Enlarge/ It’s a somewhat pricey plug-in hybrid, but it’s also quite competent.
Jonathan Gitlin
Arguably, some of Lexus’ greatest innovations have been in its product strategy as much as any technology to emerge from its R&D labs. When it launched in 1989, it was with the idea that a car could combine Japanese reliability with the luxury and power expected from a big German sedan. A few years later the RX basically invented the crossover category with SUV-like looks but with fewer of the handling compromises.
I’ll be frank—I haven’t always jelled with those crossovers. During the last couple of years we tested both the RX 500h F Sport, which I didn’t find that sporty or particularly efficient, and the battery-electric RZ 450e, which left me very cold. Third time is evidently the charm, because I got on much better with the topic of today’s review, the RX 450h+ Luxury, to give it its full name.
This is Lexus’ plug-in hybrid version—the 500h carries a much smaller battery that only recharges as the car drives. In fact, it’s the same plug-in hybrid powertrain as that found in the smaller, cheaper NX crossover, combining a 2.5 L four-cylinder gasoline engine and a pair of electric motors fed by an 18.1 kWh lithium-ion battery pack. Total power output is 304 hp (227 kW), but Lexus has declined to publish a combined torque figure or any outputs for the electric motors.
Enlarge/ The RX is 192.5 inches (4,890 mm) long, 75.6 inches (1,920 mm) wide, and 67.3 (1,709 mm) inches tall.
Jonathan Gitlin
Lexus figures that the RX 450h+ can drive 37 miles (60 km) on a fully charged battery, which takes about 2.5 hours to recharge via a level 2 plug. Like most plug-in hybrids, you can also tell it to conserve battery charge while you’re driving, or even have the engine rev a little higher and charge it while you drive (albeit with some reduction in efficiency, obviously).
I think in real-world use the actual number will be closer to 30 than 37, but with a fully charged pack each morning, that’s most or all of your average driver’s daily distance. It’s a very smooth motor in terms of power delivery, and the one-pedal driving mode (engaged by selecting B instead of D) has been well-calibrated with a very easy-to-modulate throttle.
It’s a little less smooth when the internal combustion engine is running, at least aurally. I’m not entirely sure if it’s an Atkinson cycle engine like you’ll find in Toyota’s many hybrids and PHEVs, but when its working hard it sounds harsh and, honestly, a little unbecoming a luxury brand.
Even when the plug-in pack is depleted to the point where the EV range is showing zero miles, there remains enough overhead in the battery to allow the RX to operate like one of Toyota or Lexus’ parallel (not plug-in) hybrids. Expect about 36 mpg (6.5 L/100 km) in this mode.
I enjoyed driving the RX 450h+ much more than the 500h, with its sporty pretensions. It’s not especially fast by the standards of 2024—if you floor it in sport mode, 60 mph (98 km/h) should show up in about 6.2 seconds—but turns well with acceptable steering feel. You might not want to take it down Tail of the Dragon, but I did enjoy curved highway intersections.
Visibility is quite good from the driver’s seat.
Jonathan Gitlin
A look at the rear.
Jonathan Gitlin
Here, there’s 29.6 cubic feet (838 L) with the seats in use, or 46.2 cubic feet (1,308 L) with the rear seats flat.
Jonathan Gitlin
The doors are my favorite bit of the interior.
Jonathan Gitlin
The main instrument display.
Jonathan Gitlin
Here’s what CarPlay looks like.
Jonathan Gitlin
The native infotainment UI.
Jonathan Gitlin
I must also praise the cabin. Stay away from weird color choices—thinking about the red leather seats in the aforementioned 500h—and stick to earth tones, here with semi-aniline leather in places. Lexus’ design team seems to be particularly good at door cards (the interior-facing bit) with a mix of materials that is interesting to the touch and the eye.
Can a car have Alzheimer’s?
However, some aspects of the RX 450h+ did manage to annoy me, and most of them are related to the electronics and infotainment. For example, why, when you start it up, is the car able to remember that the heated or cooled seats were previously on, but can’t remember that the air conditioning was also turned on? And having to reset the brake hold function (to turn it on) every time you start the car is also a pain.
It can be a bit hard to reach the far corner of the 14-inch infotainment touchscreen, depending on how large a human you are, and try as I might I could not fathom a way to dim the screen’s brightness at night, which was considerable even in night mode. The actual infotainment system itself is oddly limited in some ways, but it does feature wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, so most people will simply cast their phones. I don’t pick on the infotainment to be mean, but it’s an area where most of Lexus’ rivals, particularly the European ones, are handily beating it.
Lastly, the automatic emergency braking system was a little jumpy. Not quite Honda-bad, but it did intervene inappropriately twice during a week.
Enlarge/ This shade of green (Nori Green Pearl) drew a lot of compliments.
Jonathan Gitlin
Given the plug-in hybrid powertrain, the RX 450h+ is the priciest of the RX range, starting at $70,080. Blame all that lithium-ion, I guess. There are cheaper plug-in SUVs out there, even from luxury automakers, but you’d spend more on a BMW X5 PHEV, albeit one with more power. Anyone looking at the RX would have to have made peace with the giant cheese grater grille, but you can’t see that when you’re in the driver’s seat, and after a week I discovered I rather liked sitting there.
Enlarge/ Are you getting gas station vibes? Because I’m getting gas station vibes.
GM
Several years ago, General Motors and EVgo teamed up to build out a network of fast chargers for electric vehicles. As Tesla proved, giving your customers confidence that they won’t be stranded on a long drive with a dead battery really helps sell EVs, and GM’s sometimes-shifting target currently stands at deploying 2,850 chargers. Today, the two partners showed off their concept for an improved charging experience, which they say will come to a number of flagship charger locations around the US.
The most obvious thing to notice is the large canopy, co-branded with EVgo and GM Energy, similar to those found at virtually every gas station across the country. The gas station vibes don’t end there, either. Ample lighting and security cameras are meant to combat the sometimes sketchy vibes that can be found at other banks of (often dimly lit) fast chargers after dark, located as they often are in the far reaches of a mall parking lot.
