2024 Ram 1500 EV: Better Late Than Never

porsche taycan Full OverviewLeave it to Porsche. Going into our 2022 SUV of the Year competition, no vehicle had more pre-shade thrown its way than the Taycan 4 Cross Turismo. We've enjoyed a mixed, ambiguous relationship with the Taycan sedan since we first drove it. On the one hand, kudos to Porsche for making a great-handling electric vehicle that emphasizes performance and feel over everything else. On the other, where's the range, bro?Yes, we like performance, but institutionally we just can't fully get behind the industry's least efficient EV. As for the "SUV" version, well, it's just a barely lifted station wagon, right? No different than the crass, "we're not that gullible" efforts from Audi (the A6 Allroad) and Mercedes-Benz (E450 All-Terrain) to pitch station wagons as some sort of off-roaders. But then we made the terrible mistake of actually taking the Cross Turismo in the dirt, and yeah, Porsche strikes again.Before we get to how it drives, let's talk about what the Taycan 4 Cross Turismo is. First off, it's a station wagon by all definitions of the term. Yes, the legal definition of an SUV has something to do with ride height, but as I'm so fond of saying, "Just look at it." Talk about obvious. The Cross Turismo is an incredibly handsome wagon, especially on the tough-looking five-spoke wheels Porsche bolted to our test subject. Tangentially speaking, Taycan wheel design is all over the map, ranging from goofy to horrible to "yeah, baby." These are the latter. Since we drove the Cross Turismo, Porsche went and confusingly launched an uncladded wagon version of the Taycan, the 2022 GTS Sport Turismo, which looks approximately 10 percent better. That's mostly due to the 0.8-inch drop in ride height, meaning the Sport Turismo is technically a car. More on that in a bit.Under the lovely, Chalk-colored metal you'll find two motors: one driving the wheels at the front axle, and the other driving those at the rear. Unlike all other EVs on the market save for its Audi twin, the E-Tron GT, the Taycan has a two-speed transmission that's only connected to the rear motor. As for power, this gets a bit confusing. Combined output from the two motors is 375 horsepower and 368 lb-ft of torque. However, activate launch control, and the two motors go into overboost and the output increases to 469 horsepower, a more than 20 percent increase. Hey, it's a brave, new EV world. The battery pack is large at 93.4 kWh, and the range is EPA-rated at 215 miles. That's down 10 from the mechanically identical Taycan sedan, due a little to the increased weight of the wagon body but more so the increased ride height that also decreases aerodynamic efficiency and forces the halfshafts to sprout from the motor at an angle. Did I mention it weighs 5,134 pounds?The odd part about driving the Taycan 4 Cross Turismo only occurs when you realize there are three more powerful versions available: the 4S, the Turbo, and the Turbo S. There is a non-4, RWD sedan that makes less power (321 hp, 402 in overboost), but this particular version—$92,250 base, $109, 980 as tested—is pretty far down the Taycan lineup, which also includes the GTS sedan and Sport Turismo. Let me also point out that as far as the Taycan—cough—SUVs go, this is the entry-level Cross Turismo. The entry version that can hit 60 mph in 4.5 seconds, of course.The Taycan 4 Cross Turismo can also run the quarter mile in 12.7 seconds at 115.9 mph. That quarter mile is pretty quick, especially for an off-road-capable station wagon. But it's not that quick for an EV, as the Porsche barely edges out the 470-hp Jeep Wrangler 392 that does the quarter in 12.9. Hey we're talking SUVs, right? And remember, that using launch control this Taycan makes precisely 1 fewer horsepower than the double live-axle, brick-shaped Jeep.The Porsche's braking performance is good. Not so much as to stand out, but not bad, and there's nothing wrong with how the pedal feels. It takes 109 feet for the Cross Turismo to stop from 60 mph, 5 feet longer than the much more powerful, capable, expensive Taycan Turbo S with its 17.3-inch front rotors and super-sticky tires. Likewise, the Taycan 4's figure-eight time is good, at 25 seconds flat. I always say any car in the 24-second range is a sports car, and this slightly jacked-up wagon is oh, so close. To give you an idea of how well the Porsche did, remember the Mercedes E450 All-Terrain we discussed earlier? Another gussied-up station wagon pretending to be an SUV? It took 26.2 seconds to get around our figure-eight course. The Audi A6 Allroad? 