News
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California’s New Plate-Flipper Law Fines the Builder $1,000. The Driver Still Pays $250.
Somewhere in the fine print of a new California law is a detail that got lost in the headlines about drivers dodging bridge tolls: the state just quadrupled the fine for building a license-plate-hiding gadget, and it left the fine for driving around with one exactly where it’s been for over a decade. That’s the…
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Toyota’s Electric Hilux Can’t Tow Half of What a Diesel Hilux Can. Toyota Built It Anyway.
The electric Toyota Hilux tows less than half what the diesel tows and carries 600 fewer pounds. That gap is not a mistake. It is the entire business case.
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The 2025 Ram 1500’s Real Problem Isn’t the Engine — It’s the Software Deciding You’re Parked.
Picture this: you’re idling at a red light in stop-and-go traffic, or easing your truck through an automatic car wash, and without any input from you, the dashboard chimes, a warning appears, and the transmission drops itself into Park. The parking brake sets on its own. You didn’t touch anything. That isn’t a hypothetical dreamed…
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Rivian Just Gave R1 and R2 the Same Brain. Halloween Will Prove It.
Every October, Rivian’s trucks start acting possessed. Light bars pulse red, Camp Mode fills with crows and jack-o’-lanterns, and the cabin speakers do a convincing alligator impression. It’s a neat trick, and by now it’s expected. But this year the trick means something different than it did in 2024 or 2025, because for the first…
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A Defender Pickup Is the One Land Rover Britain Can’t Afford to Build
JLR’s US ambition is roughly three and a half times bigger than Britain’s entire 100,000-vehicle tariff quota — and a pickup is the one body style that quota doesn’t cover at all.
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Honda’s Rare-Earth-Free Magnet Bet Is Real. It’s Also the Smallest Check on the Table.
Honda did not just invest in a magnet company this month. It joined a line that already includes the Pentagon and a sovereign Native American nation — and Honda wasn’t first, and it likely wasn’t the biggest. On September 9, Honda Motor Co. disclosed an equity investment in Niron Magnetics, a Minneapolis startup that builds…
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Stellantis Says It’s Turning the Corner. Its Own Numbers Tell a Thinner Story.
Stellantis wants the takeaway from its second-quarter numbers to be simple: the company is turning around. Revenue climbed 13% to €43.5 billion. Net profit returned to positive territory after a brutal 2025. Industrial free cash flow moved in the right direction for the first time in over a year. CEO Antonio Filosa called it “continued…
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South Korea Just Rehearsed a Hacked Steering Wheel. The U.S. Never Wrote the Playbook.
Nobody’s steering wheel actually moved on September 15. That was the point. Inside Hyundai’s Advanced Vehicle Platform division in Pangyo, South Korea, government officials, police investigators, and Hyundai engineers spent the day working through a scenario that had nothing to do with a hacker in a hoodie hijacking a car for the cameras. It started…
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Recycled Carbon Fiber Is Growing Fast. New Carbon Fiber Is Growing Faster.
A new forecast puts recycled carbon fiber at $427 million by 2031. Virgin fiber is compounding faster, almost none of the recovered material ever came from a car, and the EU just wrote thermosets out of its circularity arithmetic.
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Toyota’s New Patent Isn’t Really About Photos. It’s About Reading Your Health Records First.
Forget the photo. The interesting part of Toyota’s newest patent filing isn’t that a car might someday capture a picture of a roadside sunset without you touching your phone. It’s what the system checks first, before it ever decides that sunset is worth shooting. On September 3, 2026, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published…
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Ontario Wrote a Liability Shield When It Killed Speed Cameras. It Covers Contracts, Not Kids.
Ontario repealed automated speed enforcement through a red-tape bill and wrote itself protection from being sued. The protection it drafted covers camera vendors. A Toronto family is now testing what it does not cover.
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The Traffic Stop Failed. Dash Cam Footage Built the 107-MPH Case Anyway.
A Pierce County deputy could not complete the traffic stop. A search warrant and the driver’s own windshield camera produced 107 mph in a 35 — and exposed how little federal law protects in-car video.