And the chargers are sited between the charging bays the same way gas pumps are located, allowing a driver to pull through. Most fast chargers require a driver to pull in or back into the space even when the chargers are located to one side, a fact that complicates long-distance towing with an EV.
The chargers will be rated for 350 kW so that 800 V EVs can minimize their charge times. And while the announcement did not mention charging plugs, given GM’s adoption of the J3400 (originally NACS) plug from the next model year and EVgo’s embrace of the new connnector, it seems likely to expect both J3400 and CCS1 plugs on each charger.
“The future of EV charging is larger stall count locations, high-power charging, and designing around features that customers love—such as pull-through access, canopies, and convenient amenities. Through this next evolution of EVgo and GM’s esteemed collaboration, the future of EV charging is here,” said Dennis Kish, EVgo’s president.
“Ensuring that our customers have seamless access to convenient and reliable charging is imperative, and this effort will take it to the next level,” said GM Energy VP Wade Sheffer. “Through our collaborations with industry leaders like EVgo, we continue to innovate and expand customer-centric charging solutions that will meet the evolving needs of EV drivers across the country.”
The first site opens next year
There won’t be a fixed number of chargers at each location—the companies say most sites will have “up to 20 stalls,” with some locations featuring significantly more. We also don’t know where the sites will be—GM and EVgo say “coast to coast, including in metropolitan areas in states such as Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New York, and Texas” and that the first location should open in 2025.
2025 was the original time frame for the full deployment of the GM Energy/EVgo fast charging network, which was also supposed to total 3,250 plugs by then—at least, that was the goal when Ars wrote about it in 2022. It appears as if the reduction in plugs freed up funds to pay for these fancier flagships.
That said, the network is not vaporware. EVgo and GM Energy deployed their 1,000th charger last summer and say they’ll reach the 2,000th by the end of this year. Additionally, the two are working together with Pilot Travel Centers to deploy another 2,000 chargers across the US at Pilot and Flying J travel centers—by the end of 2023, the first 17 of these were operational, with the goal of 200 sites by the end of this year.
On a Friday evening last November, police chased a silver sedan across the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The fleeing vehicle entered San Francisco and went careening through the city’s crowded streets. At the intersection of 11th and Folsom streets, it sideswiped the fronts of two other vehicles, veered onto a sidewalk, and hit two pedestrians.
According to a local news story, both pedestrians were taken to the hospital with one suffering major injuries. The driver of the silver sedan was injured, as was a passenger in one of the other vehicles.
No one was injured in the third car, a driverless Waymo robotaxi. Still, Waymo was required to report the crash to government agencies. It was one of 20 crashes with injuries that Waymo has reported through June. And it’s the only crash Waymo has classified as causing a serious injury.
Twenty injuries might sound like a lot, but Waymo’s driverless cars have traveled more than 22 million miles. So driverless Waymo taxis have been involved in fewer than one injury-causing crash for every million miles of driving—a much better rate than a typical human driver.
Last week Waymo released a new website to help the public put statistics like this in perspective. Waymo estimates that typical drivers in San Francisco and Phoenix—Waymo’s two biggest markets—would have caused 64 crashes over those 22 million miles. So Waymo vehicles get into injury-causing crashes less than one-third as often, per mile, as human-driven vehicles.
Waymo claims an even more dramatic improvement for crashes serious enough to trigger an airbag. Driverless Waymos have experienced just five crashes like that, and Waymo estimates that typical human drivers in Phoenix and San Francisco would have experienced 31 airbag crashes over 22 million miles. That implies driverless Waymos are one-sixth as likely as human drivers to experience this type of crash.
The new data comes at a critical time for Waymo, which is rapidly scaling up its robotaxi service. A year ago, Waymo was providing 10,000 rides per week. Last month, Waymo announced it was providing 100,000 rides per week. We can expect more growth in the coming months.
So it really matters whether Waymo is making our roads safer or more dangerous. And all the evidence so far suggests that it’s making them safer.
It’s not just the small number of crashes Waymo vehicles experience—it’s also the nature of those crashes. Out of the 23 most serious Waymo crashes, 16 involved a human driver rear-ending a Waymo. Three others involved a human-driven car running a red light before hitting a Waymo. There were no serious crashes where a Waymo ran a red light, rear-ended another car, or engaged in other clear-cut misbehavior.
Digging into Waymo’s crashes
In total, Waymo has reported nearly 200 crashes through June 2024, which works out to about one crash every 100,000 miles. Waymo says 43 percent of crashes across San Francisco and Phoenix had a delta-V of less than 1 mph—in other words, they were very minor fender-benders.
But let’s focus on the 23 most severe crashes: those that either caused an injury, caused an airbag to deploy, or both. These are good crashes to focus on not only because they do the most damage but because human drivers are more likely to report these types of crashes, making it easier to compare Waymo’s software to human drivers.
Most of these—16 crashes in total—involved another car rear-ending a Waymo. Some were quite severe: three triggered airbag deployments, and one caused a “moderate” injury. One vehicle rammed the Waymo a second time as it fled the scene, prompting Waymo to sue the driver.
There were three crashes where a human-driven car ran a red light before crashing into a Waymo:
One was the crash I mentioned at the top of this article. A car fleeing the police ran a red light and slammed into a Waymo, another car, and two pedestrians, causing several injuries.
In San Francisco, a pair of robbery suspects fleeing police in a stolen car ran a red light “at a high rate of speed” and slammed into the driver’s side door of a Waymo, triggering an airbag. The suspects were uninjured and fled on foot. The Waymo was thankfully empty.
In Phoenix, a car ran a red light and then “made contact with the SUV in front of the Waymo AV, and both of the other vehicles spun.” The Waymo vehicle was hit in the process, and someone in one of the other vehicles suffered an injury Waymo described as minor.
