At one point in history, the British automotive marque MG was one of the most revered names in the world when it came to sporty two-seaters.

Through its early years, MG cars set world speed records, and it was sister company to the likes of Jaguar and Triumph. By the 2000s, MG had lost much of their appeal, and were for the most part just a snooze fest of re-badged Rovers — yes, my grandad owned one.

In 2012, MG was bought by Chinese automotive giant SAIC Motor Corporation Limited, and it’s since been pumping out SUVs , one of which is electric but are largely uninspiring and painfully practical. Sadly for the purists, MG doesn’t quite embody the company that it once was.

That looks set to change. Personally, I couldn’t be happier, but is it enough to convince the purists?

According to an Autocar report , in a move that is a long overdue return to character, MG is readying to launch its unnamed electric sports coupe, this year!

The move comes as part of a huge strategic push for MG to make a name for itself in an all-electric world. By 2024, the company has ambitions to sell 1 million cars a year. It just so happens that that goal comes on the company’s 100th birthday.

The electric coupe is based on the E-Motion concept, which was first unveiled as in 2017, and pundits loved it. Check out the pictures below to see why.

It’ll be a bit of a halo vehicle for MG, but even so, it represents the classic essence of the brand in a modern electrified world. Sure it’s not small and light, but it’s sporty, and it’ll no doubt be fast enough.

Best of all, with its long bonnet and soft angles, it manages to capture a form of British design that we see rarely see these days as most manufacturers tend to follow aggressive and purposeful German design influences.

Patents for the car were leaked last year and showed some significant changes to its design. However, Autocar reports that its basic shape and style remains.

For more images of the concept car, check out Autoblog’s coverage here .

Technical details are sparse, but it’s thought the coupe will be able to live up to the crib sheet originally placed alongside its concept car parent.

That should mean we’ll see a four second zero to 50 time, and 300-miles of range. It will no doubt need a battery pack in excess of 85 kWh to achieve those numbers.

MG suggests the vehicle would start at around £30,000 ($40,000) which for an EV of this type, would be a game changer. So realistically, it’ll probably cost a bit more than that, but even if it cost £40,000 it still feels like a good deal.

With that kind of price and its classic styling, it just might be enough to convince the purists to entertain MG once again. If any classic MG fan bemoans the transition to electric drivetrains, I have one message for you: “Get with the times.”

If it doesn’t convince the purists, there’s certainly a huge space in the market for an affordable and classy electric coupe with a British head badge. It could end up getting a whole new generation of drivers interested in the record-breaking marque.

SHIFT is brought to you by Polestar. It’s time to accelerate the shift to sustainable mobility. That is why Polestar combines electric driving with cutting-edge design and thrilling performance. Find out how .

The Juiced RipCurrent Step-Through is a fat-tire 28mph ebike with tons of range

Juiced Bikes , makers of powerful ebikes with some of the largest batteries in the industry, today launched the RipCurrent S Step-Through. It looks like an intriguing option for those looking for a comfortable ride with power and range to spare.

I reviewed the Juiced CrossCurrent X a couple of years and found it to be an impressive option for ebike riders looking for an insane amount of range — over 150 miles , if you don’t mind pedaling at a leisurely pace — or a high-speed ride capable of going over 28mph. And the company already offered a RipCurrent model built on a similar platform, but with big ol’ fat tires for a cushier ride and easier rolling over loose surfaces like sand and snow.

The RipCurrent ST basically takes the same concept and sticks it in a more accessible step-through frame. This type of frame makes it easier for riders to get on and off of — a welcome addition for people with mobility issues, or who prefer to be able to touch the ground easily at a stop.  It can also be nice if you have riders of multiple heights who might want to share the bike. The bike’s geometry gives it an upright position that may not be the most aerodynamic but makes it easy to see the road ahead of you — many people find this type of bike more comfortable to ride as well.

Like other bikes in the Juiced lineup, the RipCurrent ST packs a 750W Bafang Motor and an enormous 994 Wh battery; you can read more on the kind of range offered by this setup here , but that’s about twice the capacity of a typical ebike battery. The bike comes set up with a 20mph limit, but you can modify that up to 28mph in the settings, and it also offers a torque sensor for a much higher quality ride than you get from typical cadence sensor-only ebikes.

Rounding out the specs are a suspension fork, a sturdy rear rack, a 9-speed transmission, and a 1,050-lumen headlight. It also has a built-in throttle if you prefer not to pedal, although throttle-only speeds are limited to 20mph.

The one obvious caveat is weight; previous RipCurrents weighed about 80 lb with battery, and I can only imagine the ST  is somewhere in that realm as well. This obviously isn’t a bike you’re going to have to lift up a staircase.

The RipCcurrent ST is priced at $2,699 and comes in white, black, light blue, and yellow colorways. It’s available for pre-order now with shipping beginning in mid-June.

