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Today — 16 September 2026Main stream

Minara.fun API on Arc : track launches, trades and volume

16 September 2026 at 11:34

Minara.fun produced 1,417 token launches in its first 6 hours and 2 minutes on Arc mainnet. By 14:40 UTC on September 16, 2026, 1,312 of those tokens had traded. Their Minara pools recorded 168,208 swaps and $22.59 million in gross USDC volume after exact duplicate data rows were removed.

Disclosure: This story was prepared for Bitquery and uses its API. I used AI assistance to organize, draft, and edit the story; I checked the queries, contracts, and figures against the cited data.

In this guide, “Minara.fun API” means Bitquery’s GraphQL access to Minara’s public on-chain data. Minara supplies the contracts and activity; Bitquery supplies the query service used below.

What Minara.fun launched on Arc

Minara.fun is a token launchpad built for Circle’s Arc mainnet. A launch creates a token and opens a Uniswap v4 pool in one transaction. Arc’s native asset is USDC, so users pay gas in USDC and Minara’s main pools use USDC as the quote asset.

That setup makes the data easier to read. The amount moving through the quote side is already in a dollar asset. It also gives an analytics app a clear chain of records: the launch event names the token and pool, while the pool’s later swap rows carry the price, wallet, direction, and USDC amount.

Minara’s mainnet contract registry listed these addresses during the check:

  • Launch strategy: 0x4D3a3f4e1a918845C2038Bc064C4d250822B203e
  • Token factory: 0xFf99D8f6C994607576eB652EDCf12E04a7EbfBf6
  • Fee hook: 0xb6A65950534F061618B4AE102FBcbb8541a8e0cC
  • Uniswap v4 PoolManager: 0x8366a39CC670B4001A1121B8F6A443A643e40951

Read that registry when your app starts. Minara’s current strategy address can change.

Six hours of Minara.fun activity

The study starts at the first successful TokenLaunched event, 08:37:48 UTC, and stops at 14:40:00 UTC on September 16. Arc public mainnet had not existed for a full day, so a “last 24 hours” figure would have been false precision.

About 92.6% of the launched tokens had traded by the cutoff. The pace peaked between 09:30 and 10:00 UTC, when 319 launches landed in 30 minutes. Across the full window, the mean was close to four launches per minute.

Minara.fun launches by 30-minute interval. The first and final bars are partial intervals. Source: Bitquery; 08:37:48–14:40:00 UTC, September 16, 2026.

Trading was concentrated. A token named Minara, at 0xa163…61bb, accounted for $9.63 million, or 42.6% of the measured volume. The four busiest Minara pools made up 70.9% of all volume in the window.

Gross USDC volume in the five busiest Minara pools. Token names are on-chain labels, not verified identities. Source: Bitquery; same fixed window.

These numbers describe turnover, not revenue, liquidity, or money raised. Anyone can create a token with an arbitrary name. A label such as “Minara” does not prove that the token came from, or is backed by, the Minara team.

Prove the launch before counting it

Minara’s TokenLaunched event has this signature hash:

3b3d2bafdcae274a232217e1f80ee4305d3af6aa25c8b14b1681bd68d18042a4

The first indexed topic after the event hash contains the Uniswap v4 pool ID. The next topic contains the token address, padded to 32 bytes. Keep the transaction hash and log index as the row ID.

A stronger check reads four events from the same transaction. The token factory emits TokenCreated; the PoolManager emits Initialize; the approved strategy emits TokenLaunched; and the Minara fee hook emits PoolRegistered. The token and pool ID must agree across those records.

My first pass filtered on the launched token addresses. It returned $26.72 million. The query was also catching secondary pools that Minara did not create. After I switched to the pool IDs emitted by the launch transactions and removed exact duplicate rows, the measured total fell to $22.59 million.

For example, the launch of 0xa163…61bb appeared in transaction 0xf4bda4…747b. Its factory event was followed by pool initialization, hook registration, and the strategy’s launch event. The agreed pool ID was 0xd77a…b150. That pool, rather than every market carrying the same token address, became the filter for the trade and candle queries.

This separation matters on launch day. A popular token can gain extra pools within minutes. A token-wide volume query then answers a different question: how much the token traded across Arc. A pool-ID query answers how much moved through the market created by Minara.fun.

Query recent Minara.fun launches

Paste the query into the Bitquery IDE. It reads Arc mainnet only and returns the newest successful launch records from the current strategy.

query RecentMinaraLaunches {
EVM(network: arc) {
Events(
limit: {count: 20}
orderBy: {descending: Block_Time}
where: {
TransactionStatus: {Success: true}
LogHeader: {
Address: {is: "0x4d3a3f4e1a918845c2038bc064c4d250822b203e"}
Removed: false
}
Log: {Signature: {SignatureHash: {is: "3b3d2bafdcae274a232217e1f80ee4305d3af6aa25c8b14b1681bd68d18042a4"}}}
}
) {
Block {Number Time}
Transaction {Hash From}
LogHeader {Index}
Topics {Hash}
}
}
}

For each result, take the pool ID and token address from the indexed topics. Before saving the row, run the four-event check above.

