Category: Reviews

It’s no secret that it’s tough going for any electric newcomer. For lots of brands, both startup and legacy, it’s been last-man-standing when it comes to just who can actually get a compelling EV product to market. And there’s always the question of whether what’s in the oven is even what people are metaphorically hungry for anymore. The economy is wonky, people are scared, and federal incentives to both build and buy EVs have been cut off at the knees.

Nevertheless, brands gotta keep going, no? Especially brands like Lucid Motors, an EV-only luxury brand aiming to usurp the likes of Mercedes-Benz and BMW. Lucid’s fooled around with the very good (but sometimes glitchy) Air sedan. The Air is great, but let’s face it—it’s a big luxury sedan in a world where sedan buyers are becoming fewer and fewer.

Lucid’s latest model, the Gravity, promises to right the ship with wider appeal, in the form of a three-row luxury SUV.

For the next two weeks (and slightly beyond), a few of the staff here at InsideEVs will have the chance to put the car through its paces. I’ve got first dibs this week down here in Ohio, and then Editor-in-Chief Patrick George and my colleague Suvrat Kothari will get a go at Lucid’s three-row SUV in New York.

Our Gravity loans may slightly differ in color or possibly optional equipment, but it looks like they’ll all follow the same baseline Grand Touring trim. This means our cars will have a base price of at least $94,900 (before destination fee). These SUVs come with a dual motor setup fed by a 123-kilowatt-hour battery, good for an EPA estimated 450 miles of range.

Oh, and the Gravity isn’t a slowpoke, either. This thing has an electric motor at each end, good for a combined output of 828 horsepower. This quiet behemoth’s sprint to 60 mph comes in about 3.5 seconds.

This is a very important model for Lucid. As stated before, the Air sedan’s an amazing car, despite its flaws. And one of its biggest flaws is just that it’s not an SUV. For the troubled brand, the Gravity has to pop off, for its own sake.

We’re all excited to put some miles behind the wheel of the Gravity SUV. What would you like to know about the Lucid Gravity? Feel free to sound off in the comments below.

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It’s hard to fathom this happening today, but not so long ago, we’d collectively get really, really excited about the debut of a new iPhone. 

Livestreams broke the internet, Apple Stores overflowed with launch-day crowds, and everyone obsessed over the latest features. That hype has faded—smartphones became routine, Apple’s updates more iterative than revolutionary. This new iPhone 17 may be impressive, but it’s no cultural moment.

That same evolution came to mind while I was driving the updated Tesla Model Y. If the iPhone defined modern tech, the Model Y defined modern EVs—good enough to be the world’s best-selling car in 2023 and Tesla’s biggest success.

But the latest update to the Model Y no longer feels groundbreaking. It’s a better version of the same car with sharper looks, more range, a nicer interior and stronger specs.

Yet Tesla hasn’t changed the fundamentals. There’s still no ultra-fast charging, 800-volt architecture, factory bi-directional charging or flashy Cybertruck tech like steer-by-wire. It feels like the “slightly better camera” update of EVs. And that’s all before we get to certain perception issues Tesla has these days, to put it gently.

Behind the wheel, the upgrades do add up to something meaningful. The new Model Y is drastically better than before, and probably Tesla’s best car yet. And for most buyers, it may still be the best all-around EV for sale in America.

(Full Disclosure: Tesla does not provide press loaner cars to InsideEVs, so I paid to rent this 2026 Model Y on Turo from HDP Mobility. They were fantastic hosts.) 

2026 Tesla Model Y Juniper: Specs and Overview

Two Model Y versions are on sale in the U.S. as of this writing. The Long-Range Rear-Wheel-Drive version starts at $44,900 and the Long-Range All-Wheel-Drive version comes in at $48,990.

Power comes from an approximately 75-kilowatt-hour (usable) battery with 357 miles of range on the RWD car and 327 miles of range on the AWD model. Those numbers may no longer be industry-leading, but they’re certainly above-average for this class. 

These improvements over the old car aren’t always obvious, but they are vast. Take the new Model Y’s signature visual upgrade, the thin, horizontal matrix LED light bar upfront. It’s not just a nod to the Cybercab; it is the best adaptive high beam system I have ever tested, detecting cars and other objects on the road at night and shining “around” them so it never blinds other drivers.

Headlights like these are newly legal in North America, and as far as I’m concerned, Tesla has reset the bar for illumination with them. Speaking of bars: that full-width LED bar on the rear hatch is a neat trick. It projects its light onto a panel below it and looks pretty wild at night. 

Since the Model Y was never designed with the historical baggage of gas cars, it remains superb in terms of cargo space and storage. You get 29 cubic feet of space behind the second row of seats, 75.5 cubic feet of total interior space, and four cubic feet out of the deeply generous front trunk. The “frunk” on my AWD Kia EV6 can’t even hold my camera bag. Tesla trounces the competition here, including bigger EVs and any gas-powered car in this class.

The new acoustic glass also cuts road noise and wind noise by 20% compared to the outgoing model, according to Tesla, while the thicker roof glass is far less likely to bake you in the sun like older cars do. The subtle visual tweaks also yield far better aerodynamic efficiency than before. And the sound system is better, while the sometimes-questionable build quality of older Teslas is now long gone. 

Basically, if you had gripes about the old Model Y, you will have fewer of them this time.

2026 Tesla Model Y: Driving Experience

The car I rented was an AWD Model Y on 19-inch wheels. Springing for the 20-inch ones drops your range up to 24 miles, so this is the one I’d get. 

The Model Y’s driving dynamics have grown up. Gone is the notoriously harsh ride that made the previous car (and its sibling, the Model 3) unpleasant to be in when the pavement got even moderately rough. This is a thoroughly revised chassis and suspension design with new frequency-selective dampers and a stiffer structure overall. The result is a car that’s less punishing than it once was, and much more relaxing to put hundreds of miles on in one go. 

Even in non-Performance form, the Model Y remains damn quick. While Tesla doesn’t release horsepower numbers for these cars, it does quote a zero-to-60 time of 4.6 seconds. In highway passing, it feels quicker than that, enough to surprise some mid-tier performance cars.

The handling feels sharp too, owing to that revised suspension and the Model Y’s relatively compact size. It’s better in the corners than, say, a comparable non-N Hyundai Ioniq 5, and it remains hundreds of pounds lighter than other EV options. At the same time, Tesla’s steering setup is as numb as it’s ever been, but overall, it’s rather fun to drive. 

That’s aided by some of the best one-pedal driving calibration in the business. You can only choose between Standard and Low regen, so don’t expect the deep customization you might get elsewhere. But in terms of smoothness, controllability and predictability, the Tesla approach is outstanding. 

2026 Tesla Model Y: Interior

If you hate Tesla’s ultra-minimalist, screen-centric approach, you will probably hate this Model Y just as much as the last one, if not more.

It’s not for everyone, and it does present a learning curve that even I, as a non-Tesla-owning journalist who drives every EV out there, have to adjust to. The thing is, you do get used to the two roller balls and smattering of buttons on the steering wheel, along with the screen itself—especially once you get your settings and preferences dialed in. It takes me around 20 minutes whenever I’m back in one of these cars, and then everything clicks. And unlike the Model 3, the Model Y at least still gets a physical turn-signal stalk.

But the headline here is that the Model Y’s cabin is vastly improved, nicer even than the updated Model 3. You get some nice synthetic leather upholstery, faux suede and fabric accents on the door cards, a dual wireless charging pad that actually works without overheating my phone and a thin LED light strip that extends across the dash to the doors. 

All told, it just doesn’t feel as cheap as it used to, and it’s hopefully less prone to falling apart the way these interiors used to. The overall build quality is markedly better than the fleet of Cybertrucks we tested last year, too. The Model Y is dialed in, much more complete-feeling. Probably best of all, the rear seats are far less thin and hard than before. It’s no longer an Uber ride you’ll absolutely dread.

Do these improvements make the Model Y a luxury car? I don’t think so. Not the way, say, the new BMW iX3 aims to be. But it is a much nicer piece of kit for a mainstream crossover than it once was—on par with something like a Toyota RAV4, if not nicer. 

