Enlarge / Porsche is the first automaker to expose car functions like climate and lighting via Apple's automaker toolkit for CarPlay. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

The introduction of Apple CarPlay in 2016 was a game-changer. Until then, connecting your phone to your car meant bothering with Bluetooth, and if you wanted to use a smartphone navigation app, you probably needed some kind of phone holder clipped to an air vent or suction-cupped to the dashboard. Being able to cast your phone's screen to the car's infotainment system turned out to be extremely popular, and by 2020, it was a feature that almost half of all new car buyers wanted .

This has not sat well with every automaker; in March of this year, General Motors made headlines —and generated a lot of comments—when it announced it was killing off support for casting interfaces (both CarPlay and Android Auto) from its future products. But where GM saw a threat, Porsche saw an opportunity. And now it has built a new iOS app, making use of an Automaker toolkit provided by Apple. This little-known feature is only offered to OEMs and allows them freedom beyond the restrictive user interface guidelines laid down by Apple.

Porsche's customer research found that the overwhelming majority of its customers have iPhones and prefer using them for things like navigation. "Obviously, you have to switch back and forth to control some features around media, for example, some more specific features around climate," explained Cyril Dorsaz, principal product manager at Porsche Digital. "And ultimately, we learned through customer research that this is something that our customers are not really happy with."

Enlarge / It meant spending most of the week on the road, but who would say no to a chance to drive Porsche's very first car? Not I. (credit: Tangent Vector/Porsche)

CARMEL-BY-THE-SEA, Calif.—Every few years, Porsche holds a big celebration of its racing heritage at the Laguna Seca racetrack in Monterey, California. Called Rennsport Reunion, it's a big deal, drawing a far bigger attendance than when racing series like IndyCar or IMSA visit. And attendees are a passionate crowd, prepared to wait in line for an hour or more just to visit the official merch store.

Rennsport Reunion 7 took place last week, and it was a special one, as this year is Porsche's 75th anniversary. Among the cars brought over from the company museum was the very first to ever bear the Porsche name, the prototype 356/1 roadster.

And Porsche let us drive this priceless artifact.

Enlarge / I can think of maybe one other race track that has a volcano for a backdrop. (credit: Sam Bloxham/Formula E)

PORTLAND, Ore.—This year's Formula E season draws to a close this weekend, with the final two rounds taking place in London. The title fight is a three-way contest, with Avalanche Andretti's Jake Dennis leading Envision Racing's Nick Cassidy and Jaguar TCS Racing's Mitch Evans. Last month, the series held a race here in the US on the opposite coast of its traditional home in Brooklyn. Formula E did something outside its comfort zone, holding a race at permanent road course—Portland International Speedway. And as Ars found out, it was a good decision; this leafy race track with its volcano backdrop felt like a much better venue for Formula E than a humid parking lot next to the Hudson River.

It was also our first opportunity to see the series' new cars in action, and they're significantly lighter and more powerful than the Gen2 machines . As ever, the drivers have a lot of work to do to manage energy in the cars, thanks to restricted telemetry to their engineers in the pit lane and new tires that prioritize sustainability over outright grip.

Portland saw the Gen3 cars reach their highest ever top speeds. (credit: Simon Galloway/Formula E)

This isn’t a city center street circuit

Portland was not the first Formula E race we've attended; we were on hand to see the series' rather chaotic Miami ePrix in 2015, and Ars logos even ran on a pair of cars at that year's London ePrix . Miami was not a repeat event for the sport, and the Long Beach ePrix in California was held only twice, in 2015 and 2016.

Enlarge / Race winners, the #51 AF Corse Ferrari 499P of James Calado, Alessandro Pier Guidi, and Antonio Giovinazzi arrive down the pit lane toward parc ferme at the end of the 100th anniversary of the 24 Hours of Le Mans at the Circuit de la Sarthe on June 11, 2023, in Le Mans, France. (credit: James Moy Photography/Getty Images)

One hundred is something of an arbitrary number, an accident of how many fingers we happen to have. But in years, it represents a long time to keep doing something again and again: like the 24 Hours of Le Mans, an annual race around an 8-mile circuit in France that exists not just as a way to entertain but also to improve the cars we drive on the road. Windshield wipers, disc brakes, fuel injection, and laserbeam headlights are just a few examples that were proved in the cauldron of the 24 Hours before appearing on cars like the one you might drive.

This weekend saw the centenary edition of the race take place. Anticipation had been building for months thanks to a new ruleset that has revitalized the top class of prototypes , now called Hypercars. After several years of Toyota facing little competition by meagerly funded privateer teams, 2023's entry list also included cars from other major manufacturers—Cadillac, Ferrari, Peugeot, and Porsche.

Legends return

Each has raced at Le Mans before, the European makes with quite some success. Across 91 actual races—world wars prevented running some years—Porsche's entries notched 19 wins, more than anyone else. Audi has the next-best record, but it has opted to spend its racing budget on Formula 1 for the foreseeable future .

Enlarge / The Mission X is Porsche's idea of what its next high-end sports car might be. (credit: Porsche)

Carmaker Porsche turns 75 this year. And as a birthday present, it has designed what it says could be the future of its sports cars—a new design study called Mission X. It's the latest in a series of one-off concepts and technology demonstrators; these give us a good idea of what the German brand is thinking when it comes to high-performance electric vehicles. Should this one go into production, it promises plenty. But that's by no means certain—for now the company is saying that decision has not yet been made.

"The Porsche Mission X is a technology beacon for the sports car of the future. It picks up the torch of iconic sports cars of decades past: like the 959, the Carrera GT, and the 918 Spyder before it, the Mission X provides critical impetus for the evolutionary development of future vehicle concepts," said Oliver Blume, Porsche AG's chairperson. "Daring to dream and dream cars are two sides of the same coin for us: Porsche has only remained Porsche by constantly changing."

The doors are inspired by racing cars like the 917, 956/962, and 919 Hybrid (credit: Porsche)

The two most recent electric Porsche one-offs have been aimed at the race track. There's the Mission R concept, which debuted in 2021— some lucky journalists even got to drive it —and then last year an electric version of the 718 Cayman with 1,088 hp (800 kW) on tap that proved extremely rapid from the passenger seat . Porsche wants to develop an electric alternative to the production racing cars it sells (like the Cayman GT4 Clubsport), and those two EVs are how it's testing out some ideas to arrive at that point.

Enlarge (credit: Porsche)

Future production Porsches will use an advanced sensor suite from Mobileye, the two companies announced on Tuesday. Called "SuperVision," it uses a mix of cameras and radar sensors and will enable a range of advanced driver-assistance systems (better known as ADAS) in coming models, including functions like hands-free traffic jam assists.

You may be familiar with Mobileye from its relationship with Tesla; the electric vehicle maker was one of its many customers for vision-based ADAS systems, which Tesla then started tweaking to turn into Autopilot. That relationship ended in a high-profile spat in 2016, with the Israeli technology company accusing Tesla of being cavalier with safety —a reasonable accusation in light of the many open federal safety investigations into Tesla's driver assists.

The following year, Mobileye was bought by Intel and has continued to be the largest player in the ADAS market .