My iPhone Wallet stores theater and transit tickets and all of my credit and debit cards, and it lets me sashay like a boss through my gym’s turnstile. The tech works flawlessly, requiring only my proximity or the merest tilt of the device toward my face. Biometric goodness means I have few worries about security, even accessing my bank accounts.
OK, it’s more than just a metal key; it’s a passive electronic fob with proximity-based radio signaling, which means I don’t have to press anything to unlock my car. But it’s nevertheless a bacteria-rich, easily lost, marque-branded plastic blob that, in truth, I no longer need. And I haven’t needed it for some years.
BMW 5 Series owners have been using smartphones to unlock, start, and digitally share access to their luxury vehicles since 2021, the year after Apple’s introduced its plainly titled Car Key. Audi, Kia, and Hyundai later implemented support for the feature. During the WWDC 2025 keynote in June, Apple said that 13 additional vehicle brands would “soon” join them, including Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC, and Porsche. “Soon” appears to mean 2026.
Tesla Model 3 owners have had digital key access since 2017, when the midsize sedan launched without a fob; it could only be opened with a smartphone. Subsequently, digital-native carmakers Rivian and Polestar also enabled digital key use. (“Digital Key has been removed from the upcoming 2025.34 software update for further testing,” noted a recent update from Rivian. The company’s comms team tells WIRED it’ll be available again “soon.”)
Owners of the latest high-end Ford vehicles can use digital keys. Still, the Dearborn, Michigan, company clearly isn’t ready to ditch fobs—in October it launched the $200 Truckle, an ornate Western-style belt buckle with a cavity to fit the oversized F-150 fob, so it need never get lost or spoil the line of your jeans.
Courtesy of Ford
Digital for All
Phone-as-a-key functionality isn’t just for select luxury cars. The wire-in MoboKey device turns a smartphone into a digital key and can be fitted by an auto electrician to almost any modern car, gas or electric.
Similarly, KeyDIY, a Chinese smart key maker, sells a USB-powered box of tricks that allows almost any car to operate with a digital key. The box grabs car connectivity signals–Flipper-Zero-style–emulating the rolling codes that key fobs use to foil signal boosting “relay” attacks where criminals use antennas and extenders to capture the signals from a car’s key fob. (Always store your fob in a Faraday cage.) KeyDIY’s box, which lives in the car, is actuated by a device connected momentarily to the vehicle’s onboard diagnostic port.
The Key to Meaning
In short, the picture here is that digital key tech is mature and (mostly) secure, and we’re perfectly happy using Bluetooth Low Energy, near-field communication (NFC), and ultra-wideband (UWB) in the rest of our life—unless you’re a conspiracy theorist who clings to cash, that is—so why are so many of us still seemingly so attached to our physical car fobs?
“Most people are reluctant to go without the physical backup of an actual key,” says Sean Tucker, managing editor of automotive research company Kelley Blue Book. And, he adds, picking up a fob is now an ingrained habit. There are also emotional factors to consider.
“A car key is full of meaning,” says Stefan Gössling, a professor at Linnaeus University, Sweden, and author of The Psychology of the Car. “Jingling them gives some motorists the opportunity to show off their automobile, even if the car is not close by. Car keys are also comforting to some, a physical reminder that your vehicle is there to take you away; to protect you.”
The issues could cascade beyond the design. The auto manufacturing industry operates on strict production schedules. Though it builds in time to validate and test whatever new features come in each new model, the sudden intro of a design change late in the process could throw off the delicate timetable.
In this decade, China’s auto industry has shocked the world by racing ahead of legacy automakers, quickly developing, with government support, ever newer, cheaper, and more technologically advanced vehicles on shorter production schedules. The country is the world’s largest automotive market; it’s expected to manufacture a full third of the world’s cars by 2030. Still, quickly complying with new design regulations won’t be easy for domestic Chinese automakers either, says Broglin-Peterson. “Mechncial release requires a mechanical assembly,” she says. “It’s not just, you write some code.”
