Chris Thompson

It’s been more than four years since February 2020 when Holden announced it would shut its doors in Australia, and for Lion-badged die-hards there’s still some hurt - but General Motors is rebuilding, and there’s a lot of optimism around the future.

The new 2024 Toyota C-HR is the 11th car tested against the new 2023-2025 ANCAP criteria and the good news for prospective buyers is it scored a maximum five stars. The style-focused small hybrid SUV from Toyota scored comfortably above the five-star threshold in all four categories. The Toyota C-HR scored higher than 80 per cent for both Adult and Child Occupant Protection, Vulnerable Road User Protection and Safety Assist tests - one of only a couple of new cars to do so under current criteria…

Nissan just can’t seem to get enough of electrified concept cars, having revealed another quartet of ‘new energy vehicles’ (NEVs) at the 2024 Beijing Auto Show.With a focus on “a new Nissan for a new era in China”, the Japanese brand announced a fresh business plan for the “rapidly changing Chinese market” with an extra EV coming by 2026 - the total by then now up to five.The four NEVs revealed under Nissan’s ‘The Arc’ business plan are named Epoch, Epic, Era and Evo, the first may cause confus…

The GLC43 is an important variant for AMG, so we attended the Australian launch to find out how good it is.

If you’re even slightly interested in electric cars, chances are you’ve heard that solid state batteries are the future, coming to save us from range anxiety and the slow decline in power retention that current lithium-ion batteries face.But that might not be what really happens if senior drivetrain and battery engineers from Audi are correct in their predictions.While it seems like some brands are holding back releasing a stable of EVs before the advent of mass production solid state batteries,…

This is the future... of Audi, at least. It’s not so much the Q6 e-tron itself, but what’s under it. The ‘Premium Platform Electric’ which it rides on will underpin future Audi models as well as others from Porsche, which co-developed it.

It’s happening again: Audi is changing the way it names its cars.If you didn’t like the current system when it first came in, this might be good news for you…. but you might take issue with a couple of the new naming decisions Audi has made.For example, if you were used to the idea of the word ‘performance’ being tacked onto the end of the name of a fast version of something, you might be in for a shock.Audi will ditch numerical references to tiers of power outputs such as 30 TFSI or 40 TDI to d…

Ford is no longer planning to go electric-only by the end of the decade in Europe as it originally planned, following its North American arm in shifting focus back to internal combustion engines (ICEs).Marin Gjaja, Chief Operating Officer for the brand’s ‘Ford Model e’ electric car division, told UK motoring outlet Autocar this week the plan to be an all-electric brand in Europe by 2030 “was too ambitious” and a renewed focus on hybrid or “multi-energy” drivetrains is on the cards.A mix of uncer…

Lexus says it has finally found the means for it to rival German brands like Porsche and BMW when it comes to engaging driving dynamics. The Japanese brand will add more body rigidity to its models to improve the handling of its cars in the hope that all its models will have the same ‘dynamic flavour’.

It’s been a long time since someone who’s not that interested in cars gushed to me about how much they like Tesla (it doesn’t help that the man in charge of Tesla has done less and less for his own reputation as time rolls on), so if Tesla isn’t the brand at the cultural forefront of electric cars then, who should be?