2013 Rolls-royce Phantom Series Ii In Diamond Black W/a Moccasin & Black Int. on 2040-cars

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2018 Rolls-Royce Phantom VIII First Look | It's all new, we swear!

At a well-decorated warehouse just off Hollywood's Sunset Blvd., a gaggle of PR, design, operations, and executives from Rolls-Royce Motor Cars are stoking our excitement for the all-new, 2018 Rolls-Royce Phantom VIII. Along with the normal Rolls-Roycey words like "heritage," "brand," and "bespoke," was a repeated phrase. A phrase that shouldn't be necessary. A phrase eliciting a concept that should be obvious if true. The new car, it said, was "not an evolution" on the current Phantom. That, friends, is exciting to hear. Don't get us wrong, we like the train-engine-bolted-to-a-horseless-carriage look, and the beast's scale and presence on the street. Trouble is, since the car first took to unsmoothing our air with its cathedral-facade front end in 2003, the looks have gotten a little, um, tired. Blame the mercilessness of time. Blame the success of the car, which means they're on every street corner in west Los Angeles. Blame the "imitation-is-the-most-sincere-form-of-flattery" Chrysler 300. Blame the fact that this car's magnetism vaults it into the public eye more frequently than a Kardashian. Whatever the cause, fact is, the Phantom needs a reboot. A subtle evolution a la the last Bentley Continental won't do. The lights are out. We're led through a darkened antechamber into the full-dark of the warehouse. We can see the shape. It's big and has the classic squared off D-pillar. The front, too, has the required grille bigness. It is enviously long. Let's pause. Here at Autoblog, we're known for giving people advice. We take that responsibility seriously, because the results of our evaluations and expertise are often the reason someone has dropped thousands of dollars on a car they're going to live with for many years. We try to keep it on cars and to not to get too preachy on the life coaching. We're going to break that convention now. Here's a life pro tip: The more frequently that someone in a position of power repeats a claim, the more likely it is that that claim is false. The lights click on. The men and women of Rolls-Royce, for whom this project is a true honor, clap in genuine appreciation and reverence for what they've been a part of. And the journalists in the room turn to each other and mouth, "Wait, is this the new one?" If you're casually familiar with the current-gen Phantom, based on seeing them pull into the club as you wait in line, then this new one will likely register as just another Phantom when it hits the streets early next year.

BMW chooses Tesla's Supercharger network for its future EVs

BMW, following the lead of many other automakers, has confirmed this week that it will adopt the North American Charging Standard (NACS), delivering EV drivers in the U.S. and Canada access to Tesla’s Supercharger network. The move goes a step further in cementing NACS as the universal system of choice. The conversion to Tesla plugs will begin formally in 2025 for BMW, as well as its Mini and Rolls-Royce brands in the U.S. market. Those marques now use the Combined Charging System (CCS) for EV charging. “It is our top priority to ensure that our drivers have easy access to reliable, fast charging," said Sebastian Mackensen, President & CEO, BMW of North America. NACS, which began as began as TeslaÂ’s proprietary charging connection, rapidly has become the new standard in its native land after Ford announced it would adopt it this past summer. This was quickly followed by General Motors. Since then, brands including Rivian, Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, Nissan, Polestar, and Jaguar have climbed d on board NACS. Earlier this month, the Hyundai Motor Group announced it would also provide customers with the NACS connector across its namesake, Kia, and Genesis marques. BMW says it will work across its three marques in the coming months to ensure a smooth transition to TeslaÂ’s charging network by early 2025, and owners will be able to pay for charging using their respective vehicle brandÂ’s own app. Related Video: How to charge a non-Tesla on a Supercharger

A car writer's year in new vehicles [w/video]

Christmas is only a week away. The New Year is just around the corner. As 2014 draws to a close, I'm not the only one taking stock of the year that's we're almost shut of. Depending on who you are or what you do, the end of the year can bring to mind tax bills, school semesters or scheduling dental appointments. For me, for the last eight or nine years, at least a small part of this transitory time is occupied with recalling the cars I've driven over the preceding 12 months. Since I started writing about and reviewing cars in 2006, I've done an uneven job of tracking every vehicle I've been in, each year. Last year I made a resolution to be better about it, and the result is a spreadsheet with model names, dates, notes and some basic facts and figures. Armed with this basic data and a yen for year-end stories, I figured it would be interesting to parse the figures and quantify my year in cars in a way I'd never done before. The results are, well, they're a little bizarre, honestly. And I think they'll affect how I approach this gig in 2015. {C} My tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015 it'll be as high as 73. Let me give you a tiny bit of background about how automotive journalists typically get cars to test. There are basically two pools of vehicles I drive on a regular basis: media fleet vehicles and those available on "first drive" programs. The latter group is pretty self-explanatory. Journalists are gathered in one location (sometimes local, sometimes far-flung) with a new model(s), there's usually a day of driving, then we report back to you with our impressions. Media fleet vehicles are different. These are distributed to publications and individual journalists far and wide, and the test period goes from a few days to a week or more. Whereas first drives almost always result in a piece of review content, fleet loans only sometimes do. Other times they serve to give context about brands, segments, technology and the like, to editors and writers. So, adding up the loans I've had out of the press fleet and things I've driven at events, my tally for the year is 68 cars, as of this writing. Before the calendar flips to 2015, it'll be as high as 73. At one of the buff books like Car and Driver or Motor Trend, reviewers might rotate through five cars a week, or more. I know that number sounds high, but as best I can tell, it's pretty average for the full-time professionals in this business.