Ars Technica - Cars Technica

The 2020 McLaren GT—never mind the looks, love the way it drives

Thu, 13 Aug 2020 19:28:32 GMT

I'm not in love with the way the McLaren GT looks, but I did fall in love with the way it drives. [credit: Jonathan Gitlin ]

It has been interesting to watch McLaren Automotive making the most of its platform. The company has been highly resourceful, using the same (or highly similar) basic building blocks—a carbon-fiber monocoque tub and twin-turbo V8 engine—to build a range of supercars and hypercars for most occasions. With the McLaren GT, the carmaker has gotten as far away from laptime-obsessed machines like the hybrid P1 or the wing-covered Senna as it can. GT stands for "grand tourer," and that means this is a car designed to be comfortable over long distances.

That's something I tried to put to the test as best I could, given rather strict instructions not to put more than 250 miles (402km) on the odometer. And it's true—this is the most comfortable, most easy-to-live-with McLaren I've driven. But don't go expecting something soft or podgy—it might say "GT" on the chassis plaque, but it's still a true supercar, through and through.

First, a confession: I'm not a fan of the way it looks, forward of the B pillars. The nose appears borrowed from a goblin shark, and the way some of the GT's lines intersect halfway down the car makes me wonder if members of the design team each contributed elements without anyone talking to each other. Then again, from other angles, particularly the rear, I think parts of it look amazing. But looks are subjective, and plenty of passersby viewed the shape of its (aluminum) body far more favorably than I do.

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Uber CEO warns California ruling could force a months-long shutdown

Wed, 12 Aug 2020 17:05:05 GMT

Enlarge / Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. (credit: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi is warning that a landmark California ruling on the employment status of its drivers could force the company to shut down its service in California until November.

"We think we comply by the laws," Khosrowshahi said on MSNBC. "But if the judge and the court finds that we're not, and they don't give us a stay to get to November, then we'll have to essentially shut down Uber until November when the voters decide."

Last year, California's legislature passed legislation designed to force Uber and other "gig economy" companies to treat their drivers as employees rather than independent contractors. That could entitle the workers to minimum wage protections, reimbursement for expenses, unemployment insurance, and other benefits.

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The Hyperion XP-1 hypercar wants to give hydrogen a halo effect

Wed, 12 Aug 2020 13:53:28 GMT

This is the Hyperion XP-1, which is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. [credit: Hyperion ]

Angelo Kafantaris is a man on a mission. He's the CEO of Hyperion, which on Wednesday morning debuted a new hypercar that wants to prove you can go really fast without wrecking the planet. But this vehicle isn't packed full of lithium-ion cells. Instead, the XP-1 is powered by a fuel cell, and its job is to give hydrogen a halo effect that more pedestrian fuel cell electric vehicles like the Toyota Mirai or Hyundai Nexo haven't quite managed.

"The key criterion is to deliver this clean powerful energy source in a cost-effective way so that the rest of the world could enjoy it," he told me when we spoke a few weeks go. "So we decided we wanted to help this industry grow so that the rest of us enjoy the same benefits, which of course would be really long range, really fast refuel time, a longer life cycle that doesn't degrade with every charge (or refuel in this case), a very high gravimetric energy density, the nature of recyclability, which is not cost prohibitive as compared to batteries, and then I think lastly, durability since hydrogen vehicles are not susceptible to low performance in high heat or very cold temperatures. All these things make hydrogen a wonderful value proposition for the consumer when applied to vehicles."

It certainly looks the part, appearing a bit like a Bugatti Chiron that had a transporter accident with an IndyCar. The headline figures for the XP-1 would make it a winner in a game of hypercar Top Trumps: Zero to 60mph in under 2.2 seconds. A top speed above 221mph (356km/h). And a range of 1,016 miles (1,635km) between fuel stops. The monocoque tub and bodywork are made from carbon composite with strands of titanium woven through it for added strength, yet the XP-1 has a curb weight of 2,275lbs (1,031kg). And it's powered by a hydrogen fuel cell that feeds energy to a pair of electric motors, with an ultracapacitor in there as an energy storage device.

