#g6-and-c6-series

#g6-and-c6-series

In 2025, German car companies earned nearly 44% less than in 2024, with earnings before interest and taxes dropping to just 24.9 billion, the lowest since 2020.

On average, fuel prices are up almost a dollar per gallon, or 25 percent, according to AAA. For a nation as addicted to the automotive as we are, that's bad news. Except, of course, for electric vehicles.

CEO Thomas Schafer stated, "I said, listen, there's two things that are absolutely non-negotiable for me: door handles and buttons. I don't understand why anybody would have [touch-sensitive] sliders."

Aston Martin has produced a unique breed of grown-up supercars that demanded its own lane amongst the competition. Rolls-Royce focuses on luxury, Lamborghini on aggression, and Bugatti on speed, but Aston Martin blends style and civilized ferocity.

There's a key reason why many EVs are expensive. Economies of scale just haven't kicked in as they have for gas cars. Over 100-plus years of building dino-burners, we've gotten pretty good at every individual part. There are plenty of firms that can build fuel pumps, turbochargers, alternators, and radiators at scale, leveraging hundreds of thousand-unit volumes to drive per-unit costs down.

Chevrolet's Super Sport badge has long been associated with go-faster, scream-louder versions of regular production models. Whether it's a 1961 Impala SS, a 2013 SS performance sedan or the flurry of muscle cars and SUVs in betweenthe idea was always to make cars fun-to-drive with more horsepower, tighter handling and louder exhaust pipes, similar to Mercedes AMG or BMW M cars. With the 2026 Chevy Blazer EV SS, the automaker is bringing the historic badge into the electric era.

General Motors has one of the broadest electric-vehicle lineups in the United States, spanning everything from compact crossovers to full-size trucks. But the manufacturer is already preparing the next stage of its EV evolution, and some changes will even appear on the 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ. GM plans to roll out next-generation software with that model, which is also expected to be the first to feature lidar for more advanced autonomous driving capabilities and conversational AI.

During the automaker's Tuesday earnings call, CEO Mary Barra highlighted the rapid growth of GM's in-vehicle software and subscription business. In the past nine months, GM's software generated $2 billion, and customers have already signed up for about $5 billion in future subscriptions. The company said it now has 11 million subscribers for its OnStar safety system, up 34% from a year earlier. Another half a million customers are also paying for Super Cruise, its hands-free driver-assistance system.

Life as a startup carmaker is hard-just ask Lucid Motors. When we met the brand and its prototype Lucid Air sedan in 2017, the company planned to put the first cars in customers' hands within a couple of years. But you know what they say about plans. A lack of funding paused everything until late 2018, when Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund bought itself a stake. A billion dollars meant Lucid could build a factory-at the cost of alienating some former fans

Mazda will begin selling a new electric mid-size SUV in Europe this year. It's not coming to the U.S. The CX-6e will compete with models such as the Tesla Model Y, BMW iX3 and Audi Q4 e-tron. It looks sharp and gets a high-tech interior. Mazda has been late to the electric vehicle party, but it's finally picking up the pace in a market that doesn't reward laggards.

It's helpful to know that the lack of physical buttons isn't just a trend pushed by designers-the bean counters like it, too. It's quicker-and therefore cheaper-during assembly to just fit a capacitive touch module that controls multiple settings or switches than it is to have individual buttons, each connected to a wiring loom. Which is why we're seeing the controls for heating and cooling the interior, the headlights, seat heaters, and more move from knobs and dials and sliders and buttons to touch panels.