At least it has dropped the bright pink. But in every other respect the new, all-electric Jaguar launched in New York yesterday was exactly the same as the widely ridiculed 'barbie-mobile' that was first revealed as a concept car two years ago.

Despite all the evidence, Jaguar has decided it has the right design, and it is sticking with it. 'Brave' would be one word for that. But a more accurate one would be 'fatal'. The reason? It is very hard to see how the manufacturer can survive if this model does not succeed.

The reaction to the Type 01, Jaguar's planned flagship for the exciting new world of electric vehicles, was, to put it politely, underwhelming. With its chunky body, boxy lines, bright-pink colour scheme and gender-fluid adverts, the car had perhaps one of the worst launches of all time.

Honda's new Sport-L trim brings Individual Mode to the mass-market compact, with a price bump that won't break the habit.

The 2027 Honda Civic adds a Sport-L trim that lifts Individual Mode straight out of the reborn Prelude, letting drivers fiddle with steering weight, throttle response, and adaptive dampers independently rather than accepting Honda's pre-set drive mode packages. The price increase sits somewhere between modest and inevitable, likely $500 to $1,000 based on how Honda has handled recent trim additions.

Individual Mode debuted on the 2026 Prelude, which returned after 23 years of absence to remind everyone that Honda used to make cars people actually wanted to drive. The feature is precisely what it sounds like: granular control over vehicle dynamics instead of the usual Normal, Sport, Eco triumvirate that forces you to choose between numb steering or a throttle map that thinks every junction is a drag strip.

Bringing it to the Civic makes sense. The Prelude is a halo car, a statement piece, the sort of thing Honda builds to justify its engineering budget. But halo cars don't pay the bills. The Civic does.

The Sport-L trim slots into the existing Sport variant hierarchy, which already includes LX, Sport, EX, and Touring. Where exactly it sits in the pecking order isn't clear yet, but the naming suggests it's a step up from the base Sport rather than a replacement. Honda has form here: the Sport Touring trim appeared in 2020 as a similar halfway house for people who wanted more than Sport but couldn't justify or didn't want Touring money.

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Acura did the same thing with the Integra in 2023, which shared its entire drivetrain with the 11th-generation Civic. The HR-V got a Sport trim in 2023. Toyota has been adding Nightshade editions to anything with wheels. Sound familiar? It's not cynicism, it's efficiency.

The Civic is in its 11th generation now, introduced for 2022, and it's still one of the few compact cars people actually buy instead of just considering before they inevitably choose a crossover. Keeping it relevant means keeping it interesting, and interesting in 2027 means giving drivers the illusion of control over their vehicle dynamics, even if most of them will set it once and forget it exists.

Honda has calibrated the range of adjustment well if the spread between soft and firm, light and heavy, lazy and aggressive is genuinely noticeable. If it's the usual 5% variation that requires a professional test driver to detect, it's a marketing exercise.

The Prelude's return was supposed to signal that Honda remembered how to make cars for people who like cars. The Civic Sport-L is the proof of concept. If the feature works, it spreads. If it doesn't, it disappears quietly in the next refresh and nobody mentions it again.

The price increase is the cost of admission. Honda isn't a charity. You want the new feature, you pay for the new feature. $500 to $1,000 is roughly what a set of decent tyres costs, or half a service interval, or three tanks of premium. It's not nothing, but it's not offensive either.

Official confirmation, full specifications, and precise pricing arrive late 2026.

Sources: Honda Motor Co., Ltd.

Three electric motors, styling cribbed from the 205 T16 Group B legend, and absolutely no confirmation it'll ever reach production.

Peugeot has unveiled the E-T16 concept, an 816 horsepower electric show car styled after the 205 T16 that won back-to-back World Rally Championship titles in 1985 and 1986. Three electric motors, no combustion engine, and a name borrowed from one of rallying's most revered machines.

The original 205 T16 was a mid-engined rally weapon built to comply with Group B homologation rules, which required 200 road-going examples. In road trim it made around 450 horsepower from a turbocharged four-cylinder. Rally spec pushed past 500. It was absurdly quick, genuinely dangerous, and became a legend precisely because Group B was shut down in 1986 after a series of fatal accidents proved the cars had outpaced any sensible notion of safety.

The E-T16 concept takes that heritage and wraps it around an electric drivetrain with nearly double the power. Tri-motor all-wheel drive is the likely configuration, though Peugeot Sport has offered no technical details beyond the headline figure. What they have provided is styling that references the boxy arches and aggressive stance of the original, rendered in the kind of smooth, sculpted surfacing that concept cars always get when there's no production budget to ruin the lines.

This is the second time in recent years Peugeot has reached into its back catalogue for performance credibility. The 9X8 Le Mans Hypercar carried the naming convention forward into endurance racing, though with mixed results on track. The E-T16 serves a similar purpose... proving that the brand still remembers when it made things people actually wanted to drive hard.

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Peugeot has made no production commitment. No timeline. No indication this is anything other than a design exercise to generate social media engagement and remind people that yes, they once built rally cars that mattered.

The trend is consistent across manufacturers with rally heritage. Renault showed the 5 Turbo 3E in 2022, a 400 horsepower electric homage to the Turbo 2. Hyundai unveiled the RN22e concept with 585 horsepower tied to its N performance division. Alpine launched the A290 GTS electric hot hatch in 2024. Lancia previewed the Ypsilon HF concept as part of its return to performance. Sound familiar? All of them leaning on nostalgia for combustion-era greatness to sell the idea that electric power can be exciting.

The problem is that the 205 T16 wasn't just fast. It was raw, difficult, and utterly without the kind of electronic safety nets that modern performance cars depend on. Group B cars killed drivers and spectators because they were fundamentally too much for the circuits and roads they competed on. That danger, that barely-contained chaos, is part of why they're remembered with such reverence.

An 816 horsepower electric concept with three motors and sophisticated torque vectoring is not that. It's extremely fast in a very controlled, very predictable way. Which is better for everyone involved, obviously. But it's not the same thing, and borrowing the T16 name doesn't change that.

816 horsepower from three electric motors is genuinely impressive. Just don't expect to ever drive one.

Sources: Peugeot, World Rally Championship historical records

Stellantis says it will build an affordable electric heir to the Deux Chevaux for half the current EV average. Four years is a long time to forget a promise.

Citroën has committed to building an electric vehicle inspired by the 2 CV with a starting price of €15,000 by 2028. That's roughly £13,000 to £14,000, depending on how badly sterling is doing that week. If it happens, it would be the cheapest new electric car from a major Western manufacturer by a considerable margin.

The target is roughly half the current average price of an electric vehicle in Europe. Which sounds impressive until you remember that four years is enough time for a manufacturer to announce a car, show a concept, redesign the concept, delay production twice, and quietly kill the project while everyone is distracted by something else.