But the Spartan-ness can sometimes be much more frustrating. I think my week of renting the Model Y was nearly up before I got the damn screen-based air vents pointed the way I wanted. 

2026 Tesla Model Y: Tech

If you’re eyeing a Model Y or any other EV right now, Tesla’s tech experience may make or break your decision. It all comes down to this: how much do you want your car to be a smartphone on wheels?

Tesla’s in-house-designed operating system is fast, responsive and powerful, one of the only ones I’ve tested that feels on par with the Chinese automakers (all of whom are using Tesla’s software playbook). It’s also packed with apps you may never use, low on customization and absolutely central to the driving experience. 

Everything runs through the screen. The door locks. The steering wheel position. The charging door. The lighting system. The climate controls, including the heated and cooled seats and steering wheel. It all works, to be sure—but you should see if it’s something you can live with before you buy one.

Where Tesla is still the gold standard, in my book, is the smartphone app. It’s deeply embedded into the Tesla experience and lets you remotely control an array of functions from charging management to locking and unlocking and even allowing access to new users. Need to plan a road trip? Do it on the app and send it to the car, complete with all the charging stops along the way. It couldn’t be easier. 

Plenty of automakers are doing this now, sure. My Kia EV6 does some of this stuff. But it’s maddeningly slow, far more limited and not worth the annual fees Kia wants to charge me for it. In short, Tesla is the template of a modern, software-driven connected car; outside of China, only Rivian comes close to what Tesla does. And it’s still not completely on par yet.

The other big piece of tech is, obviously, Autopilot and Full Self-Driving. I’ll share my thoughts on those in a subsequent story, but the TL;DR version is that it’s quite good hands-free on the highway and outstanding in a traffic jam, but never rises above being a gimmick when you use it in city settings like the so-called Robotaxis do. Make sure you understand how it works and what its limitations are before you try it. 

The tech experience can also be irksome in other ways. To “shift” into Drive or Reverse, you swipe a little tab up or down, respectively, on the screen. This can make quick three-point turns much trickier than they need to be. It is highly effective in “knowing” whether you need to go forward or backward based on the AI’s interpretation of your surroundings, but that doesn’t help you in a tight turn situation.

There’s still no 360-degree camera for parking, which feels like a major oversight for a company hinging its autonomous car dreams on cameras alone. And the entire system remains very heavily centered around FSD and automated driving assistance, since that’s being hailed as the future of Tesla beyond actual cars. As I said, good—but not for everyone. 

2026 Tesla Model Y Range And Observed Efficiency

I drove the Model Y in moderate summer temperatures here in upstate New York and it consistently delivered more than 330 miles of range on a full charge. I averaged a very impressive 3.95 miles per kilowatt-hour in almost 900 miles of mixed city and highway conditions, and I had moments where I was not driving slowly. That’s fantastic for an EV of this size and price class.

I’d love to re-test this Model Y in the winter to test its cold-weather efficiency, but overall, high marks in the distance department. 

2026 Tesla Model Y Charging

The Model Y still uses a 400-volt EV architecture, as do all current Tesla Superchargers. You’re lucky to see, at most, 250-kilowatt charging speeds in most of your fast-charging adventures. But because the Model Y has a strong charging curve, it took roughly 27 minutes for me to go from 10-80%.

This is a reasonably quick-charging car, but Tesla’s pacing threat isn’t Toyota or General Motors; it’s BYD and Hyundai. The company may not be “behind the pack compared to the average American-market EV,  but it is certainly not leading it anymore.

But what the Model Y lacks in charging speed, it makes up for in charging ubiquity. Tesla Superchargers are damn near everywhere these days. They’ve even saved me a few times on road trips through places like the rural West Texas desert. And that was with an adapter, which, on a non-Tesla EV, only allows access to some Supercharger stations. Buying a Model Y means you can use all of them. Plus, they just work every time—plug and go, no smattering of apps or buggy credit card payment systems. 

Ultimately, between 330 miles of juice and a charging network that’s this extensive, I find myself just not worrying about range all that much. It’s a different experience than with other EVs I drive, where I’m always running a kind of mental math about my charging situation. It’s as carefree and easy as these cars get. 

2026 Tesla Model Y Pricing And Verdict

I’ve been an iPhone user since 2010. Like most people, I use it for just about everything. I also couldn’t even tell you which one it is before I had to check for this article—it’s an iPhone 15 Pro, turns out. I don’t really think about it all that much. It does what I need it to do, and I’ll go years without needing or wanting an upgrade.

It just works. And the Tesla Model Y has been so successful because it, too, just works. 

Go walk up to somebody with their Model Y plugged into a Supercharger. You think that driver could explain the nuances of their charging curve to you? Maybe. More than likely, it’s just that person’s car, and it all works seamlessly, and they have far fewer concerns than other EV drivers. 

The range gets them where they need to go, the performance outpaces any comparable gas car, and they have plenty of room for their families and all their gear. They don’t use third-party apps for route planning; They tell the car where they want to go, and the car sorts out the rest in the background. They don’t worry about whether the charging stations will work or have available stalls, because Superchargers almost always work and have available stalls. 

As near as I can tell, this Model Y stickered for somewhere around $49,000, right around the average price of a new car in America these days. That’s before any EV tax credits or Tesla discounts. For all you’re getting, it’s a solid package. 

This is especially true when you look at the competition. A Ford Mustang Mach-E comes close, but the Model Y has a slight Supercharger access advantage. The Hyundai Ioniq 5 comes even closer with faster charging and a native Tesla-style plug, but the Model Y has far better software. The Nissan Ariya, Volkswagen ID.4 and Chevy Blazer EV just aren’t executed as well. The Lucid Gravity and Porsche Macan Electric are way more expensive. The Rivian R2 doesn’t exist yet.

You get the idea. Plenty of other EVs may now outclass the Model Y in individual areas, but Tesla’s crossover is still the all-arounder to beat. 

I don’t know how long Tesla can keep this going, since its focus no longer seems to be on new and better EVs. But if Apple’s proved anything lately, it’s that iteration over revolution can be plenty successful on its own—so long as a more disruptive product comes around. Until that day arrives, the Model Y remains the benchmark.

InsideEVs Rating: Top Recommendation

Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com

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Chris Baguley wanted to go out again. He didn’t insist on it, per se, but the rain had tapered off a while ago and the tarmac at the Millbrook Proving Ground was finally drying off. I was impressed enough with the Polestar 5 in the wet, but now the car’s chief engineer wanted me to experience it in the dry. 

Who was I to say no? When a top engineer, who’s also a superb wheelman in his own right, wants to show you what his 884-horsepower electric grand tourer could do on a proper track, you shut up and get in the passenger’s seat.

We had another go, and once again, I got tunnel vision from the acceleration the Polestar 5 could put down. And when Baguely completed our lap, he flashed a big grin, as if to say: “Not bad, right?”

He didn’t have to say anything. Lots of EVs are fast, especially in a straight line. But the point Baguely was trying to make came loud and clear: few fast EVs handle quite like the Polestar 5 does. And this thing has what it takes to challenge—I’m not saying beat, but challenge—the almighty Porsche Taycan. And even the likes of the Lucid Air, while it’s at it. 

If it comes to the United States, it’ll make for a fascinating match-up. But that remains a fairly ambiguous if.

(Full Disclosure: Polestar flew me to the United Kingdom last month for a preview drive of the Polestar 5. The brand covered my travel expenses.)

Polestar 5: What Is It?

The Polestar 5 makes its world premiere today at IAA Munich, Europe’s largest auto show. It’s being hailed as a big deal for the sometimes-troubled but aspirational electric luxury brand, which was spun out of Volvo and has deep ties to the rest of China’s Geely Group.

To understand why, it helps to go back to the beginning. 

The Polestar 1 was a limited-run plug-in hybrid luxury coupe that packed a lot of power but looked like a two-door Volvo S90, because under the skin, it basically was one. Then came the Polestar 2, a much-beloved electric sport sedan and early Tesla Model 3-fighter, but based on the Geely Group CMA platform that underpinned the Volvo XC40 and other cars.

Next was the Polestar 3, which offers excellent performance and style, but is again a twin to another Volvo. And finally, there’s the Polestar 4: Korean-made but also on another shared Geely Group platform used by various Zeekr and Lynk & Co. models, albeit with its own spin on things.

