There's a reason that the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona, were home to many autonomous vehicle programs: Driving on wide streets in great weather is easy mode for an AV. But a commercial robotaxi service that only works when the sun is shining is a commercial robotaxi service that will never recoup the billions it would cost to develop. That's why Moia—Volkswagen's AV division—has begun testing its autonomous ID Buzzes around the streets of Oslo, Norway, this winter.

For a while, autonomous driving was the hottest thing in tech. That hype has certainly calmed down a lot over the last few years as reality began to bite. Developing an AV that can safely drive around unpredictable humans turned out to be pretty hard, with myriad edge cases needing to be solved differently for each new city.

Startups have shut down, winnowing the field. Uber gave its AV program to Aurora, together with a rather fat investment check; Aurora these days is concentrating on autonomous trucking rather than robotaxis on busy city streets. VW, together with Ford, gave up on Argo AI. And General Motors killed off Cruise AV, seeing no way to make back the large pile of money it had already spent trying to make robotaxis work in San Francisco.

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A surprise find in my inbox this morning: news from Volkswagen about a pair of new electric vehicles it has in the works. Even better, they're both small and affordable, bucking the supersized, overpriced trend of the past few years. But before we get too excited, there's currently no guarantee either will go on sale in North America.

Next year sees the European debut of the ID. 2all, a small electric hatchback that VW wants to sell for less than 25,000 euros ($26,671). But the ID. 2all isn't really news: VW showed off the concept, as well as a GTI version, back in September 2023.

What is new is the ID. EVERY1, an all-electric entry-level car that, if the concept is anything to go by, is high on style and charm. It does not have a retro shape like a Mini or Fiat 500—VW could easily have succumbed to a retread of the Giugiaro-styled Golf from 1976 but opted for something new instead. The design language involves three pillars: stability, likability, and surprise elements, or "secret sauce," according to VW's description.

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Early on Monday morning, a bank of Tesla Superchargers went up in flames in Littleton, Massachusetts. While the cause of the fire is unknown, Tesla's Superchargers are not known for bursting into flames, and a $5,000 reward is being offered by the authorities, who believe the fire was "intentionally set." Assuming that arson is to blame, this may well be one more attack against a brand that's becoming more and more toxic.

Elon Musk's involvement with US President Donald Trump has changed the nature of the spotlight on the Tesla CEO. Instead of cute cameos in Marvel movies and being name-checked by Star Trek, Musk now makes headlines for boosting far-right politics in Europe and suggesting cuts to Social Security. This has made him some new friends, but it has lost many more in the process. And the consequences for Tesla's core business—selling electric cars—have been disastrous.

2024 was already a not-good year for the automaker. A decade ago, it was basically the only game in town if you wanted an electric car that could go more than 200 miles between charges, and celebrities and tastemakers flocked to the brand in droves. Now, customers are spoiled for choice, and Tesla's model range—effectively just two cars—has to compete against all the established OEMs that are increasingly working out how to build great EVs, plus all those Chinese startups that appear to have cracked that market in terms of what customers want and how to make it cheap.

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Watching Genesis' cars evolve and mature over the years has been interesting. Originally part of Hyundai's lineup, Genesis stood up as a brand in its own right at the end of 2015. Those early Hyundai-badged Genesises (Geneses?) were impressive considering the H on the nose, the dealerships they were found in, and the price out the door. The soft bigotry of low expectations, perhaps.

As Genesis has become its own thing, its vehicles no longer get that kind of benefit of the doubt. They have to stand against competitors from established luxury brands, the old-timers from Europe and now-middle-aged Japanese competitors. Recruiting the people associated with many of Bentley and Audi's more memorable designs was a good move in that regard.

This GV80 Coupe's design proved to be a hit with neighbors and the general public—few cars we've tested in the past couple of years have garnered as many compliments. The coupe was a relatively recent addition to the normal GV80 SUV, sacrificing a little volume at the back for a rakish ducktail rear end. All four corners are wrapped in what's now Genesis' light signature, a pair of thin horizontal stripes with microlens arrays supplying the brightness at the front.

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There's a saying about putting lipstick on a pig, but what if it's not lipstick? That's the question the universe set out to answer when it aligned in such a way that famed (or perhaps infamous) car customizer Mansory got itself a Tesla Cybertruck. The Mansory Elongation—a name that must have taken ages to think of—offers exterior, interior, and wheel and tire upgrades for the straight-edged stainless steel-wrapped pickup.

