For about a decade, electric cars asked drivers to relearn nearly everything: touch sliders where switches used to be, flush handles where door pulls used to be, sloping coupé roofs where a boxy estate would have been more useful. That bargain is being renegotiated. Carmakers are quietly handing back the habits people liked. The one habit they still want drivers to drop is the one people cling to hardest: filling up to the top.
Volkswagen is the clearest case. In Autogefühl's prototype drive, the successor to the ID.4 and ID.5 now wears the Tiguan name, and the host says customers asked for a car that looks less purely electric and more like a normal Volkswagen. Inside, that means proper door handles, steering wheel buttons that click instead of capacitive pads, and physical dials for temperature and fan. The Polestar 4 SUV makes a similar move, with Thom löv pointing to physical wheel buttons that replace the haptic controls of earlier model years, and real rear glass where the coupé relied on a camera. Neither brand frames this as a retreat. Both are conceding that some things were never broken.
The Tesla Semi takes the idea into trucking, where some habits are written into law. Program director Dan Priestley tells The Fast Lane Truck that US rules still require mirrors, so Tesla made them as good as it could and backed them with cameras. The host, meanwhile, notes that the truck is tuned to pull smoothly rather than like a sports car, which is what a driver with fragile cargo wants. Alpine is the instructive exception. Its 2017 A110 had to look like the 1962 original to give the revived brand a link to its past, and Electrifying reports the electric successor has more freedom. The engineering still goes into protecting the one habit a sports car cannot lose, which is sitting low. The batteries go in the nose and where the engine used to be, not under the floor.
The habit nobody is handing back is the full tank. Tom Moloughney's charging rules start there, with a test in which the last 20 percent took nearly as long as the first 80. That changes how today's charging specs should be read. The Tiguan stays at 400 volts, per Autogefühl. The Polestar tops out at 200 kW, which its reviewer says means 30 minutes from 10 to 80 percent, against 16 for Volvo's 800-volt EX60. If most road trip stops end at 80 percent, as Moloughney argues they should, that window is the number that decides how a trip feels.
What to watch: the Tiguan's full reveal, where Autogefühl hints at possible charging updates and promises final boot measurements; whether the animal mode the Polestar host expects to reach existing 4 coupés actually arrives by software update; Tesla's truck charging rollout, which Priestley says should pass 30 sites by year end; and the finished A110, which Electrifying expects late next year. If the production car sits as low as Alpine insists it must, the battery layout will have done its job.
VW's ID. Tiguan Prototype Brings Back Buttons, Dials and Door Handles
Volkswagen has settled the name. The car replacing both the ID.4 and ID.5 is the ID. Tiguan, sold next to the combustion Tiguan. Autogefühl drove a camouflaged all-wheel-drive prototype and reports proportions close to the ID.4, a straighter shoulder line, lights borrowed from the ID. Polo and 21-inch wheels on the test car. The batteries carry over, according to the video: 58 kWh LFP or 77 kWh NMC, both still on 400-volt charging. The all-wheel-drive version does 0 to 100 km/h in a little over six seconds, and the host expects roughly 450 km, or 280 miles, of real-world range from the larger pack with some motorway driving. The cabin carries most of the changes: real door handles, clicking wheel buttons, temperature and fan dials, larger screens running the ID.3 Neo's software, and a smoother semi-automatic lane change in Travel Assist. He calls the adaptive DCC suspension the first option he would buy, saying MEB cars on big wheels without it can ride roughly, and suggests skipping the panoramic roof to save money. His most useful buyer tip is to choose rear-wheel drive with the big battery, because he believes the all-wheel-drive car's turning circle is about 1.4 metres wider, a figure he gives with a hedge. Price was not part of the video.
Alpine Shows the Pieces of Its Electric A110 Before Showing the Car
Electrifying could not film the third-generation A110, so it filmed the parts. The original ran from 1962 to 1977, with around 7,000 built by the host's count, and the 2017 revival was a deliberately retro reinterpretation. The next car sits on a clean-sheet modular platform that Alpine plans to use for all its future models, one the host says can be widened, lengthened or shortened and is designed around low weight. The key choice is battery placement. Rather than a flat pack under the cabin, Alpine puts one battery up front and another behind the seats, where earlier A110s carried their petrol engine. Per the video, that balances the weight and, more importantly, keeps the body low, since Alpine insists the car cannot have SUV proportions. A running development mule wears a modified second-generation body over the new platform, while a design model hints at a wider, squarer car with a long character line and bunched, sculpted surfaces along the flanks. The host likes that busy look. Power, range and price are not in the video, and the host expects the full car late next year.