Automaker’s door handle trouble likely won’t end in China. The new rules could lead to cascading responses from other global regulators. It’s a now-familiar pattern: China, once a place with lax protections, has forged ahead of the rest of the world in setting guidelines for electric vehicle battery safety and recycling, and autonomous vehicle tech. “This is a classic example of China setting the guardrails early: protecting consumers while quietly shaping global design standards,” Bill Russo, the CEO of Automobility, a Shanghai-based advisory firm, wrote in an email.
A Handle on Design
For many years, says Raphael Zammit, the chair of the transportation design department at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, flush electronic door handles were the stuff of futuristic concept cars. “The fact that Elon Musk and Tesla put it into production was, frankly, pretty amazing,” he says. Their rise was linked with the increasing popularity of electric vehicles; tucking door handles into the doors of cars was meant to reduce their drag coefficient, leading to increased battery efficiency. Or so the theory went: Back-of-the-envelope math suggests the tweak maybe adds a mile of range. Maybe. Either way, the handles became a “demarcation of luxury,” Zammit says.
Indeed, electronic door handles can be found on many luxury vehicles, including some made by Volkswagen, General Motors, Ford, and Mercedes-Benz. Jake Fisher, the senior director of the Consumer Reports’ Auto Test Center, tested several of those vehicles’ electronic handles. While all had emergency mechanical releases, as the Chinese regulations mandate, some were in places that could be difficult to find in an emergency—on the floor, in shadow, or, as in the rear seats of the 2021 Model Y under investigation by NHTSA, under a slot at the bottom of the rear door pocket. The best emergency mechanical releases, Consumer Reports found, were those that simply needed to be pulled a bit harder than usual to open, an intuitive reaction in an emergency.
Despite years of effort and the outlay of billions of dollars, none of the world’s automakers have yet to match Tesla’s prowess in delivering over-the-air (OTA) software updates. Just like with your phone and laptop, these operating system refreshes allow owners to upgrade their cars remotely.
Tesla introduced OTAs in 2012, but now Elon Musk’s company pumps out these updates like no other automaker. “Tesla once issued 42 updates within six months,” Jean-Marie Lapeyre, Capgemini’s CTO for automotive, tells WIRED. But for many other automakers, says Lapeyre, OTAs ship “maybe once a year.”
For traditional car companies, software remains, or has been until very recently, merely one bolt-on component among many. In contrast, for Tesla and other digital-native automakers—among them Rivian, Lucid, Polestar, and Chinese brands such as BYD, Xpeng, and Xiaomi—it’s almost the whole shebang.
Interestingly, GM was actually the first automaker to introduce OTA functionality, two years ahead of Tesla, but it was limited to the OnStar telematics system. OTAs from traditional automakers often add just infotainment tweaks, while OTAs from the digital-first brands can be shape-shifters, increasing range and boosting speed. They often also gift features from the puerile to the genuinely performative: fart noises on demand from Tesla, plusher suspension for Rivian owners, and car unlocking by phone from Polestar.
Cars have had onboard microprocessors since the 1970s, but until relatively recently traditional automakers made their cars with software designed to remain largely unchanged throughout a vehicle’s 20-year lifespan. Since 2021, the complexity of the latest vehicle software platforms has increased by about 40 percent per year, estimates McKinsey. There are now 69 million OTA-capable vehicles in the US, reckons S&P Global.
Done right, OTAs not only freshen a car’s user experience, they can also slash the cost of recalls for automakers. More than 13 million vehicles were recalled in 2024 due to software-related issues, a 35 percent increase over the prior year. Before OTAs, the average cost of an auto recall was about $500 per vehicle. OTAs may be delivered wirelessly, but they are not cost-free, either for the environment or for automakers—Harman Automotive, a supplier of OTA software, estimates that it costs an automaker $66.50 per vehicle to deliver a 1 GB update.
But it’s usually only the digital natives sending out huge update files, because generally only they are capable of firmware over-the-air (FOTA) updates. These can update powertrains, battery management, and braking systems. FOTA capabilities require cars—usually EVs—to have good, persistent connectivity and significant computing power, much of it left latent for future updates. Lucid’s Gravity electric SUV, for instance, is equipped with the latest Nvidia Orin-X processor, with 512 GB of onboard storage, yet the vehicle’s OS fits on just 100 GB, leaving oodles of room for later OTA refreshes.
