security

Three critical vulns demand your attention, one a make-me-root mess in Nexus 9000 Series Switches that you can mitigate, not fix

Cisco has warned its customers of three critical-rated flaws in its products.

Two of them are present in the Cisco IOS XR operating system that powers the company’s carrier-grade kit.

CVE-2026-20274 scores 9.8 on the ten-point CVSS scale and covers a buffet of buffering issues, the potential for out-of-bounds writes, and the chance to initialize resources with an insecure default.

CVE-2026-20279 is another 9.8-rated flaw. Cisco says it’s an improper access control problem that covers “improper certificate validation, missing authentication for critical function, missing authorization, and incorrect authorization.”

Cisco also spotted a trio of 8.8-rated flaws, plus another rated 8.6 and one more scored at 8.2

The company’s advisory says the company found the flaws after “a comprehensive internal security review,” language that perhaps hints at Cisco dabbling with Mythos and/or other bug-finding models.

The fix is in: Cisco has published new versions of IOS XR that fix the problems and “strongly recommends” customers adopt them.

Cisco’s support organization spotted the third critical flaw it revealed on Wednesday.

CVE-2026-20212 is a tad embarrassing because the cause is a bad integration with Cisco’s own Silicon One networking processors that means some Nexus 9000 Series Switches “could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to execute code with root privileges.”

“This vulnerability exists because TCP ports 43210 and 43211 are accessible in the default Layer 3 (L3) virtual routing and forwarding (VRF),” according to Cisco’s advisory. A successful exploit could allow the attacker to connect to an affected device and send crafted input that could be executed as code with root privileges. The exploitation of this vulnerability could also cause the S1HAL process to crash, which could cause the device to reload.”

Ten Nexus 9000 devices have the problem, which Cisco suggests owners mitigate by using infrastructure access control lists (iACLs) to allow only required management and control plane traffic that is destined to the affected device.

“Alternatively, the iACLs may be used to explicitly deny all TCP packets that are destined to a locally configured IP address with a destination port of 43210 or 43211,” the company advises.

The networking giant suggests that approach because it hasn’t yet created a software update to fix the flaw once and for all. The company has, however, delivered a download that helps to implement the mitigation.

Cisco hasn’t seen attacks on these flaws. That may change, fast, now that evildoers can use AI to whip up nastyware. ®

Smart ring company Ultrahuman is up there with Samsung as the biggest rivals to Oura, but it has some lofty ambitions for its next steps, which it hinted at on Thursday at IFA here in Berlin. The company announced it had raised $70 million from Qualcomm Ventures, Labcorp, Alpha Wave, Blume and others to develop next-generation AI wearables.

The smart ring market is currently dominated by Oura, but Ultrahuman is finding ways to set itself apart. It has already evolved rapidly over the past few years into a health company offering a range of complementary products and services, including blood testing and an ambient sleep monitor that sits by your bed. Earlier this year, it launched the Ring Pro, which has better battery life than its predecessors and also doesn’t require a subscription, unlike some of its rivals.

The new funding is set to further boost this growth, putting the Ultrahuman Ring at the center of an ecosystem where data about your body is used for more insightful and actionable purposes. Ultrahuman plans to invest the money in sensing, materials, electrical engineering, algorithms, physiology and clinical science to build future rings and ultimately make the human body more understandable with AI.

The partnership with Qualcomm draws Ultrahuman into a much wider ecosystem of AI products, many of which are also wearable, with which the Ultrahuman Ring could become interoperable. One example is the Meta Glasses, which the Ultrahuman Ring could be linked to for purposes of gesture control, said Bhuvan Srinivasan, the company’s chief business officer, in an interview.

“What we’re really thinking is you could have a ring that helps you control what’s happening in the glasses, but then at the same time at night it measures all your sleep and all your health,” he said. “So it’s valuable to you both in the day and the night.”

This won’t be possible with the Ring Pro, he added. “There’ll be another Ring level that we are working on with them.”