There were two crashes where a Waymo got sideswiped by a vehicle in an adjacent lane:
In San Francisco, Waymo was stopped at a stop sign in the right lane when another car hit the Waymo while passing it on the left.
In Tempe, Arizona, an SUV “overtook the Waymo AV on the left” and then “initiated a right turn,” cutting the Waymo off and causing a crash. A passenger in the SUV said they suffered moderate injuries.
Finally, there were two crashes where another vehicle turned left across the path of a Waymo vehicle:
In San Francisco, a Waymo and a large truck were approaching an intersection from opposite directions when a bicycle behind the truck made a sudden left in front of the Waymo. Waymo says the truck blocked Waymo’s vehicle from seeing the bicycle until the last second. The Waymo slammed on its brakes but wasn’t able to stop in time. The San Francisco Fire Department told local media that the bicyclist suffered only minor injuries and was able to leave the scene on their own.
A Waymo in Phoenix was traveling in the right lane. A row of stopped cars was in the lane to its left. As Waymo approached an intersection, a car coming from the opposite direction made a left turn through a gap in the row of stopped cars. Again, Waymo says the row of stopped cars blocked it from seeing the turning car until it was too late. A passenger in the turning vehicle reported minor injuries.
It’s conceivable that Waymo was at fault in these last two cases—it’s impossible to say without more details. It’s also possible that Waymo’s erratic braking contributed to a few of those rear-end crashes. Still, it seems clear that a non-Waymo vehicle bore primary responsibility for most, and possibly all, of these crashes.
“About as good as you can do”
One should always be skeptical when a company publishes a self-congratulatory report about its own safety record. So I called Noah Goodall, a civil engineer with many years of experience studying roadway safety, to see what he made of Waymo’s analysis.
“They’ve been the best of the companies doing this,” Goodall told me. He noted that Waymo has a team of full-time safety researchers who publish their work in reputable journals.
Waymo knows precisely how often its own vehicles crash because its vehicles are bristling with sensors. The harder problem is calculating an appropriate baseline for human-caused crashes.
That’s partly because human drivers don’t always report their own crashes to the police, insurance companies, or anyone else. But it’s also because crash rates differ from one area to another. For example, there are far more crashes per mile in downtown San Francisco than in the suburbs of Phoenix.
Waymo tried to account for these factors as it calculated crash rates for human drivers in both Phoenix and San Francisco. To ensure an apples-to-apples comparison, Waymo’s analysis excludes freeway crashes from its human-driven benchmark, since Waymo’s commercial fleet doesn’t use freeways yet.
Waymo estimates that human drivers fail to report 32 percent of injury crashes; the company raised its benchmark for human crashes to account for that. But even without this under-reporting adjustment, Waymo’s injury crash rate would still be roughly 60 percent below that of human drivers. The true number is probably somewhere between the adjusted number (70 percent fewer crashes) and the unadjusted one (60 percent fewer crashes). It’s an impressive figure either way.
Waymo says it doesn’t apply an under-reporting adjustment to its human benchmark for airbag crashes, since humans almost always report crashes that are severe enough to trigger an airbag. So it’s easier to take Waymo’s figure here—an 84 percent decline in airbag crashes—at face value.
Waymo’s benchmarks for human drivers are “about as good as you can do,” Goodall told me. “It’s very hard to get this kind of data.”
When I talked to other safety experts, they were equally positive about the quality of Waymo’s analysis. For example, last year, I asked Phil Koopman, a professor of computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon, about a previous Waymo study that used insurance data to show its cars were significantly safer than human drivers. Koopman told me Waymo’s findings were statistically credible, with some minor caveats.
Similarly, David Zuby, the chief research officer at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, had mostly positive things to say about a December study analyzing Waymo’s first 7.1 million miles of driverless operations.
I found a few errors in Waymo’s data
If you look closely, you’ll see that one of the numbers in this article differs slightly from Waymo’s safety website. Specifically, Waymo says that its vehicles get into crashes that cause injury 73 percent less often than human drivers, while the figure I use in this article is 70 percent.
This is because I spotted a couple of apparent classification mistakes in the raw data Waymo used to generate its statistics.
Each time Waymo reports a crash to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, it records the severity of injuries caused by the crash. This can be fatal, serious, moderate, minor, none, or unknown.
When Waymo shared an embargoed copy of its numbers with me early last week, it said that there had been 16 injury crashes. However, when I looked at the data Waymo had submitted to federal regulators, it showed 15 minor injuries, two moderate injuries, and one serious injury, for a total of 18.
When I asked Waymo about this discrepancy, the company said it found a programming error. Waymo had recently started using a moderate injury category and had not updated the code that generated its crash statistics to count these crashes. Waymo fixed the error quickly enough that the official version Waymo published on Thursday of last week showed 18 injury crashes.
However, as I continued looking at the data, I noticed another apparent mistake: Two crashes had been put in the “unknown” injury category, yet the narrative for each crash indicated an injury had occurred. One report said “the passenger in the Waymo AV reported an unspecified injury.” The other stated that “an individual involved was transported from the scene to a hospital for medical treatment.”
I notified Waymo about this apparent mistake on Friday and they said they are looking into it. As I write this, the website still claims a 73 percent reduction in injury crashes. But I think it’s clear that these two “unknown” crashes were actually injury crashes. So, all of the statistics in this article are based on the full list of 20 injury crashes.
I think this illustrates that I come by my generally positive outlook on Waymo honestly: I probably scrutinize Waymo’s data releases more carefully than any other journalist, and I’m not afraid to point out when the numbers don’t add up.
Based on my conversations with Waymo, I’m convinced these were honest mistakes rather than deliberate efforts to cover up crashes. I could only identify these mistakes because Waymo went out of its way to make its findings reproducible. It would make no sense to do that if the company simultaneously tried to fake its statistics.
Could there be other injury or airbag-triggering crashes that Waymo isn’t counting? It’s certainly possible, but I doubt there have been very many. You might have noticed that I linked to local media reporting for some of Waymo’s most significant crashes. If Waymo deliberately covered up a severe crash, there would be a big risk that a crash would get reported in the media and then Waymo would have to explain to federal regulators why it wasn’t reporting all legally required crashes.
