The unique content on Jalopnik is a result of skilled collaboration between writers and editors with broad journalistic, academic, and practical expertise.
In pursuit of our mission to provide accurate and ethical coverage, the Jalopnik editorial team consistently fact-checks and reviews site content to provide readers with an informative, entertaining, and engaging experience. Click here for more information on our editorial process.
Electric vehicle batteries are a problematic business: About half of the carbon generated by building the whole car is dedicated to the lithium-ion cell system, they weigh a lot—the Tesla Model S’ clocks in at 1,200 pounds, even at the smaller 85kWh size—and then there’s charging time, which for your current average electric car is measured in hours and not minutes.
McLaren’s Formula One cars have been fairly terrible as of late, but its high-end road cars are unimpeachable. They’re big, beefy, twin-turbo V8 carbon-eaters, although McLaren admits the future is electrified and possibly even fully electric. So an announcement from the company today could be a big step in that direction.
Hello readers. You may have heard that EV entrepreneur, disrupteur sauvage and tweet connoisseur Elon Musk is having a “difficult time,” currently. Which is bad for electric vehicles and the optimistic pursuit of capital in the face of our impending doom, only one of which I really care about.
After years of speculation, indignities, close calls, almost-was moments and constant hope that he could accomplish what every racing fan in the world knew he was capable of, we accepted reality: Fernando Alonso is leaving Formula One. He’s going to do something else; Indycar, maybe, or more of the World Endurance Championship, or perhaps spending more time with his cat.
How do you prove your car is good? Drive it up a hill, obviously. It was the toughest proof for a car in the early days of the automobile, but now in the 21st century, the hillclimb is making a comeback in the face of new technology.
Daniel Ricciardo is the current king of the Red Bull junior alumni. He’s not a series champion since coming onto the program like Sébastien Buemi or Jean-Eric Vergne, and he isn’t a controversial rising star like Max Verstappen or a talented hopeful like Pierre Gasly. But he has survived, as of the British Grand Prix this year, seven years behind the wheel of a Formula One car funded by the caffeine empire—until last week with the announcement he’ll defect to Renault.
It weighs 440 pounds, it endures temperatures up to 140 degrees, and it’s been on a four-year stint that amounts to the same distance as going around the earth and then some. Not my luggage, despite what you might assume, but the absolute unit at the back of the first generation of Formula E race cars. Slapping the roof of this bad boy would earn you a disapproving look from the engineers but you can fit 33,865 miles of racing without a single failure inside it.