All assets for Caterham F1 to be liquidated at auction, signaling the end of the team

By Alexander Kalogianni Published February 6, 2015

Beyond the on-track drama of cars battling for the win in Formula 1, there’s a perpetual soap opera taking place behind the scenes. As with everything, the problem often comes down to money, specifically not enough. Things looked bleak for two teams, Marussia F1 and Caterham, and while the former might have been given a temporary reprieve, it doesn’t look like Caterham will have the same fortune as all of the team’s assets have been put up for auction.

The writing on the wall spelled out doom for Caterham for some time, when the teams founder sold the F1 team to a group of investors, after which saw the teams management change more than a few times and the bankruptcy of the factory that built its race cars. There was even a crowdfunding campaign raised in an attempt to keep things afloat until the closeout of last season.

15678293188_59ce7859ee_b — Image used with permission by copyright holder

The team even got as far as receiving special dispensation to use the 2014 cars in the new season, saving them from the costly design and build of a new vehicle, as well as helping the administrators in charge of the bankruptcy in finding a buyer for the team. With everything going to auction, however, it doesn’t look like that buyer is coming.

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Looking at the list of items going to the block is eerily depressing. Yes, whole cars and pit equipment are going up for sale, but there’s entire sections for office and gym equipment, hospitality, catering, factory tools and engineering machinery. We tend to focus on the driver and the racing team, but there’s a huge number of folks working behind the scenes to make all of that happen. Sadly, these people are most likely looking for new jobs as all the rest gets liquidated.

Alexander Kalogianni

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Alex K is an automotive writer based in New York. When not at his keyboard or behind the wheel of a car, Alex spends a lot of…

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Rivian set to unlock unmapped roads for Gen2 vehicles

rivian unmapped roads gen2 r1t gallery image 0

Rivian fans rejoice! Just a few weeks ago, Rivian rolled out automated, hands-off driving for its second-gen R1 vehicles with a game-changing software update. Yet, the new feature, which is only operational on mapped highways, had left many fans craving for more.
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“One feedback we’ve heard loud and clear is that customers love [Highway Assist] but they want to use it in more places,” James Philbin, Rivian VP of autonomy, said on the podcast RivianTrackr Hangouts. “So that’s something kind of exciting we’re working on, we’re calling it internally ‘Map Free’, that we’re targeting for later this year.”
The lag between the release of Highway Assist (HWA) and Map Free automated driving gives time for the fleet of Rivian vehicles to gather ‘unique events’. These events are used to train Rivian’s offline model in the cloud before data is distilled back to individual vehicles.
As Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe explained in early March, HWA marked the very beginning of an expanding automated-driving feature set, “going from highways to surface roads, to turn-by-turn.”
For now, HWA still requires drivers to keep their eyes on the road. The system will send alerts if you drift too long without paying attention. But stay tuned—eyes-off driving is set for 2026.
It’s also part of what Rivian calls its “Giving you your time back” philosophy, the first of three pillars supporting Rivian’s vision over the next three to five years. Philbin says that philosophy is focused on “meeting drivers where they are”, as opposed to chasing full automation in the way other automakers, such as Tesla’s robotaxi, might be doing.
“We recognize a lot of people buy Rivians to go on these adventures, to have these amazing trips. They want to drive, and we want to let them drive,” Philbin says. “But there’s a lot of other driving that’s very monotonous, very boring, like on the highway. There, giving you your time back is how we can give the best experience.”
This will also eventually lead to the third pillar of Rivian’s vision, which is delivering Level 4, or high-automation vehicles: Those will offer features such as auto park or auto valet, where you can get out of your Rivian at the office, or at the airport, and it goes off and parks itself.
While not promising anything, Philbin says he believes the current Gen 2 hardware and platforms should be able to support these upcoming features.
The second pillar for Rivian is its focus on active safety features, as the EV-maker rewrote its entire autonomous vehicle (AV) system for its Gen2 models. This focus allowed Rivian’s R1T to be the only large truck in North America to get a Top Safety Pick+ from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
“I believe there’s a lot of innovation in the active safety space, in terms of making those features more capable and preventing more accidents,” Philbin says. “Really the goal, the north star goal, would be to have Rivian be one of the safest vehicles on the road, not only for the occupants but also for other road users.”

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Range Rover Sport P400e

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Cars

Toyota shifts gears: 15 New EVs and a million cars by 2027

Front three quarter view of the 2023 Toyota bZ4X.

After years of cautiously navigating the electric vehicle (EV) market, Toyota is finally ramping up its commitment to fully electric vehicles.
The Japanese automaker, which has long relied on hybrids, is now planning to develop about 15 fully electric models by 2027, up from five currently. These models will include vehicles under the Toyota and Lexus brands, with production expected to reach 1 million units annually by that year, according to a report from Nikkei.
This strategy marks a significant shift for Toyota, which has thus far remained conservative in its approach to electric cars. The company sold just 140,000 EVs globally in 2024—representing less than 2% of its total global sales. Despite this, Toyota is aiming for a much larger presence in the EV market, targeting approximately 35% of its global production to be electric by the end of the decade.
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For now, Toyota has only two fully electric vehicles on the U.S. market: The bZ4X and the Lexus RZ models. The Japanese automaker is expected to introduce new models like the bZ5X and a potential electric version of the popular Tacoma pickup.
Separately, Toyota and Honda, along with South Korea’s Hyundai, all announced on April 4 that they would not be raising prices, at least over the next couple of months, following the imposition of U.S. tariffs. According to a separate Nikkei report, Toyota’s North American division has told its suppliers that it will absorb the extra costs of parts imported from Mexico and Canada. Another 25% for automotive parts imported to the U.S. is slated to come into effect on May 3.

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