Cars – Page 2

After years of saying no, Tesla reportedly adding Apple CarPlay to its cars

Apple, Apple CarPlay, Cars, Tesla / Beth Washington / November 13, 2025

Apple CarPlay, the interface that lets you cast your phone to your car’s infotainment screen, may finally be coming to Tesla’s electric vehicles. CarPlay is nearly a decade old at this point, and it has become so popular that almost half of car buyers have said they won’t consider a car without the feature, and the overwhelming majority of automakers have included CarPlay in their vehicles.

Until now, that hasn’t included Tesla. CEO Elon Musk doesn’t appear to have opined on the omission, though he has frequently criticized Apple. In the past, Musk has said the goal of Tesla infotainment is to be “the most amount of fun you can have in a car.” Tesla has regularly added purile features like fart noises to the system, and it has also integrated video games that drivers can play while they charge.

For customers who want to stream music, Tesla has instead offered Spotify, Tidal, and even Apple Music apps.

But Tesla is no longer riding high—its sales are crashing, and its market share is shrinking around the world as car buyers tire of a stale and outdated lineup of essentially two models at a time when competition has never been higher from legacy and startup automakers.

According to Bloomberg, which cites “people with knowledge of the matter,” the feature could be added within months if it isn’t cancelled internally.

Tesla is not the only automaker to reject Apple CarPlay. The startup Lucid took some time to add the feature to its high-end EVs, and Rivian still refuses to consider including the system, claiming that a third-party system would degrade the user experience. And of course, General Motors famously removed CarPlay from its new EVs, and it may do the same to its other vehicles in the future.

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Waymo to roll out driverless taxis on highways in three US cities

alphabet, Cars, Driverless cars, syndication, waymo / 9u50fv / November 13, 2025

Mawakana added her company did not think in terms of “how many [incidents] are allowable” and the challenge was ensuring the “bar on safety” was high enough.

Highway routes will initially be available to users who have opted in to early access for new features, before being rolled out more widely.

Passengers will be able to travel to and from the airport in San Jose, in the San Francisco Bay Area. The company already serves Phoenix airport but will now be able to access it on the highway.

Waymo, which launched its paid driverless taxi services in 2020, operates more than 250,000 rides a week. It has a fleet of more than 2,000 vehicles across its five US markets, primarily made up of Jaguar Land Rover electric I-Pace vehicles kitted out with its bespoke sensors and computing system.

Tesla, its main US rival, in September expanded services to the public as part of its robotaxi pilot in Austin, Texas, while Amazon-owned Zoox recently began services in Las Vegas.

Waymo said its vehicles would exit the highways in the event that they encountered technical issues. It also said it had partnered with highway patrol to prepare for circumstances where the vehicle would need to pull over.

The company has reported more than 1,250 collisions involving its vehicles since 2021, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This has included accidents with passenger vehicles, trucks, and other objects, including a closing gate.

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Pirelli’s Cyber Tire might become highway agencies’ newest assistant

Cars, Pirelli Cyber Tire, Traffic / Beth Washington / November 11, 2025

“Two weeks ago, a European manufacturer tested… the traction control and stability with a dramatic improvement in stability and the traction,” he said. “The nice part of the story is that there is not only an objective improvement—2 or 3 meters in braking distance—but there is also from these customers always a better feeling… which is something that is very important to us because numbers are for technicians, but from our customer’s perspective, the pleasure to drive also very important.”

The headline said something about traffic?

While the application described above mostly serves the Cyber Tire-equipped car, the smart tires can also serve the greater good. Earlier this year, we learned of a trial in the Italian region of Apulia that fitted Cyber Tires to a fleet of vehicles and then inferred the health of the road surface from data collected by the tires.

Working with a Swedish startup called Univrses, Pirelli has been fusing sensor data from the Cyber Tire with cameras. Misani offered an example.

“You have a hole [in the road]. If you have a hole, maybe the visual [system] recognizes and the tire does not because you automatically try to avoid the hole. So if the tire does not pass over the hole, you don’t measure anything,” he said. “But your visual system will detect it. On the opposite side, there are some cracks on the road that are detected from the visual system as something that is not even on the road, but they cannot say how deep, how is the step, how is it affecting the stability of the car and things like this. Matching the two things, you have the possibility to monitor in the best possible way the condition of the road.”

“Plus thanks to the vision, you have also the possibility to exploit what we call the vertical status—traffic signs, the compatibility between the condition of the road and the traffic signs,” he said.

