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the German luxury brand has decided to bring back the five-door version of its A3 compact to the United States without offering customers an ordinary gasoline engine.

Audi already announced plans to sell a plug-in hybrid version of the hatchback called the A3 e-tron.

Exact pricing has not been announced, but the diesel A3 will compete with entry-level luxury cars such as the Lexus CT, a similarly sized hybrid-only hatchback that starts at $32,960 with shipping. Lexus sold 15,071 of them in 2013 in the United States.

Mercedes-Benz plans to double its downtown sales outlets worldwide by 2020 to serve the boom in city living with retailing that offers more technological wizardry and tasty treats than car models in showrooms.

The world’s third-biggest maker of luxury cars opened its first Mercedes Me store today in Hamburg, a new format that features billiard-table-sized touch screens for configuring vehicles. The carmaker, targeting drivers who haven’t yet bought the brand’s cars, plans to increase the number of city-center retail sites from the current 20

Audi, the most profitable brand at Volkswagen AG, said in mid-2012 that it plans a 20-site network worldwide of Audi City stores equipped with giant LED wall screens for customers to design their cars. BMW’s I sub-brand of electric and hybrid autos has a website enabling direct online purchases.

Volkswagen Group may sell more than 10 million vehicles in 2014, four years earlier than planned, as Europe's largest automaker accelerates model introductions in a strategy to overtake Toyota Motor Corp. as the global sales leader.

Volkswagen, which has budgeted 84.2 billion euros ($117 billion) in investments through 2018 to pursue a goal of taking the No. 1 spot from Toyota, said it will introduce more than 100 models this year and next, including vehicles for the mass-market VW nameplate and the Audi and Porsche premium marques

the Genesis will help Hyundai continue its so-called intercept strategy.

If you think about Lexus in 1989, most of their customers came out of nonluxury products," O'Brien explains. "They were customers that were on their way to a German manufacturer, but they were intercepted with a better value and a better product. We're basically in that mode now."

Hyundai considers the Genesis' main competitors to be the Lexus GS, Cadillac CTS and Mercedes E class.

Ford engineers, working with Japanese supplier Takata Corp., changed part of that layout

In Ford’s system, the steering wheel activates an electric motor, which turns a gear on the steering shaft. The motor and gear turn the wheels with fewer rotations of the steering wheel.

Similar steering systems are available on some BMW, Lexus, Audi and Infiniti luxury vehicles, but they are packaged differently from Ford’s system.

Consider the new 2015 Hyundai Genesis, a luxury sedan brimming with semiconductors that handle everything from automatic braking and lane-keeping sensors to blind-spot detection. Other chips enable the car to open the trunk when it senses the owner’s arms are full, and to sniff for carbon dioxide to decide if the cabin needs more fresh air

While the Genesis represents the forefront of the auto industry’s use of chips, only a handful of the vehicle’s thousands of semiconductors is provided by Intel. Qualcomm and NVIDIA don’t even make the list.

The main hurdle is the industry’s safety and reliability standards, which far exceed those for computers or phones. Instead, most of the electronic components are provided by longtime suppliers, like Freescale Semiconductor Ltd., Renesas Electronics Corp. and STMicroelectronics NV, which have proven track records.

Lexus has some fine choices, as do BMW, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Cadillac, Acura, Infiniti and Volvo. Lincoln... Not so much. Until now, that is. The suave new MKC brings fresh lines – and fresh thinking – to a crowded segment.

Lincoln gave the base MKC a 240-horsepower 2-litre EcoBoost engine. A 2.3-litre turbo four is optional, producing a healthy 285 horsepower and 305 pound-feet of torque. Notably absent (for now, at least), are six-cylinder gasoline, turbo-diesel and gasoline-electric hybrid options.

Occupants are never reminded what sort of engine lies under the hood. On the road, the MKC delivers exemplary ride comfort and splendid control over bumps and around curves. All good news