F1 moves a step closer to fixing its 2026 hybrid problem

While lifting and coasting, the car’s brain tells the V6 to keep revving, and it siphons off 350 kW to the battery. But there’s another way the engine can recharge the battery that happens when the driver’s foot is still flat on the throttle. F1 calls this “super clipping,” and while it’s happening, the car’s power output at the rear wheels is significantly curtailed—any power going to the battery can’t go to the rear wheels, and the V6 only has 400 kW to offer. So super clipping has been capped at 200 kW, leaving the other 200 kW (268 hp) to push the car.

So sometimes an F1 car has 750 kW (1,005 hp), sometimes it has 400 kW, and sometimes it might just have 200 kW.

As will the other 21 cars on track, but not in any coordinated way. The software that governs the hybrid systems is capricious, and it decides when to initiate super clipping, and when to ramp up or ramp down power from the MGU based on how much it has already expended on the lap and how much it thinks it will need.

What’s the problem?

The new engine regs were created to get automakers more enthused about the sport, back before so many of them started pulling back on electric vehicles. It worked: Audi, Cadillac, and Honda signed on to join Ferrari and Mercedes. But as I’ve described above, the new formula means that the cars are energy-starved during a lap, particularly during qualifying when the aim is to drive the car right at its very limit.

As we saw in Japan, this has effectively neutered all of F1’s fast corners, because you can reach a shorter overall lap time by using that energy elsewhere. There’s no real problem with lift and coast during a race—as noted before, it’s already common practice in IndyCar and endurance racing. But in qualifying, that’s another matter, and watching the cars lifting and coasting through the 130R corner at Suzuka in Japan was something that demoralized virtually every race fan this author knows. Driving it seems to be worse: McLaren’s Lando Norris described it as “soul destroying.”

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/04/f1-moves-a-step-closer-to-fixing-its-2026-hybrid-problem/

Volkswagen stops building ID.4s in the US, has inventory “into 2027”

“The Chattanooga plant has been, and will continue to be, a cornerstone of Volkswagen’s strategy in the United States,” said VW Group of America president and CEO Kjell Gruner. “This strategic shift underscores the company’s commitment to Chattanooga and its workforce as we position the plant for long-term success and future product opportunities.”

If you still want an ID.4, VW says it has sufficient inventory at dealers “to support customer demand into 2027,” and the post-refresh models are both more powerful but also more efficient than earlier cars.

But it does leave the prospect of VW not having any electric cars to sell at some point; in December, the company revealed it was selling so few ID.Buzz minivans that it would simply not bother with a model year 2026 at all, ceasing imports. (In retrospect, that really does make this one of the worst headlines of my entire career.)

In this case, VW says “a future version of the ID.4 is currently planned for the North American market; details will be shared at a later time.” If and when that car appears, it may well be rebadged as the ID.Tiguan.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/04/volkswagen-ends-id-4-production-in-tennessee-to-build-atlas-suv/

The Rivian R2 will launch with 335 miles of range

It won’t be long before Rivian starts delivering the first of its new R2 SUVs to the lucky owners. After wowing everyone with its R1S and R1T, the startup is ready to enter more mainstream market segments, first with the midsize R2 this year. Last month, we got pricing and trim details for the new electric SUV: $57,990 for the R2 Performance, the only version that will be available until the $53,990 R2 Premium goes on sale in late 2026.

Both of these R2s use the same spec battery with a capacity of 87.9 kWh. At the time, Rivian said it expected at least 330 miles (531 km) of range from these models on 21-inch tires. But it seems that details of the actual Environmental Protection Agency range certification have leaked and were posted to the Rivian Forums. And from those documents, we now know that, when fitted with 21-inch wheels and performance, the official EPA range estimate will be 335 miles (539 km).

The testing also generated an official EPA range estimate for the R2 when fitted with smaller 20-inch wheels. Usually, fitting smaller wheels to an EV increases range because the rotation of each wheel causes a lot of drag that saps range, and smaller, narrower wheels disturb less air. But in this case, the 20-inch wheels drop the EPA range estimate down to 314 miles (505 km), thanks to the knobby all-terrain tires.

