duPont REGISTRY March 2024

Know this: I am not an EV guy. Over the years, friends have tried to reason with me about EVs. They have learned to come prepared: To make a sustainability argument, they have to show data about the complete supply chain and lifecycle that doesn’t exist yet; to talk up the blinding speed of the EV, they have to lay down performance stats that rival those of, say, a Porsche 911 GT3, which can party on the track all day and all night.

My biggest gripe with EVs isn’t cultural or infrastructural (though those are certainly gripes). I’m done making the casual statement that EVs are throwaway cars, single-season cars, or vehicular burner phones. It’s too easy. The biggest gripe is that when I drive a sports car—the kind that people will spend their kid’s college fund to collect and tattoo the car on their backs—I want to learn something new from it every time I take the wheel. A Ferrari 512 or a Porsche Cayman is a treasure chest of secrets, and every time you brake, blipshift, corner, and throttle in, you’re picking up a signal you haven’t heard before.

That’s just one of the things I love about sports cars that I haven’t found yet in EVs.

On the other hand, I’m willing to admit I might not know everything about electric cars. Mate Rimac, the Croatian wunderkind who formed Rimac Automobili when he was just 21, has been building fascinating electric hypercars for years. In this issue, we dive into Rimac’s world, which has what I think is the most fascinating future in this charged-up sector.

Along those lines, duPont REGISTRY Editor-at-Large John Neff dived into the most important things that every EV owner should know before they drop the nozzle and pick up the plug.

Our timepiece correspondent Roberta Naas went big on style this month and laid out the best outfits of the season, including brands from Stefano Ricci and Dorian to Louis Vuitton and Dior. She also looked at the new trend of watches turning back the clock and returning to less bulky profiles, from Carl Bucherer’s fetching $45,000 Manero Peripheral Perpetual Calendar to Bulova’s elegant and slightly less eye-popping $695 Sutton Pocket Watch.

We also drove some cars, including the Audi RS e-Tron, which continues to refine its all-electric performance (chipping away at my resistance). On our cover this month is the latest from Lotus, one of my favorite marques and one of the greatest builders of sports coupes ever to run a factory line. Now, they’re introducing the second electric SUV, the Lotus Emeya. Does it live up to expectations? You’ll have to read and find out. And once you do, email me a solid argument about electric cars.

Never lift,

Mike