Read recent trades from one Minara pool

Uniswap v4 uses one PoolManager contract for many pools. Its contract address is not a pool filter. Use Pair.Pool.Id, taken from the verified launch event.

query RecentTradesForMinaraPool {
Trading {
Trades(
limit: {count: 20}
orderBy: {descending: Block_Time}
where: {
Pair: {
Market: {Network: {is: "Arc"}}
Pool: {Id: {is: "0xd77a1efbc8d143b100cf2496ff970da0a616a6796886e6ba1f45e7d7e09bb150"}}
}
}
) {
Block {Time}
TransactionHeader {Hash Index}
Trader {Address}
Side
Amounts {Base Quote}
AmountsInUsd {Quote}
PriceInUsd
Pair {
Token {Id Address Symbol}
QuoteToken {Id Address Symbol}
Pool {Id Address}
Market {Network Protocol}
}
}
}
}

Use AmountsInUsd.Quote for dollar volume. The quote side is the sound measure for these USDC pools; the base-side USD field uses a reference price that can drift during quick moves.

Rank Minara tokens by USDC volume

Build the pool-ID list from verified launch events, then pass it to Trading.Trades. The sample uses the five busiest pools so it stays readable. A production job can submit the full list in batches and merge rows by pool ID.

query TopMinaraTokensByVolume {
Trading {
Trades(
limit: {count: 10}
orderBy: {descendingByField: "volume_usd"}
where: {
Pair: {
Market: {Network: {is: "Arc"} Protocol: {is: "uniswap_v4"}}
Pool: {Id: {in: [
"0xd77a1efbc8d143b100cf2496ff970da0a616a6796886e6ba1f45e7d7e09bb150"
"0xd67fdb79ceb19fe7c671b3def4fec48bef2322ec45e8e3b72ca918b77f1d218e"
"0x1857b4a03254e13d44f1fd50010c4eb2e6de774681d960f83d1ccd728e802602"
"0x1a81b70aef20a111df2dda2be549fef7736b7ec2196856c0d6704bb0135cad47"
"0x8923c2bd0d514997173fc0a6813ee2b7875daa9d89b76e9e98c76a3ed13b3e09"
]}}
}
Block: {Time: {since: "2026-09-16T08:37:48Z" till: "2026-09-16T14:40:00Z"}}
}
) {
Pair {Token {Id Address Symbol Name} Pool {Id}}
swaps: count
traders: count(distinct: Trader_Address)
volume_usd: sum(of: AmountsInUsd_Quote)
}
}
}

The Trading cube contained 163 exact duplicate rows in the full Minara set, a rate of 0.097%. For audited totals, I removed duplicates using pool ID, transaction hash, trader address, side, and base amount. Keep that check in any report that presents an exact trade count or volume total.

The raw query returned 168,371 rows. After the duplicate check, 168,208 remained. Distinct transaction hashes totaled 167,337, slightly below the swap count because one transaction can contain more than one swap. This is why a transaction count should not be presented as a swap count.

Build five-minute OHLCV candles

Use Trading.Pairs when you need candles for one verified v4 pool. A duration of 300 means five minutes.

query MinaraPoolFiveMinuteCandles {
Trading {
Pairs(
limit: {count: 100}
orderBy: {ascending: Block_Time}
where: {
Market: {Network: {is: "Arc"}}
Token: {Id: {is: "bid:arc:0xa163d7624da3b5d9182c50eab5b8cd247ae861bb"}}
Pool: {Id: {is: "0xd77a1efbc8d143b100cf2496ff970da0a616a6796886e6ba1f45e7d7e09bb150"}}
Interval: {Time: {Duration: {eq: 300}}}
Block: {Time: {since: "2026-09-16T08:37:48Z" till: "2026-09-16T14:40:00Z"}}
}
) {
Token {Id Address Symbol}
QuoteToken {Id Address Symbol}
Pool {Id Address}
Interval {Time {Start End Duration}}
Price {Ohlc {Open High Low Close}}
Volume {Base Usd}
}
}
}

This query returned 71 five-minute candles for the leading pool in the fixed window. Empty intervals are normal when no swap occurs.

What to build with the data

A launch feed can start with EVM.Events, verify the transaction, then watch the matching pool through Trading.Trades. Store the block time, transaction hash, log index, token address, pool ID, and strategy address. That record gives every later query a clean starting point.

