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      Polestar 2 gets new motor and battery for MY24 refresh, and it’s a winner

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 6 September, 2023 - 12:00 · 1 minute

    A white polestar 2 parked next to a colorful sculpture of a triceratops

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

    Polestar provided flights from Washington, DC, to Denver and back and two nights in a hotel so we could drive the model-year 2024 Polestar range. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

    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.

    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.

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      A brief look at electric vehicles from the dawn of the automobile age

      Ars Staff · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 17 May, 2021 - 13:06

    If it seems that electric cars are the future of the automobile, the same was true more than a century ago. With automakers planning to meet government laws ending new internal combustion engine production by 2035, this year's Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance—which takes place May 20-23 in Florida—is a reminder that electric cars are far from a new idea.

    "The electric carriage has made a good record for speed, and the great ease of control and the absence of noise and odor will commend it to those who are anxious to purchase horseless carriages," wrote Scientific American in 1895. For a while, it was true.

    These are the cutting-edge cars that held so much promise, a promise only now reaching fruition.

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      Here’s our first look at 2023’s electric Porsche Macan SUV

      Jonathan M. Gitlin · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 10 May, 2021 - 14:51 · 1 minute

    This morning, in an email extolling the flexibility of in silico development, Porsche sent Ars the first official images of its next Macan crossover. And this Macan, which is still a couple of years from being ready, is entirely electric. Unfortunately, the photos don't give too much away about this electric vehicle replacement to one of Porsche's biggest sellers; the prototypes are camouflaged, and that Safari-spec LED roof bar is presumably just there to help Porsche's engineers test around the clock. The four-element LED headlights are probably the real deal, though.

    Porsche first revealed that the Macan would go all-electric in early 2019. The car will use a new electric vehicle architecture called PPE (Premium Platform Electric), which Porsche is developing together with corporate sibling Audi. Audi recently briefed us on one of its first PPE-derived EVs, the 2023 Audi A6 e-tron , which uses an 800 V, 100 kWh battery pack and a motor for each axle, with a combined output of 350 kW (469 hp) and 800 Nm (590 lb-ft). Although Porsche isn't ready to share its own specs yet, the A6 e-tron offers a ballpark within which we can guesstimate.

    In its email, Porsche says that it has built 20 digital prototypes, with different departments conducting their own simulations. "We regularly collate the data from the various departments and use it to build up a complete, virtual vehicle that is as detailed as possible," said Porsche's Dr. Andreas Huber, who manages the digital prototypes. The aerodynamicists were among the first to start modeling the EV Macan beginning in 2017.

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      'Death of diesel looms' as car makers accelerate to electric future as world's biggest diesel engine factory in Tremery, eastern France, is switching to making electric motors

      news.movim.eu / gadgeteerza-tech-blog · Thursday, 28 January, 2021 - 11:35 edit

    From less than 10% of output in 2020, electric motor production at Tremery will double to about 180,000 in 2021, and is planned to reach 900,000 a year - or more than half the plant's peak pre-pandemic output - by 2025.

    The shift is testament to a car industry in flux. Demand for diesel cars has slumped since a 2015 pollution scandal, while tough new EU regulations, which fine carmakers for exceeding emissions limits, are pushing them to make more electric models.

    See https://www.timeslive.co.za/motoring/news/2021-01-25-death-of-diesel-looms-as-car-makers-accelerate-to-electric-future/

    #environment #EV #france #diesel

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      Everything we know about Hyundai and Kia’s new electric vehicle platform

      Jonathan M. Gitlin · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 2 December, 2020 - 13:33

    It would be inaccurate to describe the Korean auto industry as firing on all cylinders, if only because it's also really good at making electric vehicles, and those don't have cylinders that fire. The electric versions of the Hyundai Kona , Kia Soul, and Kia Niro are about the only battery EVs to approach the range efficiency of class-leading Tesla, and it makes a pretty fine hydrogen fuel cell EV as well.

    On Tuesday, Hyundai Motor Group (which owns Hyundai and Kia, as well as Genesis) showed us what comes next. It's called E-GMP, and it's the group's new modular BEV platform for bigger vehicles ( analogous to Volkswagen Group's PPE architecture ). Hyundai Motor Group has big plans for E-GMP—a million vehicle split over 23 new models by 2025, with the first two hitting showrooms sometime in 2021 .

    The tech specs are similarly impressive: an all-800V electrical architecture; bi-directional charging; DC fast charging to 80 percent in 18 minutes; and a WLTP range of 500km (310 miles).

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