Seth Weintraub

Audi invited us to drive the 2022 Audi RS e-tron GT in the Adirondack Mountains, a mere 10 minutes from my home north of New York City. How could I pass up that opportunity when I traveled across the country to see it for the first time in 2019? The drive made for a memorable (and inexpensive!) lunch date with my wife to boot.

US President Joe Biden wasn’t the only person to experience the Ford F-150 Lightning electric truck firsthand this week.

On Friday we got our first in-person look at the Ford F-150 Lightning full-sized electric truck, and it was something pretty special. This is the US’s best-selling vehicle of any kind, but electrified and better in almost every way.

While we can’t yet comment on the experience of the drive, we can comment on the specs, which are pretty spectacular. Read on about the most torque ever in an F-150, 300 miles of range, home/worksite power, and why the “lightning” moniker isn’t just about electricity, it’s about supercar quickness.

(Update: CEO Jim Farley said Ford got over 20,000 reservations overnight, 44,500 in the 1st 48 hours)

Today in France, Renault CEO Luca de Meo and the Renault brand team shared their new vision of the company. They painted themselves as an energy transition leader on the forefront of the latest technology and services, operating in a more sustainable and responsible manner.

As part of the event, they snuck in a few images of the Electric Mégane E-TECH Electric hatchback, including an Android-focused center stack.

As a pilot and electric vehicle enthusiast, I’ve been waiting for a larger cabin aircraft to emerge from all of the electric plane startups. Bye aircraft, which is named after its founder, George E. Bye, not the salutation, may have a winner in its new gorgeous 8-seat turboprop-class eFlyer 800…

Think your Tesla Model 3 is charging fast at 250kW? The FIA’s GT series would like to have a word with you. The international motorsport body today introduced the specs of its GT race series that includes a crazy-fast but also crazy-necessary charging rate of 700kW(!!)…

2021 Hyundai Ioniq and Kona owners and prospective owners from today will get a free 250kWh of fast charging at Electrify America (EA) stations as the network continues to expand.

We got a limited look at the Volvo C40 Recharge today at the Volvo Cars Manhattan showroom. That’s where the single US C40 currently is residing before its trip to Boston this weekend. Here are our first thoughts.

If you’ve driven the Bolt EV from any of the past five years, you’ve got a pretty good idea of what it is like to drive the 6-inches-longer Bolt EUV. It has the same 200 horsepower FWD drivetrain, and that includes the lackluster 55kW fast charging.

But instead of upgrading the powertrain over the past five years (AWD, faster charging?), GM added something important to the driving experience that may even put them ahead of *gasp* Tesla…

We finally got the chance to get behind the wheel of VW’s ID.4 electric CUV this week. This is 36 hours with the 1st Edition RWD, and it was mostly during a winter snowstorm in New York. But we still had time to give it a proper drive and get some initial thoughts to see if VW has a huge hit on its hands.

Tesla today announced that it had purchased $1.5B in bitcoin, pushing the cryptocurrency to an all-time high, currently approaching $44,000. The company announced the move in an SEC filing today and says it plans to accept the currency as payment for its products and services.

When we were invited to Ford’s campus in 2019 to check out what we’d learn was the new Mustang Mach-E, we were told we were witnessing the future of the iconic 118-year-old American auto manufacturer. We soon learned that Ford wasn’t just messing around with another compliance EV, it was building a sport CUV and throwing their most prized emblem on it.

Fast forward to 2021. I got a chance to drive the Mach-E for a full week, and this wasn’t a Southern California summer jaunt, when most EV drives are scheduled. It was Nor’easter-plagued late January in New York, including a snowy road trip to Vermont. I currently drive a Tesla Model Y as a daily driver and have been driving EVs exclusively for a decade, so this Mustang isn’t my first rodeo.

As promised, GM has a new ad campaign running on the 2021 Super Bowl touting its commitment to electric vehicles against Norway‘s, a country pushing up against two-thirds of its vehicle sales being EVs…

GM’s out with another press release saying it aspires to be fully electric in its consumer fleet by 2035. Yet the company only sells one EV, down from a few if you included the Chevy Volt/Cadillac ELR a few years ago, on its lots. Press releases are easy and often for GM. Putting EVs on the lots is what we want to see.

