jalopnik.com
Apple’s car is dead, after ten years of it being an extremely real thing that was absolutely going to happen and totally change the automotive world. This wasn’t going to be any major loss to us enthusiasts, until we learned one key piece of information: It was going to be a van. Vans rule, and losing one feels like a blow to the enthusiast world. Sure, none of us likely could’ve afforded that gullwing-doored van, but it would’ve been a neat thing to see through the windows of our aging shitbox…
about 1 month ago
jalopnik.com
Cars cost too much these days. Used cars, new cars — they all demand too much from our increasingly beleaguered wallets. Sure, new cars offer more features, tech, and safety than every, but how much are those worth to you in real, actual dollars? That’s a tough question to answer. How do you quantify that kind of progress, tie it all back down to a single line on a balance sheet? No, we’re not going to make you develop the formulas to figure out which features are worth what. Instead, today, we…
about 1 month ago
jalopnik.com
I love electric cars. I love electric bikes, too. I don’t love them for their efficiency, their maintenance cost-savings, or their practicality, though — I love them because they’re fun. Now, not every EV is fun. This, I admit. But that doesn’t make them all bad, any more than a boring detuned two-liter turbo makes all hot hatches unremarkable appliances. Allow The NSX Was Only In Development For 4 Years to explain: Electric power delivery, even when it’s not pinning you to your seat with th…
about 1 month ago
jalopnik.com
Every year, the price of a new car ticks ever upwards. Loans get longer, yet monthly payments are always on the rise, leading to an epidemic of folks underwater on their loans. Now, there’s a new complicating factor: Used car prices are falling, meaning folks are getting less for their over-leveraged trade than ever. A new report from Edmunds looked at used car prices compared with trades that have negative equity and found that a drop in the former has led to a steep rise in the latter. Accor…
about 1 month ago
jalopnik.com
I admit it: I love a shiny new toy. I own a Flipper Zero, I have a BambuLabs 3D printer, I’m the target market for Ooh Fancy Emergent Technology That Promises To Improve Life In Vague Inscrutable Ways. Yet, even I am on the side of the California governments trying to fight autonomous vehicle developers. My Flipper, despite public outcry, won’t hurt anyone on its own — it won’t even hurt anyone with my assistance, due to my longstanding policy of generally not being a dick. My 3D printer, simi…
about 1 month ago
jalopnik.com
The race for fully autonomous passenger cars is a dumb one. Businesses are playing with technology that offers massive downsides for little gain, and just end up clogging up streets with their often-confused computerized vehicles. But there’s more to the story than mere Sisyphean endeavors of trying to teach human behavior to computers: These companies have also wasted tons of money on the whole thing. Cruise reportedly costs General Motors $2 billion per year. Waymo has taken in $5.7 billion…
about 2 months ago
jalopnik.com
Cryptocurrency is a weird, bad bubble that’s largely already popped, but some folks just refuse to give up and cash out. Instead, they’re hawking cryptocurrency perfumes to appeal to women, presumably because they asked exactly zero women what they’d want from crypto. It’s interesting, though, that a major crypto firm would market itself using liquids. The crypto industry is under continual fire for its wasting of natural resources, and chief among those is water — which crypto churns through…
about 2 months ago
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Some cars are better than others, but no car is perfect — and our beloved shitboxes are often far from it. Earlier this week, we asked just how bad things are with your daily drivers and learned a few important things. Plenty of you actually have reliable, practical transportation in addition to your unending projects, and it seems like nearly every one of those daily drivers is a Mazda or Nissan. Oh, and, we learned the worst things about your cars. Let’s dive in. It’ll Run Forever, But Not F…
about 2 months ago
jalopnik.com
Cars and anime are a time-honored pair. They go together like chocolate and peanut butter, as generations of shows from Speed Racer to MF Ghost have demonstrated, so it’s only natural that studios keep making beautiful shows about racing. Now, though, a new trend is cropping up again and again: Anime car ads. In the past few years, we’ve seen three major automakers jump into the anime advertising market. Some have been a natural fit, while others are just downright strange — leading everyone t…
about 2 months ago
jalopnik.com
Folks, happy Dune release day. By the time you’re reading this, I’ll have already visited Arrakis once more, but for now we’re all united in our anticipation. Will Denis Villeneuve pull it off again? I think so. He’s Denis Villeneuve, after ll But until we can all ride around on Shai Hulud, we’ll need another way to get from point A to point B. It may be less cool, but we’re going to get as close to the Maker’s level of interesting and unique as we can. In other words, we’re going to get the in…
about 2 months ago
jalopnik.com