Citroën CEO Thierry Koskas has made affordable electric mobility a recurring theme. The brand already sells the Ami quadricycle for under €8,000 and launched the ë-C3 starting around €23,000. So there is at least some evidence they mean it this time.

The production model would be based on design cues from the Oli concept shown in 2022, which featured lightweight materials and deliberately simplified construction. The original 2 CV ran from 1948 to 1990 and was designed as basic transportation that anyone could afford and anyone could fix with a hammer and some wire. The modern version will presumably require a laptop and a software update.

Stellantis is developing dedicated platforms for affordable EVs, targeting vehicles under €25,000 across multiple brands. The 2 CV-inspired model would sit well below that threshold, assuming battery costs cooperate and regulations don't add another few thousand euros in mandatory safety equipment between now and then.

European combustion engine bans arriving in 2035 are forcing manufacturers to figure out how to build electric cars that normal people can actually afford. Renault launched the 5 E-Tech Electric in 2024 starting around €25,000. Dacia sells the Spring for approximately €20,000, currently the cheapest EV in Europe. Fiat charges around €30,000 for the 500e. Volkswagen has a concept targeting sub-€25,000 by 2025 or 2026, depending on which press release you believe.

Tesla promised a $25,000 Model 2 repeatedly and then stopped talking about it. Chinese manufacturers like BYD are already selling EVs under €20,000 in some markets, which is presumably why Stellantis suddenly cares about affordability.

The 2028 timeline leaves considerable room for things to change. Battery costs might not fall as predicted. Regulatory requirements might add weight and expense. Profit margins might look unacceptable once the accountants finish their work.

Citroën has at least demonstrated it can build cheap electric vehicles that people actually buy, which is more than most legacy manufacturers can say.

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Sources: Citroën (Stellantis), Reuters, Citroën 2 CV historical production data, Citroën Ami and ë-C3 pricing

Driver clocked at 312 km/h, just 1 mph below the car's factory top speed, now facing vehicle seizure and criminal charges.

A Porsche 911 GT3 driver has been arrested in France after police clocked them at 194 mph on a public road. That's 312 km/h in metric terms, and more importantly, it's precisely 1 mph short of the 992-generation GT3's factory maximum of 195 mph.

Someone ran what amounts to a full-bore top speed test on French public infrastructure, came within 99.5 percent of the manufacturer's claim, and is now discovering what French authorities think of that.

The GT3 in question produces 502 horsepower from its 4.0-litre naturally aspirated flat-six. It'll do zero to 60 mph in about 3.2 seconds. Base price sits around $162,450, though the particular car involved likely cost considerably more once options were factored in. None of which will matter much if French police follow through on vehicle confiscation, which they're entitled to do.

French autoroute speed limits sit at 81 mph. This driver was doing 2.4 times that. Not 10 or 20 mph over. Not even the sort of 120 mph burst that might be written off as momentary stupidity. This was sustained, deliberate, and required holding the throttle down long enough to reach terminal velocity on a road shared with people driving Clios and Kangoos at legal speeds.

The penalties are substantial. Immediate licence suspension. Fines up to €1,500. Possible jail time. And the car itself, which the state can seize and sell. France doesn't treat extreme speeding as a minor administrative matter. They treat it as what it is... reckless endangerment with a very expensive weapon.

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This isn't even the first time someone's tried this sort of thing. German police stopped a Bugatti Chiron driver at 260 mph on the autobahn in 2023, though that's at least legal in derestricted sections. A Czech driver was caught at 143 mph in a Lamborghini Huracán in 2022. UK police seized a Lamborghini Aventador after a 160 mph run on the M1 in 2021. And back in 2010, a Swedish motorist was fined $1 million in Switzerland for driving 170 mph in a Mercedes SLS AMG.

The Swiss case remains the benchmark for financial pain. Switzerland calculates fines based on income, which is how you end up with seven-figure penalties for speeding. France doesn't go quite that far, but they will take the car, and they will prosecute.

The stupidity lies in the precision involved. Getting within 1 mph of a car's top speed requires sustained effort. You don't accidentally reach 194 mph. You hold it there. You wait for the aerodynamics and gearing to settle. You're not reacting to traffic or road conditions at that point. You're just waiting to see if the speedo will tick over one more time.

It didn't. Police arrived first.

The GT3 is a track-focused variant of the 911, designed for circuit work and the occasional spirited drive on a mountain road. It is not designed for public highway maximum velocity runs, though clearly that didn't stop this particular owner. The car's top speed is electronically limited at 195 mph, which means the driver was essentially testing Porsche's engineering tolerances on French tarmac.

There's no indication yet whether this was a foreign driver passing through or a French national. Either way, the outcome is the same. The car is impounded. The driver is charged. And Porsche has inadvertently provided French prosecutors with factory performance data that confirms just how dangerously fast the defendant was actually going.

Factory top speed: 195 mph. Actual speed recorded: 194 mph. Margin for error: none whatsoever.

The marque that defined aspiration in Beijing now watches BYD eat its lunch. UK dealers dodged the worst of it, but VW Group's China bet is unravelling fast.

Porsche delivered 320,221 vehicles globally last year, down 16% on the year before. That is a market rejecting what you are selling.

The UK saw a smaller decline, though Porsche AG has not broken out the exact figure. British dealers will take that as a win. It is not a win. It is a slower version of the same problem.

China historically accounted for around 30% of Porsche's total sales. Past tense matters here. Chinese buyers who once queued for Cayennes and Taycans are now walking into BYD showrooms, or NIO, or Li Auto. Domestic brands control over 60% of their home market now. That figure was unthinkable five years ago.

Worth asking where you think that trajectory goes next.

BYD became the world's largest EV manufacturer by sales volume in Q4 2023. It overtook Tesla, and it did so by building cars Chinese consumers actually want at prices that make Stuttgart's electric offerings look like a bad joke. The Taycan faces competition it was never designed to handle. Porsche thought it was selling aspiration. Turns out it was selling a brand story that expired sometime around 2022.

Volkswagen Group owns Porsche. VW Group is now discussing factory closures in Germany for the first time in its history. That is not unrelated. When your growth engine stalls, you start cutting costs at home. The Chinese market was supposed to fund the future. Instead, it is forcing a reckoning.

BMW and Mercedes-Benz are reporting double-digit sales declines in China as well. Audi is down 10 to 12% year-over-year. This is not a Porsche problem. This is a European luxury problem. The brands that spent decades convincing Chinese buyers they represented the pinnacle of automotive achievement are now watching those same buyers choose local alternatives without hesitation.

Tesla's China sales are fluctuating, but Tesla at least competes on technology and price. Porsche competes on heritage, and heritage does not mean much to a 35-year-old in Shenzhen who grew up watching BYD go from making batteries to making better electric SUVs than anything Europe could ship over.

