Author: EVAI

The Gordon Murray Group (GMG) has announced its leadership of a new consortium aiming to develop an “ultra-lightweight” monocoque chassis known as M-LightEn. The project, supported by the U.K. government, brings together key partners, including Carbon ThreeSixty, Constellium, and Brunel University of London. Founded by legendary…

In recent years, Rolls-Royce has launched a series of Black Badge models aimed at updating the stalwart luxury brand’s image with a more youthful and sporty demeanor and a darker color palette. Now the first electric Rolls-Royce—the Spectre coupe—is getting the Black Badge treatment.

Rolls claims it’s the most powerful production car it’s ever sold—gasoline or electric. That’s thanks to a retuned version of the Spectre’s dual-motor powertrain, which is now rated at 659 hp and 792 lb-ft of torque. Those are increases of 75 hp and 128 lb-ft over the standard Spectre.

Full power is unlocked via Infinity Mode, which also sharpens accelerator response, but Rolls-Royce also created a Spirited Mode launch mode that allows the Spectre Black Badge to accelerate from 0-60 mph in 4.1 seconds, according to the automaker.

Rolls-Royce Spectre Black Badge

Spirited Mode is activated by fully depressing the accelerator and brake pedals, then releasing the brake, making it somewhat like the launch modes available in other high-power EVs. Such a feature might seem a bit out of character for the stately Rolls brand, but the automaker claims that a review of anonymized data voluntary provided by current Spectre owners showed a desire for such a feature, impart because drivers tended to use max power mainly in short bursts.

Other mechanical changes include retuned steering with a heavier feel, and suspension that aims for better body control and reduced squat under acceleration. It’s unclear how these changes will affect EPA range, which currently sits at 291 miles. That’s achieved with a 102-kwh battery pack, making the Spectre surprisingly efficient for a gilded luxury car—making 260 EPA-rated miles out of 102 kwh.

The Black Badge treatment also brings darkened chrome trim and 23-inch wheels on the outside, which in the press photos is matched by brooding Vapour Violet paint. Customers will have access to the typical large catalog of paint options, though, and even multiple colors for the car’s illuminated grille.

Rolls-Royce Spectre Black Badge

Inside, an elaborate interior motif consisting of 5,500 individual lighting elements is sprinkled across the dashboard and door panels, set against a piano black backdrop to give the impression of a night sky. It’s paired with what Rolls-Royce calls Technical Fibre, comprised of woven carbon fiber and metal over a wood base.

Such decadence is currently rare among EVs, but obligatory for a Rolls-Royce. The Spectre likely won’t be the ultra-luxury brand’s only electric model for long, as Rolls is also reportedly planning an electric SUV and sedan.

The 2025 Mini Cooper has been redesigned, but will retain the Oxford Edition available as part of the lineup of previous-generation models, Mini confirmed Thursday. Available with the 2-Door and 4-Door hatchback body styles, the Oxford Edition will be produced in limited numbers, but those customers who can get their hands on one will pay…

Jeep is adding a limited edition of the Wrangler 4xe plug-in hybrid that adds capability to the mid-level Sahara grade. The 2025 Jeep Wrangler 4xe Backcountry is based on the Sahara, which is two steps up from the base Sport S trim level but not quite as off-road-capable as the Wrangler 4xe Rubicon. Instead of the Sahara’s all-season tires, the…

• 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

What kind of vehicle is the 2025 Porsche Cayenne? What does it compare to? The 2025 Porsche Cayenne is a midsize luxury SUV with a very sporty personality. Shop it against the Land Rover Range Rover Sport and higher-end versions of the BMW X5 and Mercedes-Benz GLE-Class. Is the 2025 Porsche Cayenne a good SUV? The Cayenne is massively expensive…

A Boston-based private equity real estate firm has struck a deal to buy California’s Willow Springs International Raceway, The Drive reported Friday. CrossHarbor Capital Partners, which specializes in “property turnarounds” for commercial real estate and currently has a property portfolio valued at over $10 billion, confirmed to the website that a…

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%.

Rivian owners in cold weather may be experiencing issues with their headlights. The startup automaker issued a recall for 17,260 R1T pickup trucks and R1S SUVs due to the headlights possibly failing to illuminate in the cold. The recall only affects 2025 model year R1T and R1S models, and the automaker believes 2,905 vehicles are experiencing the…