Enlarge / The introduction of model year 2025 brings a retractable hard-top option for the McLaren Artura, plus a host of other upgrades. (credit: McLaren)

MONACO—The idea of an "entry-level" supercar might sound like a contradiction in terms, but every car company's range has to start somewhere, and in McLaren's case, that's the Artura. When Ars first tested this mid-engined plug-in hybrid in 2022, It was only available as a coupe. But for those who prefer things al fresco, the British automaker has now given you that option with the addition of the Artura Spider.

The Artura represented a step forward for McLaren. There's a brand-new carbon fiber chassis tub, an advanced electronic architecture (with a handful of domain controllers that replace the dozens of individual ECUs you might find in some of its other models), and a highly capable hybrid powertrain that combines a twin-turbo V6 gasoline engine with an axial flux electric motor.

More power, faster shifts

For model year 2025 and the launch of the $273,800 Spider version, the engineering team at McLaren have given it a spruce-up, despite only being a couple of years old. Overall power output has increased by 19 hp (14 kW) thanks to new engine maps for the V6, which now has a bit more surge from 4,000 rpm all the way to the 8,500 rpm redline. Our test car was fitted with the new sports exhaust, which isn't obnoxiously loud. It makes some interesting noises as you lift the throttle in the middle of the rev range, but like most turbo engines, it's not particularly mellifluous.

Enlarge / Polestar's first electric SUV is the new Polestar 3, and it's rather great to drive. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

MADRID, Spain—2024 is a big year for Polestar. It was spun out of Volvo in 2017 as a standalone performance electric brand, and in 2019, we tried its first car, a low-volume plug-in hybrid GT that wowed us but only ever amounted to 1,500 cars. Next came the Polestar 2, a compact four-door sedan that was one of the first cars to deeply integrate Google's automotive services. But now it's time for the cars most of Polestar's potential customers have been waiting for—SUVs. And it's starting with the $73,400 Polestar 3.

Although Volvo has sold its shares in Polestar (leaving its parent company Geely as Polestar's sole corporate parent), the two companies will continue to share technology and platforms. The Polestar 3 is built on the group's SPA2 architecture, which is also being used by the forthcoming Volvo EX90; indeed, both are going into production at Volvo's factory in South Carolina this year.

As a measure of how far the company has come in a relatively short time, the Polestar 3 generates less carbon emissions during production than the smaller, cheaper Polestar 2 when it was introduced in 2020.

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images/3alexd)

Have electric vehicles been overhyped? A casual observer might have come to that conclusion after almost a year of stories in the media about EVs languishing on lots and letters to the White House asking for a national electrification mandate to be watered down or rolled back. EVs were even a pain point during last year's auto worker industrial action. But a look at the sales data paints a different picture, one where Tesla's outsize role in the market has had a distorting effect.

"EVs are the future. Our numbers bear that out. Current challenges will be overcome by the industry and government, and EVs will regain momentum and will ultimately dominate the automotive market," said Martin Cardell, head of global mobility solutions at consultancy firm EY.

Public perception hasn't been helped by recent memories of supply shortages and pandemic price gouging, but the chorus of concerns about EV sales became noticeably louder toward the end of last year and the beginning of 2024. EV sales in 2023 grew by 47 percent year on year, but the first three months of this year failed to show such massive growth. In fact, sales in Q1 2024 were up only 2.6 percent over the same period in 2023.

Enlarge / For 2026, F1 cars are going on a little bit of a diet. (credit: Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile)

Earlier today, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile laid out the direction for Formula 1's next set of technical regulations, which will go into effect in 2026. It will be the second big shakeup of F1's technical regs since 2022 and involves sweeping changes to the hybrid powertrain and a fundamental rethink of how some of the aerodynamics work.

"With this set of regulations, the FIA has sought to develop a new generation of cars that are fully in touch with the DNA of Formula 1—cars that are light, supremely fast and agile but which also remains at the cutting edge of technology, and to achieve this we worked towards what we called a 'nimble car' concept. At the center of that vision is a redesigned power unit that features a more even split between the power derived from the internal combustion element and electrical power," said Nikolas Tombazis, the FIA's single-seater technical director.

