The bonnet on Renault's 8 Gordini concept is one piece of carbon fibre with no shut lines, and Electrifying's host names the catch herself: to reach anything underneath, you take the whole panel off. On a one-off show car that costs nothing. Nobody will ever book it in for a service. Put the same idea on a car someone keeps for ten years and it turns into a labour bill. Today's stories keep landing on that split. The people who will have to fix something later design it differently from the people who will not.
The clearest example is Base Power. According to Two Bit da Vinci, the Austin company fits a 39.2 kWh battery at a customer's home for $695 but keeps ownership of it and earns its money trading power on the Texas grid. Because Base pays for installation and, as the owner, for upkeep, the video says it has split the job in two: an electrician's visit for the grid connection, then a separate day for stacking modules, which the video shows taking roughly 20 minutes. A company engineer says the target is fewer than 1 percent of units needing service within the 12-year warranty. That is a goal set by the party carrying the risk, not a promise a buyer had to extract.
EV DIY's Tom sits at the other extreme. He is owner, installer and warranty department in one. His converted BMW Z3 broke badly eight months ago, and he says he rebuilt it three times before deciding to upgrade it instead. His lessons are mostly about serviceability: wires left too short to tidy, connectors he would pin differently, and a bulkhead plug that lets him pull the whole loom and work on it indoors. Bentley handles the same problem by buying it in. Per carwow, the Torcal's structure, battery and motors all come from Porsche, and Bentley's own hands go into veneer, leather and final assembly. Vauxhall's Corsa GSE takes the middle road, adding a limited-slip differential, suspension changes and trim to the existing Corsa.
What to watch is how long the incentive holds. The Two Bit da Vinci host flags the risk himself. His analysis of published grid prices suggests a battery like Base's could have earned about $2,970 from arbitrage in 2023 and about $830 in 2025, as more storage flattened the price spikes. If that trend continues, a company that owns thousands of batteries has to find its income elsewhere, and a reliability target gets tested against thinner margins. On the Renault side, follow the laser-etched tail light. The host says the designer wants it on a production car and that Renault is looking at the engineering. That is the moment a concept starts answering to whoever will have to replace it.
Renault Reworks the 1960s 8 Gordini as a 270 hp Electric Concept
Electrifying filmed the Renault 8 Gordini concept in a studio a couple of weeks before the Paris Motor Show. It is a one-off, and the host says it came out of an internal design competition that narrowed around 300 entries to this car. Where the 1964 original had four doors and an almost symmetrical profile, the concept has two doors and puts its visual weight at the back, over a rear motor the video gives as 270 hp driving the rear wheels. Period cues carry over in modern form: six round front lamps taken from the rally version, squared-off wheel arches, and 19-inch wheels at the front with 20s at the rear. The standout is the tail, a blue panel laser-etched so LEDs shine through it and disappear when off. Inside are aircraft-style toggle switches, six round digital dials and jumbo corduroy trim. The host also recounts why the name matters: in the UK, the hot version of the original Renault 5 was sold as a Gordini because Chrysler held the Alpine name there. Today the badge sits the other way round. Renault's current performance small car is the Alpine A290, built on the same platform as the Renault 5 E-Tech, and it is the car Vauxhall is chasing in story four.
Base Power Fits a 39 kWh Home Battery for $695 and Keeps Ownership
Two Bit da Vinci's Ricky visited Base Power in Austin, which installs a 39.2 kWh battery with a 20 kW inverter at a member's home for $695, or $195 through some utility partners, according to the video. The customer does not own it. Base trades with the battery while the grid is up and holds part of its charge back as backup for outages. The company says 20 kW is enough to back up the whole main panel rather than a short list of circuits, which saves electrician time. The host puts a comparable system bought outright at around $20,000. Base says its factory now builds batteries for about 350 homes a week and aims for more than 1,000 by the end of the year. The earnings figures are the host's own modelling, since, he says, Base does not publish trading data. Using published ERCOT prices at the Houston hub, he finds a typical 2025 day involved around 13 small charge and discharge cycles rather than one big one. He also notes that only 12 states let customers choose their electricity supplier, so elsewhere Base has to sell through the local utility. What the video does not cover is what happens to the agreement when a member sells the house, a question worth asking before signing.
