The future of transportation is electric. Tesla proved with the Model S that customers would want to buy luxury vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries. Other EV startups like Faraday Future, Byton, Lucid Motors, and SF Motors are chasing after Elon Musk. And major automakers like Jaguar, Audi, and Mercedes-Benz have each released their own Tesla challengers. There are obstacles, such as the need for a more robust charging network. But battery-powered cars are here to stay.
The new Cayenne S Electric slots between the entry level Cayenne Electric and the high performance Turbo Electric, both of which were released late last year. The dual-motor S Electric will have an output of 536 horsepower, which jumps to 657 hp when using Launch Control. And it will start at $126,300 when it goes on sale this summer, as compared to $165,350 for the Turbo Electric. Giddyup.
Plug-in hybrid owners rarely actually plug in their vehicles, practically negating the climate advantages of the technology.
Chevy’s hybrid sports car is a sweet deal compared to its Chinese, Italian, and German competitors. And its performance specs underscore the inevitability of electric propulsion.
That is, the fastest EV product launch in US history. TechCrunch’s Sean O’Kane (who’s also a Verge alum) outlines how Rivian is staking its future on the launch of the more affordable R2 mid-sized SUV, predicting it will sell 20,000-25,000 by the end of this year.
If it succeeds, it will pull off something that only Tesla has done with the Model Y — and in a much more challenging environment. Rivian is expected to announce the R2’s price (previously estimated to start at $45,000) at SXSW next week.
Glenn Mercer of Car Charts has a new chart that shows EV sales ticking up slightly in the US, after all the chaos around the expiration of the tax credit has settled. We’re basically back to where we were around 2022-2023, with EVs capturing around 5-6 percent of total sales. So where are things headed? According to Mercer:
As the saying goes, we will eventually “solve for the equilibrium.” Which might in the near term be something like diesel-powered duallies on the ranches, gas-burning pickups in the ruburbs (rural suburbs), BEV runabouts in most urban areas, and PHEVs and HEVs in the closer-in suburbs. Not to mention a diverse zoo of person- and cargo-carrying e-bikes and scooters everywhere.
That’s Ford CEO Jim Farley to Car and Driver about the F-150 Lightning. The automaker recently discontinued the electric truck, after announcing a massive $19.5 billion write-down on its EV operations. “I mean, look, we didn’t know what we didn’t know,” Farley adds, admitting that Ford’s gas-engine “prejudice was so high that we hadn’t designed the [electric] cars right.” Now the company is betting that it can right-size its business with smaller, more aerodynamic EVs.
You may never be able to drive the Vision GT concept — except when it arrives in Gran Turismo 7 — and there’s nothing to prove the model at Xiaomi’s MWC booth is even a functioning EV. But hey, you can’t say it doesn’t look the part.
The Vision GT was designed to split the difference between performance on straights and corners, with a chassis that was “sculpted by the wind.” Apparently it’ll be on display at the MWC show floor, where hopefully I’ll get a better look at it.
Despite Elon Musk’s public statements that Tesla was close to getting “regulatory permission” to launch a robotaxi service in the Bay Area, the company has yet to apply for any of the required permits, Reuters reports. It also logged zero miles of autonomous test driving on California roads. Seems like a strange position for a company staking its future on robots and self-driving cars.
The Italian automaker cancelled the Lanzador, which was supposed to be its first crack at a pure battery-electric supercar, to focus instead on plug-in hybrids. Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winklemann told the Sunday Times that the “acceptance curve” for EVs among the company’s target demographic was “close to zero”. Yipes!
[The Sunday Times]
The parent company of Jeep and Dodge just took a $26.5 billion hit on its EV investment. But its problems run much deeper than that.
The EV company says the staff cuts are intended to “improve operational effectiveness and optimize our resources,” TechCrunch reports. An internal memo added that the company is still focused on “further expansion into the robotaxi market,” following the launch of a robotaxi collaboration with Nuro and Uber last year.
The EV tech startup rocked the auto industry with its CES announcement of a production-ready solid-state battery. Since then, there’s been a lot of skepticism and some out-right denials that the battery is even real. Now, Donut Labs is pushing back with a cleverly titled new video series, “I Donut Believe,” and independent test results that verify its claims. The first report is expected to drop next week.
A federal jury in Florida last year found Tesla partly liable for a deadly 2019 crash involving the company’s Autopilot driver assist software, and ordered the company to pay the families $243 million. Tesla appealed the ruling, but now a judge has dismissed that effort. In her ruling, US District Court Judge Beth Bloom stated that Tesla’s arguments “were already considered and rejected” and that the evidence at trial “more than supports the jury verdict and does not find it committed any error.”
An update to the Rivian mobile app released today introduces a companion app for the Apple Watch. From your wrist you can lock and unlock doors, vent windows, activate the alarm, adjust the cabin temperature using the Apple Watch’s crown dial, and monitor your vehicle’s battery status from your watch face.
The SUV pioneer owned by Volkswagen won’t start production on its first EVs, the Terra truck and the Traveler SUV, until 2028, not 2027 as originally planned, German publication Der Spiegel reports (as noted by The Drive). Given the dour mood around EVs these days, a one-year production delay isn’t the worse news.
We can’t really tell from the photo whether it has a steering wheel, which was probably a deliberate choice. Elon Musk has said that the fully driverless vehicle will go into volume production in April.
That works out to one crash for every 57,000 miles, according to Electrek, which has been tracking robotaxi crashes reported to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Tesla also updated a July 2025 crash to include information about someone being hospitalized — but since Tesla heavily redacts its crash reports, we have no more information about who was injured. The lack of transparency from Tesla also means we have no information about the cause or circumstances around any of those 14 crashes.
The automaker’s EV skunkworks team is using ‘bounties’ to guide engineering decisions that track gains in battery range and reductions in cost.
Last month, a federal judge ordered the US Department of Transportation to unfreeze $5 billion from the federal program dedicated to building more EV chargers. But today, Transportation Secretary announced a new requirement that all federally funded EV chargers be “100 percent” built in America. Since most EV chargers are sourced from China, this will essentially refreeze the funds and indefinitely delay the installation of more chargers.
A handful of journalists and YouTubers got to drive a pre-production version of Rivian’s upcoming $45,000 EV, and the reviews are now live. Doug DeMuro called it “awesome.” MKBHD thinks it will be Rivian’s answer to the Model Y.
JerryRigEverything took it off-roading. And Patrick George from InsideEVs found some of the software choices frustrating. They all agree that Rivian can’t afford to screw this up.
Car and Driver doing the important tests of the new EV’s Jony Ive-designed interior.
David Stern suggested Epstein invest in multiple EV startups, including Lucid Motors, Faraday Future, and Canoo, TechCrunch reports. Stern was also an advisor to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and worked with Epstein for nearly a decade, calling him his “mentor.” He also pitched Epstein on buying farmland in Russia and the news organization Al-Jazeera.
EV adoption was tied to a decrease in smog-forming nitrogen dioxide pollution in California, the biggest market for electric cars in the US, a recent study confirms.
[Fast Company]
“The charges announced today largely reflect the cost of overestimating the pace of the energy transition that distanced us from many car buyers’ real-world needs, means and desires,” CEO Antonio Filosa said in a statement. The automaker is the latest to record a massive charge on its EV investment, as sales growth slows amid vanishing government incentives. Ford reported a $19.5 billion write-down, while GM said it would take a more modest $6 billion hit.
Geely may build cars in the US, but their software still has to follow cybersecurity restrictions.