Among those who mod cars, there are the tuners, who focus on adding power and (one hopes) performance, and then there are the customizers, who concentrate more on aesthetics. Once upon a time, the entire luxury car industry worked like that—a client would buy a rolling chassis from Bugatti, Rolls-Royce, or Talbot and then have bodywork added by coachbuilders like Gurney Nutting, Touring, or Figoni et Falaschi.

At least the rear winglets don't entirely compromise access to the bed. Credit: Mansory

Modern homologation requirements have mostly put an end to that level of coachbuilding, but for the ultra-wealthy prepared to spend telephone numbers on cars, brands like Rolls-Royce will still occasionally oblige. More common now are those aftermarket shops that spiff up already luxurious cars, changing normal doors for gullwing versions, adding flaring fenders and bulging wheel arches, and plastering the interior in any hue of leather one might imagine.

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Ram's 1500 Ramcharger goes on sale later this year, and the company is taking a slightly different approach to its electrified truck than rivals Ford and General Motors, which both now offer battery electric pickups. The Ramcharger will be a range-extended EV, albeit one with more lithium-ion on board than most BEVs have.

Honestly, pickup trucks are a poor candidate for electrification, at least while we're still firmly in early adopter territory. The instant and impressive torque from an electric motor is great, but the shape of a cab and bed is inherently draggy in a way that few other vehicles are, a problem exacerbated by whopping great frontal areas.

But the pickup truck is also the most popular kind of vehicle in the US, and the industry has tried very hard to convince itself and everyone else that pickup buyers could seamlessly adopt electric powertrains en masse. That way, everyone in America could drive an EV, climate change would go away, and no one would have to consider changing their lifestyle or taking a bus to work.

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One of the big advantages of electric vehicles is their greater freedom when it comes to packaging. Batteries go where it makes the most sense in terms of stability and safety. Electric motors are compact and don't need much cooling compared to a combustion engine, and there's no exhaust to worry about.

Putting the motors close to the wheels makes sense—in the wheel itself if possible—and it seems that a startup called Donut Lab may have solved some of the problems hub-mounted motors have faced in the past.

You can see where the name came from—the motors look like metal donuts. That originally had me thinking they used axial flux technology, as some hybrid supercars do, but I was mistaken. These are radial flux motors, just ones that make a lot of torque considering their size and mass.

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Acura is gearing up to build its first entirely in-house battery-electric vehicles, but it has gotten a head start with the ZDX SUV. Built in collaboration with General Motors, the ZDX is a comfortable and competent luxury EV. More than that, it's a shining example of what badge engineering looks like in the digital age.

Automakers have long collaborated with each other. Sometimes that means working together on a powertrain or vehicle platform for use in quite different products. Sometimes, it's a little less involved—the Dodge Hornet differs very little from the Alfa Romeo Tonale, for example.

In the case of the Acura ZDX, the vehicle platform and the battery-electric powertrain are all thoroughly GM, what used to be called Ultium, until the American automaker retired that branding. It is, in essence, Acura's take on the Cadillac Lyriq and is similar, if not identical, in terms of power output and pricing.

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High-revving naturally aspirated engines and their associated screaming soundtracks might be on their way back to Formula 1. Not with next year's rule changes—that will see even bigger lithium-ion batteries and an even more powerful electric motor, paired with a turbocharged V6. But the sport is starting to think more seriously about the technical rules that will go into effect in 2030, and in an Instagram post yesterday, the man in charge of those rules signaled that he's open to cars that might be louder, lighter, and less complicated.

Mohammed Ben Sulayem's tenure as president of the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile has been packed with controversy. The former rally driver has alienated many F1 drivers with clampdowns on jewelry and, most recently, swearing, as well as a refusal to explain what happens to the money the FIA collects as fines.

He also ruffled feathers when the FIA opened up the entry process for new teams into the sport and then approved an entry by Andretti Global. While the FIA said yes, the commercial side (which is owned by Liberty Media) and the teams wanted nothing to do with an 11th team—at least until the $200 million anti-dilution fee was more than doubled and Michael Andretti stepped aside.

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Senior politicians in Japan are not going to let Nissan die easily. The automaker has been struggling for some time now, with an outdated product portfolio, ongoing quarterly losses, and soon, the closure of factories and thousands of layoffs. The Japanese government has been trying to find a suitor and had hoped that Honda would do its patriotic duty and save its rival from extinction.

