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2015 Volkswagen Touareg [w/video]

The second-generation Volkswagen Touareg has been in production since 2010, and is therefore staring down the last part of its model cycle. To keep buyers interested, the company has undertaken a refresh of its upscale midsize SUV. As is typical of these things, the changes include some exterior and interior rejuvenation, as well as increased content levels and a slight uptick in price. The basics of the styling changes are pretty straightforward. The 2015 Touareg can be pretty easily spotted versus the outgoing model by way of its four-bar chrome grille, a cleaner headlight design, bigger VW badge and a completely new lower front clip. (I got one photo of the old and new models side-by-side for my Twitter followers before we rolled out on the drive.) There's also a thin strip of chrome that runs around the bodywork, standard LED taillights and a selection of three new wheel styles and five new paint colors. Inside, I found it harder to spot the changes, old to new. The Touareg's switchgear has been updated and there's a new frame for the infotainment display, but there's no piece that stands out and says "new model year!" Powertrains and mechanical bits all carryover from the 2014 Touareg, too. But there were a few functional changes to the vehicle, primarily in the new Driver's Assistance Package, for me to take note of as I took a lap of my favorite Ann Arbor, MI driving route. Drive Notes Let me start with the newest news then, the Driver Assistance pack. Volkswagen will sell you this suite of safety gear on either the mid-level Lux or the top-end Executive trims, for $2,500. The package included adaptive cruse cruise control, "Front Assist" for emergency braking situations, lane-keep assist and blind spot monitoring. If the contents of that package don't strike you as revolutionary, you're not alone. Some or all of the technologies that are new to the Touareg have been around other showrooms – and other VW family products – for quite a while. Still, they're nice to have as options. All of the driver assistance features that I was able to test worked as advertised, too. The adaptive cruise uses cameras, radar and ultrasonic sensors, so it isn't likely to be impacted by inclement weather, which is nice. I also appreciate that the lane-keep assist (which offers the driver a haptic buzz to the steering wheel when straying out of the lane) can be turned off, or turned down in terms of intensity and reaction time.

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

VW and partner SAIC start building $2.5B Audi plant in China

BEIJING — Volkswagen AG's China joint venture with SAIC Motor Corp has started building a $2.5 billion new energy vehicle (NEV) plant in Shanghai, which will make VW's luxury Audi brand cars, a possible first for the venture. The new plant is a key step for Audi to diversify production of its cars in the world's largest car market from its long-standing local partner, China FAW Group Corp. This shift has been delayed amid resistance from local dealers. SAIC Volkswagen said the new plant would have an annual capacity to make 300,000 cars and begin production from 2020. Audi sold 481,387 vehicles in China from January to September this year. The announcement comes the same week Tesla secured a Shanghai location for a Gigafactory battery plant to serve the Chinese market. Audi unveiled the plan to bolster ties with SAIC in late 2016. Earlier this year, the Germany luxury carmaker bought a 1 percent stake in the SAIC Volkswagen venture, paving the way for the joint venture to produce and sell Audi cars. Volkswagen currently gets a larger proportion of the proceeds from the 50-50 tie-up with SAIC than from its 40 percent stake in the venture with FAW. SAIC Volkswagen said in a statement on Friday the plant would cost 17 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) and would make VW and Skoda models as well as Audi cars. It will help VW tap China's fast-growing market for NEVs, a category comprising electric battery cars and plug-in electric hybrid vehicles. ($1 = 6.9314 Chinese yuan renminbi) Reporting by Yilei Sun and Adam JourdanRelated Video: Image Credit: Reuters Green Plants/Manufacturing Audi Volkswagen Skoda Electric Hybrid