VW Group invested heavily in Chinese market expansion. Factories, partnerships, entire model lines designed specifically for Chinese tastes. It worked for a while. Then the domestic industry leapfrogged them. Not just in electric drivetrains, in software, in user experience, in understanding what their own customers actually want from a car in 2025.

General Motors is experiencing the same erosion. European and American manufacturers collectively bet that brand loyalty and engineering heritage would insulate them. It did not. Chinese consumers are not sentimental about nameplates. They buy what works, what is priced fairly, and what does not feel like it was designed for a different market and lazily imported.

A Taycan costs more than a BYD Yangwang U8, which is a plug-in hybrid SUV with tank turn capability and genuine off-road credentials. Explaining why the Porsche is worth the premium requires the buyer to care about Zuffenhausen and Le Mans. Increasingly, they do not.

VW Group's overall sales declined approximately 3% globally in recent quarters. That understates the severity because it averages out catastrophic losses in China with stability elsewhere. Strip out Europe and North America, and the picture is considerably worse.

The UK's smaller decline suggests British buyers are still attached to the brand. That will last until it does not. Depreciation curves are already starting to reflect uncertainty. Used Taycans are sitting longer on forecourts. Dealers know what that means.

Factory closures in Germany are not being discussed because VW Group suddenly became inefficient. They are being discussed because the money that was supposed to come from China is not coming, and the structural costs built on the assumption of that revenue are now unsustainable.

VW Group is expected to announce which German facilities face closure or consolidation by the end of Q1 2025. Porsche's Zuffenhausen and Leipzig plants are not currently on the list, but the parent company's pain will reach them eventually if Chinese sales do not stabilise.

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Sources: Porsche AG, Volkswagen Group, BYD sales reports, Bloomberg automotive analyst reports

Sales down 3% and suddenly the combustion engine looks useful again. Also in the works: more mid-engine sports cars and a very large SUV.

Porsche delivered 310,718 cars globally in 2024, down roughly 3% on the year before, and the response has been to resurrect the internal combustion Macan alongside the electric version few customers asked to replace it. The petrol SUV will return to the lineup despite Porsche having spent 2023 and early 2024 insisting the future was electric and the old Macan was done.

The electric Macan launched early last year to the kind of reception that can politely be described as muted. It turns out that when you replace your best-selling model with a version that costs more, weighs more, and requires infrastructure most people don't have, sales suffer.

So now the combustion Macan is back. Not as a special edition or a last hurrah, just back, because it sells and the electric one doesn't, not in the volumes Porsche needs.

The Taycan isn't helping either. After a strong start when it launched in 2019, sales have been declining quarter on quarter. The early adopters bought one, told their friends about the charging experience, and the friends bought something else.

Porsche had previously committed to making 80% of its sales electric by 2030. That target is now looking about as solid as a chocolate gearbox. CEO Oliver Blume has started talking about "flexibility in powertrain strategy," which is corporate speak for "we got this wrong."

The company is also planning new mid-engine sports cars to expand beyond the current 718 Cayman and Boxster, and a larger SUV to compete in the full-size luxury segment. More variety, more combustion options, more hedging of bets.

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This isn't unique to Porsche. Mercedes scaled back its EV-only 2030 target last February. Ford delayed $12 billion in electric investments. GM pushed back multiple EV launches. Bentley moved its full electrification deadline from 2030 to 2035. Audi extended production of the combustion A4 and A6 beyond their supposed retirement dates.

The EV market has not grown at the speed the industry bet it would. Charging infrastructure remains patchy. Range anxiety is still a real thing. And a meaningful portion of buyers simply prefer the combustion engine, particularly in the premium and sports car segments where Porsche lives.

Chinese EV manufacturers have added pressure by flooding European markets with cheaper electric alternatives, making it harder for legacy brands to justify premium pricing on technology that's rapidly commoditising. Porsche's response appears to be to stop fighting a war on someone else's terms.

The comeback Macan will use the same powertrain options that made the original successful... turbocharged four-cylinders and V6s that deliver the performance and refinement Porsche customers actually want, without the 2.3-tonne kerb weight and the two-hour charging stops.

Whether this is pragmatism or panic depends on your perspective. Porsche would call it responding to customer demand. Environmental groups would call it backsliding. The reality is probably that it's both.

What it definitely is, though, is an admission. The electric transition will take longer, cost more, and require more compromise than the automotive industry was willing to admit three years ago when everyone was racing to announce phase-out dates.

The combustion Macan returns to showrooms later this year, priced and specced to compete exactly where it always did. The electric version will remain available for those who want it, which based on current sales figures, isn't many.

Sources: Porsche AG, automotive industry reports, manufacturer announcements

General Motors says its next-generation LMR battery tech will arrive before the decade ends at an affordable price. The automotive industry has heard this song before.

General Motors has announced its next-generation LMR battery technology will reach production before 2030 at what the company calls an affordable price point. The timeline puts actual vehicles using lithium metal anodes roughly five to six years away.

LMR stands for Lithium Metal Research, which replaces the graphite anodes in current lithium-ion cells with lithium metal. The theoretical advantage is higher energy density, meaning more range from a smaller, lighter pack. The practical reality is that lithium metal batteries have spent decades failing to deliver on that promise at scale because of dendrite formation. Tiny metal whiskers grow inside the cell and short-circuit the battery, causing cells to degrade faster than your patience with charging infrastructure.

GM's current Ultium platform uses nickel-cobalt-manganese-aluminum chemistry, which works well enough but isn't setting any records for affordability or energy density. The company is now promising that LMR will solve both problems by the end of the decade, which is the kind of claim that sounds reassuring until you remember that Toyota announced solid-state batteries for 2027, QuantumScape has been moving its production targets like goalposts since 2020, and Tesla's 4680 cells took years longer than promised to reach even limited production.

The affordable bit matters more than the timeline. GM has not specified what affordable actually means in pounds or dollars, which leaves open the possibility that we are talking about £50,000 EVs instead of £70,000 ones rather than the sub-£30,000 vehicles that would actually move the market. Without a cost target, affordable is marketing language, not engineering.

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Lithium metal technology has genuine potential. The energy density advantage is real if you can solve the dendrite problem, which causes tiny metal whiskers to grow inside the cell and short-circuit the battery. Labs have been working on this for years. Some have made progress. None have shipped millions of cells that last ten years in a car driven through British winters.

The 2030 target is actually more credible than some competitors' timelines, which is damning with faint praise. BMW says solid-state batteries by 2030 through Solid Power. Ford is building an LFP plant in Michigan for 2026, which at least uses proven chemistry. CATL announced condensed battery technology last year with no production date at all, just vibes.