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Always read the fine print? GM Super Cruise only free for three years

Tue, 11 Aug 2020 20:23:13 GMT

Enlarge / 2019 Cadillac CT6 with Super Cruise engaged. (credit: Cadillac)

I have regularly been effusive about General Motors' Super Cruise. By geofencing the combination of adaptive cruise control and lane keeping so that it will only engage on divided-lane highways and topping that with a gaze-tracking driver-monitoring system that only allows Super Cruise to function when drivers have their eyes on the road ahead, it works extremely well and within a tight operational design domain that should preclude any chance of encountering a parked car.

After trying it out in the Cadillac CT6 in 2018, I was so impressed I echoed Alex Roy and called on GM to make Super Cruise available in as many models as possible, as soon as possible. GM is slowly doing this. Even Consumer Reports was impressed. But in all that time, I guess I never read the fine print.

Well, the people over at MotorTrend did, and guess what? It turns out that if you bought a model year 2018, 2019, or 2020 CT6, you actually only get a free three-year trial of Super Cruise functionality. After that point, you must have an active OnStar account for Super Cruise to continue to work:

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Independent testing confirms the Lucid Air has a range of 517 miles

Tue, 11 Aug 2020 14:12:43 GMT

Enlarge / The Air looks superficially the same as when we saw it in 2017, but almost every body panel has changed. (credit: Lucid Motors)

Like it or not, range has become the primary criteria by which electric vehicles are judged. Even though most Americans travel fewer than 73 miles a day and almost every EV owner wakes up to a freshly charged battery each morning, there remains a deep-seated psychological dread at the possibility of having to drop everything and drive from New York to California with as little time spent stationary as possible. Limited range is frequently used as justification for the idea that the EV is a mere fad and will never actually catch on.

Well, road trippers, you'll soon need to find a new excuse not to go electric. Independent testing of the Lucid Air, which goes into production toward the end of the year, has determined that the car can travel 517 miles (832km) on a single charge.

When I spoke with Lucid CEO Peter Rawlinson earlier this year, he told me that the company was targeting at least 400 miles (643km) from a single charge, which would make the Air competitive with the longest-range EV currently on the market. But when FEV North America, a Michigan-based engineering company, put an Air through the EPA's multitest cycle procedure, the results were far in excess of this internal goal.

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The 2021 Polestar 2 has a great cabin—and deep Android integration

Mon, 10 Aug 2020 19:03:35 GMT

Enlarge / On the road with the new Polestar 2. (credit: Polestar)

Any day I get to drive a new battery electric car is a good day. Which made last Friday a good day, because we got our first drive in the $59,900 Polestar 2. It's the first mass-production model from a new standalone brand that was spun out of Volvo and Geely a few years ago. And the tl;dr is that the Polestar 2 is a stylish sedan with a wonderful interior, some very fancy suspension bits, and oh—it's also the first car to use Google's Android Automotive OS.

A brief history of Polestar

Once upon a time, Polestar was to Volvo as AMG is to Mercedes-Benz—a tuning company that spiffed up more pedestrian models, imbuing them with a little Nürburgring magic. But in 2017, Volvo and Geely (which owns the Swedish automaker) spun Polestar out as an independent company, one focused on sustainability and performance. Its first product was the Polestar 1, a hand-built $150,000 plug-in hybrid GT that dazzled me when I drove it in late 2019.

But with a total production run of only 1,500 cars over three years, you can think of the Polestar 1 like a calling card or a statement of intent. The future of Polestar is purely electric (so no more PHEVs)—and shipping cars in much greater volumes. By the end of 2021, we'll see the Polestar 3, an SUV that promises to look a lot like the stunning Precept concept shown off in April. But first, there's the Polestar 2. (Interesting fact: because Polestar is recognized as a standalone OEM, it has its own allocation of 200,000 vehicles for the IRS plug-in tax credit, as opposed to being counted together with Volvo.)

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Hyundai will launch three new electric cars, starting in 2021

Sun, 09 Aug 2020 23:30:54 GMT

Hyundai is spinning out Ioniq as a brand for electric cars, in the same way that it spun out Genesis as a standalone brand for luxury cars. It will launch three new battery electrics between 2021 and 2024. [credit: Hyundai ]

Hyundai is going to market a range of new battery-electric cars under Ioniq branding. The Korean automaker first introduced the Ioniq name in 2016 with a subcompact that comes in hybrid, plug-in hybrid, and BEV flavors, but early in 2021 those cars will be joined by the Ioniq 5, a midsize BEV crossover based on a 2019 concept called 45. In 2022, Ioniq will launch the Ioniq 6, an electric sedan based on the stunning Prophecy concept car from earlier this year. Finally, in early 2024, there will be a larger SUV called the Ioniq 7. It's not the first time we've seen this strategy from the automaker, which did the same thing with the creation of Genesis as a standalone luxury brand.