You get the idea. Polestar may be a newer brand, but under the skin, its cars have borrowed heavily from the rest of the family.

The Polestar 5 is where that starts to change. It’s built on an entirely new architecture exclusive to Polestar, including an all-aluminum platform and body, an 800-volt electrical architecture, an internally developed rear motor and plenty of other touches to make it something truly unique. 

“The most Polestar Polestar yet,” is how it was described to me. And that sort of thing is going to be key to making Polestar finally stand out from Volvo and the rest. 

Polestar 5: Design And Tech

And it does stand out. It’s a low, sleek sedan, angular in the right ways and perhaps echoing designs like the original Audi A7—hardly a bad thing to my eyes. You may remember the Polestar Precept Concept; this is that, taken to production with almost everything except the rear-hinged doors, which present crash-test challenges.

On the inside, it’s roomier than a Taycan, which admittedly isn’t hard to do because that car can feel more like an electric 911 than Porsche will admit. But the amount of rear headroom inside surprised me. My 5 foot, 11-inch frame never felt cramped in it, which can happen in some EV sedans like the Mercedes-Benz EQs, and I’m not even really that tall. 

How much you’ll like the interior depends on how much you like Polestar’s signature Scandinavian minimalism. (The same goes for the fact that, like most Polestar models, this one comes in Gray, Silver, The Other, Second Gray, White, Black, and who knows, down the line—Possibly Another Gray.)

Now, let’s get to the obvious: there’s no rear window. But the whole design and process is more artfully done than the Polestar 4 (and as much as I like the Polestar 4, this feels like the car it’s trying to be) and in my limited drive on the track, I can’t say I minded the camera-based rearview mirror much. It all works functionally just fine, though it’s still an acquired taste. 

In terms of software, you get Polestar’s standard Android Automotive operating system with Google built-in. While I didn’t get to play with it much on this drive, I’ve largely been impressed with that system’s speed, flexibility and voice recognition before, but more testing will be needed to render a final verdict.

Polestar 5: EV And Platform Specs

The Polestar 5 Performance—the top version and the one I tested—has a 112-kilowatt-hour battery (106 kWh usable) that powers dual motors and puts down the aforementioned 884 hp and 749 lb-ft of torque. You also get MagneRide adaptive dampers, bespoke Michelin performance tires and higher torsional rigidity from the platform than many gas-powered sports cars, Polestar says. 

But people don’t buy EVs for track days, or for performance alone. On the electric front, the Polestar 5 seems very competitive. Range for the base Dual Motor car is rated at 670 kilometers (416 miles) on Europe’s WLTP cycle, while the more powerful Performance version can go 565 km, or 351 miles. In EPA estimates for America, that equates to 330 miles for the base car, and 300 for the Performance. The max charging speed is a very healthy 350 kilowatts, and it can charge from 10% to 80% in 22 minutes. 

All in all, it’s an impressive package. And making something that wasn’t just another chip off the Geely block was the whole point. 

“There’s no group platform on which you can deliver this car,” Pete Allen, the head of Polestar UK’s R&D arm, told me. Nothing the Geely Group offered could make a car this low, or this stiff, or this light, so Polestar went out and made it alone. And the company won’t be watering it down later. “This is a no-compromise platform,” Allen said. “It’s only there to do sports, GT cars. There’s no plan to make an SUV off this platform.” 

Allen is British. So is Baguley, the lead dynamics engineer. So were a bunch of other folks who worked on the Polestar 5. The car drives like it was made by a bunch of people who’ve worked at places like Lotus and McLaren, because it was.

I suppose this makes sense. If you want AI in a car that opens your trunk when you ask it to, call up a Chinese automaker. If you want to make a car that is God’s gift to handling, call some Brits.

Polestar 5: Track Tested

For all those aluminum weight savings, the Polestar 5 still comes in at a beefy 5,518 pounds; a battery that size is heavy, and there’s no way around that. Beefier than a Taycan, for sure. But this platform affords an agility that belies its weight. Out on the Millbrook Proving Ground track—where prototype McLarens and Morgans can be seen alongside British military vehicles, hence why only Polestar was allowed to take photos—the Polestar 5 proved itself to be one of the best-handling EVs I’ve ever driven. Maybe even the best, although it’ll take more data to determine that for real.

The sedan’s steering is tight and direct. Porsche has it beaten on feel, but the 5 feels nimbler and smaller than it is. The ride quality still errs on the side of harsh, which could change if it comes to the U.S., but it’s tight and direct and handles a two-mile high-speed bank with as much confidence as it does a set of winding, off-camber blind curves. Baguley made better work of it than I could, but even a semi-skilled track driver like myself could get a lot out of it, and then some.

It’s not just a handler, either. It’s fast. Crushingly so. I did two hard launches on a straight and managed a zero to 60 mph run in 2.7 seconds, in the wet, which is considerably better than Polestar’s quoted 3.1-second time. And every launch kind of sucked the blood back in my eyes, warping my sense of reality a bit. Even by EV standards, it’s a beast. I managed to get it up to 155 mph on Millbrook’s back straight, tying it with a Cadillac CTS-V at Circuit of the Americas for the fastest I’ve driven any car on any road.

Above all, the Polestar 5’s notable for the analog vibe it has. There are surprisingly few hold-my-hand gizmos for a high-tech EV grand tourer. It doesn’t have active anti-roll-bars, or torque vectoring or an air suspension—all conscious choices, the engineers said, to make something that felt approachable and rewarding to driving enthusiasts. 

Polestar 5: Early Verdict

But as much as I liked this thing, even I’ll admit it’s a tricky sell. Polestar could use some wins lately, and what the Polestar 5 is—an expensive halo car—can’t make that happen alone. It’s targeting Porsche with a lot of the performance capability, but almost none of the brand cachet. 

The prices reflect its ambition. The base Dual Motor Polestar 5 will start at 119,900 Euro, or about $140,000, while the Polestar 5 Performance I tested is 142,900 Euro, or $167,000 at current exchange rates. That’s not what it would cost stateside—exchange rates, tax differences and tariffs mean you can’t simply convert one price to another—but it won’t be cheap.

Then there’s the fact that I’m left wondering if it can come here at all: It’s made in China, at a new sustainability-focused plant in Chongqing. Engineers said it’s borderline impossible to move the tooling for such a bespoke platform to another location, so if it’s to come to America, it would face an additional 100% tariff. 

“As with previous vehicles, we are taking a staggered approach to the launch,” a Polestar official told me. “The initial launch locations for Polestar 5 will include 24 of our 28 active markets and availability for customers in the U.S. will be announced at a later date.” 

I’ll take that as a maybe. But I hope it does. The Polestar 5 won’t be for everybody, but it’s as genuine an enthusiast car as EVs get—the kind of car where one gearhead sees it and nods to the other gearhead behind the wheel. If you know, you know. And if it previews more interesting adventures yet to come from Polestar, I’m here for it. 

Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com

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The Toyota Prius is the best hybrid on sale. It’s far more efficient than other hybrids, while offering plenty of room for four adults, ample cargo space and a responsive, refined driving experience. The real question, though, is whether you should get the plug-in hybrid version.

I spent a week with one to find out. And while I truly believe the Prius Plug-In Hybrid (PHEV) is one of the best plug-in hybrids ever, I still think the regular Prius is the right choice for most shoppers.

Read below to see why.

What Is It?

The Toyota Prius popularized hybrid vehicles in the United States, and has been a fixture of our roads since 2012. The Prius Plug-In launched in 2012 as the first plug-in version. While the Prius already offered industry-leading efficiency, the plug-in version allowed drivers to go for up to 11 miles on electric power alone. But with such limited electric-only driving range, it remained a rare option. It offered poor driving range and the same ugly design as other Prii at the time, but for more money.  

The original Prius PHEV was ugly, slow and boring to drive, with only 11 miles of range. The new one has solved all of those issues.

Photo by: Toyota

Yet Toyota never gave up. The second generation plug-in Prius became the Prius Prime, with the new name signaling Toyota’s renewed interest in the formula. But it wasn’t until this third attempt launched that people really took notice.

