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Cars.com names its Top Picks for EVs: Volkswagen, Hyundai, Lucid, and Chevrolet
Cars.com released its Top Picks list for 2022 model year Electric Vehicles, with Volkswagen, Hyundai, Lucid, and Chevrolet taking the top spots in categories such as Value, Family, Luxury, and Commuters.
The winners managed to be chosen in a field of over 30 highly popular and notable EVs that are all worthy of recognition in their own ways. With the recent explosion of the EV sector, more consumers are considering electric powertrains due to their lack of maintenance and other advantages, like not having to pay upwards of $7 for a gallon of gas.
“We have been sharing news and research on EVs ever since we reviewed our first Nissan Leaf over a decade ago,” Jenni Newman, Cars.com’s editor-in-chief, said. “As consumer interest for EVs grows due to rising gas prices and other current events, we know shoppers have questions about what EV options are available, how much they cost, what the ownership experience is like, and more. Our 2022 EV Buying Guide and Top Picks help shoppers answer those questions and cut through the noise to find the right EV for their lifestyle.”
Value – 2022 Volkswagen ID.4
As the average price of an EV costs $60,000 in today’s market, the Volkswagen ID.4 starts at just $41,669 including destination fees. It offers state-of-the-art features like LED headlights, heated front seats, a heated steering wheel, a 10-inch touchscreen navigation system, wireless device charging, Volkswagen’s suite of active-safety and driver-assist features, and Apple CarPlay, for those who really need it. Android Auto is also available. The ID.4’s also comes with three years of unlimited 30-minute DC fast-charging sessions at any Electrify America station, and it’s free.

Volkswagen’s ID.4 (Credit: Volkswagen)
Families – 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5
A compact SUV with a roomy interior, the 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5 has a sizeable backseat that slides forward and backward, so it’s ideal for car seats. The Ioniq 5 starts at $44,895, and the top trim level has plenty of discreet features that will make traveling with kids a little more enjoyable. The panoramic moonroof comes with a retractable sunshade. It also has a “composed ride on highways” that stands out, according to Cars.com, which tipped their cap to the Ioniq 5 for defying a common shortcoming in EVs due to a lack of combustion engine that drowns out road noise.
Credit: Hyundai
Luxury – 2022 Lucid Air
The Lucid Air has already captured the attention of several publications, winning awards that have named it the Best EV of 2022 elsewhere. It’s a wonderful vehicle: fast, luxurious, spacious, and clean. Lucid has a sizeable price tag on the Air’s premier model: the Dream Edition: $170,000. As it is with many other industries, you get what you pay for. The Air has cargo space, performance, a responsive and intuitive multimedia system, with an interior that would be pictured next to the word “luxury” in the dictionary. MotorTrend gave the Air plenty of kudos during their initial drives of the Air Dream Edition last year, and not much has changed, apparently.
Credit: Lucid Motors
Commuters – 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EV and EUV
The Chevrolet Bolt EV is a head-scratching choice for the Commuter category, as the vehicle has been on a production halt for several months after battery fires and GM built less than 30 of them in Q4 2021. While the Bolt EV will likely come back with no issues after a thorough investigation between GM and its battery suppliers, the EPA-estimated 247 miles of range and a $34,495 starting price gives those looking for a bargain EV this option. General Motors has high ambitions for its EV program, and the Bolt is a great car to build a foundation upon. However, there are other competitive options, and they’ll give you more range and performance, but the Bolt’s price tag alone makes it a worthy choice.
Credit: General Motors
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Lucid unveils Lunar Robotaxi in bid to challenge Tesla’s Cybercab in the autonomous ride hailing race
Lucid’s Lunar robotaxi is gunning for Tesla’s Cybercab in the autonomous ride hailing race
Lucid Group pulled back the curtain on its purpose-built autonomous robotaxi platform dubbed the Lunar Concept. Announced at its New York investor day event, Lunar is arguably the company’s most ambitious concept yet, and a direct line of sight toward the autonomous ride haling market that Tesla looks to control.

At Lucid Investor Day 2026, the company introduced Lunar, a purpose-built robotaxi concept based on the Midsize platform.
A comparison to Tesla’s Cybercab is unavoidable. The concept of a Tesla robotaxi was first introduced by Elon Musk back in April 2019 during an event dubbed “Autonomy Day,” where he envisioned a network of self-driving Tesla vehicles transporting passengers while not in use by their owners. That vision took another major step in October 2024 when, Musk unveiled the Cybercab at the Tesla “We, Robot” event held at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, where 20 concept Cybercabs autonomously drove around the studio lot giving rides to attendees.
Fast forward to today, and Tesla’s ambitions are finally materializing, but not without friction. As we recently reported, the Cybercab is being spotted with increasing frequency on public roads and across the grounds of Gigafactory Texas, suggesting that the company’s road testing and validation program is ramping meaningfully ahead of mass production. Tesla already operates a small scale robotaxi service in Austin using supervised Model Ys, but the Cybercab is designed from the ground up for high-volume, low-cost production, with Musk stating an eventual goal of producing one vehicle every 10 seconds.