The partnership with diagnostic and drugs company Labcorp is also important to bringing Ultrahuman’s vision to life, due to the support it can provide to Ultrahuman’s Blood Vision preventative blood-testing service that it’s been building out for the past two years, Srinivasan said.

“The idea behind Blood Vision is really to bring together all the things you cannot measure on a wearable, but you can measure in your blood, which is also very valuable,” he said. “And now we really want to roll that out and make preventive health blood testing much more mainstream. And that’s really why we tied up with them over time.”

The funding could help Ultrahuman position itself as a bridge between people’s health, AI agents and other AI-equipped devices. “Ultrahuman is pioneering a new generation of personal AI devices that make personalized insights effortless,” said Quinn Li, senior vice president of Qualcomm Technologies and global head of Qualcomm Ventures. “We look forward to supporting their journey as they expand the possibilities of personal AI devices.”

Editors’ note: Katie Collins’ travel costs for the IFA conference were covered in part by Xiaomi. The judgments and opinions of CNET are our own.

Katie Collins

Principal Writer

Katie is a UK-based news reporter and features writer. Officially, she is CNET’s European correspondent, covering tech policy and Big Tech in the EU and UK. Unofficially, she serves as CNET’s Taylor Swift correspondent. You can also find her writing about tech for good, ethics and human rights, the climate crisis, robots, travel and digital culture. She was once described a “living synth” by London’s Evening Standard for having a microchip injected into her hand.

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Why now? Well, the Linux desktop market share in the EU doubled between 2024 and 2025 (to 5.7%). That’s why!

Berlin-based eco-conscious search outfit Ecosia is expanding its range of European-focused web browsers to include a Linux version, citing the growing number of users in the EU looking for open alternatives to the clutches of American tech giants. 

Calling Linux users a “critical tech community that has long called for data privacy, digital sovereignty, and sustainability,” Ecosia said it was launching the new browser to support the community, whose numbers it says doubled in the EU between 2024 and 2025.

The absolute share remains small, mind you – from 2.5 percent of EU computer users to 5.7 percent in the course of a year, but it’s still an increase that the Linux community can be proud of. Ecosia noted that Windows’ share of the market fell during that same period, from 80.2 percent to 74.2 percent. As of this writing, Linux’s share of the European desktop and console market is 6.4 percent, while Windows has dropped to 68.62 percent, per Statcounter.

“Linux in particular is becoming increasingly popular among tech circles, developers, and privacy-conscious users – a target group that views commercial tech giants like Microsoft and Google with increasing skepticism,” Ecosia said. Europeans don’t appear completely disillusioned with American tech, however, as macOS’s share in the region has nearly doubled since August 2025.

Regardless, the company said, it wants to meet Linux users where they’re at with a version of the company’s Chromium-based browser designed for trailblazing European digital sovereignty leaders freed from the grasp of Google. 

“With our Linux version, we’re finally giving them a search engine that matches their values – climate- and privacy-friendly, and free of tech-bro monopolies,” said Ecosia founder and CEO Christian Kroll.

Ecosia has leaned hard into the European movement for sovereign technology in light of frustration with American tech giants, citing both the European Commission’s decision this year to require Google to share anonymized search data with eligible rival search engines, and what it says is growing dissatisfaction among Europeans over Google’s dominance of the search and browser markets.

Separating the EU from Google isn’t a new initiative, with Ecosia and French search firm Qwant partnering on an EU-based web index that launched last year. It’s not clear whether that initiative has yet benefited from the EC’s order to Google to hand over search data. The duo’s initiative, the European Search Perspective (EUSP), is currently working to expand its presence to other EU languages to “lay the foundation for genuine European digital sovereignty,” though it’s not clear from the press release how far along the initiative is.