As Western car company revenues fall, automakers are looking to make money from OTA-enabled subscriptions. Give Tesla $2,000 and, with the optional Acceleration Boost, your EV can be unlocked over-the-air to become a tire squeal quicker off the mark. For another $10 a month, Tesla’s “premium connectivity” package adds streaming data, live sentry cams, and other goodies. Want what critics claim is the misleadingly named Full Self Driving (FSD) Supervised feature? It’s yours for an additional $99 a month.
Building vehicles is a hugely complex process. Hundreds of different companies provide parts, materials, electronics, and more to vehicle manufacturers, and these expansive supply chain networks often relyupon “just-in-time” manufacturing. That means they order parts and services to be delivered in the specific quantities that are needed and exactly when they need them—large stockpiles of parts are unlikely to be held by auto makers.
“The supplier networks that are supplying into these manufacturing plants, they’re all set up for efficiency—economic efficiency, and also logistic efficiency,” says Siraj Ahmed Shaikh, a professor in systems security at Swansea University. “There’s a very carefully orchestrated supply chain,” Shaikh adds, speaking about automotive manufacturing generally. “There’s a critical dependency for those suppliers supplying into this kind of an operation. As soon as there is a disruption at this kind of facility, then all the suppliers get affected.”
One company that makes glass sun roofs has started laying off workers, according to a report in the Telegraph. Meanwhile, another firm told the BBC it has laid off around 40 people so far. French automotive company OPmobility, which employs 38,000 people across 150 sites, told WIRED it is making some changes and monitoring the events. “OPmobility is reconfiguring its production at certain sites as a consequence of the shutdown of its production by one of its customers based in the United Kingdom and depending on the evolution of the situation,” a spokesperson for the firm says.
While it is unclear which specific JLR systems have been impacted by the hackers and what systems JLR took offline proactively, many were likely taken offline to stop the attack from getting worse. “It’s very challenging to ensure containment while you still have connections between various systems,” says Orla Cox, head of EMEA cybersecurity communications at FTI Consulting, which responds to cyberattacks and works on investigations. “Oftentimes as well, there will be dependencies on different systems: You take one down, then it means that it has a knock on effect on another.”
Whenever there’s a hack in any part of a supply chain—whether that is a manufacturer at the top of the pyramid or a firm further down the pipeline—digital connections between companies may be severed to stop attackers from spreading from one network to the next. Connections via VPNs or APIs may be stopped, Cox says. “Some may even take stronger measures such as blocking domains and IP addresses. Then things like email are no longer usable between the two organizations.”
The complexity of digital and physical supply chains, spanning across dozens of businesses and just-in-time production systems, means it is likely that bringing everything back online and up to full-working speed may take time. MacColl, the RUSI researcher, says cybersecurity issues often fail to be debated at the highest level of British politics—but adds this time could be different due to the scale of the disruption. “This incident has the potential to cut through because of the job losses and the fact that MPs in constituencies affected by this will be getting calls,” he says. That breakthrough has already begun.
A proposed California law, Senate Bill 712, would have exempted older, collector vehicles from the state’s strict smog-check requirements—if they were insured as collector motor vehicles and had historic license plates—because these cars are driven only occasionally. The bill passed earlier committees but was ultimately halted in the Assembly Appropriations Committee, apparently over concerns about negative effects on air quality and state revenue. The law was nicknamed “Leno’s Law” after one of its backers, former Tonight Show host and classic car collector Jay Leno.
Car companies love a mission statement. With the arrival of the Concept C, Audi’s new one is crystal clear: “radical simplicity”. An all-electric two-seater with a retractable folding hard-top, the Concept C is a “progressive interpretation” of the company’s legacy, says Audi—and it’s not hard to see the TT has factored pretty heavily in that.
