Enlarge / Ford's latest Mach-E variant is designed for fun on or off the tarmac. (credit: Ford)

Ford has a long and successful history with rallying, having won numerous races with motorsport-modified versions of more mundane machines like the Escort, Sierra, and Fiesta. Now it's applying some of that know-how to the electric Mustang Mach-E with a new version that goes on sale early next year, the Mustang Mach-E Rally.

Until now, the Mustang Mach-E to purchase if you were looking for some fun has been the Mach-E GT, particularly if you opted for the $64,900 Performance Edition, which comes with magnetorheological dampers and better tires . Ford reckons the Mach-E Rally will cost about the same as that version, and it, too, rides on those magnetic fluid-filled dampers, together with new springs that give it a 20 mm higher ride height than the Mach-E GT.

The rear wing is inspired by the Ford Focus RS, and all Mach-E Rallys will have a black-painted roof. (credit: Ford)

There are big front brake discs and 19-inch wheels shod in Michelin CrossClimate2 tires that have bigger sidewalls (and therefore absorb more bumps) than the 20-inch wheels and tires fitted to the GT. Ford has also added some underbody shielding to protect the front and rear motors from rocks, and there's protective film to help prevent stone chips on the doors and wheel arches.

Enlarge / When you see a brightly colored triceratops by the side of the road you should probably check it out. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

DENVER—A car's midlife refresh is, more often than not, a mostly cosmetic affair—new light clusters or a changed front fascia, perhaps a new interior. Truth be told, the styling tweaks to the model year 2024 Polestar 2 are subtle—you might notice new wheel designs, and the ersatz front grille has been replaced with a body-colored panel. Instead, Polestar concentrated on tweaking the bits you can't see, making the car more efficient and, in the case of the cheaper, single-motor version, a lot more fun to drive, too.

When Polestar first launched the Polestar 2 in 2020, it did so with a dual-motor all-wheel drive version , followed by a more affordable single-motor model . Although the more expensive, more powerful version was faster, as is often the case with electric vehicles, I found the supposedly lesser car the one to go for. It's this version that has had the most attention paid to it in the refresh, most notably the fact that its single motor now powers the rear wheels, not the front.

The Polestar 2's interior is little changed, but that's good because we already loved it. The Android Automotive infotainment system includes Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Polestar has developed a new electric motor that's significantly more powerful than the one it replaces, outputting 299 hp (220 kW) and 361 lb-ft (490 Nm). That's a 29 percent boost in power and 48 percent more torque than the previous single-motor model.

Enlarge / Sigh . Not only are the 225/45/R20 tires easy to puncture, they're not cheap. Smaller wheels would ride better and provide better efficiency. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

On Friday afternoon, I popped out of the house to run a quick errand. This week's press fleet car is a Hyundai Ioniq 5 , a boxy, angular, and efficient electric vehicle. I never quite made it to my intended destination, though; a very slightly misjudged corner—at low speed—saw me clip the curb with the back right wheel, resulting in a dime-sized hole in the sidewall and a frustrating couple of hours. Needless to say, there is no spare tire in an Ioniq 5, nor a can of get-you-home foam, not that it would have helped in this instance. But I can't help thinking all that stress could have been avoided if the car used smaller wheels and higher profile tires.

Of all the current automotive trends, the ever-increasing size of wheels and tires may be my least favorite. If you're middle-aged, you've probably been driving for a couple of decades now, during which time smaller wheel sizes have been disappearing even faster than the honey bees . Just try finding good 14-inch tires for an older Miata, for example. Or even 15s.

The increasing popularity of crossovers and SUVs is largely to blame, though not entirely. So, too, is the move to battery electric vehicles, which is ironic considering that increasing wheel size very clearly hurts efficiency and range, the two main considerations for many EV buyers.

Enlarge / The Pininfarina Battista looks almost as good as it goes. And boy does this car go. (credit: Pininfarina)

There’s quick, and then there’s launching a car with such brutality that you can legitimately feel your cheeks pulling away from your face. It takes the Automobili Pininfarina Battista just 1.8 seconds to accelerate to 60 miles per hour. Yet somehow, that isn’t the most eye-popping detail about this hand-built Italian hypercar. Ditto its $2.5 million asking price.

A quick refresher: Automobili Pininfarina is a spin-off of legendary design house Pininfarina, a company responsible for making some of the automotive world’s most gorgeous cars (and also the VinFast VF8 ). The Battista—named for company founder Battista “Pinin” Farina—is Automobili Pininfarina’s first product, and it shares its electric underpinnings with the Nevera, a similarly hyperbolic supercar from Croatian brand Rimac .

Those EV guts consist of a T-shaped 120 kWh battery pack and four electric motors, one at each wheel. Max output is a yes-you-read-that-correctly 1,877 hp (1,400 kW) and 1,726 lb-ft (2,340 Nm) of torque, and while the aforementioned 1.8-second 0-to-60-mph sprint is ludicrous in its own right, even more impressive is that the Battista never lets up. It takes less than five seconds to hit 124 mph (200 km/h), and you’ll see 186 mph in just over 10 seconds. The Battista’s top speed? 217 mph (350 km/h). You’ll be there in no time.

(credit: Jeffrey Sauger / Chevrolet )

General Motors has lost confidence in battery supplier LG Chem after defective cells from the company caused a string of fires and sparked a massive recall of Chevrolet Bolt electric vehicles and electric utility vehicles.

The automaker recalled more than 140,000 electric cars and crossovers— every single one that the company has made —when it discovered two simultaneously occurring defects in the LG-made batteries. GM suspects the defects are behind the 10 fires the company has identified so far.

LG Chem makes the battery packs for every Chevy Bolt, and while the problem was initially traced to one of LG's Korean plants, subsequent investigations revealed that other LG plants were pumping out bad cells, too.

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Enlarge / An Electrify America charging location in Colorado recharges a Porsche Taycan. (credit: Electrify America)

We measure electric vehicle batteries in kWh, so if you're paying to charge an EV, you'd probably expect to be charged by the kWh. And now, if you use an Electrify America charging station in one of 23 states or the District of Columbia, you'll be able to do just that, as the charging company has rolled out a new pricing structure. For the remaining 27 states that require customers to pay by the minute for the electricity they use, the company has simplified its plans and dropped its prices.

When Electrify America started rolling out the first phase of a $2 billion charging network in 2019, it did so with a complicated payment structure . When you plug an EV into a fast charger, as part of the handshake process, the car tells the charger the maximum level of power (in kW) it can accept.

Electrify America used this to determine how much you'd pay, with three different bands (0-75kW, 76-125kW, and 126-350kW), each more expensive than the previous. And as I discovered , it was quite possible to pay the higher fee even if your car sucked in power at a much lower rate during the charging session—the theoretical maximum kW value is what set the price. (In practice, OEMs like Kia have signed deals with Electrify America so owners get discounted or even free charging for several years.)

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