"What’s nice about electrification is that you’re able to expand the attributes beyond internal combustion. So you’re able to go much farther with performance than ever before. You’re able to give people more space without making the car much larger, give them more cargo capacity. Just the overall technical experience is next-level. Oh, and by the way, the car is zero-emissio
Tesla's market standing in the world of electric vehicles remains strong, with the only real competition coming from Porsche's Taycan, which has largely priced itself out of the mainstream automotive industry. Polestar, formerly of Volvo but now its own brand, is looking to shake things up with the affordable, all-electric Polestar 2 (as opposed to the hybrid Polestar 1, which is more of an enormous superc
Volvo spinoff Polestar sure has its newest product making the rounds these days. Last month, Matt Farah of The Smoking Tire got a chance to drive a Polestar 2 around Malibu —where he was passed by another tester doing the very same thing in an identical car. Now, the Polestar 2 has made its way northward to Canada, where the YouTube channel Throttle House has pitted it in a compare-and-contrast against its main competitor, the established Tesla Model 3. Farah came away from his Polestar test drive incredibly impressed, thinking the car was a significant improvement over the Model 3, but he's only one data point. Now, we've got a pair of testers putting the two (relatively) affordable EVs head to h
To his credit, Jenkins didn’t sidestep the question. He believes PIF had been shopping around, looking at EV startups for a while. Lucid set themselves apart, Jenkins told me, with the company’s previous work on high-performance batteries. "Our involvement in the Formula E racing series was a good proof-of-concept for our capability in energy storage with our battery technology. I’m happy to say that we very much align on this common understanding that electrification is necessa
The Tesla Model 3 features 3 unique drive modes: Chill Mode, Drive Mode, and Track Mode. The Chill mode is meant for energy savings, and it makes the Model 3 much slower, but more efficient. Drive Mode is the standard mode, while track mode allows the car to control whether torque goes to the front or back wheels, which decreases rotation when corner
"I’ve also got a [VW] GTI that’s my daily driver when I’m at work. It’s just fun and sporty. It’s a very holistic, democratic design that’s both sporty and doesn’t say anything pretentious. It’s just co
Leaving the irrelevancies of past ICE design behind, Jenkins believed Lucid could entirely rework the basic notion of what a car’s form can achieve. For luxury brands in the 1990s and 2000s, Jenkins felt, "It was often about tradition and brand Evinsightzone.Com legacy, how many times you’ve won Le Mans. And I just don’t feel like that kind of legacy is nearly as relevant these da
One of the greatest elements of modern EV design is that the "skateboard" battery-motor platform they all employ allows for massive interior and cargo space. Throttle House hosts Thomas and James compare trunk space front and rear for both cars, plus headroom in the front and back se
This 1977 K5 Blazer has received a conversion to an entirely electric drivetrain, replacing its original 400ci V8, which produced an anemic 175 horsepower from the factory that was routed through a three-speed automatic. Now, under the hood lurks a Bolt EV motor, providing 200 ponies and 266 lb-ft of torque to a four-speed automatic. The transfer case, driveshaft, and axles remain in factory f
The Polestar 2 shares much of its design aesthetic with its higher-spec hybrid sibling, but at a price that's at least somewhat closer to reasonable. The starting sticker price expected to begin around $61,000 before government incentive. That should place it in competition with higher-trim Tesla Models 3 and Y, which will share the Polestar 2's setup of an electric motor powering each axle with 201 horsepower and 243 lb-ft of torque (for a combined output of 402 ponies and 487 lb-ft of twi
Everyone in the automotive industry knows that electrification is the way of the future. Just look at the Ford Mustang Mach-E with 1,400 horsepower screaming through some drifts or Elon Musk's Tesla models as they dominate drag strips. Lucid's VP of Design Derek Jenkins even said that the Saudi Monetary Wealth Fund is hedging its bets with a $1 billion investment into the EV market, a serious sign of the changing times. Now, Chevrolet has announced a new pilot program for a potential electric conversion crate engine that will be revealed for the first time in a restomodded K5 Blazer at the upcoming virtual SEMA360 eve
"I like some of these streamlined aesthetics, kind of goes back to this Porsche thing," Jenkins said [ in Part 1, Jenkins refers to his favorite car designs of all time ]. "If you think about the 356, 911, Porsche 928—I just love that car, with all the glass, it’s such a cool car, it’s so modern. When I think about Lucid Air, it is this streamlined, aircraft, it’s not based on these hard lines or facets. It’s meant to be super clean and elegant. And to me, those cars age really we