The new Prius offers a far more striking design and a much sharper driving experience than previous generations. Now, in PHEV guise, it gets 220 horsepower and up to 44 miles of electric driving range. Zero to 60 mph happens in 6.4 seconds (per Motortrend), and the Environmental Protection Agency says the Prius PHEV will do 52 miles per gallon combined when the battery is dead. 

For $34,445 for the base model, that’s a hell of a deal. 

What’s Good?

The value is hard to argue with. For $35,000, you get a modern, attractive car with seating for five, a generous cargo area and better fuel efficiency than nearly anything else on the market (the regular Prius is the only car that beats it). The Prius PHEV also comes standard with a ton of equipment, including all of the active safety tech you need. Luxuries like cooled seats, a JBL stereo, synthetic leather and a surround-view camera system are all available as extras.

In my real-world driving, I found the Prius to be whisper-quiet and engaging to drive. The steering is far improved over previous generations, and while I’d still prefer driving a Honda Civic Hybrid or Accord Hybrid on a twisty road, the Prius is among the most responsive and sporty mainstream hybrids ever built.

I also observed great efficiency during my test, though my sporadic level 1 charging stopped me from doing a full electric range test. Still, mid-50 mpgs and around 40 miles of EV range seems more than achievable. Since it’s a PHEV, too, you won’t have to do any special planning for road trips.

The bigger, 161-hp electric motor in the PHEV version is also great. It gives the Prius the instantaneous shove of a pure EV at low speeds. At highway pace, you’ll have to wait for the gas engine to spin up for any passing power, but I never struggled for speed. Between the seamlessness of the powertrain and the perfect blending of the brake pedal, any hybrid weirdness has been ironed out. The Prius PHEV feels like a normal, but fast, daily driver. 

It’s also plenty practical. The PHEV version sacrifices some cargo space—20.3 cubic feet of cargo with all seats in place, as compared to 23.8 cubes for the standard model—but with the hatch-back design and folding rear seats, this thing can easily swallow bikes, coolers, surf boards or other long and wide cargo. Just don’t get your hopes up about hauling tall objects: The pinched roof makes this a bit tighter than a crossover. 

What Isn’t?

There’s little wrong with the Prius. I happen to hate the clutter of buttons on the steering wheel, and in general I think the ergonomics are weird. Make sure you sit in one and play around with the controls before committing. Similarly, the awkward shape of the dash and the bizarre angles of the thing make it hard to find a driving position that offers the right mix of reachability, visibility and comfort.  

Speaking of visibility, the Prius follows Toyota’s infuriating trend of fitting driver-monitoring systems that are engaged even when you aren’t using driver-assistance features like lane-centering. If the steering wheel-mounted sensor can’t see your face—even while cruising around your neighborhood—it’s going to constantly tell you that the sensor is blocked.

I also found most of the driver-assistance tech in the Prius to be a step behind the industry leaders. The Prius also comes with Toyota’s “proactive driving assist,” which will use the car’s sensors to automatically adapt the car’s behavior to the driving situation. If you see a curve coming up or you’re bearing down on another car and let off the gas, for instance, the car will slow down more aggressively than if there’s no one ahead of you.

This is the personal opinion of Mack Hogan, who is not a lawyer: This feature should be illegal. 

Cramming 10 largely flat buttons onto the right half of the steering wheel is an ergonomic disaster.

Photo by: Mack Hogan/InsideEVs

In general, while what the car does when you lift off can be adjustable, it absolutely must be predictable. I can switch my car between one-pedal and normal driving modes, but it’s a choice I make knowing how the car will behave in all situations. With PDA enabled, however, when I let off the throttle, the car decides based on what I’m seeing. That means a bit of uncertainty at the best, and a safety concern at worst if the car behaves in a way you can’t predict. It’s doubly bad because, anecdotally, many consumers are not aware of the active safety features fitted to their cars. Because PDA is so esoteric, I could see an oblivious driver having it on for years and just not knowing why the car occasionally slows aggressively on lift-off.

Luckily this system—and most of them—can be disabled. So it’s absolutely not a dealbreaker, but something I think Toyota needs to work on.

Why I’d Still Buy The Regular Prius

The Prius may not have many flaws, but I still didn’t like it as much as I expected to. That’s for a simple reason: The last Prius I drove was a standard model. I expected the bigger battery and extra oomph to make everything better. But in reality, I think it spoils my favorite thing about the Prius: It’s seamless. 

The uphill battle of this gig is that I’m always speaking to buyers who frankly don’t want to hear it. The average American consumer probably couldn’t tell you what kind of engine is in their car—”a vee-four” doesn’t count. Almost nobody has a route-planning app on their phone, or wants to learn how to use one. Trying to coach them through living with an EV can be exhausting; most people just want to get in and drive to their destination without a second thought. They’ve never done it in an EV, and that scares them.

The Prius is the antidote. You buy one at the dealership, you use it like a regular car, your running costs are half what they used to be, and it lasts even longer. That’s the mission. The standard Prius fulfills it without further work from you.

The PHEV promises more, meanwhile, but also asks for more. It costs $5,000 more to start and, when the tax credit disappears at the end of the month, even lessees will be paying more. It gives up 3 cubic feet of cargo and hauls an extra 364 pounds around. It is not available with all-wheel drive, either, while the standard Prius is. It gets “just” 52 mpg combined, rather than 57 mpg on the regular one. 

Most importantly, the PHEV gives you more to manage. There are buttons that allow you to use up all of the electrons immediately, or to hold the charge for later. There’s a gas cap and a charging port. There’s another battery indicator to keep an eye on, another charger to carry, another gadget to plug in at the end of the day.

For what? More efficiency, of course. That is a noble goal. But the Prius is already getting nearly 60 mpg. It’s so good it’s silly. Commuting on electric power alone would be cheaper, but you’d have to do quite a complicated calculation to find out how quickly you’d make up the $5,000 difference. Remember to factor in that you’re getting worse MPG when the battery is dead.

You may come out ahead. But even if you do, you’ll run smack into the classic PHEV issue. If you have a cheap place to charge at home, and you’re willing to plug in every night, why wouldn’t you get an EV? You’d have to charge less often with the bigger battery, and you won’t have all of the compromises and maintenance that come with an internal-combustion vehicle. I just don’t think PHEVs are the right solution for most people. 

Conclusion

I know, I know, I can hear you shouting “road trips” at your screen. PHEV proponents argue they are the best of both worlds, giving you emissions-free commuting and planning-free road trips.

This idea is based on two misconceptions: One, that EVs cannot handle road trips, and two, that road trips are an integral part of all of our daily lives. Let’s tackle the second first: If you are seriously debating the merits of a PHEV vs an EV, ask yourself honestly how many times in the last 24 months you have driven over 500 miles. If you’re not doing it more than four or five times a year, you have nothing to worry about. An EV may cost you an hour of time once a year, but it will save you a hundred visits to the gas station in day-to-day life.

That puts the Prius PHEV in a weird place for me. I think it is the best PHEV you can buy, and it’s the only one I’d seriously consider. Yet fundamentally, it has the same problem: Those with home or work charging are better served by EVs, and those without charging at home or work should probably stick with a conventional hybrid.

PHEVs are for the awkward folks in the middle, those who have home or work charging, but who still road trip so frequently that they can’t make an EV work right now. To those people, I say go right ahead, snag yourself a Prius PHEV. It’ll be the best and probably last gas car you’ll ever buy.

Contact the author: Mack.Hogan@insideevs.com. 

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With a name like the Charger Daytona, you’d think that Dodge’s first-ever electric muscle car would be a champ at the charging station. That was not our experience. 

When we tested Dodge’s inaugural electric vehicle this spring, we fast-charged it twice at two different Electrify America stations in the Northeast. Both sessions went sideways in peculiar ways, and we never saw even close to the Charger Daytona’s claimed 20%-80% charge time of 24 minutes. 

That’s part of why, in his Charger Daytona review, InsideEVs Editor-in-Chief Patrick George called it a “great muscle car” and “a weird EV.” Let’s dig into exactly what happened. And to see the Charger in action, check out our charging test above. 

