Enlarge / Porsche's midlife refresh for the Taycan arrives this summer. Among the changes is a new model called the Taycan Turbo GT. (credit: Porsche)

Porsche is adding another new variant to its highly competent Taycan electric sedan. As part of the electric Porsche's midlife refresh, there's a new Taycan that sits atop the performance tree, appropriately named the Taycan Turbo GT. It's the most powerful Taycan you can buy, with a peak output of 1,092 hp (815 kW), and the boffins in Germany have even cut about 157 lbs (72 kg) from the curb weight.

The eagle-eyed Porsche observer probably knew a faster Taycan was on the way. In January, wearing manufacturer's camo and described as an " unnamed pre-production prototype ," the Taycan Turbo GT lapped the Nürburgring Nordschleife in 7:05.55, 20 seconds faster than Tesla's best time with its Model S Plaid (and 26 seconds faster than the Taycan Turbo S, previously the fastest variant).

Now, shorn of its camouflage and proudly bearing the Turbo GT name—as well as sporting the Taycan's new facelifted look—it has set a new record at Laguna Seca in California. With development driver Lars Kern behind the wheel, the Taycan Turbo GT lapped the 2.2-mile (3.6 km) circuit in 1:27.87, which is a track record for a production EV at that track.

Enlarge / Lotus has developed a new architecture for electric vehicles. The second EV to use this new architecture will be this, the Emeya four-door GT, which follows the Eletre SUV, released earlier this year. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

NEW YORK—After languishing with a lack of serious investment for decades, Lotus Cars is now starting to show the results of its 2017 acquisition by Geely . After building a low-volume electric hypercar and then its last gasoline-powered sportscar , it debuted an all-new electric vehicle, an SUV called the Eletre . And next year another new EV goes into production, a new four-door GT called the Emeya that uses the same Electric Premium Architecture platform as that SUV.

Despite sharing a corporate parent and a very similar design brief, the Lotus Emeya is unrelated to the Polestar 5 four-door GT that we rode in a few weeks ago . Both cars clearly target the Porsche Taycan , offering high power outputs, very rapid charging, and an engaging driving experience. But there's nothing shared between the Polestar and the Lotus, which, unlike the Polestar 5, uses a more conventional chassis construction that's a mix of different strength steels and aluminum.

"This is a Lotus like you've never seen before," said Lotus Group Vice President of Design Ben Payne. "We've built on everything Lotus has achieved so far, creating a luxury performance car for the drivers, designed to inspire confidence, exhilarate with raw emotion and pure joy—connecting them to the road."

Enlarge / Polestar is developing a four-door electric GT called the Polestar 5, which goes on sale in 2024. (credit: Polestar)

NUNEATON, ENGLAND—Any day is a good day that involves a visit to a proving ground, even if that includes a two-hour drive fresh from a transatlantic flight. And this was a good day: a visit to Polestar's UK research and development center, based at the Motor Industry Research Association's proving grounds outside Coventry, England, to find out how it's getting on with one of its next electric vehicles, a purposeful-looking performance sedan called the Polestar 5.

Until now, the Polestar EVs we've seen have used platforms shared across other brands within the Geely group. The Polestar 2 fastback sedan uses the same CMA platform as the Volvo XC40, and next year's Polestar 3 SUV —which will be built in South Carolina—uses the group's SPA2 platform.

Pete Allen, head of Polestar UK R&D (blue shirt) stands behind a Polestar 5 prototype and talks to some assembled journalists. (credit: Polestar)

That involves some compromises, though; those platforms were designed to be built in high volumes, with attributes like ride comfort prioritized over handling prowess. That's fine for, say, a luxury SUV—even a sporty one. But if you were a brand wanting to build a competitor for the Porsche Taycan, you might want to start from scratch.

Enlarge / Our Creative Director didn't know that I have a fondness for the Ford Ka and still miss the one I sold before moving to America, but I like that he chose one for this graphic. (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

As I look back on Ars' automotive year and the new cars, crossovers, SUVs, and trucks that we drove in 2022, I have started coming to a conclusion of sorts. And it's this: Forget the top-of-the-line, fully loaded, superduper electric vehicle; what you want is the least powerful, least expensive variant. And that's true whether you want an EV because you want to drive something that's very efficient or if you're a driving enthusiast who's going electric.

It's a thought I've alluded to more than once this year, and the effect can be seen when you look at a pair of first drives that bookended this year: the Kia EV6 (which starts at $48,500 for the EV6 Wind) and the Kia EV6 GT (a hefty $61,400). The extra $12,900 buys you a much quicker 0–60 time, and a twin-motor, all-wheel drive powertrain with much more power. But the GT uses the same battery as the cheapest rear-wheel drive EV6, and with its bigger wheels it only has a range of 206 miles compared to the RWD EV6 Wind, which can do 310 miles on the same number of kWh.

OK, so score one for the hypermilers. And for the enthusiasts, I have to report that the cheaper car I drove in January was more fun on the back roads. Because it's more fun to drive a slow car quickly than a quick car slowly.

Enlarge / Danish racing driver Tom Kristensen leads another pair of Audi RS e-tron GTs through the corkscrew corner at Laguna Seca. (credit: Audi)

Call it platform sharing, call it badge engineering, call it what you like—car companies have collaborated with each other to make cars for much of the automobile's history. Sometimes these link-ups happen between companies that might normally be considered rivals: Honda and Rover in the 1980s; the BMW/Toyota project that gave us the new Supra; or perhaps the forthcoming electric vehicle platform-sharing between Ford and Volkswagen or General Motors and Honda .

More often, it occurs among the shared brands of a single OEM—Chrysler Group's K platform in the 1980s is a good example. But few automakers have exploited the advantages of that quite like Volkswagen Group, which builds hundreds of different vehicles across its 10 brands around the world using just a handful of different platforms. The vast majority of these—and we're talking several million cars a year—are built on VW Group's MQB platform, which can give rise to anything from an Audi A3 to a Volkswagen Transporter van, with cars and crossovers and SUVs of most sizes and shapes.

The RS e-tron GT is a little draggier than the Taycan, with a Cd of 0.24. (credit: Audi)

But even as you go up the price scale, this practice is still widely used. For example, for decades Bentleys were basically Rolls-Royces with a slightly different nose; today, they share platforms with Porsche's Panamera and Cayenne. And it's why the handsome four-door EV in this review wears Audi RS e-tron GT badging yet features very Porsche Taycan-like specifications—a consequence of sharing the same J1 platform.

Enlarge (credit: Andrew Hedrick/Porsche)

As I'm fond of saying, electric motors just make cars better. Regular readers will notice that most of our automotive coverage is about electrified cars, but the other kind still represents more than 95 percent of all new cars sold in the US, so we have reason to drive a few of those from time to time as well. And when we do, it's often an exercise in frustration—even a performance car like a Porsche 911 Turbo can't match the immediate slug of torque from an electric motor doing its thing.

And that's good. Electric cars need to be the future of personal transportation if we want to avert the worst ravages of climate change, albeit only alongside everyone walking, cycling, and taking public transport more. (We could do with a comprehensive redesign of our built environment to make all that safer, too, but I realize I'm veering dangerously into a post-scarcity utopia there, whereas it currently looks like we're in the Mirror Universe .)

But the uncomfortable truth for the EV-loving driving enthusiast is that while EVs make perfect sense for getting from A to B—absent the occasional edge-case like an emergency cross-country trombone delivery—I'm not sure they're quite there yet when it comes to that last bit of fun.