seems always filled with the sound – and sometimes smell – of dozens of big-rig diesels idling endlessly and mindlessly. Or diesel heavy-duty pickups. Those muscular workhorses are far more refined than they once were and burn much less fuel than their gasoline counterparts. But good luck arriving home late at night, or departing early morning, without waking your housemates and neighbors with their clattery racket. No, I'm talking diesel-powered passenger cars, which account for more than half the market in Europe (diesel fuel is cheaper there) yet still barely bump the sales charts in North America. Diesel fuel remains more expensive here, too few stations carry it, and too many Americans remember when diesel cars were noisy, smelly slugs. Also, US emissions requirements make them substantially more expensive to certify, and therefore to buy. But put aside (if you can) higher vehicle purchase and fuel prices, and today's diesel cars can be delightful to drive while delivering much better fuel efficiency than gas-powered versions. So far in the US, all except Chevrolet's compact Cruze Diesel come from German brands, and all are amazingly quiet, visually clean (no smoke) and can be torquey-fun to drive. When a GM Powertrain engineering team set out to modify a tried-and-true GM of Europe turbodiesel four for North American Chevy Cruze compacts, says assistant chief engineer Mike Siegrist, it had a clear target in mind: the Volkswagen Jetta TDI 2.0-liter diesel. And they'll tell you that they beat it in nearly every way. "I believe we have a superior product," he says. "It's powerful, efficient and clean, and it will change perceptions of what a diesel car can be." The 2.0L Cruze turbodiesel pumps out 151 SAE certified horses and 264 pound-feet of torque (at just 2,000 rpm) vs.

VW decides against active-cooling system for e-Golf lithium battery

When the 2015 VW e-Golf was introduced at the LA Auto Show last year, VW said it would come with a water-cooled battery. During the Detroit Auto Show, when the car was trotted out again, VW released a new press release that stripped out the "water-cooled" language, but this change went unnoticed. During a recent VW event in Germany, a friend from Green Car Reports realized that the battery on display did not seem to have any water-cooling mechanisms. That set us off on a bit of a sleuthing and we have now learned that VW is not going to include any active cooling in the upcoming e-Golf. In fact, the company is entirely confident that this car - because of what it's designed to do - doesn't need it. "The need for a cooling system wasn't there" - VW's Darryll Harrison VW has been working on an electrified Golf for ages now, and so changes to the plan are to be expected. But battery cooling is vitally important not just to keep the car operating properly but because when things get too hot, there can be serious public relations problems. Nissan began testing a new battery chemistry for the Leaf in 2013 after an uproar from warm-weather EV drivers in Arizona who were experiencing worse-than-expected battery performance. The Leaf has always used an air-cooled battery, which is another way to say that there is no active cooling system (more details here). Tesla CEO Elon Musk once said this approach is "primitive." So, why is VW following the same path? We asked Darryll Harrison, VW US's manager of brand public relations west, for more information, and he told AutoblogGreen that VW engineers discovered through a lot of testing of the Golf Mk6 EV prototypes, that battery performance was not impacted by temperatures when using the right battery chemistry. That chemistry, it turns out, is lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxide (NMC) in cells from Panasonic. These cells had "the lowest self-warming tendency and the lowest memory effect of all cells tested," Harrison said. He added that VW engineers tested the NMC cells in places like Death Valley and Arizona and found they didn't warm very quickly either through operation, charging (including during fast charging) or through high ambient temps. "The need for a cooling system wasn't there," Harrison said.