As Jalopnik’s resident car buying expert and professional car shopper, I get emails. Lots of emails. I’ve decided to pick a few questions and try to help out. This week we are talking about issued revealed on a used car inspection, lift kits voiding warranties, and how long it sh … | Continue reading
Peak irony from the UAW corruption investigation, car rationing in New Delhi, a meh German economy, and Ford bails on another one of its tech ventures. All this and more in in The Morning Shift for Friday, September 13, 2019. | Continue reading
Yeah, sure, Bugatti breaking the 300+ mph mark with the Chiron is a pretty big deal, but have you ever seen something go 6,599 miles per hour before? Can you even see that? | Continue reading
Just before the Frankfurt International Motor Show begins tomorrow, Volkswagen revealed the final production version of what is likely their most significant car in decades, the ID.3. You can think of the ID.3 as a Golf translated into an electric vehicle via Volkswagen’s new MEB … | Continue reading
GOLDEN, Colo.—Shortly after arriving at the Global Hyperloop Conference, Brad Swartzwelter looked me in the eye and issued himself a challenge. “If I haven’t convinced you by the end of this conference that Hyperloop is the most glorious transportation opportunity of our time, th … | Continue reading
When a NASCAR pit crew swarms a car, it may look like they’ve been servicing cars all their lives. But many of them are actually athletes trained to do a mechanic’s job, and as Jalopnik found after reaching out to NASCAR’s top race teams, most never expected to find themselves th … | Continue reading
Fifty strangers were lined up to spray paint my car. | Continue reading
I made a mistake this week. I tweeted. I tweeted that, while I like the Taycan, I was disappointed that it couldn’t beat the range of the Tesla Model S years after it came out. And while I stand by the opinion that the Taycan isn’t fundamentally changing the game, Audi took the t … | Continue reading
Porsche’s first fully electric car is here, and depending on who you ask, it could be the most serious competition the Tesla Model S has faced yet. It’s called the Porsche Taycan, and it is an all-electric sport sedan promising up to 750 horsepower, acceleration from zero to 60 m … | Continue reading
Porsche’s first fully electric car is here, and depending on who you ask, it could be the most serious competition the Tesla Model S has faced yet. It’s called the Porsche Taycan, and it is an all-electric sport sedan promising up to 750 horsepower, acceleration from zero to 60 m … | Continue reading
I knew that even though Volkswagen ended Beetle (including Beetle-dressed Golfs) production in July, they wouldn’t ever really be able to not build some sort of Beetle, and I think this announcement proves that to be correct. VW is partnering with German EV conversion company eCl … | Continue reading
Let’s get something out of the way up front: Ray Magliozzi hates cars. And not in a my-car-is-a-pain-in-the-ass-and-it’s-always-breaking kind of way (though there is some of that too), but in a they’re-killing-the-planet kind of way. “How could you not?” Ray told me earlier this … | Continue reading
When the $3 million Bugatti Chiron launched a few years ago, we all marveled at how slow it was. With an electronically limited top speed of 261 mph, it didn’t seem capable of matching its predecessor the Veyron Super Sport, which hit a Guinness-certified 267.8 mph record in 2013 … | Continue reading
Quick—which side of your car is your fuel filler on? No running outside to look, that’s cheating, and you might get hurt pulling your pants on. Chances are most of you at the very least had to take a moment to think about this. I suspect you won’t think long about what side your … | Continue reading
On Wednesday, Uber and Lyft released a new petition against Assembly Bill 5, the California bill about to be debated in the Senate that, if passed, would almost certainly result in gig economy workers being designated as employees in the state rather than independent contractors. … | Continue reading
Advanced driver assistance systems, which include lane-keeping, adaptive cruise control and automatic braking, are designed to make cars and driving safer than ever. But sometimes, functions like automatic braking malfunction and have the opposite effect, wrecking a driver’s conf … | Continue reading
“When are you going to get press cars again?” my mom asked. I looked down at my right foot, still in a support boot a month after snapping two bones in my ankle. She wasn’t concerned, or just casually inquiring about my driving schedule. I had let her borrow my 2015 Volkswagen T … | Continue reading
In July, an Uber driver we’ll call Dave—his name has been changed here to protect his identity—picked up a fare in a trendy neighborhood of a major U.S. metropolitan area. It was rush hour and surge pricing was in effect due to increased demand, meaning that Dave would be paid … | Continue reading
After Volkswagen admitted to cheating on the emissions tests of hundreds of thousands of cars back in 2015, the company was forced to buy back the vehicles, modify them to produce fewer emissions but still perform well and resell the cars with a strong warranty. The resulting use … | Continue reading
Uber, the ride-hailing company that has lost $16.2 billion over the last two and a half years, got a bit of good news thanks to the generosity of Texas taxpayers. | Continue reading
On February 28, 25-year-old bike messenger Aurilla Lawrence was killed by a truck driver in Brooklyn. After killing her, the truck driver did not stop. Following a familiar pattern whenever a cyclist is killed by a driver, the NYPD rushed to make excuses for the driver, hypothes … | Continue reading
People generally seem to be on board with the new 2020 Lincoln Aviator. I know I am. It looks great, is probably real comfortable and comes with a ton of power. But it also has a Phone As A Key feature, which is a terrible idea and a trend I wish automakers would drop altogether. | Continue reading
This may seem like a trivial thing—and, really, it is—but it’s something that’s bothered me for a while, and I really want to try and understand it. It’s something that I suspect some of you have noticed before, but likely gave it no thought. But did give it some thought. And the … | Continue reading
It’s still pretty rare to see a full-battery vehicle rated by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, because there still aren’t that many of them. Even rarer is what the 2019 Audi E-Tron achieved: the Top Safety Pick+ award, making it the first battery-electric car to get t … | Continue reading