Ecosia’s Linux browser is now available through the App Center on Ubuntu and directly through the Snap store. Ecosia also has browsers available for Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android, all of which can be downloaded by following the link on its website. While based on open-source Chromium, Ecosia’s browsers themselves are not open source. We reached out to learn whether it’d be different for the Linux variant, but didn’t immediately hear back. ®

Magnetar is bringing its most ambitious disc player yet to the United States, and anyone still preparing a funeral for 4K Blu-ray may want to hold off on ordering the flowers. Making its U.S. debut at CEDIA 2026, the new Magnetar ULTIMA Ultra HD Blu-ray Reference Transport is a flagship universal media transport designed for high-end home theaters, custom installations, and collectors who want substantially more from physical media than a streaming box can deliver.

Magnetar describes ULTIMA as the world’s first luxury universal media transport with a battery-assisted DC power architecture, using dedicated lithium-based power stages to isolate critical processing and signal paths from electrical noise.

That engineering is important, but the larger story might be even more interesting. Streaming now dominates home entertainment, yet premium 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray releases continue to target enthusiasts who want higher bitrates, lossless audio, ownership, and consistent playback quality without wondering whether a movie will disappear from a service next Tuesday.

ULTIMA takes that argument to its logical, and presumably expensive, extreme. In the world of six-figure home theaters being showcased at CEDIA, spending a fortune on the display, projection, processing, amplification, and loudspeakers only to feed the entire system heavily compressed streaming video has always been a slightly strange place to start saving money.

One Transport for Discs, Files, and Reference Home Theater

Magnetar positions ULTIMA as the pinnacle of its universal media transport technology, designed to establish a new benchmark for reference-level playback and demonstrate what is possible when engineering takes priority over cost and convenience.

Engineered as a pure reference source, ULTIMA is designed to perform one primary function without compromise: preserve source integrity from the disc or digital file to the display or external processor in demanding home cinema and high-performance audio systems.

Built on Magnetar’s MKII player platform, ULTIMA supports UHD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, DVD, CD, SACD, DVD-Audio, DSD/DoP via AES/EBU, USB media, and high-resolution network playback, along with Dolby Vision and HDR10+.

That broad format support means ULTIMA can handle nearly every premium physical and digital media format likely to appear in a modern custom theater or dedicated listening room, potentially eliminating the need for separate disc players and file transports within the same system.

Why ULTIMA Uses a Separate DC Power Supply

One of the key differences between ULTIMA and Magnetar’s existing MKII platform is its use of a separate external DC power supply rather than relying exclusively on a conventional internal AC power architecture.

ULTIMA incorporates dedicated BYD lithium-based power stages designed to isolate critical transport, clocking, and signal pathways from electrical noise, voltage fluctuations, and other forms of contamination that can be present in conventional power environments. Basically, the same industrial strength lithium ion batteries used in BYD’s electric cars are being used here to provide stable, precision power for the disc transport.

The goal is to provide a more stable, low-noise operating environment for precision playback, particularly in reference home theater and high-end audio systems where minimizing electrical interference is part of the design brief. Magnetar positions this battery-assisted DC architecture as one of ULTIMA’s defining technical features and a significant step beyond its existing universal disc players.

A 10 MHz Master Clock Keeps ULTIMA in Sync

Complementing ULTIMA’s battery-assisted power architecture is a synchronized master clock system built around a unified 10 MHz reference clock. Its purpose is to maintain precise timing across the transport and provide stable, accurate signal transmission to downstream components such as external processors and DACs. ULTIMA itself does not include a built-in DAC.

Using a common reference allows the transport to operate from a single timing source, helping maintain consistent data flow and predictable timing relationships throughout the playback chain.

According to Magnetar, this approach is designed to improve overall system stability, signal integrity, and timing consistency while reducing phase noise and improving playback consistency. In a reference transport, where the goal is to deliver the cleanest and most precisely timed digital signal possible to an external processor or DAC, that clocking architecture is a meaningful part of the engineering rather than another box to tick on the specification sheet.

A Reinforced Chassis With Reference Grade Connectivity

The same attention Magnetar has given ULTIMA’s power supply and clock architecture extends to its physical construction. The transport uses a heavily reinforced chassis designed to reduce vibration and resonance, along with isolated and shielded internal circuit sections intended to minimize electrical interaction between critical components.

