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Jaguar tells design story behind new XF Sportbrake [w/video]

Jaguar has released a walk-through of the design of its new XF Sportbrake, which debuted at last week's Geneva motor show. The video features Jaguar design boss Ian Callum and Studio Director Wayne Burgess explaining how the design team managed to keep the company's first official estate car in line with the sportiness and luxury nature of Jaguar brand. Callum says, "I know it's a very practical car, there's an amount of pragmatism in it, it is functional, but at the end of the day it is we call a Sportbrake, it has to look to sporty.

MIT develops self-transforming materials that behave 'like robots without robots'

A cross-disciplinary research lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a suite of programmable materials, including carbon fiber, printed wood grain, textile composites, rubbers and plastics, that self-transform when exposed to an external stimulus. Director of the Self-Assembly Lab, Skylar Tibbits, presented a TED talk on 4D printing in 2013, where he demonstrated how a flat sheet of material could effectively build itself when exposed to water, like a robot without a robot. Following positive feedback from industries including aviation, automotive and manufacturing, his lab has been working on developing materials that change according to different activation sources, including heat, light, and air pressure, in addition to water – all of which have automotive relevance.

Volkswagen mulls new Phaeton for the US market

Volkswagen is giving some serious thought to bringing back the Phaeton sedan to the U.S., Automotive News reports. We haven't seen the Phaeton since 2006, when it was withdrawn from the North American market after lackluster sales. Built at the same factory as the much more expensive Bentley Continental GT and sharing much of the underlying mechanicals, the Volkswagen Phaeton managed to be a slower seller in the U.S.