Month: August 2021

Karma goes after fleet market with plans to electrify commercial trucks

By Michael J. Moody 5 months ago

Karma Automotive is looking to make the improbable leap from luxury cars to commercial trucks.

The California-based company announced Monday that it will offer engineering and contract-manufacturing services to fleet customers under the “Powered by Karma” banner. The plan is to offer modular electrified powertrains for a variety of applications, including buses, RVs, step vans, and box trucks, a Karma press release said.

Karma will display two such vehicles—a delivery van and a shuttle bus—Advanced Clean Tech (ACT) Expo this week in Long Beach, California, but didn’t discuss any pending orders for the vehicles.

2021 Karma GS-6

2021 Karma GS-6

The powertrain package Karma plans to offer is designed for Class 3-6 commercial vehicles, with maximum output of 268 horsepower and 1,327 pound-feet of torque. This seems like another iteration of Karma’s previous efforts to enter the commercial-vehicle sector.

Karma has been working on a new platform for commercial vehicles—potentially also to

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New technology aims to prevent child hot car deaths

By Michael J. Moody 5 months ago

This year, 17 children have died after being left in hot cars.

August 31, 2021, 1:36 PM

7 min read

This year, 17 children have already died after being left in hot cars. Since 1990, more than a thousand children have lost their lives. But a new technology on the market is aiming to prevent these tragedies.

The potentially life-saving innovation is an alarm in the 2022 Genesis GV70 that, according to the manufacturer, sounds as quickly as 10 seconds. Hidden inside the roof above the back seat is a radar that Genesis says can detect a child even if the only movement is a soft breath.

Dr. Emily Thomas, an automotive safety engineer with Consumer Reports, showed ABC News how the child detection system works with her own 4-year-old son, Micah.

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Lotus Cars Finishes Funding Round at $2 Billion Valuation

By Michael J. Moody 5 months ago

(Bloomberg) — Lotus Cars, the iconic British sports and racing carmaker being transformed into an electric-led brand by its Chinese owners, has completed a financing round, according to people familiar with the matter.

The company was valued at 15 billion yuan ($2.3 billion) in the pre-Series A funding round, one of the people said, asking to not to be identified because the matter is private. Nio Capital, the investment arm of Chinese, U.S.-listed electric-car startup Nio Inc., is part of the investor lineup, the person said.

Controlled by China’s Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., Lotus plans to announce the new investors as soon as Tuesday, at a ground-breaking ceremony for the global headquarters of Wuhan Lotus Technology, which develops electric cars for the brand in Wuhan, central China, the people said.

Representatives for both Geely and Nio Capital declined to comment.

Chinese billionaire Li Shufu’s Geely, which also controls

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Hurricane Ida: What to know about flood-damaged cars

By Michael J. Moody 5 months ago

Thousands of cars are expected to be damaged by the flood waters caused by Hurricane Ida in the southeast United States, many beyond repair.

(Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

Both owners and insurers will have to deal with the aftermath and decide what to do with the vehicles, while car shoppers need to keep a wary eye for any totaled vehicles that end up on the used market illegally. The current high demand for used cars may compound the issue.

Here are a few things all of the affected parties need to know:

Q: SHOULD I START MY CAR IF IT’S BEEN FLOODED?

A: No, in almost all cases. If the car was only in a few inches of water that didn’t rise past the bottom of the body, maybe. Water higher than that can get into wires, transmission parts, the exhaust or other places. Deeper water could enter the cylinders that

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