2004 Volvo S60 2.5t on 2040-cars

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Electrify Expo is an all-electrified auto show like the old days

In late July, Autoblog swung by Washington, D.C. to check out the Electrify Expo. Now in its third year of nationwide shows, the Electrify Expo calls itself “North America's largest electric vehicle festival filled with over 1 million square feet of the world's top electric brands.” At every stop, visitors can find out about, crawl around in, drive and ride just about any personal conveyance that uses a battery for propulsion. Truth be told, when the show's PR team reached out to us with an invite, we only considered going after finding out about an area showcasing battery-electric tuner cars. EV tuning is undoubtedly going to be huge—eventually—which got us curious about these early days. We figured weÂ’d brave whatever the rest of the expo was to find out whatÂ’s the equivalent of nitrous for a Tesla. See, the EV event scene is still such that one never knows if theyÂ’ll show up to a mix of science and county fairs with a few cars on display just for truth in advertising, or if theyÂ’ll show up to a parking lot with 26 cars, 10 of them locked, 10 of them homemade, and 6 guarded by promotional hires desperate to tap all your identifying info a tablet before dispensing dubious and superficial information. Which is to say, we didnÂ’t expect much. And that makes us chuffed to report: Electrify Expo is great. We hadnÂ’t been strolling the lot outside the old RFK Stadium for five minutes before thinking, “This feels like an old-school auto show!” The exclamation to that point came from a group of four who cut me off to reach the C40 Recharge in the Volvo booth, one of them exclaiming as if he were the group expert and as if his friends were deaf, “THATÂ’S THE LEAST EXPENSIVE ONE! AND ITÂ’S BEEEE-YOUUUUU-TI-FULLLLLL!” I wasnÂ’t there to judge, I was there for the enthusiasm. Automakers had built small, simple, open booths, parked cars in them, then provided visitors the kind of interactions that will do the most good for anyone wondering about or interested in an EV. We only saw two cars that were off limits, the new Volkswagen ID.Buzz and the Ford F-100 Eluminator. Volvo wouldnÂ’t let me get an espresso from their chic little trailer, either, unless I visited the EX90 Experience trailer first. Otherwise, it was a free-for-all. Tesla had a large booth full of cars. BMW had two i7s open for everyone to sit in, next to the Ford booth with that Eluminator and an unlocked Mustang Mach-E GT and F-150 Lightning showing their cooler-chest-frunk trick.

Vehicles awarded IIHS Top Safety Pick awards skyrockets for 2015 [w/video]

By practically every measure, passenger vehicles in the US are continuing to get safer. With the year rapidly coming to an end, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety is releasing its annual list tallying of the scores for the latest vehicles to see how they compare to last year. Judging by the agency's evaluations, the numbers look quite positive. According to the institute, 71 vehicles earned either the Top Safety Pick or Top Safety Pick+ rating so far in its testing for 2015. Among the latest winners, there have been 33 TSP+ awards and 38 TSP medalists. That's a healthy increase over the 22 TSP+ and 17 TSP grades in 2014. The figures appear even more impressive when you consider that it keeps getting harder to earn the + designation. In the latest round of testing, a vehicle must offer some form of front crash prevention automatic braking to get the mark. Previously, just a warning to drivers was necessary. This list also illustrates the ways that automakers adapt to new testing procedures. In 2013 there were 117 TSP ratings and 13 TSP+ awards. Then, the IIHS mandated that to be a safety pick, a model had to score Good in the institute's four crash tests, plus a Good or Acceptable in the small overlap front test. That brought a plunge in 2014 to just 17 TSP grades. With the numbers climbing again, companies apparently have deciphered how to perform better. Some brands especially stood out on this year's list. The IIHS praised Volvo, Mercedes-Benz and Acura for offering standard front crash prevention systems on some models. Subaru received at least one of the awards for all seven of its models. Toyota also had seven, and the Honda brand did too – though the institute counts the two- and four-door versions of the Civic and Accord separately. Check out the full announcement below and a video about this year's winners. The full list can be viewed, here. Safety gains ground: More vehicles earn top honors from IIHS The number of vehicles earning either of the Institute's two awards has jumped to 71 from 39 this time last year, giving consumers more choices for optimum protection in crashes. The number of winners in the top tier - TOP SAFETY PICK+ - has increased by 11 for 2015, despite a tougher standard for front crash prevention. "This is the third year in a row that we are giving automakers a tougher challenge to meet," says IIHS President Adrian Lund.

2024 Volvo C40 and XC40 Recharge First Drive Review: Back to the RWD future

The 2024 Volvo XC40 Recharge and C40 EVs will be available with rear-wheel drive, replacing the front-wheel-drive version that has been the fraternal pairing’s single-motor base model. This is obviously newsworthy — why else would I be writing about it? But does it actually mean anything? After driving both of these vehicles around the lakes, seaside, perfectly-maintained highways, and cobblestoned urban streets proximate to the brandÂ’s headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden, I can say that the answer is, not really. But thatÂ’s not really VolvoÂ’s fault. The last time Volvo sold a rear-wheel-drive vehicle in the United States was 1998 when the cushy, brick-like 960 was retired (officially S90 and V90 in their final year). Everything thereafter was front-wheel drive or at least on a front-drive-based platform, in no small part due to the additional all-weather traction and stability afforded by the additional weight of an internal combustion engine and transaxle over the drive wheels. In short, it was safer, and even as Volvo moved away from decades of arcane, rectilinear design, safety remained its raison dÂ’etre.   That hasnÂ’t changed, but according to Volvo, EVs have fundamentally changed vehicle dynamics, centers of gravity, and weight distribution to refute the front-drive argument. A Volvo spokesperson told me that this new one-motor layout in the XC/C40, driving the rear wheels, with contemporary advanced driver assistance systems, is better in inclement weather than a gas-engine/FWD combo. That explains why the switch to a standard rear-drive layout doesnÂ’t run afoul of VolvoÂ’s established ethos, but why make the switch in the first place? Whether it was the plan all along, or just an advancement of next-generation technology to prolong and extend the relevance of these vehicles, is not something Volvo would comment on. In any event, many of the base EVs that are in or near the XC/C40Â’s competitive set — the VW ID.4, the Kia EV6, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 — feature rear-wheel drive in their single-motor setup. It is notable that all of those cars were developed from the ground up as EVs and could be optimized for the aforementioned dynamics. The XC40 and C40 were built on a platform capable of accommodating gas-only, plug-in hybrid and full-electric powertrains.