David Ruddock

What makes a Lotus, a Lotus? Anyone familiar with automotive history would likely say it’s the coy “simplify, then add lightness” philosophy that defined Colin Chapman’s scrappy sports car manufacturer and UK Formula One legend. But last year, the company began shipping its all-new electric SUV, the Eletre. It weighs 2600 kilograms. It’s built in China. It has more settings than a high-end washing machine. It’s… an SUV. Absolutely nothing about this car says “Lotus” — aside from the many Lotus logos on it.

It’s still not coming to America. Sorry, readers — thought I’d get the disappointment out of the way. The company’s bean counters still believe America is the continent of SUVs.

VW announced a midlife refresh of the current Golf Mk VIII lineup today, and the PHEV GTE is getting some seriously attractive updates to the electric portion of the powertrain.

Last week, a 2024 Polestar 2 was dropped off in front of my apartment in downtown Berlin — less than a kilometer from the center of Mitte, the most urbanized area of the German capital city. I’d never driven an EV in Germany before. Over 1000 kilometers later, including a lot of time on the speed limit-free Autobahn, I got pretty familiar with the latest version of the Polestar — a car I first drove almost three years ago.

Polestar posted its 2023 delivery numbers and, as expected, it’s a mixed bag for the luxury performance EV brand. With the company only meaningfully selling a single vehicle model — its Polestar 2 sedan — deliveries totaled 54,600 cars for 2023. And in Q4 of the year, the pace of deliveries slowed substantially, down to 12,800 cars (annualizing to a rate of 51,200).

Nissan has announced a new performance trim level of the Ariya at the Tokyo Auto Salon 2024 show this week: Meet the Ariya NISMO. It’s a more powerful, sporty, and body kit-clad version of the company’s only modern BEV offering and, for now, it will be limited to sale in the Japanese market.

Apple announced two new partners for its next-generation CarPlay platform this week — Porsche and Aston Martin. The latter, a storied but historically technology-challenged (remember the Lagonda?) sports car brand that would greatly benefit from using someone else’s software, makes sense. But Porsche? That was more than a bit of a surprise to me — especially given the company’s storied reputation for engineering its own solutions and recently announced Android-based Macan. But I believe Porsche knows something much of the industry isn’t yet ready to accept: That Apple’s software can create far more value for Porsche’s cars than Porsche could ever create on its own. Other automakers should start living in this reality instead of chasing the fantasy that they’re software companies, if only we’d give them 10 or 20 years to figure it out.

Russia has a new electric vehicle concept design from the Moscow Polytechnic University that was revealed on social media earlier this week. It’s called “Amber,” and while we know basically nothing about it from a technical perspective, memes of the… unfortunate looking EV are already proliferating on social media. And they’re pretty, pretty, pretty good.

Volvo has begun prototype production of its next-generation luxury electric sedan, possibly called the ES90. The V551, as it’s internally known, will be built in China. This information comes via a leak from Volvo’s own internal board, with a photo of the V551 team proudly kneeling next to a giant “CONFIDENTIAL TOP SECRET” sign below a banner with the text “Volvo Cars V551 First VP Car Celebration.” Seems like pretty solid confirmation to us!

I want to preface this story with a caveat: Lemons exist (and I don’t mean the fruit). Sometimes, you just get a bad car. And generally speaking, I have a very empathetic view toward the job of vehicle software engineers. The functions that customers expect their vehicles to perform have grown immensely in the past 10 years, going from basic command and control interfaces to fully featured smartphone operating systems with multiple applications and always-on internet connectivity. Building that into a product as complex and long-lived as a car isn’t easy!

Two weeks ago, GM and Pilot Flying J announced that the first batch of DC fast charging stations the two are building in partnership had come online. What wasn’t known until now is that one of those stations — specifically, in Ohio — was built using funds from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law’s program to create a nationwide EV charging network, NEVI.

Tesla’s online parts catalog for the Cybertruck is live, and component pricing is visible for authorized users in Tesla’s parts system. The Cybertruck’s massive windshield has been a talking point since the truck was announced five years ago, and it turns out it’s pretty pricey!

