Bentley's new Continental is an electrified stunner
Plus: Profiling an EV maker that's sticking by its EV guns
Good morning, my dear readers, from me to wherever and whenever this finds you. It's been another week of travel, this time down to the wilds of Decatur, Texas, where I was filming a small but nicely varied selection of cars.
My two favorites? That would be the Bronco Raptor, in its new Shelter Green, and a MX-5 Miata Club, in Zircon Sand Metallic. Okay, so I would probably pick a different color for the Miata, but otherwise, how's that for a two-car solution? The Bronco is an off-road monster, of course, while the Miata is just as charming as ever on the road or the track.
Videos on those two will be up on Capital One's Auto Navigator once all the footage is processed by the requisite authorities. Until then, here's what I've been up to lately.
Conti GT PHEV
Bentley isn't quite ready to bestow upon us a full EV, and I think that's a bit of a shame because I can't stop thinking about how smooth it would be. But the ultra-luxe manufacturer has made the new Continental GT Speed a plug-in hybrid, and what a thing it is.
It'll do up to 50 miles on a charge, stealthy, silent, and smooth with just enough torque to be fun. To get this thing to live up to its nomenclature -- continent-conquering speed -- you'll want to recruit the V8, too.
771 horsepower gets this thing moving to 60 in 3.1 seconds, rocket-ship power with a luscious interior and butter-smooth handling. I spent nearly a week tearing and cruising around Monterey in one of these, and I was so sad to give back the key.
Read my full review at Yanko Design
Hyundai's finding EV success while others falter
Last month, I wrote a piece for Canary Media, a site dedicated to clean energy journalism, on which manufacturers were stumbling on the path toward their EV goals. The number of delays and resetting of targets is getting a bit dismaying.
So, when the site's editors asked for a profile of a company that's still doing just fine, it was an easy choice: Hyundai. Well, Hyundai Group to be specific, which (collectively with Kia and Genesis) has risen to become America's number two maker of EVs. These brands are surging where Tesla is faltering, and I break down the why.
Now, I want to be totally transparent: This article reads a little like an advertorial. I assure you there's none of that going on here. Hyundai didn't solicit nor pay anything special for this. What they did do was set out reasonable goals, put the pieces in place to deliver them, and execute that plan, all things worth celebrating.
That's it for this week. I have some thoughts on the new Polestar 3, which will hopefully be published soon, so I'll fire out an update on that as soon as that hits the light of the internets. I also have another installment of my anti-EV disinformation series for InsideEVs that'll be live soon.
Until then, I'm off to California to write and film a feature I am hugely excited about. It's a mixture of toys, tech, and cars, three of my favorite things. Watch this space for more on that. Until then, do good and be well.