AUTOMOBILE101 BLOG

You won't need an iPhone for true mobile integration Toyota joined the modern era when it  started adding CarPlay  to its vehicles early in 2018, but that hasn't done you much good if you're an Android user. You might get some relief soon, though.  Bloomberg sources  said that Toyota has agreed to put direct Android Auto support in its cars, with an announcement as soon as October. You could use the feature through Ford's SmartDeviceLink before, but that limited both their appearance on the center screen and limited their data access. Toyota wouldn't confirm or deny the apparent leak in a comment, saying that it recognized the demand for Android Auto and was considering direct support. The company would be late to the party, to put it mildly. Most major car brands have at least some kind of Android Auto support, and you'll even find it in niche makes like Koenigsegg. While it's unclear whether the absence of support hurt sales in a tangible way,...

Fifty years after introducing a six-cylinder engine in its 164 sedan model,  Volvo  has halved the cylinder count for  a new entry-level engine in the XC40 compact SUV . The turbocharged T3 gasoline engine is the Swedish manufacturer's first triple, even if it is not the smallest engine ever offered in a Volvo. Announced back in February , the T3 is being offered for now to European  XC40  buyers, but Volvo has said the three-cylinder will be part of  Volvo's XC40 portfolio in the U.S. sometime in the future. The current specifications for the XC40 T3 are fitting for an entry-level model: 156 horsepower at 5,000 rpm and 195 pound-feet of torque from 1,850 to 3,850 rpm, and the sole transmission option is a six-speed manual gearbox. Later on, an eight-speed auto will join the manual, a must for United States sales. The 1.5-liter unit is actually largish for a triple, as three-cylinder units are usually closer to one liter of displacement or l...

Is the 2018 Honda HR-V safe? In its crash-test ratings, the  National Highway Traffic Safety Administration  gives the 2018 HR-V an overall rating of five stars, the highest possible. The HR-V gets four stars for protecting passengers in frontal crashes, five stars in side crashes and four of five stars for rollover crashes. Over at the  Insurance Institute for Highway Safety , which puts cars through its own bevy of smash-'em-up tests, the 2018 HR-V earns only an "acceptable" rating on its small-overlap driver-side test (it wasn't rated for passenger-side protection, one of  IIHS ' newer tests). IIHS gives the compact crossover "good" ratings on most of the other  crash tests  — moderate front overlap, roof strength, etc. Headlights, a new area of scrutiny, earn a "poor" rating, while the child-seat LATCH anchor ease of use are rated "marginal." How reliable is the Honda HR-V? J.D. Power gives the 2018 Honda HR-V two o...

The next Mercedes-Benz S-Class  has been spied once again. This time, though, we get to see the redesigned flagship luxury sedan from outside  and the inside. The car still looks very evolutionary from the outside, but the inside suggests more radical updates.  Starting from the outside, we can tell that the overall profile of the car won't radically change. It's still a long, rear-drive sedan with graceful curves. The nose looks slimmer and lower than  the current model , thanks to headlights that appear to be sit lower and have less vertical area. We can also spot a clear crease that runs the length of the body and follows the curve of the window sills that sit just above it.  Inside, the S-Class seems to ditch what's become a signature Mercedes design: the ultra-wide tablet-style instrument panel. Instead of having one large rectangle encompass a pair of screens that stretch over the center stack, this prototype has just one screen in front of the driver. It'...