These recently declassified nuclear test videos are utterly mesmerizing, terrifying

20 Tesla P100Ds with slicks and wings? Meet Electric GT

Electric GT

Its cars are blindingly fast, but as a company, Tesla appears to be utterly indifferent to racing. This is perhaps understandable; Tesla is up to its eyeballs in orders for cars and is hard at work on developing the Model 3, as well as the Nevada "Gigafactory." After all, why spend time and money on a side activity when you're flat-out, selling every vehicle you can build? But that hasn't stopped people wanting to take Teslas racing. We've seen a privateer Model S run at the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, and with any luck an all-Tesla racing series—called Electric GT—will field a grid of 20 Tesla Model S P100Ds later this year.

I've been keeping a watchful eye on the Electric GT series for a while now, but over at Motor Sport, Jack Phillips has an interesting piece on the series, including an interview with racing drivers Karun Chandok and Alice Powell, who have actually driven one of the cars.

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Mazda’s move upmarket with the 2017 CX-5

Mazda

It may not set your pulse racing the same way an MX-5 does, but Mazda's CX-5 is an important vehicle for the car company. Like it or not, the crossover is king in the US. Buyers simply prefer SUVs and CUVs over hatchbacks, sedans, and station wagons, and Mazda's sales for the CX-5 reflect that. In fact, it's the second-quickest Mazda to sell more than 1 million units—after the aforementioned MX-5.

Mazda says that the CX-5 accounts for a quarter of its total sales these days and moved more than 370,000 of them in 2016 alone. So the car maker has a lot staked on the new model, particularly since—as we learned during the briefings that preceded being given the keys—its shifting its sights further upmarket than one might expect. According to its data, the average Mazda customer today has a significantly higher income than even five years ago ($80,000 in 2011 vs. $93,000 in 2016). So Mazda has decided to embrace that demographic and accept that it can't compete with the likes of Toyota or Honda on volume.

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The 2017 Mazda MX-5 Miata RF—fancy new looks, same great driving

When the Mazda MX-5 Miata hit the streets in 1989, it showed the world that an affordable, reliable, and extremely fun sports car wasn't an oxymoron. Consequently it sold like hotcakes, to the point where Mazda is unapologetic about the fact that the MX-5 saved the company. The MX-5 is in its fourth generation, known as the ND to Miataphiles, and the latest variant—the Mazda MX-5 Miata RF—is finally here.

RF stands for "retractable fastback," which means this is an MX-5 with a hardtop that folds away. It's not the first MX-5 with a folding hardtop; that was an option with the previous-generation car. But this is the first one to look quite different from the regular soft-top car. While the roof above your head can be stowed in seconds, the car retains its fastback shape thanks to the buttresses that slope down behind the doors.

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The most detailed maps of the world will be for cars, not humans

Here

The weight of the automotive and tech industries is fully behind the move toward self-driving cars. Cars with "limited autonomy"—i.e., the ability to drive themselves under certain conditions (level 3) or within certain geofenced locations (level 4)—should be on our roads within the next five years.

But a completely autonomous vehicle—capable of driving anywhere, any time, with human input limited to telling it just a destination—remains a more distant goal. To make that happen, cars are going to need to know exactly where they are in the world with far greater precision than currently possible with technology like GPS. And that means new maps that are far more accurate than anything you could buy at the next gas station—not that a human would be able to read them anyway.

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Ars asks: How do you feel about junkets for auto coverage?

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Top Gear does Kazakhstan in half-million-mile cars

Top Gear's 23rd season was not the show's finest. After the departure of Jeremy Clarkson, James May, Richard Hammond, Producer Andy Wilman, and several others, Chris Evans was drafted in by the BBC to front the show, but poor chemistry and a dearth of new ideas saw ratings plummet in 2016.

Evans duly fell on his sword, and when season 24 debuted in the UK last night, it was a three-man act with Matt LeBlanc, Chris Harris, and Rory Reid sharing the duties. (The US has to wait until March 12, unfortunately.) Having watched the first episode, we're rather impressed with the results. We particularly like some of the (overdue) tweaks to the format, which desperately needed to evolve for the post-Clarkson world.

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DSC Sport’s clever algorithms transform the Porsche Cayman GT4

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Tesla’s P100D: I got 99 problems, but not being able to go really fast ain’t one

Jonathan Gitlin

To coincide with the opening of its newest store in Washington, DC, Tesla asked us if we'd like to spend a few days with one of its latest Model S P100Ds. However, there was just one catch; we'd have to do all the driving ourselves. As one of the newest cars off the production line, this Model S was equipped with Tesla's own self-driving sensors (known in Tesla-world as HW2), but the company is still in the process of pushing out the software necessary to enable Autopilot in these cars. Scratch that plan of road-tripping up to New York—a proper test of the new Autopilot will have to wait.

Autopilot may have been absent, but this P100D did have a rather special trick up its sleeve: an Easter egg that makes Ludicrous Mode even more, well, ludicrous. So, rather than try out the P100D's humongous (for an electric vehicle) range—315 miles according to the EPA—we spent our days finding out just how fast it really is. The answer? Ludicrously fast.

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Formula 1 2017: The rest of the grid shows up

Ferrari

Over the weekend, the last of the new Formula 1 cars of 2017 were unveiled, just in time for the first official preseason test, which began Monday morning in Spain. Ferrari, McLaren, Haas, Red Bull, and Toro Rosso joined the five other teams that took the wraps off their cars earlier in the week, giving us our first complete look at the grid for the coming year.

We covered the big rules changes that have affected the design of the cars last Friday. To briefly recap, the cars—and their wings and tires—are wider than in recent years, and they are expected to be several seconds faster per lap thanks to better aerodynamic downforce.

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Decrypted: The Expanse—OK, so we broke a few laws of physics here

Formula 1 in 2017 means fat tires and wide wings

Mercedes-Benz GP

Formula 1 is set to be a radically different sport in 2017, and that mainly has to do with the change in ownership. Long-time F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone has been shuffled out by new owner Liberty Media, replaced by a three-person team with Chase Carey as CEO, Sean Bratches as head of commercial operations, and legendary engineer Ross Brawn overseeing the sporting and technical stuff. But the changes for this season aren't solely in the boardroom. 2017's F1 cars have a few notable changes compared to recent years, and this week the teams started pulling off the dust sheets to show us.

Bigger Tires

For one thing, the tires are bigger. F1 is still sticking with those silly 13-inch wheels, but they're about 25 percent wider this year: 305mm up front (compared to 245mm last year) and a whopping 405mm at the back (up from 325mm). Pirelli has also been told to make tires that won't rapidly degrade, which means an end to drivers cruising around many seconds a lap slower than their cars are capable. (The tire company was instructed to make those rubbish tires on purpose following an exciting race in Canada in 2010, except that race was exciting because the teams were all reacting to the unknown. Once everyone knew how the new tires would behave, the racing turned out to be dull as dishwater.)

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