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Renault Captur Eco-G 120: The 1,400-Kilometer Commuter That Runs on Common Sense

The compact-SUV world is full of big promises—hybrid this, electric that—but Renault has just taken a refreshingly pragmatic approach with the updated Captur Eco-G 120. It doesn’t plug in. It doesn’t need a charging station. And yet it delivers one of the longest driving ranges you’ll find in a mainstream crossover: up to 1,400 kilometers on a combination of gasoline and LPG.

In other words, this might be the most quietly clever powertrain Renault has built in years.

At the heart of the new Captur Eco-G 120 is a reworked version of Renault’s familiar 1.2-liter turbocharged three-cylinder (HR12), derived from the TCe 115. With direct injection and a flex-fuel petrol/LPG setup developed in-house, output rises to 120 horsepower and 200 Nm of torque, gains of 20 hp and 30 Nm over the old Eco-G 100. That might not sound like hot-hatch territory, but in the real world it cuts the 0–100 km/h sprint to 12 seconds, a full second quicker than before—and in this segment, that’s noticeable.

Power goes to the front wheels through a six-speed manual gearbox, and while Renault hasn’t chased performance for its own sake, the extra torque makes the Captur feel more relaxed and more willing when merging or overtaking. This is a small engine doing grown-up work.

But the real headline is efficiency—both financial and environmental. When running on LPG, the Captur emits around 10 percent less CO₂ than its petrol-only equivalent, with emissions rated at 117 g/km on gas and 133 g/km on petrol. Consumption starts at 7.2 l/100 km on LPG and 5.9 l/100 km on gasoline, which makes this Captur cheaper to run than the outgoing Eco-G 100 despite the power bump.

Renault has also made the LPG system more usable. The gas tank grows from 40 to 50 liters, and together with the 48-liter petrol tank, it gives the Captur that 1,400-kilometer theoretical range. For anyone who does long motorway slogs or simply hates stopping for fuel, that’s borderline absurd—in a good way.

Importantly, this isn’t some aftermarket conversion. Renault has been doing LPG systems for more than 15 years, and the Eco-G 120 is designed from the factory to run on both fuels. The LPG tank lives where the spare wheel would normally sit, so there’s no loss of cargo space or petrol capacity. It’s all clean, integrated, and OEM-approved.

And buyers seem to be noticing. In 2025 alone, Renault registered more than 15,600 LPG vehicles, nearly 5,700 of them Capturs, marking a 60 percent increase over the previous year. In markets like France—where about 1,500 LPG stations keep distances between fill-ups below 60 km—the appeal is obvious: fuel bills can drop by up to half.

Renault didn’t stop with the engine. The latest Captur also benefits from a series of tech and safety updates. New aerodynamically optimized rearview mirrors, borrowed from the Clio 6, reduce wind noise and can even project a logo onto the ground when you unlock the car, if you tick the right option box. Inside, a new driver-monitoring camera watches for fatigue and distraction, and if you fail to respond in semi-autonomous driving mode, the emergency stop assist will bring the car to a controlled halt with the hazard lights flashing.

Parking tech gets an upgrade too, with high-definition reversing cameras and a 360-degree 3D view, making the Captur feel more premium than its price suggests. Automatic versions also ditch the old MySense system in favor of a new Smart mode, which seamlessly switches between Eco, Comfort, and Sport depending on how you drive.

Speaking of price, Renault has pulled a neat trick: the Captur Evolution Eco-G 120 starts at €26,400 in France, exactly the same as the outgoing Eco-G 100, or €210 per month on a finance plan. More power, more range, and better efficiency—for the same money—is the kind of upgrade buyers usually only dream about.

The Captur Eco-G 120 won’t headline any Nürburgring lap times, and it isn’t trying to. What it does offer is something far rarer in today’s SUV market: a genuinely smart powertrain that lowers emissions, cuts running costs, and lets you drive from one end of Europe to the other without obsessing over where to refuel.

Sometimes, the cleverest tech isn’t electric—it’s just well-engineered. And Renault seems to have nailed it.

Source: Renault

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BMW and ZF Bet Big on the Automatic: Why the 8-Speed Isn’t Going Anywhere

For years, the industry has been loudly preparing for a future without gears. EVs don’t need them, after all, and even hybrids are often pitched as smoother, simpler, and more software-driven. But BMW and ZF Friedrichshafen just dropped a very loud mechanical mic on that narrative.

The two companies have signed a multi-billion-euro contract that locks BMW into ZF’s 8HP eight-speed automatic transmission until the end of the 2030s—and not just as a legacy carryover. This deal is about evolving the automatic gearbox into something that works just as well in electrified cars as it does in traditional gasoline-powered ones.

In other words, the automatic isn’t dying. It’s getting smarter.

BMW’s Quietly Radical Decision

While some automakers are sprinting toward fully electric lineups, BMW continues to play a long game. The company has been clear that internal-combustion engines, mild hybrids, and plug-in hybrids will remain part of its portfolio well into the next decade. That requires a transmission that can do more than just shuffle ratios—it has to integrate seamlessly with electric motors, regenerative braking systems, and increasingly strict emissions rules.