Our first test, at a 350-kilowatt station with plenty of power to meet the Charger Daytona’s 210-kW rating, started off fine. Video chief Mike Roselli arrived with a 15% state of charge. At 40%, the session was cruising along at around 150 kW. Suddenly, the charge rate plummeted to 2 kW, before rising back up to 150. At around 50% battery, the power output fell to a measly 73 kW, trending downward as it reached 80%. The whole session took 47 minutes. 

The final result was so far off of Dodge’s claimed charging time that we had to run the test back on a different day at a different location. 

Once again, the power rate started off strong, exceeding 200 kW at times, but whipsawed to 2 kW multiple times early on. This made for one of the strangest charging curves we’ve ever seen. The charging session cut out entirely at 36% (which may very well have been the charger’s fault). Once we resumed, the power rocketed up to a healthy 180 kW, but soon dropped to 40 kW, where it remained for the rest of the session.

This time, predictably, 20%-80% took well over an hour. 

When we asked Dodge about this, a spokesperson said the charger itself is usually to blame for the slow speeds, and that “the charge speed experience is not due to limitations on the vehicle side.”

He can’t speak to how widespread this issue is. However, according to YouTube videos, other Charger Daytona drivers have experienced similar issues across EVgo and Tesla Supercharger stations as well. Hopefully this can be solved with a software update. 

Do you own a Dodge Charger Daytona? What’s your experience been like overall, and with charging in particular? Let us know in the comments below or shoot me an email.

Contact the author: Tim.Levin@InsideEVs.com

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This phenomenon has kind of tapered off in recent months, but for a while there, I couldn’t go a single week without getting about a bunch of emails from Tesla owners seeking advice on how to dump their vehicles.

The issue wasn’t even with the cars themselves. Most Tesla owners I spoke to really love their electric vehicles. The problem, you see, was the man up top: CEO Elon Musk. His various antics had Tesla owners everywhere scrambling to move to something electric from a different, and less controversial, brand. And most of those people were driving a Tesla Model Y, which makes sense, since it is the best-selling EV of all time.  

The good news for those people was that their choices for Tesla alternatives are now better than ever. There’s the Ford Mustang Mach-E, the Hyundai Ioniq 5, the Kia EV6, and the value-packed Chevrolet Equinox EV, just to name a few of the top of my head. 

Much to their consternation, however, there are still ways the Model Y runs circles around everything else. Yes, even now. And that’s especially true with the Model Y’s Juniper update—the car you see tested here in this video. 

Since Tesla does not do press loaners like other automakers do, I rented this Model Y off Turo for a week. It’s a Long Range, Dual-Motor All-Wheel-Drive model, the one packing a 75-kilowatt-hour battery and good for an EPA-rated 329 miles of range. And thanks to a raft of improvements inside and out, the Model Y is now a significantly better car than it’s ever been—one with a nicer interior, better technology, more overall comfort, more range, more striking looks, and packing the best adaptive high beams I have ever tested in my career. All that and a bag of chips for around $45,000, before any incentives or tax breaks, as long as those last.

As you’ll see in the video above, the Model Y remains the total package EV. Maybe it’s not the fastest-charging EV these days. Nor is it the fastest, period. And there are many areas where rivals are beginning to outpace it, if they have not already. But can you find all of those things rolled into one car that’s as good as this one, at this price point? The answer is not really.

You can say what you want about the guy up top, or the Tesla brand in general, or how it’s settled into a kind of Apple-like groove and doesn’t really seem to be innovating in terms of the EVs themselves, the way that it used to. But none of that changes the fact that the Tesla Model Y is an outstanding buy, and still quite possibly the best EV for most people. 

Check out our video review up top and let us know what you think in the comments. 

Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com

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• InsideEVs Editor-in-Chief Patrick George drives the electric Porsche Macan 4.
• The electric Macan is not mechanically related to the gas-burning car and is quite a bit more expensive.
• It’s not perfect, but it’s a great overall package that shows Porsche has learned a lot from building the Taycan.

You see a lot of Porsche Macans around the world, driven by people with expensive sunglasses and designer handbags. It is the cheapest way to enter the Porsche universe, and it blends excellent road manners with style and practicality, making it a global favorite.

But now that the combustion engine Macan is being phased out and replaced by a considerably more expensive pure electric model, does it have what it takes to maintain its popularity? Both flavors of Macan are still on sale today, and so far this year, and it’s the electric model that has proven more popular, even despite going electric (and potentially alienating part of its buyer pool) and hiking the price.

Even though the electric Macan is proving successful, Porsche isn’t taking any chances and has confirmed that it’s working on a new midsize combustion crossover. It will arrive in 2028, and it won’t be called Macan. 

While the Macan EV is more expensive than the ICE model, it’s also a better, more grown-up vehicle. The two are not mechanically related and the electric model rides on the VW Group’s Premium Platform Electric (PPE), which also underpins a couple of Audis. Thanks to this platform, it has a big 100-kilowatt-hour battery pack and offers big luxury car features such as rear-wheel steering.

This isn’t the first time we’ve tried the Macan, but now InsideEVs Editor-in-Chief Patrick George has spent more time with the car and had mostly positive things to say about it. His tester was a Macan 4 with a dual-motor powertrain providing 402 horsepower and 479 lb-ft of torque. That’s enough to send the Macan EV to 60 mph in 4.9 seconds and up to a top speed of 137 mph.

The Macan 4 has an EPA range rating of 308 miles, but that goes down to around if you get the larger RS spider-design 22-inch wheels like the ones on Patrick’s tester. Interestingly, when Out of Spec Reviews drove a Macan Turbo at 70 mph, it actually exceeded its 288-mile EPA claim by 2 miles on 22-inch wheels. Tom Moloughney got 343 miles in the base rear-wheel-drive Macan on 20-inch aero wheels, surpassing its 315-mile EPA range prediction by almost 10%.

With a starting price of $81,600, the all-wheel-drive Macan 4 is definitely expensive. Patrick’s tester had some options, so it cost $94,855, which is a lot for a Macan, no matter what powers it. Patrick missed one-pedal driving, which the Macan doesn’t really offer, and it could also do with a bit more drama when you’re going fast in one. But overall it works really well, it’s practical, it’s well built and it’s just a cohesive package. It really shows Porsche has gained experience making EVs, and in many areas, it feels like an improvement over the Taycan.

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Carmakers are now stuffing big batteries into their loudest and proudest performance flagships—the cars in their lineup that typically have the highest emissions—and it has created a crop of cars that are quite odd. They are absurdly quick in a straight line and can take you dozens of miles on electricity, but the heavy hybrids start to fall apart when you try to throw them into a corner like their non-electrified predecessors.

This became apparent after driving the new G99 BMW M5 Touring and then jumping into a Mercedes-AMG C63s E-Performance. One has a big V-8 complemented by a big battery that gives it dozens of miles of electric range, while the other has a small four-cylinder, with a smaller battery whose purpose is mainly to increase performance. Two very different approaches that at launch drew a lot of critcism from fans and keen drivers, but for different reasons.

The new BMW M5 feels even more gutsy than its claimed 717 horsepower output would suggest. It’s not surprising that one dyno test revealed that it was pushing almost 700 hp to the wheels, meaning the real output is probably closer to 800 hp. It pins you to your seat with its alarming pace, whether from a standing or a rolling start. There’s nothing quite like feeling the shove of a 4.4-liter twin-turbocharged V-8 engine with 737 pound-feet (1,000 Nm) of torque.

The M5’s powertrain is unequivocally brilliant. Part of that comes down to the fact that it’s also pretty great to drive without firing up the V-8. With 197 hp and 206 lb-ft (280 Nm) of torque, the electric motor, which lives inside the eight-speed automatic gearbox, is more than capable of moving the M5 on its own. Even in my hefty, 5,456-pound (2,475 kg) Touring Model, the M5 felt brisk in EV mode. 

I found myself enjoying driving the M5 most in EV mode, surprisingly. It pipes in a subtle, fun acceleration sound through the speakers. It also shifts up through the gears when the V-8 is off and you feel the shifts, although you can’t control them yourself in EV mode. The electric motor sends its power to all four wheels, meaning that even driving in EV mode in winter or low-grip conditions, you know you can rely on the all-wheel drive system’s reassuring extra traction. It’s a great around-town electric experience no matter the weather.