From there, you can add alerts for new launches, a pool-level trade tape, price charts, or wallet activity. If the app must react at once, turn the launch and trade queries into subscriptions and connect through Bitquery’s GraphQL WebSocket endpoint. Keep the API token on your server.

Plan for brief WebSocket drops. Save the last processed block and log index, then request a small overlap before reconnecting. Remove rows already held by your app. The overlap is safer than assuming the first message after a reconnect follows the final message seen before it.

Refresh Minara’s registry on a schedule as well. Event signatures can remain stable while an approved strategy address changes. Saving the strategy address beside each launch makes an old record reproducible without forcing today’s address onto yesterday’s data.

I covered the wider chain setup in my earlier guide to the Arc blockchain API with Bitquery. For the current data fields and more examples, use Bitquery’s Arc launchpad API documentation.


Minara.fun API on Arc : track launches, trades and volume was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The world’s best racing driver is about to race 100 karts at once

16 September 2026 at 10:19

Later today, Max Verstappen will strap on his helmet and take to the track at the Silverstone circuit in England for a rather unusual race. The four-time Formula 1 world champion is recognized as the leading talent of his generation, but unlike some of the legends that have preceded him, Verstappen’s passion for motorsport extends beyond just the rarified world of F1. With apologies to Midweek Motorsport, but if it has wheels and they keep score, odds are good Verstappen's down to race it. So at noon Eastern Time (5 pm BST) today, September 16, Verstappen will slip into something a little more basic: a kart.

It’s one of 101 identical karts that have been sourced from Eastern Europe for the event—the other 100 will be driven by a mix of content creators and Red Bull athletes, all of whom fancy their chances at beating one of the world’s greatest drivers at his own game. They get a bit of an advantage, all starting ahead of Verstappen. Once he passes another karter, they’re out of the race, and Verstappen has 30 laps of a purpose-designed layout at Silverstone to get through them all and win.

Other F1 drivers have attempted slightly similar challenges in the past—Alex Albon raced 25 kids last year, and last month Oliver Bearman raced 50 amateurs. But neither is as high-profile as Verstappen, and neither is facing as much competition.

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© Joerg Mitter / Red Bull Content Pool

Arc blockchain API: query Circle’s chain with Bitquery

16 September 2026 at 09:16

An Arc blockchain API can tell you which tokens were created and which ones traded. In five hours on Arc mainnet on September 16, 2026, verified Tolly and RadarDEX contracts created 744 tokens. Only 544 had recorded swaps before the cutoff. If your app lists every new token as an active market, that gap matters.

Arc is Circle’s Layer 1 chain. It supports the EVM and uses USDC for gas. Circle announced its public mainnet launch on September 16. For a token tracker, the work starts with matching launch events to trades. Prices come next, along with a few unit and filtering errors that are easy to miss.

An early trading snapshot on September 16

The measured window runs from 06:00 UTC up to 11:00 UTC on September 16, 2026. It includes the start and excludes the end, covering five full hours. The exact time of public opening was not verified, so these figures do not measure elapsed time since launch.

Across 35,481 blocks with no gaps, Arc recorded 1,762,673 transactions from 90,202 distinct sending addresses. That total includes 161,957 failed transactions. Addresses can belong to bots or the same person; the address count is not a count of users.

The launchpad study has a smaller scope. It includes tokens created during those five hours by verified Tolly or RadarDEX launch contracts, then counts their swaps after creation and before the cutoff.

Source: Bitquery-indexed Arc data, September 16, 2026, 06:00–11:00 UTC; end time excluded. Chart prepared with AI assistance.

Tolly created 613 tokens; 450 had swaps before the cutoff. Those tokens recorded 5,965 swaps from 1,114 distinct sending addresses, with 216,050.69 USDC in gross turnover.

RadarDEX created 131 tokens; 94 had swaps. Its group recorded 881 swaps from 204 distinct sending addresses, with 41,073.35 USDC in gross turnover.

Tolly led this group by launch count and trading volume. Tokens created near the cutoff had less time to trade, though, and both totals include swaps made in the transaction that created a token. Some wallets may have traded on both pads.

Giving each token the same time to trade helps. Among launches with a full hour of data, median turnover during that first hour was 26.40 USDC for Tolly and 13.91 USDC for RadarDEX. Tokens with no swaps counted as zeros. The median token had modest activity despite the larger group totals.

The two groups together recorded 257,124.04 USDC in turnover. All indexed, valid DEX swaps of fungible tokens in the same window recorded about 96.34 million USDC in turnover. The new Tolly and RadarDEX tokens made up about 0.27% of that broader total. Older tokens and other markets sit outside this launch cohort. These figures cannot rank every Arc launchpad.