Magnetar has also paid particular attention to the disc mechanism itself, including its servo control and vibration management. The objective is greater mechanical stability during playback and more consistent disc reading, particularly with demanding formats such as Ultra HD Blu-ray, SACD, and DVD-Audio. Even the support feet have been designed as part of the vibration control strategy.

ULTIMA’s rear panel reinforces its role as a dedicated digital transport. It provides two HDMI outputs, including a main output for audio and video and a second audio-only HDMI output, allowing video to be sent directly to a projector or display while audio is routed separately to an AV processor.

Digital audio connectivity includes AES/EBU and coaxial S/PDIF, while USB 3.0 and Gigabit Ethernet support file and network playback. There is also a 10 MHz clock connection for compatible external clock systems and RS-232C for integration into more sophisticated custom installations.

What you will not find are analog audio outputs. ULTIMA does not contain a DAC and is designed specifically to hand digital audio and video signals off to an external DAC, AV processor, or display. That makes it fundamentally different from Magnetar’s UDP900 MKII, which includes its own extensive analog audio section.

“With ULTIMA, we set out to answer one question: what does a universal media transport solution look like when every possible limitation is challenged?” said Rob Jones, President of Magnetar North America. “At a time when manufacturers are turning away from reference-grade physical media playback, Magnetar is doubling down. ULTIMA is our definitive statement piece. ULTIMA is a purpose-built reference source for those who understand that true reference performance is achieved through relentless attention to detail and uncompromising execution.” 

The Bottom Line 

When Oppo ended production of its Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray players in 2018, many enthusiasts wondered whether that was the final nail in the coffin for high-end disc playback. Magnetar has since emerged as a worthy successor, and with 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray showing renewed signs of life, the company appears to be in the right place at the right time.

ULTIMA takes that commitment to an entirely different level. Its two-chassis design, battery-assisted DC power architecture, 10 MHz master clock, reinforced construction, and pure digital transport architecture make it unlike anything else in Magnetar’s lineup. It is also expected to cost around $12,000, which is a substantial jump from the UDP800 MKII and UDP900 MKII, currently priced at $1,899.99 and $3,399.99, respectively.

Pro Tip: Check out some of the Best Ultra HD Blu-ray Disc Titles So Far in 2026.

For enthusiasts looking for the best possible movie playback experience, the choices are becoming increasingly distinct. You can build a Kaleidescape movie server system, buy Panasonic’s excellent DP-UB820 for $549.99, move up to Magnetar’s UDP800 MKII or UDP900 MKII, or head straight into reference territory with ULTIMA.

What makes ULTIMA unique is that Magnetar is not trying to build another feature-packed universal player. It is building an extremely specialized digital transport for people who already own the processor, DAC, display, and home theater system capable of taking advantage of it. At roughly $12,000, that is a very small audience, but nobody can accuse Magnetar of believing that 4K Blu-ray is dead.

Pricing & Availability 

The Magnetar ULTIMA is shipping and available through Magnetar’s authorized dealer and distributor network at an MSRP of $12,000. Should full specs become available, a chart will be added to this article. The ULTIMA is on display at CEDIA Expo 2026 in booth #4103 from Sept 2-4.  

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OpenAI slow-walks debut of delayed GPT-6, with Trusted Access Program participants getting first shot

After a brief training pause to reflect on the inadequacy of its AI security measures, OpenAI has released GPT-6 Astra, initially for those in its Trusted Access Program.

Assuming all goes well and there are no more incidents like the Hugging Face hack, the AI biz in a few days will allow Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise subscribers to try out what the company describes as “our most intelligent model yet, with state-of-the-art performance in computer use, browsing, software engineering, science, and professional work.”

GPT-6 Astra arrives just two days after rival Anthropic debuted Fable 5.1, at the same eye-watering price: $10 per million input tokens and $50 per million output tokens. 