That deal—one branded "a desperate move" by former Nissan CEO and fugitive from Japanese justice Carlos Ghosn—fell apart last week after Renault demanded a price premium for its shares in Nissan, and Nissan demanded a merger of equals with Honda. In reality, it was always going to be a takeover, with very little in it for Honda in the way of complimentary product lines or access to new technologies.

Today, we learned of yet another desperate move—the former Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga is among a group that is trying to get Tesla to invest in Nissan instead.

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Do you remember The Simpsons episode "Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield"? It first aired in February 1996, and it's the one where Homer and Bart go to Appliance Zone and are confronted with "genuine" Panaphonics, Sorny, and Magnetbox TVs. Well, it seems a similar brand name game has been going on at a Volvo dealership in China.

News started filtering out of China last week about an owner of a Volvo S60 sedan who realized the speakers in his car were not from Bowers and Wilkins, as they were supposed to be. Instead, the speakers were branded Bowers and VVilkins, substituting a pair of Vs for the W. We've seen that "typosquatting" approach in malicious emails plenty of times, but it's a first in a Volvo.

That wasn't the only phony part of the customer's S60. He also realized that the crystal transmission knob wasn't entirely right either and lacked the genuine article's backlighting.

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Some Tesla owners have yet another thing to worry about. As sales crash in Europe and protests gather outside Tesla showrooms in the US as a result of the CEO's political engagement, it now emerges that more than 376,000 Model Y crossovers and Model 3 sedans are at risk for power steering failure. So far, it has resulted in more than 3,000 warranty claims and caused 570 crashes, according to Tesla and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Federal investigators have known about the problem for some time—in 2023 NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation opened a preliminary inquiry after 12 reports of steering failures, including three Model 3s and nine Model Ys.

By February 2024, NHTSA had received 124 complaints about steering failure in 2023 Teslas and found another 2,264 reports of steering problems. Color me wrong, though—at the time, I wrote that "a software patch is unlikely to help," except a software patch is indeed the remedy here.

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New Yorkers' ongoing attempts to rein in car traffic on the island of Manhattan took a serious blow yesterday. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy terminated the city's congestion charge, which made drivers pay for going below 60th Street.

Duffy claimed that it's unfair that drivers should have to pay to use roads since there are already tolls on bridges into Manhattan and claimed there are no alternatives, ignoring the buses and subway trains operated by the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

Further, the city is being unfair against people who live far away, Duffy said. "The toll program leaves drivers without any free highway alternative and instead takes more money from working people to pay for a transit system and not highways. It’s backwards and unfair," he said in a statement.

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New Yorkers' ongoing attempts to rein in car traffic on the island of Manhattan took a serious blow yesterday. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy terminated the city's congestion charge, which made drivers pay for going below 60th Street.

Duffy claimed that it's unfair that drivers should have to pay to use roads since there are already tolls on bridges into Manhattan and claimed there are no alternatives, ignoring the buses and subway trains operated by the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

Further, the city is being unfair against people who live far away, Duffy said. "The toll program leaves drivers without any free highway alternative and instead takes more money from working people to pay for a transit system and not highways. It’s backwards and unfair," he said in a statement.

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Formula 1 racing turns 75 this year. The sport has been under new management for a few years and is now owned by an American entertainment company that's interested in trying new things to grow the sport—a refreshing change from the previous regime that did little but get rich at everyone else's expense. Among the new things it's not afraid to try was last night's F1 75 Live event, a star-studded extravaganza held under the dome of London's O2 Arena.

The idea behind F1 75 was to gather all 10 teams together to reveal each one's new look to the fans and make something of a splash about it. It's the first time the sport has attempted such a thing. In years past, teams would simply wait until the start of preseason testing to reveal that year's livery, although more recently, individual teams have started holding season launch events themselves.

F1 has started broadcasting some of that preseason testing on its streaming platform, but evidently, the bosses don't want to wait that long to start recapturing the attention of the fanbase, hence F1 75 Live in mid-February.

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PALM SPRINGS, Calif.—After a very pleasant morning getting acquainted with the model-year 2025 Hyundai Ioniq 5, it was time to meet the new addition to the range: the $55,400 Ioniq 5 XRT. It's the latest example of an automotive trend, quietly simmering in the background, suddenly taking off. And in this case, that trend is when a carmaker takes something that's normally meant to be driven on the road and makes it a bit more... rugged.

