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CEO says Volkswagen's buying spree is over

After adding Italian motorcycle icon Ducati to its stable and spending $5.6 billion on the rest of Porsche, Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn says he's done shopping for a while.
"We have enough to do at the moment in taking our twelve brands to where we want to be," Winterkorn tells German newspaper Handelsblatt.

Ex-Fiat exec: VW diesel scandal will hurt plug-in hybrids

It doesn't sound right at first blush, but former Fiat executive and noted diesel-powertrain expert Rinaldo Rinolfi thinks that plug-in hybrid sales may be more impacted by the VW diesel-emissions scandal than diesel sales. Rinolfi, who worked for Fiat for 40 years, told Automotive News Europe, said that the Euro 6 emissions rules that went into effect in 2015 have already increased diesel-engine production costs enough to raise prices and ultimately flatten demand. By the end of the decade, diesel-vehicle sales will settle in at a 40-percent market share of new European vehicles, and that was going to happen with or without the scandal. "Every carmaker has found ways to achieve fuel consumption and emissions results that have progressively diverged from the real driving conditions." - Rinaldo Rinolfi Makers of plug-in hybrids have more to lose, though, because every PHEV maker has figured out a way to keep emissions figures artificially low, Rinolfi said. Under New European Driving Cycle (NEDC) standards, PHEVs can be tested part of the time with the electric motor in action, meaning emissions get driven down to 30 percent to 40 percent less than real-world figures. With the VW scandal pushing regulators to use real-world figures, those PHEV emissions numbers are expected to rise substantially. To a lesser extent, hybrid emissions figures are also tested as artificially low. "Over the years, even without defeat devices, every carmaker has found ways to achieve fuel consumption and emissions results that have progressively diverged from the real driving conditions the customer experiences," Rinolfi said in the Automotive News Europe interview. Rinolfi is a little sunnier about compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles, estimating that CNG emissions are as much as 25 percent lower compared to conventional vehicles. As for battery-electrics, he's not so optimistic, estimating that there needs to be at least a tenfold improvement in energy efficiency for EVs to be truly competitive with conventional vehicles. "I've been waiting for a true breakthrough for the past 25 years, but I've not seen it yet," Rinolfi said about EVs in the Automotive News Europe interview. Related Video: News Source: Automotive News Europe-sub.req.Image Credit: Arnd Wiegmann / Reuters Green Fiat Volkswagen Diesel Vehicles Electric Hybrid diesel emissions scandal nedc

Poor headlights cause 40 cars to miss IIHS Top Safety Pick rating

Over the past few months, we've noticed a number of cars and SUVs that have come incredibly close to earning one of the IIHS's highest accolades, the Top Safety Pick rating. They have great crash test scores and solid automatic emergency braking and forward collision warning systems. What trips them up is headlights. That got us wondering, how many vehicles are there that are coming up short because they don't have headlights that meet the organization's criteria for an "Acceptable" or "Good" rating. This is a revision made after 2017, a year in which headlights weren't factored in for this specific award. This is also why why some vehicles, such as the Ford F-150, might have had the award last year, but have lost it for this year. We reached out to someone at IIHS to find out. He responded with the following car models. Depending on how you count, a whopping 40 models crash well enough to receive the rating, but don't get it because their headlights are either "Poor" or "Marginal." We say depending on how you count because the IIHS actual counts truck body styles differently, and the Infiniti Q70 is a special case. Apparently the version of the Q70 that has good headlights doesn't have adequate forward collision prevention technology. And the one that has good forward collision tech doesn't have good enough headlights. We've provided the entire list of vehicles below in alphabetical order. Interestingly, it seems the Volkswagen Group is having the most difficulty providing good headlights with its otherwise safe cars. It had the most models on the list at 9 split between Audi and Volkswagen. GM is next in line with 7 models. It is worth noting again that though these vehicles have subpar headlights and don't quite earn Top Safety Pick awards, that doesn't mean they're unsafe. They all score well enough in crash testing and forward collision prevention that they would get the coveted award if the lights were better.