On paper, the BYD Atto 1 Premium should have beaten the Honda Super-ONE at everything. It makes 115 kW to the Honda's 70 in boost mode, carries a bigger battery and lists for less. Yet on a motorkhana course laid out in a Western Sydney car park, Mighty Car Mods timed the Honda at 47.6 seconds and the BYD at 48.37. The Honda is roughly 300 kg lighter, and the hosts point to where Honda spent instead: bucket seats, a front bumper made with recycled Honda bumpers, a simulated gearbox with engine sounds. It did not spend on range. Every car in this edition is a budget you can read from the driver's seat, and the useful question is less what each one costs than where the money went.
Car and Driver's 40,000-mile Lucid Air Pure shows one way to split it. The magazine says Lucid gave its cheapest Air the core strengths of the expensive versions, a quiet, well-damped ride among them, and that it never felt like the entry model. By the magazine's account, the weak spots were in parts owners handle every day: a key fob with no marked buttons, a frunk latch that never worked right, dark exterior trim that ended up pitted. The Sealion 7 made the opposite bet. Electrify This credits its sales to cabin materials that feel expensive, plus a head-up display and a powered roof shade the Tesla Model Y does without, while its regenerative braking stays too mild for true one-pedal driving.
Slate goes furthest by spending almost nothing and handing the rest of the budget to the buyer. On the configurator, James May left his truck blank at $24,950, while Lucy Brown added options until hers reached $33,827. The Rivian R2 lands in between. Out of Spec Roaming found Rivian's money in details people photograph, such as a removable flashlight and a drop-down rear window, and its savings in hard plastic low on the doors and a cooled seat that cools only the cushion. The host thinks the R2 would sell in Norway on its brand, once service centers are in place. Its 400-volt charging, next to faster European and Chinese rivals, is the harder argument.
None of these trades is wrong in itself. A trade goes wrong when it lands on the thing a particular owner uses most. Someone commuting 80 km each way will notice the Honda's 202 km WLTP range long before the seats. A family sharing one Lucid will curse the keys. The spec sheet rarely says which trade a maker chose. A long test or a careful walkaround usually does.
What to watch: whether the extra Super-ONE supply Honda has promised for 2027, as Zecar reports, does anything to the $36,900 price; whether the Sealion 7 holds second place behind the Model Y through the end of the year; how far above $24,950 real Slate orders land once deliveries begin; and whether Rivian commits to a European date, after Electric Drives reported that 2027 had been removed from its European page.
Honda's Super-ONE Wins the Motorkhana, BYD's Atto 1 Wins the Straight Line
Mighty Car Mods borrowed a Super-ONE from Honda Australia for 48 hours and an Atto 1 Premium from its owners, then scored the two across a run of challenges. The Honda uses a 29.6 kWh battery and makes 47 kW, or 70 kW with its boost button, which also brings in simulated engine noise and a virtual seven-speed gearbox. Honda Australia quotes 253 km of range on the older NEDC cycle; The Driven gives the WLTP figure as 202 km. The hosts put its weight at 1,090 kg against about 1.4 tonnes for the BYD, which makes 115 kW. The BYD took the drag race on a second, longer run, plus the rolling race and, narrowly, the slalom. The Honda won on looks, the audience vote, interior, sound and the acceleration-and-braking test, then set the faster motorkhana time, 47.6 seconds to 48.37. The hosts say the Atto 1's owners paid about $33,000, against $37,000 for the Honda. Honda Australia lists the Super-ONE at $36,900 drive-away, while BYD lists the Atto 1 Premium at $27,990 before on-road costs, with 310 km WLTP. Zecar reported that only 130 Super-ONEs are allocated to Australia for 2026, which fits the hosts' report that the first shipment has sold out.