After driving the M5 Touring and putting a few hundred miles on it, I kind of wished I was driving the pure electric i5 Touring M60 instead, a thought I never expected. The new M5 is the first BMW M that I didn’t instantly covet after driving. Because it’s so heavy (heavier than the i5), BMW has had to tune the suspension to cope with the mass, and it results in a weirdly inconsistent ride quality. It can’t decide if it’s a Maybach or a pogo stick and you never know which of those extremes you’ll get.

Mid-corner bumps also unsettle the car, often alarmingly, and you feel the transfer of forces from one side to the other as you thread the car around a twisty road. All this mass makes the M5 feel like an athlete trying to run with ankle weights on. There’s an uncomfortable amount of inertia trying to pull the car straight into understeer when you drive it spiritedly.

Then I jumped into the still heavy but far more agile Mercedes-AMG C63 PHEV, and it really put the M5’s mass into perspective..

I know it’s one size class below the M5, so it’s not a direct and totally fair comparison, but I would honestly pick the C63. Yes, it only has four cylinders, which is half of what the BMW has, and a few dozen fewer horsepower. But it feels more special to drive. And while its engine may only be a 2.0-liter, it’s an actual AMG engine hand-assembled by someone who puts their name and signature on it.

The signed plaque is proudly displayed when you pop the hood, and you also get to see the big turbo and electric supercharger setup sitting to the side of the engine. This was a more impressive sight than what I saw when lifting the hood on the M5, whose clever hot-V twin-turbo setup is hidden by an underwhelming plastic engine cover.

The M139 engine is borrowed from the hottest versions of Mercedes-AMG’s compact offerings, like the CLA 45. It makes well over 400 horsepower on its own, and together with the electric motor, puts out 670 hp and 752 lb-ft (1,020 Nm) in the C63. That’s more torque than the BMW in a car that’s about 880 pounds (400 kg) lighter, and you can really feel it.

The force that acts on your body when you do a Race Start in the C63 is unlike anything I’ve ever felt in a combustion car. It definitely feels faster than the BMW, even though on paper, they are fairly evenly matched. Just like the BMW, the Mercedes feels quicker than the numbers suggest, but by an even greater margin. It’s shockingly quick off the line, thanks to all that torque and its all-wheel drive that does a fantastic job of putting the power to the ground.

There’s also an electric supercharger working to build boost quickly and minimize lag. The powertrain is really responsive, and the surge you feel from the combined torque of the electric motor and gas mill is really something. It doesn’t sound as bad as some have said, even if you disable the piped-in enhanced engine sound. You still hear the exhaust, which is characterful, and you get to hear the turbo build pressure and release it, which, for me, added to the fun.

It’s also much more enjoyable through the corners than the M5. It doesn’t feel like the C63s of old, which were always all too eager to turn their rear tires into shreds and smoke. The new model feels like a track car, focused on delivering the best possible corner exit with minimal drama.

Sure, the C-Class on which the C63 is based is smaller and lighter than the G61 5 Series Touring that serves as the basis for the M5. However, there isn’t an E63 that we can compare it to (yet), and the E53 plug-in hybrid that I have driven is not in the same performance league as the M5 and C63, even though its widebody treatment suggests it would be.

Mercedes could have ended up with a PHEV that was nearly as heavy as the Bimmer, but it intentionally designed a lighter system. Unlike the M5 and E53, which have a similar battery and motor configuration as lesser PHEV versions of each model, the C63 gets a smaller, bespoke setup. Its electric motor isn’t located in the gearbox but integrated into the rear axle, and its main purpose isn’t to drive the car around in EV mode (even though it can do that for around 5 miles). It’s there simply to boost performance, which it does in spades.

Mercedes’ real genius move with the C63 was giving it a smaller battery. While the M5 has a 22.1-kilowatt-hour battery, which is largely to blame for its heft, the C63’s battery only has a capacity of 6.1 kWh. That’s small by PHEV standards, but it does the job, and that job is mostly regulatory—it needs to do well in lab testing to please the European Union’s increasingly stringent emissions standards.

The heavier, more powerful of the two, the BMW, gets a WLTP efficiency rating of between 1.6 and 1.7 liters/100 km, or almost 150 mpg. However, that’s only if you keep the battery topped up, which many PHEV drivers don’t, which is why the M5’s EPA combined rating of 13 mpg (18 l/100 km) is much closer to what it actually returns in normal driving.

The C63 doesn’t get a comparable efficiency rating in Europe, with a claimed average of 6.9 l/100 km or 34 mpg. You will have to be extremely gentle with the throttle to come anywhere near that, but it is achievable, even with a drained battery. Driving it like I did the BMW to enjoy the car rather than save fuel, it ended up returning around 15 mpg, which is still excellent given the ludicrous acceleration that it can provide. The EPA rates the C63 at 20 mpg with a depleted battery, which is definitely achievable without trying to drive especially efficiently.

Look, we’re InsideEVs—we love electrons. But in performance cars, more battery isn’t always the way to go. The people who buy these cars can afford to fuel them up, and the advertised and often unrealistic efficiency numbers are not a key selling point for someone looking for a C63 or an M5. Plus, performance cars are a tiny subset of overall vehicle sales, accounting for a tiny fraction of overall emissions. We can electrify mass-market cars today, which would pay far greater dividends. But as the M5 proves, if you want the best possible driving experience, a giant battery can get in the way.

Even though Mercedes is accused of doing it wrong, I think it has the right approach to making a performance PHEV. The C63 is a better driver’s car than the M5, which is just too heavy to be fun. The C63 is still heavier than it would have been had Mercedes stuck to a V-8 without electrification, but for a PHEV, it’s still an excellent and exciting driving experience. It feels more special than the M5, even with half the cylinders.

There should be a clear distinction between electrified cars designed for efficiency and those where electrification is meant to enhance performance. Some great performance PHEVs include the second-generation Acura NSX, the Corvette E-Ray, the Ferrari 296 GTB or the new Lamborghini Temerario. Sure, electrification does enhance efficiency to a degree in any application, but making a PHEV too heavy by giving it too big a battery can make it less efficient than the same car powered solely by combustion.

What Mercedes-AMG did with the C63 PHEV is closer to Ferrari’s plug-in hybrids, where efficiency is never the key point of focus. The battery doesn’t have to be huge, and in cars like the Ferrari SF90 and 296 GTB, it’s under 8 kWh, which doesn’t overburden the chassis and keeps these cars’ handling pure. Getting a few miles of electric driving is a bonus, but the main point of the electrification remains performance.

The only catch is that if the battery runs low, the engine turns into a hamster wheel, sapping power to make electricity to replenish the pack. Unless you’re doing several laps of the Nurburgring, that likely won’t matter. I drove the C63 quite hard around a twisty road for over half an hour, and it still showed around 33% battery remaining. Maybe if you take it on a track where you keep the throttle pinned for longer, you will feel the performance loss, but in my experience, there was none.

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The way it looks is reason enough to buy the Renault 5 E-Tech. It looks like the result of tossing several classic Renault hatchbacks into a blender with some sci-fi gravy. It somehow ends up being a really tasty combo, but what clinched it for me was that it drives with enough poise and gusto to challenge a Mini Cooper E.

It strikes a better balance between sporty handling and comfort than the new Chinese-built Mini J01, which feels too stiff in comparison. Like the Mini, the R5 has a multilink independent rear suspension setup, which you rarely see in this segment of the market, making it feel surprisingly sophisticated as it glides over road imperfections. Oh, how very French of it.

This is one of the few electric cars that should come close to matching its WLTP range thanks to its consistently impressive efficiency, even when you’re not trying to save electrons. It’s nice to look at, pleasant to travel in, and the user experience is especially impressive.

It’s not perfect, though, since the version you want, with the more powerful motor and bigger battery, is not cheap, and there’s no room for a rear passenger sitting behind taller drivers. But if you accept that it’s pitched as a somewhat premium product (hence the price) and keep the hauling of big groups to a minimum, it all starts to make sense.

Tron Meets Baguette

Few cars blend retro design cues into a fresh, cohesive and modern look quite like the Renault 5. It’s like something you would see in a sci-fi movie with its holographic-looking, squared-off daytime running lights and matching squares in the headlight glass.