No, it's not a new idea—Audi Allroads and Volvo Cross Countries have played this game for years and years. More recently, companies like Porsche and Lamborghini have gotten into the act, creating supercars with six-figure price tags that aren't fazed by a little sand or snow.

But the Ioniq 5 isn't a supercar—it's just a super car. The XRT treatment was done by Hyundai's California design team, and it involves new, more protective cladding at the front and rear. The black plastic looks at first glance like it might be forged carbon—in fact it's a pixelated camo pattern that calls out to the "Parametric Pixel" design language that underpins the Ioniq 5's blocky look. The twin red-accented tow hooks are almost whimsical.

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PALM SPRINGS, Calif.—Can it really have been four(ish) years since we first drove the Hyundai Ioniq 5? With looks like a scaled-up hatchback from the 1980s, and one of the most advanced electric vehicle powertrains on the market, the Ioniq 5 was an instant hit with Ars and car buyers. Since then, Hyundai has begun building Ioniq 5s at its new plant in Georgia, and for model year 2025, it has made some tweaks that have turned a great EV into an even better one.

The Ioniq 5 was the first EV to use Hyundai's new E-GMP platform, designed for mid-to-large EVs with rear- or all-wheel drive. The powertrain uses an 800 V architecture, which endows it with a number of advantages, some obvious, like very fast DC fast charging, some less obvious, such as less mass (and expense) given over to high-voltage cabling. On the road, it proved highly efficient, not to mention stylish and practical.

The tweaks for model year 2025 are subtle as far as midlife upgrades go. There's a new wheel design, and some of the details at the front and rear bumper are more pronounced. The idea was to "accentuate the CUVness" of the car, according to Brad Arnold, head of exterior design at Hyundai Design—perhaps broadening the appeal to those who have no affection for late '80s hatchback vibes.

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Hyundai Ioniq 5s with NACS (J3400) ports, as opposed to the CCS1 style, are starting to roll out of its factory in Savannah, Georgia. It's the first manufacturer to sell electric vehicles with native NACS ports—other than Tesla, that is, and you'll be able to read about our first drive in the model year 2025 Ioniq 5, as well as the new, off-roady Ioniq 5 XRT next week. But we've got some good news for owners of any existing Hyundai EVs out there—if your car has a CCS1 port, then next month, you're eligible for a free CCS1-NACS adapter.

Hyundai wasn't the first OEM to ink a deal with Tesla to gain access to the Supercharger network, but it is ahead of Ford, General Motors, and Rivian in swapping to the Tesla-style charge ports. Existing owners get access to the large charging network, too, but they'll need an adapter to make use of the smaller NACS plugs.

And those will be available next month, Hyundai told us. What's more, they're going to be gratis, or free as in beer. As long as you have a VIN, the automaker will send you the adapter, which you'll be able to order once the website goes live in March.

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The proposed merger between Honda and Nissan is officially dead. The plan, announced in late December, would have created the world's third-largest automaker, displacing Volkswagen Group from the bronze on the podium. But it was also never quite seen as a merger of equals—many suspected this was a Honda takeover of beleaguered Nissan at the behest of the Japanese government.

Nissan is already part of a triple-alliance, together with Mitsubishi and France's Renault. Although Mitsubishi considered joining the Honda-Nissan merger, that was old news by late January.

That alliance might have been part of the problem. Although not an actual merger, the car companies involved each own stakes in the other—in Renault's case, it owns 37.5 percent of Nissan. Honda would have liked Nissan to buy out Renault's stake, presumably not keen on such a significant chunk of the company under foreign ownership.

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American roads have grown deadlier for everyone, but the toll on pedestrians has been disproportionate. From a record low in 2009, the number of pedestrians being killed by vehicles rose 83 percent by 2022 to the highest it's been in 40 years. During that time, overall traffic deaths increased by just 25 percent. Now, a new study from AAA has identified a number of common factors that can explain why so many more pedestrians have died.

Firstly, no, it's not because there are more SUVs on the road, although these larger and taller vehicles are more likely to kill or seriously injure a pedestrian in a crash. And no, it's not because everyone has a smartphone, although using one while driving is a good way to increase your chances of hitting someone or something. These and some other factors (increased amount of driving, more alcohol consumption) have each played a small role, but even together, they don't explain the magnitude of the trend.

For a while, researchers started seeing that the increased pedestrian death toll was almost entirely happening after dark and on urban arterial roads—this has continued to be true through 2022, the AAA report says.

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