Over in Switzerland, the Geneva International Motor Show got underway on Tuesday morning. Switzerland has no real domestic car industry, so it’s neutral territory for the world’s car companies. That’s made Geneva the marquee event on the calendar, where OEMs bring out their biggest reveals of the year in an attempt to steal headlines from one another. Sadly, we’re not there on the ground this year—I did get an invite from Lamborghini which we had to decline due to our junket policy—but the wonders of the Internet mean we’re still able to bring you the highlights.

And what an array of new reveals to choose from! There’s something for everyone, whether you like pint-sized urban electric vehicles, four-door luxury coupes, or new hybrid or electric SUVs. You can even go all the way up to multimillion-dollar hypercars, several of which aren’t even going to be road legal.

Something small and electric for your commute?

At the smallest end of the scale, Mercedes-Benz brought its new battery electric smart cars, the smart EQ fortwo and smart EQ forfour. “With the smart EQ fortwo and forfour, we are putting the first products from the Mercedes-Benz Cars EQ family on urban roads and showing how much fun electric mobility can be,” said smart CEO Annette Winkler. We won’t get the four-seat forfour here in the US, but the smart EQ fortwo will show up later this year.

We also won’t get the utterly charming Honda Urban EV. We first saw this delightful little EV at last year’s Frankfurt Auto Show, and, on Tuesday, Honda announced it will open its order books for a production version early next year. If you live in Europe and the little Honda has won your heart, it should be in production by the second half of 2019. Like the smart, pricing and specs will be announced at a later date.

Volkswagen has a Vizzion

Last September, Volkswagen Group finally found a new religion. With diesel now a dirty word—one that’s sullied the automaker’s reputation—it’s amping up to replace its current fossil-fuel line-up with a whole bevy of BEVs and plug-in hybrid EVs. A Volt-face, if you will.

Work is underway on a new all-electric architecture, called Modular Electric Toolkit (or MEB), which will form the basis for BEVs across VW Group’s 12 different brands. At other auto shows, VW has shown off several concepts for MEB-based vehicles: the I.D. and, more recently, the I.D. Crozz both arrive in 2020, while the crowd-pleasing I.D. Buzz microbus is due in 2022. Now there’s a fourth model in the I.D. parade, and it, too ,has too many Zs in its name. It’s called the I.D. Vizzion, and it’s also due to arrive in 2022.

The Vizzion is a very on-trend vehicle, incorporating level 5 autonomous driving, operating solely by voice or gesture control. That means there’s no steering wheel, pedals, or even a main instrument display. But VW says it will use a HoloLens to project a virtual interface using augmented reality. Personally, I’m a little skeptical that any of that stuff will be ready by 2022, for level 5 autonomy—which means the car can drive itself anywhere, any time, in any weather—is not a solved problem. But VW recently partnered with Aurora, a very hotly tipped autonomous driving startup, which will provide the self-driving software and sensor suite.

Even so, 2022 seems optimistic if we’re talking about a vehicle that you or I might buy; all the plans I’ve seen for level 4 autonomous vehicles involve the OEMs owning and operating them as fleets. VW Group has its own brand for that, called Moia, so perhaps the Vizzion might end up being rebadged?

Mission E possible

Long before work began on MEB, Porsche and Audi set their minds to creating some long-range BEVs that could mix with the Tesla Model Ss and Tesla Model Xs of this world. These BEVs are a sort-of dead end in evolutionary terms, although no doubt they have informed MEB, but crucially they will be on sale in the very near future. At the end of February, Porsche released some tantalizing details about its car, called the Mission E. But at Geneva, we got a surprise: the Porsche Mission E Cross Turismo.

Unlike the sleek Mission E sedan, the Mission E Cross Turismo (try saying that out loud five times) is an SUV. That’s probably a wise move on Porsche’s part, since sedans are increasingly out of favor with car buyers. The specs are pretty much identical to the Mission E we already know about: 440kW (600hp), 0-62mph (0-100km/h) in 3.5 seconds, and 250 miles of range from a 95kWh battery.