But as you pick your way through the messaging—key words here are precision and clarity, as well as a re-emphasis on our old friend, “Vorsprung durch Technik”—this feels like a substantial reset after a period of aesthetic drift. This isn’t just a piece of conceptual eye candy, then: it’s Audi engaging combat mode in an industry currently beset with challenges.
“Our vision is a call to action for the whole company—and is essential for making our brand truly distinctive once again,” Audi’s Chief Creative Officer Massimo Frascella explains. “It is the philosophy behind every decision we make, and we aim to apply its principles across the entire organization. We call it ‘The Radical Next’.”
Let’s start with the car itself. Although the e-tron GT set the bar high, Audi’s model range has been light on coherence and drama. The Concept C isn’t quite a first-principles machine, but it definitely strips things back and seeks to stoke some good old-fashioned flames of desire. It’s a terrific looking thing in the flesh: stocky, solid, and charismatic. Audi CEO Gernot Döllner, in charge for exactly two years, personally pushed for a new sports car; Frascella used it to push the boundaries in terms of design creativity and manufacturing technique.
Courtesy of Audi
It’s also one for marque historians: although there’s nothing explicitly retro here, the Thirties Auto Union Type C Grand Prix car, the early Noughties Rosemeyer concept and more pertinently the original TT are all in the mix, as is Bauhaus and German modernism.
Frascella, it should be noted, is an Italian who rose to prominence as Head of Design at Jaguar Land Rover, and is credited with the current Range Rover, a universally admired vehicle (though he also worked on the rather more polarising Jaguar Type 00.) A lack of adornment and commitment to what car designers are wont to call “monolithic” surfaces are evidently two of his trademarks.
That much is certainly apparent here. The Concept C’s taut, machined look suggests something carved from a giant billet of aluminium, and there’s a strong new vertical front grille shape with a slim but powerful light signature that echoes the four-ring logo. We reckon it’s best appreciated from an elevated position above the rear three-quarters, though. There’s no rear window, minimal decoration and slender LED tail-lights, with three slats in the rear deck to suggest a more emotionally charged, mid-engined configuration. We’re told the window-less, slatted look will make production, the new car slated to arrive in 2027.
EREVs have some manufacturing advantages, too, says Steven Ewing, who directs editorial content at Edmunds. Specifics on Scout production are scant, but at least the Ramcharger is using components and technology that Stellantis already puts in other cars. “You’re not introducing this giant new propulsion system,” Ewing says. On the EREV (and PHEV) con side: It’s always going to be expensive to put two powertrains into one vehicle.
An Emissions Win?
Some climate advocates, who hope the world transitions quickly to battery electric vehicles to stave off the worst of climate change, say EREVs could be part of a cleaner transportation system, even if the design still uses gasoline.
“The future is fully electric,” says Kathy Harris, who directs the clean vehicles policy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group. “But many drivers are worried about going fully electric. While the country continues to build out a robust charging network, EREVs can be a good choice for some of them.”
EREVs might prove less emissions-intensive than their PHEV cousins because drivers cannot simply choose to skip charging and drive on gasoline alone, a phenomenon that some researchers worry is degrading the real-life emissions output of many plug-ins.
Other researchers are less convinced by automakers’ “bridge technology” arguments but say EREVs might be helpful anyway. EREVs are showing up on heavy vehicles like trucks and SUVs because those need more battery power to move, especially when they’re hauling or towing. The tech might obviate the complaints of, say, some Ford F-150 Lightning owners, who say they want to use their all-electric trucks to do work and charge tools but can’t get enough done on one charge. Full battery electric might never be a fit for every person.
“For those drivers who live in rural areas or who have driving patterns where they go long distances every day, a range extender with a very efficient generator may be a great technology,” says Gil Tal, who directs the Electric Vehicle Research Center at UC Davis. “I think that will be the way we get to 100 percent electric.”
