Nutson's Weekly Auto News Nuggets March 26-April 1, 2018; NY Auto Show; World Car Of The Year; Fuel Economy Standards Buh-Bye?; On Street Autonomous Testing Buh-Bye; Chevy Bolt (not Volt) Canada's Journalist Favorite Car; Tesla Recall; UAW Growing

AUTO CENTRAL, CHICAGO - April 1, 2018; Every Sunday Larry Nutson, Senior Editor and Chicago Car Guy along with fellow senior editors Steve Purdy and Thom Cannell from The Auto Channel Michigan Bureau, give you TACH's "take" on this past week's automotive news in easy to "catch up" news nuggets. For More search the past 25 year's millions of (Indexed By Google) pages of automotive news, automotive stories, articles, reviews, archived news residing in The Auto Channel Automotive News Library.

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Nutson's Weekly Auto News Nuggets March 26-April 1, 2018

* Focus was on the "Big Apple" this week for media previews at the final big auto show for the season, the New York International Auto Show. World Car awards were announced and there were a surprising number of new vehicle introductions and plenty of news. Lincoln unveiled its Aviator concept; Nissan showed the new Altima; Jaguar had its I-Pace and F-Pace SVR; Land Rover rolled out the Range Rover SV Coupe; Cadillac gave us its smallest SUV, the XT4; Lexus’ new compact crossover called UX; two new high-performance Mercedes-AMGs, C63 and C63S; a new 55-mpg Honda Insight; there will be an all-electric MINI; a pickup concept from VW called Tanoak based on the Atlas; and even a new Lamborghini Huracan Performante Spyder. See all the coverage here on TAC. Happy Spring selling is upon us.

* The Road to World Car journey concluded at the New York International Auto Show with the declaration of the Volvo XC60 as the 2018 World Car of the Year (It also won the North American Utility Vehicle of the Year at the Detroit auto show.) Other winners are: Nissan Leaf is 2018 World Green Car, Audi A8 is 2018 World Luxury Car, Range Rover Velar is 2018 World Car Design of the Year, BMW M5 is the 2018 World Performance Car and the Volkswagen Polo is the 2018 World Urban Car.

* One concept at the NY Auto Show got lots of attention. Genesis unveiled its groundbreaking Essentia Concept. The all-electric, high-performance concept that elevates and re-imagines the "Athletic Elegance" design paradigm, while providing a vision of future Genesis product performance and technology.

* The EPA is planning to declare the Obama administration's fuel economy rules “not appropriate” according to reporting by Reuters this week. Administrator Scott Pruitt will sign the declaration at a suburban Washington car dealership on Tuesday where auto industry and dealership groups will be on hand. In the meantime California's Air Resources Board chairwoman, Mary Nichols, said her agency does not agree. California has the power to set its own standards, setting up a challenge to the feds. Although the auto companies have asked for softening of rules, in general, they may end up with more complexity in needing to build two different versions of a vehicle. Ford and Honda made statements that they didn’t ask for this. We'll see!

* Uber has now been officially ordered to suspend testing of its autonomous vehicles on Arizona roads, after one of its cars struck and killed a woman in Tempe. State officials said the ride-hailing service had failed to meet an expectation that it would prioritize public safety as it tested the technology. Uber had already suspended all testing of its cars in Arizona, San Francisco, Pittsburgh and Toronto.

* By the way, in case you were wondering, Uber disabled the standard collision-avoidance technology in the Volvo SUV that struck and killed a woman in Arizona last week, according to Aptiv the auto-parts maker that supplied the vehicle’s radar and camera.

* Aptiv's autonomous driving subsidiary, NuTonomy, suspended its pilot in Boston following demands from local regulators. Hyundai told Reuters it is now "cautious about mass producing self-driving cars."

* And this from Waymo, the autonomous-car company spun out of Google. Waymo announced a new alliance that would vastly expand its effort to ramp up a driverless ride service over the next two years.The company said it planned to buy as many as 20,000 electric cars from Jaguar Land Rover and outfit them with the radars, cam-eras and sensors it has developed to enable the vehicles to drive themselves on public roads.The cars, the Jaguar I-Pace SUV will be used in a ride-hailing service that Waymo plans start in Phoenix by the end of this year.

* And another fatal crash for Tesla. Tesla said that a Model X involved a fatal crash in California last week had activated its Autopilot system, raising new questions about the semi-autonomous system that handles some driving tasks. Tesla also said vehicle logs from the accident showed no action had been taken by the driver soon before the crash and that he had received earlier warnings to put his hands on the wheel.

* Is this a joke? A self-driving car got a ticket in San Francisco. Actually, no joke. A motorcycle officer ticketed a Cruise autonomous vehicle’s human safety driver, saying the car came too close to a pedestrian. Cruise Automation, which is a startup acquired by GM, says it did nothing wrong. The car’s data shows it was no closer than 10.8 feet from the woman who was in a crosswalk.

* Meanwhile in Canada, at the Vancouver International Auto Show, the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC) announced that Chevrolet Bolt EV is the winner of the 2018 Canadian Green Car of the Year (CGCOTY) and Kia Niro is the winner of the 2018 Canadian Green Utility Vehicle of the Year (CGUVOTY).

* Tesla has announced that it is recalling 123,000 Model S sedans due to problems with steering bolts that could cause the failure of the power steering system on vehicles built prior to April 2016. The number of Model S sedans involved amounts to about half of all the vehicles it has produced since going into business. It seems the bolts can rust and break in climates where salt is used on the highway, resulting in loss of power steering assist. You’ll still be able to steer manually, if your upper body strength is up to it.

* The United Auto Workers posted a ninth straight year or membership increases according to their U.S. Department of Labor filing this week. Membership rose from about 416,000 to about 430,000 in spite of ongoing crises and scandals around the manipulation of training funds at FCA, the loss of the Nissan Canton, MS plant and internal graft allegations. UAW’s optimistic president, Dennis Williams, called the stated of the UAW “strong.” UAW organizers have aggressively expanded beyond factory workers to engage full- and part-time graduate workers, adjunct faculty and postdoctoral researchers on college campuses.