Author: EVAI

• Future Mini EVs will switch to the BMW Neue Klasse platform.
• BMW created the Neue Klasse architecture with either rear- or all-wheel drive in mind.
• No cheaper front-wheel-drive version of the platform is planned.

Minis have traditionally been small and fun front-wheel drive cars characterized by their nippy go-kart-like handling. All Minis, both before and after the BMW takeover in 2000, have been front-wheel drive, but a new report suggests that may change in the future as Mini models adopt the new Neue Klasse platform.

Autocar says that when the current electric Minis reach the end of their lifecycle, they will be replaced by Neue Klasse-underpinned cars. They asked Joachim Post, a BMW purchasing and supply board member, about the possible future switch to rear-wheel drive, and he didn’t deny it, stating, “We will see what the future is. We want to make one thing feasible: sheer driving pleasure.”

While that is far from a confirmation, it sounds like he was implying that a switch to RWD is very much in Mini’s future. Unlike Hyundai-Kia or Volkswagen, which have some cheaper front-wheel-drive versions of their E-GMP (used in cars like the Kia EV4) and MEB platforms (used in entry-level VW EVs), BMW has no plans to develop a front-wheel-drive version of its Neue Klasse platform to underpin more affordable models. That means it may have to make future Minis rear-wheel drive.

BMW Blog reached out to BMW to ask about the prospect of front-wheel-drive vehicles made on the Neue Klasse platform, and the manufacturer said it had no such plans. All Neue Klasse cars will have (at least) one electrically excited synchronous motor (EESM) motor in the back. All-wheel-drive cars will get an additional asynchronous motor to power the front axle. There will also be tri- and quad-motor performance BMW EVs made on this platform, likely with two motors per axle, while all base model cars will be rear-wheel-drive.

The first-generation Mini Cooper SE is still among the top three most engaging electric cars I’ve ever driven, even though it was a combustion car converted into an EV. It borrowed the electric motor from the rear-wheel-drive BMW i3S, but it was actually more fun to drive than the BMW, even with the motor driving the front wheels.

Around the time I drove the Cooper SE, I also tried the Honda e, a bespoke rear-wheel-drive EV designed to be a quick and fun city runabout. However, while I really wanted to like that car and it had so many good points, I was surprised to discover that the front-wheel-drive Mini was much more fun to drive and a much bigger enthusiast pleaser than the Honda.

If BMW makes future Mini EVs rear-wheel drive, it will have to do a lot of work on the cars to differentiate them from the BMWs they will share the platform with. Even though there are common traits, BMWs and Minis feel quite different to drive, and a lot of this comes from which axle is powered in cars from each brand.

Even if this becomes reality, Mini’s switch to rear-wheel drive is still a few years away. The manufacturer fairly recently released a new electric three-door Cooper and a five-door crossover called the Aceman, which are built on a reengineered version of the Great Wall Motor front-wheel-drive platform related to the one that underpins the Ora Cat. These new electric Minis will likely be around until toward the end of the decade, so BMW has time to work a front-wheel drive EV platform or retain Mini’s trademark driving manners in a rear-wheel drive package.

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• Report suggests GSA may be forced to pull the plug on thousands of EVs and chargers
• GSA’s biggest fleets are USPS, Dept. of Defense; 20% of its 2024 light-vehicle orders were EVs
• Could affect chargers at national parks, VA hospitals, other venues

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), which manages all federal government buildings and has been nicknamed by some as the largest landlord in the world, is reportedly planning to shut down its EV chargers and offload some or all of its EVs.

The move would take about 8,000 charging connectors and thousands of EVs out of service, according to a report from The Verge, citing a GSA email and a source familiar with the plans.

If so, it might amount to an exceptionally strange juxtaposition for Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO has spent years admirably facing down Tesla short-sellers on the viability of EVs and selling the public on how EVs cost less to own and use over the long run—even claiming, perhaps optimistically, at various points that Tesla’s EVs would be appreciating assets. Musk is now managing the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which according to the Trump administration seeks “to modernize federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”

If running an EV and keeping electricity flowing to its Level 2 charger isn’t the technology that maximizes cost savings for the fleet over the long run, as Musk has argued for years, the Tesla CEO might need to update some of its core selling points for EVs—or have a conversation with shareholders.

The news of the charger shutdown and EV purge was first reported by Colorado Public Radio on Thursday, which reported that chargers at the Denver Federal Center were due to be shut down. The Verge then reported Friday that it had obtained the GSA email telling federal workers to begin the process of shutting down all EV chargers overseen by the agency, which is reportedly due to be formally announced internally next week.

