This week the stories kept landing in the same place: real conditions, real results. A Finnish town heated through a brutal winter without burning a drop of oil. A robotaxi running actual paying rides in Las Vegas for six weeks. A motor teardown that corrects what most coverage gets wrong about why axial flux actually works. Denmark's half-century renewable bet paying out during an energy crisis. And AMG showing up with 1,169 PS and a purpose-built electric platform, though that one still has to prove itself on the road. Four out of five have already been tested against reality. The fifth is on its way.
THE WEEK'S BEST STORIES
Mercedes-Benz acquired YASA in 2021, and the motor has attracted plenty of online coverage since. Most of it lands on the same talking point: the geometry creates more torque leverage because the diameter is larger. Munro Live's teardown of the production YM360, used in a Lamborghini hybrid application, is more precise than that. The real explanation runs through shear stress, the force a magnetic field can apply per unit of working surface area, which is a fixed ceiling set by the saturation limits of electrical steel and the current density copper can sustain continuously. Given that ceiling, torque in any motor is determined by how much working surface area you can pack into a given volume. The axial flux geometry achieves a comparable working area to a radial motor but with far less steel filling that volume. The YM360 delivers 360 Nm and 125 kW from roughly 15 kg. A comparable BYD radial flux motor in the teardown weighs over 40 kg. Nearly that entire weight difference is steel. Copper and magnet quantities are similar between both because both need similar current and magnetic field to hit similar output. The stator teeth use a soft magnetic composite, powdered steel with an insulating coating around each grain, which enables a tooth geometry that produces smoother magnetic flux transitions than radial machines. A prototype in the same physical envelope has been demonstrated at around 1,000 horsepower using grain-oriented electrical steel.
A Finnish town of around 5,000 people ran its entire district heating system through one of the harshest winters on record using a steel silo filled with 2,000 tonnes of crushed soapstone heated to between 500 and 600 degrees Celsius. No oil burned. No backup fuel was called on. The system, built by Finnish startup Polarite Energy and commissioned in 2024, stores 100 megawatt-hours of thermal energy, making it the largest sand battery by capacity in the world. It charges when electricity prices drop during peak wind or solar output, then discharges heat through the existing district heating network. The outcome was a 100% reduction in oil use, a 70% cut in CO2 emissions, and a 60% reduction in wood chip combustion for the local grid. The cost comparison with lithium-ion is stark: sand battery systems run between $10 and $50 per kilowatt-hour of capacity against $100 to $200 for lithium-ion, with projected system lifetimes of 50 years or more versus 10 to 15 for lithium. The practical limitation is that these systems store heat, not electricity. Converting back to power through steam turbines loses 30 to 40 percent in the process, which is why the economics work best where the end product is heat, and roughly 60% of Danish homes along with a significant share of Finnish and German urban buildings are already connected to district heating networks. Polarite Energy now has five operational projects across Finland. Siemens Gamesa, Antora Energy, and Australian company 1414 Degrees are each working in adjacent territory using volcanic rock, carbon blocks, and liquid silicon respectively.
The AMG GT 4-Door Is Electric Now. 1,169 PS, 600 kW Charging, and a Fake V8 That Actually Sounds Right. Autotrader UK · Rory Reid
AMG's first fully electric car is built on a dedicated platform called AMG.EA, developed in Affalterbach specifically for this vehicle rather than adapted from any existing Mercedes architecture. Peak power is 1,169 PS, available in bursts of up to 63 seconds. Continuous output is 721 horsepower. Torque is 2,000 Nm. The 0 to 62 mph time is 2.1 seconds and 0 to 124 mph takes 6.4 seconds, the figure that separates genuinely fast from merely very fast. Top speed is 186 mph. The 800-volt architecture uses 2,660 individual liquid-cooled cylindrical cells, and peak charging sits at 600 kW with AMG claiming 285 miles of range restored in 10 minutes. Claimed total range is 430 miles. Three axial flux motors handle propulsion, one at the front and two at the rear, which AMG describes as 66% smaller and 33% lighter than conventional equivalents. Nine levels each of throttle response and traction control are available through the AMG Race Engineer system in the cabin. The synthetic sound system draws on over 1,600 audio files to model the acoustics of the AMG GTR's V8, with haptic feedback simulating gear changes through the chassis. Rory Reid tested it unsupervised in the studio and found it more convincing than expected. Boot capacity is 415 litres with a roughly 41-litre frunk. Retail launch is planned for the second half of 2026, and Reid has not driven it on the road yet. The numbers are extraordinary. Whether the car feels that way is a question still waiting for an answer.
After the oil shocks of the 1970s, Denmark made a deliberate long-term commitment to domestic renewable energy. PBS NewsHour's report from Denmark shows what that decision looks like now: an industry generating roughly $17 billion per year in revenue, employing 107,000 people, and a country that remained a net electricity exporter while surrounding nations dealt with fuel price spikes driven by ongoing conflict around the Strait of Hormuz. The island of Aeroe, home to 6,000 residents, is a net electricity exporter, with solar feeding a thermal storage system that heats the town through winter. Its all-electric ferry Ellen has run for nearly seven years without a backup generator or a single electrical incident. The island of Samsoe, during a windy stretch this past winter, was exporting surplus electricity at around $39,000 per day, with individual turbine owners receiving annual profit-sharing payments. Danish EV adoption hit 96.3% of new car sales in the most recent month reported, driven by both the fuel price shock and the maturity of the national charging infrastructure. The report directly addresses two criticisms common in American political discourse: on economics, wind and solar is now cheaper per unit than natural gas in many markets; on national security, software-based radar filtering successfully distinguishes aircraft, ships, and drones from wind turbine interference. Denmark now derives close to 90% of its energy from renewable sources. The point the report makes clearly is that the investment horizon for energy security is measured in decades, and Denmark is the most complete evidence available that the approach works.
Hyundai's Robotaxi Drove Itself Around Las Vegas for Six Weeks. Out of Spec Took a Ride. Out of Spec Reviews
Motional, the autonomous vehicle company 85% owned by Hyundai Motor Group, has been running a commercial robotaxi service in Las Vegas for roughly six weeks. The vehicles are Hyundai Ioniq 5s assembled from the ground up at a Hyundai pilot facility in Singapore, built with redundant steering and braking systems, additional compute hardware, and a full-coverage sensor array. The service runs through the Uber app with safety monitors aboard while the system builds real-world experience. The plan is to remove those monitors before the end of 2026. Out of Spec Reviews and automotive YouTuber David Moss hailed one from Resorts World and rode it to the Luxor Hotel. The departure went well: the vehicle handled the Strip's traffic geometry cleanly, used turn signals correctly, and displayed its intended next action on the dashboard throughout. Two phantom braking events occurred mid-ride without a clear trigger, and the car stopped awkwardly mid-intersection before correcting course. Both reviewers still rated the Motional ride ahead of a Zoox trip taken immediately after from the same location, which included a full ABS stop at a green light with no obstacle present and a missed turn. Motional cites 2 million accumulated miles across its fleet. An estimated 10 to 20 vehicles are currently operating commercially. The phantom braking is a known tuning problem across autonomous platforms rather than a fundamental system failure. The more useful benchmark is not how the first six weeks felt but how the system performs in six months.
FRESH FROM THE SITE
If you are following R2 production and delivery timelines, the tracker is live on the site. One place, updated as deliveries progress. Worth bookmarking if you have a reservation or are watching the ramp.
The week is yours. See you next Monday.
Jacob Hunka, Founder nexusEVnews.com
P.S. Know someone who follows the auto industry and ignores the electric side of it? Now is a good time to fix that.