Move over, Lucid. There’s a new world record holder in EV range. Engineers at General Motors recently took a minimally modified version of the 2026 Chevrolet Silverado EV Work Truck out on a real-world test and traveled a total distance of 1,059.2 miles from a single charge.
The Chevy Silverado EV may differentiate quite a bit mechanically from its ICE counterpart, which has been in production for nearly 30 years, but it has made a name for itself as a flagship model in General Motors’ all-electric lineup.
After debuting in 2022, the Silverado EV was released a year later as a full-size pickup in 2023. The two initial trims were fleet-focused work truck variants before a passenger-friendly RST version arrived in 2024. This summer, Chevy introduced the 2026 version of the Silverado EV, featuring an EPA range of 493 miles.
That range estimate also applies to the Max Pack Work Truck trim of the 2026 Silverado EV Work Truck, which GM engineers recently used to achieve a new world record for EV range, besting the previous leader by over 300 miles.
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Source: GM
Silverado Work Trucks nabs EV world record for range
GM shared details of its recent world record-breaking EV range test this morning. Per the American automaker, this engineer-led challenge began as a passion project before evolving into a real-world test of a 2025 Chevy Silverado EV optimized for efficiency.
When we say “optimized,” we don’t mean this pickup was heavily modified to achieve such impressive range. Per GM, both the hardware and software of the Silverado EV Work Truck were left untouched. Here are the modifications that were made before testing:
Windshield wiper blade position lowered to reduce drag
Tires inflated to their highest acceptable pressure for lower rolling resistance
Spare tire removed reduce weight
Wheel alignment optimized
Tonneau cover added for smoother airflow
Climate control turned off for the duration of the test
Testing was performed in summer for optimum ambient temperature for battery efficiency
With these optimization techniques in place, a team of 40 engineers at GM drove a production model Silverado EV WT on public roads near its Michigan proving ground over the course of seven days. To further optimize the EV’s range in hopes of a world record, GM said the engineers used “smart driving techniques” and limited the pickup’s speed to 20-25 mph the entire time.
The result was an industry milestone and, per GM, a new world record in EV range. The Silverado EV WT traveled 1,059.2 miles on a single charge, beating the previous record of 749 miles held by the Lucid Air Grand Touring. The pickup’s range tally also blew away the WT’s EPA-estimated range of 493 miles.
Contrary to GM, Guinness documented and confirmed Lucid’s EV range world record. Additionally, Lucid still wins in efficiency, as the Air Pure achieved 5 miles/kWh compared to 4.9 miles/kWh by the Silverado EV. However, that is not to take away from the team at GM, as this latest real-world test has achieved a welcome industry milestone that should be recognized and celebrated.
Congrats to GM and the engineers at Chevrolet!
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SAIC Motor opened pre-sales for the new MG4 EV, starting at just over $10,000 in China. The Chinese automaker confirmed a new MG4 model, powered by a semi-solid-state battery, is set to launch next month.
When will the MG4 with a semi-solid-state battery launch?
Pre-sales for the new MG4, SAIC’s new flagship model, opened on Tuesday, starting at just 73,800 yuan, or about $10,000.
The new MG4 EV is available in four variants, but SAIC promises a semi-solid-state battery will be added soon. SAIC will reveal prices for the new semi-solid-state model next month, with deliveries expected by the end of the year.
For now, the new electric hatch is offered in Comfort, Ease, Freedom, and Smart trim options. It’s available with two LFP battery options: 42.8 kWh and 53.9 kWh, rated with CLTC ranges of 437 km (272 miles) and 530 km (330 miles), respectively. Prices range from 73,800 yuan ($10,000) to 105,800 yuan ($15,000).
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The new MG4 is 4,395 mm long, 1,842 mm wide, and 1,551 mm tall, with a wheelbase of 2,750 mm, which is slightly larger than the BYD Dolphin.
The all-new MG4 EV (Source: SAIC MG)
Although it may be small, the electric hatchback is packed with advanced technology and features. SAIC stated that the new MG4 is the first to feature OPPO’s Smart Driving connectivity system, enabling car-to-vehicle integration, AI voice assistance, and more.
The interior features a relatively good-sized 15.6″ floating entertainment screen. With OTA updates, the vehicle will gain new features, such as remote parking and safety upgrades.
The all-new MG4 EV interior (Source: SAIC MG)
SAIC will reveal prices for the MG4 with a semi-solid-state battery in September, with deliveries set to begin by the end of 2025. The company claims its engineers “have broken the material monopoly and overcome technical barriers” for the new battery tech, turning “the impossible into mass production.”