So, despite the screwups, I find Waymo’s data to be fairly credible, and those data show that Waymo’s vehicles crash far less often than human drivers on public roads.
Tim Lee was on staff at Ars from 2017 to 2021. Last year, he launched a newsletter, Understanding AI, that explores how AI works and how it’s changing our world. You can subscribe here.
Enlarge/ The latest Volkswagen Golf GTI isn’t perfect, but it has enough charm to overcome its flaws.
Jonathan Gitlin
“They won’t make them like this much longer” is a pretty hackneyed aphorism, but it certainly applies to the Volkswagen Golf GTI. The Mk 8 Golf is due for a mid-life refresh next year, and when that happens, VW will be simplifying things by dropping the manual transmission option. That means model year 2024 is the final chance anyone will have to buy a GTI with three pedals. Yes, it has some flaws, but it’s also small and nimble, both attributes lacking in so much of what the automotive industry has to offer these days.
We’ve been a bit deficient in not reviewing the Mk 8 Golf GTI until now. I reviewed the more expensive, more powerful Golf R in 2022, but the last GTI we drove was the outgoing Mk 7 car in mid-2020. That time, we were only able to source a GTI with the two-pedal, dual-clutch gearbox, a transmission I felt didn’t quite suit the engine it was mated to. On the other hand, I was effusive about the old GTI’s infotainment, calling it “one of the best systems on the market.” Well, it was 2020, remember.
Under the hood, you’ll find yet another version of VW Group’s venerable EA888 four-cylinder engine, here with a turbocharger and direct injection. It generates 241 hp (180 kW) and 273 lb-ft (370 Nm), with that peak torque arriving at just 1,750 rpm. This sends its power to the front wheels via a seven-speed DSG or the soon-to-be-retired six-speed manual.
For this review, we tested both the DSG and manual transmission versions of the GTI.
Jonathan Gitlin
I don’t know if generations of Golf styling is exactly like Star Trek movies, but I do usually prefer the even numbers…
Jonathan Gitlin
VW decided to drop the three-door Golf body style when it introduced the Mk 8 Golf.
Jonathan Gitlin
There’s 19.9 cubic feet (563 L) of cargo space with the seats in use, or 34.5 cubic feet (977 L) with the rear seats folded flat.
Jonathan Gitlin
You can blame enlightened Europe for the six-speed’s demise. Over there, buyers prefer the two-pedal version by a massive margin, which even the high take rate for three-pedal GTIs in the US and Canada couldn’t make up for. (This is, of course, contrary to popular wisdom, which has it that all Europeans shun auto ‘boxes as a matter of course.) On top of that, getting the six-speed to comply with incoming Euro 7 emissions regulations proved to be just too much, according to VW, so it decided to drop the option.
Here in the US, both transmissions are rated at a combined 27 mpg (8.7 L/100 km), with the DSG getting the edge in city driving (24 mpg/9.8 L/100 km) and the manual beating it slightly for highway (34 mpg/6.9 L/100 km). In practice, I saw as high as 36 mpg (6.5 L/100 km) on highway trips with the three-pedal GTI.
A smarter GTI
A more modern electronic architecture was one of the improvements to the Golf from Mk 7 to Mk 8. On the plus side, it enables some clever vehicle dynamics control via the torque-sensing limited slip differential, the GTI’s stability and traction control, and the adaptive dampers, if fitted. Very keen drivers might prefer a mechanical limited slip diff, but in day-to-day driving, you’d never have an issue with the Mk 8 GTI’s electronic version.
The new electronics meant a big tech upgrade for the interior, too. Out went the physical analog gauges, which were replaced by a 10.25-inch digital display with various different user-configurable views. A move to capacitive control panels instead of discrete buttons adds an extra level of minimalism to VW’s traditionally spartan approach to cabin design, but they’re far too easy to activate by mistake.
Enlarge/ Other automakers have half-heartedly tuned their EVs, but Hyundai’s N brand has gone all-out with the Ioniq 5, and the results are spectacular.
Jonathan Gitlin
Hyundai’s transformation over the past decade and a half has been one to watch. The automaker went on a hiring spree, luring design and engineering talent away from the likes of BMW and Audi to grow its own competency in these areas. It worked—few can rival the efficiency or charging speed of the current crop of Korean electric vehicles, for instance. And Hyundai’s N division has shown it can turn prosaic underpinnings into performance cars that push all the right buttons. Both of those things are on vivid display with the Ioniq 5 N.
The regular Ioniq 5 has been on sale for a while now, long enough to have just received a facelift. It’s one of our favorite EVs, with styling that calls back to the angular hatchbacks of the 1980s and an 800 V powertrain that’s easily best-in-class. Now, the company’s in-house tuners have had their way with it, applying lessons learned from rallying and touring car racing to up the fun factor.
It’s not exactly a novel approach, even for EVs. Kia beat Hyundai to the punch with the EV6 GT; the car is fearsomely fast, but I found it less compelling than the normal version, which is cheaper, less powerful, and more efficient. In fact, I’m on record as saying that when looking at EVs, the cheapest, least-powerful version is almost always the one to get.
Not in this case. The body has extra welds and adhesive to stiffen its shell, with new front and rear subframes and reinforced battery and motor mounts. The N even took mass out of the drive axles to reduce unsprung weight, similar to its World Rally Championship contender.
Among the obvious changes are blistered wheel arches and an assortment of aerodynamic ducts, winglets, channels, and spoilers.
Jonathan Gitlin
The base Ioniq 5’s bone structure was well-suited for this motorsport makeover.
Jonathan Gitlin
This will probably be my car of the year.
Jonathan Gitlin
There’s a different center console, and new sports seats, plus a steering wheel with an awful lot of buttons on it.
Jonathan Gitlin
The back is roomy, but it’s a little more claustrophobic than normal thanks to the backs of the big bucket seats.
