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Consumer Reports names only four vehicles to its "Worst Cars of 2015" list, and the Land Rover Discovery Sport is one of them. By VICTOR E. SASSON EDITOR How can you resist buying an SUV called the Disco? That's how Consumer Reports magazine refers to the Land Rover Discovery Sport, which is on its short list of "Worst Cars of 2015." Other "worst cars" are the Chrysler 200, Kia Sedona and Lexus NX 200t/300h. "Its engine seems flat-footed and the transmission often feels in the wrong gear," the magazine's editors say of the Disco. It gets worse:  "Handling is lumbering, and the wheels ride as though made of concrete. The infotainment system seems dated." The magazine's October 2015 issue notes, "Shoppers covet this eccentric English SUV brand for vanity reasons.... The Disco belongs to a family that includes the stately Range Rover." The 2015 model started at $37,070. Free lunch Just a week ago, Jaguar Land Rover No...

COMING UP FOR AIR: On Nov. 4, my all-electric Tesla Model S made its first visit to a gas station since I drove it home in mid-April to fill the Michelin tires with air -- 45 psi all around. FREE ELECTRICITY: Charging my Model S at home costs me nothing, because I have more than 60 solar panels on the roof. By VICTOR E. SASSON EDITOR My electric bill this month is exactly $2.43, a reduction from about $6 the month before. With more than 60 solar panels on the roof of my home, charging my Tesla Model S costs me nothing. In the past two months, the solar panels generated pretty much all of the electricity I needed to run appliances and lights, as well as charge the Model S crouching in the garage. Unfortunately, I still have to choke on the fumes from huge SUVs and other vehicles that use fossil fuels, including those filthy, diesel-powered Volkswagens, Audis and Porsches. OPEN WIDE: The hatchback in the Model S comes in handy at the hardware store or supermarket.

Joe Eberhardt, right, president and CEO of Jaguar Land Rover North America, answering questions from Scotty Reiss, president of the International Motor Press Association, after a lunch in midtown Manhattan on Thursday. By VICTOR E. SASSON EDITOR When I was a newspaper reporter covering auto importers based in northern New Jersey, Jaguar's luxury sedans and powerful sports cars were known as unreliable. In fact, I recall writing a business story about Jaguar, based then in Leonia, identifying the car as the most accurate winter thermometer ever -- it would start at 33 degrees, but not below that temperature. That was 30 years ago, but Jaguar Land Rover CEO Joe Eberhardt said on Wednesday the perception of unreliability still dogs the British marque. That may be why Jaguar and Land Rover vehicles sell in such small numbers in the United States -- fewer than 68,000 units so far in 2015. On Wednesday, Eberhardt bought a big lunch for 60 members of the International Motor Press Associat...

A 2015 Chevrolet Volt, the plug-in gas-electric hybrid the news media insists on calling an electric car. By VICTOR E. SASSON EDITOR What's all the shouting about? Since 2011, Chevrolet has delivered about 85,000 Volt plug-in gas-electric hybrids in the United States and about 5,000 more in Canada. That sounds like a sales flop to me, not a cause for celebration. You'd have to add in sales in Europe and Australia through October to reach the 100,000-car milestone marked by the Gas2 blog and other media. No one is saying how many hundreds of thousands of gallons of fossil fuel those cars burned or measuring how much pollution they poured into the atmosphere. For a real success story, you have to look at Toyota, which sold more than 200,000 Prius gas-electric hybrids in each of the last three years. From 2000 through December 2014, the Japanese automaker delivered nearly 1.5 million hybrids in the U.S. alone. The Volt, including the redesigned 2016 model, represents the continuin...

At the Tokyo Motor Show, Nissan promised to offer self-driving functions in a few years that are already available in Tesla Motors' Model S. By VICTOR E. SASSON EDITOR Automobile writers are so bored with the old technology being hawked at dealers worldwide they go bananas over concept cars and other fantasies that may never hit the road. Take this week's reports from the Tokyo Motor Show, where Nissan showed an all-electric concept car that isn't likely to go into production for five years, if then. The Associated Press story on Nissan's IDS (intelligent driving system) noted that by 2018, vehicles equipped with self-drive would be able to change lanes on the highway. That's what owners of the Tesla Model S can do now, thanks to updated software downloaded to the all-electric cars this month. To change lanes, all owners have to do is put on their directional signal when Tesla's Autopilot and Autosteer are enabled. Volt or Dolt? Meanwhile, a new version of the p...

In the 1990s, hundreds of people died in accidents involving the Ford Expolrer and other vehicles equipped with Firestone tires, below. By VICTOR E. SASSON EDITOR There is no way to know how many defective cars were produced when Bob Lutz was a senior leader at GM, Ford and Chrysler or how many people died as a result. Lutz is credited with bringing the first Ford Explorer SUV to market in 1990, leading to a series of fatal rollover accidents when the vehicles were equipped with defective Firestone tires. The auto executive also served, until 2010, as vice chairman of General Motors, where he was instrumental in the production of the Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid the news media incorrectly calls an electric car. Now, in a column for Road & Track magazine, Lutz claims Tesla Motors is doomed to fail because the California company is losing money on every all-electric car it sells. Lutz apparently doesn't address why two of the successful auto companies he was involved with, Genera...

On Route 80 west in northern New Jersey on Saturday, I briefly engaged the autonomous-driving features of my Tesla Model S, allowing pedal-free and hands-free driving. But a recent New York Times article erred on how the system works. By VICTOR E. SASSON EDITOR New York Times reporter Aaron M. Kessler made two big errors in reporting on high-speed autonomous driving in the Tesla Model S, and one of them could land owners off the road. In an Oct. 15 article in the paper's Wheels newsletter, Kessler said a software update gave owners Autopilot, "a semi-autonomous feature that allows hands-free, pedal-free driving on the highway under certain conditions." But the business-automotive writer made no mention of Autosteer, the other shoe that has to drop for the car to "drive us, rather than the other way around," as Kessler put it. I had the same incomplete understanding on Oct. 16, when I first tried Autopilot on Route 80 west, near my home in northern New Jersey. I ...