Volkswagen, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and UT Knoxville test wireless charging

The GSA currently operates or hosts various Level 2 AC chargers across the country, totaling about 8,000 connectors. They’re mostly there to charge government-owned EVs, but they also charge personal vehicles of federal employees, according to The Verge. Examples of charger locations seen by Green Car Reports as under GSA control that might affect public accessibility might include publicly accessible locations at national parks and VA hospitals.

Highway fast-charging infrastructure already frozen

If true, it will be the second significant impact by the Trump administration on EV chargers that were essentially already paid for. It froze EV charger funding earlier this month, pending new rules not yet released, something automakers have already rallied against. California plans to move ahead with its own EV charger buildout despite the funding freeze; it’s also promised to offer purchase incentives for most EVs (likely not including Teslas), equivalent to the current federal tax credit, should the administration eliminate that.

“As GSA has worked to align with the current administration, we have received direction that all GSA owned charging stations are not mission critical,” the email reads.

There’s nothing to directly indicate that the decision to shut down chargers comes from Tesla CEO Elon Musk. But the term “not mission critical” echoes language often used by Musk, who has been arbitrarily cutting federal spending and jobs in his role as an advisor to the Trump Administration. And, if this is overseen by Musk, it directly conflicts with the CEO’s longtime efforts suggesting that Teslas would make good public-service vehicles with lower operating costs.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggesting Tesla EVs cost less for patrols

Some regional federal offices have already been instructed to take their chargers offline, according to The Verge, which adds that the GSA is looking to cancel current network contracts that keep chargers operational. Once those contracts are canceled, chargers will be “turned off at the breaker,” the email reads.

The federal fleet overseen by the GSA currently includes approximately 650,000 vehicles, more than half of which were due to be replaced with EVs under a Biden administration plan. Although a fleet summary hub page has been removed, a November 2024 release from the GSA notes that it’s ordered a cumulative 82,000 EVs and installed more than 10,500 individual charging ports, with an additional 52,535 charge ports in progress. It also reported that EVs made up 20% of its light-duty vehicle orders in 2024.

2022 Ford F-150 Lightning

The report, citing the same source with knowledge of the plan, notes that GSA-controlled facilities will stop using EVs and start offloading them, although it’s not clear whether these will be sold or stored.

Of course, chargers at facilities are essential for keeping government EVs in service. “You can’t have an electric vehicle if you can’t plug it in,” said Mark Dowd, who was the Biden administration’s director of zero emission vehicles and on the White House Council on Environmental Quality, in a 2023 podcast from the administration.

Independent of any vehicle spending, the previous administration also allocated $975 million to the GSA to upgrade federal buildings with “emerging and sustainable technologies”—including EV charging—so it’s unclear how much of that outlay it would be abandoning in doing so.

USPS Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDV) – Oshkosh Defense

Fraught USPS EV order in question, again?

U.S. Postal Service vehicles comprise more than a third of the GSA fleet, and non-tactical Department of Defense vehicles make up another third. All the other federal agencies make up the other third.

Of course, this begs the question of whether the United States Postal Service (USPS) will take delivery of as many EVs as anticipated, after a debacle that led to a plan to purchase mainly gasoline vehicles. The federal government currently has tens of thousands of EVs in use, and it planned to replace more than half of its approximately 650,000 vehicles with EVs.

GSA either helps buy vehicles for agencies or leases them to agencies, depending on the situation. Under a Biden executive order, GSA was transitioning to all-electric vehicle purchases by 2027. GSA replaces a small percentage of its vehicles annually; vehicles haven’t been pre-emptively replaced with EVs, rather as gasoline models reach the end of their service life. Examples include a push to switch National Park Service vehicles from gasoline F-150 trucks to Ford F-150 Lightning models on an ongoing basis.

GSA keeps vehicles in use a long time, according to federal data, and in many cases well into high mileage, which seems like an ideal use case for EVs. According to its own current standards, the minimum life cycle for replacement of electric trucks, for instance, is seven years or 90,000 miles. Many vehicles in the GSA fleet are much older.

Tesla website promoting savings over gasoline vehicles – Feb. 2025

Musk has spent much bandwidth on EVs as smart money

As Tesla CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly emphasized over a span of more than a decade, and as Tesla’s very own site has aggressively pushed this as a built-in part of its pricing, EVs cost less to run—not just to fuel, but to own and maintain. According to Tesla the Model 3, for instance, has a five-year gas savings of $5,000 based on 10,000 miles a year or $7,500 based on 15,000 miles a year (with Los Angeles as the location). Longer maintenance intervals on EVs, including items like brake pads and fluids, mean preventative maintenance costs are far lower. 

