How We Test Cars

MotorTrend has been a trusted source for objective test data on new cars since October 1949 when we published our first 0–60-mph times in the second issue of the magazine.

Ever since then, we’ve built MotorTrend’s unbiased new-car reviews and comparison tests on the data and insights gleaned from instrumented testing. Our experienced drivers test hundreds of vehicles every year at world-class automotive proving grounds using high-accuracy data loggers to measure a vehicle’s acceleration, braking, and handling performance. Our team also conducts the EV range and fast-charging tests that help car shoppers understand how electric cars perform in the real world.

The scale, consistency, and integrity of our testing makes MotorTrend data the gold standard among independent automotive testing. Our work educates car shoppers and enthusiasts while keeping automakers honest and occasionally uncovering safety issues the manufacturers aren’t even aware of.

We take this work seriously, doing everything in our power to ensure it’s repeatable and representative of what drivers will experience with their own vehicles. Here’s how MotorTrend arrives at the numbers that underpin our expert opinions.

Performance Testing

Nearly all of our performance testing is conducted inside automaker-owned proving grounds that MotorTrend rents in California’s Mojave Desert and on the outskirts of Detroit. These sprawling test facilities offer long and level straights for acceleration and braking tests and huge vehicle dynamics areas for handling maneuvers. The quality and consistency of these surfaces helps us control the variables in our testing week after week and year after year.

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Preparation

Before hitting the test track, every vehicle goes through the same check-in procedure to document key vehicle information, maximize safety, and ensure we start every test from the same baseline. We jot down the VIN, odometer, tire information, and other details, and torque the lug nuts. The tank is filled with whatever fuel the manufacturer recommends, and the tire pressures are set using the relevant information found on the door jamb, inside the fuel filler flap, or in the owner’s manual. Because a battery’s power output drops as it discharges, we also test EVs, plug-in hybrids, and hybrids with full batteries. Finally, we roll every vehicle across our scales and record the weight.

Acceleration Testing

Car enthusiasts rely on MotorTrend’s 0–60-mph and quarter-mile times for bragging rights and settling arguments, but acceleration has relevance in the real world for all drivers. A quicker vehicle instills confidence merging onto a highway, passing on a rural two-lane, and just keeping up with varying traffic speeds.

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We do everything within reason to attain the quickest possible times. Most modern performance cars with automatic transmissions have a launch-control feature that can’t be beat by a human driver, so we use it. Mainstream models, though, typically require our testers to try different drive modes, traction control settings, and launch techniques to find the quickest combination. For manual-transmission cars, our drivers lean on their experience and expertise to dial in the engine rpm, the clutch release, and the throttle tip-in to achieve the best run.

Because we test cars year-round and across the country, we apply a weather correction to every vehicle that sends torque to the wheels from a gas or diesel engine. This is important because an internal combustion engine’s output is directly affected by the density of ambient air, which changes with the weather. MotorTrend uses the correction outlined in SAE J1349, a procedure created and maintained by the automotive industry standards organization SAE International. The formula adjusts our acceleration numbers—sometimes slower and sometimes quicker—as if the engine had been sucking in air at 77 degrees Fahrenheit with zero humidity and a barometric pressure of 29.2348 inches of mercury. Doing this allows us (and you) to confidently compare the results from a car tested in California in August with those from a car tested in Michigan in January.

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The test tracks we use have similar grip as a public road. They aren’t prepped with traction compound like you’ll find at a dragstrip. However, we do remove 1-foot rollout from our acceleration times following the practice established in drag racing decades ago. That usually trims 0.2 or 0.3 second off the raw times.

Brake Testing

We measure braking performance by accelerating to 63 mph and then standing on the brake pedal. As the vehicle slows through 60 mph, our data loggers start measuring the distance traveled until the vehicle comes to a stop. Performance vehicles are also subjected to a 100–0-mph test. We report the best stopping distances out of five runs from 60 mph and three stops from 100 mph. The best sports cars can pull off a stop from 60 mph in less than 90 feet while some heavy-duty trucks need more than 150 feet.

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It’s a common misconception that a long stopping distance means the vehicle has lousy brake pads or that the rotors are too small. But all modern cars have more braking power than tire grip, and a long stop is usually indicative of meager grip or a poorly calibrated antilock braking system.

During brake tests, our drivers pay attention to how straight a vehicle tracks, how controlled dive is, and how the pedal feels underfoot. Occasionally our testing reveals excessive brake fade, where the stopping distances stretch longer as heat builds up in the braking system with repeated runs. This indicates a potential safety issue for cars that might be driven on a racetrack or trucks and SUVs that could be used for towing in hilly areas. Our test drivers make a point of communicating this to our writers so it can be called out in our reviews.

Figure-Eight Handling Test

MotorTrend’s figure-eight circuit combines acceleration, braking, and cornering into a single test that tells us everything we need to know about how a car behaves when driven hard. Our “racetrack in a bottle” has drivers trace an “8” around two 200-foot-diameter circles with their centers 500 feet apart. Tires squeal, engines roar, and occasionally brakes smoke. It’s a ton of fun and extremely informative.

