Enlarge / The Mercedes-Benz EQE sedan's shape has been designed to create as little drag as possible.

Mercedes-Benz provided flights from DC to Denver and back, plus two nights in a hotel, so we could drive the EQE sedan and the EQS SUV, which you'll be able to read about on September 29. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

DENVER—No one has more experience with launching new cars than Mercedes-Benz, the world's oldest existing automaker. The company is at the start of a new phase of its existence, as it transforms into a carbon-neutral company that mostly builds electric vehicles. But it's sticking to some tried and true strategies as it does.

So, like the smaller, cheaper E-Class that follows the S-Class sedan, the EQE sedan will arrive this fall in the US to follow last year's bigger, more expensive EQS sedan .

Built using Mercedes' new EVA2 platform for EVs, the EQE is obviously related to the EQS; the two cars look similar, having been optimized to the nth degree by the wind tunnel and computational fluid dynamics. It's an evolution of the cab-forward "four-door coupe" look that the company pioneered on the CLS, but with any rough edges polished away to aid the air's passage over and around the bodywork as efficiently as possible. Mercedes hasn't published the EQE's drag coefficient, but I'd be surprised if it was higher than the EQS's remarkable 0.2, given that it rides on smaller 19-inch wheels.

Enlarge / The Genesis G80 is a fine midsized luxury sedan, and now there's a fully battery electric variant. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Recently Ars tested the new Genesis GV60 , a sharp little electric crossover. Although that car was Genesis' first EV to use the brand-new E-GMP platform , it's technically the brand's second EV. That's because there's also a fully battery-electric version of the Genesis G80 sedan. Called the G80 Electrified, it was first shown in Shanghai last year but has now arrived on these shores.

The company introduced the internal combustion engine-powered G80 in 2020, and it's a competent take on the midsize luxury sedan. But the platform (known internally as M3) was designed to support both combustion and electric powertrains—few automakers today can afford the expense of engineering an entirely new ICE-only architecture given impending regulations around the world.

As you might expect, the G80 Electrified shares a lot of the same EV technology as the GV60, which impressed us. It's a bigger, more expensive car—$79,825 plus destination fees—but manages to be even more efficient and luxurious in the process.

Enlarge / Back in 2015, Faraday Future looked like it could be a proper rival for Tesla. In 2022, we're still waiting for its first EV, the FF91, to be ready for prime time. (credit: Faraday / Aurich Lawson)

PEBBLE BEACH, CALIF.—In a parking lot next to Peter Hay Hill sat two square-ish, blobby vehicles. They weren't attractive, and they seemed both inordinately squat and huge, but there were plenty of looky-loos who wanted to check them out. One vehicle was a static "show car," and when a man in pink pants and a polo shirt with a popped collar tried to find a way to open a door, a product specialist flapped him away. Truthfully, even if you could figure out a way to open the doors, there weren't any handles to grab.

Plenty of people milled down the hill from where the more established automakers had taken up residence to stop and gawk at the pair of FF91 pre-production vehicles, one giving rides around the block in Pebble Beach traffic—mixing with Koeniseggs, McLarens, and Ferraris—and the other hulking across two parking spots, with the doors on the passenger side open to passers-by.

The weirdly shaped vehicle stood out in a sea of low-slung supercars crawling all over the bucolic, fog-shrouded Pebble Beach peninsula. The color of both the display and test vehicles was white, so they looked like refrigerators in a sea of praying mantises. I waited while another journalist took a ride around the block in the mobile pre-production FF91, the first and only vehicle from beleaguered California startup Faraday Future.

Enlarge / The 2023 Genesis GV60 is the third E-GMP-based EV we've tested in the last few months, and like the other two it is extremely impressive. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

The rise of the Korean automotive industry over the past few years has been fascinating to watch. Years of lackluster products and difficult dealerships still carry some stigma, but the truth is that we haven't driven a bad new car from Hyundai Motor Group in some time. That's particularly true when it comes to its electric vehicles, especially those built using the company's latest platform, called E-GMP .

Kia and Hyundai have each delivered their first E-GMP EVs, and both have seriously impressed. Now it's time for Genesis to apply its first take on automotive luxury as applied to the E-GMP platform with this electric crossover, the GV60.

It builds on what we already knew to be a competent skeleton, adding a hefty dose of style, some intriguing convenience tech that might not be reliable enough just yet, and in the case of the all-wheel drive Performance version we tested, more than enough power. It's even what currently passes for reasonably priced in terms of specification, finish, and the generally over-exuberant state of the EV market, starting at $58,890.

Enlarge / Rimac Automobili brought the Nevera over to the US, allowing us to try out the car on familiar California roads. (credit: Rimac)

The performance benefits of electric powertrains are now well understood. Thanks to near-instantaneous torque delivery and continuous advances in everything from software to motor design, cars like the Tesla Model S Plaid have rewritten the production car hierarchy when it comes to acceleration.