GM can’t really catch a break on its decision to end support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto in-vehicle projection modes. And while that choice does have a defensible business purpose (more on that in a moment), recent comments from Tim Babbitt, GM’s Head of Product for Infotainment, to Motor Trend seem like an unforced error — making an already unpopular move feel even less justifed.

I’m going to shoot straight with you: I don’t fully understand Volkswagen’s commercial van lineup — it is dizzyingly complicated. Today, VW announced the next generation of its commercial Transporter family will introduce an all-electric option in panel van, Kombi (dual purpose), dropside, and Caravelle (passenger) layouts.

Huawei, a major smartphone OEM, telecom supplier, and (formerly) silicon designer, is engaging German carmakers Mercedes and Audi over a potential stake in its vehicle software business. Huawei currently supplies vehicle software to several Chinese domestic OEMs, including Seres Group, Changan Automobile, and Arcfox, as well its own joint ventures, Luxeed (co-owned by Chery) and Avatr (co-owned by CATL).

If you’ve ever flown on the double-decker monster that is an Airbus A380, you know just what a bizarrely special experience it is — a plane so massive, you can barely tell it’s taking off or landing (let alone that it’s cruising 35,000 feet in the air). The latest MPV (MPEV?) from Geely-owned LEVC (London Electric Vehicle Company) is inspired by that wonder of engineering, and it’s a big boy indeed. With an 8-passenger layout and a length of over 17 feet (5.3 meters, specifically), the L380 is a vehicle designed to jet get groups around in comfort.

NIO is considering full LFP (Lithium Iron Phosphate) batteries for future vehicles in a bid to cut costs, according to a Chinese regulatory filing (reported by CNEVPost). While the company has announced no plans about which vehicles or when the batteries will be available, the move makes sense for the high-volume, low(ish)-margin automaker.

One of the less obvious features of the Tesla Cybertruck is its vehicle voltage architecture. The Cybertruck is the first EV from the automaker to use a 48-Volt (48V) electrical system implementation throughout the entire vehicle, as compared to the 12V systems that are used in pretty much every other vehicle on the planet. Today, Tesla shared its 48V implementation documentation with other major automakers — including competitors like Ford.

The CEO of Mazda, a company that makes one very mediocre electric car, is still trying to make electrification sound like some strange one-off consumer fad. In an interview with Fortune, Masahiro Moro basically says that if an EV isn’t a Tesla, it’s sitting unsold on a dealer lot somewhere in America.

While the 2024 Porsche Panamera Turbo E-Hybrid isn’t exactly the most environmentally-friendly plug-in hybrid you could choose, there’s an updated version of the Stuttgart super-sedan on the way next year, and it packs a 25.9kWh battery. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s 1.8kWh more capacity than an entire first-generation Nissan Leaf gave you. Not bad.

Nissan is announcing a major series of investments and plans for electrification today, many of which have been long rumored but are now being concretely defined. In summary, plan on two new CUVs and a brand-new version of the Leaf, all three of which will be produced in the UK at Nissan’s Sunderland plant. In support of those plans, Nissan will also be adding another gigafactory at Sunderland to enable production.

If you had to read that headline twice, let me assure you: I had to read Kitepower’s website a few times myself. The concept of harnessing the wind for power is positively ancient, but it usually comes in the form of a fixed wind-catching surface rotating a driven mass (aka a windmill). Kitepower is doing something very different. The best way to describe it is probably a “wind winch.”

If you’ve followed cars as long as I have, you’d have been following cars since Mitsubishi was last a household name in the industry! Which is to say, in 1999, with the generation three Eclipse. But the company has hung on, sort of, particularly in its home market of Japan and developing regions of the world where it has sold super-compact and highly cost-conscious transportation.

Volkswagen Group China has begun producing battery systems at a new factory in Hefei, China for its MEB platform EVs in the country. The initial capacity of the plant will be 150,000-180,000 EV packs per year, and marks VW’s first wholly-owned battery manufacturing venture in the country.

MEPs of the European Union voted to adopt strict new rules regarding emissions from trucking and busses today, seeking a 90% reduction in total fleet CO2 emissions by 2040 — but there’s a big loophole involved. While initial planning from the EU Commission sought to categorize effectively all ICE trucks and busses as CO2-emitting, the EU Parliament has other ideas.