There's no getting around it: 2025 has been a rough year for the electric vehicle space.

Tax credits ending, sales dropping off, models getting canceled and abrupt policy shifts on both sides of the Atlantic have a lot of critics saying "I told you so." Even many EV advocates I know are doing some soul-searching. 

As for me, I like to choose optimism. It gives you something to strive for. And this week, we had five reasons to be optimistic: the Editor's Choice contenders for our annual Breakthrough Awards, where we select the best EVs in the U.S. market that we tested over the past year. 

By now, you hopefully know that the 2026 Nissan Leaf took home the win. But how and why the team at InsideEVs came to that conclusion is the main topic for this week's Plugged-In Podcast. 

This week, my co-host Tim Levin and I are joined by Deputy Editor Mack Hogan, the mastermind behind our testing and awards program. And we'll run through the cars we drove this year and why five choices were able to rise above the rest: the aforementioned Leaf, the 2026 Hyundai Ioniq 5, the 2026 Lucid Gravity, the 2025/2026 Tesla Model Y and the 2026 Cadillac Optiq.  

I'm optimistic because even compared to last year's crop of candidates, these are even better-priced, with more features, more electric range and better technology. Imagine where we'll be next year with some of the stuff headed our way soon. 

Before we dive into the test, we're also analyzing the news of this week—and there was a lot of it. Ford is axing the F-150 Lightning and retrenching on several EV plans, including refocusing a battery plant to make energy storage systems for AI data centers instead of cars. That's a $20 billion pivot for Ford, the automaker that's one of the loudest voices warning of China's dominance in this space. Can its upcoming Universal EV Platform save the day? 

Finally, I'll recap my drive of the 2026 Mercedes-Benz CLA-Class, a 400-mile electric sedan that also makes me feel good about where this space is going.