Jonathan Gitlin
I mean, it’s not a dungeon back here or anything.
Jonathan Gitlin
There’s no need for additional bracing, so there’s as much cargo room as the base model.
Jonathan Gitlin
No frunk, just power electronics and HVAC parts.
Jonathan Gitlin
15.75-inch brake discs and four-piston calipers help stop the front wheels.
Jonathan Gitlin
The power steering has been strengthened and given a quicker ratio, and it has been comprehensively reprogrammed to deliver more feedback to the driver. As you might expect, there are all manner of clever algorithms to control how much power gets put down at each axle or to each rear wheel, with various levels of intervention for a driver to choose from.
Nominal power output is 601 hp (448 kW) and 545 lb-ft (739 Nm), with bursts of 641 hp (478 kW) and 568 lb-ft (770 Nm) for up to 10 seconds available with the push of one of the many buttons on the steering wheel. That’s sufficient for a 0–60 mph time of 3.3 seconds, with a chirp from the tires in the process.
The pair of electric motors are fed by an 84 kWh battery pack that will fast-charge from 10 to 80 percent in 18 minutes. However, just like with performance variants of internal combustion cars, the combination of big wheels, sticky performance tires, and all those aerodynamic drag-inducing addenda means it won’t be as efficient as the normal version. Here, that leads to an EPA range of just 221 miles (355 km), although that’s measured in Normal mode, not the far more efficient Eco setting.
You either get it or you don’t
The Ioniq 5 N’s best party trick is called N E-Shift, and it’s bound to be divisive. It simulates an eight-speed paddle-shift transmission, changing throttle mapping and lift-off regen to replicate each “gear,” and the effect is extremely convincing.
The different levels of performance or efficiency are readily available and easy to switch between using the multifunction steering wheel.
Jonathan Gitlin
This is the default instrument panel.
Jonathan Gitlin
Here, the N E-Shift button has been pressed, and the power gauge on the right has turned into a tachometer.
Jonathan Gitlin
In N mode, with the N E-Shift active.
Jonathan Gitlin
This was actually the second charger I visited to recharge the Ioniq 5 N; the first EA charger started smoking and shut down. But that was an EA thing, not an Ioniq 5 N thing.
Jonathan Gitlin
Like any car, if you drive it hard, you’ll have to recharge or refuel it often.
Jonathan Gitlin
As you can see, the Ioniq 5 N can also be quite efficient if necessary.
More so than most other forms of bicycle, cargo bikes are specifically designed to make ditching a car easier. Whether hauling groceries or kids, they can handle a lot more of the day-to-day errand running than most other forms of two-wheeled transport. The problem with some of the higher-end cargo bikes is that the upfront costs can be competitive with a decent used car (although operating costs will be dramatically lower) without offering quite the flexibility that a car might.
Fortunately, as Beth Mole discovered, you don’t necessarily have to spend that much to get a decent riding experience, putting cars at a further disadvantage. That left me curious as to what the price floor for a decent cargo bike might be—how little can you pay and still get a satisfactory experience? I was also keen for a second try on my experiment of going a month without using a car, meant to happen during my earlier review but interrupted by wildfire smoke.
All of which explains why I took delivery of a $1,500 cargo bike called the CycWagon, from a company called Cycrown. It’s currently well on its way toward getting me through a car-free month, but it has… well, a lot of issues.
Evoking wagons of my past
The CycWagon is a long-tail cargo bike, meaning its frame extends well to the rear of the seat, providing an area where you can fit people or packages, depending on whether you set the area up with seating or cargo-carrying hardware. They’re generally not very good as all-around bicycles. For starters, to keep the center of gravity low, they tend to use wheels with a smaller circumference that alters the handling. The longer space between the wheels also requires a relatively rigid frame, and that can translate more of the road’s bumpiness directly to your body. Depending on what attachments you’ve got on the back, they can also be considerably wider than a normal road bike, which is something to take into account while riding.
Enlarge/ I liked the wood panel aesthetic, but gradually found myself removing them for various reasons.
JOHN TIMMER
The CycWagon does make some adjustments to make the ride a bit smoother. For starters, it has a front suspension that definitely soaks up some of the road’s roughness. Wide tires that can be run at low pressures improved the situation as well. And I definitely got the sense that the rear of the frame was a bit more compliant than the Trek cargo bike I had tried a year earlier. So, overall, it was a much less jarring ride.
I cannot, however, call it a better ride because of the various decisions made by Cycrown. For starters, the company went a bit too far in trying to keep the center of gravity low, in that the cranks were low enough to the ground that the pedals would scrape pavement if you tried to lean into a turn while pedaling. I gradually adjusted to remembering to stop pedaling when turning, but by that time I had scraped the finish off of both sides of both pedals, leaving bare metal exposed.
I have gotten quite used to e-bikes that are rated for my height but don’t fit my legs, but the CycWagon’s seat was so low that my thighs were horizontal while pedaling, leaving me feeling like I had just shoved a small kid off their bike and taken it for a spin. The low seat was oddly paired with handlebars from a foldable bike, for reasons that mystify me. This does allow you to fold them down, but it’s not obvious to me when that would be useful. But it also positions the grips a bit far forward, making the riding stance even more awkward. Still, the handlebars do come with a vertical adjustment, so it’s possible to find a reasonably comfortable arrangement.
Enlarge/ Even at its maximum extension, the seat was very low and close to the pedals, which were in turn very close to the ground.
John Timmer
There’s probably no way to make a long-tail a fun ride, but all of these design choices made the ride more awkward than it needed to be and more than offset the cushiness that the tires and front shock offered.
The bike itself was a fairly utilitarian gray. But it came with a wooden panel for the deck of the cargo area, and there are two optional foot rests that can be installed on either side of the rear wheel that are also topped with wood. Maybe it’s nostalgia for the cargo wagons of my youth, but I liked the mixed metal/wood look. Unfortunately, I gradually discovered that all of that wood had to go.