The Torcal Is the Heaviest Bentley Yet, and Most of It Is Fitted by Hand
This is the third Torcal video in two days, so here is only what carwow adds to yesterday's coverage. Bentley's Martin gives the car's weight as 2,795 kg, and the presenter says that makes it the heaviest Bentley yet, outweighing a long-wheelbase model once owned by Queen Elizabeth II. Per the video, the main structure comes from a Porsche plant in Leipzig, and the battery and motors also come from Porsche. Bentley paints the body and fits nearly everything else by hand, in the former factory where Rolls-Royce built Merlin engines for the Spitfire. The video says only two robots are involved, mainly to install the battery and motors, with full production planned at 36 cars a day. The wood trim uses a new method: a veneer with an injection-moulded backing, lighter and quicker to make, still hand polished. Martin puts the UK starting price around £170,000 and expects most buyers to spend north of £200,000, close to the £165,000 base price Autogefühl quoted.
Vauxhall's Corsa GSE Beats the Alpine A290 on Power and Price
CarGurus UK drove the Corsa GSE in North Yorkshire and treats it as a direct rival to the Alpine A290. On paper the Vauxhall leads. It sends 281 hp, roughly 210 kW, through the front wheels, against 160 kW for the most powerful A290 in Alpine's published figures. The host puts the price at £33,000 once the UK government grant is applied and says that undercuts the A290 in GTS form. Changes over a normal Corsa include a Torsen limited-slip differential, suspension 25 mm lower, a front track up to 54 mm wider, hydraulic bump stops, bigger brakes and 18-inch wheels styled after an earlier Vauxhall hot hatch. Inside are bespoke bucket seats and yellow trim, plus top-trim kit such as adaptive cruise and heated seats. The host found the ride fidgety at town speeds but calmer when pushed, and says 0 to 62 mph takes a little over five seconds. The trade-offs are range, where he suggests hard driving could cut the 200-plus-mile claim to around 120, a tight rear seat, and a 309-litre boot he puts about 20 litres behind the Alpine. He also finds the Alpine more playful at the limit. Since the £33,000 depends on the grant, check that it appears on the quote.
A £600 BMW Z3 Becomes an Electric Roadster, and the Paint Cost More Than the Motor
EV DIY's Tom started with a BMW Z3 bought for £600 as an MOT failure, which turned out to be badly rusted. Eight months ago the finished conversion broke, and after rebuilding it three times he upgraded it instead. The drive unit is the hybrid transmission from a Lexus IS300h, which other builders worked out how to run as an electric motor capable of 135 kW. He paid around £330 for his and has since found another for under £100, with a matching inverter for about £45. Control comes from a ZombieVerter, an open-source board by Damien Maguire, at roughly £450. His point is that a working drivetrain can cost under £1,000, possibly under £600, and that batteries are no longer the big expense: his 12 kWh BMW hybrid pack gives about 40 miles and cost £800, the same as the 32 kWh pack he plans to fit next. The looks cost more. He quotes about £3,000 for paint and around £2,650 plus VAT for a fibreglass body kit from Tribute Automotive. The video's full total appears only in an on-screen graphic, so it is not included here. For now he drives at around 5 percent throttle to protect the differential, until a stronger rear axle goes in. Insurance and paperwork for a converted car are not covered, and anyone copying the build will need to sort both out.
Bottom line: Base Power is the story that matters today. At $695, whole-home backup is an easy yes for a Texas homeowner, and a company that keeps the hardware has every reason to build it well. The catch is that its income rests on grid price swings the host's own numbers show are shrinking, so watch the pricing, not the hardware. Among the cars, the Corsa GSE is the value pick if you can live with the range. Tom's Z3 shows a home conversion is cheap in parts and costly in time. And Renault should build that tail light.
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.