Hello, dear readers. Writing from home at the moment, though much of this week was spent out in Pahrump, NV, a former desert wasteland and global conspiracy theory hotspot that’s increasingly turning into a motorsports paradise thanks to the remarkable success of Spring Mountain. I was out there playing with some Corvettes whilst also getting a little too much sunshine and heat. Upper 90s F in mid-March? No thanks.

It feels like just yesterday I was up on the ice in Sweden. That trip was to test out a bunch of different prototypes, the first being BMW’s i3, which I discussed a few weeks back. This week, I can finally tell you what else I was up to up there.

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When it comes to suspension design, reducing weight at the wheels is key. Any pound out there counts double against you when it comes to handling prowess or ride quality. With that knowledge, it’s understandable why so many performance enthusiasts feel physically ill when they see big heavy electric motors hanging out with the brakes and knuckles and ball joints and everything else.

But talk to an in-wheel motor company like Donut Lab or Elaphe, and they’ll tell you such concerns are vastly overblown and easily outweighed by the potential benefits. I got a chance to sample that myself at the wheel of three different prototype cars created by Elpahe, the company that was to build the hub motors for the former Lordstown project.

Elaphe thankfully survived that sad debacle, now leaner and meaner and making a case for much more widespread adoption of its technology. I was incredibly impressed by what I saw and felt. A quad-motor Ioniq 5 was a blast, but even more remarkable was how a pair of motors bolted over the brakes on a certain large American performance car turned it into a real joy on ice, without reducing the sound or fury of its 5.0-liter V8.

Sadly, ice is not the best place to verify those aforementioned unsprung mass concerns. Still, the experience changed me from skeptic to believer, and Elaphe’s team tells me they’ve had equal success opening the eyes of engineers at multiple global OEMs. You can read all about the why at these fine outlets:

Even though I’d generally prefer a light and nimble sports car to a big sledgehammer of a thing, I have a strange affinity for Corvettes. I think it’s somehow baked into my DNA. I don’t know how many of my relatives own or have owned the things, but it’s a lot, up to and including my dad, whose Roman Red C1 came and sadly went long before I did.

While the current-generation ZR1 is the edition that most set my world on fire, the previous-generation Grand Sport was the one that gave me the most smiles. It’s still something of a high-water mark for the breed in my eyes, attainable and quick and lacking in nothing. Now, there’s a new Grand Sport, and it’s got a lot more of everything, including hybrid power, thanks to the ZR1X’s electric motor at the front axle.

Personally, I feel like I’d still prefer the C7 Grand Sport, but we’ll have to wait until I get a go in this new one before I can say that for sure.

It wasn’t just Audi’s epic RS6 Avant that I was driving out in California a few weeks back. I was really out there sampling the new Q3, one of the most important models in the company’s lineup. The new Q3 predictably grows with this new generation but also makes a few key steps forward in interior design and other features that make me think that Audi is starting to find its mojo again.

Finally, this week came the news that the fruit of the Sony Honda Mobility mashup is dead. The Afeela 1 is no more. Despite my repeatedly calling this project misguided, I take no joy in this turn of events. I spoke with several engineers and other folks at SHM, all of whom were excited to be doing something different, and now we’ll never get to see whether it would have fared better on the open road than it did showing up on that same CES stage year after year.

That’s pretty much a clean sweep for Honda’s future American EV plans, a tabula rasa that seems short-sighted given the cost of gas right now. I’m still optimistic for the future of EVs here, though, a topic I delved into a bit with Tom Merritt and his DTNS crew this week.

And just like that, we’re all caught up. I’m here at home for two solid weeks, a fact that brings me no small amount of joy and might just mean I can finally find enough time to clean both my office and my inbox. But there’s still plenty of good stuff coming up online soon enough. More on that as it all goes live.

Until then, do good and be well.

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