Smart used to mean one thing: a plastic-bodied, two-seat egg that you could park facing the curb just to prove a point. Those funky little city buggies were special in a weird, urban-chaos sort of way. Fast forward to today, and the union between Mercedes-Benz styling and Geely hardware has completely rewritten that playbook. The Smart #1 crossover arrived a… Read more…

Every time an automaker promises a holy grail technology that will magically vanish range anxiety, my cynical petrolhead instincts take the better of me. We have been hearing about solid-state batteries for what feels like a lifetime – hyped as the mythical energy density revolution that will give us 2,000 km road trips without making our cars weigh as much… Read more…

Dongfeng Nissan has a fresh teaser poster that says it is not ready yet to surrender the Chinese EV market to local titans. We have watched legacy brands stumble through the global EV transition for some time now, some even trying (and many failing) to sell cars in a market crazy about hyper-connected, high-tech electric rockets. Yet Nissan’s Chinese joint… Read more…

Today, Ford has decided to finally unveil the name of its next electric truck. It will be called Fathom. Ford says it comes from “a deep understanding of the person who would drive it”. “Deep”, because a fathom is a unit of measurement equal to six feet, used in measuring the depth of water. Ford says the person who’ll buy… Read more…

There is something eerie about watching a vehicle pull up to the curb, pop its indicator, and smoothly join the traffic without human hands on the wheel. No matter how many times you try it, there’s a moment of awe. Sure, the ride is nothing like a science fiction novel and more like an overly polite machine nailing the morning… Read more…

BMW today announced that it’s starting to produce the i3 series at its plant in Munich, Germany. The company began taking orders for the new i3 in June. BMW says that high demand has led to “a steep ramp-up curve at the plant”. The plant has made more than nine million BMW 3 series vehicles since 1975. The i3 is… Read more…

The Mercedes AMG GT 4-Door Coupe broke cover in May and was introduced in only two configurations – the top-tier GT 63 and the mid-tier GT 55. The former boasts 1,153 hp with a 696 km range, while the latter boasts 805 hp and a 700 km range. Now, the automaker is bringing the base GT 53 model to the… Read more…

It has only been five years since Xiaomi decided to go into the auto business, and when a smartphone titan said it wanted to build cars, legacy carmakers offered a patronizing smile. But when Xiaomi rolled out the SU7 sedan and followed it up with the YU7 crossover, those smiles faded fast. Now, the tech giant is pulling off its… Read more…

All EV startups seem to be focused on a wild, breakneck timeline. Every fresh Silicon Valley outfit promises to reinvent personal transport, build a gigafactory from scratch, and deliver a world-beating crossover to your driveway by next Tuesday. Lucid Motors used to be no stranger to that heady optimism when it first teased its sleek lineup. But as anyone who… Read more…

BYD’s sub-brand Denza opened up the Z9S pre-orders in China starting at CNY 319,800 (~$47,000) and promises record-breaking cruise range on a single charge – 1,100 km. But that’s the top-tier model with a huge 102.3 kWh battery, and the range estimates are on the generous CLTC cycle. BYD Denza Z9S BYD equipped the Denza Z9S with its second-generation LFP… Read more…

Remember the big declarations made when Tesla broke ground on the muddy outskirts of Lingang back in 2019? Elon Musk stood before local dignitaries and promised that Gigafactory Shanghai would exist purely to build electric cars for Chinese drivers. Fast forward to the first half of 2026, and that original promise has aged poorly – like many others. Look closely… Read more…

Honestly, it hasn’t been that long since petrolheads laughed off electric cars as glorified milk floats. Fast forward only a few years, and the latest European sales figures tell a radically different story. In June alone, 366,000 battery-electric vehicles hit the road across the continent – that’s a colossal 50% year-on-year jump and the fastest growth rate we have seen… Read more…

After an unsuccessful run, the original Audi A2 went quickly off the showrooms, but now the company is going for a fully electric reboot. The Audi A2 e-tron is expected to launch sometime this fall, so the German automaker decided to tease the crowd a little bit by boasting an impressive efficiency test by WLTP. Audi A2 e-tron According to… Read more…

How times have changed – modern motoring anxiety arrives quietly on a display in the form of a bright red steering wheel icon, a disengagement chime, and a notification declaring self-driving unavailable. You are cruising down the motorway, letting the digital brain handle the boring task of lane-keeping, when the car essentially throws up its hands and surrenders. Under the… Read more…

VW used to rule the Chinese auto market with an iron fist, built on a foundation of petrol sedans that every family wanted to own. When the FAW-Volkswagen joint venture spun off the Jetta nameplate into an independent brand in 2019, the strategy seemed obvious – lock down the entry-level, internal-combustion market for budget-focused buyers who liked the idea of… Read more…

The last couple of decades have been really something to watch. It all started with the traditional auto establishment scoffing at the idea that upstart tech firms could master the black art of the automobile – we only need to mention Xiaomi to see how well that went for the old guard. But as we watch the global markets shift,… Read more…

Not that long ago, we used to argue if a naturally aspirated V8 pushing 400 horses could hold its own against a twin-turbo V6. Fast forward to today, and the entire conversation has flipped on its head. Now, we are arguing about megawatts. The numerical chest-thumping has moved from the engine bay to the charging cable – and the latest… Read more…

Have you ever visited a modern automotive assembly plant? They all have this specific rhythm – a deep, mechanical thud of stamping presses accompanied by the synchronized dance of robotic arms sparking welds into the air. It is the industrial heartbeat of any automaker – it is spectacular, poetic almost. But the latest rumblings out of Wall Street suggest that… Read more…

According to a corporate listing in China, Zhejiang Xinglixing New Energy Technology Co., Ltd has registered a new capital inflow and shareholder restructuring. The investment comes from a Xiaomi-backed company named Hanxing Venture Capital, bumping up the company’s capital from RMB 100 million ($14.8 million) to RMB 130 million ($19.3 million). Now, Hanxing Venture Capital holds about 23% of Zhejiang… Read more…

There is a serious issue at the heart of building electric vehicles right now: stamping heavy sheet metal and bolting multi-link suspensions onto a chassis makes you bleed cash, but writing elegant lines of code makes you wealthy. The monstrous presses that punch out body panels – they are the brutal, high-capital reality of the physical car business. But it… Read more…