Older Tech, New Interest
Technically, the Chevrolet Volt, which in 2010 represented General Motors’ first modern foray into EV tech, was an EREV, though it was marketed as a PHEV. Jaguar intended a 2010 concept car, the C-X75, to go into limited production in 2013 but canceled the project amidt the Great Recession. (A C-X75 appeared in the James Bond film Spectre, and a design firm turned out a gas-powered conversion, but otherwise the car never saw the light of day). A few years later, the BMW i3 EV came with a range-extender option, with a very small generator giving drivers a few extra miles to get to a charger, stat. But that choice didn’t prove popular with buyers, according to Edmunds data.
The EREV story began to change in China. The Chinese automaker Li Auto was a global outlier in 2019 when it unveiled its first model, the Li One, a range-extended SUV. That year, EREVs accounted for 1 percent of all PHEV sales, according to the research firm BloombergNEF. But by 2023, Li Auto had led EREVs to a 28 percent share of PHEV sales—accounting for 9 percent of all electric vehicle sales in China. That’s not a huge share, but the tech has “been transformative in a pretty short amount of time,” says Corey Cantor, an analyst with BloombergNEF who covers electric vehicles. The world might be learning from that experience.
“No Model Y ‘refresh’ is coming out this year,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated earlier this year. “I should note that Tesla continuously improves its cars, so even a car that is six months newer will be a little better.”
Aside from the constant software updates, expect a substantially updated Model Y to land in Q1 of 2025. Efficiency and performance will be enhanced, and new damping will improve the ride. Inside, more of the primary controls will be moved to the touchscreen—including the gear selector—360-degree acoustic glass will be introduced, and rear passengers will gain entertainment screens for streaming content, gaming, and climate control.
All of which will be dissected and debated in that manic manner peculiar to Tesla adherents. Not everyone, however, who ends up in a Model Y has a voice. Point of fact, some of them can’t even speak. Yet they’ve exerted a powerful influence on the car’s design, and concerns for their well-being have reportedly contributed to the delay in the car’s rollout.
The Tesla Model Y is being redesigned with a bigger third row, making it more dog-friendly and thus potentially more popular in China.
Photograph: Courtesy of Tesla
Yep, apparently the car’s “cramped third row” is being redesigned to make it more dog-friendly and thus potentially more popular in China, where domestic rivals have roomier interiors. This is an unusual admission and one that raises a question: How many carmakers actively consider canine needs when developing new models?
Pooch Purchasing Power
“Our approach is to be function-agnostic. We try to make a great car that people will then find uses for,” says Andrew Wheel, director of production design and quality at Jaguar Land Rover. “We’ve always been cognizant of the fact that versatility and flexibility are key USPs.”
There isn’t a single carmaker that’s not fixated by its products’ “lifestyle” attributes. Some of this is marketing flimflam, of course, but plenty of us number dogs among the family unit, and the bigger breeds definitely crave space.
On which basis, there have been some interesting innovations. Tesla offers a “dog mode” that allows owners to maintain a comfortable cabin temperature while owners leave their vehicles. That’s monitored via a mobile app and a live camera feed, while passers-by are mollified by the cabin temperature shown on the car’s main display screen alongside an explanatory graphic. Note that the electric windows won’t work in dog mode, to avoid accidental pressing of the buttons, though that’s taking the idea of canine sentience a bit far.
Colorado has three years to lower ground-level ozone pollution to meet federal standards, and this summer’s hazy skies — caused by oil and gas drilling, heavy vehicle traffic and wildfire smoke — are putting the state in a hole as it’s already logged more dirty air days than in all of 2023.
“Our state has taken a lot of steps to improve air quality, but you can see it in the skies, you can see it in the air, that we still have work to do,” said Kirsten Schatz, clean air advocate for the Colorado Public Interest Research Group.
Two months into the 2024 summer ozone season, the Front Range already has recorded more high ozone days than the entire summer of 2023. As of Monday, which is the most recent data available, ozone levels had exceeded federal air quality standards on 28 days. At the same point in 2023, there had been 27 high-ozone days.
The summer ozone season runs from June 1 to Aug. 31. However, the region encompassing metro Denver and the northern Front Range this year recorded its first high ozone day in May, and in some years ozone pollution exceeds federal standards into mid-September.