The next step is a national program in Italy. “We are investigating and making a project to actively control not the control unit of the car but the traffic information,” Misani said. “On some roads, you can vary the speed limit according to the status; if we can detect aquaplaning, we can warn [that] at kilometer whatever, there is aquaplaning and [the speed limit will be automatically reduced]. We are going in the direction of integrating into the smart roads.”

Pirelli’s Cyber Tire might become highway agencies’ newest assistant Read More »

F1 in Brazil: That’s what generational talent looks like

Cars, F1, Formula 1 / DJ Henderson / November 10, 2025

After a weekend off, perhaps spent trick or treating, Formula 1’s drivers, engineers, and mechanics made their yearly trip to the Interlagos track for the Brazilian Grand Prix. More formally called the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace, it’s definitely one of the more old-school circuits that F1 visits—and invariably one of the more dramatic.

For one thing, it’s anything but billiard-smooth. Better yet, there’s elevation—lots of it—and cambers, too. Unlike most F1 tracks, it runs counterclockwise, and it combines some very fast sections with several rather technical corners that can catch out even the best drivers in the world. Nestled between a couple of lakes in São Paulo, weather is also a regular factor in races here. And indeed, a severe weather warning was issued in the lead-up to this weekend’s race.

You have to hit the ground running

This was another sprint weekend, which means that instead of two practice sessions on Friday and another on Saturday morning, the teams get one on Friday, then go into qualifying for the Saturday sprint race. The shortened testing time tends to shake things up a bit, and we definitely saw that this weekend.

When we left Mexico, there was only a point’s difference between McLaren drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in the championship. After a strong run in the middle of the season, when he led the championship and seemed to have the edge on Norris, Piastri has had a string of disappointing races. By recent standards, Brazil wasn’t quite so bad, but it wasn’t great, either.

Carlos Sainz Jr. of Spain drives the (55) Atlassian Williams Racing FW47 Mercedes during the Formula 1 MSC Cruises Grande Premio De Sao Paulo 2025 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on November 9, 2025. (Photo by Alessio Morgese/NurPhoto via Getty Images) — Is it just me, or does Williams usually have a disappointing weekend when it does a Gulf Oil livery? Credit: Alessio Morgese/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Despite the weather warnings, none of the sessions required treaded tires. While the track surface was basically dry for the sprint race, the same couldn’t be said for the painted curbs—water had collected in the valleys between the stepped “teeth,” and as just about every racer knows, if the painted bits of the track are wet, you really don’t want to go near them if you have slick tires.

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Elon Musk wins $1 trillion Tesla pay vote despite “part-time CEO” criticism

Cars, elon musk, Policy, Tesla / Kelly Newman / November 8, 2025

Tesla shareholders today voted to approve a compensation plan that would pay Elon Musk more than $1 trillion over the next decade if he hits all of the plan’s goals. Musk won over 75 percent of the vote, according to the announcement at today’s shareholder meeting.

The pay plan would give Musk 423,743,904 shares, awarded in 12 tranches of 35,311,992 shares each if Tesla achieves various operational goals and market value milestones. Goals include delivering 20 million vehicles, obtaining 10 million Full Self-Driving subscriptions, delivering 1 million “AI robots,” putting 1 million robotaxis in operation, and achieving a $400 billion adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization).

Musk has threatened to leave if he doesn’t get a larger share of Tesla. He told investors last month, “It’s not like I’m going to go spend the money. It’s just, if we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over that robot army? Not control, but a strong influence. That’s what it comes down to in a nutshell. I don’t feel comfortable building that robot army if I don’t have at least a strong influence.”

The plan has 12 market capitalization milestones topping out at $8.5 trillion. The value of Musk’s award is estimated to exceed $1 trillion if he hits all operational and market capitalization goals. Musk would increase his ownership stake to 24.8 percent of Tesla, or 28.8 percent if Tesla ends up winning an appeal in the court case that voided his 2018 pay plan.

Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm has argued that Musk needs big pay packages to stay motivated. Some investors have said $1 trillion is too much for a CEO who spends much of his time running other companies such as SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), and xAI.

New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who runs a state retirement fund that owns over 3.3 million shares, slammed the pay plan in a webinar last week. He said that Musk’s existing stake in Tesla should already “be incentive enough to drive performance. The idea that another massive equity award will somehow refocus a man who is hopelessly distracted is both illogical and contrary to the evidence. This is not pay for performance; this is pay for unchecked power.”