Didn’t we just get new rules?

It feels like F1 only just got through its last big rule change with the (re)introduction of ground-effect cars at the start of 2022. Since the early 1980s, F1 cars have generated aerodynamic grip, or downforce, via front and rear wings. But drivers found it increasingly difficult to follow each other closely through corners as the dirty air from the car in front starved the following car's front wing of air, robbing it of cornering grip in the process.

Enlarge / "It got more attention than last year, and the development feels steadier, faster, and safer," said Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda when asked how the hydrogen-powered Corolla had improved from 2023. (credit: Toyota)

A couple of weekends ago, when most of the world's motorsport attention was focused on Monaco and Indianapolis, Toyota President Akio "Morizo" Toyoda was taking part in the Super Taikyu Fuji 24 Hours at Fuji Speedway in Japan. Automotive executives racing their own products is not exactly unheard of, but few instances have been quite as unexpected as competing in endurance races with a hydrogen-burning Corolla.

A hydrogen-powered Toyota has shown up for the past few years, in fact, as the company uses the race track to learn new things about thermal efficiency that it says have benefitted its latest generation of internal-combustion engines, which it debuted to the public at the end of May.

With backing from its government, the Japanese auto industry has continued to explore hydrogen as an alternative vehicle energy source instead of liquid hydrocarbons or batteries. Commercially, that's been in the form of hydrogen fuel cells, although with very little success among drivers, even in areas that have some hydrogen fueling infrastructure.

Enlarge / Tesla will have to rely on its Dojo supercomputer for a while longer after CEO Elon Musk diverted 12,000 Nvidia GPU clusters to X instead. (credit: Tesla)

Elon Musk is yet again being accused of diverting Tesla resources to his other companies. This time, it's high-end H100 GPU clusters from Nvidia. CNBC's Lora Kolodny reports that while Tesla ordered these pricey computers, emails from Nvidia staff show that Musk instead redirected 12,000 GPUs to be delivered to his social media company X.

It's almost unheard of for a profitable automaker to pivot its business into another sector, but that appears to be the plan at Tesla as Musk continues to say that the electric car company is instead destined to be an AI and robotics firm instead.

Does Tesla make cars or AI?

That explains why Musk told investors in April that Tesla had spent $1 billion on GPUs in the first three months of this year, almost as much as it spent on R&D, despite being desperate for new models to add to what is now an old and very limited product lineup that is suffering rapidly declining sales in the US and China.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

New cars have gotten pretty expensive, and it feels like electric cars are especially pricey. The average sale price of a new car has dropped a couple of thousand dollars since it peaked in early 2023, but at more than $47,400 in April, sticker shock is understandable, particularly as interest rates have doubled over the course of the past two years. Based on reader feedback, that impression is particularly pronounced when it comes to new electric vehicles. But EV prices have actually been falling, and inventory is growing. So we put together a list of all the new EVs on sale today for less than the average transaction price of a new car. You can buy 17 different EVs for less than the average price of a new car, and 11 are available for less than $40,000.

Nissan Leaf

The Leaf is the cheapest new EV on sale today. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

First on the list is the Nissan Leaf, which starts at just $28,140 for the version with a 40 kWh battery pack. Nissan was an early EV pioneer, and the current Leaf is the second generation to wear the name. But it hasn't always been on the cutting edge, and some of the Leaf's specs that felt a little outdated in 2017 may feel more so in 2024. The Leaf is eligible for a $3,750 IRS clean vehicle tax credit.