The first benchmark is to lower average ozone pollution to a 2008 standard of 75 parts per billion. The northern Front Range is in what’s called “severe non-attainment” for that number, meaning motorists must use a more expensive blend of gasoline during the summer and more businesses must apply for federal permits that regulate how much pollution they spill into the air.
The second benchmark requires the region to lower its average ozone pollution to a 2015 standard of 70 parts per billion, considered the most acceptable level of air pollution for human health. In July, the EPA downgraded the northern Front Range to be in serious violation of that standard as the region’s ozone level now sits at 81 parts per billion. The state must now submit to the EPA a new plan for lowering emissions.
Colorado needs to meet both EPA benchmarks by 2027, or it will be downgraded again and face more federal regulation.
Of the 28 days the state has recorded high ozone pollution levels, 17 exceeded the 2008 standard of 70 parts per billion, according to data compiled by the Regional Air Quality Council, an organization that advises the state on how to reduce air pollution.
That’s bad news for the region after state air regulators predicted Colorado would be able to meet that standard by the 2027 deadline. The EPA calculates average ozone pollution levels on a three-year average, so this summer’s bad numbers will drag down the final grade.
“It’s not a good first year to have,” said Mike Silverstein, the air quality council’s executive director.
Smoke from wildfires near and far
Ground-level ozone pollution forms on hot summer days when volatile organic compounds and nitrogen oxides react in the sunlight. Those compounds and gases are released by oil and gas wells and refineries, automobiles on the road, fumes from paint and other industrial chemicals, and gas-powered lawn and garden equipment.
It forms a smog that can cause the skies to become brown or hazy, and it is harmful to people, especially those with lung and heart disease, the elderly and children. Ground-level ozone is different than the ozone in the atmosphere that protects Earth from the sun’s powerful rays.
Wildfire smoke blowing from Canada and the Pacific Northwest did not help Colorado’s pollution levels in July, and then multiple fires erupted along the Front Range over the past week, creating homegrown pollution from fine particulate matter such as smoke, soot and ash. Ultimately, though, the heavy smoke days could be wiped from the calculations from 2024, but that decision will be made at a later date.
Still, June also saw multiple high ozone days, and air quality experts say much of the pollution originates at home in Colorado and cannot be blamed on outside influences.
The out-of-state wildfire smoke sent ozone levels skyrocketing the week of July 21 to 27, Silverstein said, but it’s not the reason the numbers are high. The week prior saw ozone levels above federal standards, too, and wildfire smoke had not drifted into the region.
“Pull the wildfires out and we would probably still have had high ozone,” he said.
Jeremy Nichols, senior advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, also warned that wildfires should not be used as an excuse for the region’s air pollution.
“While the wildfires are out of our control, there is a whole bunch of air pollution we can control,” he said. “I don’t want to let that cover up the ugliness that existed here in the first place.”
Nichols blames oil and gas drilling for the region’s smog. The state is not doing enough to regulate the industry, he said.
“We actually need to recognize we are at a point where oil and gas needs to stop drilling on high ozone days,” Nichols said. “Just like we’re told to stay home on high ozone days, business as usual needs to stop. I don’t think we’ve clamped down on them and in many respects they are getting a free pass to pollute.”
One proposal would require drilling companies to eliminate emissions from pneumatic actuating devices, equipment driven by pressurized gas to open and close valves in pipelines, Silverstein said. Oil companies already are required to make 50% of those devices emission-free, and the federal government also is requiring them to be 100% emission-free by 2035. But Colorado’s proposal would accelerate the timeline, he said.
The second proposal would tell companies to stop performing blowdowns, which is when workers vent fumes from pipelines before beginning maintenance to clear explosive gases, when an ozone alert is issued, Silverstein said.
“There are thousands of these very small events, but these small events add up to significant activity,” he said.
Gabby Richmond, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, said the industry supports the new regulations. She said operators also were electrifying operations where possible and voluntarily delaying operational activities on high ozone days.
“Our industry values clean air, and we are committed to pioneering innovative solutions that protect our environment and make Colorado a great place to live,” Richmond said in a statement. “As a part of this commitment, we have significantly reduced ozone-causing emissions by over 50% through technology, regulatory initiatives and voluntary measures — all in the spirit of being good neighbors in the communities where we live and work.”