Astra, OpenAI says, is the first of its models to reach the “Critical” level for cybersecurity capabilities under its Preparedness Framework. The 22-page policy document has been panned [PDF] by researchers, who argue that it “allows OpenAI’s CEO to deploy even more dangerous capabilities, especially if other AI developers do so.”

And here we are. OpenAI’s cautionary but upbeat assessment of Astra describes it as “a significant step up in cyber capabilities.” 

“This means that, with the right tools and access, GPT‑6 Astra can find previously unknown security flaws and develop new ways to exploit them across many well-protected systems without a person guiding each step,” the company said.

OpenAI goes on to argue not to worry since Astra is more robust than prior models, better aligned, more comprehensively monitored, and safer in high-risk scenarios.

“[W]e built a new evaluation informed by the Hugging Face incident that evaluates whether a model facing a difficult or impossible task will go beyond its intended scope,” OpenAI said. “Compared to GPT‑5.6 Sol, which without production safeguards went beyond the authorized target 48 percent of the time, GPT‑6 Astra did this in 0 percent of cases.”

Other longstanding AI model problems are also said to have been reduced. On OpenAI’s internal hallucination benchmark, Astra scored 2 percent, down from 9.4 percent for GPT-5.6 Sol. And Astra is said to be three times less likely than GPT-5.6 Sol to misrepresent what it can do.

“GPT-6 Astra surpasses the human baseline in action efficiency on ARC-AGI-3,” said Greg Kamradt, president of ARC Prize Foundation, in a blog post. “It used fewer actions than the median tested human on 96 percent of levels.” 

But it does so at far greater cost – about $360 per game in GPU-forged tokens compared to $0.00067 per game if one had to purchase electricity from the grid to run a human brain.

Fable 5.1 hasn’t been publicly evaluated on ARC-AGI-3, but for version two of the test it scored 90 percent, compared to 95 percent for Astra. 

According to Artificial Analysis, GPT-6 Astra matches GPT-5.6 Sol on its Intelligent Index with a score of 61, five points less than Claude Fable 5.1 and also trailing Meta Muse Spark 1.3. In terms of its competency as a coding agent, Astra scores 67, on par with Opus 5, Fable 5, and Muse Spark 1.3. But Fable 5.1 in Claude Code tops current coding agent scores at 70.

Fable 5.1, however, appears to be significantly more expensive on a cost per task basis. Artificial Analysis’ numbers put Fable 5.1 at $9.18 per task, compared to $4.72 per task with GPT-6 Astra.

Astra brings with it improvements in the Codex harness, which OpenAI claims result in a 1.9x faster task completion rate.

Codex has also incorporated a new approach to context maintenance – retaining prior session text to inform future work.

“In Codex, Astra can keep notes across context windows, preserving accumulated details without repeatedly compressing them into a single summary,” the company explains. “Earlier context windows remain searchable, so Astra can find requirements or test results from previous messages and tool outputs – even if that information wasn’t captured in its notes.”

This feature is currently experimental and must be enabled through the Codex config.toml file until it becomes the default in a few weeks.®

from the fix-your-own-shit dept

At this point all fifty states have considered passing “right to repair” law aimed at making it easier and cheaper for consumers (and independent repair shops) to repair their tech. That said, only Massachusetts, New York, Texas, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Oregon, and Washington have actually passed laws. And of those states, none have seen any enforcement despite no shortage of offenders.

So it’s interesting to see the first lawsuit filed in Colorado. Colorado technically has three right to repair laws: one protecting wheelchairs passed in 2022; one covering agricultural equipment passed in 2023; and one expanding coverage to HVAC equipment and most tech in 2024.

A company named Acme Revival, which connects customers with electronics repair technicians, has sued three companies for violating Colorado’s right to repair laws. Three different lawsuits are targeting Toast, a point-of-sale system provider, Owl Labs, a maker of meeting cameras, and Blackmagic Design, a maker of digital camera equipment — claiming they’re violating the law.