One of my favorite details is the 5 on the left side of the hood, which mimics the placement of an actual vent in the classic Renault 5, which was sold as the LeCar in the United States. The 5 even lights up in higher-spec versions like my tester, where it also acts as a battery meter to tell you the state of charge from a distance.

It also plays a cool animation when the car unlocks, and it makes you feel pretty special. It may seem trivial, but the light-up 5 is a must-have option for this car. I also really like the design of the rear lights, which, just like in the classic 5, run up the C-pillar. They have a cool 3D effect and built-in fake vents, which are meant to resemble the ones on the mid-engined Renault 5 Turbo rally homologation special. The Turbo is coming back with electric power, featuring in-wheel electric motors.

There are plenty of cool details all around the vehicle, and they all blend really well with the overall design. Nothing feels forced or like an afterthought on this.

Wheel design isn’t something I normally feel the need to mention in a review, but I have to because all the available options for the Renault 5 are fantastic. Even the base model’s hubcaps have aesthetic appeal, likely also helped by the fact that all wheel choices are quite big for a car this size at 18 inches—even the steelies.

An ‘80s Arcade Machine That You Can Sit In

The interior perfectly matches the exterior for style, with the same kind of retro-futuristic approach. This is the first car I’ve been in recently where thick bezels around the displays look like a smart design choice and not the result of the manufacturer installing screens smaller than they should be and trying to make them look big.

The top of the gear selector is translucent and has the Renault logo inside, which looks really fancy. Putting it in gear and using any of the stalks, I was impressed by how solid, damped and expensive they felt. The steering wheel looks great and is fantastic to hold on to. It’s probably one of my favorite helms in a modern car.

The seats also deserve a mention. They’re trimmed in something that feels like denim with a mustard yellow color that seems ripped out of a 1970s design magazine. The chairs themselves are soft, supportive and utterly French in the best possible way. They look fantastic and appear modeled after the Turbo 2 seats.

This is also the first modern car where thick bezels around the screens didn’t make it look cheap. Quite the opposite, actually. The driver gets a 10.1-inch display behind the steering wheel, while there’s another 10-inch screen in the middle handling infotainment. It’s among the best I’ve ever used in a car. We’ll get to that shortly.

The user experience inside the R5 is also really good, thanks to a brand-new infotainment operating system built around Android Automotive. I’ve met actual people less responsive than its artificial intelligence-powered digital assistants. Chatting to the bot is surprisingly natural, making asking it questions a lot less awkward than in other cars.

As much as I loved the R5’s interior, it’s not quite perfect. While I praised the overall build quality, there were a couple of spots where the plastic panels didn’t join together perfectly, and the ergonomics are a bit odd, too. To the right of the steering wheel, you have three stalks. One handles the transmission, another the wipers and that’s just too much to remember the position of on one side of the wheel.

There’s also no ‘Park’ position for the transmission, so when you want to stop, you put the car in neutral and then extend your arm all the way to the nether reaches of the dashboard to pull the parking brake button. Then again, a French car without a little weirdness would be an incomplete product.

But another issue I have with the R5 is the shameful lack of rear legroom. With the driver’s seat set for a six-footer like myself, there is no room for a full-size adult to sit behind the driver. There’s just no space for their feet, which makes the car more of a 3+1 rather than a true four-seater. This doesn’t make me like it less, since it’s about the same as a Mini J01, but it could have been a bit better. Maybe Renault could have sacrificed some trunk space for a bit of extra rear leg and foot room.

Corners Like It Means It, But Softly

Photo by: Andrei Nedelea

What really won me over is how it drives. The steering is sharp without being twitchy, and when you tip it into a corner, it weights up nicely and gives you a lot of confidence. That may seem secondary for a car that will spend most of its time sitting bumper-to-bumper in a crowded city. But it is this responsiveness that made me (and many others) like old Renault Clios, so I was very happy to see this character transferred to the new EV.

The well-judged suspension also deserves a mention. It’s a bit softer than in the Mini J01, but it’s all the better for it, since it has a smoother ride over uneven roads. The multilink rear suspension really helps when going over big imperfections or over the wildly inconsistent tram tracks that we have here in Bucharest. Almost no subcompact cars these days have independent rear suspension—it’s kind of a premium feature—making it clear what Renault is aiming for with the R5.

Taking it out on some more windy country roads, the R5 never felt flustered. Carry a bit too much speed into a corner, lift off just before hitting the apex and you feel it rotating around you, like a proper hot hatch should. This isn’t just competent. It’s fun, and I can’t say that about too many EVs in its price, power and size bracket.

My tester had the beefier motor. It delivers 148 horsepower and 180 pound-feet (245 Nm) of torque to the front wheels, allowing for a respectable time to 62 mph (100 km/h) of 8 seconds. It’s not as punchy as the Mini Cooper SE that I keep comparing it to, but it’s zippy enough, and flooring it out of a roundabout chirps the tires before the nannies rein in the excess power.

There is no acceleration sound coming through the speakers in the R5. Just silent thrust. In this regard, it’s like a Tesla and not like other electric (hot) hatchbacks. The Abarth 500e comes to mind, which tries to imitate a turbocharged four-cylinder both inside and out. After experiencing the Mercedes-AMG C590 prototype with its expertly done pretend V-8, I’m a bit partial to having an acceleration sound in an EV, but I also don’t mind its absence.

Plug In, Make Tea

With the larger 52-kilowatt-hour “Comfort Range” battery, my tester is officially rated at up to 256 miles (412 kilometers) on one charge. When I picked the car up from Renault Romania, it was fully charged and had a maximum range estimate of 246 miles (396 km) with an average electricity consumption of 4.28 miles/kWh (14.5 kWh/100 km), which almost matched its WLTP efficiency claim.

This was over several hundred miles from the journalist who drove the car before me, with a lighter right foot and more restraint than I could practice. I drove the car mostly in Sport mode for the first few days and really enjoyed what acceleration it had to offer, and my average consumption was 3.86 miles/kWh (16.1 kWh/100 km).

My theory about the best way to test electric cars is not to try to hypermile the thing to get it to come close to its manufacturer-claimed numbers. I drive these cars like I would any car, not treating EVs differently because they are electric, and in some cases, this produces some alarmingly high consumption figures and drastically reduced range. But in the R5, the average was still reasonable, even in spite of my carefree driving style.

Over the last couple of days with the car, I stopped treating it like a hot hatch, and the efficiency immediately started improving. By the time I returned the car, it had gone down to 4.09 miles/kWh (15.2 kWh/100 km), and this included the first two days of more brisk driving; I didn’t reset it specifically because I wanted to see how it all evened out.

I only charged the R5 briefly, with around 68% in the battery, preconditioning on the way to the charger. Juicing up to 80% from a 150 kW charger, I never saw more than 65 kW going into the car, even though it can take up to 100 kW. Its peak charging power isn’t great, with a claimed 15 to 80% in 30 minutes, but its battery is just about small enough that it’s not bothersome. Using its 7 kW onboard charger takes over six hours to fully replenish the battery from flat.

Thanks to its vehicle-to-load (V2L) function, the R5 can supply any device with up to 3.7 kW of power through a special adapter that snaps into the charging port and allows you to connect anything via a household-type socket. The adapter costs an extra $231 (€200), but it’s well worth getting.

I’d Buy One. Seriously

With its blend of tasteful retro style masterfully executed by Renault, impressive driving dynamics and great range from its relatively small battery, the R5 E-Tech is easily one of the best subcompact EVs you can buy today in Europe. With a starting price of $29,100 (€24,900), which goes up to just over $40,900 (€35,000) for a fully specced Iconiq Cinq example with the big battery.

It’s not perfect. It’s small, a bit pricey and its charging power is only so-so. The fact that you can’t carry an adult behind a tall driver is a big downside. But you know what? It looks fantastic and drives great, and it’s close to the top of the shortlist of EVs I’d seriously consider buying today.

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The BMW iX may be one of the ugliest cars on sale, but underneath that ugly wrapper lies quite a lovely electric car. The beaver-toothed front end and tragic proportions are hiding an interior that’s almost architectural in its ambiance, paired with a driving experience that’s sharper than some sports-oriented models from other brands. It’s a range king, too—a treat in the electric car space. 

