Enlarge / Many people still find this large kidney grille to be too big, but some of us are starting to come around. (credit: BMW)

As a late Gen Xer, I grew up in an era when BMW's cars were pretty easy to understand based solely on their model names. A 325i was a 3 Series with a 2.5 L engine, for example; a 540i was a 5 Series with a 4.0 L engine, and so on. BMW left that common-sense naming approach in the dust quite some time before it set a goal to have sold 2 million plugins by 2025 , but even the new nomenclature gives some clues about where a new model fits in the range.

For example, the newly announced i4 eDrive35 is the company's new entry-level EV sedan, slotting in underneath the i4 eDrive40 and the i4 M50 .

With a starting price of $51,400, the new i4 configuration undercuts the existing eDrive40 by $4,500. It also uses a single synchronous electric motor driving the rear wheels, although in the eDrive35, it has been derated to 281 hp (207 kW) and 295 lb-ft (400 Nm). That's still sufficient to endow the i4 eDrive35 with a sub-6-second 0–60 time, and there's a decent chance this might actually be the best driver's car from the range .

Enlarge / There's only one Mercedes-Benz Vision EQXX, so bringing it back in one piece was important. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Mercedes-Benz provided flights from DC to Stuttgart and back, plus two nights in a hotel so we could drive the Vision EQXX as well as the EQB (which you can read about on Monday). Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

IMMENDINGEN, GERMANY—Driving off in the Mercedes-Benz Vision EQXX was slightly more stressful than I anticipated. Not that it's difficult to drive, or to see out of the low-slung streamliner, but it's also the only one in existence. Mercedes wouldn't tell us the program's exact budget, simply warning us that the sole EQXX should be considered priceless, but I'd guess somewhere in the range of three Bugatti Pur Sports .

Like the Bugatti, the EQXX was built to an engineering brief—in this case to build an electric vehicle capable of at least 621 miles (1,000km) on a single charge. Also like the Bugatti, it's road-legal: in April of this year, less than two years after the project was given the green light, the team drove the EV 625 miles (1,006 km) from Sindelfingen in Germany to Cassis, France, arriving with a 15 percent state of charge in the battery.

Two months later, they followed that up with a longer drive that involved descending down fewer mountains, driving from Stuttgart, Germany to the Silverstone racetrack in the UK, where reigning Formula E champion Nyck de Vries then used the remaining charge to drive some hot laps, the car eventually completing 747 miles (1,202 km) before coming to a halt in the pit lane.

Enlarge / An EV's battery represents as much as 25 percent of the cost of the car, so it's understandable that people are nervous about longevity. (credit: Aranga87/Getty Images)

It's often said that the easiest way to get people to buy an electric vehicle is to let them test-drive one . But here in the US, EVs only accounted for 3 percent of the 15 million new vehicles sold in 2021. That means there are an awful lot of misconceptions out there when it comes to these newfangled machines.

The top concern is probably range anxiety, a fear that is usually dispelled as someone gets used to waking up to a full battery every morning. I won't dwell on that today, but the next-most common point of confusion about EVs has to be the traction battery's longevity, or potential lack thereof.

It's an understandable concern; many of us are used to using consumer electronic devices powered by rechargable batteries that develop what's known as "memory." The effect is caused by repeatedly charging a cell before it has been fully depleted, resulting in the cell "forgetting" that it can deplete itself further. The lithium-ion cells used by EVs aren't really affected by the memory effect, but they can degrade storage capacity if subjected to too many fast charges or if their thermal management isn't taken seriously.

Enlarge / You're unlikely to find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, but you might encounter a Polestar 2. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Polestar is riding pretty high right now. Now listed on the NASDAQ exchange, the company is preparing to introduce three new electric vehicles over the next three years: a large SUV in 2023 , a smaller crossover in 2024, and a flagship (read: expensive) four-door coupe in 2025 . In March, the company introduced a new variant of the Polestar 2 fastback sedan, the $48,400 Polestar 2 Long Range Single motor.

And after a few days of driving one, I think it's another data point in favor of the argument that less power sometimes means more fun when it comes to EVs. But I must confess I'm scratching my head about the "long range" part, given the useable capacity of the battery pack and the EV's energy efficiency.

As the name suggests, the biggest mechanical change compared to the dual-motor version we drove in 2020 is the loss of the rear motor. Polestar has also made some changes to the way it sources and makes components like the aluminum alloy wheels and the battery case; the company says these changes reduce the carbon footprint of the car's manufacturing by just under 3,000 lbs (1,350 kg).

Enlarge / Streamlined aircraft of the 1930s and 1940s were an inspiration for the Hyundai Ioniq 6. (credit: Hyundai)

Hyundai provided flights from DC to London and back, plus a night in a hotel so that we could see the Ioniq 6 in person. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

The physical unveiling of the Hyundai Prophecy concept car was an early casualty of COVID, originally scheduled for the hastily canceled 2020 Geneva auto show . That didn't stop it from blowing my socks off once Hyundai sent some images over the Internet, however. At the time, I didn't think the Korean automaker would put the concept—which I described as the result of "a transporter accident involving a Mercedes CLS and a Tesla Model 3"—into production.

Obviously, I was being a fool because just as the Hyundai 45 concept morphed into the excellent Ioniq 5 crossover, the Prophecy has been translated into production as the Ioniq 6 sedan. Like the Ioniq 5, the Ioniq 6 uses Hyundai's new E-GMP platform for 800 V vehicles , but importantly, it's actually smaller (with a 2-inch/50-mm shorter wheelbase) and will be cheaper than the angular Ioniq 5. (Yes, this still confuses me, because 6 is more than 5, so one expects a bigger, more expensive car, plus the Ioniq 7 is going to be a large seven-seater electric SUV , due next year.)

The most notable change from the concept is the Ioniq 6's extra height, an unavoidable consequence of having to package a 6-inch (150 mm) slab of lithium-ion batteries under the cabin's floor. I asked Hyundai design chief Sangyup Lee if he had been tempted to stretch the production car's wheelbase to maintain the concept's proportions.

Enlarge / This EV is called the Nissan Sakura, and it goes on sale in Japan this year for about $14,000, proving that automakers can make small and affordable EVs. (credit: Nissan)

You don't have to dig far into the comments of just about any article we write about new cars to find complaints about the ever-growing size and cost of those new cars. Automakers are convinced that size sells in the US market, particularly when it comes to new electric vehicles. But there is a different way, as both Europe and Japan have shown.

For example, Autocar reported on Tuesday that Volkswagen will build a small EV called the ID.1 that will sell for around $18,000 (17,000 euros). Due to reach the market in 2025, this diminutive EV will use a cut-down version of VW's MEB platform (as used in the US-market ID.4 crossover, among others) and is expected to have a WLTP range of about 250 miles (400 km) thanks to a 57 kWh battery pack.

In fact, Europeans will be somewhat spoiled for choice since the same factory in Spain will also produce versions of the ID.1 for the Cupra and Seat brands.