Hello, dear reader. Writing you today from a particularly uncomfortable seat somewhere between Frankfurt and Malaga. Honestly, the seat isn’t that bad. My posterior is just a little more sensitive than usual, thanks to having less than 48 hours to recover after returning from Japan before heading out on the road again.

What am I up to this week? More on that in a moment. Here’s what’s new from me in some familiar and unfamiliar places.

I love me a good factory tour, and I’ve been lucky to poke around inside the inner workings of assembly facilities large and small all over the world. But never before have I been to a place where high-tech modern weaponry mingled with high-tech modern suspension components. So it goes at Divergent 3D, parent company of everyone’s favorite poster child for additive manufacturing, the Czinger 21C.

I’ve seen my share of laser sintering operations over the years, too, but this one’s different, promising to do for manufacturing what Amazon Web Services did for computing. Aspirational? Sure, but big dreams get big valuations -- $2.3 billion to be exact in this case.

Is it viable, and how’s the 21C drive? Check out my piece at The Verge to find out.

Since last I wrote, Alloy has gone live. The product of friend and editorial powerhouse Rory Carroll and design guru Fernando Pino, Alloy promises to bring no-nonsense perspectives on automotive culture and industry, all presented with a stunning design that’s easy on the eyes, regardless of what device your peepers are being assaulted by.

I feel very fortunate to have contributed three stories to the project so far, and if all goes well, there’ll be more to come. I’d love it if you gave them a click, signed up for the site’s newsletter, and maybe even considered a membership.

It’s easy to hate on electrification these days, but the vitriol levied against Porsche in hybridizing the 911 was a little uncalled for. That’s especially obvious given how great the GTS turned out to be. Now, how great could the 911 be with twice the high-voltage electrified turbos? Mighty, as it turns out.

That’s basically the recipe for the new, 701-horsepower 911 Turbo S. With two of Porsche’s funky motorized turbos on tap, the new capital-T Turbo is a wild ride with zero lag and big ol’ power that just keeps on building the further you get on the wrong side of the speed limit. I remain concerned about the long-term reliability of this system, and the way those turbos are lurking down low behind the rear wheels makes me wonder what happens in a low-speed fender-bender, but these are the sorts of pedestrian concerns that won’t trouble someone with the means for a nearly $300,000 911.

You can read my impressions at Ars Technica, and stay tuned for more coming in print in due time.

I’ve never before had the CEO of a major international auto manufacturer tell me that they’re watching the results of mid-term American elections with interest. I daresay most Americans aren’t watching mid-term elections, so when Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe said that he was tuned in, that made my ears perk up.

The topic of conversation was the American EV market, which is, of course, in a bit of a weird place right now. For that reason, that Mibe-san said they’re pausing development on smaller, cheaper EVs for we unlucky Americans, but at least the funky and fresh 0 Series EVs are still on track to drop over the next couple of years. Full details on all that here at Engadget.

While out in Japan, I also got a go behind the wheel of a test mule of the company’s newer, lighter, sportier, and theoretically cheaper hybrid system. It looked a little like a Civic with a very unfortunate sinus infection, but it drove far nicer than that. It wasn’t exactly a revelation, but it was surprisingly fun and engaging. More on that here, also over at Engadget.

And then I also got a spin in Honda’s new Prelude, a first taste for me in Honda’s new S+ Shift technology. It’s a system similar in spirit to what Hyundai’s doing in the Ioniq 5 N, except here the noise is coming from an honest-to-gosh internal combustion engine. It’s a little weird and practically pointless, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t thoroughly enjoy it.

And that’s it for now. As for me, by the time you read this, I should (TSA-willing) be headed home from southern Spain, where I wasn’t escaping the cold back home but was instead discovering the BMW iX3. This machine launches the company’s next-gen EV aspirations, and after years of Neue Klasse talk and prototype rides and drives, I’m excited to tell you all about how the final production version drives.

But you know the deal: I can’t do that just yet. Stay tuned for more on that front, and as ever, do good and be well.

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