Musk and his side hustles

With Musk spending more time at xAI, “some major Tesla investors have privately pressed top executives and board members about how much attention Musk was actually paying to the company and about whether there is a CEO succession plan,” a Wall Street Journal article on Tuesday said. “An unusually large contingent of Tesla board members, including chair Robyn Denholm, former Chipotle CFO Jack Hartung, and Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, met with big investors in New York last week to advocate for Musk’s proposed new pay package.”

Elon Musk wins $1 trillion Tesla pay vote despite “part-time CEO” criticism Read More »

Ford says “no exact date” to restart F-150 Lightning production

Cars, Ford F-150 Lightning / Kelly Newman / November 7, 2025

When Ford electrified its bestselling pickup truck, it pulled out all the stops. The F-150 Lightning may look virtually identical to other versions of the pickup, but it’s smoother, faster, and obviously far, far more efficient than the ones that run on gas, diesel, or hybrid power. But the future of the country’s bestselling electric truck may be in doubt.

That’s according to a report in The Wall Street Journal, which claims that Ford’s management is “in active discussions about scrapping” the Lightning. Production had already been suspended a few weeks ago due to an aluminum shortage following a destructive fire at a supplier’s factory in New York, which Ford estimates may result in as much as $2 billion in losses to the company.

While Ford told Ars it doesn’t comment on speculation on its future product plans, the automaker said that “F-150 Lightning is the best-selling electric pickup truck in the US—despite new competition from CyberTruck, Chevy, GMC, Hummer and Rivian—and delivered record sales in Q3.”

“Right now, we’re focused on producing F-150 ICE and Hybrid as we recover from the fire at Novelis. We have good inventories of the F-150 Lightning and will bring Rouge Electric Vehicle Center (REVC) back up at the right time, but don’t have an exact date at this time,” a Ford spokesperson said.

Ford was the first of the domestic automakers to bring a full-size pickup EV to market. But like General Motors, it has found that pickup truck customers have not flocked to electric propulsion in anything like the numbers predicted pre-pandemic. As we learned last week, GM has also scaled back its EV production, and last month Stellantis announced that it has ceased development of an all-electric version of its Ram 1500.

As for Ford, a second-generation F-150 Lightning has been postponed in favor of a much cheaper, much simpler-to-build electric pickup, which is due in 2027.

Ford says “no exact date” to restart F-150 Lightning production Read More »

Tesla’s European and Chinese customers are staying away in droves

Cars, Tesla / Kelly Newman / November 5, 2025

Tesla’s shareholders are ready to vote tomorrow on whether to give Elon Musk an even more vast slice of the company in an effort to keep him focused on selling electric vehicles. Currently, the trolling tycoon appears a little obsessed with the UK, a place he appears to conflate with Middle Earth, which investors may or may not take into account when making their decision. What they ought to take into account is how many cars Tesla sold last month.

Although Tesla only publishes quarterly sales figures and does not divide those up by region, slightly more granular data is available from some countries via monthly new car registrations. And the numbers for October, when compared year on year to the same month in 2024, should be alarming.

Sales fell by double-digit margins in Sweden (89 percent), Denmark (86 percent), Belgium (69 percent), Finland (68 percent), Austria (65 percent), Switzerland (60 percent), Portugal (59 percent), Germany (54 percent), Norway (50 percent), the Netherlands (48 percent), the UK (47 percent), Italy (47 percent), and Spain (31 percent).

Only France bucked the trend—there, a new subsidy helped bump sales by 2 percent year on year.

Things in China were better, but not by much; Tesla sales dropped 9.9 percent in October compared to last year. And that’s bound to be very bad news for the bottom line; even with record sales in Q3, Tesla saw its margins shrink, its costs climb, and its profits begin to evaporate.

A common factor in both Europe and China is that Tesla now faces a huge amount of competition for EV buyers from both established OEMs and new Chinese startups. Tesla has failed to expand its range beyond the Models 3 and Y, both of which look increasingly stale despite recent cosmetic tweaks.

