Ford Motor has developed a racing version of its upcoming all-electric Mustang Mach-E crossover with 1,400 horsepower and a top speed that’s not street legal.

The company plans to use the prototype vehicle, which it’s calling the Mustang Mach-E 1400, to show off the potential performance of all-electric vehicles as the new crossover begins arriving in dealerships later this year.

“It’s an all-around athlete,” Mark Rushbrook, motorsports director of Ford Performance, told CNBC. He called the vehicle a “learning platform” for the company to utilize aspects of for its future all-electric vehicles.

In the pursuit of a rechargeable battery that can power electric vehicles (EVs) for hundreds of miles on a single charge, scientists have endeavored to replace the graphite anodes currently used in EV batteries with lithium metal anodes.

But while lithium metal extends an EV’s driving range by 30–50%, it also shortens the battery’s useful life due to lithium dendrites, tiny treelike defects that form on the lithium anode over the course of many charge and discharge cycles. What’s worse, dendrites short-circuit the cells in the battery if they make contact with the cathode.

For decades, researchers assumed that hard, solid electrolytes, such as those made from ceramics, would work best to prevent dendrites from working their way through the cell. But the problem with that approach, many found, is that it didn’t stop dendrites from forming or “nucleating” in the first place, like tiny cracks in a car windshield that eventually spread.

New battery technology developed at Berkeley Lab could give flight to electric aircraft and supercharge safe, long-range electric cars.

In the pursuit of a rechargeable battery that can power electric vehicles (EVs) for hundreds of miles on a single charge, scientists have endeavored to replace the graphite anodes currently used in EV batteries with lithium metal anodes.

But while lithium metal extends an EV’s driving range by 30–50%, it also shortens the battery’s useful life due to lithium dendrites, tiny treelike defects that form on the lithium anode over the course of many charge and discharge cycles. What’s worse, dendrites short-circuit the cells in the battery if they make contact with the cathode.

While the ID Buzz, aka the electric Microbus, isn’t quite production-ready, it may not be the only iconic vehicle Volkswagen’s rebooting into an EV. 2019 saw the release of the final Volkswagen Beetle. Despite its styling and long history, consumer interest lagged, and VW discontinued it. But now, there’s rumors of a new Volkswagen Beetle—an electric one.

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This news comes courtesy of the electric Volkswagen forum VW ID Talk, Autoblog reports. Forum users discovered several VW trademark applications submitted to the EU Intellectual Property Office.