Turnover counts the USDC amount once per swap. It measures trading flow; it does not measure deposits, profit, or unique capital. Repeated trading can move the same funds many times.

Over time, transactions rose from 273,589 in 06:00–07:00 UTC to 407,408 in 10:00–11:00 UTC. That is a 48.9% increase between the first and last full hours measured. The counts alone do not tell us why.

Source: Bitquery-indexed Arc blocks, checked against transaction records. The five-hour total includes failed transactions. Chart prepared with AI assistance.

Choose the right Circle blockchain API

“Circle blockchain API” is a broad search term. Circle’s wallet and payments services cover tasks that differ from reading Arc market data. A token feed needs a way to search the chain’s events and swaps.

A node RPC is useful for chain state and sending transactions. Arc mainnet uses chain ID 5042; testnet uses 5042002. Check which chain you need before reusing an address or saved query from a testnet app. The Arc RPC guide lists the networks and methods you can call.

An indexed API reduces the work needed to search past events or fetch decoded trades. The examples below use the Bitquery GraphQL endpoint at streaming.bitquery.io/graphql. Send an HTTP POST with a JSON body that holds the query, a JSON content-type header, and your token in the authorization header as a Bearer token. Keep that token on your server.

For recent trades, use Trading.Trades. Use Trading.Tokens for a token’s candles and Trading.Pairs when the price must belong to one pair or pool. Find launches with EVM.Events, since a token launch event and a trade tell you different things.

Leave the dataset setting unset for these Trading examples. Check how much past data your plan can return before promising users a full history. A query that returns a recent row does not prove that you can fetch all prior trades for every market.

There is also a unit trap on Arc. USDC has a native form with 18 decimals and an ERC-20 form with six decimals at 0x3600000000000000000000000000000000000000. Both expose the same balance. Read the decimals for the form you received; do not add the balances as separate assets. Arc explains this in one token, two interfaces.

Find new Tolly token launches

Start with a known contract and the verified signature of its launch event. This query finds the latest 20 matching Tolly events from the previous 24 hours. It requires success and excludes removed logs and reverted calls.

Run the Tolly launch query

query {
EVM(network: arc) {
Events(
limit: {count: 20}
orderBy: {descending: Block_Time}
where: {
Block: {Time: {since_relative: {hours_ago: 24}}}
TransactionStatus: {Success: true}
Call: {Success: true, Reverted: false}
LogHeader: {
Address: {in: ["0xcad7ee36ac193bf2eddb7b3e2736c5bdb8269c8b"]}
Removed: false
}
Log: {Signature: {SignatureHash: {is: "875522b092d9e19a1de359e4bd218090d582fa521c9733889acf1a5ff1941255"}}}
}
) {
Block {Number Time}
Transaction {Hash From}
LogHeader {Address Index}
Log {Signature {SignatureHash}}
Topics {Hash}
}
}
}

The factory address was matched against the mainnet settings served by Tolly’s own site. RadarDEX was checked against the contract settings served by its own site. A matching token symbol would not provide that proof.

In the returned Tolly event, the token address is the final 20 bytes of the second topic, Topics[1] when counting from zero. Keep the emitting contract, transaction hash, and log index with the decoded token address. They let you inspect the source event if a label looks wrong.

Save those rows as new token records, then query each token’s trades to fill in its activity. If the trade query returns nothing, check your filters before deciding what it means. The creation event remains valid even when no matching swaps appear.

Query recent Arc trades and stream new swaps

The next query uses a Tolly token found in the snapshot as an example. Replace its token ID with your target token’s ID, keeping the chain prefix. The filter checks both Token and QuoteToken, and limits this example to the Uniswap protocol family.

Run the recent-trades query

query {
Trading {
Trades(
limit: {count: 20}
orderBy: {descending: Block_Time}
where: {
Block: {Time: {since_relative: {hours_ago: 24}}}
Pair: {Market: {NetworkBid: {is: "bid:arc"}, ProtocolFamily: {is: "Uniswap"}}}
any: [
{Pair: {Token: {Id: {is: "bid:arc:0xc17c325c02b65e35827ceed47c2ac581f45c251e"}}}}
{Pair: {QuoteToken: {Id: {is: "bid:arc:0xc17c325c02b65e35827ceed47c2ac581f45c251e"}}}}
]
}
) {
Block {Time}
TransactionHeader {Hash Index}
Trader {Address}
Side
Amounts {Base Quote}
AmountsInUsd {Quote}
PriceInUsd
Pair {
Token {Id Symbol}
QuoteToken {Id Symbol}
Market {Network Protocol}
Pool {Address Id}
}
}
}
}

Keep the pair fields, even if your screen shows only price and time. They help catch a common error: reading a price as though the selected token is always the base. The meaning of Side, base amount, and price depends on that role. If your token appears as QuoteToken, check what PriceInUsd measures before using it as the token’s price.

