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Volvo's autonomous car is boring enough to work

Volvo is a bit of an enigma. The Chinese-owned Swedish automaker releases a stunning concept from time to time, and we're often pleasantly surprised by the Volvos that enter out test fleet, but it hasn't done much to generate sales numbers -- or buzz -- in the North American market. Maybe that's because Volvo is too busy looking down the road to focus on selling cars now.

BMW plotting a hydrogen fuel cell EV

The BMW i3 EV (pictured) will eventually be joined by a hydrogen fuel cell BMW BMW has now taken its first fully-fledged step in to the electric car market with the BMW i3, revealed in full earlier this week. The i3 is a properly competent offering from BMW and it seems likely that, despite a price pushing on £30k even after the taxpayer bribe for EVs, that they will find a ready market in their affluent customer base for the i3 as a second (or third, or fourth…) car for local runarounds. BMW has even managed to negate range anxiety by offering the option of a range-extender engine in the i3 – basically a BMW motorcycle engine to charge the battery when it runs out of juice – so BMW’s customers who may wish to use their i3 for more than just a trip the shops can do so without getting stranded.

Mazda sells 10 millionth car in America

The first car Mazda ever sold in America was the R100, a cute lil' two-door fastback that was, unsurprisingly, rotary-powered. The year was 1970. Iggy Pop had made that much explicitly clear with "1970." Just imagine how weird it must have been for Americans to wrap their minds around some tiny Japanese upstart, selling a car approximately the size of a 1970 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham's wheelwell, powered by -- what's this, German technology?