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Volvo has agreed to adopt Tesla’s proprietary charing port, which will provide access to the U.S. company’s extensive Supercharger network of fast-chargers. Called the North American Charging Standard, Volvo’s electric models will have a NACS port starting in 2025; an adapter for earlier models is coming next year. Volvo is the latest—and first foreign automaker—to announce switching to the NACS port, with Ford, GM, and Rivian already making the move.A seismic shift in how electric vehicles are charged is gaining momentum after more and more automakers are agreeing to adopt Tesla’s proprietary charging port known as the North American Charging Standard—or NACS, for short. Volvo becomes the latest automaker to make the shift, as today it announced an agreement with Tesla to use the U.S. company’s charging structure.Switching In 2025Volvo says that starting in 2025 all of its electric vehicles will be equipped with a NACS port. This will allow them to charge at Tesla’s far-reaching Supercharger network in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The charging network is currently said to consist of 12,000-plus fast-chargers and is expected to continue to keep growing.“One major inhibitor to more people making the shift to electric driving, a key step in making transportation more sustainable, is access to easy and convenient charging infrastructure,” Volvo CEO Jim Rowan said in a press release. Adapters ComingWhat does this mean for the owners of Volvo models built before the NACS adoption? The company says its current lineup of EVs, which includes the XC40 Recharge, the C40 Recharge, the recently revealed EX30, and the new three-row EX90 SUV that are are currently equipped with CCS-type charge ports, will be able to use an adapter to connect to Tesla’s chargers.Volvo says the CCS-to-NACS adapter will be made available in the first half of next year, but what remains to be seen is how much it will cost, if anything. Also worth noting is that the automaker plans to offer a NACS-to-CCS adapter for future 2025 models for owners who wish to replenish their battery using that style charger.While Volvo is the first foreign brand to agree to adopt Tesla’s charging port, several U.S. automakers have already signed on. It was Ford who got the ball rolling, followed by GM signing on, and then most recently Rivian agreeing to a deal with Tesla. There’s also chatter that Hyundai and Stellantis could be next in line to implement NACS.Following the NACS Movement More

Lordstown Motors, which started producing the electric Endurance truck in limited quantities last fall, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.Foxconn, which was building the Endurance at a plant in Ohio, backed out of a $170 million investment in Lordstown earlier this year, putting the nascent electric carmaker in jeopardy.Lordstown is also filing a lawsuit against Foxconn, claiming that the electronics company broke the terms of the investment agreement.The Lordstown story may be coming to an end. The embattled automotive startup filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today and is offering its Endurance electric pickup and related assets for sale. Lordstown Motors was founded in 2018 and built a handful of trucks starting in September 2022 before pausing production to address quality issues in February.The bankruptcy filing comes just a couple of months after Lordstown Motors admitted there was “substantial doubt regarding our ability to continue as a going concern,” an ominous forecast prompted by a delisting warning from the Nasdaq in April. That warning—issued because the company’s share price had closed below $1 a couple of months earlier and had failed to recover—put Lordstown in apparent breach of its investment agreement with Taiwanese electronics company Foxconn. The Lordstown StoryFoxconn had purchased the Lordstown, Ohio, factory from the eponymous automaker in 2022, invested $50 million into the EV startup, and was building the Endurance under contract. Foxconn had agreed to another investment of $170 million in November 2022, but the delisting warning from the Nasdaq caused Foxconn to hesitate, threatening to back out of the agreement if Lordstown didn’t settle its stock listing situation. Lordstown countered that the terms of the contract didn’t allow Foxconn to exit the deal and that the claims of a breach in the agreement were unfounded. Along with filing for bankruptcy, Lordstown also announced today that it was filing a lawsuit against Hon Hai Technology Group, as Foxconn is known in China and Taiwan. The lawsuit focuses on “Foxconn’s fraud and willful and consistent failure to live up to its commercial and financial commitments to the company,” according to Lordstown. The startup claims that “Foxconn’s actions led to material damage to the Company as well as its future prospects.” Lordstown MotorsIts unclear what will happen to the few Endurances that were produced, and whether any are still in the hands of customers, with the February production pause also including a recall of 19 vehicles. Although Chapter 11 bankruptcy is usually structured as a reorganization that aims to keep the business alive, Lordstown’s plans to sell its Endurance truck assets leave the question of what will be left by the end of the process. Regardless if Lordstown comes out the other side intact, the bankruptcy filing serves as a stark reminder that, despite the boom of EV startups in recent years, it is incredibly hard to create an automaker from scratch and bring a car to market.This content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Associate News EditorCaleb Miller began blogging about cars at 13 years old, and he realized his dream of writing for a car magazine after graduating from Carnegie Mellon University and joining the Car and Driver team. He loves quirky and obscure autos, aiming to one day own something bizarre like a Nissan S-Cargo, and is an avid motorsports fan. More