At Lucid Investor Day 2026, the company introduced Lunar, a purpose-built robotaxi concept based on the Midsize platform.
Into this landscape steps Lucid’s Lunar. Built on the company’s all-new Midsize EV platform, which will also underpin consumer SUVs starting below $50,000. The Lunar mirrors the Cybercab’s core philosophy of having two seats, no driver controls, and a focus on fleet economics. The platform introduces Lucid’s redesigned Atlas electric drive unit, engineered to be smaller, lighter, and cheaper to manufacture at scale.
Unlike Tesla’s strategy of building its own ride hailing network from scratch, Lucid is partnering with Uber. The companies are said to be in advanced discussions to deploy Midsize platform vehicles at large scale, with Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi publicly backing Lucid’s engineering credentials and autonomous-ready architecture.
In the investor day event, Lucid also outlined a recurring software revenue model, with an in-vehicle AI assistant and monthly autonomous driving subscriptions priced between $69 and $199. This can be seen as a nod to the software revenue stream that Tesla has long championed with its Full Self-Driving subscription.
Tesla’s Cybercab is targeting a price point below $30k and with operating costs as low as 20 cents per mile. But with regulatory hurdles still ahead, the window for competition is open. Lucid’s Lunar may not have a launch date yet, but it arrives at a pivotal moment, and when the robotaxi race is no longer viewed as hypothetical. Rather, every serious EV player needs to come to bat on the same plate that Tesla has had countless practice swings on over the last seven years.
Elon Musk
Brazil Supreme Court orders Elon Musk and X investigation closed
The decision was issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes following a recommendation from Brazil’s Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet.
Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court has ordered the closure of an investigation involving Elon Musk and social media platform X. The inquiry had been pending for about two years and examined whether the platform was used to coordinate attacks against members of the judiciary.
The decision was issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes following a recommendation from Brazil’s Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet.
According to a report from Agencia Brasil, the investigation conducted by the Federal Police did not find evidence that X deliberately attempted to attack the judiciary or circumvent court orders.
Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet concluded that the irregularities identified during the probe did not indicate fraudulent intent.
Justice Moraes accepted the prosecutor’s recommendation and ruled that the investigation should be closed. Under the ruling, the case will remain closed unless new evidence emerges.
The inquiry stemmed from concerns that content on X may have enabled online attacks against Supreme Court justices or violated rulings requiring the suspension of certain accounts under investigation.
Justice Moraes had previously taken several enforcement actions related to the platform during the broader dispute involving social media regulation in Brazil.
These included ordering a nationwide block of the platform, freezing Starlink accounts, and imposing fines on X totaling about $5.2 million. Authorities also froze financial assets linked to X and SpaceX through Starlink to collect unpaid penalties and seized roughly $3.3 million from the companies’ accounts.
Moraes also imposed daily fines of up to R$5 million, about $920,000, for alleged evasion of the X ban and established penalties of R$50,000 per day for VPN users who attempted to bypass the restriction.
Brazil remains an important market for X, with roughly 17 million users, making it one of the platform’s larger user bases globally.
The country is also a major market for Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, which has surpassed one million subscribers in Brazil.
Elon Musk
FCC chair criticizes Amazon over opposition to SpaceX satellite plan
Carr made the remarks in a post on social media platform X.
U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr criticized Amazon after the company opposed SpaceX’s proposal to launch a large satellite constellation that could function as an orbital data center network.
Carr made the remarks in a post on social media platform X.
Amazon recently urged the FCC to reject SpaceX’s application to deploy a constellation of up to 1 million low Earth orbit satellites that could serve as artificial intelligence data centers in space.
The company described the proposal as a “lofty ambition rather than a real plan,” arguing that SpaceX had not provided sufficient details about how the system would operate.
Carr responded by pointing to Amazon’s own satellite deployment progress.
“Amazon should focus on the fact that it will fall roughly 1,000 satellites short of meeting its upcoming deployment milestone, rather than spending their time and resources filing petitions against companies that are putting thousands of satellites in orbit,” Carr wrote on X.
Amazon has declined to comment on the statement.
Amazon has been working to deploy its Project Kuiper satellite network, which is intended to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink service. The company has invested more than $10 billion in the program and has launched more than 200 satellites since April of last year.
Amazon has also asked the FCC for a 24-month extension, until July 2028, to meet a requirement to deploy roughly 1,600 satellites by July 2026, as noted in a CNBC report.
SpaceX’s Starlink network currently has nearly 10,000 satellites in orbit and serves roughly 10 million customers. The FCC has also authorized SpaceX to deploy 7,500 additional satellites as the company continues expanding its global satellite internet network.