Couldn't find my post from the end of march anymore, so here it is. It's a Kia EV6, a #BEV - the only black one with long-range pack and heat pump I could find, after looking for weeks. Ordering one from a dealer in Sweden would have taken more than a year; fortunately a dealer in Cologne had one ready for pickup from a guy who ordered but didn't want to wait anymore. In just the last few months I have saved about ~2000€ in gas, and most of the time I'm driving for free now.

Enlarge / Ars drove an early front-wheel drive Ariya last year, but now the all-wheel drive version is finally ready for these shores. (credit: Stephen Edelstein)

The 2023 Nissan Ariya was meant to be Nissan's EV comeback, regaining ground the automaker lost after delaying a follow-up to the pioneering Leaf by expanding into the popular crossover SUV segment. But Nissan has left what may be the Ariya's key feature on the table until now.

When US Ariya deliveries began in late 2022, Nissan only shipped front-wheel drive models , leaving the launch of its new e-4ORCE dual-motor all-wheel drive powertrain until a later date. Now the Ariya e-4ORCE is finally here, with cars scheduled to reach dealerships in the coming weeks. It's billed as not only providing the all-wheel drive option important to any crossover, but also a greater focus on handling quality than most rivals.

Adding a second motor powering the rear axle in addition to the standard front motor—both motors are of identical design—the Ariya e-4ORCE is rated at 389 hp (290 kW) and 442 lb-ft (600 Nm) of torque, compared to 238 hp (177 kW) and 221 lb-ft (300 Nm) in the front-wheel drive Ariya.

Enlarge (credit: George Rose via Getty )

Electric vehicle batteries keep getting larger, and the typical driving range between charges keeps growing.

The shift is partly a response to “range anxiety”—the fear of being stranded because EV batteries don’t have enough power to get to the next charging station—an idea so familiar in discussions of electric vehicles that it was spoofed in a Ram Super Bowl ad last month.

But this concern is unwarranted for a large share of EV customers, according to research from the University of Delaware, published February 21 in the journal Energies .

Enlarge (credit: Lightrocket via Getty Images )

Renault and Nissan have hammered out a historic deal to salvage their troubled 24-year-old alliance and convince both sides that the partnership can survive without its former supremo, Carlos Ghosn .

The hard-fought agreement creates a pathway for the carmakers to restore a working level of trust and resume cooperation in select technical areas after the disruption and internal rows that followed the arrest of Ghosn more than four years ago.

Under the deal, which has yet to be formally approved by the Nissan board, the carmakers have agreed to equalize their stake-holdings in each other, removing a source of tension that has dogged the relationship since its inception.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson/Ars Technica)

Until a long-promised future replete with driverless cars arrives, we're stuck behind the wheels of our own vehicles. Autonomous driving is slowly getting more… autonomous in places, but for passenger cars that still feature steering wheels, we still need to keep our hands on the wheel and eyes on the road—if you're not driving a GM with SuperCruise or a Ford with BlueCruise, that is.

Currently available only in certain trims of Ford's first two battery electric vehicles, the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning , BlueCruise enables hands-free driving on over 130,000 miles of divided highways around the US. It's essentially Ford's Co-Pilot 360 driver-assistance system paired with a set of cameras inside the car that monitor the driver's eyes to make sure they're looking at the road.

I recently got to spend a week each with the Ford Mustang Mach-E GT and F-150 Lightning Platinum, both of which are equipped with BlueCruise. Those two weeks also coincided with a positive COVID test for my son, a freshman at the University of Iowa. As that university's COVID policy for positive tests boils down to "you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here," and I had my own (mild) bout about a month prior, I was dispatched to retrieve the boy so he could isolate at home.

Enlarge / A 2022 Toyota bZ4X on display at the 43rd Bangkok International Motor Show 2022 in Bangkok, Thailand. (credit: NurPhoto via Getty )

Five months since Toyota started selling its first all-electric car to compete directly with Tesla, hardly any of them have been seen on the road.

The rollout of the bZ4X sport utility vehicle was intended as a watershed moment for the world’s largest carmaker by sales. Its first mass-produced EV was Toyota’s answer to investor criticism that it had been slow to embrace the industry’s transition to electric.

Instead, the long-awaited debut was hampered by a humiliating global recall because of safety problems and supply chain delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic. With the rollout of the bZ4X only just resumed, Toyota has spent much of the year on the defensive and under scrutiny for its lobbying against rules designed to encourage a shift to electric vehicles.

Enlarge / A technician removes a battery cell from a testing vault at the "Volkswagen Group Center of Excellence" battery cell research center in Salzgitter, Germany, on May 18, 2022. (credit: John MacDougall/Getty )

How much does an electric vehicle’s battery performance change in hot weather? How about cold?

If someone drives aggressively in an EV, how does that affect the battery life?

How much do variations in battery materials make a difference in how an EV performs in various conditions?

Enlarge / The extremely aerodynamic Mercedes EQS 580 (credit: Eric Bangeman)

Mercedes-Benz first gave us a glimpse at its electrification strategy in 2018, with its first battery-electric vehicle—the EQC 400 crossover —going on sale in Europe in 2019. Sporting a range of around 220 miles, (354 km) the 402 hp (296 kW) SUV never made it over to this side of the Atlantic. The US instead got a pair of EQS sedans that went on sale in 2021: the $102,310 EQS 450 and the $125,900 EQS 580.

The EQS 580 4Matic is the heftier of the two models—it has more motors, more mass, and more horsepower. And don't mistake it for an S-Class sedan with all of the internal combustion bits swapped out for batteries and motors. The EQS is a new vehicle architecture designed from the beginning to push electrons, not hydrocarbons. And those electrons will push the EQS 580 a very long way—340 miles (547 km), to be exact.

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  Mercedes used the front of the EQS 580 to show how fond it is of its logo. There's no frunk above the plethora of three-pointed stars. [credit: Eric Bangeman ]

You can't get that far in an EV with a massive battery pack, and the EQS 580 has 107.8 kWh of juice at its disposal (the battery actually has a capacity of 120 kWh, about 10 percent of which is off-limits for driving). But what's truly impressive about this electric sedan is an absurdly low drag coefficient of 0.20, which is unmatched by any production BEV. It looks sleek, but at first glance, the profile isn't that much different from an S-Class sedan. Upon closer examination, you'll notice the longer wheelbase and a pop-open slot on the front quarter-panel, which is another clue to its aerodynamic profile. That slot is for adding wiper fluid, because not only does the EQS 580 have no frunk, the hood does not even open.