Every day, presumably now for the next 14 years, GM will be rolling gas vehicles off its assembly lines knowing that each one will be contributing heavily to carbon emissions. Also, one has to wonder, Why make pie in the sky promises for 15 years in the future when current GM leadership will no longer be there and will have no responsibility? It all feels a little… greenwashy.

The EPA has the updated range estimates for the 2021 Porsche Taycan 4S, its midrange model now that the standard model Taycan has been announced. Surprisingly, the range jumped from 203 miles in 2020 to 227 miles of range this year, a gain of over 10%. What exactly happened?

Before today, buying a Porsche Taycan in the US was a six-figure layout. The first full battery electric vehicle from Porsche was only offered in packages starting from $103K for the Taycan 4S to $185K for the Turbo S (reviewed here).

Today, Porsche is now opening the floodgates to Taycan ownership with a base model offering starting at $79,900. With federal and state EV incentives, the price could drop below $70K. But what did Porsche cut to get the price there?

The GM announcements keep coming at CES 2021 this year. Today GM CEO Mary Barra announced a new division called BrightDrop that would be building electric delivery vehicles and the technology to go along with it.

GM is starting a huge campaign this week in the US and will be rolling out in phases globally to highlight the automaker’s move to electrification. The campaign was done by McCann as well as the logo and type, which was developed in-house. It’s a big change and will envelop all of its products, including its legacy ICE vehicles.

The year 2020 wasn’t horrible for everyone. For the companies that make electric bikes, a convenient, inexpensive, and fun way to avoid public transportation, business was so good that supply chain shortages made their products hard to find. Many companies we spoke with had record years.

It’s the move of ebikes into micromobility that has been the bigger trend for 2020, and our ebike of the year winner has highlighted this trend.

Congratulations to the Juiced HyperScorpion, a 33mph (53km/h) emoped that can be ridden as a class 1/2/3 ebike on bike trails or ridden like a moped on 35mph speed limit roads with traffic. It can even be pedaled like a traditional bike. It can be a cargo bike or a delivery bike. It’s a fun joy ride or it’s a great commuter and can provide fun exercise. It’s a little of everything.

Lanai Island, a former pineapple plantation that was almost entirely (98%) purchased by Oracle founder and Tesla board member Larry Ellison for $300 million in 2012, is the first in Hawaii to see a Supercharger permit filed by Tesla.

I’ve had the Juiced HyperScrambler 2 for over a month now, and every time I ride, I find out something interesting about the ebike/emoto hybrid. On most of those days someone asks me, “What the heck is that awesome thing you’re riding?!” and “Where I can get one?” The second part is easy — JuicedBikes.com. The first part? Let’s take a look.

Today GM had a lot of new EVs on display at a Barclays investor event but far away, a realtor doing YouTube videos happened to catch the first public glimpse of the 2022 Bolt EV out in the wild. This is the same pre-COVID 2021 Bolt EV that we saw at GM’s EV Day in Detroit in February.

As more and more people are retiring their old gas-powered leaf blowers for superior electric alternatives, they are finding a growing number of brands with different power, capabilities, and price points.

Today we take a look at the two of the highest-powered 40cc-equivalent hand-held options: The EGO LB6504 56V ($299) — that my neighbor recently purchased — and my own year-old Greenworks 80V ($229).

Tesla made a significant update to its phone-charging setup in Model Y by not only going to USB-C in the rear, but also adding a higher-power 19W USB-C PD port in the front. But with all the new features of Tesla’s constantly updating OS including USB Game controllers, USB TeslaCam and Sentry storage, and Qi charging, are just two USB ports enough? Of course not. And that’s why Jeda’s USB Hub is a must-have for any Model Y owner.

Coupon Code “Electrek” drops $15 off the price of the USB hub ($65) and anything on Jeda’s site using this link.

Polestar is a bit of an enigma as far as auto companies are concerned. The company, which is a joint venture between Geely and Volvo (which, in turn, is also owned by Geely), operates independently on some fronts from either Geely or Volvo in order to remain nimble. But it also leans heavily on its incestuous parents for infrastructure, talent, and support. I spoke to its North American head, Gregor Hembrough, who incidentally came from two decades previous at Volvo in 2018, to find out why.