(Source: SAIC MG) *Translated from Google Translate
The new MG4 will be one of the first production EVs to launch globally with a semi-solid-state battery. We will learn more details and prices next month.
In the first half of 2025, SAIC Motor sold over 2.05 million vehicles. Although sales were down 12% from the first half of last year, SAIC claims its “new three-driving force” is paying off. In June alone, the company sold 365,000 vehicles, representing a 22% increase over the same period last year. It was also SAIC’s sixth consecutive month with higher sales.
OpenAI on Tuesday released two open-weight language models for the first time since it rolled out GPT-2 in 2019.
The text-only models are called gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b, and are designed to serve as lower-cost options that developers, researchers and companies can easily run and customize, OpenAI said.
An artificial intelligence model is considered open weight if its parameters, or the elements that improve its outputs and predictions during training, are publicly available. Open-weight models can offer transparency and control, but they are different from open-source models, whose full source code becomes available for people to use and modify.
Several other tech companies, including Meta, Microsoft-backed Mistral AI and the Chinese startup DeepSeek, have also released open-weight models in recent years.
“It’s been exciting to see an ecosystem develop, and we are excited to contribute to that and really push the frontier and then see what happens from there,” OpenAI President Greg Brockman told reporters during a briefing.
The company collaborated with Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, Cerebras, and Groq to ensure the models will work well on a variety of chips.
“OpenAI showed the world what could be built on Nvidia AI — and now they’re advancing innovation in open-source software,” Nvidia CEOJensen Huang said in a statement.
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The release of OpenAI’s open weight models has been highly anticipated, in part because the company repeatedly delayed the launch.
In a post on X in July, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company needed more time to “run additional safety tests and review high-risk areas.” That came after a separate post weeks earlier, where Altman said the models would not be released in June.
OpenAI said Tuesday that it carried out extensive safety training and testing on its open-weight models.
It filtered out harmful chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear data during pre-training, and it mimicked how bad actors could try to fine-tune the models for malicious purposes. Through this testing, OpenAI said it determined that maliciously fine-tuned models were not able to reach the “high capability” threshold in its Preparedness Framework, which is its method for measuring and protecting against harm.
The company also worked with three independent expert groups who provided feedback on its malicious fine-tuning evaluation, OpenAI said.
OpenAI said people can download the weights for gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b on platforms like Hugging Face and GitHub under an Apache 2.0 license. The models will be available to run on PCs through programs such as LM Studio and Ollama. Cloud providers Amazon, Baseten and Microsoft are also making the models available.
Both models can handle advanced reasoning, tool use and chain‑of‑thought processing, and are designed to run anywhere — from consumer hardware to the cloud to on-device applications.
Users can run gpt-oss-20b on a laptop, for instance, and use it as a personal assistant that can search through files and write, OpenAI said.
“We’re excited to make this model, the result of billions of dollars of research, available to the world to get AI into the hands of the most people possible,” Altman said in a statement Tuesday.
WASHINGTON, DC – JUNE 2: A NASA logo is displayed at the entrance to the Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building on June 2, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images)
Kevin Carter | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The U.S. should deploy a small nuclear power plant to the surface of the moon before China and Russia are able to do so, the interim head of NASA has told the space agency’s staff.
NASA should be ready to launch a reactor to the lunar surface by the first quarter of fiscal year 2030, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who is serving as the space agency’s acting administrator, said in a directive to NASA dated July 31. This would work out to late 2029.
China and Russia are aiming to deploy a reactor to the moon by the mid-2030s to power a joint base, officials in Moscow and Beijing have said. The first country to deploy a reactor on the moon “could potentially declare a keep-out zone which would significantly inhibit the United States from establishing a planned Artemis presence if not there first,” Duffy warned NASA. The Artemis mission is NASA’s lunar exploration program, which was first announced in 2017.
NASA should issue a request for proposals to industry within 60 days, according to Duffy’s directive. The reactor should be able to generate 100 kilowatts of electricity at a minimum, according to the directive. It would be transported aboard a heavy class lander with a payload of 15 metric tons.
A reactor without a 100-kilowatt output could power about 80 U.S. homes. By contrast, the average nuclear reactor in the U.S. fleet can power more than 700,000 homes.
The NASA program, called Fission Surface Power, will rely on microreactor technology, according to Duffy’s directive. But no microreactor has been licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, let alone built in the U.S. President Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders in May that aim to expedite the commercialization of small nuclear reactors.
Duffy’s ambitious directive comes as the Trump administration has proposed steep cuts to NASA’s budget. The space agency also remains without a Senate-confirmed leader. Trump named Duffy as acting administrator after pulling his original nominee in May amid a feud with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
Politico first reported Duffy’s plans to launch a nuclear reactor to the moon.