If Musk is at all behind this, it leads to a bigger question: If the chief cost-cutter and efficiency master doesn’t actually believe that EVs are cheaper and more efficient for the government to be running daily—or can’t convince President Trump that they are—will Tesla continue to sell its own vehicles on that premise?

–with reporting by Stephen Edelstein and Bengt Halvorson

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The Polestar 3 electric SUV will get an upgraded chipset for its second model year, the automaker confirmed Thursday in a press release.

Due to arrive in showrooms later in the 2025 calendar year, the 2026 Polestar 3 is the first of the brand’s EVs to receive the Nvidia Drive AGX Orin processor, a more powerful successor to the Drive AGX Xavier processor the SUV launched with.

2026 Polestar 3 charging

In addition to being installed in newly built vehicles, the more powerful processor will be offered as a free upgrade to existing Polestar 3 owners. Parent brand Volvo earlier this week confirmed it’s doing the same thing for owners of the EX90 electric SUV, which shares the SPA2 architecture with the Polestar 3.

Overall, it’s unusual for an automaker to update hardware post-sale rather than just software.

Volvo has said the added computing power of the Drive AGX Orin, which will also be used in that brand’s upcoming ES90 electric sedan, will support AI-based features, more sophisticated safety tech, an array of onboard sensors, and a more efficient battery management system. That will likely be the case for the Polestar 3 and any future Polestar models that use this chipset as well.

2026 Polestar 3 Plug & Charge

The 2025 Polestar 3 is built in Charleston, South Carolina, and it arrived as a sportier, two-row counterpart to the three-row Volvo EX90 with which it shares a platform. All versions have a 111-kwh battery pack, with up to 350 miles of range in base single-motor rear-wheel-drive form.

Polestar hasn’t yet given a timeline for when it will update existing 2025 models, but it says it will contact customers when the new chips are available. Installation will take place at Polestar-authorized service centers which, in keeping with the brand’s hybrid business model, is handled by franchised dealerships even though Polestar doesn’t sell car cars through them.

• Tesla spent over a year investigating the issue at the behest of a non-U.S. regulatory agency
• In the U.S. Tesla’s latest recall affects the 2023 Model 3 and Model Y
• Tesla’s NHTSA recall filing leaves unanswered questions for global markets

Tesla has acknowledged over 300,000 of its EVs could lose power steering.

On Thursday, Tesla’s Daniel Donovan, Technical Publications Manager, filed an acknowledgement with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that stated the automaker will be conducting a recall. The recall, posted a day before by the agency, involved 376,241 Tesla EVs.

Specifically, the recall involved the 2023 Model 3 sedan and 2023 Model Y crossover.

Tesla estimates only 1% of the vehicles included in the recall have the defect.

Those vehicles were manufactured in the U.S. prior to software release 2023.38.4. Model 3s affected were produced between February 28, 2023 and October 11, 2023 while Model Ys were assembled between February 24, 2023 and October 11, 2023.

These vehicles are equipped with electronic power-assist steering (EPAS) systems that, prior to software version 2023.38.4, could experience a code error that leads to overstressed motor drive components. Tesla said that if this occurs above 0 mph, steering effort will not be affected though alerts will appear on the vehicle’s dash-mounted screen. Once the vehicle reaches 0 mph, the steering system will revert to a manual system without assist. It’s unclear how long and under what conditions the reversion to manual steering would persist.

Tesla acknowledged this could increase the risk of a collision. Tesla will recall all vehicles in all markets affected by this situation, but failed to mention how many vehicles that would include outside the U.S. or detail those vehicles.

Tesla said software release 2023.38.4 and beyond resolve the issue, and that as of January 23, 2025, some 99% of affected vehicles in the U.S. have installed the release or later software versions. Tesla did not mention how many vehicles outside the U.S. have been updated or any information pertaining to those vehicles. U.S. vehicles in production rolled off the assembly line with the updated software as of October 11, 2023.

The recall notice said an unidentified regulatory authority in a non-U.S. market area opened an investigation into complaints related to the loss of power steering by the described conditions. Tesla spent over a year performing technical reviews with this unidentified authority before issuing a recall for vehicles affected on January 16, 2025. The automaker didn’t file the report with the NHTSA until February. 

Tesla admitted in the filing that it has identified over 3,012 warranty claims and 570 field reports in the U.S., but does not expand on any claims or reports outside the U.S. market, which is where the original investigation started. Tesla claimed it’s unaware of any crashes, injuries, or deaths related to the condition.

Tesla’s already issued a large recall in 2025 and seven Cybertruck recalls in 2024 alone. The automaker’s sales fell in 2024 while its share of the U.S. EV market fell below 50%.

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