26.5. Oh, and the Jeep 392? A frankly pathetic 29.3 run, which our test team chalked up to "aggressive ESC."Based on time spent with other Taycans we knew going in that this Porsche would be more fun to drive than the competition on the street. We wrongly assumed that since it's obviously only pretending to be an SUV, it would be weak sauce in dirt. We were totally wrong. Did we attempt any rock crawling? No, and you'd be insane to try. But we did try dirt, sand, and gravel, and, man, was the Cross Turismo not only competent and capable, it was a blast, as well. Especially in sand, where the EV loved kicking up giant rooster tails while simultaneously not even kinda getting stuck. Whatever off-road advantage there is from a 0.8-inch lift, Porsche fully exploited it.Unlike the aforementioned Audi and Mercedes "SUVs," I'd actually recommend the Taycan 4 Cross Turismo as both a driver's car and a light-duty off-roader. It's a genuine double-threat. At this stage in the game do we have the right to be surprised that a Porsche is fun to drive? Naw, probably not. Now, if the fine folks at Zuffenhausen could just do something about the meager driving range.Looks good! More details?2021 Porsche Taycan 4 Cross Turismo BASE PRICE $92,250 PRICE AS TESTED $109,980 VEHICLE LAYOUT Front and rear-motor, AWD, 5-pass, 4-door wagon MOTOR TYPE Permanent-magnet electric POWER (SAE NET) 469 hp TORQUE (SAE NET) 368 lb-ft TRANSMISSION 2-speed automatic CURB WEIGHT (F/R DIST) 5,134 lb (49/51%) WHEELBASE 114.3 in LENGTH x WIDTH x HEIGHT 195.8 x 77.4 x 55.5 in 0-60 MPH 4.5 sec QUARTER MILE 12.7 sec @ 115.9 mph BRAKING, 60-0 MPH 109 ft LATERAL ACCELERATION 0.89 g (avg) MT FIGURE EIGHT 25.0 sec @ 0.76 g (avg) EPA CITY/HWY/COMB FUEL ECON 75/81/77 mpg-e ON SALE Now Show All

With so many wings 'n things, the newest Porsche 911 GT3 RS looks like it could fly. Before you even think about this über-911-GT3 taking flight, let us assure you, all of those spats, spoilers, flaps, louvers, and so on are there precisely so that this sports car stays firmly planted on planet Earth. They have the added side effect of signaling to the world that you didn't settle—if that's the right word—for the already excellent 911 GT3, itself a track-ready missile that so impressed us we awarded it our 2022 Performance Vehicle of the Year award.Aero, DynamicsIn what could be the most Germanic understatement of the year, Porsche says "The purposeful look of the new 911 GT3 RS is characterized by the large number of functional aerodynamic elements." Yes, the "purposeful look" Porsche refers to is the eye-popping array of body add-ons that regular GT3s lack and the tallest rear wing ever fitted to a production Porsche vehicle. Like on the base GT3, the RS's rear wing is of the swan-neck variety, in which the supports stretch up and over the plane of the wing, mounting to the horizontal surface from above. Unlike the regular GT3, the RS's wing is taller than the roof, with a hydraulically adjustable upper section.That adjustable piece works in concert with a race-inspired drag reduction system (DRS), which at the press of a button moves the wings to a lower-drag position to achieve higher straight-line speeds. Conversely, under hard braking, the rear wing can flip up into an air brake position. Porsche has made the various splitters and canards on the nose similarly adjustable, a move made possible by sacrificing the front trunk entirely to a lay-down radiator. Air exits that radiator via a pair of huge holes in the hood, flows over the roof, and is directed to the sides so that the engine air intakes in the rear—remember, 911s are rear-engined!—ingest cooler air.Along with a larger rear diffuser, those meaty louvers atop each front fender (for evacuating wheel-well pressure), and reworked rear fenders for improved airflow, the 911 GT3 RS is altogether more focused than the already sharp GT3. Downforce in the RS is up big time as a result, three times more than what a "normal" GT3 produces at 124 mph (for a total of over 900 lbs). At 177 mph, the GT3 RS generates 1,895 lbs of downforce.The Mechanical StuffPorsche takes so seriously the GT3 RS's aerodynamics, that it didn't stop at adding those wings all over the body. Its engineers turned their attention to the RS's mechanicals, too, reshaping the suspension links with airfoil-shaped profiles, a move that is said to contribute 88 lbs of downforce at "top track speed" at the front axle alone. According to Porsche, these new links increase the GT3's track width by a mighty 1.14 inches in front.To help overcome some of that extra aero, the 4.0-liter flat-six engine retains the same one-throttle-body-per-cylinder layout as the non-RS GT3 but receives new camshafts and sees peak horsepower rise from 502 hp to 518. It comes mated to a seven-speed dual-clutch automatic transmission with a shorter final-drive ratio than the non-RS GT3 and little air intakes under the body that help cool it. Porsche, always conservative, estimates the GT3 RS is 0.2 second quicker to 60 mph than a 911 GT3; given how we recorded a 2.7-second rip in dual-clutch 911 GT3 last year, figure on the RS being mind-bending. Top speed is said to be 184 mph.Huge brakes help slow things down, with the front caliper pistons growing a few mm larger in diameter than those on the GT3. The front rotors thicken by 2 mm to 36 mm; step up to the carbon-ceramic brakes, and the rotors grow by 2 mm in diameter up front (410 mm) and 10 mm in back (390 mm). Also, as on the GT3, the RS gets a rear-wheel-steering