"The Ioniq brand will change the paradigm of EV customer experience. With a new emphasis on connected living, we will offer electrified experiences integral to an eco-friendly lifestyle,” said Wonhong Cho, executive vice president and global chief marketing officer at Hyundai Motor Company.

Ioniq's first three BEVs will be built on a new platform that Hyundai is developing, called the Electric Global Modular Platform, or E-GMP, which it says is highly flexible with regard to body style and interior design. We can probably expect these cars to be built in serious volume; Hyundai Motor Group (which also includes Kia and Genesis) is aiming to sell 1 million BEVs a year by 2025. By that same year it also plans to sell more than half a million hydrogen fuel cell EVs.

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New cars can stay in their lane—but might not stop for parked cars

Fri, 07 Aug 2020 12:33:48 GMT

Enlarge / A test vehicle collides with a dummy car at a AAA test track in California. (credit: AAA)

In recent years, a number of car companies have—like Tesla—begun offering driver assistance systems that offer lane-keeping as well as adaptive cruise control. This might seem like a big step toward a "self-driving car," since a system like this can travel down the freeway for miles without human intervention. But a new report from AAA underscores the limitations of these systems.

Its most dramatic finding: the advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) on the latest cars still struggle to avoid collisions with parked vehicles. They tested cars from BMW, Kia, and Subaru; none consistently avoided running into a fake car partially blocking the travel lane.

The researchers also examined the ADAS in the Cadillac CT6 and the Ford Edge, but these cars' systems weren't included in the parked-vehicle test because their driver assistance systems wouldn't engage on AAA's closed course. They were included in other tests conducted on public highways.

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Cadillac reveals the Lyriq, its new long-range electric SUV

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 23:00:50 GMT

The Cadillac Lyriq is the first battery EV to use General Motors' new 3rd-generation EV platform. [credit: Cadillac ]

On Thursday night, Cadillac unveiled a new SUV, the Lyriq. It's the brand's first battery electric vehicle, and the first vehicle to use General Motors' new BEV3 platform and Ultium battery technology, which is set to spawn 22 new BEVs across the company's range of brands between now and 2023. Cadillac isn't spilling all the beans about the Lyriq just yet, but it did share some info with Ars ahead of the livestream launch. The headline figures are a range of "beyond 300 miles" (482km) on a single charge, DC fast charging at "over 150kW", and the fact that it will come in rear- and all-wheel drive configurations.

Additionally, it's going to feature a massive 33-inch display on the dashboard that combines the main instrument panel and the infotainment system, a dual-plane augmented reality heads-up display (that features information like vehicle speed on a close plane, and navigation directions on a far plane), and advanced driver assistance systems including the latest version of Super Cruise and the ability to remotely park itself.

Recently, I spoke with Michael Harpster, global chief engineer for electric and hybrid propulsion systems at GM, to find out a bit more about the new BEV3 platform and the lessons that GM has learned from its previous vehicles like the EV1 and Chevrolet Bolt EV. "We were doing the math, and you know, we've got 25 years of production EV experience, going back to the EV1. So, there's a huge history of General Motors and electric vehicles," he told me, adding that his team at GM still includes a couple of engineers who worked directly on the EV1, which was in production between 1996 and 1999.

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Coronavirus clobbers Uber, leading to $1.8 billion quarterly loss

Thu, 06 Aug 2020 22:05:40 GMT

Enlarge / Passengers load their luggage into their Uber cars Sydney Airport on August 05, 2020. (credit: James D. Morgan/Getty Images)

The coronavirus pandemic hammered Uber's finances in the second quarter of 2020, the company announced on Thursday. Gross bookings for Uber's core ride-hailing business plunged by 75 percent compared with a year earlier—from $12.2 billion to $3 billion.

That was offset somewhat by rapid growth in Uber's delivery business. Delivery bookings more than doubled from $3.4 billion to $7 billion.

The company lost $1.8 billion in the second quarter on a GAAP basis. Ignoring one-time charges, Uber has been losing around $1 billion per quarter for the last couple of years.

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