Currently reading: Autocar confidential: Volvo's hybrid hopes, VW's transatlantic Golf and more

Our reporters empty their notebooks to round up a week in gossip from across the automotive industry

In this week's round-up of automotive gossip, we chat plug-in hybrids with Volvo, talk Kia e-Niros with Kia, find out why Bugatti is swapping clay model cars for virtual ones and more.

Volvo's hybrid hopes

Volvo expects that a quarter of all the cars it sells in Europe in 2020 will be plug-in hybrids, up from 10% in 2019. It has tripled factory capacity for them and prioritised their production to cut lead times. It will also launch its first electric car, the XC40 P8 Recharge, this year. “This is the year in which electrification goes from a niche to a significant business to lay down the future,” said Volvo’s boss for Europe, Björn Annwall.

Kia's professional appeal

Less than 10% of e-Niro buyers are existing Kia owners, creating a good opportunity to bring new consumers to the brand. Kia UK boss Paul Philpott said: “We’re not seeing people leave Kia products to go to the e-Niro. It’s mostly professional people [buying the model]. There’s a disproportionate number of doctors on the list!”

1 Kia e niro 2019 tracking front

VW's transatlantic Golf

While the regular Mk8 Volkswagen Golf won’t reach the US, where pick-up trucks and large SUVs dominate, the forthcoming Golf R hot hatch will. “The Mk7 Golf R is a huge success there,” said R division boss Jost Capito. “In the US, car dealers measure success by the days a car spends on the lot; the Golf R averages two days and sells overpriced.”

24 Vw golf r 2019 stationary rear

Advertisement

Read our review

Car review

Volvo’s XC40 arrives in the crowded premium compact SUV segment and hits the right note with design, practicality and driving style

Back to top

Bugatti swaps clay for code

Bugatti design boss Achim Anscheidt believes the days of shaping new cars with clay are over, as using virtual reality is quicker, more accurate and cheaper. “We’ve been talking about this for 20 years, saying ‘one day, we’ll be standing over a virtual model’. Now it has happened,” he said. The shift began in 2016 and helped Bugatti design its recent Bugatti Chiron offshoots.

2 Clay model car

READ MORE

Volvo confirms electric version of next XC90

From dependable to disruptive: the reinvention of Volvo 

Why Volvo is redefining autonomous driving

Join the debate

Comments
2
Add a comment…
xxxx 10 March 2020

Clay

Can't see a screen ever taking the place of a fullsize 'final mock-up' model whether it be clay or printed plastic, if it was possible/practical it would have happened long ago.  

Takeitslowly 10 March 2020

xxxxzzzz

xxxx wrote:

Can't see a screen ever taking the place of a fullsize 'final mock-up' model whether it be clay or printed plastic, if it was possible/practical it would have happened long ago.  

 

You are RIGHT, because seasoned senior automotive industry people know NOTHING about what they purport to speak...then you arrive, in the nick of time, at the eleventh hour...cometh the hour, cometh the FOOL.