system, albeit tuned along with the rest of the suspension for sharper response, and drivers can independently adjust the compression and rebound settings for the front and rear via buttons on the dashboard. There also is a rotary drive mode dial for selecting Normal, Sport, and Track modes (with the DRS button in the middle) on the steering wheel.What a Lightweight!Porsche says the GT3 RS weighs just 3,268 pounds, thanks mostly to the carbon-fiber door skins, front fenders, roof, hood, and seat shells. Want some of that carbon fiber on fuller display? The available Weissach performance package leaves the carbon naked on the roof, hood, rear wing, and door mirrors; the kit also includes forged magnesium wheels that shave 17.6 pounds of unsprung weight from the car.Also lightweight? Your wallet, after you buy a 2023 Porsche 911 GT3 RS. The car starts at $225,250 (about $60,000 more than a normal GT3) and goes on sale early in 2023. Deliveries begin in the spring, and those with reservations can also choose to pay even more and get a Porsche Design Chronograph watch that incorporates titanium and various nods to the RS's styling.

lucid air Full OverviewProsAbsurdly quickHandles like a heavyweight sports carUnbeatable range ConsTakes forever to boot upProximity key is infuriatingSafety tech needs more workMaking an EV quick in a straight line is easy, so much so it's been one side of Tesla's calling card for a decade. Making an EV drive like sports cars has proven incredibly difficult, in no small part because batteries are so heavy. Various automakers with plenty of experience in sports cars have tried, and although they've made their cars go around a corner quickly, none has really captured the feeling of driving a world-class sports car. The 2022 Lucid Air Grand Touring Performance, though, has cracked the code.If you've read our First Drive story on this electric luxury sedan, you already have a feel for what we're talking about. You'll also know the back story: Lucid's director of chassis and vehicle dynamics, David Lickfold, personally retuned the Air's chassis for this Grand Tour Performance (GTP) model by benchmarking a last-generation Porsche 911 GT3 RS, one of the greatest sports cars on earth.Now we have the numbers to add to the equation.You already know the Air is quick, so we'll start with the handling stats. The Air GTP pulled 0.87 g on our skidpad, which is a shockingly low number compared to other high-performance EVs like the Tesla Model S Plaid and Porsche Taycan Turbo S, which both pull more than 1.00 g. Similarly, the Lucid's 24.8-second figure-eight lap at a 0.80-g average is a full second or more behind the other two.But How Does It Drive?It's moments like this we remind ourselves why we do what we do. Numbers don't always tell the story. It's why we created Best Driver's Car and Performance Vehicle of the Year. If you could tell which car drove the best purely via bench racing, we'd just publish charts and fire all the writers. You can't. This car proves it.Put the Air GTP on the same mountain road as the Model S and Taycan, and no unbiased driver will pick the Porsche or the Tesla. As good as they drive, the Taycan in particular, neither comes close to the Air GTP. The Tesla is roughly 450 pounds lighter than the Lucid, but the Lucid feels as if it ought to be the other way around. The nimbleness of this massive car, the response from the front end, and the feedback in the steering, all make it feel like a classic high-performance sport sedan, not a big heavy EV with sticky tires.It's really worth emphasizing here, because automakers have been trying to capture the sheer driving delight of a good sports car in an EV chassis and so far have come up at least a little short. There's a lot of weight for the suspension and brakes to deal with, not to mention the handoff between regenerative and mechanical braking. Putting huge amounts of power to the front axle in all-wheel-drive setups makes it harder to get the steering feel right, and the traction and stability control have a lot of work to do with this kind of power on hand.Lucid cracked the code. Even more so than Porsche. The Air GTP is the new handling benchmark for EVs. If they all drove like this, all the enthusiasts wringing their hands about the all-electric future would have to move the goalposts again. This is the EV we've been asking automakers to build.With 1,050 horsepower going to all four wheels, you'd be forgiven for thinking it might be a handful. We went easy on the accelerator in the early corners, just in case the software didn't have what it takes to cheat physics, but that was unnecessary. In a matter of seconds it was clear this car has the grip and poise to use every last electric pony. Get on the power hard and early exiting a corner, and the Air GTP sticks and goes. You can force the GTP to drift, but you have to be very deliberately trying.It'll Impress Your Friends at a Stoplight, for SureIt does the electric vehicle "super quick in a straight line" thing, too, of course. We clocked this 