US cities may be under-reporting their emissions… by up to 145%

This article was originally published by Sarah Wray on Cities Today , the leading news platform on urban mobility and innovation, reaching an international audience of city leaders. For the latest updates follow Cities Today on Twitter , Facebook , LinkedIn , Instagram , and YouTube , or sign up for Cities Today News.

A new study finds that US cities could be underestimating their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 18.3% and in some cases by up to 145%.

The researchers put the discrepancies largely down to inconsistencies in the way cities calculate emissions.

The study, published in Nature Communications , compared the self-reported emissions inventories of 48 major US cities to estimates from a detailed emissions information system developed by researchers at Northern Arizona University. It found “large differences and a systematic under-reporting of urban emissions by cities.”

The cities in the study included New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, Denver, and Philadelphia.

“The results of this comparison were surprising,” said Professor Kevin Gurney of Northern Arizona University’s School of Informatics, Computing, and Cyber Systems, who led the research. “The differences were large and varied widely from one city to the next. When averaged, the self-reported emissions were almost 20% below the emissions estimated by the Vulcan system.”

He added that the average doesn’t tell the whole story, noting that Cleveland, Ohio reported emissions 90.1 % below the Vulcan estimate while Palo Alto, California reported emissions 41.7 % greater than the researchers’ system.

“The adage ‘you can’t manage what you can’t measure’ is really applicable here,” Gurney said. “Cities need a comprehensive and accurate assessment of their emissions. Without it, they could target the wrong emissions sources in their landscape for emission reduction or think they are on an emissions trajectory to meet their target, when in fact, they are not.”

He added that this accuracy is also crucial to getting and keeping citizens on board with climate action.

Methods vary

Cities typically estimate their GHG emissions using tools such as the US Community Protocol for Accounting and Reporting of Greenhouse Gas Emissions, developed by ICLEI; the Global Protocol for Community-Scale Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventories (GPC) , developed by the World Resources Institute, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and ICLEI; and the Global Covenant of Mayors Common Reporting Framework.

The process remains complex, though, and methodologies still differ. The report highlights key areas of variance such as accounting for shipping and airborne emissions and on-road emissions, for instance.

Further, cities may miss or exclude certain categories due to data challenges or resource constraints.

The Vulcan tool, which Gurney and a team of science and climate specialists, have developed over 15 years offers a standardized system for quantifying greenhouse gas emissions. It was funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and quantifies and visualizes greenhouse gases emitted across the entire country down to individual power plants, neighborhoods, and roadways.

In an interview with Cities Today , Gurney described it as “a big data mining machine”. It uses around 30 different datasets related to CO2 emissions, including federal databases, regulatory data, Highway Administration data, energy statistics, and fuel consumption figures, as well as information on land parcels, buildings, traffic, and demographics.

“It really is a giant mixture of different datasets that we bring together, and then we try to place the emissions as best we can in space and time across the whole landscape,” Gurney said.

The results from Vulcan are compared to atmospheric measurements to confirm accuracy.

Next steps

Gurney says the system can also help cities better prioritize and target their climate actions down to the specific pieces of roadway or buildings that are creating the most emissions. In one city, for instance, the tool shows that around 10% of the physical road surface accounts for 60 % of on-road CO2 emissions. With this insight, cities could achieve results faster and at a lower cost.

Gurney is pushing for federal agencies in the US and global organizations more widely to consider adopting Vulcan as a systematic way to track emissions.

He uses the analogy of the weather: “In the same way that we wouldn’t expect every city or state to collect weather data, run a weather model and figure out their own weather, it doesn’t seem very efficient to have every single city engaging in this redundant activity, which is costly, tedious and very time-consuming. We have a centralized system that we’ve built much like a weather forecast system, and we can make this foundational data available to everybody.”

Laura Jay, C40’s Regional Director for North America, told Cities Today : “The report underscores how critical cities are to addressing the climate crisis. It also makes an important case for a strong partnership between the federal government, states, and cities with a focus on which specific emissions each level of government can most effectively address, as well as cities working closely with the business community to bring down emissions from all sectors.

“We welcome any new insights that can improve our efforts to reduce emissions, particularly those within cities’ direct control.”

The next steps for Gurney and his team are looking at ‘scope 3 emissions’ in the value chain, as well as globalizing the research using remote sensing.

Cities Today has contacted the cities of Cleveland and Palo Alto for comment.

Update (Feb 11): ICLEI published a response to the paper in Nature Communications , including a Technical FAQ. It states: “The GHG accounting method in the study is atypical in local GHG accounting, it is not fully comparable with city inventories, and does not address some of the key policy levers that drive cities to conduct GHG inventories and develop GHG mitigation strategies.”

SHIFT is brought to you by Polestar. It’s time to accelerate the shift to sustainable mobility. That is why Polestar combines electric driving with cutting-edge design and thrilling performance. Find out how .