The three different lawsuits state that all three companies have made it very difficult for customers to obtain tools, parts, manuals, and firmware/software needed to upgrade and repair point-of-sale terminals, card readers, cameras, and other restaurant-related hardware:

“Acme Revival has received hundreds of requests from owners seeking repairs for Toast devices. The reported problems have included failed batteries and charging systems, damaged housings and touchscreens, malfunctioning card readers and buttons, circuit-board failures, loose or damaged connectors, damaged cables, damaged ports, and other defects requiring replacement parts or technical repair materials.

Acme Revival alleges that it has been unable to complete certain repairs because Toast failed or refused to provide the necessary repair materials.”

There’s really no shortage of large offenders who make it difficult to find parts and tools, buy up independent repair centers to try and monopolize repair (see: John Deere), leverage annoying DRM to make repair difficult or impossible, or engage in the practice of “parts pairing,” which ensures hardware owners can only access large and costly parts assemblages — not individual parts.

The bipartisan anger at such practices has resulted in the right to repair movement seeing the most meaningful traction of any consumer rights issue in the country. Hopefully enforcement steadily scales up to match the full scale of public annoyance.

Filed Under: colorado, consumers, hardware, manuals, parts, repair, right to repair, software, state law

Apple’s “Surprise and Shine” event is days away, and there are plenty of rumors swirling about new devices we can expect, like a new Apple Watch and the first foldable iPhone, which could be called the iPhone Ultra. 

When we asked CNET readers one thing they’d change about the iPhone in our Big Guessing Game, 16% said they want it to cost less. But that’s not happening. In fact, you should expect new models to cost significantly more.  

TrendForce, a global market research firm, released a report on Thursday suggesting you can expect higher prices instead of steep discounts. The firm expects the iPhone 18 series to cost 10 to 20% more due to the ongoing RAM shortage and higher hardware costs. 

“For the 256GB Pro model, memory costs in [the third quarter of 2026] are expected to be nearly 400% higher than a year earlier,” TrendForce said. “Despite Apple’s efforts to negotiate lower prices for other components, these savings are unlikely to offset the resulting pressure on overall [materials] costs.”

Apple raised prices on select products in June due to the RAM shortage, but excluded iPhones from the price hikes. Now there’s a chance that Apple could release some iPhone 18 models with higher prices at the September event. TrendForce said it expects Apple to absorb some of the costs to keep prices for the new models as part of a “relatively moderate” pricing strategy. 

So exactly how much more are we talking about? Some analysts believe the foldable iPhone Ultra could cost between $2,000 and $2,500. TrendForce predicts the starting price will be slightly higher — between $2,099 and $2,299. The phone could go up to $3,000. TrendForce didn’t immediately respond to a request for further comment. 

But higher costs aren’t equivalent to big improvements. 

TrendForce says we shouldn’t expect major performance upgrades from Apple’s upcoming iPhone lineup. Instead, we should expect a more powerful processor for AI features and power efficiency, better chip cooling technology and power-efficient displays. And the iPhone 18 Pro models’ main camera could have a “mechanical variable aperture” to improve depth-of-field control and dynamic range for different lighting settings. 

The really big upgrade is the potential release of the folding iPhone Ultra and bigger batteries for premium iPhone 18 models, TrendForce predicts. The iPhone 18 Pro Max could see the biggest upgrade due to a larger chassis. CNET’s Patrick Holland tested smartphone batteries last year and found that the iPhone 17 Pro Max was the best for battery life, so iPhone 18’s premium models could be an even bigger upgrade from the current model. 

Dashia Milden

Senior Consumer Insights Editor

Dashia is the consumer insights editor for CNET. She specializes in data-driven analysis and news at the intersection of tech, personal finance and consumer sentiment. Dashia investigates economic shifts and everyday challenges to help readers make well-informed decisions, and she covers a range of topics, including technology, security, energy and money. Dashia graduated from the University of South Carolina with a bachelor’s degree in journalism. She loves baking, teaching spinning and spending time with her family.

