For the better part of this century, the solid-state battery chemistry was treated as if it were the cold fusion itself- an intoxicating cure-all that promises 1,000-km cross-country dashes without stopping. And yet somehow it was always parked five years away. Whenever an executive mentioned solid electrolytes – my instinct was to check my watch and ask how many billions… Read more…

Silicon Valley fed us a dream where steering wheels belong in museums together with hand-crank starters, and pedals are archaic nonsense. We are promised silent mobile living rooms where commuters recline, and let neural networks fight the traffic. And yet, no matter how much marketing you spread over the subject, cars are still the same stubborn chunks of metal subject… Read more…

Xiaomi, the smartphone colossus turned automaker, has decided that conquering the Nürburgring was only an appetizer. To feed the beast of mass-market scale, you do not build low-slung electric sports sedans forever – you build family wagons that can swallow three generations of relatives, their luggage, and enough camping gear to survive a minor apocalypse. Lei Jun’s automotive upstart achieved… Read more…

Here’s a fact nobody could have ever predicted: the most commercially vital Jeep on earth is a four-meter runabout assembled in Poland and tailored specifically for navigating tight roundabouts. Jeep – a brand forged on thirsty V8 engines, ladder frames, and machines wide enough to take both lanes on a European road – has discovered that its true calling comes… Read more…

For the last ten years at least, mainstream carmakers have insisted that saving the planet means building two-and-a-half-tonne, leather-lined electric dreadnoughts that cost as much as a small terraced house in Yorkshire. Showrooms are packed to the rafters with SUVs each having three displays across the dashboard, artificial motor hums, and tri-motor powertrains capable of going from zero to sixty… Read more…

Back in 1999, Audi created a brilliant, lightweight oddity that almost nobody wanted to buy. The original A2 was an engineering tour de force – an aluminum teardrop that sipped fuel, thumbed its nose at automotive excess, and arrived roughly a quarter of a century before the public was ready to appreciate it. Dealers could barely give them away, and… Read more…

There is an old rule on the racetrack: when the chicane gets dangerously busy and every car around you starts swapping paint, the smartest driver looks for clear asphalt out wide. It is simple and effective. Right now, China’s domestic electric vehicle market is literally that kind of demolition derby. It is a merciless, margin-crushing slugfest where legacy giants and… Read more…

Most car manufacturers treat battery thermal runaway the way politicians treat illegal donations – pretend they never heard the conversation, and deflect blame to third-party suppliers the second smoke appears. But Xiaomi, never one to shy away from grand gestures, has just thrown that playbook right into the incinerator. If their brand-new “Dragonscale” battery pack decides to spontaneously combust due… Read more…

Right after taking delivery of our brand new BMW iX3 50 xDrive, we put its range claims to the test. From the dealership, we headed straight to the seaside, covering almost 400 km in one go. After spending some time there, we started the return journey from an even more distant location, this time surpassing the 400 km mark. Our… Read more…

The ghost of Ferdinand Piëch must be pacing the offices in Wolfsburg, cursing into the fluorescent lights. The gospel according to Volkswagen used to be simple, quite arrogant for sure, but very effective: conquer every conceivable niche, buy every badge not bolted down, and build an industrial machine so monstrous it could literally steamroll the whole planet. Whether you wanted… Read more…

The whole world watched a golden wedge glide silently across the sunbaked Austin tarmac yesterday, its butterfly doors opened up against the Texas sky, and we all felt that familiar chill every car enthusiast gets when confronting the death of the steering wheel. No helm, no pedals, not even a rudimentary stalk to flick an indicator. Just two contoured buckets… Read more…

Ettore Bugatti famously derided W.O. Bentley’s Le Mans-conquering racers as “the fastest lorries in the world.” It was meant as a Parisian sneer, but in Crewe, they took it as the highest form of praise. For over a century, a proper Bentley has never been a dainty, rev-happy plaything. It has always been an iron fist in a bespoke Connolly… Read more…

At IFA Berlin 2026, under the sterile white exhibition lighting usually reserved for curved televisions and robotic vacuum cleaners, Xiaomi Auto dropped a sledgehammer right into the heartland of European motoring. With an official European market launch locked in for 2027, the Beijing tech giant isn’t even trying to test the waters – it is setting up camp in Germany’s… Read more…

In 1980, when International Harvester switched off the assembly line for the original Scout II, nobody in their right mind could have predicted that four decades later a German automotive empire would resurrect the badge to lead an all-electric offensive across the American heartland. Volkswagen essentially scooped up the dormant trademark by chance when it absorbed commercial truck maker Navistar… Read more…

MINI is one of the most recognizable automotive brands in pop culture, even among people with little interest in cars. Today, we are testing one of its new additions, the MINI Aceman JCW e, a compact crossover positioned below the Countryman while offering more space and versatility than the traditional MINI Cooper. The Aceman is MINI’s first model available exclusively… Read more…

Hypermiling is very much like competitive meditation – it demands a monk-like discipline, bordering on clinical obsession. Tires pumped to granite firmness, every comfort accessory banished, climate systems powered down, and a right foot operating with the featherlight delicacy of a watchmaker. Nobody actually drives like this in the real world, yet car companies simply cannot resist the siren song… Read more…

When Charles Spencer King sketched out the very first Range Rover in the late 1960s, he thought of a utilitarian aristocrat – a 4×4 trimmed in hose-down vinyl that could shepherd flock of sheep across a soggy Yorkshire moor before parking outside the Savoy without a hint of shame. Five decades later, the vehicle’s defining paradox is still intact, only… Read more…

Spend five minutes reading industry headlines, and you could swear the electric transition had hit a brick wall. We love a good crisis – tales of unsold inventory on dealer lots, companies dusting off combustion blueprints, and buyers going back to the familiar embrace of gas station. But walk into an American showroom right now, and sales don’t show any… Read more…

Zeekr is rapidly expanding across Europe, and its models are becoming an increasingly common sight on the road. With a growing and diverse lineup, the brand now offers something for any kind of buyer. Today, we are testing the Zeekr 7GT Privilege AWD, the quickest and most luxurious version in the lineup. Neither advantage helps much in an efficiency test… Read more…

SUV Coupé – a curious breed of vehicle engineered to solve a riddle nobody asked for. It usually comes about by chopping off rear headroom and ditching visibility in the name of athletic posturing. Polestar applied that avant-garde dogma to its absolute extreme with the Polestar 4 coupé, deleting the rear window entirely and insisting that an HD roof camera… Read more…