All of the cars, concepts, and wild ideas from the 2019 Geneva Motor Show – The Verge

Koenigsegg’s Jesko is a 300 mph projectile on wheels

2019-03-07T09:30:36-05:00

It takes a lot for a petrol-fueled car to nudge out all of the hyper electrics that attract eyeballs at the Geneva Motor Show, but Koenigsegg has done it. The new Jesko by Koenigsegg, named after the company founder's father, is claimed to be the world's first road-legal 300 mph car. That top speed translates to more than 480 kilometers per hour. To put it in more relatable terms, this car can travel fast enough to cover the length of a football field - doesn't matter which version of football you prefer - in less than a second. When you think of it in those terms, you'll probably also realize just how theoretical performance like that is: t …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Volkswagen’s dune buggy is an electric shot of nostalgia

2019-03-07T02:33:25-05:00

Dune buggies, according to Volkswagen and some senior Verge staff members, used to be hip. I'm told that young people used to once go driving on California beaches instead of worrying about crippling student loan debt, uncertain job prospects, and unaffordable homes. Hoping to revive the spirit, if not the economics, of the past in a modern all-electric form, Volkswagen has come to the Geneva Motor Show 2019 with a new ID Buggy concept car. Like the ID Vizzion from last year, the Buggy is huge - it has the proportions of a smaller car, but the absolute dimensions of something approaching an SUV - and all the VW logos are lit up with LEDs.

O …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Fiat’s newest concept is a modular electric car you can almost endlessly customize

2019-03-06T15:17:27-05:00

The biggest debuts each year at the Geneva Motor Show are usually eye-popping supercars, but look hard enough and you can find some more… democratic ideas in the margins. Like Fiat's newest concept, the Centoventi, which is a customizable modular electric car that totally rethinks many of the norms of automotive ownership.

The Centoventi - named as such in honor of the Italian automaker's 120th anniversary - is an exploration of what it would be like to buy a very plain car that you can dress up to your liking. Customers would buy a metal gray car (loosely based on the company's Panda lineup), but would be able to choose from four different …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Kia turned 21 phone screens into a concept car dashboard

2019-03-06T10:17:20-05:00

Ralph Kluge, head of Kia's interior design team, thinks EVs up until now have been too logical, appealing to customers' reason instead of their emotion. So, in a deliberate move to troll the Geneva Motor Show - or "to polarize a little bit," as Kluge puts it - Kia has unveiled its Imagine concept car. Its absolute highlight is an array of 21 smartphone-sized LCDs that form the dashboard / instrument cluster for the driver. They don't do a damn thing for the passenger, other than look like a deliberately distorted mess.

Maybe I'm supposed to be turned off by the sheer lunacy of what Kia's brought to Geneva, but I actually like it. There's a …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The electric Pininfarina Battista is my new dream car

2019-03-06T08:06:38-05:00

Hypercars are like big cities: more glamorous from a distance, rarely affordable to people who earn an honest living, and often claustrophobically limited in interior space. The Geneva Motor Show is full of them every year, but in 2019, Pininfarina has delivered an exception with its 1,900-horsepower, all-electric Battista. This is one of the few cars where I find myself wanting it more after I've seen it in person rather than before. Not that it matters what I want with such an exclusive performance and hype beast, of which there'll only ever be 150 made, and each will cost a dizzying $2.6 million.

Pininfarina design director Luca Borgogno …

Read the full story at The Verge.

The Polestar 2’s secret weapon against the Tesla Model 3 is native Android Auto

2019-03-06T02:35:45-05:00

In among the ornate (Aston Martin's new Lagonda concept) and the obscene (Bugatti's one-off La Voiture Noire), Volvo spin-off brand Polestar is gracing the Geneva Motor Show 2019 with a car that merits attention for its relevance as well as it looks. The Polestar 2 is a five-door, all-electric fastback coupe that carries over much of the sporty styling of the turbocharged Polestar 1, however it drops the price dramatically while adding the distinction of being the first car to feature a native implementation of Google's Android Auto. What I saw of both in Geneva this week left me with a very positive impression.

Looking at the Polestar 2 fr …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Pininfarina’s 1,900 horsepower Battista is one of the fastest EVs on the planet

2019-03-05T16:24:23-05:00

After months of teasing, Italian automotive design-outfit-turned-manufacturer Pininfarina has revealed its first car, the Battista. It's a sleek $2.6 million hypercar with power that lives up to its brawny-sounding name, and it's sure to blow nearly any other car in the world off the asphalt, all without using a drop of gas. Just 150 will be made.

Pininfarina says the Battista is "the most powerful road-legal car ever designed and built in Italy." Considering Italy is the country that birthed the two companies most people associate with supercars, it's hard to think of a more obvious "shots fired" statement.

But Pininfarina backs it up (on …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Piëch Automotive claims its electric supercar runs on a completely new type of battery

2019-03-05T14:43:09-05:00

Electric car startup Piëch Automotive, named for legendary Volkswagen executive (and grandson of the founder of Porsche) Ferdinand Piëch, arrived at the Geneva Motor Show this week with an electric supercar and an interesting story to tell. According to the company, the all-electric Mark Zero is powered by a new type of battery that will recharge to 80 percent in less than five minutes. If true, that represents a pretty incredible breakthrough in battery technology. But until we see some independent proof of this, we'll reserve judgment.

Here's how Piëch, which was co-founded by Ferdinand Piëch's son Anton "Toni" Piëch along with Rea Stark …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Bugatti’s La Voiture Noire is a $19 million ode to the grotesquely rich

2019-03-05T14:26:54-05:00

Disregard your bank (im)balance for a moment, and consider this proposition: Bugatti has designed a one-off, blacked-out car - built upon the Chiron drivetrain, and made out of carbon fiber and all the finest materials humanity has discovered - but it costs a whopping $18.9 million and you can't have it for another 2.5 years, because Bugatti has to figure out how to engineer and homologate the preposterous thing. Do you take up that offer?

Any car fanatic would calculate how many Ferraris, McLarens, and Lambos could be had for such a princely sum, and how much driving can be done in 30 months, and decline as quickly and politely as possible …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Audi’s new Q4 E-tron is a smaller electric SUV with great range

2019-03-05T10:48:38-05:00

Audi unveiled the next vehicle in its all-electric lineup: the Q4 E-tron SUV. Smaller than the regular E-tron, the compact Q4 still packs a nice punch, with 280 miles of range, twin electric motors, and a total power output of 225 kW. But it won't be hitting dealerships anytime soon: the vehicle was released only in concept form this week at the Geneva Motor Show.

First teased in 2016, the E-tron is Audi's first real response to the push from parent company Volkswagen Group to electrify its entire lineup of cars by 2030. At first glance, the Q4 looks just like the E-tron, only slightly shrunk down. The compact SUV is 4.59 meters long (180 i …

Read the full story at The Verge.