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First look: Range Rover has introduced its first all-electric model, putting an 800-volt battery system and dual-motor drivetrain into its flagship SUV. It marks a major technical step for Jaguar Land Rover, combining fast-charging hardware, a large battery pack, and software-controlled off-road systems in a vehicle designed to preserve the Range Rover’s established identity.

The 2027 Range Rover Electric will be built at Jaguar Land Rover’s Solihull plant in England. It uses a 118.5-kWh battery pack, two electric motors, and a claimed EPA range of at least 333 miles. JLR says the SUV can charge at up to 350 kW, adding about 125 miles of range in 10 minutes. A 10% to 80% charge is expected to take 22 minutes.

The vehicle arrives about a year later than originally planned. It also comes as JLR works through supply-chain issues, lower profits, a restructuring program, and the aftermath of a cyberattack that halted production for more than a month last year.

JLR has upgraded its manufacturing operations in the West Midlands for EV production. The company said it has trained roughly 9,000 employees at Solihull for electrification work, along with another 1,500 workers elsewhere in the region. Its Electric Propulsion Manufacturing Centre in Wolverhampton is producing battery packs and electric drive units alongside internal-combustion engines.

The Range Rover Electric is based on JLR’s MLA platform, which was designed to support combustion, hybrid, and battery-electric powertrains. The electric version largely retains the shape of the current Range Rover. It has a revised grille, aero-focused wheels, and a flat underbody, but otherwise looks much like the gasoline and plug-in hybrid models.

Its front and rear motors are identical permanent-magnet synchronous units, each rated at 349 horsepower. Together, they produce 542 horsepower and 627 pound-feet of torque. JLR said the motors are 24% more efficient than those used in the Jaguar I-Pace.

The powertrain uses silicon-carbide inverters that can switch in less than a millisecond. Each motor contains 144 copper hairpin windings, with 0.2-millimeter laminations and a 0.7-millimeter gap between the rotor and stator. The power electronics are mounted in the space normally occupied by the transmission tunnel.

AESC supplies the battery cells, which use nickel-manganese-cobalt chemistry. The pack contains 10 modules arranged in a double-stack configuration. JLR said aerogel spacers help manage heat between the cells. Its ThermAssist system recovers waste heat from the powertrain. The company said the system can increase range by 7% and reduce cabin-heating energy use by 40%.

US-market vehicles will include a NACS charging port, Tesla Supercharger access, and ISO 15118 plug-and-charge capability. The SUV can also provide up to 3.6 kW of AC electricity through vehicle-to-load capability. JLR plans to add vehicle-to-grid support later.

The battery adds weight and also changes the SUV’s handling. The electric Range Rover is only 165 pounds heavier than the V8 version because it eliminates components including the front, center, and rear differentials and their driveshafts. The battery lowers the center of gravity by 3.4 inches, while its aluminum frame increases chassis stiffness by 56%, according to JLR.

Range Rover expects the electric SUV to reach 60 mph in 4.3 seconds. It has air suspension, twin-valve dampers, and rear-wheel steering that turns the rear wheels by up to 7.3 degrees. The vehicle weighs 6,195 pounds. One-pedal driving is optional, with regenerative braking of up to 0.2 G.

JLR says the electric model is 7 decibels quieter than the V8. Engineers added isolation around the front drive unit and addressed noise transmitted into the cabin through high-voltage cables. An active noise-cancellation system uses thin membrane speakers developed with Warwick Audio and installed in the headrests.

The electric Range Rover is designed to retain much of the off-road capability of its combustion-powered counterpart. Ground clearance is up to 10.3 inches, slightly less than the V8 model because of the rear drive unit. It can wade through up to 36 inches of water.

Instead of mechanical locking differentials, the electric model uses software-based torque management to control traction at the front and rear axles. JLR said the system can adjust power delivery based on available grip.

JLR said 80,000 people have registered their interest in the vehicle. About half are in North America, and 70% are new to the brand.