Auto News 5

Here are four sneak peeks in one: the Volkswagen Touareg in these pictures hides a new hybrid system that will be offered not only in a brand-new Touareg to be launched at the Frankfurt auto show in September, but also in the new Porsche Panamera and Cayenne and - mated to a smaller gasoline engine - in the Audi Q5.

New Yorkers would have been impressed if we'd told them that the makers of the Aptera 2e, the two-seat, three-wheeled oddity we were driving around Soho, promised the equivalent of more than 200 mpg and a 100-mile range between charges of its battery pack. But we never got that far. The mind of every single New Yorker who saw us was blown at first sight. We could have told them anything.

The U.S. auto market may be fast-moving and competitive, but one subset, commercial vans, is neither. Looking much the same as it did during the Nixon administration, it has seen few innovations and fewer new entries. The only real change is that the big Dodge van--dressed in the same duds since the early '70s--finally expired a few years ago, when the Mercedes-Chrysler tie-up brought us the Sprinter van to replace it. Half-hearted attempts to make work vehicles out of passenger haulers, such as panel-truck versions of the Dodge Caravan and the Chevy HHR, have met with little success.