Enlarge / The 2024 Kia EV9 takes many of the things people love about the Telluride but does them on one of the best purpose-built EV platforms in the industry. Kia American car buyers love purchasing way more car than they need. Have a kid and a dog? You’d better get a Suburban. Need to…
Mercedes-Benz Most car accidents begin and end in a few seconds. That’s plenty of time to get in a tiny micro-nap while driving. The famous asleep-at-the-wheel film scene in National Lampoon’s Vacation, where Clark Griswold goes off to slumberland for 72 seconds while piloting the Wagon Queen Family Truckster (a paragon of automotive virtue but…
Enlarge / Everyone loves a good van, and Supervan 4.2 is a very good van. Ford Concorde, NC—On Wednesday, Ford Performance held an official launch event for the 2024 season. The new GT3 version of the Mustang makes its competition debut at next weekend’s Rolex 24 at Daytona, marking the start of a new approach…
Enlarge / I normally prefer my performance cars on race circuits, but the Lightning Switchgear impressed this off-road racing novice. Jonathan Gitlin CONCORD, NC—The venerable pickup truck can play a multitude of roles these days. For some, it’s nothing more than a work vehicle, something to carry around lumber or tools or tow a trailer…
BMW The wave of AI hysteria at the 2024 CES in Las Vegas was predictable in many ways. It is, after all, the single biggest tech trend of the moment, and what startup wouldn’t want to be part of that buzzy zeitgeist? To me, the widespread embrace by car manufacturers is a little more surprising….
JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images/Aurich Lawson Elon Musk says his ambitions to make Tesla more than just an automaker depend on him gaining far more control over the company. The controversial CEO took to his social media platform X to say that unless he is awarded another 12 percent of the company, which would give him ownership…
Enlarge / From mid-2024, ChatGPT is coming to VWs. Volkswagen This year’s Consumer Electronics Show got underway in Las Vegas today. For nearly a decade, automakers and their suppliers have increasingly expanded their presence at CES, such that today, it’s arguably a more important auto show than the once-proud, now-sad, extremely underattended events held in…
Enlarge / If our comments are anything to go by, there is a huge demand out there for a small, cheap EV. Well, this is a small, cheap EV from VinFast. VinFast This year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas isn’t just about AI infotainment add-ons and concept cars—sometimes automakers actually debut new production models,…
Enlarge / Until now, remote parking systems have mostly required the parking lot or garage to fit expensive sensors and equipment. BMW’s approach is different, requiring nothing that isn’t already on the car. Tim Stevens If I had a dollar for every automated self-parking demo I’ve seen over the years, many of which happened at…
Enlarge / Lucid has dropped the Air’s drag coefficient to just 0.197, making it the most aerodynamic car on sale. Jonathan Gitlin When we saw our first Lucid Air prototype in 2017, we came away extremely impressed. This alpha build appeared far more realized than some prototypes, complete with functioning infotainment software as opposed to…
Getty Images The federal government’s Joint Office of Energy and Transportation announced on Thursday $632 million in grants to fund clean vehicle infrastructure. Twenty-two states along with Puerto Rico will be the recipients of this first round of funding from the $2.5 billion Charging and Fueling Infrastructure program, which started accepting applications in March 2023….
Hertz If you’re looking for an electric car bargain and you’re braver than the average bear, you might want to check out Hertz, the car rental agency. After announcing big plans to purchase tens of thousands of EVs from Tesla and then Polestar, it’s now liquidating a third of that fleet, the company told investors….
Cummins Cummins, which makes diesel engines for trucks, among other products, will pay a record Clean Air Act civil penalty of $1.675 billion in a lawsuit brought by the US Department of Justice, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the California Air Resources Board. Like Volkswagen before it, Cummins was found to have fitted engines—in this…
Enlarge / Look closely and you’ll spot the changes to the 2024 Tesla Model 3. Tesla Tesla might not have the most expansive range among automakers—the vast majority of its sales come from just two models. But it’s hard to deny that the company has sold a lot of those EVs; in some areas, the…
Enlarge / Honda says a production version of this car will go on sale in 2026. Honda The global auto show might be in decline, but at least fans of futuristic cars still have CES. Today, Honda unveiled a pair of concepts in Las Vegas that it says preview a new range of electric vehicles….