For a trade quoted in USDC, the executed unit price is the quote amount divided by the base amount. Keep the full decimal values when working with amounts. A rounded display price should not become the input to a volume total.

The Trading Trades guide explains the response fields. One transaction can contain several trades, so its hash alone is not a safe key for merging trade rows. Keep the source details needed to tell swaps apart and inspect repeated rows before dropping them.

For incoming Arc trades, use this subscription. It has a broader scope than the HTTP example: it filters the Arc network but does not restrict the protocol family. Check the returned market fields before treating every result as a Uniswap trade.

Open the live Arc trade subscription

subscription {
Trading {
Trades(where: {Pair: {Market: {Network: {is: "Arc"}}}}) {
Block { Time }
TransactionHeader { Hash }
Trader { Address }
Side
Amounts { Base Quote }
AmountsInUsd { Quote }
Price
PriceInUsd
Pair {
Market { Network Protocol ProtocolFamily }
Pool { Address Id }
Token { Id Address Symbol }
QuoteToken { Id Address Symbol }
}
}
}
}

Use the secure WebSocket endpoint, wss://streaming.bitquery.io/graphql, with the token setup in the Bitquery WebSocket guide. The test for this draft used the graphql-transport-ws protocol. Supply your token, send connection_init, wait for connection_ack, then send the query in a subscribe message.

On September 16, all four printed examples passed schema checks and returned data. The live feed sent 32 rows during the short test, after connection_ack. That confirms data delivery during the test; it does not promise a fixed event rate or future uptime.

A live app also needs to recover when the link drops. Store the last block time you processed, wait briefly, then connect again. Query a recent time range that overlaps the data you hold. Match the replay with stored trades before updating totals. A fresh link by itself gives no proof that the missing interval was filled.

Build Arc token price charts

For a token price chart, this query requests up to 120 rows of 60-second USD candles from the previous 24 hours.

Run the token candle query

query {
Trading {
Tokens(
limit: {count: 120}
orderBy: {descending: Block_Time}
where: {
Token: {Id: {is: "bid:arc:0xc17c325c02b65e35827ceed47c2ac581f45c251e"}, NetworkBid: {is: "bid:arc"}}
Block: {Time: {since_relative: {hours_ago: 24}}}
Interval: {Time: {Duration: {eq: 60}}}
Price: {IsQuotedInUsd: true}
}
) {
Token {Id Symbol}
Interval {Time {Start End Duration}}
Price {IsQuotedInUsd Ohlc {Open High Low Close}}
Volume {Base Usd}
}
}
}

The test returned 27 rows. A limit of 120 is only a ceiling; it does not promise two full hours of prices. Check for gaps and repeated intervals before plotting, and confirm how much past data the query can return.

Use the interval start to place each point on the time axis. Sort the response from oldest to newest for a chart. Inspect rows with the same token and interval before merging them, and allow the current candle to change as new trades arrive.

These prices draw on trades across pools. A chart for one specific pool needs a query at the pair level. Keep both pool address and pool ID to track a market; a shared contract address alone may not tell its pools apart. The token price guide explains the fields.

A practical first build is one token page: its creation event, followed by the trades it attracts. Add a price chart after the token IDs and units agree. Those checks will still matter as new pads and tokens appear in the feed.

Start from the Arc mainnet API docs for current examples.


Arc blockchain API: query Circle’s chain with Bitquery was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Yesterday — 15 September 2026Main stream

Demand for EV chargers is outstripping supply, says ChargePoint report

15 September 2026 at 13:58

There might not be the same degree of optimism regarding electric vehicle adoption as a few short years ago, but the transition toward battery-electric vehicles continues nevertheless. More than 1.8 million EVs had already been sold between the start of this year and the end of August, according to analysts. And in the US, there has been a large uptick in drivers considering EVs that they might have written off last year, due to escalating fuel prices with no clear end in sight. Despite this, charging infrastructure continues to lag, according to a new report from ChargePoint.

“All in all, things are moving forward. I think the North American market has been better shaped than a lot of the press reports,” said ChargePoint CEO Rick Wilmer. “Part of it is just the data we see in terms of the amount of RFPs that we receive for charging solutions. They haven't slowed down. We reported quarter over quarter growth in the last quarter we reported. And you look at the data around used EVs going up in price because the demand is so high. I saw a recent report… EV retention rates are 96 percent. So those folks that are putting their leased cars on the used market, they're not going back to gas, they're going to another EV,” he said.