Tesla’s European and Chinese customers are staying away in droves Read More »

“So much more menacing”: Formula E’s new Gen4 car breaks cover

Cars, Formula E, Formula E Gen4 / Shannon Garcia / November 5, 2025

In fact, there will be two different bodywork configurations, one for high downforce and the other with less. But that doesn’t mean Formula E teams will run out and build wind tunnels, like their F1 counterparts. “There’s significant gains that can be made out of software improvements, efficiency improvements, powertrain developments,” said Dodds, so there’s no incentive to spend lots of money on aero development that would only add fractions of a second.

The biggest opportunity for finding performance improvements may be with traction control and antilock braking systems. Formula E wants its technology to be road-relevant, so such driver aids will be unlimited in the Gen4 era. But efficiency will remain of utmost importance; the cars will still have to regenerate 40 percent of the energy they need to finish the race, as the 55 kWh battery is not sufficient to go flat-out to the end. Happily for the drivers, the new car can regen up to 700 kW of energy under braking.

A grainy shot of a Formula E gen4 car testing — The Gen4 car in testing. Credit: Formula E

Finally, the car’s end of life has been considered. The entire race car is entirely recyclable, Formula E says, and it already contains 20 percent recycled content.

So far, the Gen4 car has been put through its paces for more than 5,000 miles (8,000 km), which is more than the mileage of an entire Formula E season, including testing. Now the teams have started to receive their chassis and have started the work of getting to know them and preparing to race them in season 13, all while getting ready to start season 12 next month.

What we won’t know until season 13 gets underway is how the Gen4 era will change the races. With bigger, faster cars, not every Formula E circuit will still be suitable, like London’s very tight Excel Arena track, but with a continued focus on making efficiency count, it’s quite likely we’ll continue to see the same close pack racing as before.

“So much more menacing”: Formula E’s new Gen4 car breaks cover Read More »

Dune driving with Mercedes-Benz as it tests off-road systems

Cars, Mercedes GLC with EQ Technology / DJ Henderson / November 4, 2025

The reason Mercedes’ engineers were driving up and down and across the dunes was to work on the car’s brake control systems. As you slow with the brake pedal, the car’s electronic brain juggles the input of the traction control, electronic stability control, antilock brakes, and a downhill speed governor that keep you going where you want, as opposed to careening down a slope at speed.

After a passenger ride through a particularly tricky section, it was my turn to have a go. It was a more surreal experience than messing around in an all-wheel drive car on fresh snow—that might involve low traction surfaces and some sliding around, but the horizon tends to remain in the same place.

As I climbed a dune, my view was nothing but sand, then the deep blue sky. Despite the steep slope and the fact that the car was shod with regular street tires, the wheels found traction where needed, “churning” where necessary. Under braking, the ABS allows the front wheels to remain more controllable, taking into consideration any steering angle you have.

And that may be a lot, because as Lightning McQueen learned in Cars, to go left, sometimes you have to turn right. At times, crabbing up the side of a dune involved making progress with a fair amount of opposite steering lock.

Just think, the wind deposited all this sand here. Note the return of a maximalist Mercedes front “grille.” Mercedes-Benz

Driving on a loose surface like sand, similar to driving on snow, requires a fair bit of torque, and the GLC’s 596 lb-ft (808 Nm) was more than enough to throw a rooster tail or two as the speed picked up and propelled us along. And the low center of gravity that results from the 94 kWh battery pack between the axles no doubt helped keep the car planted even while driving sideways along the dune.

My experience was much less repetitive than that of the Mercedes engineers, whose job it is to go out and drive a route, come back to the trailer, download the data, and upload a new configuration to the car. Then go out and drive the route again and repeat the whole process before driving two hours back to Las Vegas at the end of each day. But the result should be an electric SUV with the kind of mountain goat ability that belies its posh badge and looks.

The new GLC with EQ Technology goes on sale in the US late next year.

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Sam Altman wants a refund for his $50,000 Tesla Roadster deposit

Cars, sam altman, tesla roadster / Shannon Garcia / November 1, 2025

2017 feels like another era these days, but if you cast your mind back that far, you might remember Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s vaporware Roadster 2.0. Full of nonsensical-sounding features that impressed people who know a little bit about rockets but nothing about cars, the $200,000 electric car promised to have a suction fan and “cold gas thrusters,” plus 620 miles (1,000 km) of range and a whole load of other stuff that’s never happening.

Plenty of other electric automakers have introduced electric hypercars in the eight years since Musk declared the second Roadster a thing, with no sign of it being any closer to reality, if the latest job postings are accurate. And it seems that over time, a lot of the people who gave the company a hefty deposit—some say interest-free loan—have become tired of waiting and want their money back.

