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Last week, the Biden administration made it official: American cars are really going electric. The US Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule, long in the works, that will require automakers selling in the United States to dramatically boost the number of battery-powered vehicles sold this decade, putting a serious dent in the country’s carbon emissions … Read more
Following recent reports that Fisker has been preparing for a possible bankruptcy filing, today the embattled automaker announced that it is suspending all manufacture of its electric vehicles. “Fisker will pause production for six weeks starting the week of March 18, 2024, to align inventory levels and progress strategic and financing initiatives,” the company said … Read more
Chinese automakers are starting to equip electric cars with camera drones. For now, this drone integration is aimed at content creators who want to collect videos of themselves driving. These systems typically enable one-click filming of a moving vehicle, with the action viewable live on the car’s interior display as well as recorded for posterity. … Read more
I experienced the City NGP function under XNGP in a P7i in Shanghai, and later in a G6 in Guangzhou. With my second experience I soon realized it was a tale of two cities. In Shanghai it was quite smooth, and at least one of the interventions made was due to me being disoriented rather … Read more
Last week, the electric automaker Rivian unveiled the R2, its latest electric SUV. When the vehicle starts rolling off production lines—in the first half of 2026, Rivian says—the R2 will join the R1S SUV and the R1T pick-up truck in the automaker’s lineup. Critically, Rivian pledges its newest entry will be cheaper: At “around” $45,000, … Read more
Yes, things sure have changed—for Rivian and for the world—since the automaker debuted in the US in 2021 and recorded the largest IPO the stock market had seen in seven years. One big change is that interest rates are higher, which makes large purchases more expensive to finance, and makes buyers cagier about purchasing anything, … Read more
“We have a giant, beautiful, red paperweight in our driveway,” Snell says. Snell is just one of many California hydrogen fuel-cell car owners facing difficulties as a confluence of unfortunate events—tech limitations, rising station operating costs, policy changes, even the Russian invasion of Ukraine—have hiked hydrogen fuel prices and taken hydrogen fueling stations offline. Just … Read more
Tesla says it uses proprietary stainless steel (possibly from Outokumpu of Finland, Europe’s largest producer, which runs a plant in Calvert, Alabama). However, even proprietary stainless steels can stain, especially if any cheaper steel fittings beneath the Cybertruck’s panels react with the stainless product. There are five basic families of “stainless steel”: austenitic, ferritic, martensitic, … Read more
In the US, analysts say consumers have balked at automakers’ pricier electric offerings. Though the gap is closing, the average electric vehicle transaction is still more expensive than the average gas-powered one. It doesn’t help that 2024 began with discontinuation of the US market’s most affordable EV, the $26,500 Chevy Bolt. (It’s due to make … Read more
A big pain point for electric vehicle owners could soon sting less, thanks to an announcement from the Jeep-, Ram-, and Chrysler-maker Stellantis—one of Detroit’s Big Three automakers. This week, the company said that it would add the Tesla-designed charging connection system, called the North American Charging Standard, or NACS, to its electric vehicles by … Read more