Beyond that, cheap electric trucks from Slate and Ford indicate further future demand for charging. “When you look at how much interest there is in the used EVs that are at parity with an equivalent gas vehicle, that tells you the appetite is there for EVs if it's the right vehicle at the right price point," Wilmer said. "So I think the auto OEMs, maybe not homogeneously, but they're figuring out what the market wants in North America, and they're starting to introduce those vehicles, which I don't think a lot of the forward-looking forecasts accommodate the fact that the product market fit is getting better coming out of the car companies.”

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© Getty Images

GM gives its most important trucks a new UI—and includes CarPlay

15 September 2026 at 09:27

General Motors is about to launch new versions of its bestselling Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks for model year 2027, and among the changes are new user interfaces for the trucks’ digital displays. The automaker has gone for a more minimalist approach than we’ve seen from it in the past, and after a demo yesterday, it seems like it has been listening to constructive feedback to improve the products. And yes, unlike GM’s electric vehicles, these trucks still let you cast your Apple or Android phone to the infotainment system.

Although GM showed us video of the main instrument cluster—the gauges and info that’s presented to the driver—we don’t have any screenshots we can show you. But I was impressed with the restraint and lack of visual noise; instead, the background is always black, which should be dark even at night thanks to local dimming technology.

There are a number of different views. One with simple half-moon dials for speed and engine rpm; on the right side of the display is a user-configurable zone, where you can browse your music or audio feeds, display trip info, or turn-by-turn directions. Another is a driver assist display, with green as the highlight color to show when Super Cruise is active; this shows you a representation of what the car’s fused sensors are seeing around it. A third is for off-road driving, with your various angles and diff settings, and a fourth is for towing.

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© GM

Volvo increases the batteries for 2028 XC60 and XC90 plug-in refresh

15 September 2026 at 03:00

There must be a case of upgrade fever taking hold in Gothenburg. Yesterday, we saw the revised Volvo XC40; today it’s the turn of another pair of Volvo SUVs, the bestselling XC60 and the three-row XC90. While the styling changes are more subtle, the new plug-in hybrid powertrain—which more than doubles its real-world electric range—is most welcome.

Volvo had sold more than 2.7 million XC60s worldwide by the end of last year, so it’s an important car for the brand. Visually, there are changes to the “Thor’s Hammer” headlights: these keep their distinctive daylight running light signature but now hide matrix LED projectors within their depths. There’s a new front grille as well, one that has been slimmed down a little, together with tweaks to the bumpers, wings, and some other body panels.

On the inside, there’s a new ventilated leather interior option, and like the XC40, the new 11.2-inch infotainment system sports a Gemini personal assistant to enable conversational voice control of the android automotive OS-based infotainment system. Based on some brief testing, the new Gemini voice assistant does at least perform a lot better than the previous version, which, if anything, has degraded in ability over the past few years.

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© Volvo

Before yesterdayMain stream

New corners, new lights for 2028 Volvo XC40

14 September 2026 at 11:46

Most cars get a midlife facelift about four years after first hitting the streets. It’s a chance for automakers to update the styling and introduce new features and engineering changes that are usually minor but can be quite dramatic—the Polestar 2 swapping from front- to rear-wheel drive comes readily to mind. I can’t think of too many cars that have gone on to have a second update, but here’s one: the 2028 Volvo XC40.

First debuting in 2017, Volvo gave the XC40 a tweak for model year 2023. Rather than launch an all-new version, it has decided to give the popular crossover another update for MY28 with the aim of keeping things fresh. “By enhancing the XC40’s design, technology, and safety features, we've created the best version of the XC40 yet,” said Akhil Krishnan, interim lead for the 30 and 40 Series at Volvo Cars. “This already-popular model is now set to continue being one of our best-selling cars for years to come.”

The most obvious changes are the new front and rear lights. Up front we still see the distinctive “Thor’s Hammer” daylight running light signature, but the new matrix LED light clusters appear more minimalist, hiding their details from view. The rear similarly gets new LEDs. But Volvo’s designers have been at work elsewhere, shaving away the corners of the car to make what was already a small SUV take up slightly less room.

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F1 in Madrid: Like Monaco but twice as long and none of the glamour

14 September 2026 at 10:32

It’s been quite a couple of weeks for Formula 1. First, its annual visit to one of the oldest tracks on the calendar, the Italian temple of speed that is Monza, just outside Milan. Apologies for no Ars report, but your correspondent was on the ground, on vacation, learning the hard way that attempts to call the circuit “accessible by public transport” can still involve walking several miles. The place was packed with Tifosi—the hardcore Italian superfans—dressed in red, who had their hopes dashed almost immediately as Charles Leclerc first ruined his teammate’s race, then his own, all within the first two laps.

Salvation came in the form of the first Italian title contender in my lifetime, Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli. Opting to take a new engine and other power unit components meant Antonelli would start the race from 19th. But the kid is in fine form right now, and Monza’s long straights and slow corners make for several good overtaking spots. I declared to my race companions that morning that “he’s going to podium, easily,” but if anything, I was too cautious. By the time Leclerc’s heavy crash at Parabolica had stopped the race, Antonelli was already up to 12th.