Yet many traditionalists have been slow to come around on electric vehicles, complaining that the driving experience is too clinical and performance is too circumstantial. They say that EVs lack emotion. Well, the Rimac Nevera is about to change all of that.

Rimac may not be a household name today, but over the past decade, the Croatian startup has been hard at work quietly establishing itself as a key player in high-performance EV development. What began in 2010 with a handful of employees in a converted warehouse has expanded into a 1,700-employee operation with a 200,000 m² campus in Kerestinec, Croatia. The site, which is currently under construction, will house the company's research and development centers and production facilities when it opens in 2023. The company's rapid growth has been aided by its various EV development projects for automakers like Porsche , Hyundai, Aston Martin, Pininfarina, and Koenigsegg, leading Rimac to split the company into two distinct entities (Rimac Automobili and Rimac Technology) last year. (Rimac Group also now owns Bugatti, with Porsche .)

Enlarge / Riding in Tula's DMD-equipped Chevrolet Bolt EV. (credit: Roberto Baldwin)

SAN JOSE, CALIF.—Electric vehicles are all about small gains in efficiency leading to increased range. Reduce the drag , tweak the acceleration curve, and increase the regenerative braking, and you get a few more miles. Car tech company Tula has come up with another solution to enhance efficiency.

Called Dynamic Motor Drive (DMD), the system pulses the electric motor to operate within a "sweet spot" of efficiency. DMD adds efficiency and removes one of the more controversial materials found in EV motors: rare earth metals. The result is an efficiency gain of about 3 percent. That's not a huge boost, but if your vehicle gets 300 miles of range, for instance, you get nine extra miles of road you can cover. But the system also sets itself up to work in a world with fewer rare earth magnets.

Those rare earth magnets cost automakers a pretty penny, and they're not aligned with the green positioning of EVs. Currently, 90 percent of the EV industry's materials for these magnets (mostly neodymium) come from China. Since late 2021, the price of those materials has increased by about 90 percent. There are plans to increase rare earth mining in the US , but considering the environmental precautions that need to be taken, it still won't be cheap.

Enlarge / No, this isn't a rendering from a Pixar film; it's what the new USPS mail delivery vehicle will look like. (credit: USPS)

In 2021, the United States Postal Service picked a new delivery vehicle to replace its fleet of aging Grumman LLVs. However, the USPS drew immediate criticism, as the vast majority of a potential 165,000 Next Generation Delivery Vehicles, which will be built by Oshkosh Defense, would not be electric.

But on Wednesday, the USPS changed its mind and says it will now limit its NGDV purchase to 50,000 NGDVs, at least half of which will be battery-electric vehicles. Additionally, it says it will purchase 34,500 commercial off-the-shelf vehicles, "including as many BEVs as are commercially available and consistent with our delivery profile" according to the Federal Register .

Oshkosh's NGDV has been designed to be fitted with either an internal combustion engine or a battery-electric powertrain. When the USPS first selected the NGDV, it said that only 10 percent of the order would be for BEV mail vans—Postmaster Louis DeJoy pleaded poverty on behalf of the Postal Service, which he said could not afford to purchase more BEVs.

Enlarge / After building the R1T adventure truck, Rivian has followed up with the R1S SUV. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Rivian provided flights from DC to Albany and back, plus two nights in a hotel so we could drive the R1S. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

Last September, we drove one of Rivian's new electric trucks and found its R1 platform highly competent on and off the road, with an impressive level of engineering that made driving to the top of a mountain almost effortless . It's been a tough few months for the electric vehicle maker since then, with supply chain issues delaying deliveries , a former executive filing a discrimination lawsuit, and shareholders upset about a rather clumsy price hike .

But Rivian remains very well-funded, and its factory in Normal, Illinois, is finding its feet building electric trucks as well as delivery vans for Amazon . Now another R1-based EV is entering production—the R1S SUV.

Like its truck sibling, the R1S is a friendly-looking thing, particularly compared to the more aggressive SUVs coming out of Detroit. Partly that's down to the design of the lights, which should set off your pareidolia , and partly down to what now passes for a relatively low hood height, with curved edges finding favor over sharp creases at the corners.

Enlarge / A customs officer inspects imported lithium carbonate at Longwu Branch Terminal of Shanghai İnternational Port Co., Ltd. (credit: VCG | Getty Images )

The industrial port of Kwinana on Australia’s western coast is a microcosm of the global energy industry. From 1955, it was home to one of the largest oil refineries in the region, owned by British Petroleum when it was still the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. It once provided 70 percent of Western Australia’s fuel supplies, and the metal husks of old tanks still dominate the shoreline, slowly turning to rust in the salt air.

The refinery shut down in March 2021, but it isn’t just oil below the region’s red soil: Australia is also home to almost half of the world’s lithium supply. The trucks and machinery are humming once again, but now they’re part of a race to secure the clean energy sources of the future—a race being dominated by China.