Porsche says the Mission E Cross Turismo is for “people who like to spend their free time traveling, playing sports, and pursuing other outdoor activities.” To that end, the interior is flexible, so you can swap out a four-seat configuration if you need to bring your mountain bike or surfboard along. Although there’s no official word as to whether the Mission E Cross Turismo will appear in showrooms, Porsche does say that it “uses elements that are close to series production.”

Fellow VW stablemate Audi also had a BEV for Geneva; it looks like a pre-production prototype of the e-tron. Audi says that it’s about to start testing hundreds of e-tron prototypes around the world in the run-up to the car going on sale in Europe at the end of the year. Those of us in the US will have to wait until 2019 to try one out.

A new Toyota Supra—sort of

The return of the Toyota Supra has been a long time coming. Back in 2014, Toyota gave us the FT-1 concept car. Since then, it’s shown up in video games and auto shows, teasing us along the way. But, at Geneva, the Japanese automaker unveiled the GR Supra Racing Concept, which it says revives “the name and spirit of the most celebrated model in Toyota’s illustrious sportscar heritage and demonstrating Toyota’s commitment to bringing the Supra back to the market.”

Although the GR Supra Racing Concept looks like a race car, it isn’t actually eligible to compete anywhere, since almost every series requires road cars to be in production. (Yes, I know Ford got a waiver for the Ford GT, but they’re actually building those.) But if you’ve got a copy of Gran Turismo Sport—and, if you’ve got a PS4, you ought to—you’ll be able to try out the new Supra in April.

If it’s got four doors, how can it be a coupe?

If you needed any more proof that we’re living in a postmodern age, consider the rise of the four-door coupe. I don’t mean to be churlish, but a coupe—or coupé to those of us who didn’t grow up speaking American English—is literally defined as a car with a fixed roof and two doors. If it’s got a roof and four doors, then it’s a sedan (or maybe a saloon). You’d think that was pretty simple, but then in 2004 Mercedes came along with its CLS. Next thing we knew, black was white, and people started getting killed at zebra crossings.

True to form, the automaker brought a new four-door coupe to Geneva, the Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupe. After all, the (actually a coupe) AMG GT sports car has been a bit of a hit, so why not add an extra row of seats?

“The new AMG GT 4-Door Coupe blends the impressive racetrack dynamism of our two-door sports car with maximum suitability for everyday use. It has a unique way of embodying our brand core, ‘Driving Performance,’ and, with its systematic configuration, it will attract new customers for Mercedes-AMG,” said Tobias Moers, CEO of Mercedes-AMG GmbH.

The 4-Door Coupe should deliver on that performance; the entry-level car will still pack 429hp from an inline six-cylinder engine (yay!), with more powerful models opting for a 630hp twin-turbo V8. Knowing how AMG makes engines, that last one should sound like “The Ride of the Valkyries” mixed with a Supermarine Spitfire. Sales begin early next year.

Not to feel left out, BMW also had a four-door coupe to reveal. I got my first look at the forthcoming M8 (in two-door form, as nature intended) at last year’s Monterey Car Week; then, in January, we saw the racing version take to the stage at the Rolex 24 at Daytona. Now, it too has grown an extra pair of doors.

At least BMW is honest about the impact it hoped the new car would cause. “The BMW Concept M8 Gran Coupe is designed to stir things up, to polarize—it should move you emotionally,” explains Domagoj Dukec, Vice President Design BMW M and BMW i. “With this car, we want to reach people who are looking for something special and who want to stand out from the crowd. Here, BMW M is unmistakably taking luxury out of its comfort zone.”

BMW is being a little more cagey when it comes to details, compared to Mercedes-AMG, so I can’t tell you what kinds of engines the M8 will come with or any of that stuff. And the automaker hasn’t released the clearest images either. But we do know the production car is coming in 2019.

Check back tomorrow for the second part of our Geneva coverage, including a hybrid Bentley SUV and a whole clutch of handmade hypercars with seven-digit price tags, most of which you can’t even drive on the street.

Listing image by Porsche

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1270479