Electrifying's Kilowatt Half Hour spent a good chunk of episode 123 on a question it could not answer. Is the new Mazda CX-6e a Chinese car? It carries a Mazda badge, Mazda styled it, and underneath it is the product of a partnership with Changan. One host pointed out that MG is Chinese-owned now. Another held up a Hot Wheels car designed in Los Angeles and stamped made in China on the base. They gave up and put it to listeners: does a joint venture count, or does the car have to be assembled there?
The question stopped being academic the moment somebody priced it. In What Car?'s twin test of the Renault Twingo and the Honda Super-N, the presenters explain that the Twingo is built in Slovenia, which they expect to be worth at least a £1,500 UK grant, and that Renault is trying to source European batteries before right-hand drive orders open in November. Get that done, they say, and the car should clear the full £3,750. The badge does not change. The bill changes by £2,250, and it turns on where a battery pack was put together. The Honda beside it is built in Japan, which the video raises as the contrast, and it sells today at £18,995.
Everything Electric's ID Polo film asks the same thing from the manufacturing side. Driving in Austria, the presenter keeps counting Chinese cars on roads that used to be almost entirely European, and says a further round of Volkswagen Group job cuts was announced the day he filmed. He is open about wanting the Polo to succeed for that reason. Volkswagen's answer to the pressure, at least in this car, is not a screen. It is a volume knob, a row of climate buttons and a deliberately narrow model range. Mazda's answer is the opposite: 26.5 inches of glass and no physical controls at all beyond the window switches and the steering wheel.
MotorWeek's Mach-E test is the control group. There is no origin argument to have and no grant to chase, because the video says the incentives are gone, which leaves a $39,840 starting price to do all the work by itself. November settles part of the rest. Renault confirms UK Twingo prices and specs then, along with the battery sourcing decision underneath them, and What Car? has declined to name a winner until it knows. That is the right call. It is also a strange sentence to have to write about a supermini: nobody can tell you whether it is the best cheap EV yet, because nobody knows which continent supplied part of it.
Two Cheap EVs, 195 Miles, and No Winner Declared
What Car? ran the new Renault Twingo and the Honda Super-N from London to Pevensey and back, 195 miles apiece, and then refused to pick a winner. The stated reason is that Renault has not confirmed UK pricing. The Super-N is £18,995 with 25.4 kWh of usable battery and 128 miles of official range. The Twingo has 27.12 kWh usable, LFP chemistry rather than NMC, and a claimed 163 miles on entry-level Evolution trim, falling to 156 on the Techno tested here with optional 18 inch wheels. The video says Renault has committed to a price under £20,000 regardless of how the grant lands.
Over the same route the presenters put the Twingo at 132.9 miles of extrapolated real range against 127.2 for the Honda, with efficiency of 4.62 and 4.32 miles per kWh including charging losses. The Renault's figure is 14.8 percent below its WLTP rating. The Honda's came in within a percent of its own. The trip cost £24.42 in the Twingo and £25.86 in the Super-N, inflated by a 92p per kWh rapid charger in Eastbourne. Charging was near enough identical, both cars taking a shade under 30 minutes from 10 to 80 percent.
Set that next to our September 13 edition, where carwow tested a Twingo rated at 163 miles and measured 118. What Car? extrapolated 132.9 from a 10 percent indicated stop. Two outlets, two methods, two numbers, both a long way under the brochure.
One Battery, One Motor, and 26.5 Inches of Screen
Electrifying's road test describes the Mazda CX-6e as the second car out of Mazda's partnership with Changan, styled in-house and closely related to a Changan model underneath. The spec sheet is deliberately short. Every version gets a 78 kWh LFP battery, a single motor, rear-wheel drive, up to 300 miles of claimed range, 200 kW DC charging, 11 kW AC and a heat pump as standard. There is no dual-motor option. The presenter calls the range decent rather than notable and rates the charging figure as the stronger number of the two.
Inside there is a single 26.5 inch display and, he says, no physical knobs or buttons beyond the window switches and the steering wheel controls. He describes the system as confusing to use while moving, and says the car's driver monitoring objects when you look at it, to the point that yawning prompts a suggestion to pull over. He also says the default driver assistance settings are more intrusive than he would like, and he does not rate the digital door mirrors, though he thinks the screens are better positioned than in some rivals.