1,050-hp cruise missile at 2.7 seconds to 60 mph followed by a 10.0-second quarter-mile trap at 145.3 mph. That's a half-second quicker than the Porsche and 0.7 second slower than the Tesla, which is pretty impressive considering the Air GTP is the heaviest car of the bunch.More than winning bracket races and showing off to your friends, though, that accelerative acumen is life-altering on a mountain road. We've driven a lot of high-horsepower supercars on Angeles Crest Highway, and none of them has shortened the time between corners like this one. None of them has required us to back up our braking points as far as this one, and not just because it's heavy. The rate at which this car gains speed and the incredibly short distance needed to do it has you arriving at every corner much sooner and much faster than any other car we've driven. Critically, it doesn't slack off as you approach or exceed triple digits. It just keeps pulling like crazy up to at least 150 mph (where we ran out of test track, not power).Braking for those corners—always remember they arrive much sooner than expected—is another example of the numbers not telling the whole story. On the test track, the Air GTP needed 118 feet to stop from 60 mph. That's as much as 15 feet further than the other two EVs we've mentioned. When you're up the mountain hurtling at a hairpin, though, it has no problem stopping in time, and then doing it again at the next corner, and the next, and the next. What's more, the blend of regenerative and mechanical braking is an excellent recipe, allowing you to lift and activate the regen to slow the car slightly or just settle it, or to get on the brake pedal hard for the serious corners.Is It Also a Good Luxury Car?When it comes to the fundamental engineering of being a good car and a good sport sedan, Lucid has it nailed. The luxury side of things is well in hand, too. The materials are impeccable, the design inside and out is stunning, and the construction all around is superb.We've rattled on before about how much we like the interior of our 2022 Car of the Year, and we're going to do it again here. The front seats provide an excellent balance of comfort and support, and the massagers are no joke. The rear seat, meanwhile, is absolutely massive. Futuristic as all the big screens look, everyone's favorite trick is power-stowing the largest one up in the dash.It's Not Perfect, ThoughWhat's on those screens looks good, too, but the functionality leaves something to be desired. Whereas most cars' screens boot up in the time it takes to fasten your seat belt, the Lucid's need a solid 12 seconds just to come off the loading screen (a beautiful sunset landscape, it must be said). It's another 12 seconds before the car is actually ready to drive, and 10 more before everything is fully loaded on every screen. Thirty-four seconds doesn't sound like a lot, but when competitors are fully booted and ready to work in less than five seconds, it's an eternity.Lucid says an over-the-air (OTA) software update is coming that'll address the load speeds, but it wasn't part of the update we ran while we had the car. That one made a bunch of little background fixes we didn't notice. We couldn't help but notice, however, that the scheduled installation failed to start; after that, the manual installation failed to finish properly, leaving a massive warning on the instrument cluster that read, "Software update failed, vehicle may not be driveable" along with a customer service number to call. As it happens, the car was driveable, but we had no instruments because we couldn't clear the message. After following the customer service rep's instructions to, in essence, turn it off and turn it back on again, the message cleared and the car was fine. Apparently, the update was fully installed, after all.The software update also didn't fix some of the latency issues with the screens. Most of the time, response times to inputs were good, but sometimes it took several seconds for the screen to change. It was especially annoying when bringing up the navigation system, which apparently doesn't always load when you start the car but rather when you actually open that app. It even affected hard controls like the volume rocker switch on the steering wheel, which didn't always register a press and doesn't tell you when the volume is muted but still raises and lowers the volume bar on the screen.We had a similar issue with the video blind-spot monitors. Activating a turn signal brings up a video feed of the appropriate blind spot on the corresponding side of the instrument cluster. The cluster is mounted high enough to put the video near your line of sight, so no issue there. The problem, rather, is that we haven't seen lag like this since we played Counterstrike at LAN parties in 2005. There's no reason for video frame rate to be this bad in 2022.Latent LatencyIn fact, nearly all the issues we had with the Air GTP had to do with latency. The other was the keyless entry system. The best cars wake up and unlock as you're walking up to