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2015 Volvo S60 T6 Drive-E [w/video]

The Swedes Bend Sixes And Fives Into Fours
With government agency pressures mounting, the auto industry's latest engine and powertrain trends invariably include the cobbling of heretofore eight-cylinder models into charged (either turbo- or super-) six-cylinder models, six-cylinders into charged four-cylinders and so on. And then there's the mating of these downsized engines to fuel-saving automatic transmissions with ratio counts previously reserved for bicycles and semi trucks. Volvo can at last follow suit with the best of Germany and Japan thanks in great part to an $11-billion multi-year investment by its Chinese owners, Geely.
After we survived the recent Frankfurt Motor Show marathon of news and reveals (chief among said bits being the stunning Volvo Concept Coupe), we were escorted by the Swedish automaker to the far less frenetic air of southern France to explore the most significant step yet in the company's new life. Volvo's entire movement of new tech is referred to as Drive-E, and it includes these all-new four-cylinder engines we just tested, a new modular architecture called Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) that will first be found under the next-generation XC90, along with a host of other onboard advancements. Think of it as a Scandinavia's version of Mazda Skyactiv, a total-systems approach to developing more efficient yet more sporting new models.

Geely targeting US market in 2016 with help from Volvo

Following reports that it'd team up with corporate sibling Volvo on a Chinese-market car comes a report from Bloomberg that Geely would reattempt its entry into the US market. The Chinese brand had a display at the 2006 North American International Auto Show, but has been absent from the US scene ever since.
The Geely branded cars will be jointly developed with Volvo, and bank on the Swedish manufacturers reputation for safety and reliability. Geely's CEO, Gui Shengyue, explained, "Our acquisition of Volvo enhanced our image and overseas consumers are seeing us as an international company." This represents a change in rhetoric for the brand, after Geely Chairman Li Shufu hamstrung the idea of a closer pairing, citing fears that an association would harm Volvo's reputation. The news of projects between Geely and Volvo first broke last week, although it's unclear if the cars that end up coming to the US will be the same as those being sold in China.
As we reported last week, Geely is already aiming to be the biggest brand in the Chinese domestic market. With this move to the US market, it's also attempting to overtake Chery as China's largest automotive exporter. According to the Bloomberg report, Geely has already moved 180,000 units overseas, which is extremely close to the 184,800 vehicles sold by Chery in 2012. By 2018, Geely anticipates that 60 percent of its sales will be occur outside of the PRC.

Why this could be the perfect time for Apple to make a car play

While the automotive and technology worlds have been pouring billions into autonomous vehicles (AVs) and preparing to bring them to market soon as shared robo-taxis, Apple has mostly sat on the sidelines. Of course, Apple is the last company to ever make its intentions known, and the super-secret tech cult giant hasn't been totally out of the AV game based on the clues that have slipped out of its Cupertino, Calif., citadel over the past few years. Related: Apple self-driving cars are real — one was just in an accident News first broke in 2015 that it had assembled an automotive development team, in part by poaching high-profile talent from car companies, to work on a top-secret self-driving vehicle project code-named Titan. (Thank you very much, Nissan.) Apple also subsequently broke cover by making inquiries into using a Northern California AV testing facility and receiving a permit to test AVs on public roads in California. But then as the AV race started to heat up in the last few years, Apple reportedly began scaling back its car activities by downsizing team Titan. More recently, Apple's car project has shown signs of life with the hiring a high-level engineer away from Waymo and luring one Tesla's top engineers and a former employee back to Apple. It also inked a deal with Volkswagen to provide a technology platform and software to convert the automaker's new T6 Transporter vans into autonomous shuttles for employees at tech company's new campus. That is a far cry from giving rides to Wal-Mart shoppers, like Waymo is doing as part of its AV testing in Phoenix. But this could be the perfect time for Apple to enter the AV market now that ride-sharing is reaching critical mass and automakers and others are planning to deploy fleets of robo-taxis. Apple could easily establish a niche as a high-end ride-sharing service – and charge a premium – given its cult-like brand loyalty and design savvy. The growth of car subscription models could also play in Apple's favor since is already has many people hooked on paying for phones in monthly installments – and eager to upgrade when a new and better model becomes available. To achieve this, some believe Apple will fulfill co-founder and CEO Steve Job's dream of building a car. And as the world's first and only $1 trillion company it's sitting on a mountain of cash that certainly gives it the means. But other tech darlings like Tesla and Google have discovered how difficult it can be to build cars at scale.