Industry news

Polestar has been on a sales rebound in 2025 after a disappointing result in 2024, but its most affordable upcoming compact SUV model is still years away.

If you thought the Ioniq 5 N was the peak of EV performance when it comes to the capability of Hyundai’s N department, Namyang has news for you.

The BMW 3 Series has hit a big milestone Down Under. The iconic luxury sedan is celebrating its 50th year on sale in Australia, and has released a special edition to commemorate the occasion.

Mitsubishi's CEO, Shaun Westcott, explained the effect he thinks Australia’s tough new emissions laws will have on the new car market, and why Mitsubishi will continue to stick with its PHEV-heavy strategy.Westcott said there are still significant hurdles to overcome for electric cars despite the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES) coming into effect.“Just penalising us is not going to deliver the outcomes we need. The original thinking was that if you penalised us, we’d bring more EVs to the market.”“There’s no shortage of choice, what we lack is positive initiatives. You can give us as many sticks as you like, we need some carrots.”“The bigger challenge with adoption is that we need to have a government which considers the peculiarities of the Australian market. We’re not Norway. We’re not a small country. We don’t have cities that are 40 kilometres apart.”He said even with advancements in battery technology, which may result in vehicles able to travel between Sydney and Melbourne on a single charge, having infrastructure sufficient for the cities was an ongoing issue.“As we sit here today, Adelaide has 52 public fast chargers. 52 for a city of one and a half million people!”Westcott added if Mitsubishi’s number crunching was reflective of the wider market, price hikes could be headed for most brands as they try to keep up with the regulations which have effectively moved Australia from the emissions environment of the 1980s to the strict nature of Euro 6 overnight.He said despite the abundance of options, even at lower price points, Australian consumers still preferred combustion engines overall, which will cause a problem for many manufacturers, and soon.“I think the reality we’re looking at today is a lot of brands have dialled back their EV ambitions because they’ve realised that just bringing the cars to the market, you can fill your showroom with EVs but if nobody buys them you’d have to discount those cars to a point where they will be below the cost of production and that’s happening already just to get people to take them," said Westcott.“OEMs realise that to stay alive you have to sell cars - if Australians aren’t buying the EVs then we have to bring combustion and all the other powertrains to market and that will continue to happen despite the penalties because if the demand isn’t there, you haven’t got a business. It’s simple economics.“Every brand has to cover the cost of those penalties to survive and if customers are only buying single digit (percentages) of EVs - everyone is going to be copping penalties,” he said.Westcott still backs PHEVs in the short term.“We believe this is the correct transition technology. Our customers use their car in pure EV mode 83 per cent of the time," said Westcott.“ our customers have reduced emissions by 83 per cent right here, right now, today, with zero investment in infrastructure.“And if I wanted to do a trip to Melbourne, or Sydney, or across the Nullabor to Perth. It doesn’t matter, the car can do it.”Westcott was also blunt about how he sees the choice to remove the fringe benefits tax exemption, which (along with the original EV exemption) caused a spike in interest for PHEV models, was a political error when it comes to emissions reduction.“Stopping the FBT exemption on PHEVs was a mistake - Look what it did! PHEV Outlander was 20 - 25 per cent of the mix, it worked. It comes back to the carrots and the sticks. If we had a few more carrots it works. Lets do it.”It’s worth noting Mitsubishi has everything to gain by such changes. It currently doesn’t field a fully electric vehicle, with plans to bring in the eK X electric city car shelved after a brief local evaluation program.Plus, some manufacturers with diverse offerings in their line-ups have spoken out in favour of the NVES, as models they currently import from Europe or China already comply with even more stringent regimes in their respective home markets.Chinese manufacturers, meanwhile, are squeezing Mitsubishi on its plug-in hybrid home turf with unprecedented price-tags attached to incoming versions of the Chery Tiggo 7 and Tiggo 8 PHEV competing on price with combustion Outlanders and undercutting Mitsubishi’s Outlander PHEV by a significant margin.Mitsubishi isn’t alone though. Japanese manufacturers seem to be in particular trouble, as they struggle to adjust to a regulatory environment much more hostile to their historically popular nameplates. Subaru, Isuzu, Mazda, and to some extent, even Toyota will have work to do in the coming years if they want to avoid painful fines under the new laws.

Porsche’s next electric car is powering through testing as the brand sends a near-production prototype of the Cayenne Electric on a “record-gathering mission”. The 2026 Porsche Cayenne Electric has been coming for some time, but details are scarce as the SUV closes in on its proper reveal.

There is a new electric car distance champion.The Lucid Air Grand Touring now holds the Guinness World Record for the longest journey by an electric car on a single charge.It covered 1205km to beat the previous record of 1045km set by the Nio ET7.Lucid isn’t well known on a global stage, but the American company has been slowly building an impressive line-up of luxury focused and long-legged electric cars.The record-breaking journey started in St Moritz, Switzerland and ended in Munich, Germany.Lucid said the journey took in alpine roads, highways and secondary roads. Starting in the Alps means the Lucid would have benefitted from plenty of downhill driving rather than the energy-sapping drive up the mountains.Electric cars use regenerative braking to feed juice back into the battery. CarsGuide’s experience driving electric cars down mountain roads in Australia and in the Alps has shown it can add a substantial amount of energy to the battery.Despite the added benefit of downhill driving the feat is still exceptional.At its core the Air Grand Touring is a monster 112kWh that has a WLTP verified range of 960km. Excellent aerodynamics help the Air Grand Touring in achieving its long range, with a drag coefficient of sub-0.2, which trumps all other mass-produced electric cars. This means it uses just 13.5kWh per 100km, which is one of the lowest of any electric car.Its 900-Volt architecture allows for speedy DC charging at up to 300kW, which it said can add 400km of range in 16 minutes.Despite its hyper-miling ability, it has some serious performance.It has two electric motors delivering all-wheel-drive grip and outputs of 610kW and 1200Nm.This enables the Air Grand Touring to hit 100km/h from a standstill in 3.2 seconds on the way to a top speed of 270km.Lucid’s Senior Vice President of Product and Chief Engineer, Eric Bach, said the vehicle’s record-setting run showed the brand’s technological edge.“Our Lucid products combine world-class vehicle efficiency with the most advanced drive units, ultra-high voltage architecture, and battery management technology available today, which lets a Lucid travel further with less energy than any other vehicles,” said Bach.

A Chinese technology company backed by carmaker Chery has begun production of its first batch of high-density solid-state batteries.

Is Toyota about to spring a reborn Celica on us? A mid-engined 300kW GR Celica that’s just 1.2m tall with a weird windscreen? The rumour mill is working around the clock right now, but our friends at Japanese auto publication Best Car Web, who are often on the money, say they are receiving inside information about an almost ready new-gen Celica that’s very exciting.

Toyota is working on a solution to some of the biggest issues facing electric cars. Toyota Executive Vice President, Hiroki Nakajima, opened up about the importance of solid-state batteries in a recent interview.

Nissan has introduced a more affordable hybrid entry offering in Australia, with a new Qashqai electrified variant sneaking in under the $50K mark. The 2026 Nissan Qashqai can now be had as a Ti e-Power, a roughly middle-of-the-range variant.