The part a buyer should weigh is space. The video gives 468 litres of boot, against the 600 plus it cites for a Skoda Enyaq and the 500 plus for an Audi Q4, rising to 1,434 litres with the rear seats down, plus an 80 litre frunk, 1,500 kg braked towing and 3.5 kW vehicle to load.
The Mach-E Outsold the Mustang Coupe. Now It Has No Subsidy.
MotorWeek's 2026 Mustang Mach-E test opens with a statistic that still catches people out. The video says that last year the Mach-E was the fourth best selling EV in the United States, beat the F-150 Lightning by a wide margin, and outsold the petrol Mustang coupe as well. The 2026 car offers five power outputs from 264 to 480 horsepower. The tested Premium eAWD is rated at 370 hp and 500 lb-ft. Standard range is a 73 kWh pack good for 240 miles; extended range is 88 kWh rated at 300, and MotorWeek's loop was on pace for 297.
At its test track the car reached 60 mph in 4.5 seconds and covered the quarter mile in 13.4 at 100 mph, stopping from 60 in 112 feet. The presenters say power held all the way down the strip, which they contrast with the 2021 GT Performance Edition they timed at 3.5 seconds. They also note that Ford has moved some previously standard content onto the options list, including access to the storage space under the bonnet. Pricing starts at $39,840 and the test car came in just over $50,000.
One line carries the story: the video says EV incentives are long gone. Our September 13 edition cited CNBC putting US EV sales down 36 percent year over year in the fourth quarter of 2025 after the federal purchase credit lapsed. The Mach-E now has to sell on $39,840 rather than on what $39,840 turned into at tax time.
Volkswagen Kept the Volume Knob
Everything Electric drove the production VW ID Polo in Austria and came away arguing it matters to Volkswagen for reasons that have little to do with the car. The presenter says a further round of group job cuts was announced on the day of filming, driven by falling sales in China, and he repeatedly notes how many Chinese-built cars he passes on roads that were until recently almost entirely European. The video does not source those employment figures and nexusEVnews has not verified them.
On the car itself he says noise suppression is unusually good for the class, that the handling builds confidence rather than inviting speed, and that the range of versions is deliberately narrow, two in the UK and three in Germany. He puts the UK on-the-road price in the low twenty thousands of pounds, with exact figures still unconfirmed.
The detail that separates it from the Mazda above is a row of physical controls: a volume knob, fan speed, climate on and off, demist. He rates them highly and says the layout took no learning. His one complaint is that the driver assistance chimes reset to on every time the car is locked, so the sequence he uses to silence them has to be repeated on every journey.
A Podcast Asks Where a Car Stops Being Chinese
Episode 123 of Electrifying's Kilowatt Half Hour gives a stretch of its runtime to a definition. The hosts describe the Mazda CX-6e as having Chinese underpinnings through the Changan partnership, note that MG is Chinese-owned, and point out that the new Renault Twingo was developed with a Chinese partner. One host argues the Volvo EX60 is Swedish because it was designed and built in Gothenburg. They end up putting the question to listeners: does collaboration count, or does the car have to be assembled in China?
Elsewhere one host reports driving the Kia EV3 GT, EV4 GT and EV5 GT in Norway and rates them highly, while another says the right-hand drive EV4 GT is under embargo until 1 October. They disagree about its simulated gearbox and engine noise, with one arguing an EV does not need either and the others saying the option is welcome because it can be switched off. The hosts also say a Hyundai Ioniq 3 N is coming, but that no date is known.
The buying advice segment is the practical part. Asked what suits a 25,000 mile a year motorway commute with a home charger, they recommend the Kia EV3 Long Range on a new lease, which they name as their car of the year, or a post-facelift used Skoda Enyaq 85. That is close to the buyer the Mazda in story two is aimed at, a car the same outlet reviews with a 468 litre boot and no physical controls.
Bottom line: If you are buying small and cheap in the UK this autumn, wait for November. The Twingo's price moves by £2,250 on a battery sourcing decision Renault has not finished making, and What Car? is right to hold its verdict until that lands. The wider shift is less comfortable. Where a car was put together has become a pricing variable rather than a badge question, and buyers are being asked to follow supply chains that the manufacturers themselves describe in the future tense. The Polo's volume knob will age better than the Mazda's 26.5 inches of glass.
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