& cars concepts 6 AUGUST 20, 2018 Get our Cars & Concepts newsletter delivered via email each Tuesday. It’s free. Sign up at autonews.com/carsconcepts GMC’s entry-level crossover moves closer to production GMC’s small crossover, shown in this spy photo, is expected to arrive in showrooms in 2020 and compete against the Jeep Renegade and Honda HR-V. S py photographers caught a heavily camou- concept. It is expected to arrive in showrooms in 2020. fl aged version of GMC’s new entry-level cross- over. T e vehicle, spotted undergoing road tests in Arizona, is smaller than the compact GMC Terrain.
It is expected to be based on General Motors’ Gamma II architecture that underpins the Buick Encore, Chevrolet Spark and Chevrolet Trax in the U.S. T e vehicle’s design aspects are hard to determine, though it seems to have GMC’s new slotted grille GMC has been planning a smaller crossover/SUV for some time. T e vehicle had been expected to be a body- on-frame Jeep Wrangler fi ghter, but now the production crossover is expected to compete against the Jeep Rene- gade and Honda HR-V.
T e crossover could be called Granite, after a 2010 — Michael Wayland BRIAN WILLIAMS/SPIEDBILDE McLaren prepares to go electric, but don’t expect an SUV QA & W EST SUSSEX, England — McLaren Automotive is planning a power- train transformation. T e British au- tomaker, synonymous with throaty V-8s, is in the early days of exploring a full-electric vehi- recharge, and when you come in and re- charge it needs to recharge in 30 minutes. a successor to the P1, its gaso- line-electric hybrid hypercar introduced fi ve years ago. What can we expect from the new vehicle? er-cars to 10-15 years ago. A few years ago, when we announced the P1, we sold 38 cars in China.
T at market has changed dramatically. Our growth in Asia, apart from China, has been superb. Taiwan is one of our best markets. T ailand is doing well. Korea has been a huge success since we went in there. We’re having a study done on India and Russia right now about market size, about the access to the market. Lamborghini has entered the white-hot crossover/SUV market. Why is McLar- en against going down that path? T e P1 shocked the world. It was a 900-horsepower car, light, lots of aero, in- credibly compelling to drive. I think it was a huge step over anything that was there. cle that could arrive by 2025. It is part of an ambi- I’m not against SUVs. T ey are just not what McLaren does.
Laren’s sports car and supercar fl eet to hy- brids by 2025 as the auto industry prepares for tighter emission standards around the world. tious plan to convert Mc- An SUV is hugely expensive to do. We wouldn’t have the shared engineering that you need to have the kind of business model that supports what we do. T e P1 successor has got to be signifi cant again. I think it’ll come from a combination of things — driving dynamics, software con- trols, powertrain technology. MIKE FLEWITT In India, you’ve certainly got enough high- net-worth individuals and enough car enthu- siasts. What you don’t have there is a road structure for really enjoying these cars.
When we decide to do a product there are three simple tests: It has to be right for the brand and right for the customer base, we’ve got to have the technology to do the best car in class and we’ve got to make money. We are going to want a lightweight, high-per- formance, super aero-car that’s going to do During last month’s Goodwood Festival of Speed here, McLaren CEO Mike Flewitt, 56, spoke with Staff Reporter Urvaksh Karkaria about the automaker’s electrifi cation plans and global expansion outlook. things only race cars could do in the past. North America is McLaren’s largest mar- ket, accounting for about 35 percent of sales.
What effect might the Trump ad- ministration’s proposed 25 percent tar- iff on auto imports have on McLaren as a low-volume luxury automaker? And also be a great car to drive on-road. An SUV starts to reduce the purity of the brand as a supercar driver’s brand. Secondly, we don’t have the technology. Can you imagine from a standing start if we wanted to go out and do a better car than a Range Rov- er, or a Cayenne — the billions we’d have to invest? T ird, therefore, is we wouldn’t make any money. So it doesn’t tick any box. McLaren built about 3,300 vehi- cles last year, and plans call for producing 6,000 a year in 2025. What’s driving the in- creased production? Q:
What’s moving McLaren toward an all-hybrid fl eet and eventually an all- electric supercar? A: China is very aggressive about emission standards. T e world is going in that direction. I think legislation will drive us in that direction, and we need to be ready. T e only way we can meet emission standards at the performance we want is to be hybrid. T ere’s no other way. Our cars are always going to be very I am probably more worried today about the threat of tariff s into North America than I am about Brexit. My goal in life is completely free trade. What happens when you see tariff duties change is the market tends to stop while it understands what’s happing, to di- gest what the new world is.
I don’t want that interruption in our business. exclusive products. If you looked at how many cars we sell in the U.S. and the U.K., As it stands at the moment, we don’t think the battery technology will be ready until 2025 to give us what we want in terms of per- formance. A McLaren EV has got to be us- able. It shouldn’t be that we off er a power- train solution that compromises. It won’t just be lower emissions, it’ll be a better sports car. We’ve set ourselves half an hour full-on track use. You need to be able to do that without that isn’t going to change.
What is changing is that a lot of new mar- In the initial phase, we’ll probably have to ab- sorb some of the tariff -related price increase, so it harms our profi tability. We’ve got to see what happens with competitors. We’ve got to see what happens with any negotiation that comes after it and then determine what the right course is. Inevitably, some of the price increase will fl ow through consumers eventually. a McLaren will launch kets are open- ing. We’re sell- ing cars into Mike Flewitt: “I’m not against SUVs.
They are just not what McLaren does.” markets that you didn’t sell sup- BRIAN WILLIAMS/SPIEDBILDE Checking Honda’s Passport Honda’s revived Passport midsize crossover, which may be unveiled in November at the Los Angeles Auto Show, has been spotted road testing in California. The Passport will slot between the CR-V and Pilot. It is expected to be about six inches shorter than the Pilot and compete with the Ford Edge and Nissan Murano. A hint of Infi niti’s electrifi ed future Infi niti will unveil its Prototype 10 concept car this week at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.
An electrifi ed, single-seat speedster, the Prototype 10 adapts form language fi rst seen in the Infi niti Q Inspiration and hints at future design cues for the brand.