Once other trims become available, we should get additional EPA range data on smaller wheels with all-purpose (as opposed to all-terrain) tires, as well as the $45,000 version with a smaller battery that isn’t due until late 2027.

There were some other interesting details in the R2 document. The pack capacity is listed as 86.8 kWh, slightly lower than the 87.9 kWh in the official Rivian specs. The maximum DC fast-charging rate is 210 kW, and max level 2 AC charging is 11.5 kW. A heat pump is also standard and is improved from the one in the R1.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/04/rivian-r2-epa-certification-leaked-gets-335-miles-of-range/

This Ford is the quickest production car at the Nürburgring, ever

When it comes to automotive bragging rights, a good Nürburgring Nordschleife lap time is right up there with the best of them. And today, those bragging rights belong to Ford. The automaker revealed that its GT Mk IV, an evolution of the mid-engined supercar it created in 2016, is now the fastest production car to ever lap the 12.9-mile (20.8-km) race track in Germany, with a time of 6 minutes, 15.997 seconds set by Frédéric Vervisch.

The century-old racetrack in Germany’s Eifel region was built during the Great Depression as a way to create jobs but also to provide Germany’s car industry with a place to test its products. In addition to races, it was—and remains—open to the public for leisure driving.

Well, for some definition of leisure: The place isn’t known as the Green Hell for nothing, with hundreds of feet of elevation change across 12.9 miles (20.8 km) and between 73–170 corners, depending how you count them. After years of driving it online, I got my first laps there last summer and can report that in real life, it is bumpy and narrow, and I’d need another hundred laps or so before I started to feel properly comfortable.

Which would still leave Vervisch on another plane. Along with his teammates, he won the 24 Hour race here in 2019 and 2022 and now has the outright fourth-fastest lap time across the Nordschleife; only Volkswagen’s battery-electric ID.R (6:05.336, driven by Romain Dumas in 2019) and Porsche’s hybrid 919 Evo (5:19.546 driven by Timo Bernhard in 2018) have gone faster this century, both beating Stefan Bellof’s 1984 qualifying time of 6:11.13, set in a Porsche 956 Group C race car. (Because Bellof’s time was set in qualifying, some don’t count it among the official records, so Ford can officially claim the GT Mk IV is the third-fastest car around the ‘Ring.)

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/04/a-production-ford-sets-third-fastest-time-ever-at-the-nurburgring/

Tesla sales grew by 6% in Q1, but company has an overproduction problem

This morning, Tesla published its production and delivery results for the first three months of 2026. And for the first time in a while, the news has been largely positive. The automaker built a total of 408,386 electric vehicles, a 12.6 percent increase from Q1 2025.

Almost all of those EVs were Models 3 and Y—the company built 394,611 of these, a 14.2 percent increase compared to the same quarter last year. The rest were mostly Cybertrucks, as we learned at the end of January that the aging Models S and X had finally been put out to pasture. At 14 years, the Model S’s service to Tesla showed longevity beaten only by Nissan’s R35 GT-R, which was old enough to vote when it was finally retired.

Overproduction

Tesla also recorded an increase in sales for Q1, though not to the same degree. It sold a total of 358,023 EVs, a 6.3 percent increase compared to the same quarter in 2025. Unfortunately for Tesla, that growth is only half as much as the increase in production.

Looking at the Models 3 and Y, we see the same trend. Tesla sold 341,893 of these vehicles, a 5.6 percent increase year over year. But it ended up with 50,000 more cars in inventory as well. Sales of everything else—the Cybertruck, Model S, and Model X—fell by 19.7 percent year over year to 13,775 units.

The bad news extends to Tesla’s energy storage business. This has been growing steadily in recent years and contributes a small, if meaningful percentage to the company’s coffers. But Tesla was able to deploy only 8.8 GWh of energy storage in Q1, a 15 percent decline compared to the same three months last year.

