Two conversions in the same shop, the same 40 kilowatt-hour battery in both. The Toyota pickup Electric Supercar finished earlier managed around 100 miles. The 1992 Nissan 300ZX they wrapped up this week is tracking at 185 to 190 usable miles. Same cells, same shop, roughly double the distance. The shop puts the gap down to aerodynamics and tires, and that one comparison explains more about today's five stories than any spec sheet in them.
Production cars are making the same argument more quietly. carwow measured the Geely EX5 at 3.7 miles per kilowatt hour, which works out to 223 miles against a claimed 260. That is 87 percent of the brochure figure, and it comes from a pack the review itself calls mediocre. Autogefühl's facelifted ID.3 Neo carries a 79 kilowatt-hour battery and returned 320 miles at 60 mph, falling to 240 at 80. The bigger pack buys more range, no surprise there. What is worth noticing is how much of the distance between those two cars comes down to speed, shape and rubber rather than chemistry.
Volkswagen has gone further and turned the pack itself into a software product. The ID.3's two entry batteries, 50 and 58 kilowatt-hours, are the same physical hardware according to the review, with the smaller figure set by a limit in code. Autogefühl's host does not hedge about what he thinks of that. Whatever your view, it is a plain admission that the cells are no longer where a manufacturer differentiates. Tesla is running the same logic from the opposite end of the price ladder: the Model S Signature is 250 cars distinguished by paint, gold accents and a badge, sitting on a drivetrain nobody touched.
Lucid brings the biggest number of the day, roughly 123 kilowatt-hours at around 920 volts, and Out of Spec's 1,500 mile update barely mentions it. The runtime goes to a steering rack that shakes after bumps, a hands free mode a bug has switched off, and a navigation system that offers mountain peaks when you search for a town. The pack is not the problem. It has not been the problem for a while.
What to watch is whether buying advice catches up. Range anxiety trained a generation of shoppers to compare one figure, and that figure is now among the least predictive things on a window sticker. What decides whether you still like the car after a year is how the charge curve holds past 50 percent, what the warranty covers, and whether the driver assistance works on roads you actually drive. Four of today's five reviews land there. None land on cells.
Geely's EX5 Gets the Chassis Right and the Range Wrong
Geely's EX5 starts at £31,000, with the fully loaded car carwow tested quoted at £38,000 through its own platform. The review's finding is that nearly everything except the battery is better than that price suggests. carwow reports 218 horsepower through the front wheels, 0 to 60 mph in 7.1 seconds, and a stop from 60 mph in 108 feet, roughly 33 metres, which the reviewer calls surprisingly good for the class. The boot holds 461 litres and Geely covers the whole car, not just the battery, with an eight year, 125,000 mile warranty. For a brand most British buyers have never owned, that cover is a large part of what is being sold.
Range is where it thins out. The claim is 260 miles from a 60 kilowatt-hour pack, and the measured 3.7 miles per kilowatt hour works out to 223 miles, about 87 percent of the claim. The retention is strong. The starting number is just small. Stepping up to the Ultra trim costs £2,000 for a claimed 30 extra miles, which is about £67 per mile of range and the kind of arithmetic that makes the cheaper car the sensible buy. The reviewer's verdict is to shortlist it.
VW Put the Buttons Back. Autogefühl Says the Small Battery Is Just Software.
The facelifted ID.3, badged ID.3 Neo, is Volkswagen undoing its own decisions. Autogefühl's review counts physical climate switches, proper buttons for all four windows, and knurled metal controls where the previous car had touch panels. The car measures 4.29 metres, drives the rear wheels, and the version tested makes 231 horsepower with a quoted 7 second 0 to 100 km/h time. The channel measured a DC peak of 185 kW against a claimed 183, and 12 to 80 percent in a little over 28 minutes, with the curve falling away earlier than the host would like.