them, before you're close enough to reach the door handle. The Air GTP almost always required us to stand next to the driver door for several seconds before it realized we were there, and on occasion it didn't recognize our presence at all. At that point, pressing the center of the buttonless key fob is supposed to unlock the doors, but we couldn't get it to work. It just reaffirmed the car was locked, as if we'd only pressed it once (and that's after we finally figured out there was even a button in the fob to begin with by accidentally squeezing it too hard).Non-latency issues were limited to the driver safety aids. We love that automakers are incorporating advanced driver monitoring systems into cars with semi-autonomous driving features to make sure people are still watching the road, but Lucid's system is wildly overzealous. Maybe it just didn't like our sunglasses, but the system regularly warned us to keep our eyes on the road when we were looking straight out the windshield, and more often than not, it almost immediately escalated to a second, much more disruptive warning.We also took exception with the lane departure intervention. Although the overzealous warnings seem to have been reined in since the last time we drove an Air GTP, the way the system intervenes to keep the car in its lane needs work. When you drift too close to the lane line, it feels as if the steering wheel locks up to correct and get back to the middle of the lane; you have to wrest it free. We're fine with the system preventing you from steering farther out of your lane, but it shouldn't fight you when you try to steer back to the proper spot.The only non-software—and thus un-over-the-air-updateable—issue was the glass roof. Lucid says it's coated in all sorts of high-tech chemicals to keep out UV rays, but for a company that builds cars in Arizona, it feels like they didn't test much in the summer sun. When the thermometer approaches triple digits, you need a physical cover. Lucid could also offer a metal roof on this model like it does on the less expensive Airs. The glass roof and suspended sun visors sure do look cool, though.What About Range and Charging?We can't talk EVs without mentioning range and charging, and it's good news on that front. With an EPA-estimated range of 446 miles, it takes forever to run the battery down on this thing, even when you're driving it hard. Replicating a story we did with the Taycan, we took the Air GTP for a run from the beach up into the mountains and—starting with only an 80 percent charge—got there with more than 50 percent left. The Taycan, which started with a full battery, was down to 30 percent, and we drove it on a much cooler day so the battery-, motor-, and interior cooling systems had less work to do.Driving like a normal person, a 50 percent charge is still good for more than 200 miles of range. With a lot of EVs, you feel like you need to keep them at 70 percent or better all the time, just in case. This one you just don't worry about. Plug it in whenever. Only charge it to 50 percent at home so you spend less time tethered to the wall. And shoot, it charges pretty quick. On our 240-volt Level 2 wall charger, it pulls down 25 miles of range per hour, the charger's maximum. Our long-term Rivian R1T tops out at 13.7 miles of range per hour. Hit a high-speed 350-kW public charger, and the Air fills up crazy fast.Curiously, though, its reported efficiency doesn't match its promises. Lucid says it'll do 3.8 miles of driving per kilowatt-hour, but the best we saw cruising on the freeway was barely better than 3.0. Most of the time we drove it around town, it hung around 2.5. Our Rivian averages just over 2.0, and it's a truck. Our long-term 2017 Chevrolet Bolt EV consistently did 3.4 miles per kilowatt-hour. It still took forever to run down the Lucid's battery, so we didn't mind this inconsistency as much.The Bottom LineThe Air GTP may not be perfect in every way, but it's so damn good at being an EV, a luxury car, and a sport sedan, we have no second thoughts about naming it our 2022 Car of the Year. Even more so than when we bestowed that title eight months ago, the GTP model sets the bar for all other EVs, from its already incredible range to its newly transcendent handling. If you're the chief EV engineer at a rival automaker, get your order in now and prepare your benchmarking and teardown teams. You all have work to do.Looks good! More details?2022 Lucid Air Grand Touring Performance Specifications BASE PRICE $180,650 PRICE AS TESTED $180,650 VEHICLE LAYOUT Front- and rear-motor, AWD, 5-pass, 4-door sedan MOTOR TYPE Permanent-magnet electric POWER (SAE NET) 1,050 hp TORQUE (SAE NET) 921 lb-ft TRANSMISSIONS 1-speed automatic CURB WEIGHT (F/R DIST) 5,256 lb (50/50%) WHEELBASE 116.5 in LENGTH x WIDTH x HEIGHT 195.9 x 76.2 x 55.4 in 0-60 MPH 2.7 sec QUARTER MILE 10.0 sec @ 145.3 mph BRAKING, 60-0 MPH 118 ft LATERAL ACCELERATION 0.87 g (avg) MT FIGURE EIGHT 24.8 sec @ 0.80 g (avg) EPA CITY/HWY/COMB FUEL ECON 109/110/109 mpg-e EPA RANGE, COMB 446 miles ON SALE Now Show All