Enlarge/ The lifted, rugged, off-road version-of-normal trend has come to the Ioniq 5 with the new XLT.
Hyundai
The Hyundai Ioniq 5 is one of our favorite electric vehicles. It offers excellent efficiency and really rapid charging, all wrapped up in a shape that exudes late-’80s hatchback vibes. Today, Hyundai revealed details about the Ioniq 5’s update for model year 2025 (MY25), and it’s noteworthy for a number of reasons.
For starters, when MY25 Ioniq 5s start appearing on dealer lots in Q4, they’ll arrive with J3400 ports concealed underneath their charger port flaps. Once known as the North American Charging Standard (NACS), this is the Tesla-style charger plug, which means MY25 Ioniq 5s should be able to fast charge at more than 17,000 Tesla Superchargers throughout the US and Canada.
The flip side is that a MY25 Ioniq 5 will require an adapter if the driver wants to charge it with a CCS1 charger, although Hyundai will include that dongle with a new car. The automaker says that as it refreshes other EVs in Q4, they will also only come with J3400 ports. For existing Hyundai EVs with CCS1 ports, J3400 adapters are supposed to be available in Q1 2025.
Another benefit of starting production at Hyundai’s new plant in Georgia is that US-made Ioniq 5s will be eligible for some of the IRS clean vehicle tax credit. This is now linked to domestic battery content, and Hyundai says that, initially, it expects US-made Ioniq 5s (and other EVs from the Georgia factory) to be eligible for at least $3,750. (Leased Ioniq 5s qualify for the full $7,500 tax credit.)
Hyundai says that model-year 2025 Ioniq 5s will come from the factory with native Tesla-style J3400 ports.
Hyundai
This is the XRT interior, and unless I’m mistaken, it’s the same as MY24 Ioniq 5s. (Hyundai’s press materials say the new interior tweaks are for non-XRT models.)
Hyundai
Hyundai might encroach on some Rivian sales with the XRT.
Hyundai
A bigger battery
The Ioniq 5 is also getting a battery capacity bump for MY25. The standard-range Ioniq 5 increases from 58 kWh to 63 kWh, boosting the range by 20 miles (32 km) to 240 miles (385 km). The long-range models see capacity grow from 77.4 kWh to 84 kWh—this adds seven miles to the range of the longest-range Ioniq 5, which will be able to travel 310 miles (489 km) on a single charge.
Not all of the longer-range Ioniq 5s can go that far; as EV aficionados know, fitting bigger wheels to one does deleterious things to its range.
That definitely applies to a new addition to the Ioniq 5 lineup, a lifted black-bumper-clad off-road-capable variant called the XRT. The XRT combines an all-wheel-drive powertrain with new 18-inch wheels and all-terrain tires, new suspension tuning, including a 0.9-inch (23 mm) lift, and a whole lot of black trim.
All the other Ioniq 5s (barring the bonkers Ioniq 5 N) get some interior and exterior tweaks for MY25, including new front and rear bumpers, a new rear spoiler, a redesigned center console and new climate control panel, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and some new safety-focused driver assists.
Pricing for the refreshed Ioniq 5 range should be available closer to the cars’ arrival at dealerships.
Enlarge/ The third-generation Audi SQ5 (blue) and Q5 (black) go on sale early next year.
Audi
MUNICH—Germany’s triumvirate of luxury automakers made their reputations off the backs of sedans, but the uncomfortable fact is that these days, they sell far more in the way of SUVs and crossovers, particularly in North America, where the prevailing sentiment is that station wagons belong with bell bottom jeans in the suburbs of the ’70s and hatchbacks are reserved for college kids. The ur-Quattro might have made Audi famous, but the Q5 is what keeps it profitable.
There’s a new Q5 on the way, the third in its line. As global electrification timelines are proving to be a little slower than once predicted, automakers are responding accordingly, and at Audi, that has meant developing Premium Platform Combustion, a new flexible architecture for internal combustion engine-powered vehicles (including hybrids) that combines the latest in software-defined vehicle technology with more fuel-efficient powertrains and the latest active and passive safety standards.
In mid-July, we published our first look at the first car to use PPC, the next Audi A5. Expect the SUV you see in this article to be a far more common sight in the US.
The new Q5 is a curvier-looking car than I expected given Audi’s propensity for designing and producing cars with complicated creased body panels—here, that’s relegated to the treatment along the lower parts of the doors. Audi’s growing expertise in streamlining its electric vehicles has been applied to the Q5 as well, although exactly how much it has helped fuel efficiency will remain unclear until closer to the Q5 actually going on sale in the US early next year.
The new Q5 gets bigger holes in the radiator grille, which is now more of a 3D design. The grille also conceals the forward-looking sensors. And the air vents are real air vents, not just for show.
Audi
The new Q5 has more room inside for rear passengers and cargo.
Audi
The Q5’s spoiler projects a brake light onto the rear window across its entire length, in addition to providing direct light.
Audi
The SQ5 is the sportier version.
Audi
SQ6s get round tailpipes.
Audi
The interior layout is quite cosseting.
Audi
When that happens, we’ll be restricted to a pair of models. There’s a 268 hp (200 kW) 2.0 L four-cylinder TSFI engine that powers the Q5, or a 362 hp (270 kW) 3.0 L V6, which powers the SQ5. Both are all-wheel drive, and both use seven-speed dual-clutch transmissions. But we won’t get a less-powerful 2.0 L Q5 here, nor the 48 V mild-hybrid powertrain.
The US is also set to miss out on the animations in the Q5’s taillights. Like the A5, A6 e-tron, and Q6 e-tron, our cars will still arrive with three-dimensional OLED light clusters, but owners will have to content themselves with the ability to pick between eight different static themes. And don’t expect to be able to order a Q5 with a cloth interior—American Audi customers just want leather, apparently.