Mini SE

There's an old joke where I come from. "How do you get to Wales in a Mini," it asks, except instead of "to Wales" the country, the joke is "two whales," and the answer is "one in the front, one in the back." Such jokes are unlikely to be repeated about the new battery electric Mini Cooper SE, but if they are, the answer will probably be "slowly, because you have to stop and charge it a lot." (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

With new tariffs on Chinese-made EVs, no one is entirely sure when the next electric Mini Cooper will go on sale in the US. But right now, you can buy the current Mini Cooper SE for a starting price of $30,900. Although the suspension can feel stiffer than a supercar's, if you live in a city and don't need mega-miles of range, the Mini fits the bill quite effectively and is much more of a hoot to drive (and much cheaper) than the John Cooper Works GP mini.

Enlarge / Jeep is ready to join the electric SUV fray with the new Wagoneer S, which goes on sale later this year. (credit: Jeep)

The Jeep brand has finally debuted its first purpose-built electric vehicle. It's targeting the hotly contested SUV segment with the new Wagoneer S, which goes on sale this fall. But other than its name, it shares little with the gasoline-powered Wagoneer; the Wagoneer S uses the same EV architecture—called STLA Large—as the forthcoming electric Dodge Charger.

It looks like Jeep is using a similar playbook to Dodge and Ram as it introduces its electric models: Give them the same name and styling as a familiar bestseller to keep customers comfortable, then give them serious power output and some headline-grabbing numbers to generate a halo effect.

Powerful

That's why the Jeep Wagoneer S Launch Edition will offer 600 hp (447 kW), 617 lb-ft (837 Nm), and a 0–60 mph (0-98 km/h) time of 3.4 seconds. It's powered by a 100.5 kWh battery pack with nickel manganese cobalt chemistry operating at 400 V.

Enlarge / For a while the Lyriq was a rare sight on the road, but now that production has picked up, we decided it was time to get a second impression. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

We first drove the Cadillac Lyriq a couple of years ago. It was the first of a whole range of new electric vehicles from General Motors built on shared electric powertrain components. Compared to more recent Ultium-based EVs from GM, the Lyriq launch went relatively smoothly, despite pre-production test vehicles. Hype was so great that Cadillac was said to have increased the first year's production run by almost a factor of 10.

But customers faced a long wait for their orders as the company stumbled at the step where cells get turned into battery packs. Now the production kinks have been worked out, and Lyriqs are becoming a more common sight. So it seemed like a reasonable time to check in on the electric Caddy.

We've written quite a lot in the past about the Lyriq's Ultium powertrain, so I won't repeat too much detail here. For model-year 2024, the underpinnings remain the same, although our test car is an all-wheel-drive version. (Cadillac only had the rear-wheel-drive variant at the first drive in 2022.) There are a pair of new trims, Tech and Sport—this test car was the top-of-the-line Sport 3, with a $78,295 sticker price (including delivery charge).

Enlarge / Used Tesla Model 3s can be had for less than $20,000 now. (credit: Getty Images)

The launch of a new electric vehicle these days is invariably met with a chorus of "this car is too expensive"—and rightfully so. But for used EVs, it's quite another story, particularly used Teslas, thanks to a glut of former fleet and rental cars that are now ready for their second owner.

"Due to a variety of reasons, Tesla resale values have plummeted, making many Tesla models very affordable now. Plus, for some consumers, an additional $4,000 Federal tax credit on used EVs may apply, sweetening the deal even further. Buying a used Tesla can be a great deal for the savvy shopper, but there are significant things to look out for," says Ed Kim, president and chief analyst at AutoPacific.

Indeed, a quick search on the topic easily reveals some horror stories of ex-rental Teslas, so here are some things to consider if you're in search of a cheap Model 3 or Model Y.

Enlarge / After building almost 100,000 W12-powered Bentley Continental GTs, the brand is moving to a plug-in powertrain. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

BARCELONA—The days of big engines are numbered, even for big spenders. Owning a GT that lets you drive across Europe in a day in cosseted luxury means very little if you're not allowed to drive it into the city you're meant to be visiting, after all. Low emissions zones are either a fact of life or on the way in many of the more desirable urban postcodes, and even here in the US, we're about to start getting quite tough on fuel efficiency. Which is why Bentley is saying goodbye to its W12-powered Continental GT Speed and replacing it with a new plug-in hybrid instead.

