Throttle Weekly Issue 42: A 0.158 Drag Coefficient, Volvo's 78-Mile Plug-In, and 18 Cautions at Gateway
Volkswagen's record 0.158-drag efficiency prototype, Volvo's 78-mile plug-in hybrids, a Toyota C-HR battery recall, and a caution-plagued NASCAR playoff race at Gateway lead this week's sourced car digest.
The week in one pass
Coverage: September 9–16, 2026.
Volkswagen's engineers set three certified efficiency records with a four-seat prototype that covered 794 miles on a single charging stop, and Volvo answered the same question from the opposite direction by fitting its two best-selling SUVs with plug-in hybrid batteries large enough to cover 78 miles on electricity alone. Toyota opened a recall on roughly 10,000 C-HR electric crossovers. Formula 1 christened its newest circuit in Madrid, where Kimi Antonelli won his eighth race of the year and the drivers immediately asked for the layout to be changed. NASCAR's playoff race at Gateway produced a record 18 cautions, five exploded brake rotors, and a first win in 51 races for Kyle Larson. The number behind all of it is the drag coefficient, which explains why the same car spends far more energy at 87 miles per hour than at 62. A one-owner 2005 Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG with 12,000 miles brought $48,150 at auction, and a 25-year-old in Pennsylvania has collected all seven of Chrysler's 2007 models in the same shade of blue.
- Industry: Volkswagen's Mission Efficiency prototype earned a certified drag coefficient of 0.158 and returned more than 30 percent better energy use than its own ID. Polo at highway speed. Volvo's 2028 XC60 and XC90 plug-in hybrids roughly double their electric-only range to 78 and 73 EPA-estimated miles. Toyota recalled about 10,000 C-HR EVs after a software fault let regenerative braking overcharge the battery and cut drive power. 1234
- Trackside and community: At Madrid's new Madring circuit, Kimi Antonelli won the inaugural Spanish Grand Prix after a Virtual Safety Car swung the race, stretching his championship lead to 81 points; Lando Norris took pole and finished third. At World Wide Technology Raceway, Kyle Larson won the Enjoy Illinois 300 in double overtime as brake-rotor failures ended five drivers' races and reshuffled the playoff standings. 56
- Explainer: A drag coefficient compares the force pushing a car backward against air density, speed squared, and the car's frontal area. Drag force climbs with the square of speed and the energy spent fighting it climbs with the cube, which is why roof racks and highway pace cost more range than most drivers expect. 78
- Car culture: A one-owner 2005 Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG in rare Everest Green sold for $48,150 against a five-year market range of $11,000 to $40,000. Ryan Maruca, 25, of Erie, Pennsylvania, owns seven 2007 Chryslers — every model the brand sold that year — all ordered in Marine Blue. 910
Industry news
Volkswagen's efficiency prototype goes 794 miles on one charging stop
Volkswagen built a four-seat electric prototype called the Mission Efficiency that set three energy-efficiency records certified by Germany's Record Institute, and the automaker says its 0.158 drag coefficient is the lowest achieved by a road-approved car. The prototype left Volkswagen's Wolfsburg research center and drove 794 miles to Vienna, where the company launched the ID. Polo, stopping once to charge. 2
The mechanical package is ordinary by design. A 54.9-kilowatt-hour battery feeds a 99-kilowatt (133-horsepower) front motor shared with the upcoming ID. Polo and ID. Cross, both built on Volkswagen's next-generation MEB+ architecture. Under ideal conditions the prototype returned 9.59 miles per kilowatt-hour, or 323 MPGe; on the Vienna drive it recorded 9.02 miles per kilowatt-hour, which fell to 8.28 once charging losses were counted. Volkswagen says the car finished with 102 miles of indicated range left. 12
Everything else went into shape and losses rather than capacity. The body is a teardrop with a fully enclosed underbody, active cooling flaps, flush door handles, and partially covered rear wheels. Continental developed tires about 25 percent below Europe's highest tire-efficiency rating, and an electromechanical rear brake cuts friction while improving energy recovery. A 370-watt solar array in the roof and rear deck can add up to 19 miles of range a day. The cabin has no infotainment screen at all; a phone or tablet serves as the display and a portable speaker handles audio. 2
Volkswagen says the Mission Efficiency will not reach showrooms in Europe or North America. It exists as a rolling laboratory for technology bound for future MEB+ models, and the company's brand chief, Thomas Schäfer, described the goal as applying "technology for the masses" rather than exotic parts. The comparison Volkswagen leans on is its own ID. Polo: more than 30 percent less energy at highway speeds, and at 87 mph the prototype uses roughly what the ID. Polo needs at 62 mph. 2
