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Mazda to make 1,000 more copies of final RX-8

Wankel wankers, rejoice: The Mazda rotary engine has received a short stay of execution. Mazda is building 1,000 more RX-8 Spirit R models, and then the car is gone forever. Well, maybe not forever.

Audi planning their own version of the electric VW e-Up

Perhaps the most promising EVs from Audi so far have been the A2 EV (pictured above) and the A1 range extender with a small Wankel engine in the boot to charge the battery. But even they were dropped from Audi’s production plans last year. But now it seems Audi are back in the production EV game with plans to produce an Audi e-tron using the underpinnings of the electric VW e-Up, but with Audi styling and an upmarket Audi interior and high-end Infotainment.

Lotus Evora 414E Range Extender EV moves forward

The Lotus Evora 414E – a Lotus Engineering range extender hybrid project – is still moving ahead with dynamic and durability testing now underway. On the surface the Evora 414E looked like every other Evora, but under the skin sat the first version of a Lotus range-extender platform with a pair of electric motors and a small, 3-cylinder range-extender engine promising impressive performance and economy. Despite the reveal of the 414E at Geneva in 2010, there’s not been a huge amount of news on Lotus pushing forward with the project, or at least not until we got the Infiniti Emerg-E Concept at Geneva this year that turned out to be underpinned by the Evora 414E platform.