Autos

Two companies that are both defined by the relentless pursuit to do away with any and all unnecessary weight in their sports cars will soon be working together with nickel, cobalt, and lithium and taking a shot at electrification. That’s right, Lotus and Alpine are collaborating on an electric sports car, and believe it or not, this is great news for the EV world. At the moment, one of the main problems with electric vehicles is they weigh significantly more than their internal combustion engine counterparts. Lotus and Alpine, both experts in lightweight sports cars of old, could very well change that calculus. You see, power and torque can make up for extra vehicle heft in a straight line, but in every other performance aspect—so, turning and braking—weight can be a real d...

Sure, you could always buy a prefab skateboard from Element or Zero, but the cool kids pick their ideal size deck and then select custom trucks and wheels to suit. Tel-Aviv-based REE Automotive reckons it should be just as easy to build your electric mobility as a service (MaaS) shuttle or delivery van. At CES 2021, the company showed off its electric skateboard chassis concept comprised of its patented REEboards and REEcorners. See all 13 photos REEboards—Backbone of the Electric Skateboard Chassis REEboards are way larger but only slightly more complicated than the bent plywood of an analog skateboard. In addition to providing the structural basis for the finished vehicle, the board houses a battery sized for its intended duty cycle, along with most power electronics and the wiring neede...

See all 4 photos We drove it around the block and were impressed with its tight feel and ride quality. The throttle-body-injected (TBI) 454 definitely makes more torque and accelerates with more aplomb than Project Jake, the in-house, small-block-powered OBS (old body style) 1993 GMC C1500 from our sister publication HOT ROD. Still, an 8:1 compression big-block with peanut-port cylinder heads, a tiny cam, and hard-to-tune, airflow-limited induction and fuel-delivery systems doesn’t compare very favorably with even the standard engines in today’s pickups. Say what you will about taking out the big-block in a 454 SS and replacing it with an LS or (in this case) LT engine, it’s hard to argue with the logic. Lucky told us he and Dax discussed several options on how to build t...

We’ve seen Kia’s new logo, and now we’ve learned a more about the brand’s future plans, including seven all-electric models and three battery-powered concepts by 2027. Kia’s intent is to stake out a leading position in the EV market, and it teased five of those future production models in silhouette. The models will be known as EV1 through EV9, part of a model-name reorganization we’ll touch on in a bit. We don’t know which models get which numbers, so we’ll use Kia’s own descriptions (and please don’t accuse of egregious use of marketing-speak; we’re just parroting here). First up is what Kia calls “a powerful and dynamic crossover”: See all 11 photos A “fun and practical commuter”: See all 11 photos...

Rarely do mid-cycle updates of existing models accomplish so much change as Honda’s 2021 refresh for the Ridgeline midsize pickup. The only unibody, car-based pickup truck on the market, the Ridgeline has long delivered admirable handling, ride comfort, and clever packaging thanks to its lack of a cumbersome separate frame. Thing is, while it’s among the best midsize trucks you can buy, the pre-update Ridgeline resembled a Honda minivan with a pickup bed grafted on. For 2021, the Ridgeline finally adopts tougher, truckier styling. And, as if Honda is trying to drive the point home that it wants customers to take the pickup more seriously, it’s abandoning the Ridgeline’s standard front-wheel-drive configuration. By making all-wheel drive standard across the Ridgeline...

While much of the emphasis at CES 2021 was focused on autonomy (and related sensors), artificial intelligence, and bigger-picture tech, there were still plenty of little gizmos on virtual display promising a brighter driving tomorrow. Gadgets that solve little problems, like why your phone sometimes doesn’t juice up properly in a Qi wireless charger, and how a WiFi camera can help you monitor precious trailer cargo or reverse a long rig into a tight spot, and even how to pay for gas or parking remotely. Here are five hot gizmos from this year’s non-show. See all 6 photos Sweet-Spot Qi Wireless Charger Ever notice how sometimes when you toss your phone onto your car’s Qi wireless charger, it doesn’t always start charging (or maybe it gets hot but charges slowly)? Tha...

ZL1, COPO, L88, SS, RS, Z/28, Z06—without context, Chevy’s mid-century order codes are about as evocative as reading the back of a once-a-day vitamin bottle. Unsurprisingly, the docket of Mecum Auction’s upcoming sale of Rick Treworgy’s sprawling Muscle Car City is loaded to the air cleaners with these alphanumeric codes, and while it’s tempting to fixate on the incredible COPO Camaros and SS variants filling up the show floor of the former grocery store, we can’t tear our eyes from the rare and semi-obscure 1965 Chevrolet Chevelle Z16 that’s up for grabs. See all 7 photos As demand for high-performance muscle car variants rose in the mid-1960s, Chevrolet realized the relatively staid Chevelle was at risk of falling behind its contemporaries as the big-b...

The iconic Renault 5 hatchback is getting rebooted as a sexy EV, informed by the iconic little Cinq of the past, but not necessarily beholden to it. In fact, you can say that about Renault in general, because this R5 Concept EV was revealed as part of a larger push to reinvent the French company for the 2020s and beyond that the company is calling Nouvelle Vague—New Wave. Renault as a services company, as a tech company, et cetera. Oh, and they’re still going to build cars—and if they’re anything like this R5 concept, that’s great news for those that can buy them. See all 12 photos The company is promising seven fully-electric vehicles—half its projected lineup—to be full EVs by 2025. The company already sells a range of EVs, from the tiny and bizarre Twizy to the Master ...

Like most of the population, we’re wondering when we can return to our offices—or at least we were until we saw Nissan’s NV350 Caravan Office Pod Concept, one of several concept cars Nissan is showing at the virtual 2021 Tokyo Auto Salon. The NV350 Office Pod turns work-from-home into work-from-wherever, and we’ve decided that we desperately, desperately need a fleet of them, if only to distance ourselves from our own families (we kid … mostly). Based on the Nissan NV350 van, the NV350 Caravan Office Pod Concept features an office with a computer desk and what appears to be a delightfully overcomplicated office chair. The office pod fits neatly into the back of the Caravan, but should you choose to take your workspace-on-wheels to a more picturesque spot, the pod sl...

Thanks to a set of patent images that were found lurking around an Australian patent site, we now have a pretty good idea of what the production car will look like. Design number 202015053, as it’s referred to on the site, is most definitely the saleable version of the car we expect Nissan to sell as the 2022 400Z. For lovers of retro-modern design, the news is good. Even though it very closely resembles the Z Proto, there are key indicators that this is the production version of the car. The radar sensor for systems such as adaptive cruise control (something the Z Proto didn’t have) is clearly visible in the lower part of the front intake. Additionally, the headlights are shaped slightly differently, there are emergency keyholes in the doors and in the rear liftgate in the eve...