News
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California’s New EV Rebate Just Went Live. The Automaker It Was Written For Didn’t Show Up
California flipped the switch today on a new $3,500 discount for first-time electric vehicle buyers, and the state’s press release wants you looking at the money. Look instead at the guest list. Three automakers are handing out the rebate at the dealership right now: Tesla, Hyundai, and Lucid. A fourth name is conspicuously missing from…
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Lotus Unveils a Hybrid V8 Supercar to Save the Brand. The Real Story Is the Chinese Factory Running at One-Fifth Capacity
Lotus wants the headline this week to be about a supercar. A new hybrid V8 coming in 2028, code-named Type 135, packing more than 1,000 horsepower, built to remind everyone that a company now majority-owned by a Chinese industrial conglomerate still remembers what Colin Chapman’s name is supposed to mean. It’s a good story, and…
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Hertz Investors Sue After a 40% Wipeout — the Fleet Math Behind the Collapse
On June 24, Hertz told the market two things at once: that demand was fine, and that it needed money. The stock did not take the news gracefully, and the plaintiffs’ bar showed up on schedule. A securities class action filed in July names Hertz Global Holdings along with CEO Wayne Gilbert West and CFO…
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A Lotus Got Impounded for Hitting 140 MPH on I-15. The Real Shock Is How Little Engine It Took.
A Lotus got towed off the 15 Freeway near Temecula on Saturday, and the scariest number in that sentence isn’t 140. It’s 1.8, as in liters, as in an engine smaller than what Toyota once put in a Corolla XRS. Most people assume that kind of speed needs a rocket under the hood. This car…
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GM Signs On With SAIC Until 2047 — and Quietly Drops Chevrolet From Its China Plans
General Motors just signed a lease on a country it has spent two years writing down. On August 5 in Shanghai, GM and SAIC put their names to a 20-year extension of SAIC-GM, pushing the venture out to 2047 — a full year before the original 1997 agreement was due to lapse. That’s the headline.…
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A Naked Fire Truck Joyride In Wisconsin Exposed More Than The Driver, Watch
Just before 1 a.m. on a Tuesday in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, a woman walked up to a parked pickup truck outside Fire Station 3, climbed inside wearing nothing at all, flipped on the emergency lights, and drove off. Dispatchers spent the next hour listening to her on the fire department’s radio asking if anyone had…
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Mercedes-AMG’s Metal Badge Is So Fancy It’s Allegedly Branding Owners Like Cattle
Two Southern California drivers have handed the auto industry a real-world lesson in a problem that should have been obvious the moment somebody decided a painted plastic badge wasn’t premium enough: real metal gets real hot. Mercedes-Benz is now defending a design choice that has nothing to do with horsepower, brakes, or crash structure. It…
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Uber Pledges $10 Billion to Robotaxis — What That Actually Buys, and Who Builds the Cars
Uber spent Wednesday morning telling investors it intends to become the world’s largest platform for cars that don’t need a driver. Wall Street spent Wednesday afternoon marking the stock down. Both reactions are defensible, and the gap between them is the whole story. Start with the number that matters to anyone who cares about vehicles…
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An East LA AutoZone Gets Ransacked During Street Takeover. California’s Looting Law Never Even Applied.
Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies responded to Olympic and Atlantic twice in about twenty-four hours this past weekend, first around 2:20 a.m. Saturday and again around 3 a.m. Sunday, each time for a street takeover that spilled into the AutoZone’s parking lot. Both times, authorities say, people broke away from the crowd of spectators and…
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Dodge Brings Back the Super Bee With 600 HP — And Buries the Real News in the Fine Print
Read the press release Dodge sent out on August 7 closely enough, and it tells on itself. Dodge calls the new 2027 Charger Super Bee Launch Edition the “quickest, fastest, most powerful SIXPACK Charger” ever built. Notice the qualifier. Not the quickest, fastest, most powerful Charger, full stop. The quickest, fastest, most powerful SIXPACK Charger.…
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Relay Car Theft Explained: Why Your Key Fob Is Broadcasting Through Your Front Door
A Chicago driver walked out of her house this week to a stretch of empty curb where her car had been. No broken glass, no scattered trim clips, no ignition lock hanging out of the steering column. Police told her what happened: someone stood near her house, captured the signal her key fob was quietly…
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California Legalized 80,000-Pound Driverless Trucks Using a Rule Built for Fixing Typos. The Teamsters Just Called That Bluff.
No self-driving semi has crashed on a California freeway. None has even been allowed to try. That is the detail missing from most of the coverage of Teamsters California’s new lawsuit against the state’s DMV, and it is the detail that actually matters. On August 5, Teamsters California filed a writ of mandate in Alameda…