The similarities with the A5 continue on the inside. There’s more headroom, and it’s an airier cabin generally given the larger internal volume, but the layout of the dash, console, and infotainment screens is basically the same, including the optional passenger infotainment screen, which has an active privacy mode, so the driver can’t see what’s being displayed while the car is moving.
Pricing should be available closer to the Q5 going on sale in early 2025.
Enlarge/ Jaguar sourced the I-Pace’s battery cells from LG Energy Solutions. But now there’s a problem with some of them.
Jonathan Gitlin
The Jaguar I-Pace deserves more credit. When it debuted in 2018, it was one of only two electric vehicles on sale that could offer Tesla-rivaling range. The other was the much more plebeian Chevrolet Bolt, which was cheaper but nowhere near as luxurious, nor as enjoyable to drive. Now, some I-Pace and Bolt owners have something else in common, as Jaguar issues a recall for some model-year 2019 I-Paces due to a fire risk, probably caused by badly folded battery anode tabs.
The problem doesn’t affect all I-Paces, just those built between January 9, 2018, and March 14, 2019—2,760 cars in total in the US. To date, three fires have been reported following software updates, which Jaguar’s recall report says does not provide “an appropriate level of protection for the 2019MY vehicles in the US.”
Although Jaguar’s investigation is still ongoing, it says that its battery supplier (LG Energy Solutions) is inspecting some battery modules that were identified by diagnostic software as “having characteristics of a folded anode tab.” In 2021, problems with LG batteries—in this case, folded separators and torn anode tabs—resulted in Chevrolet recalling every Bolt on the road and replacing their batteries under warranty at a cost of more than $1.8 billion.
For now, the Jaguar recall is less drastic. A software update will limit the maximum charge of the affected cars to 80 percent, to prevent the packs from charging to 100 percent. Jaguar also says that, similar to other OEMs who have conducted recalls for similar problems, the patched I-Paces should be parked away from structures for 30 days post-recall and should be charged outdoors where possible.
$321 million from today’s announcement will be spent on 41 different projects across the country—these projects are a mix of level 2 AC chargers as well as DC fast chargers. The remaining $200 million will continue funding DC fast chargers along designated highway corridors.
The Joint Office of Energy and Transportation, which administers the federal funding, called out a $15 million project to install chargers at 53 sites in Milwaukee and a $3.9 million project to install publicly accessible chargers on the Sioux Reservation in North Dakota as examples of the latest awards.
“Today’s investments in public community charging fill crucial gaps and provide the foundation for a zero-emission future where everyone can choose to ride or drive electric for greater individual convenience and reduced fueling costs, as well as cleaner air and lower healthcare costs for all Americans,” said Gabe Kline, executive director of the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation.
The Biden administration set a goal of 500,000 EV chargers nationwide by 2030. The Joint Office’s latest data shows more than 189,000 chargers across the country, although fewer than 44,000 of these were DC fast chargers.
But it cites real improvements over the past few years—56 percent of the most heavily trafficked highways have a fast charger every 50 miles, up from 38 percent in January 2021. And in June, it says an additional 3,000 charging ports were added to the national network. Other funding has gone to repairing or upgrading existing infrastructure, starting with a currently inoperable site in Washington, DC.
At the same time, progress has not been especially rapid for the highway charger NEVI (National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure) program. NEVI funds are administered by the states, similar to the way they manage federal highway funding, and the extra layers of bureaucracy have meant that the first NEVI-funded charging station—located in Ohio—only became operational in mid-December 2023.
Enlarge/ Mercedes-Benz got into the passenger infotainment game with the EQS.
Mercedes-Benz
Jumping into a new car from the driver’s seat of something built before 2010 can cause quite the case of future shock. Over that time, automakers have been on a technology frenzy, loading up new vehicles with all manner of gizmos, gadgets, and features, some meant to make your life easier, others to make your journey safer. But do car buyers actually want all this stuff? A new survey by JD Power suggests they may not.
With enough time, a new convenience feature just becomes something buyers expect to be there. Starter motors replaced hand cranks for a reason, and I imagine most modern motorists would prefer not to deal with manual chokes. Manual window winders became more expensive and heavier than electric ones, leading to their extinction.
Some of the technology creep has come about by regulation or the threat of it. While many bemoan the “iPad on the dash,” the legal requirement for a backup camera means there needs to be a screen in the car to display that feed. Steering wheels and dashboards grew to conceal airbags. And now vehicle fascias conceal sensors that can alert the driver or stop the car in the event of an imminent head-on crash.
But according to JD Power’s Tech Experience Survey, which “measures problems encountered and the user experience with advanced technologies as they first enter the market,” advanced technology in cars needs to solve real problems, and too much tech simply doesn’t do that.
For example, drivers generally appreciate advanced driver assistance systems, known as ADAS in the industry; blind spot monitoring solves a real problem. But does anyone ever actually use their automatic parking system? JD Power found that systems that partially automate a driving task—even the most advanced hands-free systems—had a low perceived usefulness, a finding that dovetails nicely with data published last month by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that revealed partial automation did not make cars any safer.
Enough with the screens
My current bete noir is the trend for automakers to include an additional infotainment screen directly in front of the front passenger, separate from the main infotainment screen in the center stack. Blame Ferrari, which started adding a passenger screen to its supercars in the perhaps misguided impression that Ferrari drivers wanted their passengers to know how fast they were actually going.
The early Ferrari passenger displays were somewhat limited, but they have morphed into a second fully fledged infotainment display for the not-driver. Porsche did this with the Taycan, then Mercedes brought us the “hyperscreen,” which was really three separate displays and plenty of blank dashboard, all bonded to a single sheet of glass. The latest trick, as seen in some new Audis, is to have an active privacy mode so that the passenger can watch video but the driver can’t see anything at all on that display.
If the idea of giving passengers their own display when there’s already one immediately next to it sounds excessive, welcome to my club. We’re not alone—JD Power says passenger screens are negatively reviewed by many owners and notes that “it is difficult for dealers to teach new owners how to use the primary infotainment screen, let alone a second one.”