Jonathan Gitlin I seem to be thinking a lot about Ford’s electric pickup truck, the F-150 Lightning. Earlier this week, we got the news of price cuts and price increases. Before that, there was a pending cut to planned production output. Taken as it is, it’s just the all-electric version of America’s favorite pickup—and arguably…
Enlarge / A GM Ultium battery pack like that found in the Lyriq. (credit: Santa Fabio for General Motors) General Motors ended 2023 as the number one automaker in the United States, selling 2.6 million new vehicles during those 12 months. That’s a 14.1 percent increase from its performance in 2022, and comfortably eclipses the…
Getty Images | San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers Tesla found new homes for 1.8 million electric vehicles last year, it revealed on Tuesday afternoon. That will no doubt please CEO Elon Musk—it means the company has met its sales volume goal given to investors when it released its 2022 financial results at the end of last…
Enlarge / The Ford F-150 Lightning Pro gets a plainer front treatment than the more expensive trims. Jonathan Gitlin Was Ars premature in calling the electric Ford F-150 Lightning pickup truck the most important electric vehicle of the decade? At launch, it seemed like a no-brainer—an all-electric version of the nation’s most popular four-wheel vehicle…
Aurich Lawson | Getty Images How does the US Environmental Protection Agency decide how far an electric vehicle can go on a single charge? The simple explanation is that an EV is driven until the battery runs flat, providing the number that goes on the window sticker. In practice, it’s a lot more complicated than…
Getty Images It’s a new year, and while few of us still have the headache of needing to remember to write the new year on checks, 2024 brings a new annoyance of sorts. As of yesterday, tough new US Treasury Department rules concerning the sourcing of electric vehicle batteries went into effect; as a result,…
Aurich Lawson/Getty Images The mince pies have been eaten, the crackers have been cracked, and the days are starting to get longer. That means it’s time to look back on the best vehicles we tested in 2023. It has been a good year for electric vehicles, which accounted for almost one in ten new vehicles…
Enlarge / I know it looks like someone grafted the nose from a McLaren onto a Porsche Taycan, but it’s actually a Xiaomi SU7. Xiaomi Xiaomi, a Chinese maker of consumer electronics perhaps best known for taking plenty of inspiration from Apple, is getting into the automotive industry. Earlier today in Beijing, Xaiomi CEO Lei…
Enlarge / The previous Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV was the world’s best-selling plug-in hybrid, apparently. Now the new one has more power and a bigger battery, among other improvements. Jonathan Gitlin What to make of Mitsubishi, now we’re almost a quarter of the way into this century? For enthusiasts of a certain age, the brand is…
Enlarge / In the past you needed to be brave to own an Italian motorcycle. Now you just need to be brave to ride one. Ducati BOLOGNA, ITALY—For decades, owning an Italian motorcycle required a tradeoff. On one hand, Italian bikemakers led the pack with gorgeous designs and the most exotic, highest-performing engines in the…
Mazda Electrification is a big challenge if you’re a small automaker. And Mazda is a small automaker, one that’s in danger of being caught out by a range of inefficient gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles. But the Japanese company hasn’t given up on electric vehicles, it says. In an interview with Auto News, Mazda CEO Masahiro…
Enlarge / Tesla Cybertruck displayed at Lincoln Center in New York. Getty Images | Roman Tiraspolsky Tesla has revived a contract clause that says the electric carmaker could sue Cybertruck buyers for $50,000 or more if they resell during their first year of ownership. As we reported a month ago, the Cybertruck-only clause was added…
Enlarge / Porsche’s all-electric Macan is almost on sale. Porsche LEIPZIG, Germany—The Porsche Macan has carved out a rather solid reputation for itself over the years, bringing hot hatch-like driving fun to the premium midsize crossover segment. Next year there’s an all-new Macan, an entirely electric one that makes use of a new EV platform…
Enlarge / Electric Ford F-150 Lightnings being built at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan. Ford On Monday, Automotive News reported that Ford’s suppliers have been told by the automaker that from January it is halving the production rate of its F-150 Lightning from 3,200 trucks a week down to 1,600 trucks a…
Enlarge / The new Chevrolet Blazer EV is the latest electric vehicle to use General Motors’ Ultium battery platform. Jonathan Gitlin DEL MAR, Calif.—Americans love midsize SUVs—American automotive product planners, at any rate. These SUVs have supplanted sedans and station wagons as the family-mobile of choice, offering all the advantages of a hatchback with a…
