#electric-vehicles

#electric-vehicles

Kia America announced a 7% sales increase in 2025 after selling a record 852,155 units in the U.S. last year. It's the third consecutive annual sales record for the South Korean automaker's U.S. division, and the feat was driven by strong sales growth for vehicles like its K4 sedan and its Sportage and Telluride SUVs. Kia's U.S. market share has never been greater.

Lucid Motors built twice as many electric vehicles in 2025 as it did in the prior year, a sign that the company has bounced back from early production struggles with its new Gravity SUV. The company announced Monday that it finished the year having built 18,378 EVs, with 8,412 of those coming in the fourth quarter alone. That's more than Lucid built at its Casa Grande, Arizona factory in the first half of the year.

While investors chased artificial intelligence stocks and cryptocurrency throughout 2025, a commodity fund quietly delivered returns that rivaled the market's biggest winners. The United States Commodity Index Funds Trust ( NYSE:CPER) surged 39% last year, matching NVDA's performance and more than doubling the S&P 500's 16% gain. CPER tracks copper futures contracts, providing exposure to the industrial metal without mining company operational risks.

The first was my inaugural outing in a Tesla Model 3, which truly felt like it shrunk the Model S' impressive design into a BMW 3 Series-sized package while simultaneously improving on it. The second came when I drove the original Chevrolet Bolt EV, which felt so far ahead of any comparable gas car in that size and price range that it made internal combustion seem irrelevant.

After years of EV optimism, revanchists are pushing back against things like clean energy and fuel economy. Automakers have responded, postponing or canceling new electric vehicles in favor of gasoline-burning ones. It hasn't been all bad, though. Despite the changing winds, EV infrastructure continues to be built out and, anecdotally at least, feels far more reliable. We got to witness a pretty epic Formula 1 season right to the wire,

The world's largest-ever electric vehicle winter test just concluded in China, and the results show just how extreme cold punishes driving range. Chinese EVs dominated the rankings, but one American and one Japanese model still cracked the top ten. The test was conducted by Autohome, China's largest automotive media outlet, which drove roughly 67 new EVs and hybrids to Yakeshi, Inner Mongolia. There, about 100 car experts subjected the vehicles through rigorous tests to examine their range, charging performance, driveability on icy surfaces, acceleration.

While investors fixated on artificial intelligence throughout 2025, the battery supply chain quietly delivered exceptional returns, powering everything from electric vehicles to grid storage. A Supply Chain Play, Not Just an EV Bet Amplify Lithium & Battery Technology ETF (NYSEARCA:BATT) returned 66% year-to-date in 2025, nearly tripling the Nasdaq-100's 22% gain. This performance came from diversified exposure across the entire battery ecosystem: lithium miners, copper producers, battery component manufacturers, and select EV companies.

A year ago, I wrote that 2024 marked the end of "business as usual" for the global car industry and its electric transformation. I can pretty confidently say now that 2025 looked at everything that had happened in the last few years and said, "Hold my beer." The United States saw a surge of electric-vehicle sales for most of this year, until policy reversals and an end to the EV tax credits threw a lot of future plans into chaos.

According to official documents, the root cause of the issue has been traced to the integrated parking module's pawl, which can bind against an adjacent slider, preventing it from returning to its fully engaged park position. However, after analyzing faulty parts, Ford concluded that there is no actual mechanical fault and that a software update is enough to fix the problem. The update, which affects the Secondary On Board Diagnostic Module C (SOBDMC), can be installed at a dealer or over-the-air.

Many luxury EVs are about to get significantly cheaper as we step into 2026. That's because dealers still have a lot of leftover inventory for 2025 and even 2024 models. As time passes, dealers will want them gone sooner rather than later. Even with the generous $7,500 federal incentive for EVs out the window, there is good news on the horizon for car buyers interested in going electric.