“Knock down emissions where we can”
Meanwhile, people who live in metro Denver and the northern Front Range are asked to do their part, too.
When the state health department issues an ozone action alert — which is a forecast for high pollution levels — people are asked to limit driving as much as possible. They also are asked to avoid using gas-powered lawn and garden equipment until later in the day when the sun starts dropping behind the mountains and temperatures fall.
It would be easy to blame Colorado’s ozone pollution on its geography, global climate change that is raising temperatures, and pollution blowing from other countries and states, Silverstein said. But Colorado has a responsibility to do its part.
“We have 4 million people and a big oil and gas field and lots of industrial activity and all of the things related to human activity all in one concentrated location with a great mountain backdrop, but it comes with a bit of a price,” he said. “So it’s up to us to find the strategies to knock down emissions where we can.”
This is a new issue for the automotive industry. “One of the beautiful things about automotive has been that it tends to move much more slowly than consumer electronics,” says Phil Amsrud, an associate director of automotive at the market research firm S&P Global Mobility. That gives auto manufacturers and suppliers plenty of time to figure out how to support their products and guarantee that software will stay up-to-date and functioning through at least year 15. But “now that we’re trying to compress automotive’s timeframe to look more consumer-like, will 15 years get compressed to 10 years, five years?” Amsrud says.
Automakers love the idea of a “software-defined vehicle” because they might prove an entry point into the low-margin, high-profit software business. A customer whose car is updatable whenever and wherever might also be a customer willing to pay to update their car whenever and wherever.
As a result, automakers can keep selling new services and subscriptions—hands-free driving systems, perks including remote start and enhanced maps—to people who already bought their cars, as long as that car is on the road. Today, some car customers pay extra monthly fees for these packaged services, including General Motors’ OnStar roadside assistance, Tesla’s Full-Self Driving (Supervised), and Mercedes’ Me Connect package. But the public has balked at other subscriptions, including a 2022 offering from BMW that would have charged South Korean drivers a monthly fee to turn on their heated seats. (The automaker eventually dropped the scheme.)
Max Headroom
The concept of “software-defined vehicles” requires automakers to build in “headroom,” or guarantees that the car hardware of today will be able to handle the new capabilities of tomorrow. The sunsetting of connectivity standards—choices ultimately made by telecommunications firms, not automakers—demonstrates this is a tricky challenge moving ahead.
In a written statement, Volkswagen spokesperson Mark Gillies said that “despite our best efforts, we have not yet identified a solution that meets our standards for reliability and safety for 3G vehicles.” He declined to comment further on solutions, citing ongoing lawsuits, but said the company believes 4G sunsets will not happen until after 2035, “which means the majority of our 4G vehicles will have the ability for connectivity for at least 10 years.”
Automotive experts say the industry hasn’t made any significant commitments about how long it plans to keep updating its newer, software-enabled vehicles. And if vehicles lose the ability to update well before they make it to the junkyard, “whoever’s holding the bag gets a big hit in resale value,” says Philip Koopman, who studies transportation software and safety as an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
Ray Cornyn is the senior vice president and general manager of automotive processors at NXP, a Dutch firm that’s among the automotive industry’s most popular suppliers. He predicts the auto software future will look a bit like the present. “Vehicles will be defined and designed for 10 to 15-year lifetimes,” he says, with support from suppliers like NXP extending past the 15-year mark. But the bulk of updates will happen in years five to 10.
EV company Rivian markets itself as a software-forward company. Software head Wassym Bensaid says its solution to obsolescence is, in concept, pretty simple: The automaker is talking with its suppliers about when its hardware will no longer be updatable. “Today, the headroom we’ve planned in our hardware with what we think are best practices in the software world, we estimate it to be seven years,” Bensaid says. So while this matches smartphone longevity, in practice this could mean that Rivian trucks and SUVs sold today will continue to get software updates only until 2031.