Similarly, the Mini Countryman SE has taken a lot of flak for what some people say represents everything wrong with the Mini brand. To some folks, this car is too big, too ugly, and its circular infotainment screen is way too complicated compared to the simplistic aura that classic Mini cars had. Or heck, even the early BMW-era Minis. Are they right?

I don’t know. I’m not going to pretend to be the ambassador for Mini enthusiasts and purists. But I do know that a week with the Countryman SE revealed a charming electric vehicle, even if it’s not exactly pitch-perfect in its execution.

Believe it or not, the Mini Countryman is now in its third generation. Initially started back in 2011, this biggie-mini crossover was designed to court the number of buyers who liked the Mini Cooper hatchback, but wanted a little more space and a second set of doors. I suppose the ill-fated Clubman was also designed to satiate that desire, but its hearse-style rear doors and crew-cab door on the passenger side meant it was a five-door in the most maliciously compliant way. Mini drivers wanted a “five door” in the traditional sense, with four normal, forward-hinged doors, and a hatchback. 

Some point after that, and possibly even in response, the slightly-bigger-than-Mini Countryman was born. It was an immediate sales success. Several generations later, and a healthy amount of middle-aged model bloat, the Honda Fit-sized Countryman has turned into a small crossover that’s a stone’s throw from a Toyota RAV4. Victory, it seems, has defeated the Countryman.

But while the third-generation Countryman is bigger than ever, its platform feels designed to right some of those wrongs. Underneath, the Countryman is an electrified version of its gas-powered sibling and closely related to the BMW X1. The Countryman SE’s direct electric analog is the BMW iX1, an electric version of the X1 that we don’t get here. 

In Mini’s modern lineup, it’s the only four-door EV available with the Mini badge. The smaller Aceman five-door is missing in action for the U.S. market. 

Power for the Countryman SE comes from two electric motors that have a combined output of 308 horsepower and 364 ft-lbs of torque. This is fed by a 64.6 kWh battery good for 212 miles of range, mounted underneath the car’s roughly 4,400-pound body. Oh, and dual-motor is the only way to fly; no front-wheel-drive-only models here. 

A lot of people don’t like the way the Mini Countryman SE looks inside or out.

I am not one of those people. I think it’s a swell-looking car, but I will admit that it’s a design that looks far better in person. This is the biggest Countryman yet, but I think the Mini designers were good at both making the familiar Mini silhouette feel fresh, while disguising the car’s physical girth. 

Like other modern BMW Group cars, photos don’t really do it justice; the Mini’s sides look kind of blank and understyled, with not much brightwork or surfacing aside from the chunky, squared-off wheel arches. Yet, in person, the Countryman SE’s side surfacing is deceptively complex, with interesting surface interactions. I fell in love with the Countryman’s dead-on rear view, the beefy trunklid, and Union Jack taillights feel like such a techno-futurist elevation of what we’ve already seen on modern Minis. Add in the bronze roof and wheels, and it’s such a good way to make an old theme feel new and modern. I like it a lot more than other second-gen retro designs, like the Fiat 500e. 

The interior is arguably the best part of the Countryman SE.

Similar to the exterior, the interior is deceptively fresh. At first glance, the Mini’s interior looks like little more than a makeup compact-shaped screen mounted on a plastic panel. In reality, the car’s interior is so much more complicated. The shapes are simple – this feels like a more earnest reinterpretation of the very basic dashboards of the original Morris Mini Cooper. 

Yet, all of the surfaces look so much more interesting in person. All of the bright work in my tester was bronze, matched to the bronze roof and wheels. The blue fabric on the dashboard and upper levels of the doors turns orange/bronze as it moves toward the rear of the car. Add in the really nice leather seats, and the interior is so charming that you’ll forget that there aren’t very many soft-touch plastics at all. The only soft part of the interior is the seats and armrests.

Oh, and I liked the circular-shaped screen and its software, but we’ll get into that in a more focused review of the software. 

Fundamentally, the Countryman SE is a converted gas car with some batteries shoved under the floorboard. 

On its face, the Countryman SE’s numbers are very average. It’s heavy, kind of tall, and its power numbers aren’t as staggering as cars like the Volvo EX30 twin motor, which has more than 100 more horsepower than this Mini. Yet, this still manages to be a fun-to-drive crossover. Especially when you don’t have a Mini purist all up in your ear, complaining about how the Countryman SE is the antithesis of any Mini product.

I guess to be fair to those folks, they are a little right. I’ve driven plenty of Mini Coopers in my day, and the low-to-the-ground, slightly raw feeling is part of their appeal. The Countryman SE instead feels tall and very refined behind the wheel, not at all like the old Mini hatchbacks of yore. Dare I say it, the Countryman SE’s suspension tuning is sophisticated and feels expensive, the ride is the opposite of rough, and it feels a premium car, not a toy. For some, they’d hate it.

I am not one of those folks. Yes, the Countryman SE feels a little tall and bulkier than I’d like, and yes, I wish the suspension were a tad firmer, but the car makes up for it by being relatively engaging to drive. The steering ratio is fairly quick, and there’s a bit of feel for the type of vehicle that it is. The car corners flat and grips hard, whereas other cars with similar characteristics would not feel anywhere near as engaging. I mean, drive an Equinox EV, then hop behind the wheel of this thing.

The Countryman SE is also a quick car. Stick it in Go-Kart mode, depress the throttle to the floor, and the Mini will do its best impression of a rocket ship – it’s one of the first EVs I’ve ever driven that genuinely felt as if Mini had underrated its specifications. Mini says it’ll hit 60 in 5.4 seconds, but Car and Driver said its Countryman SE scooted to 60 mph in a mere 4.8 seconds. That’s pretty damn quick.

The Mini Countryman SE’s range and charging abilities seem to be, on paper, kind of mediocre. The car is only rated for 212 miles of range, but it’ll zip from 10-80% on a DC fast charger in 29 minutes, with a maximum speed of 130 kW. 

These numbers would have been cutting-edge in 2018. But, to be fair to Mini, the Countryman SE actually did all of those things. Our DC fast charging test hit the 29-minute mark right on the money, while a mixed-use road trip had me on track to achieve about 190 miles of range. For some, this may not be enough miles, but for my use case, the Mini was just fine. Over the week, I averaged 3.2 miles per kWh, which is merely okay. 

Frustratingly, the Mini has DC fast charging preconditioning, but it’s not intuitive to use. It can activate automatically when navigating to a DC fast charger, but I often don’t use navigation in everyday driving. There is a button to turn on the preconditioning manually, but more often than not, it was greyed out with no explanation. 

The Mini fans may have a point. On some level, the Countryman’s oversized dimensions and weird styling may not be everyone’s cup of tea. I get it, I remember being somewhat disappointed driving the new Fiat 500e compared to my old Fiat 500 Abarth.

However, I don’t think every car needs to be a direct 1-to-1 version of something old. Perhaps it’s time to reinterpret the past into something new—and take that something new, for what it is. With that in mind, the Mini Countryman SE has a lot of things to like about it. It’s sharp to drive without losing its premium edge, it is spacious for being a compact crossover, and in the grand scheme of things, it’s not even that expensive. True, the range and charging specifications are mediocre, but I think it’ll still work for most people.

I don’t even mind the price—my example stickered for $51,145. All Countryman SEs effectively come in one trim, with only a handful of option packs that can be optioned. My example came with the Iconic package ($3,200) and the Comfort Max package ($900), which added goodies like a Harmon & Kardon sound system, power front seats, and Mini’s Active Driving Assistant Pro. For comparison’s sake, this is cheaper than an AWD Cadillac Optiq. Although the Optiq qualifies for the federal $7,500 tax credit on full purchases. For now.

I just liked driving the Mini. Sometimes when I’m behind the wheel of these press cars, it can feel like a slog, like I am forcing myself to drive a car I don’t really like. Whereas with the Mini, I found myself making up reasons to drive the thing. I didn’t want to give it back. Because I liked it.

I think the world would be a better place if we drove cars we liked.

Contact the author: kevin.williams@insideevs.com