Enlarge / Robert Wickens looks out from the cockpit of the Formula E GenBeta test car in Portland, Oregon. (credit: Formula E)

PORTLAND, ORE.—The timing of Robert Wickens' life-altering crash at Pocono Raceway in 2018 could hardly have been more cruel. After landing a full-time seat in IndyCar, he was named rookie of the year at the Indy 500 in June, finally showing the world his talent in a single-seat race car. F1's loss was IndyCar's gain, and the prospect of championships seemed certain. But a bad wreck derailed all of that, leaving Wickens paralyzed from the waist down. This past weekend, he made his return to the cockpit of a single-seater, testing a Formula E car with hand controls at Portland International Raceway.

It wasn't his first time in a racing car since 2018—for the last few years he's been running in IMSA's Michelin Pilot Challenge series, taking the 2023 TCR championship in a Hyundai Elantra N. But Formula E's GenBeta car weighs almost 900 lbs less than Wickens' Hyundai and boasts far more power and that immediate electric torque. More power than the Gen3 Formula E cars that lined up to race the following day, too—the 530 hp (395 kW) GenBeta machine is Formula E's test bed and is able to deploy energy from its front electric motor (in addition to the rear motor) instead of just regenerating energy under braking.

I spoke with Wickens a few hours before his test and asked what he was expecting in terms of performance. "It's an entirely different beast to an IndyCar," he said. "So I know here in Portland that they actually had the exact same straight line speed as IndyCar [170 mph/275 km/h], obviously achieving in very different ways. The aerodynamic differences between the two and the whole philosophy of the series are entirely different. You'll never really compare them, apples to apples, I don't think, but, I'm really excited to give the Gen beta car a go," Wickens said.

Enlarge / For some time now, Tesla has produced more cars than it has sold. This past quarter, that changed. (credit: Toru Hanai/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Tesla published its quarterly production and delivery numbers yesterday afternoon, and anyone hoping that the last three months have marked a return to growth will be disappointed. For Q2 2024, the automaker built 418,831 electric vehicles, a 14.4 percent decrease on Q2 2023. The drop in sales wasn't quite as bad—in Q2 2024 Tesla sold 443,956 EVs, a 4.8 percent decline, year on year.

After several boom years, even the hype-generating powers of Tesla CEO Elon Musk weren't able to stave off the realities of a small and stagnant product line and a brutal price war, particularly in China. The first quarter of 2024 saw Tesla's deliveries fall by 8.5 percent, the first time this number hadn't gone up since 2020.

Later in April, we saw the effect on Tesla's balance sheet. Profits fell by more than half, and profit margins slumped to just 5.5 percent, barely half the industry average.

Enlarge / Audi took the lead on developing VW Group's new Premium Platform Electric, and its first EV to use PPE is the 2025 Q6 e-tron. (credit: Audi)

The arrival of the Q6 e-tron marks a significant milestone on the electric journey that Audi and its corporate siblings began in the wake of dieselgate, nearly a decade ago. Now, after developing electric vehicles based on its own gas-powered models, a cheaper VW platform, and a tweaked Taycan, the brand has led the development of a new platform just for electric vehicles, one that incorporates lessons learned from those earlier EVs.

We've followed the development of that Premium Platform Electric architecture and the Q6 e-tron for some time. Now, we've finally been behind the wheel.

Audi made its name with "quattro" all-wheel drive powertrains, and both versions of Q6 e-tron to be offered initially will use twin-motor, all-wheel drive powertrains—an asynchronous motor driving the front wheels and a permanent magnet synchronous motor at the rear. Both versions will use the same capacity 100 kWh (94.4 kWh net) battery pack, which operates at 800 V and DC fast-charges from 10–80 percent in 21 minutes.

Enlarge / The Polestar 4 is the latest entrant into the crowded midsize luxury electric SUV segment. We think it has what it takes to stand out. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

"If you're going to make a car and use all that energy, it should be a good car," said Thomas Ingenlath, CEO of Polestar. Ingenlath was referring to the company's latest electric vehicle, a midsize SUV with striking coupe looks called the Polestar 4. While Ingenlath is on point from a sustainability perspective, it makes good business sense, too. The Polestar 4 needs to be a good car to stand out as it enters one of the most hotly contested segments of the market.

In fact, Polestar uses less energy to make its latest EV than anything else in its range—the company quotes a carbon footprint of 19.9 tonnes of CO₂ from cradle to gate. Like some other automakers, Polestar is using a monomaterial approach to the interior to make recycling easier, choosing the same base plastic for all the components in a particular piece of trim, for example.

The carpets are made from, variously, recycled fishing nets or plastic bottles. The vinyl seats use pine oil instead of the stuff extracted from the ground, and the knitted upholstery fabric—also recycled plastic bottles—was designed to leave no off-cuts.

Enlarge / The introduction of model year 2025 brings a retractable hard-top option for the McLaren Artura, plus a host of other upgrades. (credit: McLaren)

MONACO—The idea of an "entry-level" supercar might sound like a contradiction in terms, but every car company's range has to start somewhere, and in McLaren's case, that's the Artura. When Ars first tested this mid-engined plug-in hybrid in 2022, It was only available as a coupe. But for those who prefer things al fresco, the British automaker has now given you that option with the addition of the Artura Spider.

The Artura represented a step forward for McLaren. There's a brand-new carbon fiber chassis tub, an advanced electronic architecture (with a handful of domain controllers that replace the dozens of individual ECUs you might find in some of its other models), and a highly capable hybrid powertrain that combines a twin-turbo V6 gasoline engine with an axial flux electric motor.

More power, faster shifts

For model year 2025 and the launch of the $273,800 Spider version, the engineering team at McLaren have given it a spruce-up, despite only being a couple of years old. Overall power output has increased by 19 hp (14 kW) thanks to new engine maps for the V6, which now has a bit more surge from 4,000 rpm all the way to the 8,500 rpm redline. Our test car was fitted with the new sports exhaust, which isn't obnoxiously loud. It makes some interesting noises as you lift the throttle in the middle of the rev range, but like most turbo engines, it's not particularly mellifluous.