The Singer DLS Turbo is a modern-day reinterpretation of the Porsche 934/5 endurance racers from the 1970s.Based on 964-generation 911s, Singer’s latest custom-built cars boast a carbon-fiber widebody, a 700-hp twin-turbo 3.8-liter flat-six, and a manual gearbox. Singer offers the DLS Turbo with track- or road-oriented hardware, with the former featuring an enormous rear wing.Nearly every iteration of the Porsche 911 now comes with a turbocharger—in fact, you have to pay more for the ones that don’t—but the ones that wear the “Turbo” script out back remain very special. Porsche wasn’t the first company to adapt turbocharging for race and road, but it was perhaps the most successful. In 1977, the owner of a Porsche 930 could have driven their whale-tailed grand tourer to all eight races of the SCCA Trans American series and seen the racing version of the road car win a convincing six times. Singer, the vaunted Porsche restoration house, has now revealed a new creation that combines both into the essence of a 911 Turbo.A 934/5 RebornAs ever, Singer is very careful to point out that it is not a boutique manufacturer like RUF or Alpina, but it merely seeks to reimagine what the ideal of a Porsche 911 could be. Founded in 2009, the company now has multiple rivals but also possibly no real competition. In the classic 911 world where cost is no object, a Singerized Porsche is the standard which others attempt to achieve.Two new cars seek to raise an already high bar somewhere into the upper ionosphere. Built as tribute to the Porsche 934/5 racing machines that dominated in endurance racing, the “Dynamic and Lightweighting Study (DLS) – Turbo,” are a matched pair of rocketships, one built for the track, the other for the road. Dynamics and Lightweight Study sounds like a chapter out of an aeronautical engineering textbook, but the actual experience is more Top Gun: Maverick. The original DLS was created in 2008, infused with exotic composite materials and built around a naturally aspirated 4.0-liter flat-six built by Williams Advanced Engineering. That engine made 500 horsepower at 9300 rpm and was filled with excruciatingly painful details like each individual valve costing $30,000. The whole DLS cost $1.8 million, yet the limited number were almost immediately all spoken for.Singer also reimagined the 911 Turbo last year, slightly softened up versus the company’s previous projects. With a torque-rich and flexible turbocharged 3.8-liter flat-six good for 450 horsepower, both a coupe and later a 510-hp cabriolet variant were intended to be grand tourers in the same mold as the original 911 Turbo. A six-speed manual provided two more forward gears than customers got in the 1970s.Track or Road?The new DLS Turbo, which has a name like a gaming mouse, combines the hardcore engineering of the F1-style 911 rebuilt with the tremendous power available via forced induction. Both the Blood Orange track-focused car and the Moet Black road-oriented machine have a new twin-turbo 3.8-liter flat-six with electric wastegates and air-to-water intercooling. It makes an estimated 700 horsepower and revs to over 9000 rpm.If being around the earliest Singer restorations was all about noticing the subtle details, the two DLS Turbo models are as wild as it comes. Huge rear fenders balloon out like in a modern interpretation of the 1970s racers of IMSA and Le Mans. The road-going car has a duckbill spoiler rather than the box-wing of the track-focused machine, but both look completely insane.The closest comparison is the Kremer K3 Strasse commissioned by F1 team owner Walter Wolf in 1980. However, where that near-800 horsepower bit of lunacy ate a set of rear tires every hundred miles and only had air-conditioning for the driver, Singer’s DLS Turbo builds will doubtless be as flawlessly executed as each one of its former creations. It is therefore to be hoped that, despite the eye-watering, multi-million dollar cost of each one of these cars, they actually get driven. After all, while the 911 Turbo is now a highly collectible car, especially the racing version, Porsche differentiated itself from the Italian exotics by building cars that were intended to endure. One of the highest-mileage 911s in existence, a 1976 Canadian-market 930 owned by original-owner Bill MacEachern of Toronto, Ontario, now has more than 800,000 miles on its odometer.As a cross-pollination between endurance racer and road-car, these are the wildest Singer-restored Porsche 911s yet. The bar is raised, the standard reset.Related StoriesThis content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.Contributing EditorBrendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British automobiles, came of age in the golden era of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing career of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to be perpetually buying Hot Wheels. More