For anyone shopping for an EV in 2025 or 2026 or even 2027, this announcement changes nothing. GM's Ultium vehicles will continue using the batteries they already have. The next generation might arrive in 2029 if development goes smoothly.

GM knows its current battery tech is not competitive long-term and is hedging with a technology that might pan out in five years. Might. The company is not alone in this. Every major manufacturer is chasing the same breakthrough, throwing research budgets at lithium metal, solid-state electrolytes, sodium-ion alternatives, anything that might deliver cheaper, lighter, longer-range batteries than the lithium-ion packs that have dominated for a decade.

The pattern is consistent across the industry. Announce breakthrough battery technology. Assign it a production date far enough away to avoid immediate accountability. Use words like affordable without attaching numbers. Wait for the next earnings call and talk about progress.

None of this means LMR batteries are vapor. GM has serious battery research programs and the Ultium platform proves the company can execute on next-generation chemistry when it commits. But the gap between a working prototype and a million cells rolling off a production line at a price point that makes financial sense is where most battery breakthroughs go to die quietly.

The end of the decade is still five years away, which in automotive development is both a realistic timeline and an eternity. Regulations will change. Competitors will ship their own next-generation tech or fail to. Customer expectations will shift. The affordable price point GM promises today might look expensive by 2030 standards, or it might look like a bargain if raw material costs spike.

The automotive press will continue covering these announcements as if they are news, which they are, technically, in the same way that a restaurant announcing a menu for next year is news. You cannot eat it yet. You cannot reserve a table. You can only wait and see if the chef delivers.

GM has five years to move LMR from research to production at scale. The affordable price point remains undefined, and the company's track record on battery timelines is mixed at best. Whether LMR reaches production in 2029 or slips into the 2030s depends entirely on whether GM can solve dendrite formation before its competitors do, and at a cost that actually matters to buyers shopping for a £30,000 EV rather than a £50,000 one.

Sources: Car Scoops, General Motors press release dated January 2025

Ford announces full factory return to rallying after 16 years away, starting with a Fiesta-based entry in 2028 and a purpose-built car for 2029. The technology transfer claim is the interesting bit.

Ford has confirmed a full works return to the World Rally Championship with a Fiesta-based entry debuting in 2028, followed by a purpose-built rally weapon for 2029. The move ends 16 years of arm's-length involvement through M-Sport, which has been running Ford-badged entries without full factory backing since 2012.

This is not M-Sport getting a bigger budget. This is Ford treating rallying as a strategic engineering priority again, which means direct manufacturer funding, factory engineers embedded in the program, and the sort of boardroom attention that disappeared when they pulled out after 2012.

The 2028 car uses the Fiesta platform, which is slightly awkward given Ford killed the Fiesta for most markets in 2023. The 2029 car will be purpose-built under Rally1 regulations, which means a 1.6-litre turbocharged engine mated to a hybrid system producing around 500 horsepower. M-Sport has been running the Puma Rally1 since 2022 under the current hybrid rules, so Ford isn't starting from scratch.

The technology transfer claim is what separates this from routine motorsport news. Ford says the rally program will directly improve road car development, particularly around all-wheel drive systems, hybrid powertrains, and lightweight materials. Toyota did exactly this with the GR Yaris, using WRC development to create a road car that actually drives like the rally program mattered. If Ford follows through, the next-generation Focus ST or whatever replaces it could be genuinely better because of this.

Ford last won the manufacturers' title in 2006 and 2007 with the Focus RS WRC. Since then, M-Sport has operated as a semi-independent team, occasionally winning rallies but without the full engineering and financial weight of a factory effort. That changed the character of the program. M-Sport has done remarkable things on a privateer budget, but it's not the same as a works team with direct access to Ford's engineering resources.

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Rally1 regulations introduced hybrid systems in 2022, which aligns suspiciously well with Ford's current push toward electrified performance road cars. The timing suggests this isn't just about winning rallies. It's about developing hybrid all-wheel drive systems that can be justified to shareholders because they win on Sundays and sell on Mondays.

Toyota's return to WRC in 2017 after an 18-year absence proved a factory rally program can produce genuine road car benefits. The GR Yaris exists because of that program. Hyundai's WRC entry in 2014 led directly to the i20 N and eventually the rest of the N performance line. Ford had that same relationship with rallying in the 1990s and 2000s, when the Escort Cosworth and Focus RS felt like they mattered because the rally program mattered.

Actual road car improvement hinges on whether Ford treats the feedback loop seriously. If it's a marketing exercise with a rally team attached, it won't. If it's a genuine two-way transfer of technology ... a way to test hybrid all-wheel drive systems under the sort of punishment no road car will ever see ... then it might.

Commitment is everything here. Volkswagen dominated WRC from 2013 to 2016, won everything, then walked away. Ford's last factory effort ended in 2012 despite winning two manufacturers' titles. Coming back suggests they think the hybrid Rally1 regulations offer something worth the investment, or at least something they can justify to a board that stopped caring about rallying in 2012.

M-Sport will continue as Ford's competition partner, but with full factory support this time. That means more budget, more engineers, and presumably more pressure to win. The 2028 Fiesta entry gives them a year to sort the program before the purpose-built 2029 car arrives. Sensible, if unexciting.

Ford's last rally-bred road car that actually felt like it came from a rally program was the Focus RS Mk2. That was 2009. The subsequent RS models were good, but they didn't feel like they existed because Ford needed to homologate something for competition. If this WRC return produces another road car with that kind of engineering legitimacy, it's worth paying attention to.

The 2029 purpose-built Rally1 car arrives with 500 horsepower and a hybrid system Ford says will influence the next generation of performance road cars.

Sources: Ford Motor Company

A researcher mapped the entire US network of Flock Safety's automated license plate readers. The company's response? Attempted takedown.

Someone mapped all 300,000 of Flock Safety's surveillance cameras across the United States, and the company that profits from watching your car move through public streets apparently didn't appreciate the transparency.

Flock Safety sells automated license plate reader systems to police departments and homeowners associations. The cameras sit on poles at neighborhood entrances and major intersections, silently photographing every passing vehicle, logging the plate number, make, model, colour, and precise location. All of it gets stored in a searchable database that law enforcement can query whenever they like.

Think about that for a moment. Your daily route to work, logged. School run, logged. Weekend trip to the retail park, logged.

The business model works because most people don't know the cameras are there, or how many there are, or where exactly they're positioned. A researcher recently solved that problem by creating a comprehensive map of the entire network. Three hundred thousand devices. Specific locations.

Flock's response was to try to kill the research.

According to reports, the company moved to have the map taken down after publication. Not disputed. Not corrected. Just removed. Which is a fascinating position for a surveillance operation to take, given that the entire premise of their product is that monitoring people without their explicit daily consent makes communities safer. The company resists being monitored itself, which rather undermines the argument.