Both car deliveries and energy deployment were below analyst estimates.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/04/tesla-sales-grew-by-6-in-q1-but-company-has-an-overproduction-problem/

Kia shows off small cars in NY: The 2027 EV3 and 2027 Seltos Hybrid

The other EV3s—the Wind, Land, GT-Line, and GT—all make use of a larger 81.4 kWh pack that provides as much as 320 miles (515 km) of range if you stick with front wheel drive. The larger pack also makes all-wheel-drive possible via a second motor for the rear axle as an option for the Wind and Land trims but standard on the GT-Line and GT. The GT also boasts a bit more oomph with 288 hp (215 kW), up from 261 hp (195 kW) for the other AWD EV3s. (Kia didn’t specify FWD output in the press materials it sent us, but we’re pretty sure it’s 201 hp/150 kW.)

The infotainment is the same system seen in the EV9. It is OTA-updatable, and Kia tells us there’s a range of customizable dashboard themes from Disney and National Geographic, as well as the NBA and FIFA World Cup, should you find the default ones uninspiring. Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are standard.

The EV3 goes on sale here in late 2026; we’ll learn pricing closer to launch, though we expect the short-range car to start at around $35,000.

Seltos Hybrid

Kia also has an all-new version of its little Seltos SUV on display in the Big Apple. The last one wasn’t bad at all, and for model year 2027, there’s a naturally aspirated 2.0 L version and another with a 1.6 L turbocharged engine, but it’s the hybrid I’m most interested in. This is new for this generation of Seltos and pairs a 1.6 L turbocharged four-cylinder with an electric motor, both powering the front axle, with a second eAxle for AWD as an option.

The Seltos, like the EV3, comes with a suite of advanced driver assists to warn you about blind spots and approaching vehicles, and there’s the same themeable infotainment with standard CarPlay and Android Auto. The hybrid Seltos also goes on sale in late 2026, so we have a little time to wait before we find out how much it will cost and what its fuel economy looks like.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/04/kia-shows-off-small-cars-in-ny-the-2027-ev3-and-2027-seltos-hybrid/

No more Chinese Polestar 3s as production shifts entirely to the US

The Volvo factory outside Charleston, South Carolina, will get even busier this year. Formerly the site that built the S60 sedan, in recent years it shifted to building big electric SUVs, the EX90 and closely related Polestar 3. Today, Volvo and Polestar announced that Charleston will now be the sole production site for the Polestar 3; until now, it was also being built at a factory in Chengdu, China.

“The move to consolidate global Polestar 3 production in Charleston help[s] generate efficiencies for both companies, whilst also underscoring our confidence in the plant and the role it plays in our manufacturing footprint,” said Håkan Samuelsson, chief executive of Volvo Cars. “The US is a very important market for Volvo Cars, both to support our growth ambitions as well as a strategic production site to meet regional and export demands.”

Volvo had a challenging 2025, with sales falling by 7 percent. Meanwhile, Polestar, which was spun out from the Swedish OEM’s performance arm into a standalone startup in 2017, had a rather good 2025, seeing a 34 percent increase in sales. So increasing the proportion of Polestar 3s to come out of South Carolina seems sensible.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/03/polestar-3-production-consolidated-to-the-us-to-keep-volvo-factory-busy/

As electric truck demand craters, GM lays off workers and idles plant

After getting a little overoptimistic about the speed and nature of electric vehicle adoption in the US, automakers are now scaling back their production plans. The imposition of tariffs and the abolishment of federal EV incentives are mostly to blame, although the domestic OEMs’ attempt to easily transition their full-size truck customers into all-electric versions has stumbled due to a mix of range and towing anxiety.

General Motors has been well represented in the large electric vehicle segment by Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC with a mix of pickup trucks and SUVs. But the plant that assembles them—Factory Zero in Hamtramck, Michigan—was idled two weeks ago. Thirteen-hundred workers have been temporarily laid off until it restarts on April 13, resuming production of the Escalade IQ, Chevrolet Silverado EV, GMC Sierra EV, and the GMC Hummer EVs.

