Author: Sofia
Hyundai is planning to launch dozens of new or refreshed models in North America. That includes Hyundai and Genesis extended range electric vehicles with over 600 miles of range. It will begin delivering Ioniq 5 robotaxis to Waymo in the fourth quarter of this year. Hyundai will launch 58 new or refreshed models in North America by 2030, the automaker said at its 2026 CEO Investor Day in Seoul on Wednesday. Chief among them will be the new Santa Fe extended-range electric vehicle, which will offer more than 600 miles of combined range on a full battery charge and a…
Bafang has never exactly been known for building timid e-bike motors, but its latest pair of high-performance e-MTB drives takes things to a whole new level. We’re talking up to 1,700 watts of peak power, 150 Nm of torque, and 800% pedal assistance. At that point, “pedal assist” is starting to do some pretty heavy lifting as a phrase. The new Bafang M510RS and M560RS are production versions of motors first shown as concepts at Eurobike last year. They’re set to make their official production debut at the Italian Bike Festival in Misano, Italy, September 4-6, ahead of series production…
Honda says it will continue offering manual transmissions in enthusiast cars despite declining demand. Honda executive Lance Woelfer acknowledged that the percentage of buyers interested in manuals continues to shrink. Honda recently paused production of the Civic Si, with an all-new version expected in the coming years. We all know the manual transmission isn’t nearly as popular as it once was, but some automakers endeavour to keep the old-school shifter alive—at least for a little while longer. Honda is one of the few automakers that still offers a manual transmission in the US, but even Honda execs admit the gearbox…
A group of Chicago business leaders have announced plan to launch what they’re calling, “the first airport express train in the US.” The O’Hare Flyer is a fully electric train that will offer non-stop rides between downtown Chicago and America’s busiest airfield. The planned fully electric train route has been pieced together, Ticket to Ride-style, using freight rail right-of-way currently owned by three Class I railroads: CSX, Canadian National (CN), and Union Pacific (UP). The O’Hare Flyer group has signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) with CSX and says it’s moving forward with the other carriers as well. “By combining…
While not a real S351, today’s Nice Price or No Dice Mustang GT has enough Saleen badges and parts to at least pull off the look. Let’s see if we like the look of this wannabe’s price tag. There are certain species of dung beetles that gather up the poop of herbivores, shape it into a ball, and then roll that ball—backward, mind you—a safe distance away so as not to get trampled by an errant hoof or buried under a freshly dropped steamer. Industrious and efficient, these detritivores are an important part of most ecosystems. We just tend to…
Mercedes-Benz CEO Ola Källenius, a self-described “petrol head” who once ran AMG, says driving an electric AMG with a simulated V8 turned him into “a born-again Christian.” The comments, made in a new interview, are Mercedes’ clearest pitch yet that enthusiasts, not just early adopters, are supposed to love its next wave of EVs. Källenius made the remarks to Autocar’s James Attwood during a drive of the new C-Class Electric in Finland. The context was the Mercedes-AMG CLA 45, whose electric powertrain can simulate a V8 engine down to the pops, bangs, and feedback of virtual gearchanges. “When I first…
Photo: Kempower When it comes to public EV charging, more plugs may matter a whole lot more than bigger power numbers, according to new North American data from Kempower. The Finnish EV charger maker analyzed public charging sites connected to its ChargEye cloud software and found that plug count had roughly three times the relationship with site utilization as total installed charging power. Put simply, giving more EV drivers somewhere to plug in appears to be more useful than installing fewer chargers with a huge amount of power behind them. Kempower found a correlation of 0.63 between plug count and…
Elon Musk put a number on where he thinks SpaceX’s Starship program is headed by 2030, replying on X a day after President Trump signed a memo pushing the country toward 1,000 space launches and reentries a year. The exchange started when Aaron Burnett, co-founder of propulsion startup Mach 33, posted that “1,000 launches/reentries is the goal,” quoting White House science adviser Michael Kratsios on the newly signed National Space Transportation Policy. Burnett noted that the FAA’s own bull-case forecast reached only 385 annual launches by 2030, while his firm’s conservative model already put SpaceX alone near 940. Musk responded,…
On X, two drivers posted videos of FSD Lite v14.1 not stopping for objects in the road, namely fallen trees and wooden logs. FSD Lite is designed to run on Tesla’s Hardware 3, which has significantly less computing power compared to Hardware 4 used in later cars. FSD Lite was introduced this June. As Tesla tries to scale up its fleet of self-driving cars and roll out the steering wheel-free Cybercab, Full Self-Driving (Supervised) continues to stumble in serious ways. One video posted on X on August 21 shows a user named Baldersonmichae using FSD on the road at night.…
Porsche has unveiled the 911 Challenge, a new track-only race car that brings motorsport hardware to the more accessible end of its racing lineup. Based on the road-going 911 GT3, the 911 Challenge uses the same naturally aspirated 4.0-litre flat-six, but Porsche has extracted a little more from it. The engine produces 508 hp, revs to 9,000 rpm and sends its power through a seven-speed PDK gearbox. Porsche has stripped away the airbags, passenger seat, carpeting, sound insulation and other road-car luxuries to save weight. In their place are a welded roll cage, racing seat, six-point harness, fire-extinguishing system and…