Volvo doubles the electric range of its plug-in hybrids
Volvo's 2028 XC60 and XC90 plug-in hybrids will travel up to 78 and 73 EPA-estimated miles on electricity alone, more than double the range of the versions they replace. Volvo builds both around a 37.9-kilowatt-hour battery, more than twice the capacity of the outgoing XC60 T8's pack, paired with a 247-horsepower turbocharged 2.0-liter four-cylinder and two electric motors contributing up to 208 horsepower. 311
At 78 miles, the XC60 T8 carries the longest electric range of any plug-in hybrid on sale in the United States, according to Road & Track. The layout keeps Volvo's unusual split, in which the four-cylinder drives the front wheels and an electric axle powers the rear. The larger battery sits under the floor, which required changes to the understructure. 11
The XC60 takes the heavier visual update: a new grille, front bumper, hood, and fenders, revised taillights, and a new take on Volvo's Thor's Hammer headlight graphic. Inside, both SUVs get a redesigned dashboard with an 11.2-inch center touchscreen and Google Gemini for voice control of navigation, messaging, and vehicle functions. Volvo also added automatic emergency steering and braking, lane-change assistance, a 360-degree camera with a 3D view, and a door-opening warning for approaching cyclists. Production begins later this fall, with order books already open in selected markets. 3
Volvo chief executive Håkan Samuelsson said the two SUVs would sit alongside the coming EX60 electric SUV. "The XC60 is our best-selling model of all time, while the XC90 marked the beginning of our premium journey," he said. "Now, as long-range plug-in hybrids, they build on those legacies and, together with the all-electric EX60, give us our strongest-ever electrified offering in the mid-size SUV segment." Volvo has said demand for plug-in hybrids has held up longer than it expected in many markets, and it will keep selling mild-hybrid versions of both SUVs as well. 311
Toyota recalls about 10,000 C-HR EVs over a charging software fault
Toyota is recalling roughly 10,000 C-HR electric crossovers across North America, all from the 2026 model year, because a software fault in the battery control unit can let the vehicle overcharge itself. When the battery already sits at a high state of charge, regenerative braking under certain conditions can push energy into it faster than the pack can absorb. The electric drive system can then shut down and the car loses drive power, which Toyota says increases the risk of a crash at higher speeds. 4
The population covers a large share of the model's fleet. Toyota sold 6,321 C-HRs in the United States through the end of August, and the vehicle is not sold in Mexico, so the roughly 10,000 recalled unit count implies that most C-HRs delivered so far are affected. Toyota has not yet filed paperwork with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. 4
Toyota's notice describes the trigger condition rather than any dashboard warning, and the company has not published a symptom owners can watch for beyond the loss of power itself. Owners of affected vehicles will be notified in early November. The remedy is a software update to the Battery Electric Vehicle Electronic Control Unit performed at a Toyota dealership, at no cost. 4
Washington signals openness to Chinese automakers building in the United States
President Donald Trump said in a Friday interview on Fox News's "The Ingraham Angle" that he would accept Chinese automakers building cars on American soil. "If China wanted to come in and open a plant to build their cars here, I'd be okay with that," he said, adding that "Japan does it, but they hire our people. The big thing is they hire our people." 12
The remark runs against the position of both parties in Congress and of the industry's own lobby. Japanese automakers alone support about 2.3 million American jobs across plants, engineering, dealerships, and suppliers, according to a study by the Japanese Automobile Manufacturers Association. Legislators from car-producing states argue that Chinese manufacturers benefit from state subsidies that would let them undercut domestic prices, and Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan has raised concerns about data collection from connected vehicles. 12
The industry's largest trade group asked the administration last week to ban the sale of Chinese vehicles in the United States by the end of the year. Trump is due to meet President Xi Jinping in Washington within the month, and Reuters reports that he aims to reach some sort of deal with Xi on the question. 12
Trackside and community
Antonelli takes an inherited win as drivers ask F1 to fix its newest circuit
