Welcome to Must Read, where we single out the best stories from around the automotive universe and beyond. Today we've got reports from Wired:Autopia, Petrolicious, GreenCarReports and Yahoo! Autos.


Electric bikes continue to improve and offer a certain few advantages over larger EVs, but range is still an issue. Now one group is promising 200 miles (max) range with a realistic 10 miles. Not bad.

More impressive is the lithium-ion battery, which packs 17 kWh of juice — one kWh more than the miserable four-wheeled Mitsubishi i-MiEV — along with a pair of on-board chargers that allow nine kW worth of energy transfer during charging. All told, Mission estimates a max range of 200 miles, but on the combined city/highway cycle, riders will get 140 miles in the real world, and be able to top up that massive battery pack in around two hours through the industry standard J1772 Level 2 charging stations. According to Seeger, “Even a short rest stop is enough time to add a significant amount of range.”


The great Neal Pollack takes on Monaco. We've got some posts coming from Bill Caswell as well.

Speaking of “paying for sex,” it’s impossible to describe the Monaco Grand Prix without talking about the Red Bull Energy Station, which has become the thumping hub of rich-person favor for the world’s most glamorous sporting weekend. The Energy Station, two stories of white steel and glass, makes an appearance at every European F1 event. But for Monaco, Red Bull adds a “terrace,” with an outdoor bar and comfortable white couches arranged around a pallet of fake grass, and, more impressively, an upstairs outdoor pool deck, with water that they keep crystal clear so you can see the Red Bull logo at the bottom. These components are assembled in Italy and then floated 40 miles down the coast, where they get parked in Monaco Harbor’s prime docking spot, within view of several sections of the track. An invitation to the Energy Station means that you’re the boss, or at least someone the boss deems worthy.



There's an ongoing debate over just how clean EVs are and it's highly dependent on geography

We've arrived at a number for the real-world effective CO2 emissions of a Model S of 292 g/mi. Admittedly, that's lot higher than Tesla claims on its website. But worse than a Grand Cherokee? Hardly. The V-6 Grand Cherokee's official EPA CO2 number is 479 g/mi when fitted with the smallest engine offered, a 3.6-liter V-6. The more powerful V-8 model logs in at a whopping 592 g/mi.



Couldn't have said it better myself.

The book of famous Italian coachbuilders brims with names synonymous with beautiful cars, among them the houses of Frua, Ghia, Touring, Vignale, Scaglietti, Bertone, and of course, Pininfarina. Though generally remembered for their most gorgeous contributions to automotive design, each is also responsible for a fair share of more polarizing work as well, Bertone’s Volvo 262C and Pininfarina’s Mondial merely a few that readily spring to mind. None, however, come close to matching Carrozzeria Zagato’s record for controversy. Perhaps Italy’s most adventurous, and therefore most vulnerable to fail auto design studio, Zagato’s bold, envelope-pushing approach has resulted in stunning, breakthrough concepts and shockingly grotesque failures in equal measure.