2004 Volvo Xc90 Suv Clean…drives Excellent! on 2040-cars

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China's Geely says it has no plan to buy Fiat Chrysler — as FCA stock leaps

HONG KONG — Chinese carmaker Geely Automobile denied media speculation on Wednesday that it planned to make a takeover bid for Fiat Chryslerk Automobiles (FCA), the world's seventh-largest automaker. Geely was one of several Chinese carmakers cited in by Automotive News, which said representatives of "a well-known Chinese automaker" had made an offer this month for FCA, which has a market value of almost $20 billion. "We don't have such a plan at the moment," Geely executive director Gui Shengyue told reporters at an earnings briefing, when asked if Geely was interested in Fiat. He said a foreign acquisition would be complicated, but he did not elaborate. "But for other (Chinese) brands, it could be a fast track for their development," Gui added. However, a source close to the matter said FCA and Geely Automobile's parent firm, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, had held initial talks late last year, without disclosing their nature. The source confirmed Geely was no longer interested in FCA, noting that the parent company had only three months ago announced its first push into Southeast Asia with the purchase of 49.9 percent of struggling Malaysian carmaker Proton, a deal that also included a stake in Lotus. Geel's denial failed to dent FCA's stock. The price of its Milan-based shares has jumped more than 10 percent to a 19-year high since Automotive News first reported on Monday, citing unnamed sources, that FCA had rejected the Chinese offer as too low. FCA stock on the New York Stock Exchange rose sharply on Monday from $11.60 to $12.38 and on Wednesday was trading at $12.84. FCA declined to comment on Wednesday. FCA Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne has repeatedly called for mergers as a way of sharing the costs of making cleaner, more advanced cars, but he has repeatedly failed to find a partner and retreated from his search for in April, saying FCA would stick to its business plan. He has also spoken of spinning the successful Jeep and Ram divisions off from FCA. Europe's largest carmaker, Volkswagen, and General Motors have both said they are not interested in talks with FCA. On Wednesday, Geely Automobile reported a doubling of first-half profit, above expectations, as cars designed with Sweden's Volvo won over domestic consumers. Volvo is a unit of the Zhejiang Geely group, and has recently announced it will share its technology with Geely.

Euro-market Volvo C40 Recharge and XC40 Recharge add efficiency, range

Volvo's tweaked the powertrain specs for the C40 Recharge and XC40 Recharge in Europe in both front- and all-wheel-drive trims. (We don't get the FWD versions here, only the AWD models.) First reported by CarsUK as a rumor, Autocar dug into the details after the new models hit some EU configurators. The big change there is that the front-drivers are now rear-drivers, engineers moving the single motor to the rear axle in the name of efficiency. The battery in the single-motor cars stays the same size at 67 kWh, but motor output rises from 228 horsepower to 235 hp. Even better, the C40 Recharge goes from an estimated 270 miles on a charge to 296 miles, the XC40 Recharge goes from an estimated 260 miles on a charge to 286 miles on the WLTP cycle. The AWD Recharge Twin trims get a larger battery, swapping the 78-kWh unit (75 kWh usable) for a 82-kWh unit (78 kWh usable). Their motors put out the same combined 402 hp as before, but do so with a rear bias. Instead of each motor making 201 hp, the front motor makes 161 hp, the rear 241 hp. Their ranges climb even more, the C40 gaining 37 miles of range to go an estimated 315 miles on a charge, the XC40 adding 42 miles to go an estimated 311 miles on the WLTP cycle. Volvo also upped the fast charging capability for the Recharge from 150 kW to 200 kW. The upgrade cuts the charge time from 10% to 80% by 10 minutes, to 27 minutes, matching the time required for the single-motor trims with the smaller battery to refill the same amount. The revised models can be ordered in Europe now but won't go into production until next year, the Recharge versions in May, the single-motor versions in autumn. Prices are up about 10%. It's thought the Polestar 2 will be in line for the same changes. We asked Volvo USA about the revisions coming to the U.S., aand  spokesperson responded, "We will have more details to share on the U.S. offer at a later date."

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.