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      Lotus is the latest to show off a high-powered electric sedan—the Emeya

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 7 September, 2023 - 22:00 · 1 minute

    A Lotus Emaya pokes out from behind a girder

    Enlarge / Lotus has developed a new architecture for electric vehicles. The second EV to use this new architecture will be this, the Emeya four-door GT, which follows the Eletre SUV, released earlier this year. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

    Lotus provided a train ticket from Washington, DC, to New York City and back so we could see the new Emeya. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

    NEW YORK—After languishing with a lack of serious investment for decades, Lotus Cars is now starting to show the results of its 2017 acquisition by Geely . After building a low-volume electric hypercar and then its last gasoline-powered sportscar , it debuted an all-new electric vehicle, an SUV called the Eletre . And next year another new EV goes into production, a new four-door GT called the Emeya that uses the same Electric Premium Architecture platform as that SUV.

    Despite sharing a corporate parent and a very similar design brief, the Lotus Emeya is unrelated to the Polestar 5 four-door GT that we rode in a few weeks ago . Both cars clearly target the Porsche Taycan , offering high power outputs, very rapid charging, and an engaging driving experience. But there's nothing shared between the Polestar and the Lotus, which, unlike the Polestar 5, uses a more conventional chassis construction that's a mix of different strength steels and aluminum.

    "This is a Lotus like you've never seen before," said Lotus Group Vice President of Design Ben Payne. "We've built on everything Lotus has achieved so far, creating a luxury performance car for the drivers, designed to inspire confidence, exhilarate with raw emotion and pure joy—connecting them to the road."

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      Watch out Porsche, Polestar is working on a proper Taycan rival

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 24 July, 2023 - 15:39 · 1 minute

    Polestar 5 engineering prototypes, wrapped in camouflage

    Enlarge / Polestar is developing a four-door electric GT called the Polestar 5, which goes on sale in 2024. (credit: Polestar)

    Polestar provided a flight from Washington, DC, to London and back and two nights in a hotel so we could visit its UK R&D center. Ars does not accept paid editorial content.

    NUNEATON, ENGLAND—Any day is a good day that involves a visit to a proving ground, even if that includes a two-hour drive fresh from a transatlantic flight. And this was a good day: a visit to Polestar's UK research and development center, based at the Motor Industry Research Association's proving grounds outside Coventry, England, to find out how it's getting on with one of its next electric vehicles, a purposeful-looking performance sedan called the Polestar 5.

    Until now, the Polestar EVs we've seen have used platforms shared across other brands within the Geely group. The Polestar 2 fastback sedan uses the same CMA platform as the Volvo XC40, and next year's Polestar 3 SUV —which will be built in South Carolina—uses the group's SPA2 platform.

    That involves some compromises, though; those platforms were designed to be built in high volumes, with attributes like ride comfort prioritized over handling prowess. That's fine for, say, a luxury SUV—even a sporty one. But if you were a brand wanting to build a competitor for the Porsche Taycan, you might want to start from scratch.

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      Electrify America’s EV chargers now support Plug&Charge

      Jonathan M. Gitlin · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 16 November, 2020 - 21:30 · 1 minute

    A black Porsche Taycan plugged into a sleek-looking charger

    Enlarge / Charging a MY2021 Taycan at an Electrify America station (not pictured) will be as easy as plugging it in. (credit: Porsche)

    Fast charging your electric vehicle at an Electrify America station just got a lot more seamless—at least for some electric vehicles. That's because the company has now implemented Plug&Charge, the user-friendly name for the ISO 15118 standard that enables an electric car to talk to the charger and handle authentication and billing.

    If you ask any analyst, they'll tell you that Tesla's Supercharger network is one of the company's most valuable assets. For one thing, they're everywhere in the United States, enabling the kinds of road trips that always come up as an excuse as to why electric cars can't work. But it's not just the coverage—a Supercharger is effortless to use. You turn up and plug your car in, and it does the rest. Your Tesla tells the Supercharger who you are and whether you have to pay, and it deals with any billing. The whole arrangement really is delightfully easy.

    Fast charging a non-Tesla EV is invariably a less seamless experience. You can carry a dongle on your keys, or use an app or your phone to authenticate with the charger. But in my experience, sometimes neither of those work, and you end up having to call the phone number on the side of the big humming box and ask them to turn it on for you from their side. Even when it does work smoothly, there's still some faffing about, poking a touchscreen that may not be the world's most responsive.

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      Teardrops and wind tunnels: A look at the world’s most aerodynamic cars

      Jonathan M. Gitlin · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 8 May, 2020 - 18:02 · 1 minute

    With no car launches to work on thanks to COVID-19, some automakers' press offices are filling the gap by digging into the archives to share interesting stuff with the rest of us. On Thursday, Volkswagen North America reached out to tell us about the company's most aerodynamic car ever. It was called the Aerodynamic Research Volkswagen, and it was built in 1980 as a demonstration of how to make a vehicle as slippery as possible, with a drag coefficient (Cd) of just 0.15. Powered by a 177hp (132kW) 2.4L inline-six cylinder engine, the ARVW reached a speed of 225mph (362km/h) at the Nardo test track in southern Italy. But the ARVW isn't the lowest-drag vehicle ever built, just the lowest-drag VW. So what is the most aerodynamic car of all time?

    Production cars

    When Tesla revealed its Model 3 sedan a few years ago, it was justifiably proud of the car's Cd of 0.23, which bettered the Models S and X by 0.01. Tesla didn't optimize the Model 3's aerodynamics just for bragging rights. The lower a car's drag, the further it can go per unit of energy because it doesn't have to work as hard to push its way through the air. However, a Model 3 is only this slippery through the air when the car's 18-inch wheels are fitted with the aero wheel covers, something Car and Driver put to the test late last year . (If you're a Model 3 owner and into hypermiling, you can cut your car's drag—and thereby boost its range—even further by fitting aftermarket front- and rear spoilers .)

    But the Model 3 isn't the lowest-drag car to have gone into production. Porsche's Taycan battery EV bested Tesla's best when it went on sale last year. Both the Taycan Turbo and Taycan 4S manage a Cd of 0.22, although again, only with the most aerodynamic wheels fitted. The Taycan Turbo S uses a different design and in the wind tunnel, that adds 0.03 to the Cd.

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