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More than any other test we do, the figure eight is as much about our test driver’s notes as it is the data. The dynamic nature of this test gives us so much to evaluate: How easy is it to modulate the brake pedal to get the just-right amount of deceleration? Does the car turn in reluctantly or eagerly? Does the transmission downshift on corner entry or wait for full throttle at corner exit? How much feedback does the steering wheel communicate to the driver? Are body motions well controlled, or do they give the driver a sense that they’re out of control?

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Of course, we also pull data from these laps. Test vehicles swing through the turns at a steady speed, which allows us to extract a lateral acceleration figure. This number, typically between 0.60 g and 1.20 g, represents the vehicle’s maximum cornering grip through an unbanked corner. More grip equals higher cornering speeds. We also report a figure-eight lap time (ranging from about 21 to 31 seconds) and average g for the entire lap. That second figure represents the acceleration, braking, and cornering forces felt by the driver. For an example of a top performer, the 2025 Porsche Taycan Turbo GT with the Weissach package laid down a 21.9-second lap at 1.03 g.

EV Testing

In 2021, MotorTrend launched range and fast-charging tests for electric vehicles. We designed these tests to help car shoppers understand how an EV performs in real-world scenarios where range and charging speed actually matter.

MotorTrend Road-Trip Range

We call our range test the MotorTrend Road-Trip Range test to emphasize that, for most Americans, today’s electric cars have enough range to easily handle day-to-day driving. Having lived with EVs in our long-term fleet for more than a decade, we know that range only becomes a concern on road trips when you’re driving highway speeds for extended periods.

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An EV’s MotorTrend Road-Trip Range represents how far it can travel at a constant 70 mph starting with a full battery and ending with 5 percent charge remaining. Because our test runs at higher speeds and doesn’t use the full battery capacity, our range number is almost always lower than the official range that’s based on the EPA’s combined city and highway test. On average, a vehicle’s MotorTrend Road-Trip Range is about 15 percent below the EPA rating, but we’ve seen some EVs miss by more than 30 percent and a handful of models have managed to beat the official range.

We drive our Road-Trip Range test on public highways and, for the sake of repeatability, use out-and-back loops to minimize the effects of elevation and wind. We often decide when to test based on whatever time of day gets us closest to 75 degrees Fahrenheit, but our procedure allows us to test anywhere between 45 and 105 degrees. To minimize the impact of the weather, we always precondition the battery and cabin prior to testing. Our test also specifies which accessories can and can’t be used during the drive, so every vehicle is competing on a level playing field.

EV Fast-Charging Test

MotorTrend’s real-world fast-charging test is the yin to our range test’s yang. Using a DC fast charger capable of providing full power to the EV, we charge a vehicle from 5 to 100 percent. We start this test by driving the vehicle and preconditioning the battery, since drivers rarely arrive at a fast charger with a cold pack.

We log how quickly energy is added to the battery and, using the efficiency of the vehicle from our 70-mph highway test, report how many miles of range the vehicle recovers after 15, 30, 45, and 60 minutes of charging. You’ll notice in the results that charging is nonlinear; an EV will collect more energy (and range) during the first 15 minutes than the second 15 minutes, which will add more juice than the third 15 minutes. For example, a 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5 XRT adds 152 miles in the first 15 minutes, 216 miles after 30 minutes, and 236 miles at the 45-minute mark, before filling its battery with 244 miles of range (using 95 percent of a full charge) after 52 minutes plugged in.

The idea is that you can put the two parts of our EV testing together to get an idea of what a road trip might be like. A front-wheel-drive 2025 Chevrolet Equinox EV LT can cover 262 miles before needing to charge, at which point stopping for 15 minutes will allow you to add another 94 miles and stopping for 30 minutes will stretch that to 157 miles.

The People and the Gear Behind MotorTrend Testing

MotorTrend’s test team is led by Eric Tingwall, who holds a degree in mechanical engineering and has been testing cars since he started an automotive journalism career in 2009. Road test editor Erick Ayapana and staff writer Jered Korfhage make up the rest of the team. Together the trio has covered the auto industry for more than 40 years and performed instrumented testing of cars for 25 of those years.

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One of the central tenets of our testing is that we never rely on the vehicle to provide data, since a manufacturer could mislead us with an improperly calibrated odometer or speedometer. The Racelogic VBox Touch data loggers we use on a daily basis record data 25 times per second using GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, and BeiDou satellites to measure speed to an accuracy of 0.06 mph and distance to an accuracy of 2.6 feet per mile. For more sophisticated tests that require better resolution or additional sensors, we use a Racelogic VBox 3i with a higher sample rate of 100 times per second.

The Future of Testing

MotorTrend used handheld stopwatches to test its first cars back in 1949. As technology and vehicles have evolved, so too has our testing. We are committed to using the best tools and techniques for the task, and we regularly review and update our processes to ensure our data is as accurate and repeatable as possible.

We also know that our testing will inevitably change in response to industry trends and consumer tastes. Just as we’ve added new tests in recent years to demystify electric vehicles, we’re constantly evaluating infotainment systems, artificial intelligence applications, and driver assistance systems and looking for new opportunities to bring MotorTrend’s rigorous testing to new technology.

Enthusiasts and car buyers have turned to MotorTrend for critical reviews and trusted data for decades. No matter how much the auto industry changes, our dedication to covering the industry honestly, transparently, and without bias will always be at the center of our testing.