Enlarge / Around the world people are asking for smaller electric vehicles. Someone at Kia has been listening and designed this car, the EV3. (credit: Kia)

Kia provided flights from Los Angeles to Seoul and three nights in a hotel so we could see the EV3, EV4, and EV5. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

Kia is staring down an ambitious goal. The company wants to increase its global electric vehicle sales to 1 million units annually by 2026, further ramping up to 1.6 million by 2030. New products like the EV5 crossover and EV9 SUV will certainly help with this push, but smaller, more affordable EVs will be crucial to Kia's success, as well. That's why, despite being called concept cars, the new EV3 and EV4 are thinly veiled glimpses into Kia's next round of production EVs.

Unveiled at Kia's EV Day event in South Korea this week, the EV3 and EV4 will arrive in the next few years. The company also spoke about an even smaller EV2 that will be designed for Europe and emerging markets, with the goal for that car being a super-low starting price—something around the equivalent of $30,000.

The EV3 and EV4 ride on the same E-GMP electric vehicle architecture that underpins the Kia EV6 and EV9, as well as sister vehicles like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 , Ioniq 6 , and Genesis GV60 . However, while the current crop of E-GMP vehicles are built with 800 V electrical architecture giving them fast charging speeds, the EV3 and EV4 will use a slightly more cost-effective version of this platform with a 400 V system. That's a bummer; one of the big highlights of cars like the Kia EV6 is its ability to charge at a max rate of 233 kW. With the EV3 and EV4, we could be looking at a maximum rate of 150 kW—or less.

Enlarge / BMW has a new 5 Series, and it's starting with the fully electric version seen here, the 2024 BMW i5. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

BMW provided flights from Washington, DC, to Portugal and three nights in a hotel so we could drive the new BMW i5 and the BMW i7 M70 . Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

LISBON, Portugal—Electric vehicles are becoming normalized. Take BMW, for instance. When the electric i3 went on sale a decade ago, it looked— and still looks, in fact —like nothing else on the road. Fast forward to 2023 and we've reached the point where you'd have to be very observant to spot the differences between the fully electric and internal combustion versions of the new BMW 5 Series. In fact, it's a testament to the importance of the fully electric version that the 2024 BMW i5 is the one the company chose to offer up to the world's journalists for a first drive.

The eighth-generation 5 Series—internal BMW code G60, for those who keep track— broke cover this past May . It has a more restrained look than other electric BMWs we've driven recently.

Back when its range was mostly just 3, 5, and 7, they all wore roughly similar kidney grilles. But in the 21st century, BMW has series going from 1 to 8, not to mention SUVs, with almost as many variations of that famous grille among them. Here, it's a horizontal design, and it's technically not a grille if we're being literal—there's no grate or mesh covering a big air inlet. Behind the plastic exterior live some of the car's forward-looking sensors. And for those who think the design is maybe too restrained, you can opt for an illuminated surround.

Enlarge / The i7 M70 features new mirrors and side skirts to go with new suspension and brakes and a more powerful rear motor. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

BMW provided flights from Washington, DC, to Portugal and three nights in a hotel so we could drive the new BMW i7 M70 as well as another BMW electric vehicle, which you can read about on October 1. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

LISBON, PORTUGAL—Driving BMW's new electric 7 Series was one of the true automotive surprises of 2022. The automaker rolled out electric and combustion-tech versions at the same time, with the electric i7 bettering the gas-burning 760i in just about every way. Now, BMW has sent its biggest and boldest EV off to its M division, the in-house tuning and motorsport people. The resulting car is the fastest-accelerating and most expensive electric BMW to date.

I've long been an advocate for putting electric motors in luxury cars, especially big ones — the combination of instant torque and near-silence is ideal for that application. Automakers both new and established also like the idea of big, luxury EVs because they can charge plenty for the privilege, so it's a crowded field. Some cars in this class target rollercoaster-like acceleration; for example, Porsche , Tesla , and Lucid will each sell you a four-door EV capable of a 0–60 time that's around two seconds.

The i7 M70 is not as fast as those EVs, and it's not the kind of luxury EV you might use to wipe the smiles off some faces at the local drag strip's "run what ya brung" night. Instead, in keeping with BMW's old "ultimate driving machine" slogan, it's a rather engaging driver's car, one that belies its size and mass remarkably well.

Enlarge / Volkswagen has established the "face" of its ID electric vehicles—because there's no mistaking this for anything else. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Volkswagen provided a train ticket from DC to New York and back, plus a night in a hotel, so we could see the ID.7. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

NEW YORK—On Monday morning, Volkswagen introduced its next new electric vehicle with simultaneous events in New York, Shanghai, and Berlin. It's called the ID.7, and it will go on sale in Europe and China later this year and in North America in 2024. It's a fairly substantial thing—more than a foot longer than the ID.4 crossover that VW now builds in Chattanooga—with a low-drag shape and some powertrain refinements that VW says will make the car highly efficient.

But it will face stiff competition in the electric sedan market, up against the established juggernaut that is the Tesla Model 3 , not to mention Hyundai's excellent new Ioniq 6 .

This is not our first view of the ID.7—VW showed it off underneath luminescent camouflage back in January . It's a big car—longer even than the VW Arteon sedan at 195.3 inches (4,961 mm), with a 116.8-inch (2,967 mm) wheelbase. It's relatively wide at 73.3 inches (1,852), but it also has a relatively low roofline at 60.6 inches (1,539 mm) that helps keep the frontal area down to 2.45 m2 in order to make the most of the ID.7's drag coefficient of 0.23.

Enlarge / VW used QR codes to camouflage the shape of its new ID.7 sedan for its CES debut. (credit: Volkswagen)

On Tuesday in Las Vegas, Volkswagen revealed its next fully electric model destined for North America. Well, a somewhat-camouflaged version, at any rate—the show car wears an electroluminescent QR code livery for its debut at this year's Consumer Electronics Show.

The new sedan, called the ID.7, will go on sale in the US in 2024 after the official production car is unveiled later this fall. As its name suggests, the ID.7 is part of VW's new family of electric vehicles that use the company's new modular platform called MEB (Modularer E-Antriebs-Baukasten or Modular Electrification Toolkit), which we've tested in the ID.4 crossover as well as the ID. Buzz van .

Like the ID.4, the ID.7 will be built at Emden in Germany, and like that crossover, it will be a global EV for VW, on sale in Europe and China as well as the US. (Europe also gets an ID.3 hatchback and an ID.5 crossover, and the ID.6 is a larger crossover just for the Chinese market.)