In four-plus years of covering EVs, we’ve seen a lot of quietly exciting sedans. Thoughtfully designed crossovers. Incremental progress. But sometimes the industry goes completely sideways. Both literally and figuratively, and produces something so gloriously absurd, so baffling, so deeply unnecessary that we absolutely had to write about it.
Here are our favorites. In roughly ascending order of “wait, that’s a real thing?”
1. A Robot Vacuum Company Strapped Rockets to an EV
Dreame — a brand you probably know from its robot vacuums — decided the logical next step was a twin-solid-fuel-rocket-boosted electric hypercar capable of 0-100 km/h in 0.9 seconds. Not 1.9. Not 1.1. Point nine. If that holds up in real-world testing, it would be the fastest-accelerating road car ever built. By a company that also cleans your floors. We still can’t fully process this. Read the full story →
2. You Said You’d Accept an EV Over Your Dead Body. Cadillac Took Notes.
The electric hearse has arrived. Cadillac, not content to merely electrify luxury SUVs, has gone all the way to the end of the road. Literally. We called this one “the EV you’d resist adopting until you absolutely, permanently couldn’t,” and we stand by that. The copy writes itself — the headline actually is the copy. Read the full story →
3. The Ferrari That Made the Internet Lose Its Mind
The Ferrari Luce is a $640,000 electric Ferrari. It exists. The internet, upon seeing it, did not take it well. Comments ranged from polite disappointment to full-on grief. We noted at the time that this might be “the wrong answer to the right question,” and the response to that framing alone generated more reader feedback than almost anything we’ve published. People have feelings about Ferrari going electric. Read the full story →
4. The Hyundai That Could Drive Sideways
In 2023, Hyundai revealed an e-Corner system for the Ioniq 5 that could rotate all four wheels 90 degrees and drive the car perfectly sideways into a parking spot. Crab-walk mode, essentially, but real. The internet watched the demo video about fourteen million times. Whether this ever makes production is another matter, but as a proof-of-concept for where EV motors and software can take vehicle dynamics, it’s hard to top. Read the full story →
5. The 6-Wheel EV That Came With Its Own Flying Drone
XPENG, a Chinese EV company with a taste for drama, unveiled a six-wheeled electric adventure vehicle that comes packaged with a detachable flying craft. The pitch: drive until you can’t, then launch the drone and continue your journey from the air. It sounds like something a 12-year-old would design with unlimited budget. We mean that as the highest compliment. Read the full story →
6. Jaguar’s Truly Unhinged Rebrand (And Then the Car Itself)
In late 2024, Jaguar dropped a rebrand ad so aggressively weird — no cars, just fashion models, a new logo, and the phrase “Copy Nothing” — that it broke automotive media for approximately two weeks. Everyone hated it. Then the actual car arrived, the Type 00 concept, and it was genuinely stunning: pink and cream, long and low, dripping with provocation. We called it “Modern Exuberance” and meant it sincerely. The bonkers ad worked. Read the full story →
7. The Catbus. But Real. And Electric.
In September 2023, a full-scale working replica of the Catbus from My Neighbor Totoro was spotted on the streets of Tokyo. It was electric. It moved. Children lost their minds. Adults also lost their minds. There’s not much analytical value to add here — it’s a giant electric cat bus — but it made us happier than almost anything else we’ve covered, and we’re not sorry. Read the full story →
8. The Flying Car That Actually Got FAA Approval
The Alef Model Zero is a street-legal electric car that can also fly. That sentence has been written before about vehicles that never flew and were never street-legal. But Alef Aeronautics received actual FAA approval for test flights in 2023 — a milestone that separates it from virtually every other “flying car” announcement in history. It’s still early, it’s still limited, and we remain cautiously optimistic in the specific way that only covers writing about flying electric cars can make you. Read the full story →
This is a living list. We fully expect to add to it — the EV industry has a remarkable talent for topping itself. Got a nomination? We’d love to hear it.