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On the redesigned Avante in Korea and the new Ioniq 3, the screen behind the steering wheel is no longer standard equipment. Avante buyers can add the 9.9-inch driver's display for 350,000 won ($255). On the entry UK Ioniq 3 it cannot be added at any price. Without it, the speedometer lives on the central touchscreen.
Polestar has added a second body to the Polestar 4 range, and it reverses the car's most argued-about feature: the SUV has a conventional rear window and mirror. It also has 530 litres of boot space, standard roof rails and up to 630 km WLTP, and it undercuts the coupe in Germany, the UK and Australia.
Audi and SAIC have opened the AUDI Innovation & Technology Center in Shanghai, a roughly 300-person R&D operation for the China-only AUDI brand covering chassis, software, AI cockpits and driver assistance. The two companies will jointly develop four models on the new ADP 2.0 platform, the first arriving in 2028.
Chery Jaguar Land Rover launched the Freelander 8 on 3 September at list prices from 309,900 yuan, 20,000 yuan lower after incentives. The after-incentive entry price of 289,900 yuan ($42,750) lands under the 300,000 yuan target the venture had set for itself - a correction to our own pre-sale coverage, which read the pre-sale price as landing above it.
Tesla has published an online form inviting companies to register interest in buying Cybercab fleets and building Robotaxi infrastructure. It is the first public sign that the two-seat robotaxi may be operated by outside owners rather than only by Tesla itself. Nothing about prices, delivery timing or operator requirements has been confirmed.
Jim Farley calls the troubled 2023 F-Series Super Duty launch a catalyst for change at Ford. About two thirds of the leaders across manufacturing, supply chain and engineering have been replaced since, and the company now says it will slow a line or delay a launch rather than ship a known defect and fix it by recall.
One owner's filing has put the 2024 Ford Maverick Hybrid in front of federal safety regulators. NHTSA has opened defect petition DP26007 over a reported intermittent loss of anti-lock and regenerative braking, which the petitioner says survived four repair attempts and led to a crash. No defect has been found, no recall has been issued, and the agency is still deciding whether to investigate at all.
Lexus revealed a mid-cycle facelift of the NX on 1 September 2026, with a stiffened body, variable-ratio steering and a chassis tuned at the Nürburgring for European roads. The plug-in NX 450h+ gets a 23 kWh battery, 307 hp, and DC fast charging for the first time, while the NX 350h hybrid carries on at 199 hp. European pre-sales open this autumn ahead of an early 2027 launch; the wider rollout across 90-plus countries begins in late 2026.
Mitsubishi revealed an all-new Pajero on 2 September 2026, a body-on-frame diesel SUV that ends a five-year gap since the outgoing generation left production. It launches in Thailand first, then Japan and Australia within this fiscal year, before reaching roughly 100 countries from fiscal 2027 - some of them under the Montero name. Mitsubishi has not confirmed a US launch.
Land Rover has opened orders for the first battery-electric Range Rover, built at Solihull on the same line as the petrol and plug-in hybrid cars. Two motors give 542 hp and 850 Nm, the usable 118.5 kWh pack is rated at 372 miles WLTP in the UK and 333 miles EPA in the US, and the off-road figures carry over: 900 mm wading, traction control that reacts in 50 milliseconds, and one-pedal descent on 45-degree slopes. Prices start at $138,000 in the US and £154,070 (about $208,200) in the UK.
Carwow's latest tracker puts UK consideration of Chinese brands at 49%, twice the 24% it recorded in the first half of 2023. Awareness of the individual badges has climbed faster still, though the survey is of the site's own audience rather than a national panel.
BYD's second-quarter net profit rose about 30% to 8.2 billion yuan ($1.21 billion), its first quarterly increase in five quarters, on revenue that still fell 3.2%. Overseas sales carried it: more than half of first-half revenue now comes from outside China, where revenue dropped by roughly a third.
Denza has detailed the N8, a five-seat electric SUV that shares its 3,075 mm wheelbase with the six-seat N8L. Chinese filings list two Blade Battery packs and CLTC range from 800 km to 1,003 km, with a tri-motor version making 890 kW (1,194 hp). The interior drops the instrument cluster for a 1.1-metre projection strip and a 30-inch screen. No prices yet.
Toyota is finishing a Lexus factory in Shanghai's Jinshan district, the brand's first production site in China and the first Japanese-owned car plant in the country with no local joint-venture partner. Investment is 14.6 billion yuan ($2.02 billion), capacity around 100,000 cars a year, and production starts in the second half of 2027.
Li Auto delivered 37,679 cars in August, its first year-on-year growth in four months and its fastest in two years. The eight-month total is still 0.6% below last year's, and hitting the company's own third-quarter guidance now requires a September bigger than August.
Honda and Nissan concluded a joint development agreement to standardize the electronic control units, in-vehicle operating system and control software in their next-generation cars, for use from fiscal 2029. Mitsubishi, named in earlier reporting, is not a signatory and says it is still considering whether to join.
A second-generation BMW X7 has been filmed testing at the Nurburgring with four exhaust tips, which points to a V8 surviving into the new car. The bigger change is the electric iX7 that joins it, reported to run next-generation Neue Klasse batteries and motors on the existing CLAR architecture rather than on a dedicated electric platform.
Land Rover has shown the Defender Dakar, a limited-run road-legal version of the D7X-R that won the Stock class at the 2026 Dakar Rally. The 4.4-litre twin-turbo V8 runs unrestricted at 635 PS (626 hp) and 750 Nm, on 35-inch tyres and Bilstein dampers. Reservations open in early 2027 and no price has been announced.
The Times reports that JLR has paused work on the next-generation Defender, pushing the full electric version into the 2030s. Staff were told the reason is that the current car keeps selling, at around 110,000 units a year. What JLR has confirmed itself is separate: a smaller Defender-family model on the EMA platform, now offered as a hybrid as well as an EV.
Dongfeng has opened pre-orders in China for the Epicland X9, the first car from a brand it set up with Huawei in November 2025. The full-size six-seat SUV is sold only as an extended-range electric vehicle, with a 74.29 kWh CATL battery on an 800 V system and prices from 299,800 to 379,800 yuan ($44,200 to $56,000). Sales start in the third quarter.