Polaris Indy Helmet on 2040-parts.com

Maserati Levante SUV confirmed for 2015 – Alfieri could arrive in 2016

The Maserati Levante SUV (pictured) will arrive in 2015 Fiat’s plans top revive the Maserati brand are off to a good start after sales grew strongly last year to more than 22,500 cars in the first nine months with the new Quattroporte and new Ghibli contributing strongly to those figures. But with a target of 50,000 sales a year, Maserati need new models too and the next in line for production is the Maserati Levante SUV, which Sergio Marchionne has now confirmed will arrive in production guise in 2015. It was expected the Levante would be a re-working of the new Jeep Grand Cherokee, but with the Grand Cherokee selling in droves – and with a desire to make the Levante as ‘Italian’ as possible – it now looks like the Levante will get a version of the platform underpinning the Ghibli and use Maserati’s own 4WD system.

Tesla-Toyota RAV4 EV: LA Catchup +video

The Tesla Toyota RAV4 EV A couple of weeks ago we ran a story on the Tesla Toyota RAV4 EV, an electric Toyota RAV4 endowed with electric car gubbins by Tesla. That’s the same Tesla in whom Toyota recently acquired a stake and provided with a factory with a capacity at least twenty times that which Tesla will ever need. We speculated when the tease came in for the electric RAV4 that maybe Toyota had plans to get Tesla to run out electric versions of all its cars at the new Tesla plant to take up the enormous slack in production numbers.

125th Anniversary of the Automobile: Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler put the world on wheels

The world will mark the 125th anniversary of the invention of the automobile on Jan. 29. Karl Benz filed a patent for a three-wheeled vehicle driven by a gasoline engine in Mannheim, Germany, on that day in 1886, the same year Gottlieb Daimler completed his motorized carriage in Cannstatt, Germany.