The cameras themselves are not hidden. They're visible if you know what you're looking for. Mounted in plain sight on public streets, often funded with public money through municipal contracts or HOA fees. The researcher likely compiled the map using procurement records, city council meeting minutes, and direct observation. All public information. All legal.

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Flock markets aggressively to both sides of the surveillance appetite. To police, it's an investigative tool that can track vehicles across entire metropolitan areas. To residents, it's a crime deterrent that keeps undesirables out of the neighbourhood. What the company doesn't advertise quite as loudly is the permanence of the data collection or the lack of oversight on who queries the system and why.

Surveillance infrastructure has objected to being surveilled before. Clearview AI, the facial recognition company that scraped billions of photos from social media, famously bristled when researchers exposed the scale of its database. Amazon's Ring doorbell network became controversial when mapping projects revealed just how thoroughly some neighbourhoods were blanketed in always-on cameras. The difference is that Ring cameras are privately owned, even if Amazon hoovers up the footage. Flock devices are often taxpayer-funded and installed on public property.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been documenting Flock's expansion for years. The company is now active in over 2,000 US communities. Some cities, like San Francisco and Oakland, have banned or restricted ALPR systems outright on privacy grounds. Others have embraced them enthusiastically, seeing automated surveillance as a staffing solution for under-resourced police departments.

The attempted takedown suggests Flock views the camera locations as strategically sensitive information. That's a telling admission. If the cameras are purely a public safety tool with nothing to hide, why does it matter if people know where they are? The obvious answer is that widespread awareness of the surveillance network's scale and density might prompt uncomfortable questions about proportionality, oversight, and whether any of this actually reduces crime or just creates a permanent digital record of everyone's movements.

The researcher's map is a public service, whether Flock thinks so or not. You can't have an informed debate about mass surveillance if people don't know they're being surveilled in the first place. And you certainly can't trust a company that profits from watching the public while simultaneously trying to prevent the public from watching back.

Sources: Car Scoops, Electronic Frontier Foundation surveillance research, public procurement records

The entire 2026 allocation of Ram's entry-level Rumble Bee with the 5.7-litre HEMI V8 vanished in an hour and a half, which tells you everything about what buyers actually want versus what manufacturers insist they should have.

Ram's entire 2026 allocation of the Rumble Bee sold out in 90 minutes. The entire year. Gone before lunchtime.

The Rumble Bee is positioned as Ram's entry-level performance truck, which in this context means you get the 5.7-litre HEMI V8 without having to tick every box on the options list first. That engine makes 395 horsepower and 410 lb-ft of torque, figures that matter less than the fact that it's a naturally aspirated V8 in a market being systematically stripped of them.

This is a revival of a nameplate Ram used in the early 2000s, and the speed of this sellout suggests the nostalgia isn't just for the badge. It's for the engine. Because while Stellantis and everyone else pivots toward turbocharged inline-sixes and electrification, the people actually spending money appear to have other ideas.

Ninety minutes. That's faster than most limited-edition supercars manage, and those come with social media hype campaigns and influencer unboxings. The Rumble Bee is a working truck with a big engine and a relatively accessible price. It sold itself.

The timing is pointed. Ram has been clear about its future direction, and that direction involves fewer cylinders and more batteries. The Hurricane twin-turbo inline-six is the anointed replacement, a capable engine by all accounts, but not the one people are panic-buying when given the chance.

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This isn't the first time we've seen this pattern. Dodge's Last Call editions of the Challenger and Charger evaporated in 2023. Ford's F-150 Lightning had waitlists, sure, but so did the Bronco, and that was partly because people wanted something that felt like it came from before everything got efficient and mild. Toyota's GR Corolla allocations disappeared within hours. The common thread isn't retro styling or clever marketing. It's hardware people think won't be available much longer.

And they're right. General Motors has already announced phase-outs of V8s in certain truck lines. Ford's gone deep into EcoBoost territory. The 5.7 HEMI, for all its thirst and emissions baggage, is on borrowed time. Everyone knows it. Ram knows it. That's probably why they didn't make more Rumble Bees available.

What's interesting is the gap between what this sellout represents and what gets talked about in product announcements. Electrification is the future, we're told. Efficiency is what customers demand. Smaller, turbocharged engines deliver the torque without the guilt. And yet here's an entry-level V8 truck that sold a year's worth of inventory before the press release got cold.

The Rumble Bee isn't a halo car. It's not a limited-run collectible with a numbered plaque. It's the accessible version, the one that's supposed to sit on dealer lots and give salespeople something to move when the TRX is too much truck and too much money. Instead, it's gone, and everyone who didn't get one is now shopping used or waiting for 2027, assuming there is a 2027 allocation.

This won't change Ram's product plans. The decisions about powertrains were made years ago, and they're not reversible because one trim level sold well. But it does highlight how large the gap has become between what the industry wants to build and what a significant portion of buyers still want to own.

The 2026 Rumble Bee allocation is sold out. The 5.7-litre HEMI will keep rumbling in those trucks for years, long after Ram has moved on to explaining why the replacement is actually better.

Sources: Ram Trucks (Stellantis)

Millions of American shoppers have lost access to up to $1 per gallon off at the pump through the Kroger rewards scheme, exactly when they need it most.

Kroger has scrapped the fuel discount programme that let customers knock up to $1 per gallon off at the pump, removing one of the main reasons people bothered shopping there in the first place. The timing is impressively bad. US average petrol prices are sitting above $3.50 per gallon in most markets, household budgets are stretched thin, and the country's second-largest supermarket chain has decided now is the moment to pull a benefit that saved regular shoppers $5 to $10 every fill-up.

The programme was straightforward. Spend a dollar on groceries or prescriptions, earn one fuel point. Collect 100 points, get 10 cents off per gallon at a Kroger fuel centre. Stack enough purchases and you could hit that maximum $1 discount without much effort. Kroger co-branded credit cards made it even easier, turning routine shopping into tangible savings at a time when people actually notice an extra tenner in their wallet.

Kroger operates roughly 2,750 supermarkets across 35 states under banners like Ralphs, Fred Meyer, and King Soopers. That's millions of customers who specifically chose Kroger over Walmart, Amazon, or whoever else because the fuel rewards made the maths work. Those customers now have one less reason to stay loyal.

Kroger isn't alone in this retreat. Shell Fuel Rewards changed its earning rates in 2023, making grocery store partnerships less generous. Weis Markets tinkered with its structure the same year. Giant Eagle cut its maximum fuel savings from $1.50 to $1.00 per gallon. Supermarkets are quietly walking back fuel discount programmes that were supposed to be permanent perks.