Kimi Antonelli won the first Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix held at the Madring circuit outside Madrid on September 13, his eighth victory of the season, and the result stretched his championship lead to 81 points. The Mercedes driver crossed the line ahead of Max Verstappen and Lando Norris, then told reporters that Norris had deserved the win. 5
Norris started from pole and led the opening stint, and a Virtual Safety Car turned the race. Lance Stroll's Aston Martin suffered a brake problem, and the resulting neutralization arrived just after Norris had passed pit entry. Antonelli and Verstappen pitted under the VSC at minimal cost; by the time Norris reached pit entry, the neutralization had ended and he took a normal stop with a slow tire change. Charles Leclerc led for a long stretch in the hope that another interruption would fall his way, then pitted and handed the lead back to Antonelli, who held it to the flag. 5
Lewis Hamilton retired from a race for the first time this season, his Ferrari's brake pedal going long after four laps, and he now trails by 101 points. Franco Colapinto finished seventh and remains the only driver to have seen the checkered flag at every round this year. Both Spanish drivers went out in the first qualifying session; Carlos Sainz drew a three-place grid penalty for impeding Valtteri Bottas and a further penalty for contact with Fernando Alonso, then retired, while Alonso finished 17th, two laps down. 5
The racing gave the drivers little to work with, and they said so publicly. Madring is the first new circuit on the calendar since Las Vegas in 2023, and once the opening lap shook out there were only a handful of on-track passes, none for position at the front. Antonelli said several corners need changing to create overtaking chances, and Norris proposed deleting Turns 18 and 19 in favor of a longer straight into the hairpin. George Russell and Oscar Piastri both compared the challenge to Monaco, where qualifying decides the order. 13
Five brake rotors explode as Larson survives NASCAR's Gateway wreckfest
Kyle Larson won the Enjoy Illinois 300 at World Wide Technology Raceway on September 13, ending a 51-race winless streak and climbing from seventh to second in the playoff standings, nine points behind Denny Hamlin, who finished ninth. The race ran to double overtime and produced 18 caution periods, a record for the 1.25-mile track, along with two red flags. 6
Five drivers left the event with a destroyed brake rotor, four of them on Fords and one on a Chevrolet. Zane Smith's rotor let go first, on lap 131; Ryan Blaney lost one on lap 155, Noah Gragson on lap 199, and Chase Elliott on lap 214. Chris Buescher's failure sent the race into overtime and triggered a three-minute, 24-second red flag. Chase Elliott said he had no warning: "I stepped on the brakes, exploded a rotor, and that was about it." 6
Gateway has a long reputation for punishing brakes, and the consequences reached the standings. Blaney fell from third to fourth, 33 points behind Hamlin. Elliott dropped from ninth to 11th and sits 93 points back after his failure collected Chase Briscoe, who slid from fifth to eighth. Buescher fell from 11th to 13th. Christopher Bell, who won the playoff opener at Darlington, was caught in a four-car crash and dropped to third, 18 points behind. Tyler Reddick finished 25th and fell to fifth, while Joey Logano's third-place finish moved him up to seventh. 6
Two drivers salvaged their afternoons. Carson Hocevar fought back from a pit-road problem to finish eighth and moved from 12th to ninth in the standings. Rookie Connor Zilisch finished seventh, his second top-ten of the year and his first since Sonoma in June, while teammate Ross Chastain came home fifth. Hocevar also tagged and spun Shane van Gisbergen on lap 242, the incident that sent the race into overtime. Daniel Suárez was eliminated in a six-car crash on the backstretch that caused the first red flag and dropped from 13th to 16th. 6
Explainer: what a drag coefficient measures
A drag coefficient is the number engineers use to describe how easily a car slips through the air. It works by comparison: the coefficient strips out the effect of air density, speed, and the size of the car's front face so that two very different vehicles can be measured on one scale. The formula is the drag force divided by one half of air density times velocity squared times frontal area. Lower is better. 7
The scale runs from about 0.29 to 0.30 for the sleekest production sports cars of the mid-2000s, past the 0.37 to 0.39 of a mid-1980s Honda Civic, to roughly 0.49 for an original Volkswagen Beetle, according to MotorTrend's technical guide to aerodynamics. Volkswagen now claims 0.158 for the Mission Efficiency, a shape with a fully enclosed underbody and covered rear wheels that it describes as the lowest figure for a road-approved car. 27