Enter ZF’s 8HP.

This gearbox is already one of the industry’s most widespread units, used by everyone from BMW and Audi to Jeep and Rolls-Royce. But the next generation will be engineered specifically for the awkward middle age of the car industry—the phase where gasoline engines and electric motors have to coexist under the same hood.

Three Big Engineering Goals

ZF and BMW are steering the 8HP’s future along three main paths.

First, efficiency and emissions. The new versions will reduce internal friction, improve thermal management, and better coordinate with hybrid systems to squeeze out every possible gram of CO₂.

Second, performance across hybrid layouts. Whether it’s a 48-volt mild hybrid, a full plug-in system, or a traditional engine, the 8HP will be designed to handle electric torque fills, engine restarts, and blended propulsion without sacrificing BMW’s trademark throttle response.

And third, future-proofing. Regulations will keep tightening, and customer demand will keep shifting. ZF is effectively being paid to make sure this transmission platform doesn’t become obsolete halfway through the 2030s.

Why This Matters to Drivers

For BMW buyers, this is quietly excellent news.

The ZF 8HP is already one of the best automatics on the market—quick, smooth, durable, and far better than most dual-clutch gearboxes in daily driving. By continuing to refine it instead of replacing it with something unproven, BMW ensures that its future gas and hybrid cars will keep the crisp, confident shifting enthusiasts expect.

More importantly, it means BMW isn’t treating the next decade as a technological stopgap. Instead of rushing into half-baked solutions, the company is doubling down on a proven piece of hardware and evolving it for an electrified world.

In a time when many automakers are discarding everything mechanical in favor of software, BMW and ZF are making a different kind of bet: that great engineering still matters, even when electrons start sharing the workload.

And for drivers who still enjoy how a well-tuned automatic feels when you put your foot down, that’s very good news.

Source: BMW

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Skoda Quietly Had Its Biggest Year in Six Years

While the global auto industry is still trying to figure out what comes after the post-pandemic whiplash, Skoda has gone ahead and delivered something refreshingly old-school: real, measurable growth. In 2025, the Czech automaker built 1,065,000 vehicles worldwide, a 15-percent jump over the previous year and its strongest production result since 2019. That’s not a rebound—it’s a comeback.

At the center of it all is Skoda’s historic home in Mladá Boleslav, which pumped out 605,600 vehicles while also assembling 329,000 battery systems for everything from Skoda’s own EVs to other Volkswagen Group products. It’s an operation that now straddles two automotive worlds at once, still building combustion-engine cars while simultaneously supplying the electrified future.

Skoda likes to point out—correctly—that Mladá Boleslav is the only Volkswagen Group factory that builds ICE vehicles and full EVs on the same production line. That’s not just a trivia fact; it’s a quiet flex. It means Skoda can pivot production faster than most brands as market demand swings between gasoline, hybrid, and electric powertrains.

And swing it has.

On the electric side, Skoda’s new Elroq compact electric crossover has taken off with 112,500 units built by January 2025, while the larger and already familiar Enyaq added another 77,000 vehicles. These numbers don’t make Skoda a Tesla-level EV powerhouse, but they firmly establish it as a serious European electric player—not a reluctant follower.

Meanwhile, Skoda hasn’t forgotten how to make old-fashioned mechanical hardware. Across its factories, the company produced more than 1.03 million transmissions and over 500,000 engines in 2025, underscoring that the ICE business is still very much alive inside the brand.

If Mladá Boleslav is the brain, Kvasiny is the muscle. The plant’s output jumped from 248,000 to 301,500 vehicles, a healthy 20-plus-percent increase that signals strong demand for Skoda’s higher-margin models, many of which are built there.

The growth story doesn’t stop in Europe. In India, production doubled to 73,800 vehicles, driven largely by the new Kylaq crossover, a model designed specifically for that rapidly growing market. This isn’t just export-and-hope strategy—Skoda is tailoring its products to local tastes, and it’s paying off.

Then there’s Vietnam, where Skoda has opened a new assembly plant with the Thanh Cong Group. So far, it’s modest—2,500 Slavia and Kushaq models built from Indian-supplied kits—but it’s a classic first step toward deeper localization in Southeast Asia, a region every global automaker is eyeing.

Skoda’s management isn’t hiding its satisfaction.
“For the first time in six years, we exceeded the limit of one million Skoda cars produced,” said Andreas Dick, the board member responsible for production and logistics. And for once, corporate pride actually lines up with the numbers.

What makes Skoda’s 2025 performance impressive isn’t just that it built more cars—it’s what kinds of cars it built. Gasoline, hybrid, and electric vehicles all rolling down the same lines. European volume, Indian growth, and Southeast Asian expansion. Old-school engines next to battery packs.

In an industry obsessed with choosing sides, Skoda is winning by refusing to. And right now, that flexibility looks like a very smart bet.

Source: Škoda

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