Other examples of new technology solving a nonexistent problem include facial recognition, fingerprint scanners, and gesture control. Having experienced all three in various new cars over the past few years, I am not surprised by their inclusion. I never felt safe enough, though, with Genesis’ facial recognition to leave the key at home, and BMW’s gesture controls mean that you might accidentally turn the sound system to full volume if you talk with your hands too much.
But not every new innovation was met with opprobrium. JD Power calls out AI-based features like smart climate control as having quickly won popularity.
“A strong advanced tech strategy is crucial for all vehicle manufacturers, and many innovative technologies are answering customer needs,” said Kathleen Rizk, senior director of user experience benchmarking and technology at JD Power. “At the same time, this year’s study makes it clear that owners find some technologies of little use and/or are continually annoying.”
The market research company says its tech survey is designed to help automakers decide where to invest their R&D resources. If we start seeing any objectionable in-car tech become less common, we’ll know which OEMs were paying attention.
Enlarge/ The battery pack of a Volkswagen ID. Buzz electric microbus on the assembly line during a media tour of the Volkswagen AG multipurpose and commercial vehicle plant in Hannover, Germany, on Thursday, June 16, 2022.
Lithium-ion battery fires can be intense and frightening. As someone who used to repair second-hand smartphones, I’ve extinguished my fair share of flaming iPhones with punctured lithium-ion batteries. And the type of smartphone battery in your pocket right now is similar to what’s inside of electric vehicles. Except, the EV battery stores way more energy—so much energy that some firefighters are receiving special training to extinguish the extra-intense EV flames that are emitted by burning EV batteries after road accidents.
If you’ve been reading the news about EVs, you’ve likely encountered plenty of scary articles about battery fires on the rise. Recently, the US National Transportation Safety Board and the California Highway Patrol announced they are investigating a Tesla semi truck fire that ignited after the vehicle struck a tree. The lithium-ion battery burned for around four hours.
Does this mean that you should worry about your personal electric vehicle as a potential fire hazard? Not really. It makes more sense to worry about a gas-powered vehicle going up in flames than an electric vehicle, since EVs are less likely to catch fire than their more traditional transportation counterparts.
“Fires because of battery manufacturing defects are really very rare,” says Matthew McDowell, a codirector of Georgia Tech’s Advanced Battery Center. “Especially in electric vehicles, because they also have battery management systems.” The software keeps tabs on the different cells that comprise an EV’s battery and can help prevent the battery from being pushed beyond its limits.
How do electric vehicle fires happen?
During a crash that damages the EV battery, a fire may start with what’s called thermal runaway. EV batteries aren’t one solid brick. Rather, think of these batteries as a collection of many smaller batteries, called cells, pressed up against each other. With thermal runaway, a chemical reaction located in one of the cells lights an initial fire, and the heat soon spreads to each adjacent cell until the entire EV battery is burning.
Greg Less, director of the University of Michigan’s Battery Lab, breaks down EV battery fires into two distinct categories: accidents and manufacturing defects. He considers accidents to be everything from a collision that punctures the battery to a charging mishap. “Let’s take those off the table,” says Less. “Because, I think people understand that, regardless of the vehicle type, if you’re in an accident, there could be a fire.”
While all EV battery fires are hard to put out, fires from manufacturing defects are likely more concerning to consumers, due to their seeming randomness. (Think back to when all those Samsung phones had to be recalled because battery issues made them fire hazards.) How do these rare issues with EV battery manufacturing cause fires at what may feel like random moments?
It all comes down to how the batteries are engineered. “There’s some level of the engineering that has gone wrong and caused the cell to short, which then starts generating heat,” says Less. “Heat causes the liquid electrolyte to evaporate, creating a gas inside the cell. When the heat gets high enough, it catches fire, explodes, and then propagates to other cells.” These kinds of defects are likely what caused the highly publicized recent EV fires in South Korea, one of which damaged over a hundred vehicles in a parking lot.
How to react if your EV catches fire
According to the National Fire Prevention Agency, if an EV ever catches fire while you’re behind the wheel, immediately find a safe way to pull over and get the car away from the main road. Then, turn off the engine and make sure everyone leaves the vehicle immediately. Don’t delay things by grabbing personal belongings, just get out. Remain over 100 feet away from the burning car as you call 911 and request the fire department.
Also, you shouldn’t attempt to put out the flame yourself. This is a chemical fire, so a couple buckets of water won’t sufficiently smother the flames. EV battery fires can take first responders around 10 times more water to extinguish than a fire in a gas-powered vehicle. Sometimes the firefighters may decide to let the battery just burn itself out, rather than dousing it with water.
Once an EV battery catches fire, it’s possible for the chemical fire to reignite after the initial burn dies down. It’s even possible for the battery to go up in flames again days later. “Both firefighters and secondary responders, such as vehicle recovery or tow companies, also need to be aware of the potential for stranded energy that may remain in the undamaged portions of the battery,” says Thomas Barth, an investigator and biomechanics engineer for the NTSB, in an emailed statement. “This energy can pose risks for electric shock or cause the vehicle to reignite.”
Although it may be tempting to go back into the car and grab your wallet or other important items if the flame grows smaller or goes out for a second, resist the urge. Wait until your local fire department arrives to assess the overall situation and give you the all clear. Staying far away from the car also helps minimize your potential for breathing in unhealthy fumes emitted from the battery fire.
How could EV batteries be safer?
In addition to quick recalls and replacements of potentially faulty lithium-ion batteries, both researchers I spoke with were excited about future possibilities for a different kind of battery, called solid-state, to make EVs even more reliable. “These batteries could potentially show greater thermal stability than lithium-ion batteries,” says McDowell. “When it heats up a lot, it may just remain pretty stable.” With a solid-state battery, the liquid electrolyte is no longer part of battery cells, removing the most flammable aspect of battery design.
These solid-state batteries are already available in some smaller electronics, but producing large versions of the batteries at vast scale continues to be a hurdle that EV manufacturers are working to overcome.