The coefficient tells only half the story, because resistance depends on frontal area as well. A tall SUV and a low coupe can share a drag coefficient and still push very different amounts of air, which is why the total figure engineers chase is the coefficient multiplied by the car's front-facing area. That is also why making a car lower and narrower pays off twice. 7
Speed matters more than anything else. Aerodynamic force climbs with the square of velocity, so doubling speed quadruples the push; the energy needed to overcome that force climbs with the cube, so doubling speed multiplies the fuel or charge required per hour by eight. MotorTrend points out the practical consequence: on a highway, even opening the windows costs more than running the air conditioning, because the drag penalty of an open aperture grows so quickly. Volkswagen's own comparison makes the effect concrete — at 87 mph the Mission Efficiency uses about what the ID. Polo needs at 62 mph. 28
Rolling resistance is the other loss Volkswagen went after. The prototype runs on Continental tires developed to sit about 25 percent below Europe's highest tire-efficiency rating, and patented wheel deflectors reduce turbulence inside the wheel wells. Weight came down through an aluminum frame with carbon-fiber and aramid-reinforced composite panels. On the road these changes are worth as much as a bigger battery: the pack in the Mission Efficiency is 54.9 kilowatt-hours, barely larger than the 52-kilowatt-hour unit planned for production MEB+ cars. 2
The lesson transfers to an ordinary car at no cost. Cross bars and roof-rack mounts left on the roof create drag all year, and removing them when they are not carrying anything is the cheapest efficiency gain available to most drivers. 8
Collector corner
A one-owner E55 AMG in a rare green brings $48,150
A 2005 Mercedes-Benz E55 AMG finished in Everest Green sold for $48,150 on Hagerty Marketplace this week, a strong result for a sedan whose market has sat between $11,000 and $40,000 across roughly 200 public sales in the past five years. Two things explain the price. The car had one owner until the sale and showed about 12,000 miles, and the color is a rare one on a model most buyers ordered in silver, black, or gray. 9
The E55 AMG of 2003 to 2006 paired a supercharged 5.4-liter V-8 with an automatic transmission, producing 469 horsepower and 516 pound-feet of torque from a plateau that started at 2,650 rpm. Mercedes-Benz built fewer than 8,000 of them. The wagon version is the collector prize: 193 came to the United States, 129 in 2005 and 64 in 2006, and the longroof record stands at $64,790. 9
The buyer also took on a list of deferred work. The car needs an "F" service, its paint carries several chips and a scratch, and the tires are likely too old for the road. Hagerty reckons the work is relatively affordable next to the needs of cheaper, needier examples, and notes that the model's prices have remained relatively flat since 2022. 9
The human-interest coda
Seven 2007 Chryslers, one color, one owner
Ryan Maruca owns every model Chrysler sold in 2007, and he owns all of them in Marine Blue. The 25-year-old from Erie, Pennsylvania, has a 300C with the Hemi V-8, an Aspen, a Crossfire SRT-6, a Pacifica, a PT Cruiser convertible with the turbocharged SRT-4 engine and a manual gearbox, a Sebring, and a Town & Country. The Drive noticed the lineup at a car show and called him. 10
The collection started with a Crossfire. Maruca bought a naturally aspirated example first, learned about the supercharged SRT-6, found one in Ohio with under 17,000 miles, and flew out to drive it home. A search for a winter car led him to the Pacifica, which happened to be the same color, and the rest followed. The Crossfire remains the anchor of the group and the least used: it now shows 24,000 miles, meaning he has added about 7,000 in six years. 10
He was six years old when these cars were new, and he chose the Daimler-Chrysler era deliberately. "I love that they are German-engineered and American-designed," he said, adding that "Chrysler took risks in the early 2000s with some of their design." His mileage spread runs from the Town & Country at 180,000 to the 300C at 83,000, with the Aspen, at roughly 120,000 miles, the hardest of the seven to find. 10
The Chryslers are seven of the ten cars he keeps. The others are his first daily driver, a Honda Accord, a Mercedes-Benz S55 AMG, and a Dodge Magnum that he plans to convert with a Chrysler 300 front clip to mimic the European-market 300 wagon that never reached the United States. 10
References
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- 410,000 Toyota C-HR EVs Recalled Due to Overcharged Batteries
caranddriver.com
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- 7Car Aerodynamics: All About Aerodynamics
motortrend.com
- 8Does Cruise Control Save Gas?
motortrend.com
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