Car and Driver's Base Lucid Air After 40,000 Miles: Great Chassis, Awkward Keys
Car and Driver's long-term 2024 Air Pure is the base car: one rear motor, 430 hp and an 88 kWh battery. The magazine says it started at $71,000 and reached about $81,000 with options, including a $2,900 21-speaker stereo. Over 40,000 miles the staff praised the ride, the rear-seat room and in-gear acceleration that it says beat the last Porsche 911 GTS it tested from 30 to 50 and 50 to 70 mph. Most complaints were about living with it: key fobs worked by memorized press patterns, a frunk latch that stayed unreliable after adjustment, and $1,750 Stealth trim the magazine says now looks pitted. Service runs every 12,000 miles at $371 or $611, and with the nearest center 85 miles away, technicians usually came to the car. Repairs included $700 after a soda spill, a module replaced under warranty when the fob, phone key and key card all failed at once, and $2,000 for a windshield because local glass shops could not recalibrate the camera. The car covered 300 miles in the magazine's 75 mph highway test against a 419-mile EPA rating, averaged 92 MPGe, and fell to about 240 to 250 miles in winter.
James May Drives a Pre-Production Slate and Orders It Blank
James May drove a pre-production Slate truck in Texas: a rear-drive electric pickup sold in bare gray plastic, with a wrap on the test car, wind-up windows and three knobs for heating and air conditioning. He reports roughly 200 miles of usable range, 0 to 60 mph in about eight seconds and a top speed under 100 mph. He says he drove for about an hour through town, country roads and freeway without touching the brake pedal, because lifting off slows the truck to a stop. His criticisms were a large blind spot over the shoulder and some wrinkles in the hood, which he puts down to the prototype build. May argues the approach keeps Slate's costs down, since the factory builds one basic truck and owners add the rest. On the configurator, Lucy Brown added wraps, lighting and a roof rack for a total of $33,827, while May took nothing and stayed at $24,950. He says he would have one. Slate's own estimate is 205 miles from a 63 kWh usable LFP pack, and Edmunds notes the $24,950 price does not include a destination charge.
Electrify This Credits the Sealion 7's Sales to Price and the Extras Tesla Skips
Electrify This calls the Sealion 7 Australia's second-best-selling electric car, and the sales figures agree: Cars24 reported it second only to the Tesla Model Y in year-to-date EV sales through July, and Zecar had it second again for September. The host puts that down mostly to price, quoting $59,350 drive-away in New South Wales for the rear-drive Premium and under $69,000 for the dual-motor Performance. BYD's list price for the Premium is $54,990 before on-road costs, against $58,900 for the Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive. Both use an 82.5 kWh LFP battery with 150 kW DC and 11 kW AC charging; the video gives 482 km of range for the Premium and 456 km for the Performance. Most of the host's reasons are things a buyer can touch: stitched, soft materials, heated and ventilated front seats on both versions, a head-up display, a powered shade for the glass roof, a 50 W phone charger and a carpeted frunk. Against that, the review finds rear visibility poor with no rear wiper, regenerative braking too gentle for one-pedal driving and the Performance unsettled on rough roads, and suggests the cheaper car has enough power.
Out of Spec Roaming Asks Whether the Rivian R2 Could Sell in Norway
Out of Spec Roaming, whose host lives in Norway, borrowed an R2 from Rivian's Boston location for a first look at whether it could compete with European and Chinese SUVs. The host rates the design and branding as its strongest cards, and praises the powered frunk release, the drop-down rear window, the removable flashlight and a cargo area the host compares with the Lucid Gravity for usable width. A ski pass-through, which the host calls a requirement in Norway, is there. The reservations are mostly about where money was saved: hard plastic on the lower door panels and in the cargo area, already scratched on this car, no metal tie-down points that the host could find, no cooled rear seats, and front seat cooling only in the cushion, with a fan the host calls louder than any other they have tried. The host also flags the 400-volt system, quoting about 29 minutes for 10 to 80 percent against 12-minute times described as common in Europe, and wonders whether the hidden rear wiper copes with freezing rain. Rivian has said the R2 will come to Europe, but Electric Drives reported that a 2027 date was removed from Rivian's European page, and AutoGuide cites an Auto Express estimate of 2028 or 2029.
Bottom line: Lucid made the right call, because a chassis is hard to fix later and a key habit is easy to change; anyone shopping a used Air Pure should buy it and use the phone key. Honda made the riskiest one. $36,900 for 202 km of WLTP range is a second-car price, and a motorkhana win does not change that. The Sealion 7 is still the safest family pick in Australia, and the base car is the one to buy. Slate's blank truck is the only budget here the buyer controls, which is both its best feature and its real test.
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.