News Roundup: Jeep’s big EV plans, Tyre Extinguishers strike again, and more

Article content

Welcome to our roundup of the biggest breaking stories on Driving.ca from this past week. Get caught up and ready to get on with the weekend, because it’s hard keeping pace in a digital traffic jam.

Article content

Here’s what you missed while you were away.

Article content

Jeep’s upcoming EV plans

Jeep is planning to plug in to the EV revolution in a major way, starting with the Avenger. How ‘marvelous.’ The brand recently announced its intentions to have the full Jeep lineup electrified in some way by 2025, with four models running as full-fledged BEVs. 

The first full-electric Jeep will be the compact, urban-focused Avenger, which should arrive in European and Japanese markets next year with a range of around 400 km and a “fun” and “emotional” makeup, according to Antonella Bruno, head of Jeep Europe. The Jeep Recon, meanwhile, will target the same North American dirt-chasing customer as the Wrangler, with a one-touch power top and removable doors, plus pure battery power. Jeep plans to begin building the trail-ready Recon in 2024, perhaps even in Canada at the new Stellantis-LG battery manufacturing plant in Ontario. 

Article content

Then there’s the larger, wing-wearing AWD Wagoneer S, which Jeep claims will draw 600 horsepower from its batteries to get up to 96 km/h (60 mph) in just 3.5 seconds, and run a range of 400 miles (640 km). If that sounds too good to be true, consider the new battery-powered Grand Wagoneer with an estimated range of 800 km. Click here to learn what kind of batteries Jeep would need to outfit it with to reach those numbers. 

This P.E.I. company is reconfiguring old Corollas into electric pickups

Prince Edward Island’s Upcycle Green Technology recently wrapped its first couple electric pickup trucks made from old Toyota Corollas. The brand’s Brazilian leader, Natal Antonini, says he was inspired by all the small pickup trucks in his home country, and decided to use a readily available donor, the 10th generation Corolla made from 2009 to 2013, to recreate something for the Canadian market. 

Article content

The Upcycle Corolla pickup is advertised as using a 26-kWh battery pack and a 102-kW (136-hp) electric motor to deliver a range around the 150-km mark, though the brand says it’s working on a longer-range model. Its makers hope the small and energy efficient vehicle will provide utility for tradespeople and small business owners who require space for tools and gear but don’t travel too far for a day’s work. 

Tyre Extinguishers strike again, deflating tires in Europe and Canada

Article content

How annoyed would you be if you woke up to find some tree-hugging stranger had let the air out of your SUV’s tires? Annoyed enough to sell the vehicle and buy something more appropriate in the eyes of the hippy-dippy set? Yeah, me neither. Yet the activist group called the Type Extinguishers are still at it, most recently freeing the air out of the tires of some 600 SUVs as their owners slept during the night of Sept 6. 

Armed with whatever small, pointy, and probably animal-product-free device they could wedge into a valve stem, activists in the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Montreal, Canada did their annoying thing once again, leaving the SUVs with flat tires and leaflets on the windscreens explaining why they were targeted. In response, U.K. police told the Guardian that the act is in somewhat of a legal grey area. Crime or not, I’m sure Driving’s readers can agree: this is flatly obnoxious. 

Article content

No Power? No problem. Texas doctor performs Rivian-powered vasectomy

Article content

Hospitals usually have large gas generators to fill in and keep patients well and alive, if and when the power grid cuts out. However, at privately owned medical centres like Dr. Christopher Yang’s urology clinic in Austin, Texas, a loss of power can often mean a loss of business. Recently, however, when the lights went out at Yang’s practice, he and his client decided to take a novel approach and run an extension cord from the good doctor’s new Rivian R1T pickup truck and soldier on. 

Using the power provided by the EV’s onboard generator, Yang performed what must be the world’s first pickup-powered vasectomy. “When talking to the patient, we mentioned that we could just reschedule the procedure itself, or, if he was up for it, we could do the vasectomy using power from the truck. And he had a good laugh as well, and we agreed,” Yang told NPR’s WGLT. The procedure went as planned and after Yang shared news of it to Twitter, garnered some seriously hilarious responses. Check out some of the cleverest reactions here. 

Article content

Honda confirms Civic Type R with 315 horses

Honda has finally shared the official spec sheet for the 2023 Honda Civic Type R after visually revealing the vehicle months ago. The new information confirms the hot hatch’s 2.0L four-cylinder’s power at 315 horsepower at 6,500 rpm, and 310 lb-ft of torque between 2,600 and 4,000 rpm. That’s 9 hp and 15 lb-ft more than the outgoing model, but 11 hp less than the 326-hp figure listed on a stat sheet that was leaked a little while back. 

Additional power (and something of a new engine sound) comes courtesy of adjustments to the turbo, better air intake, and an improved exhaust system that opens its active valve at a higher rpm. Acceleration figures have not been made public. 

The Type R measures in longer, lower, and wider than the base 11th-generation Civic it’s based on, with new 265/30R19 tires replacing the thinner and taller 245/30R20 tires. Bone further up on the 2023 Honda Civic Type R here and here.