In late October last year, GM permanently laid off 1,700 workers in Michigan and Tennessee at EV and battery plants, including Factory Zero. Then, it also idled the production line for the big EVs for about a month before restarting with just a single shift. At least production will restart at all. In December, Ford canceled its F-150 Lightning pickup truck, and Ram never even got a battery EV truck into production.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/03/gm-idles-electric-truck-factory-lays-off-1300-workers-for-a-month/

Rivian and VW Group complete winter testing of new zonal architecture

RV Tech, a joint venture between Volkswagen Group and Rivian, has completed a successful winter test program, it said this morning. The partnership was created in 2024 when VW Group announced it would invest $5.8 billion in the American electric vehicle maker to gain access to Rivian’s expertise in vehicle software and electronic architecture. VW Group initially paid Rivian $1 billion in cash, with further payments over time: the completion of the winter testing milestone should unlock a further $1 billion payment.

VW’s decision to turn to Rivian followed a tortuous history of its own internal software development. It created a new division in 2019 just to develop software for cars, then immediately bit off more than it could chew by trying to simultaneously develop three different vehicle operating systems. Things went the opposite of smoothly, with software-related delays to the two new platforms used by cars like the VW ID.4 and Porsche Macan that led to chairman Herbert Diess’ firing and the third platform delayed until late in this decade.

Rivian, meanwhile, had no such problems developing its own vehicle electronic architecture and software, starting from a clean sheet unencumbered by generations of legacy cruft. As a startup automaker, Rivian needs money, and since Volkswagen needs better tech, the joint venture makes a lot of sense.

To the Arctic Circle

Automakers love testing cars in the Arctic Circle. It’s about as cold an environment as anyone’s going to drive a car, so if you can make your systems reliable in those extreme temperatures, they should be just fine in milder winters. And there are plenty of frozen lakes, with vast flat expanses of ice thick enough to drive cars across with no worries. So you can test chassis tuning and traction and stability control work at the same time.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/03/rivian-and-vw-group-complete-winter-testing-of-new-zonal-architecture/

The Corvette E-Ray is dead, long live the Grand Sport X

A 13:1 compression ratio makes it the highest-compression small-block that Chevy has ever produced, up from the 12.5:1 in the current Z06.

That compression ratio is enabled by a number of tweaks, including better cooling around the valves and spark plugs and optimized direct injection. Mike Kociba, assistant chief engineer of small block engines at General Motors, told me that some extra processing power was key to unlocking that extra performance.

“With our newer controllers and control systems, you can process information faster. So, if you start to sense an issue, you can react to it faster,” Kociba said. The issue is a phenomenon called knock, in which combustion in the cylinders doesn’t happen at precisely the right time. When you’re talking about an engine spinning at 6,800 rpm, explosions occurring at the wrong time can have catastrophic effects.

A V8 on a display stand — The new LS6 engine. Credit: Tim Stevens

Knock sensors are standard on every engine, but with the new LS6, Chevy’s engineers refined the system with a faster onboard engine controller called the E94. Using the same sensors as before, the extra processing power of the new controller means that the system can detect and react to knock more quickly, letting engineers push the envelope further on output.

“It’s still based on our knock sensors, which are vibration-based. So if you can start detecting an unusual vibration, if it meets a certain frequency profile, then we react to that,” Kociba said. The “new processors, faster speed… obviously helps us chew through the logic.”

That logic includes fast Fourier transforms and other algorithmic means of identifying specific wave patterns amid the overwhelming noise of a high-strung V8.

Kociba said this is still a discrete controller and not fully integrated into a broader software-defined vehicle platform. The company is starting to move that way, though. “That’s one more step on the journey to integrate and make the engine controls as agile as they can be… one step closer to what you’d consider a true software-defined vehicle,” he said.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2026/03/the-corvette-e-ray-is-dead-long-live-the-grand-sport-x/