What makes Kroger's decision particularly irritating is the competitive landscape. Sam's Club and Costco still offer fuel discounts as membership benefits, and they're not subtle about it. Warehouse clubs have turned cheap petrol into a membership-retention weapon. Kroger just handed them an argument on a plate.

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For regular Kroger shoppers, the immediate question is where to find replacement savings. Credit card rewards programmes exist, though they require more effort and usually deliver cashback rather than instant pump discounts. Warehouse club memberships cost money upfront but include fuel savings as part of the package. Or you just eat the higher cost and shop based on proximity and price rather than loyalty schemes that can disappear whenever the spreadsheet says so.

The fuel points programme wasn't charity. It was a customer retention tool designed to keep people coming back weekly instead of splitting their shopping between multiple chains. Kroger clearly decided the cost of maintaining it outweighed the benefit of keeping those customers locked in. That might be sound financial strategy in the boardroom. It's less sound if you're the customer who built shopping habits around a programme that no longer exists.

Grocery fuel rewards always had an expiration date built into the model. They worked when petrol was cheap and competition was fierce. Now petrol is expensive, margins are tight, and the supermarkets are pulling back benefits while hoping customers don't notice or care enough to leave.

The customers will notice. Whether they care enough to actually change where they shop is a different question. Inertia is a powerful force in grocery retail. People stick with the shop they know even when the incentives disappear. Kroger is betting on that inertia being stronger than the lost fuel savings.

Sources: Kroger Co., Reuters, Bloomberg

By 2008, three-quarters of Big Three sales were trucks and SUVs. Then petrol prices spiked and Japanese manufacturers cleaned up.

By the mid-2000s, SUVs and light trucks accounted for 75% of what General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler were shifting out of showrooms. Suburbans. Expeditions. Durangos. Big profit margins, high kerb weights, and fuel consumption that only made sense when petrol was cheap.

It wasn't.

Gasoline hit $4.11 per gallon in July 2008. That's an all-time high, and it turned Detroit's entire product strategy into a liability overnight. The people who'd been buying Expeditions started doing sums on napkins. Toyota and Honda had those sums figured out years earlier.

Prius sales jumped 69% year-on-year in 2007. The Honda Civic and Toyota Corolla became America's best-selling passenger cars during 2007 and 2008. Not SUVs. Not trucks. Small, efficient boxes that didn't cost a mortgage payment to fill. The average fuel economy of a Big Three vehicle in 2007 sat at roughly 24 mpg. Japanese manufacturers were hitting 29 mpg. Five miles per gallon doesn't sound like much until you're doing it every week.

The Big Three's market share fell from 70% in 1998 to 53% by 2008. That's not a blip. That's a structural collapse. Ford lost $12.7 billion in 2006 and another $2.7 billion in 2007. GM, which had been the world's largest automaker for decades, got overtaken by Toyota in 2008. Hummer, the ultimate symbol of American excess, was shut down in 2010 after fuel prices destroyed any remaining demand.

The 1970s oil crisis handed Japanese compact cars their first permanent foothold in America. Same playbook, three decades apart.

The 1970s oil crisis handed Japanese compact cars their first permanent foothold in America. Honda Accords and Toyota Corollas became default sensible choices because they didn't guzzle fuel and they didn't break. Detroit responded with the Saturn brand in 1990, a dedicated effort to build competitive small cars. It never worked. Saturn died in 2009, the same year GM and Chrysler took government bailouts to avoid total collapse.

Hyundai, meanwhile, spotted the opportunity and ran at it. The Korean manufacturer introduced a 10-year, 100,000-mile warranty in 1998, a middle finger to the perception that Asian cars outside Japan were cheap and flimsy. It worked. Hyundai's U.S. market share climbed from 0.9% to 3.3% by 2005. When fuel prices spiked, buyers who might have dismissed Hyundai as a budget option started taking them seriously.

Volkswagen tried a diesel push around the same time, banking on fuel economy concerns to shift TDI models. That strategy imploded later for entirely different reasons involving emissions fraud, but the logic was sound. High fuel prices make people reconsider what they're willing to drive.

Tesla launched the Roadster in 2008. Awful timing for a $100,000 electric sports car, except it turned out to be perfect timing. Oil dependence and fuel costs were front-page concerns. Tesla positioned itself as the long-term answer, and enough people bought that argument to keep the company alive long enough to matter.

Detroit didn't see any of this coming, or didn't care. The profit margins on full-size SUVs were too good. Executives convinced themselves that American buyers would always want big vehicles, that fuel prices would stabilize, that they had time to adjust. They didn't. By the time they tried pivoting toward smaller, more efficient vehicles, Toyota and Honda owned that market. Hyundai and Kia were climbing fast behind them.

The 2008 financial crisis finished what high fuel prices started. GM and Chrysler went into bankruptcy. Ford survived without a bailout, mostly because it had borrowed heavily in 2006 and had cash reserves to burn through. The industry that emerged on the other side looked nothing like the one that went in.

Today, the Big Three are back making massive profits on trucks and SUVs again. Fuel economy standards are higher, engines are smaller and turbocharged, but the basic bet is identical. F-150s. Silverados. Jeep Wranglers. Premium trim levels north of seventy grand. Petrol is cheaper than it was in 2008, and memories are short.

Sources: U.S. Energy Information Administration fuel price data, Automotive News sales archives, company financial filings, Ward's Automotive historical market share data

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The online car marketplace burned through investor cash at an accelerating rate in 2024, raising familiar questions about whether venture-backed car platforms can ever actually make money.

Carwow posted losses of £23.9 million for the year ending December 2024, up from £19.7 million the year before. Revenue crossed £100 million for the first time. The company says the widening loss reflects heavy investment in technology and product development.

That's the polite version.

The less polite version is that Carwow spent an extra £4.2 million losing money in a year when it was supposedly scaling. Revenue growth is meant to make losses shrink, not expand. When the opposite happens, it means the business model has a problem or the growth is being bought at unsustainable cost.

Carwow operates as a marketplace connecting car buyers with dealers. It takes a commission on leads and completed sales. Founded in 2013 by James Hind, the platform started with new car price comparisons and later expanded into used cars and review content. The pitch is straightforward: consumers get competitive quotes, dealers get warm leads, Carwow takes a cut.

On paper, it works. In practice, it costs a fortune to run.

A 21 per cent increase in losses year-on-year suggests the company is either investing for a future payoff that hasn't materialised yet, or chasing growth metrics that investors want to see regardless of whether they lead anywhere sustainable. Technology investment is the usual explanation. Product development is the usual follow-up. Neither tells you whether the spending will ever stop.

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Carwow is not alone in this. Cazoo collapsed spectacularly in 2023 after burning through billions trying to build an online car retail empire. Cinch, owned by Constellation Automotive Group, has poured money into a similar model with mixed results. Auto Trader UK eventually became profitable, but it took years of losses to get there.

