Tag Archives: vehicles

Last Bugatti Chiron with 1,500 PS

At the 2016 Geneva Motor Show Bugatti revealed a mid-engine two-seater sports car, the Bugatti Chiron. The intention was to produce only 500 examples of this model, and now the last example with 1500 PS has left the production line in Molsheim.

The car is finished in Nocturno and Copper, and was delivered to its owner, Bilal Hydrie. Hydrie is the founder, CEO, and President of Inclusive Energy. He ordered his car back in November 2021, and at that time he paid about 3 million dollars for it. You could say cheap, given that at the beginning of 2023, the Bugatti Chiron Profilee was sold for $9.79 million.

Bugatti Chiron Profilee is powered by an 8.0-liter quad-turbo W16 engine with 1,480 hp (1,103 kW) and 1,180 lb-ft (1,600 Nm) of torque. The same engine powers the Bugatti Mistral. It reaches 62 mph in 2.3 seconds with a top speed of 380 km/h, which is 30 km/h more than the Chiron Pur Sport (350 km/h).

The Bugatti Chiron was produced in several versions, and it is still unknown how many copies of the Chiron Pur Sport model, as well as the Mistral and Bolide models with W16 engines are left. All of them should reach their owners by the middle of this year.

Bugatti’s plan is to replace the existing W16 engine with a hybrid V8 in the near future, which should arrive with the successor to the Chiron.

Source: Bugatti

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Kia set a new sales record

The year 2023 has ended and companies report their sales results. Thus, KIA announced that last year it achieved a historical sales record with more than 3 million vehicles sold.

Although December was not so successful (-9.2%), taking into account the whole year, Kia recorded a sales growth of 6.3 percent (3,085,771 vehicles) compared to 2022. It was the best result since 2014, when 3,038,552 vehicles were sold. Also, sales records were achieved in almost all major markets such as Europe, the United States and India.

The new Kia EV9 electric SUV, the Sorento, the K5 sedan and the Carnival minivan had a big impact on increasing sales. Also, higher production and reduction of problems in the supply of semiconductors contributed to the historical result.

When it comes to individual models, the highest demand was for the Sportage SUV with 523,502 deliveries, followed by the Seltos SUV with 344,013 deliveries and the Sorento SUV with 242,892 deliveries.

This year too, Kia plans to introduce new fully electric models and attract the attention of a larger number of potential buyers in order to continue sales growth. It is expected that the total number of vehicles delivered this year will exceed 3.2 million, of which the plan is to sell 530,000 vehicles on the domestic market.

Source: KIA

China is the world’s largest car exporter

Japan has been the world’s largest car exporter for decades, but it was only a matter of time before another Asian giant (China) took over that position. This happened in 2023 when, according to official data, China exported one million cars more than Japan.

The development of the automobile industry in China is expanding, primarily fully electric vehicles, which are killing competition worldwide with low production costs and subsidies provided by the Chinese government. This has led large manufacturers to find partners in China or open their own plants, and increase competitiveness in the world market. “If you can’t beat them, join them.”

China has become a big “problem” for most developed countries that are trying to protect their own car manufacturers. Some of them, like the French one, canceled subsidies on new electric cars produced in China, in order to protect domestic manufacturers. This is also expected from other EU members. According to Bloomberg Intelligence, if the other members adopt the same decision, it could threaten the import of electric cars and small commercial vehicles in the amount of almost 7 billion dollars. The fact that in 2023 it exported 5.26 million vehicles, excluding exports to the USA, shows how serious the success of the Chinese industry is. Chinese manufacturers exported the most cars to Russia and Mexico, but also to Europe.

When it comes to the domestic market, sales of fully electric cars increased by 21% while sales of plug-in hybrid cars increased by 83%. The leader is BYD with 3,024,417 vehicles, making this company one of the top 10 largest car manufacturers in the world. The second largest manufacturer was Chery with 1.88 million cars, while the third was Geely with 1.62 million vehicles. Also, in Q4 of last year, BYD surpassed Tesla in terms of sales of battery vehicles.

Source: Reuters