Polestar 4 SUV Adds a Rear Window, a Taller Boot and a Dog Mode
Polestar calls it the 4 SUV. Thom löv, who drives a Volvo V60, treats it as the electric estate he has been waiting for. In his first look, the front is unchanged apart from a grey badge, while everything behind the B-pillar is new: a longer roof, roof rails he says are rated for 100 kg while driving and 300 kg parked, and a heated rear window with the wiper tucked under the spoiler. Boot space to the parcel shelf is 530 litres, the same as the coupé, but loading to the roof adds 130 litres, and folding the 60/40 rear seats opens more than 1,600. The raised roofline adds about 2.5 cm of rear headroom, and the very tall host still fit comfortably. His quoted specs: 272 hp single-motor rear drive or 544 hp dual motor, about 7 and 4 seconds to 100 km/h, around 600 km WLTP for both, which he expects to become about 450 in real use, and 2,000 kg towing for the dual motor. His reservation is charging. With a 100 kWh pack on 400 volts, he says, DC peaks at 200 kW and 10 to 80 percent takes 30 minutes, nearly twice as long as Volvo's 800-volt EX60 by his figures. An animal mode keeps the cabin climate running while parked, down to 20 percent battery.
The Fast Lane Truck Drives the Production Tesla Semi With 30,000 lb Behind It
Yesterday's edition toured the Semi line. Here The Fast Lane Truck drives what comes off it. The host, who holds a commercial licence but does not drive a semi every week, takes a long-range production truck on a short loop near the Sparks, Nevada plant, towing a trailer the crew puts at about 30,000 lb. He reports a quiet cab, a centre seat with sightlines he likens to an IMAX screen, regen that does the work of an engine brake while returning energy, and no shift pauses. On a grade estimated during the drive at around 10 percent, he held his 30 mph entry speed. The one rattle he found was a loose ladder. Program director Dan Priestley supplies Tesla's claims: a 1.7 million sq ft plant able to build 50,000 trucks a year, 500 miles of range at 82,000 lb gross, and room for about 45,000 lb of legal cargo in a standard setup. He says the new truck carries close to 50 kWh less battery than before with the same range. Charging uses MCS, the heavy-duty standard, at up to 1.2 MW, which Priestley says restores 60 percent of range in 30 minutes. He expects more than 30 Tesla sites by year end and a payback under five years across most of the country, sometimes under two in California.
Ten DC Fast Charging Habits, Starting With Unplugging at 80 Percent
Tom Moloughney says he has driven EVs for 16 years, owned 11 and covered more than 600,000 miles. The video is sponsored by Electrify America, whose chargers appear in it. His first rule carries the most data. On a 350 kW Electrify America unit, a Mercedes-Benz CLA went from 0 to 80 percent in 28 minutes, then needed 24 more to reach 100, which he says works out to about nine miles of EPA-rated range per minute before 80 percent and under three after. He adds that most automakers advise daily charging to about 80 percent to limit degradation, with LFP packs the exception, so owners of the Tiguan's LFP version in story 1 can charge fully at home but, he argues, should still stop early at a busy fast charger. The rest is etiquette. Move the car when it finishes, since many networks charge idle fees. Pick a stall that matches your car's peak rate so faster cars get the faster chargers. Never park in a charging bay without charging, queue fairly and park centred. Holster the connector so its pins stay clean, report faults through the app or the number on the unit, and set up the app, payment and plug and charge before arriving. On one debated point he is firm: never unplug someone else's car, even after it finishes.
Bottom line: Volkswagen's dials and Polestar's rear window are the most useful news here, because they fix things drivers deal with on every trip, not once a year on a spec sheet. The Polestar 4 SUV belongs on the shortlist for anyone who tows or carries a dog, but frequent fast chargers should weigh that 30-minute stop honestly. The Tiguan's real test is price, which the video does not give. And Moloughney's 80 percent rule costs nothing to adopt today, which makes it the cheapest upgrade in this edition.
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