Fundamentally, electric motors haven’t changed all that much since they were developed well over a century ago: they’re still electromechanically spinning rotors inside of stators. There a Texas startup, though, that claims to have developed the first real, substantive improvemen … | Continue reading
Drive free or die. | Continue reading
With hundreds of 737 MAX planes still on the ground following two fatal crashes, airlines are frantically trying to lease available 737s to fill gaps left by the MAX. They’re so desperate that they’re leasing 737-200s, a variant that was discontinued in 1988. | Continue reading
Ever wonder how much air vents cost on a Honda versus a Toyota, or how much a horn bracket weighs on a BMW? Unless you’re the most deeply obsessive car enthusiast in the world, probably not. But automakers care, and they’re always trying to figure out ways to outdo competitors—ev … | Continue reading
For decades, the dream of motorists all over the world has been a car that could run on frothy buckets of cheap, garbage fish like tilapia or something. So far, though, that dream has eluded humankind. But now, thanks to the rise of modern electric cars, perhaps it’s possible wit … | Continue reading
Helen Hudson will tell you what the 15th Ward was like when she was a girl. In the 1950s and early ’60s, the Syracuse neighborhood was home to thousands of predominantly black residents who had settled in the growing upstate New York city during and after the Great Migration. Tho … | Continue reading
In Elon Musk’s mind-brain, the future is autonomous cars (Teslas) getting sucked into the earth and then fired through tunnels at speed in a clean, orderly new system for navigating cities. The reality has... not quite been that good. Now in Las Vegas, Musk’s tunneling venture Th … | Continue reading
Ever since human beings have been jamming themselves into little metal canisters and shooting themselves off into space, there has been one thing everyone wants to know: how do you go to the bathroom? Sure, you can read about how it’s done, and for most people that’s enough. But … | Continue reading
Correction 3:47 p.m. ET: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated Ford wrote off its entire $181 million investment in Pivotal Software. Ford lost $181 million in market value from its Pivotal stock due to the events described in the article, but as a Ford spokesperson … | Continue reading
You have to admire a man like John Brabazon, not only for having an incredible license plate, but also for being the first person to fly a plane in Britain. And not only did he do that, but he also had a splendid plane named after him. A splendid, worthless, beautiful, useless, w … | Continue reading
When you’re trying to figure out how to get somewhere, the odds are pretty good your first move is opening Google Maps. But Uber and Lyft each want to change that. To them I say: good luck. | Continue reading
You might think an electric car is a car, but you’d be wrong. It is a giant battery that, for some reason, spends most of its existence powering a thing that’s not moving at all. That’s why Nissan sees a future for the Leaf as a battery that can power your house. | Continue reading
Starting in 2020, flying out of France—both domestic and international, but not for connecting passengers—will incur an additional surcharge dubbed an Ecotax, because the revenue raised will go towards “eco-friendly transport infrastructure” such as trains. | Continue reading
I’d call it an open secret in the world of cars but for the fact that everyone knows about it: the dual-clutch transmission in the last-generation Ford Fiesta and Focus was an utter disaster. The gearboxes are plagued with problems like sudden acceleration, sputtering, and slippi … | Continue reading
New York City has a lot of tunnels, and a lot of cars drive through those tunnels everyday, releasing all sorts of particulates out of their tailpipes that eventually stick to the walls of said tunnels. To avoid too much buildup, the tunnel walls and roof are cleaned, and here’s … | Continue reading
One of the earliest pieces of advice I ever got from my mother is to never share hats with someone. My coworker Erica Lourd received similar motherly advice, forbidden from using a friend’s hairbrush. Why? Because this is how things like lice and bedbugs can spread. And now with … | Continue reading
There are still cowboys driving livestock across America in 2019. While most of us are snoozing, they’re rolling up to dark fields with trucks full of creatures that are critical to our nation’s agriculture: thousands and thousands of bees. | Continue reading
The Martin Stationette was pitched as the American economy car of the future. It was supposed to make our lives better, our roads clearer, but only one prototype was ever built. That’s probably for the best. On this week’s episode of Jason Drives (I am writing the post for it bec … | Continue reading
On June 13, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law new legislation that opens the door to fully autonomous vehicles in a way no other state has. “A fully autonomous vehicle may operate in this state regardless of whether a human operator is physically present in the vehicl … | Continue reading
The modern car market is in a period of transition as semi-autonomous features migrate onto it, and not in the joyous, life-is-about-to-change-forever kind of way. It’s more like it just hit middle school, and a bunch of terrible, miserable things no one understands are happenin … | Continue reading
The 2020 Bentley Flying Spur took some notes from the Porsche Panamera it shares a platform with, finally getting rear-wheel steering, adding rear-wheel bias to its all-wheel drive system, and boosting its W12 engine to reach a top speed of 207 mph. | Continue reading
One weekend morning toward the end of 2017, I woke up at home in Venice, CA and took a walk, only to see something entirely new: people on electric scooters. And I mean lots of people on electric scooters. Literally overnight, a new company called Bird, founded just two miles awa … | Continue reading
If you needed any further proof that we live in hell and everything is meaningless, there is a new tech-less pogo-stick-sharing micro mobility startup from Sweden called Cangoroo that people are apparently taking seriously. Allegedly intended to compete with soul-crushingly popu … | Continue reading
Here's a fun problem to have. Let's say you're a car company famous for going racing. You built yourself a bunch of racing cars so you could beat the pants off your biggest rival. Then you find out you have a couple leftovers! What the hell do you do with them? | Continue reading