Aston Martin and Lucid are partnering up, with Aston’s future EVs set to use Lucid’s next-gen electric motors.An SUV and three sports cars are part of Aston’s EV plans, and some models could offer up to 1500 horsepower.The first Aston Martin EV is set to arrive in 2025.The news surrounding Aston Martin over the last few years has often felt like an automotive soap opera. In the last five years, the British sports-car maker has gone through a poorly received IPO, parted ways with two CEOs, and gained an increasing number of co-owners. Both Mercedes-Benz and Chinese giant Geely acquired stakes alongside the consortium led by Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, who is now also Aston’s executive chairman. But now Aston has gained another equity partner as it looks towards an electric future, signing a deal with Lucid that will see the U.S. EV maker supply much of the technology for Aston’s forthcoming range of fully electric models. The first is promised for as soon as 2025. In return, Lucid Motors will be paid $132 million in cash for its expertise and will also be given a 3.7 percent stake in Aston Martin worth another $100 million. It is also guaranteed that Aston will buy at least $225 million in powertrain components.More on LucidSpeaking to journalists at the company’s Gaydon HQ this afternoon, Stroll said that taking control of Aston proved proved to be the biggest challenge in his career. “Some of which I understood, some of which I clearly didn’t,” he admitted. The issues included dealing with excess inventory—shutting down production for nearly a year—and then raising the money required to develop new models, with this including a technology supply agreement with Mercedes. That deal included both the AMG-sourced V-8 engines and Mercedes electronic architecture that Aston is already using, but also made provisions for a deeper agreement that would see Aston’s future EV models being based on Mercedes expertise. That prospect has effectively ended with the new Lucid deal, although Stroll was quick to point out that the existing Mercedes partnership for pure combustion and hybrid powertrains will continue.Aston Martin RapidEAston MartinAston first tried to build an EV with the RapidE sedan nearly 10 years ago. This was intended for a limited production run, although only a single demonstrator was constructed. Subsequently the company planned to create a new EV platform to underpin Lagonda-branded models, although those were abandoned when it ran into its first financial crisis. But with luxury rivals including Bentley, Lamborghini, and Rolls-Royce working on electric models, Lucid’s expertise would seem to offer Aston a potential shortcut to what could be segment-leading performance.No electric Aston will be short on urge. The forthcoming triple-motor Lucid Air Sapphire is set to have more than 1200 horsepower, but Lucid Group CEO Peter Rawlinson confirmed at the Aston briefing that the deal is actually for the company’s next-generation electric-motor technology. Aston CTO Roberto Fedeli said that Aston is working on what will become its own scalable EV platform that is set to feature similar bonded aluminum construction to the technique that underpins the company’s combustion models. But Lucid will supply both the twin rear motors and the compact battery cell technology that will allow low packs to be created to suit Aston’s sleek designs. Lucid Air Sapphire motorLucidFedeli told journalists that Aston is working to develop its own front motors, with the EV set to use versions of the ones that will feature in the forthcoming mid-engined plug-in-hybrid Valhalla hypercar. He also said the company is working on an active drag reduction technique in collaboration with the Aston Martin Formula 1 team, one that sounds like the “streamline mode” of the GMA T.50. A quad-motor layout will allow torque vectoring at both ends, and the prospect of a peak power output beyond 1500 hp.Aston is also planning multiple EV models. The first of these will likely be a sleek SUV given the dynamics of the luxury market. Beyond that, Stroll confirms the plan is to create differently sized EVs similar to the brand’s three different front-engined sports cars. But, these won’t be electric versions of combustion models like the Maserati GranTurismo Folgore. It’s no wonder that Aston is also planning to radically revise its retail experience by opening company-owned flagship stores, the first in New York; they will need plenty of floor space just to show the full lineup.More on Aston and EVsBefore the arrival of the first EV in 2025, Aston has already confirmed it will have replaced all of its existing sports cars with fresh models; the already announced DB12 is set to be joined soon by replacements for both the current Vantage and DBS. We can also expect a revised DBX which will include the option of a plug-in hybrid, with the Valhalla set to arrive next year as well. Before that, we’re also set to see an ultra-limited model created to celebrate Aston’s 110th anniversary this year.Most important is the improving financial situation. Aston’s revenue has more than doubled between 2020 and 2022, with Stroll predicting that the company will become “cashflow positive” next year—bringing in more money than it is spending. Could Aston Martin’s roller-coaster fortunes be set for the biggest climb yet?This content is imported from poll. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.European EditorMike Duff has been writing about the auto industry for two decades and calls the UK home, although he normally lives life on the road. He loves old cars and adventure in unlikely places, with career highlights including driving to Chernobyl in a Lada. More