Government auctions are a great way to pick up cars on the cheap, but even they have their limits. You might find cars going for just a few hundred dollars, but you’re not likely to find them selling for a single bill — unless, of course, you play a little fast and loose with an online auction like an Oklahoma man did. Evan James Coker apparently found some flaw in the General Service Administration’s auction page, which allowed him to bid up the price of various auctions but “win” them in the…
2 months ago
jalopnik.com
People love to make fun of art. After all, rich people will say that anything they own is a piece of art — down to their mass-produced, entirely normal cars — so why should we ever believe them? If so much of the art world is just money laundering between nepo baby failchildren, why should we believe that anything is art at all? This isn’t an uncommon line of thinking, but the end result of “actually, nothing is art” is patently absurd. So, plenty of folks revert back to the basics: Art is tec…
2 months ago
jalopnik.com
Have you ever had an opinion? Judging by our comments, I think you certainly have. But have you ever had an opinion that everyone disagreed with? If so, you’re in luck: Today, we want to hear it. That’s right, today we’re asking for your hottest car takes. Do you think all racing series should only use showroom-stock cars? Do you want a mandatory minimum of 500 horsepower on all new production vehicles? Do you want anything larger than a kei car banned from American roads? Now’s your chance to…
2 months ago
jalopnik.com
Utes are underrated as a form of automobile. The Australians get it, they understand Ute Supremacy, but Americans are hopelessly lost on the idea of Cars With Truck Beds. Perhaps someday we’ll catch up. It won’t happen overnight, though. It’ll be a slow growth; utes popping up around occasional corners, then with increasing frequency, until one day you look around and there’s naught but utes left from sea to shining sea. Today, though, we start at the beginning: Just two utes among this week’s…
2 months ago
jalopnik.com
Sometimes, we get it wrong. We make mistakes. When we’re lucky, you all call us out on them — you help keep us honest. Today, I need to apologize for a grievous error I made yesterday: I missed a pun that was staring me dead in the face. I am so, so sorry. Yesterday, after much raving amongst Jalops over text, Andy raved about the trailer for “Twisters” that dropped during the Super Bowl and I hopped into the comments to express my own eagerness to see the movie the second it comes out. Unfort…
2 months ago
jalopnik.com
If you’ve ever ridden a bike — whether bicycle or motorcycle — you understand how they work: Steering happens in the front, where you turn the handlebars, and the rest of the bike follows as it leans (at least, most bikes do.) Most of us have taken it for granted since we were kids. There’s one problem, though: That’s not how bikes steer. A new video from FortNine breaks down all the myths about how bikes turn: Steering the bars in the direction you want to go, body english, and leaning. As it…
3 months ago
jalopnik.com
Cars: They cost too much. Big cars, little cars, fast cars, slow cars — the only things they all share are that they’re too expensive to buy, too expensive to own, and never worth enough when you’re trying to sell yours. Earlier this week, we asked you for the most overpriced new cars, and you gave us a wealth of answers. Here are some of the best. Infiniti QX80 For me, it’s the 2024 Infiniti QX80 (MSRP: $74,150 - $88,450). I’ve driven one as a rental car and couldn’t believe the price they c…
3 months ago
jalopnik.com
Happy Tuesday! It’s January 30, 2024, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know. 1st Gear: Driving Is Just Too Expensive Every year, the average transaction prices for cars creep ever higher. It’s not just the purchase, though — maintenance, insurance, even car washes have skyrocketed. Why? Well, it’s simple: The people selling you these things want to make more money.…
3 months ago
jalopnik.com
Happy Monday! It’s January 29, 2024, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know. 1st Gear: Toyota Stops Shipping Diesel Vehicles Over Test ‘Irregularities’ It’s been a rough couple months for Toyota. First, its subsidiary Daihatsu admitted that it might have faked three decades of crash tests, and now the company’s diesel engines are under similar scrutiny. From Reuters:…
3 months ago
jalopnik.com
For over a decade, Tesla has promised buyers that complete and total vehicular autonomy is right around the corner. So far, that has yet to be true, but it hasn’t stopped some folks from pretending otherwise — doing everything they can to avoid touching the steering wheel for as long as they can. This has, of course, led to an aftermarket replete with “solutions” that extend the time between steering wheel touches. But an investigation from The Drive showed that those defeat devices really onl…
3 months ago
jalopnik.com
Some members of the automotive press were bamboozled by a Toyota press release and accompanying conference last week. The story was that, in order to promote the company’s electrified offerings, Toyota had released an AI companion named Electra — an AI that immediately went off the rails and began talking about Toyota’s hesitancy to embrace electric vehicles. The press release, of course, was fake. The conference featured real media members watching as actors played out a script. The AI assista…
3 months ago