From the second standing start, on fresh medium tires and still needing a second pitstop, he made short work of the rest of the grid, including his teammate George Russell, who spent much of the race in the lead, on a theoretically faster one-stop strategy. Even a mistake from Antonelli that saw him make an excursion through a gravel trap as he tried to pass Russell couldn’t stop his charge, and he became the first Italian to win the Italian Grand Prix in 60 years—fairy tale stuff, surely.

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© Clive Rose/Getty Images

EV batteries last longer than drivers feared

Electric vehicle batteries are lasting longer than previously feared by drivers, with most used EVs able to retain about 90 percent of their original usable battery capacity after 150,000 kilometers, a new study has shown.

Despite a surge in global EV sales on the back of rising fuel prices, long-term battery durability continues to be one of the key concerns for drivers when they consider switching from a petrol model to an electric car.

EV battery warranties typically cover eight years or 100,000 miles (160,000 km) with car manufacturers required under the warranty to provide a replacement battery if capacity falls below 70 percent.

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© Horacio Villalobos

Tesla’s Cybercab has been deployed, and it’s already under investigation

5 September 2026 at 11:17

Tesla’s Cybercab, a distinctive two-seater without a steering wheel or brake pedals, is set to start picking up members of the public in two states. But the vehicle is already under investigation by the US federal government, which is probing whether it meets federal safety standards.

The investigation comes just hours after the electric automaker welcomed hundreds of fans to downtown Austin to ride in the driverless Cybercabs. Tesla plans to deploy the vehicles on its Robotaxi ride-hail network, which is currently operating in a handful of cities in Texas and Florida.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is updating vehicle standards to make it easier and faster for driverless cars to deploy on public roads. It’s currently tweaking eight rules, including those requiring car parts that driverless cars don’t really need: brake pedals, windshield wipers, and rearview mirrors. But for now, years-old standards remain in place.

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© David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Here's our first look—and drive—of the 2027 Range Rover Electric

1 September 2026 at 19:01

Jaguar Land Rover was one of the first automakers to announce a transition away from combustion engines. That transition timeline might have slipped somewhat—pesky things like pandemics, supply chains, and revanchism have all been barriers to more rapid electrification—but it's still underway, and today is the debut of the Range Rover Electric, a new battery-electric vehicle variant that sits alongside the internal combustion and plug-in hybrid Range Rovers.

Until now, the only way to get a fully electric Range Rover was by going the restomod route. But classic Range Rovers drive like classic cars, with all their inherent faults, and the price tag can be eye-watering. No Range Rover is exactly cheap, but with a starting price of $138,000, the 2027 Range Rover Electric is about half the cost of one of those restomods and benefits from 21st century safety systems like airbags, advanced driver assistance systems, modern crash protection standards, plus the support and warranty of a major OEM. And there's evidently demand: JLR told us that it already has 80,000 hand-raisers—half from North America—70 percent of whom are new to the brand, with 20 percent already owning an EV. (Obviously, only some fraction of those will translate to sales.)

Range Rover EV grille The smooth front grille is one of the only ways to spot a Range Rover Electric. Credit: Range Rover

Because the idea was to make the Range Rover Electric a Range Rover first and an EV second, it looks virtually identical to the other versions, albeit with a slightly more aerodynamic front grille and more aero-efficient wheels that together conspire to shave off a fraction of the vehicle's drag coefficient. The lack of tailpipes at the back is probably the biggest giveaway that you're looking at the electric one. There's also a flat underbody, but hopefully you'll never need to look at that.

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This is what a supercar was like a century ago

1 September 2026 at 13:34

MONTEREY, Calif.—Elsewhere on these pages, you can find our first track drive of the new Bentley Supersports. Shorn of its hybrid system and stripped back to rear-wheel drive, it's not only the most driver-focused Bentley we can remember, but it's also apparently the lightest car the company has made in 85 years. But you have to go back even further into the Bentley archive to find the first car to wear the Super Sports badge. And since Bentley had done just that, bringing along to Laguna Seca an example from the time, it would have been rude to refuse the offer of a ride.

Bentley built 18 Super Sports between 1925 and 1927, taking its standard 3 Litre model and shortening the wheelbase by 9.5 inches (241 mm). Like today's Super Sports, that shaved some mass and made it a more responsive driver's car. But a fast one, too. The radiator was more tapered and thus presented less resistance against the flow of air, although like many cars at the time, the bodywork was a matter of whichever coachbuilder the owner decided upon.