Venture-backed automotive platforms follow a consistent pattern: raise funding, grow fast, lose money, raise more funding, repeat until either profitability arrives or the money runs out. Carwow has raised substantial venture capital over the years. That funding is what keeps the lights on while losses mount.

The platform remains operational and useful. Buyers still get competitive quotes. Dealers still get leads. The service works as advertised.

Whether the business works as a business is less clear. Revenue over £100 million sounds impressive until you realise the company is losing nearly a quarter of that amount every year. At some point, investors will want their money back. Or at least want to see a path to getting it back.

The optimistic reading is that Carwow is building infrastructure that will eventually generate profits once the initial investment phase ends. The pessimistic reading is that online car marketplaces are structurally difficult to make profitable because the margins are thin, the competition is fierce, and the customer acquisition costs are high.

Carwow hasn't said when it expects to break even. Most venture-backed companies don't, because admitting you have no clear timeline to profitability makes the next funding round harder to close.

The company filed its 2024 accounts in 2025. The loss figure is a matter of public record. The explanation about technology investment came from the company. The reality is that Carwow is now losing nearly £24 million a year selling something that other people make.

Sources: Carwow Ltd financial filings, Companies House

Which? ranks the Tiguan bottom for dependability, with nearly a third of owners reporting faults. German engineering reputation takes another hit.

The Volkswagen Tiguan has been named the least reliable used car in the UK, according to a survey of approximately 40,000 vehicle owners conducted by Which?, the country's leading consumer rights organisation.

Nearly one in three Tiguan owners reported faults with their vehicles. Engine problems, gearbox failures, and electrical gremlins topped the complaint list.

Which? surveyed owners of cars aged between three and eight years old, covering the 2016 to 2024 model range. The Tiguan's reliability score came in significantly below the average for family SUVs, a category it was supposed to dominate.

This is one of Volkswagen's best-selling models globally. That makes the result worse, not better. High volumes mean more data points, yes, but they also mean more buyers discovering that what they paid for isn't what they got.

The gap between Volkswagen's marketing and the lived experience of ownership has widened into something resembling a canyon. For decades, the brand sold German engineering as a tangible thing you could touch in the cabin, hear in the door closing, feel in the way the car drove. That story justified higher prices than a Kia or a Hyundai. It was the reason people stretched their budgets.

The Tiguan's failure isn't an outlier. Which? has previously ranked the Sharan and Touran poorly for reliability. The Golf Mk7, produced between 2012 and 2020, accumulated its own catalogue of owner complaints. Dieselgate in 2015 cost Volkswagen over €30 billion and involved 11 million vehicles worldwide. The reputational damage was supposed to be temporary.

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It wasn't.

Japanese brands like Toyota and Lexus continue to top reliability rankings in the UK and US. Their success isn't about clever marketing or heritage. It's about fewer things going wrong. That's not romantic, but it is what people actually want when they're spending their own money.

German car brands ... Volkswagen, Audi, Mercedes-Benz ... have historically traded on engineering quality as a core differentiator. That reputation is now doing more harm than good, because it sets expectations the products can't meet. When a Range Rover breaks down, nobody is surprised. Range Rover reliability has been a punchline for years. When a Volkswagen does it, there's a sense of betrayal attached.

For used car buyers, this survey is useful data presented at scale. Reliability isn't subjective. It's measurable. Forty thousand owners is a large enough sample to mean something. If you're considering a used Tiguan, you're now making that decision with the knowledge that roughly a third of current owners have had problems serious enough to report them.

Volkswagen's response to the survey has been predictably corporate: a commitment to quality, references to investment in new technology, assurances that customer satisfaction is paramount. None of that fixes a gearbox.

The brand built its reputation over decades. Losing it has taken less time than that. Whether it can be rebuilt depends on whether Volkswagen can make cars that actually work as well as the old ones were supposed to. Right now, the evidence suggests it can't.

The Tiguan starts at around £32,000 new. On the used market, three-year-old examples are available from £18,000. That depreciation curve just got steeper.

Sources: Which? UK consumer survey (2024), Volkswagen UK, historical reliability data from J.D. Power and Consumer Reports

The 2020 rollback cut annual efficiency gains from 5% to 1.5%, adding 500,000 barrels of oil a day to U.S. consumption and forcing manufacturers to bet on regulations that might not last.

In March 2020, the Trump administration finalised the Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient Vehicles Rule, cutting the federal fuel economy target from 40.4 miles per gallon by 2026 to roughly 32 mpg. The move slashed the annual improvement requirement from 5% to 1.5%, handing a temporary reprieve to manufacturers who had spent years preparing for standards they were now told to ignore.

The original Obama-era target, 54.5 mpg by 2025 in manufacturer terms, translated to 40.4 mpg in real-world driving once you accounted for the EPA's testing adjustments. The Trump rule binned that trajectory entirely.

NHTSA Administrator James Owens and EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler argued the rollback would save consumers $1,400 per vehicle. Environmental groups called that figure fiction. What nobody disputed was the oil consumption estimate: an additional 500,000 barrels per day, a figure that made the rule a gift to domestic energy producers and a headache for anyone planning long-term emissions policy.

The decision split the industry down the middle. Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, and BMW had already signed a voluntary agreement with California for stricter standards than the Trump rule mandated. General Motors, Toyota, and Fiat Chrysler backed the rollback. The schism wasn't ideological, it was strategic. The Europeans and Ford were already tooling up for tighter regulations in the EU and China; they had no interest in building two sets of powertrains. GM and FCA, with heavier exposure to full-size trucks and the U.S. domestic market, saw the rollback as breathing room.

California didn't take it quietly. The administration revoked the state's Clean Air Act waiver, the legal mechanism that had allowed California to set its own stricter emissions standards since 1970. Twenty-two other states joined California in suing. The waiver wasn't a courtesy, it was statutory, and revoking it triggered a legal fight that outlasted the administration itself.

For manufacturers, the real cost wasn't regulatory, it was uncertainty. Vehicle development runs between five and seven years from concept to showroom. A company greenlighting a new platform in 2020 had no idea whether the rules would still be 32 mpg or 49 mpg by the time the car launched. The safe bet was to engineer for the stricter standard and hope it paid off. The cheaper bet was to optimise for the rollback and risk building something obsolete if the next administration flipped the table again.

In April 2022, the Biden administration reinstated stricter standards, requiring 49 mpg by 2026. California's waiver was restored two months earlier. The Trump-era rule lasted two model years in practice, just long enough to create confusion and burn development budgets on contingency planning.

Consumers buying gas-powered vehicles during the rollback period faced their own version of the same problem. Resale values depend partly on running costs, and running costs depend on fuel prices and regulatory pressure. A truck optimised for 2020's relaxed standards might be a liability in 2027 if fuel hits $5 a gallon and tighter emissions rules push used buyers toward hybrids. Or it might be fine. Nobody knew.