And that’s not quite so easy, it turns out. Musk’s current Silicon Valley rival is the latest to discover this. According to Sam Altman’s social media account, he placed an order for a Roadster on July 11, 2018, with a deposit of $45,000 ($58,206 in today’s money). But after emailing Tesla for a refund, he discovered the email address associated with preorders had been deleted.

A screenshot of Sam Altman's X posts about cancelling his car — Credit: Twitter

Perhaps Altman forgot to ask ChatGPT how best to go about getting his money. If he had, he might have stumbled across the experience of streamer Marques Brownlee, who eventually had to pick up a telephone and call someone to get most of his $50,000 back. Or perhaps some of the threads at Reddit or the Tesla forums, where other people who fell for the cold gas thruster-equipped two-seater with Lucid-busting range and F1-beating acceleration have gathered to share stories of how best to make Tesla return their money.

Sam Altman wants a refund for his $50,000 Tesla Roadster deposit Read More »

2026 Hyundai Ioniq 9: American car-buyer tastes meet Korean EV tech

car review, Cars, Hyundai Ioniq 9 / Shannon Garcia / October 31, 2025

The Ioniq 9 interior. Jonathan Gitlin

The native NACS charge port at the rear means all of Tesla’s v3 Superchargers are potential power-up locations; these will take the battery from 10–80 percent state of charge in 40 minutes. Or use the NACS-CCS1 adapter and a 350 kW fast charger (or find one of Ionna’s 350 kW chargers with a NACS plug) and do the 10–80 percent SoC top-up in a mere 24 minutes.

With this most-powerful Ioniq 9, I’d mostly keep it in Eco mode, which almost entirely relies upon the rear electric motor. When firing with both motors, the Calligraphy outputs 422 hp (315 kW) and more importantly, 516 lb-ft (700 Nm). In Sport mode, that’s more than enough to chirp the tires from a standstill, particularly if it’s damp. Low rolling resistance and good efficiency was a higher priority for the Ioniq 9’s tire selection than lateral grip, and with a curb weight of 6,000 lbs (2,735 kg) it’s not really a car that needs to be hustled unless you’re attempting to outrun something like a volcano. It’s also the difference between efficiency in the low 2 miles/kWh range.

Life with the Ioniq 9 wasn’t entirely pain-free. For example, the touch panel for the climate control settings becomes impossible to read in bright sunlight, although the knobs to raise or lower the temperature are at least physical items. I also had trouble with the windshield wipers’ intermittent setting, despite the standard rain sensors.

A Hyundai Ioniq 9 seen from the rear 3/4s. — Built just outside of Savannah, Georgia, don’t you know. Credit: Jonathan Gitlin

At $74,990, the Ioniq 9 Calligraphy comes more heavily specced than electric SUVs from more luxury, and therefore more expensive, brands and should charge faster and drive more efficiently than any of them. If you don’t mind giving up 119 hp (89 kW) and some options, all-wheel drive is available from $62,765 for the SE trim, and that longer-legged single-motor Ioniq 9 starts at $58,955. Although with just 215 hp (160 KW) and 285 lb-ft (350 Nm), the driving experience won’t be quite the same as the model we tested.

2026 Hyundai Ioniq 9: American car-buyer tastes meet Korean EV tech Read More »

GM lays off 1,700 workers making EVs and batteries in Michigan, Tennessee

Cars, EV adoption, General Motors, Lordstown / Kelly Newman / October 30, 2025

Now we can see some of the impact of that realignment. According to The Detroit News, 1,200 workers are being laid off at GM’s EV-building Hamtramck Assembly Center near Detroit, which will move from two shifts a day to just one in early January.

Another 550 workers are being laid off at the Ultium Cells battery plant in Ohio; this is a joint venture with LG Chem and the plant will also stop production on January 5 until at least May.

Another 850 workers at the Ultium Cells plant in Ohio will be temporarily laid off, as will 700 more at a second Ultium Cells factory in Tennessee.

“During the temporary pause, Ultium Cells plans to make upgrades to both facilities to provide greater flexibility,” GM said in a statement to the Detroit News. “Ultium Cells will continue to evaluate and adapt production plans based on evolving market needs.”

GM also recently shut down its BrightDrop brand, which made electric delivery vans, blaming weak demand. And the automaker has also laid off IT workers in Georgia and staff from its Warren Technical Center in Michigan.

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