Enlarge / Tesla says that Autopilot users should always keep both hands on the steering wheel. CBS More than 2 million Tesla electric vehicles are subject to a new safety recall today. At issue is the much-criticized Autopilot driver-assistance feature, more specifically the Autosteer component. At one time, Tesla claimed that Autosteer cut crashes by…
Enlarge / The 2023 Cadillac Lyriq had an extremely good CarPlay implementation. But that’s gone from GM EVs for MY2024 onward. Jonathan Gitlin Few things have improved the state of in-car infotainment more than the advent of the phone casting interfaces from Apple and Google. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto let you run navigation or…
Enlarge / The Tesla Optimus Gen 2 robot. Tesla | Benj Edwards On Tuesday, Tesla released a demo video showing the latest version of its prototype humanoid robot, Optimus Gen 2. Over one year after Tesla’s first public Optimus robot demonstration, which showcased shaky robots that waved and slumped over, things have apparently progressed quite…
Enlarge / British Airways Aerospatiale BAC Concorde taking off with afterburners blazing. aviation-images.com/Universal Images Group via Getty Images If you’re a bit of a plane nerd—and if you’re reading this site, the odds are good that you are—a rather interesting eBay auction ended over the weekend. The auction site knows it as item number 116001533010;…
Getty Images I like the idea of drawing the year to a close with some good news for a change, and I think maybe the US Environmental Protection Agency does as well. On Wednesday, the EPA published its Automotive Trends Report, which now included data for model-year 2022 vehicles. And the data is good: record-low…
Waymo Waymo on Wednesday released new crash data based on the company’s first 7.1 million miles of fully driverless operations in Arizona and California. The data show that human-driven cars are more than twice as likely to get into a crash that is reported to the police. And depending on how you do the math,…
Enlarge / I’m not 100 percent sure, but it looks a lot like the Vistiq will be a three-row SUV. Cadillac Cadillac’s product planners sure love the letter Q. Last year, the American luxury automaker started building the Lyriq, a rather competent midsize electric SUV. Last month, it revealed plans for an entry-level electric crossover…
Enlarge / Mercedes-Benz receives approvals for turquoise-colored automated driving marker lights in California and Nevada Mercedes-Benz Authorities in California and Nevada have both granted Mercedes-Benz permission to test out a new car-to-human communication idea. While we’re still some way away from road cars emoting like some of the concepts we’ve seen in the past few…
Enlarge / Yes, pickup trucks are used in work situations, but they’re also bought by people who want to drive them off-road. Kristin Shaw Between a new platform and the model’s first hybrid powertrain, the redesigned 2024 Toyota Tacoma is full of interesting tidbits and both off- and on-road enhancements. The refresh has been a…
Enlarge / Trevor Milton, founder of Nikola Corp., arrives at court in New York on Monday, Dec. 18, 2023. Milton is set to be sentenced on Monday after being found guilty of securities fraud and wire fraud in October 2022. The disgraced founder and former CEO of the “zero emissions” truck company Nikola, Trevor Milton,…
Enlarge / The Specialized Turbo Creo 2 Comp taking a break from central Illinois gravel. Eric Bangeman If the question is “what is the ideal number of bikes to own,” the answer is usually “n+1.” Whether you are into gravel trails, BMX, mountain biking, road biking, or cyclecross, there’s a bike for that. But after…
John Timmer The arrival of e-bikes has blurred the lines between bicycles, mopeds, and scooters. Depending on what country or state you’re in, some e-bikes can legally hit 45 km/hour (28 mph), yet they don’t require a license, registration, or insurance, unlike their competitors. Whether that’s a good or bad thing depends on whether the…
Enlarge / Extreme E travels to remote locations by boat and brings its own energy infrastructure with it. Currently, it makes its own hydrogen on site and uses that to charge EV batteries, but in 2025, the cars will switch to hydrogen fuel cells. Colin McMaster / LAT Images ANTOFAGASTA, Chile — On a picnic…
Jonathan Gitlin Tesla has engaged in a series of price cuts over the past year or so, but it might soon want to think about making some more for the Model 3 sedan. According to the automaker’s website, the Tesla Model 3 Long Range and Tesla Model 3 Rear Wheel Drive will both lose eligibility…
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