Car News

Tesla will build its next Gigafactory near Berlin, as it looks to tap into the huge pool of automotive engineering talent in Germany. The factory will be Tesla's fifth, following facilities in Nevada, New York, and California, USA, and Shanghai, China. It will also up the pressure on European carmakers, as they look to rapidly develop and roll out their pure-electric line-ups.

After a meeting of the Volkswagen Group's supervisory board late last week, the automaker confirmed it was increasing its average annual spend on developing electric, hybrid and digital technologies by around 36 per cent from €8.8 billion ($14.3 billion) to €12 billion ($19.5 billion). As part of Volkswagen's latest five-year plan, it will increase spending on EV development to €6.6 billion ($10.7 billion) annually.

The production version of the Aspark Owl made its debut at the 2019 Dubai motor show this week. With four electric motors, the Aspark Owl has a total of 1480kW of power and 2000Nm of torque. Using road-legal tyres, the startup automaker says the hypercar can accelerate from 0-60mph (0-97km/h) in 1.69 seconds and hit 300km/h in 10.6s, while top speed is claimed to be 400km/h.

Renault has decided to stop selling the warmed-up Megane GT and GT-Line in Australia, leaving the 205kW RS hot hatch as the sole member of its small-car range. While there’s no impediment to sourcing Megane GT and GT-Lines, the company says customer demand has declined to the point the cost of stocking them, promoting them, keeping parts for them, and transporting them, no longer stacks up. Once existing stock is depleted, no more will be ordered.

On this week's podcast, you are joined by Mandy Turner, Kez Casey, and James Wong. We speak to Josh Dowling about the Ford Mustang EV SUV and the Tesla ute at the Los Angeles motor show. He also talks in more detail about his trip with a team replacing recalled Takata airbags in remote areas. In other news, the Skoda Octavia has been revealed, and Holden rents its cars out to the general public for the first time.