The battery lineup is the story. Two LFP packs are listed at 50 and 58 kilowatt-hours, and the review states these are the same physical hardware with the smaller figure set in software, which the host calls a scam on customers. He recommends the 79 kilowatt-hour NMC option instead, which returned a measured 510 km, or 320 miles, at 100 km/h and 380 km, or 240 miles, at 130 km/h. Prices run from €34,000 to about €45,000 for the big battery, with a fully optioned car reaching €57,000. The review also flags an intermittent CarPlay blackout it says it saw in a Cupra, and a sharp boot edge the presenter says cut his fingers on camera.
The Final Model S Is Paint, Gold Trim and a $300,000 Ask
Auto Focus has one of the 250 Model S Signature cars that the video describes as a send-off for the Model S and Model X, both of which it says Tesla is retiring for good. What separates it from a standard Plaid is a deep red paint referencing Tesla's earliest cars, soft gold accents on the badges and calipers, carbon ceramic brakes, and signature markings on the door sill and startup screen. The seats, yoke, vents and trim are what late Model S production already shipped with.
The car in the video came from a dealership rather than from Tesla, listed at around $300,000, with the host mentioning another advertised near $500,000. His answer on whether it appreciates is no, at least not over the long term, and the reasoning is the useful part: Teslas are mass produced, the early Cybertruck over-sticker premiums collapsed once supply caught up, and the original Roadster holds value because it is genuinely rare and historically significant rather than because it wears a special badge. He notes the example he drove had 381 miles on it, and argues the right thing to do with it is add more.
Same 40 kWh Pack, Nearly Double the Range
Electric Supercar closed out a customer build this week: a 1992 Nissan 300ZX running dual Tesla motors and a 40 kilowatt-hour pack. The final jobs were underbody protection, made easier because the car uses Tesla Model 3 subframes, so the shop bolted in factory Tesla skid plates front and rear and bridged them with a ribbed galvanised steel plate. The car started life at 3,146 pounds with 57/43 weight distribution. Finished, the video reports almost 3,900 pounds and 52/48 front to rear.
The range test is the part worth sitting with. Running errands, surface streets and roughly 55 miles of freeway in 97 to 98 degree heat with the air conditioning on, the car covered 150 miles and still showed about 32 percent charge. The shop estimates around 200 miles total and 185 to 190 usable. Their previous conversion, a Toyota pickup, used the identical pack and returned about 100 miles. The explanation offered is aerodynamics and tires. The build was not flawless: the car dropped into limp mode coming down the canyon, which the team traced to a mismatched front to rear regeneration value and says it has since corrected over repeated test laps.
Lucid's Gravity Is Finally Good. This One's Steering Rack Still Shakes.
Out of Spec Reviews has a 2027 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring on long-term loan and has covered about 1,500 miles, most of it in triple digit heat with the air conditioning running non-stop. Under those conditions the trip computer showed 2.91 miles per kilowatt hour over 1,734 miles, and 2.86 on the 1,086 mile leg from California to Colorado, which climbed from sea level past 12,000 feet. The pack is roughly 123 kilowatt-hours at around 920 volts. On a Tesla Supercharger the car steps its own voltage up through the rear motor and inverter and holds 220 to 225 kW rather than tapering, which the channel praises.
The complaints are all above the hardware. The review describes lane centering that degraded badly in Colorado and behaved normally again after the car sat for a few hours, a hands free highway mode disabled by what the host says Lucid has acknowledged as a known bug affecting a limited number of vehicles, and a steering rack that oscillates after bumps while lane centering is engaged, for which he says Lucid raised the possibility of a replacement. He is clear the car is a large step forward from previous Lucids he has tested, and equally clear that the driver assistance package, which he says costs over $6,000, is not earning it.
Bottom line: The cheapest car here has the smallest battery and the best real-world retention. The most expensive has the biggest battery and the worst week. If you are shopping now, spend your comparison time on charge curves past 50 percent, on what the warranty actually covers, and on how the driver assistance behaves on roads you drive daily, because those are the parts that still differ meaningfully between cars. The kilowatt-hour figure tells you what you paid for. It no longer tells you much about what you got.
Commentary on third-party videos. Figures and claims are as presented in the sources and have not been independently verified. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it.