A 1926 Bentley Super Sports with bodywork by Jarvis of Wimbledon, seen from the front 3/4
Smoky's two-seat bodywork was compact for the time.
The cockpit of a Bentley Super Sports
The lever for the three-speed transmission is just outside the car. Not sure the FIA or NHTSA would let you get away with that today. Credit: Jonathan Gitlin

Like today with the Continental GT and the new Supersports, the 3.0 L engine Bentley in the original Super Sports was more special than one you'd find in the standard car, with new pistons, a lighter flywheel, more compression, and different carburetors. Together with its unique gearing, the factory would guarantee a Super Sports that could exceed 100 mph (160 km/h); the millions of Ford Model Ts that took the roads those same years were hard-pushed to break 40 mph (64 km/h).

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© Jonathan Gitlin

The Bentley Supersports: A stripped-out engineer's indulgence

31 August 2026 at 19:01

MONTEREY, Calif.—Last week, we brought news of the Bentley Torcal, a new electric vehicle that the luxury automaker has been cooking up at its HQ in Crewe, England. The company wants to attract new customers with its first battery EV, part of a plan to make sustainability as much a part of the brand's character as its high-end fit and finish. W12 engines have given way to V8 plug-in hybrid power, and the new Continental GT is all the better for it.

But around the same time as Ars got its first experience of that new PHEV two-door on a rather wet Spanish racetrack, some of Bentley's boffins were wondering what might happen if you also built one without the hybrid stuff.

Or all-wheel drive—something that has been a characteristic of every new road-going Bentley since the turn of the century. That would certainly cut the curb weight. So, too, would leaving out the rear seats. That sort of idea leads down a well-trodden path for some OEMs, and Porsche in particular is famous for making stripped-out road cars inspired by its race cars and making money from them, too.

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Bentley takes us for a ride in its new EV, the Torcal

27 August 2026 at 07:30

MONTEREY, Calif.—Next month Bentley will reveal its first battery-electric vehicle. The British automaker is no stranger to electric motors; it now offers plug-in hybrids across its range, even replacing the Continental GT's W12 with a new plug-in hybrid V8. The addition of electric motors perfectly suits the marque: what's more Bentley than waves of effortless torque, after all? But until now, there's always been a combustion engine along for the ride. Not so the Torcal.

Clad in plastic and wrapped in a multi-hued dazzle camouflage, it's shorter in length and height compared to a Bentayga, although it is similarly voluminous on the inside thanks to the inherent packaging efficiencies of an EV. If the proportions remind you of a Porsche Cayenne EV, that's because the two share quite a lot of the same basic engineering, albeit reworked by Bentley to suit its needs. The target is 300 miles (482 km) in EPA range or 600 km (373 miles) under WLTP, from the battery pack, and like the Cayenne, expect 400 kW DC fast-charging.

A camouflaged preproduction Bentley Torcal drives past the camera. Bentley is targeting the sports SUV segment with the Torcal. It's 5 meters (16 feet, 5 inches) long, which is shorter than a Bentayga. Credit: Bentley

Don't expect the Cayenne's quadruple-figure power output, though. "We'll be well over a thousand newton-meters of torque [737 lb-ft], which is one of the sort of enabling pillars of the technology, which is fantastic. There'll be over 850 PS [838 hp/625 kW], but we're not chasing four figures," said Martin Page, product line director for the Torcal.

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The Porsche 911 GT3 Touring punches above its weight class

26 August 2026 at 13:25

The GT3 occupies a singular place in the 911 lineup. Whereas the range-topping Turbo S piles on power, technology, luxury, and all-weather capability, the GT3 has always pursued something more elemental: a lighter weight, more focus, and a finely honed setup that puts the driver at the center of the experience.

Porsche has expanded the GT3 formula since the model’s debut in 1999, adding the more extreme GT3 RS to the lineup in 2003 and the slightly more reserved GT3 Touring in 2017, along with the GT3 S/C earlier this year. While the concept behind the drop-top S/C requires some mental gymnastics to make sense of it, the Touring’s original premise was refreshingly simple: Take the standard GT3—including its naturally aspirated 4.0 L flat-six and track-tuned chassis—and replace the fixed rear wing with the deployable spoiler from the Carrera. The result is a subtler version of the homologation car that recaptures the classic 911 silhouette without giving up the hardware that makes a GT3 a GT3.

Fresh from its 992.2 mid-cycle update, the latest GT3 Touring sticks closely to that original design. Its 4.0 L flat-six still spins to 9,000 rpm and produces 502 hp (375 kW) and 331 lb-ft (449 Nm), sending its output exclusively to the rear wheels through either a seven-speed PDK dual-clutch automatic or six-speed manual gearbox. Massive brakes, rear-axle steering, a GT3-specific suspension, active sport exhaust, and plenty of other road course-oriented hardware remain standard.

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© Bradley Iger

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