President Donald Trump announced a new plan that lets carmakers pollute more by making less fuel efficient vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said today that it’ll roll back fuel economy rules finalized last year by the Biden administration for model year 2022-2031 vehicles. The Trump administration has eliminated incentives for EV purchases, […]
Earlier this year, a mysterious new company called Tensor announced itself to the world by claiming it would be the first to sell fully autonomous vehicles to customers at scale. The news didn’t make much of a splash. No one had ever heard of Tensor, so it was the kind of announcement easy to dismiss […]
The first Chinese-made car Omar Rana ever drove was a gas-powered SUV that he rented while on a trip overseas in 2015. To say it didn’t leave much of an impression would be an understatement. “It sucked really bad,” Rana, aka OmarDrives, tells me. “A horrible experience.” Flash forward nearly a decade to last year, […]
Last week, Tesla revealed a new section of its website dedicated to reporting safety statistics for its advanced driver assist systems, Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD). The new hub appears to be an attempt to move beyond the company’s traditional quarterly safety reports, which have been criticized for failing to account for basic facts about […]
It’s no surprise that the Porsche Cayenne EV is a beast. Of course the famed German automaker would tout its all-electric SUV as “the most powerful,” the quickest — both off the line and in a charging stall — and record-setting in so many ways. The question remains: how beastly are we talking? Now, thankfully, […]
It’s been over three years since we first caught glimpse of Jeep’s Wrangler-esque Recon EV, named after the automaker’s suspension-lifting package of off-roading options for its popular lineup of SUVs. Jeep originally pegged the Recon’s sales debut for 2023, but that obviously didn’t happen. And since then, there have been further delays, and even rumors […]
Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius is the eternal optimist, and for good reason. He has long pushed the European Union to roll back its lofty goal of phasing out new internal combustion engine cars, arguing that weakening the rules was a return to pragmatism and not capitulation to opponents of Europe’s green agenda. His push is […]
Tesla is expanding a Powerwall 2 battery recall that started in Australia last September to the US. A ”third-party battery cell defect” can cause units to “stop functioning normally, resulting in overheating, smoking and in some cases smoke or flame causing minor property damage.” The company has received 22 reports of overheating, six reports of […]
Tesla, one of the original Apple CarPlay holdouts, may finally be close to actually adopting the immensely popular phone projection system for its cars, Bloomberg reports today. The company has started testing the capability internally, anonymous sources tell the publication, and could be close to releasing it publicly, perhaps in a few months — or […]
Tesla is now in the business of short-term car rentals, as the company tries to mitigate falling sales in the US following the expiry of federal tax credits for electric vehicles. Rentals are currently being offered in two California Tesla stores in San Diego and Costa Mesa, with plans to expand to more locations by […]