The W12 engine has become something of a trademark for Bentley in the 21st century. For many years, Bentleys were essentially just badge-engineered Rolls-Royces, while both companies were owned by the aircraft maker Vickers. But VW group took control of Bentley in 1998—BMW got Rolls-Royce—and it was time for something fresh.

Originally developed within parent company Volkswagen Group for use in the all-aluminum Audi A8, the W12 design essentially mated a pair of narrow-angle V6 engines as used in the Golf VR6 to create a compact and powerful multi-cylinder engine for those customers looking for a powertrain a bit less common than a V8.

Enlarge / The current 911—known to Porschephiles as the 992 generation—has just been given its midlife refresh. The most obvious visual indicator is the presence of vertical strakes in the front air intakes. But we're much more interested in what's gone on under the skin. (credit: Porsche)

Today, Porsche gave the venerable 911 a bit of a spiff-up, putting an updated engine in the base 911 Carrera and making some design tweaks to keep the 992-generation machine looking fresh. But the most interesting update is an all-new powertrain in the 911 Carrera GTS. For the first time, you can now buy a hybrid 911.

When Porsche has been asked about adding electrification to the 911, the answer has generally been some variation of "we'll do it when the technology gets light enough." Plug-in hybrid Cayennes, Panameras, and battery electric Taycans are all well and good because they are big cars.

But a Porsche 911 remains a relatively small car, even if it has grown a little since 1963. The engine bay behind the rear axle isn't exactly expansive, and adding a high-voltage battery and electric motors had to be done thoughtfully.

Enlarge / BMW's single-motor, rear-wheel drive i4 eDrive40 ticks an awful lot of my boxes. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

I have a theory about electric vehicles, and with a few notable exceptions, it's this: The cheaper, less powerful version is usually the one to get. Big power outputs and short 0–60 times have been the industry's go-to, but always with the trade-off being less range and a bigger sticker price. Today's EV is a good example. It's the BMW i4 eDrive40, a single-motor version of BMW's smaller electric fastback sedan. It has taken a while to get some seat time in one, but the wait was worth it, because this is one of the best electric sedans we've tested so far.

I've driven the BMW i4 a few times now since its launch in 2021, but always the very fast, very powerful, rather expensive i4 M50. Which is fine, but not exciting like the M3. The i4 eDrive40 undercuts the twin-motor, all-wheel drive M50 by more than $10,000—it starts at a more reasonable $57,300 and goes more than 30 miles (48 km) farther on a single charge of the same capacity 84.3 kWh (net) battery pack, with an EPA range of 301 miles (484 km).

BMW made its name on the back of a string of driver-focused, rear-wheel drive sedans, and I had high expectations for the eDrive40 to live up to. With no front motor, there's less weight on the front axle, and the front wheels just have to worry about steering and braking, not laying down power as well. Less power to put down means smaller wheels, which translates into a better ride and more range, although our test car was equipped with 19-inch wheels (a $600 option), which reduced its range to 283 miles (455 km) compared to the 18-inch option.

Enlarge / These minerals were once part of lithium-ion battery cells and will be once again. (credit: Redwood Materials)

Battery recycling company Redwood Materials will start recycling battery production scrap from General Motors' new line of electric vehicles. This morning, Redwood announced that it is working with Ultium Cells, the joint venture between GM and LG Energy Solutions that makes Ultium battery cells. Approximately 10,000 tons a year of production scrap will be sent from the Ultium Cells plants in Ohio and Tennessee to Redwood's site in northern Nevada.

Redwood was started by former Tesla CTO JB Straubel in 2017 and in recent years has announced partnerships with multiple OEMs, including Ford, Volvo, Volkswagen, and now General Motors. Last year, the US Department of Energy approved a $2 billion loan to Redwood as part of its Advanced Technology Manufacturing program (which also funded Ultium Cells).

Redwood says that its hydrometallurgy facility is now a "commercial-scale source of lithium supply," the first to come online in the United States for decades. The facility also produces raw nickel and cobalt from battery scrap.