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Renault’s new Megane is evolutionary where it counts, and revolutionary where it needs it

Paris-based Renault has published the first official images of the all-new 2016 Mégane ahead of its debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show.

Aimed squarely at the Volkswagen Golf, the Mégane is one of Renault’s bread-and-butter models so designers were careful not to make drastic design changes. As a result, the hatchback is lower, longer, and wider than the outgoing model but its proportions stay roughly the same.

Design-wise, the new fourth-generation Mégane is markedly inspired by the Passat-sized Talisman sedan that will also make its debut in Frankfurt. It gets a more premium-looking front end with sharp headlights and a pair of LED daytime running lights that stretch well into the bumper, as well as a four-slat grille accented by an oversized Renault emblem.

When it goes on sale, the new Mégane will only be available as a four-door hatchback. A family-friendly station wagon will join the lineup a little later in the production run, but what the future holds for the sporty coupe model and the convertible is anyone’s guess at this point. Rival Opel recently confirmed plans to ax the two-door Astra because the market is shrinking, so it’s not to far-fetched to imagine the future looks grim for the Mégane coupe.

Buyers after a sportier-looking Mégane can step up to the GT trim level. Offered at launch, the GT stands out from the regular Mégane thanks to a bigger air intake up front, a new grille with honeycomb inserts, a pair of chromed tail pipes and a Formula 1-inspired spoiler. Eighteen-inch alloy wheels and a model-specific paint color called Iron Blue adds a finishing touch to the overall look.

Technical details have not been published yet. However, it’s safe to assume the fourth-gen Mégane will be offered with four- (and, possibly, three-) cylinder gasoline- and diesel-burning engines borrowed from the Renault-Nissan parts bin. A range-topping, Renaultsport-designed model with over 280 ponies under the hood will round out the lineup later in the production run.

Full details about the 2016 Renault Mégane will be published during the Frankfurt Motor Show. The hatchback will go on sale across Europe and in a host of other overseas markets in the coming months, though it goes without saying that we’re not about to see it land on our shores anytime soon.

Ronan Glon
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Ronan Glon is an American automotive and tech journalist based in southern France. As a long-time contributor to Digital…
Tesla, Warner Bros. dodge some claims in ‘Blade Runner 2049’ lawsuit, copyright battle continues
Tesla Cybercab at night

Tesla and Warner Bros. scored a partial legal victory as a federal judge dismissed several claims in a lawsuit filed by Alcon Entertainment, a production company behind the 2017 sci-fi movie Blade Runner 2049, Reuters reports.
The lawsuit accused the two companies of using imagery from the film to promote Tesla’s autonomous Cybercab vehicle at an event hosted by Tesla CEO Elon Musk at Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) Studios in Hollywood in October of last year.
U.S. District Judge George Wu indicated he was inclined to dismiss Alcon’s allegations that Tesla and Warner Bros. violated trademark law, according to Reuters. Specifically, the judge said Musk only referenced the original Blade Runner movie at the event, and noted that Tesla and Alcon are not competitors.
"Tesla and Musk are looking to sell cars," Reuters quoted Wu as saying. "Plaintiff is plainly not in that line of business."
Wu also dismissed most of Alcon's claims against Warner Bros., the distributor of the Blade Runner franchise.
However, the judge allowed Alcon to continue its copyright infringement claims against Tesla for its alleged use of AI-generated images mimicking scenes from Blade Runner 2049 without permission.
Alcan says that just hours before the Cybercab event, it had turned down a request from Tesla and WBD to use “an icononic still image” from the movie.
In the lawsuit, Alcon explained its decision by saying that “any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account.”
Alcon further said it did not want Blade Runner 2049 “to be affiliated with Musk, Tesla, or any Musk company, for all of these reasons.”
But according to Alcon, Tesla went ahead with feeding images from Blade Runner 2049 into an AI image generator to yield a still image that appeared on screen for 10 seconds during the Cybercab event. With the image featured in the background, Musk directly referenced Blade Runner.
Alcon also said that Musk’s reference to Blade Runner 2049 was not a coincidence as the movie features a “strikingly designed, artificially intelligent, fully autonomous car.”

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2021 Audi Q5

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Two people exit a Waymo taxi.

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It was clearly meant as a warning about a not-so-desirable dystopian future.
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On X, Wong unveiled an unreleased version of Waymo’s privacy policy that suggests the California-based company is preparing to use data from its robotaxis, including interior cameras, to train generative AI models and to offer targetted ads.
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Waymo’s AI-models “are not designed to use this data to identify individual people, and there are no plans to use this data for targeted ads,” spokesperson Julia Ilina said.
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The new feature is still under development and offers riders an opportunity to opt out of data collection, Ilina says.
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