HEALDSBURG, Calif.—Earlier this summer, Ars got its first drive of Audi's new Q6 e-tron on some very wet roads in Spain. Then, we were driving pre-production Q6s in Euro-spec. Now, the electric SUV is on sale in the US, with more power in the base model and six months more refinement for its software. But the venue change did not bring a change of weather—heavy rain was the order of the day, making me wonder if Audi is building its new electric vehicle on the site of an ancient rain god's temple?

Of all its rivals, Audi appears to have settled into a nomenclature for its vehicles that at least makes a little sense. Odd numbers are for internal combustion engines, even numbers for EVs, although it also appends "e-tron" on the end to make that entirely clear... and give francophones something to snicker about. (Yes, the e-tron GT does not fit into this schema, but nobody's perfect.)

The Q6 e-tron is also the most advanced EV to wear Audi's four rings. Built on a new architecture called PPE (premium platform electric), at its heart is an 800 V powertrain with a 100 kWh (94.4 kWh useable) lithium-ion battery pack that powers a permanently excited synchronous motor driving the rear wheels, and in the case of the quattro versions, an asynchronous motor. The electric motors have 30 percent less energy consumption than those used in the Q8 e-tron, and are smaller and lighter.

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© Jonathan Gitlin

PHOENIX—Dodge gave its development team a relatively simple brief for the new Charger: It had to look, drive, and sound like a traditional Dodge muscle car. "If we don't make people uncomfortable, where are we going," asked Matt McAleer, Dodge and SRT's CEO. And you can see what he means: customers will have a choice of battery-electric or, from next year, an inline-six gasoline engine. For now, there is no throbbing V8 version, and those options will surely make some Dodge muscle car purists a little uncomfortable.

But the new car certainly looks the part. According to Scott Krueger, vice president for exterior design at Dodge, the stylists' aimed for "heritage, not retro," and they achieved that with a sedan shape that certainly evokes the classic 1968 Charger without directly copying any of its lines. It's a car that looks great in the metal, and features like the LED strip of daylight running lights and the so-called "R-wing" at the front ensure that the design feels thoroughly modern and not a pastiche.

The Charger Daytona name is just for the BEV variant—when the straight-six Charger debuts next year it won't be a Daytona. Credit: Jonathan Gitlin

It's not exactly compact, though—at 206.9 inches (5,248 mm) long, 78.1 inches (2,028 mm) wide, and 58.9 inches (1,497 mm) tall, the Charger was built with American roads (and parking spaces) in mind, and is in fact 2 inches (50 mm) wider than the outgoing Charger Hellcat widebody.

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© Jonathan Gitlin

The Lucid Air sedan's base Pure trim can manage 420 miles (676 km) of EPA-estimated range from just an 84 kWh battery pack. At 5 miles/kWh (12.4 kWh/100 km), the Pure is the single most efficient EV in the world, with pricing that undercuts the Tesla Model S. Yet the general public is largely unaware of Lucid as an automaker in the first place. The new Gravity, which just entered serial production last week, aims to bring more recognition to the company as a whole while achieving a similarly impressive level of efficiency in an SUV form factor.

The day after the new model began production at Lucid's factory in Casa Grande, Arizona, I spent a morning testing a pre-production Gravity in the hills of Malibu. I had previously climbed around a static concept car about a year beforehand in a small photo studio, but under the wide-open Southern California skies, the shape actually looked smaller in person than expected.

Low drag, low friction

The long and low roofline helps to reinforce that perception while maintaining Lucid's commitment to aerodynamics. Lucid's head of design, Derek Jenkins, told me that with a few more improvements to the underbody's design to help wrap airflow around suspension components like tie rod ends and ball joints, the Gravity will dip below its current 0.24 coefficient of drag. That's important because despite my visual perception, the Gravity is not a small vehicle by any means. In fact, it measures 198 inches (5,029 mm) long and 87 inches wide (2,210 mm), including the mirrors, and it's 65 inches (1,651 mm) tall.

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© Lucid

The original Urus was an SUV that nobody particularly wanted, even if the market was demanding it. With luxury manufacturers tripping over themselves to capitalize on a seemingly limitless demand for taller all-around machines, Lamborghini was a little late to the party.

The resulting SUV has done its job, boosting Lamborghini's sales and making up more than half of the company's volume last year. Even so, the first attempt was just a bit tame. That most aggressive of supercar manufacturers produced an SUV featuring the air of the company's lower, more outrageous performance machines, but it didn't quite deliver the level of prestige that its price demanded.

The Urus Performante changed that, adding enough visual and driving personality to make itself a legitimately exciting machine to drive or to look at. Along the way, though, it lost a bit of the most crucial aspect of an SUV: everyday livability. On paper, the Urus SE is just a plug-in version of the Urus, with a big battery adding some emissions-free range. In reality, it's an SUV with more performance and more flexibility, too. This is the Urus' Goldilocks moment.

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© Tim Stevens

Car people, like most flavors of enthusiasts, are often given over to ideological purity tests. Car X is better than car Y because it's naturally aspirated, not turbocharged. Hybrid Q is a pure series hybrid and is thus better than hybrid R, which sometimes operates as a parallel hybrid when that's more efficient. That kind of thing. And we definitely see that attitude when it comes to electric cars, with some people saying that a dedicated BEV will always be better than an electric version of a powertrain-agnostic platform. It's just that these kinds of purity tests rarely stand up when the actual rubber meets the road. That's true with today's car, the 2025 BMW i5 M60 xDrive.

When it was time for BMW to develop its fifth-generation EVs, it made more sense, as a smaller automaker, to create a vehicle architecture that could be equipped with internal combustion engines, plug-in hybrid powertrains, or a fully electric setup of battery plus electric motors. Purists will tell you this results in a lesser vehicle, but if that's true, why is the new i5 so much better than similar electric sedans from rivals like Mercedes, which use dedicated EV-only platforms?

Today's tester is the range-topping i5 M60 version, which boasts a hefty 593 hp (442 kW) and 586 lb-ft (795 Nm) from a pair of electrically excited synchronous motors fed by its 84.3 kWh (useable) lithium-ion battery pack. There's now a PHEV M5 that exceeds this battery EV in both performance and MSRP, but with a 0–60 time of 3.7 seconds and a starting price of $84,100–$95,395 as configured, the i5 M60 is still pretty superlative.

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© Jonathan Gitlin

Electric trucks aren't exactly blowing up the sales charts right now. A market that's increasingly skeptical of EVs in general isn't helping, but that age-old work-minded segment that looked set for a reinvention just a few years ago now seems increasingly reluctant to change.

Rivian's excellent R1T hasn't taken the market by storm, while Ford's F-150 Lightning isn't reinventing the work truck landscape the way many (including myself) had hoped. On the Chevrolet side of the equation, the Silverado EV likewise hasn't challenged the sales of its internally combusted siblings.

General Motors is bringing another contender to the fray, the 2025 GMC Sierra EV Denali, and if you thought the $94,500 initial price on the Silverado RST First Edition was a bit much, prepare for more sticker shock, as the Max Range Denali starts at $100,495. Is the solution to electric truck woes an even more expensive model? After a few days in the saddle, I'm not so sure.

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© Tim Stevens