The yo-yoing made long-term infrastructure planning nearly impossible. Refineries, charging networks, hydrogen distribution, battery supply chains... all of it requires certainty about where the fleet is headed. A four-year window of policy whiplash doesn't build refineries, it just makes everyone hedge.

The industry adapted, mostly by ignoring the rollback and continuing to electrify anyway. Europe and China weren't softening their targets, so the global platforms had to meet the higher bar regardless of what Washington wanted. The Trump rule proved inconsequential, a temporary distortion that cost more in legal fees and planning chaos than it saved in engineering costs.

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Cities across California are sticking giant suction devices on windscreens to enforce unpaid parking tickets. State law says only three types of people can legally immobilise your car, and parking enforcement companies aren't on the list.

The Barnacle weighs 20 pounds, suction-cups itself to your windscreen, and won't come off until you pay your parking fines plus a release fee. Cities from Los Angeles to San Francisco have deployed them. But California Vehicle Code Section 22651.7 is extremely specific about who can legally stop you driving your car away, and private parking enforcement companies using these devices appear to fall outside those restrictions.

Under California law, only three categories of people can immobilise a private vehicle: law enforcement officers, property owners acting on their own property, or licensed repossession agents. That's it. The statute exists precisely to prevent the kind of freelance immobilisation that parking barnacles represent.

The device itself is straightforward. Made by Ideas That Stick, a Pennsylvania company, it's a large plastic and metal contraption that blocks the driver's entire view. You can't drive with it on. You can't easily remove it without damaging your windscreen. You pay via phone app or website, get a release code, punch it in, and the suction releases. The whole system is designed around coercion ... pay up or your car stays where it is.

Cities like the barnacle because it's cheaper than towing and less labour-intensive than wheel boots. Denver switched to barnacles in 2018. Philadelphia started using them in 2019 targeting vehicles with outstanding parking debt. New York adopted them in 2021 for repeat offenders. The pitch is always the same: it's more humane than a tow truck dragging your car to an impound lot where fees multiply by the hour.

But humane and legal are not the same thing.

Section 22651.7(e) makes illegal vehicle immobilisation a misdemeanor. The penalty is up to six months in jail, a fine up to $1,000, or both. That's not a parking ticket. That's a criminal charge. And if the person or company attaching the barnacle doesn't fall into one of the three permitted categories, every device they deploy is potentially a violation.

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Parking enforcement is necessary. Cities outsourcing that enforcement to private companies using methods the state legislature explicitly restricted is another matter entirely. California has been through versions of this fight before, with automated license plate readers and aggressive private lot enforcement. The pattern is familiar: a technology appears, gets deployed widely, then someone reads the actual statute.

Drivers who find barnacles on their windscreens typically pay between $50 and $150 as a release fee, on top of whatever fines they owe. That's on top of the tickets themselves, which may or may not have been fairly issued in the first place. The device doesn't care. It just sits there until money changes hands.

Sound familiar?

No major California case has tested whether barnacle deployment violates Section 22651.7. But the statute is unambiguous, and the device unquestionably immobilises the vehicle. If a private contractor attaches one, and that contractor isn't a law enforcement officer, a property owner on their own land, or a licensed repo agent, the law appears to have been broken.

Cities will argue they're acting under municipal authority to enforce parking violations. That argument has limits. State vehicle code doesn't defer to cities when it comes to who can physically prevent someone from driving. The legislature wrote those restrictions for a reason, and adding a suction cup doesn't change the legal framework.

The Barnacle has been marketed as progress. It probably is, compared to towing. But progress that violates the law is still a violation, and $1,000 is more than most parking tickets.

Sources: California Vehicle Code Section 22651.7, Ideas That Stick (Barnacle manufacturer), Los Angeles parking enforcement, San Francisco parking enforcement

The R3 is being positioned materially below the R2's $45,000 entry point, putting Rivian in direct competition with Tesla and Chevy in the one segment where EVs actually need to succeed.

Rivian has confirmed the R3 will be priced materially lower than the R2, which means a starting figure under $40,000 against the R2's $45,000 entry point. This isn't positioning. It's a statement of intent in a segment where most manufacturers have either failed or refused to compete.

The R3 is smaller than the R2 SUV. It's a crossover hatchback, unveiled alongside the R2 in March 2024 at Rivian's Laguna Beach design facility. RJ Scaringe showed both vehicles at the same event, but the R3 was the surprise. Few expected Rivian to go after the affordable end of the market this aggressively.

Under $40,000 puts the R3 alongside the Tesla Model 3 at $38,990 and the Chevrolet Equinox EV at $35,000. Those are the only two EVs currently available in the United States that come close to mass-market pricing. Everything else hovers around $50,000 or climbs rapidly beyond it. The average new EV transaction price in late 2024 was $50,683, which explains why adoption remains slow despite endless talk about the electric future.

Rivian has burned money at a rate that would embarrass most startups. The company has never turned a profit. Promising a sub-$40,000 EV while still bleeding cash is either visionary or delusional, depending on whether they can actually build it at that price.

Production timelines add to the scepticism. The R2 doesn't start rolling out of Rivian's Normal, Illinois facility until the first half of 2026. The R3 follows sometime after that, likely 2027 or later. By then, the competitive landscape will have shifted again. Hyundai's Kona Electric already starts at $33,550. Nissan's Leaf begins around $28,140, though it's aging badly. Volkswagen's ID.4 sits at $38,995. Rivian is entering a segment where established brands already occupy the space.

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The R3X performance variant was also announced, which suggests Rivian understands that affordable doesn't have to mean boring. But performance variants don't save companies. Volume models do, and volume at this price point requires ruthless cost control that Rivian hasn't demonstrated yet.

Tesla promised the Model 3 at $35,000 back in 2016. It took years to get there, and when it finally arrived, the $35,000 version disappeared almost immediately. Elon Musk admitted it was financially unviable. Rivian is making a similar promise in a market where battery costs haven't dropped as fast as predicted and where tariffs and supply chain disruptions remain unpredictable.

The R3 could work if Rivian has genuinely figured out how to build an EV at this price without losing money on every unit. If they haven't, this is just another optimistic projection that will quietly shift upward as production approaches. The company's track record doesn't inspire confidence, but the segment desperately needs someone to prove it's possible.

The design looks good. The intent is clear. Rivian can deliver in 2027 what they're promising now, or they can't. The execution remains theoretical.

R2 production begins in 2026. R3 pricing gets real sometime after that, assuming the company is still solvent.

Sources: Rivian Automotive official announcements, EV pricing data from manufacturer websites and Cox Automotive transaction reports