Yet in spite of the fact that this may be the firmest any automaker has committed to updates, experts are still skeptical, and wish automakers would be clearer about when and how they plan to update their vehicles.
“Whatever anybody is saying right now, it will really have to be proven out in time,” says Stacey Higginbotham, a policy fellow at Consumer Reports.
Last week, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked me to moderate what he called “The Real Debate.”
Kennedy was angry with CNN because it wouldn’t let him join its Trump-Biden debate.
His people persuaded Elon Musk to carry his Real Debate on X, formerly Twitter. They asked me to give RFK Jr. the same questions, with the same time limits.
I agreed, hoping to hear some good new ideas.
I didn’t.
As you know, President Joe Biden slept, and former President Donald Trump lied. Well, OK, Biden lied at least nine times, too, even by CNN’s count.
Kennedy was better.
But not much.
He did acknowledge that our government’s deficit spending binge is horrible. He said he’d cut military spending. He criticized unscientific COVID-19 lockdowns and said nice words about school choice.
But he, too, dodged questions, blathered on past time limits, and pushed big government nonsense like, “Every million dollars we spend on child care creates 22 jobs.”
Give me a break.
Independence Day is this week.
As presidential candidates promise to subsidize flying cars (Trump), free community college tuition (Biden), and “affordable” housing via 3 percent government-backed bonds (Kennedy), I think about how bewildered and horrified the Founding Fathers would be by such promises.
On the Fourth of July almost 250 years ago, they signed the Declaration of Independence, marking the birth of our nation.
They did not want life dominated by politicians. They wanted a society made up of free individuals. They believed every human being has “unalienable rights” to life, liberty, and (justly acquired) property.
The blueprints created by the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution gradually created the freest and most prosperous nation in the history of the world.
Before 1776, people thought there was a “divine right” of kings and nobles to rule over them.
America succeeded because the Founders rejected that belief.
In the Virginia Declaration of Rights, George Mason wrote, “All power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people.”
By contrast, Kennedy and Biden make promises that resemble the United Nations’ “Universal Declaration of Human Rights.” U.N. bureaucrats say every person deserves “holidays with pay…clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services.”
The Founders made it clear that governments should be limited. They didn’t think we had a claim on our neighbor’s money. We shouldn’t try to force them to pay for our food, clothing, housing, prescription drugs, college tuition.
They believe you have the right to be left alone to pursue happiness as you see fit.
For a while, the U.S. government stayed modest. Politicians mostly let citizens decide our own paths, choose where to live, what jobs to take, and what to say.
There were a small number of “public servants.” But they weren’t our bosses.
Patrick Henry declared: “The governing persons are the servants of the people.”
Yet now there are 23 million government employees. Some think they are in charge of everything.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.), pushing her Green New Deal, declared herself “the boss.”
The Biden administration wants to decide what kind of car you should drive.
During the pandemic, politicians ordered people to stay home, schools to shut down and businesses to close.
Then, as often happens in “Big Government World,” people harmed by government edicts ask politicians to compensate them.
After governments banned Fourth of July fireworks, the American Pyrotechnics Association requested “relief in the next Senate Covid package to address the unique and specific costs to this industry,” reportedThe New York Times. “The industry hopes Congress will earmark $175 million for it in another stimulus bill.”
Today the politically connected routinely lobby passionately to get bigger chunks of your money.
For some of you, the last straw was when the administration demanded you inject a chemical into your body.
When some resisted vaccinations, Biden warned, “Our patience is wearing thin.”
His patience? Who does he think he is? My father? My king?
At least Kennedy doesn’t say things like that. But he does say absurd things. In a few weeks I’ll release my sit-down interview with him, and you can decide for yourself whether he’s a good candidate.
This Fourth of July, remember Milton Friedman’s question: “How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect?”
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Watch The Real Debate as it was meant to be with all three candidates — Kennedy, Biden, Trump.#TheRealDebate has already been seen more than 11 million times. pic.twitter.com/W27pXIOLkd
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) June 30, 2024
The operating system has been developed well, and is largely easy to use, but there is a lot going on. And that’s not all. The Edition 1 model comes with an additional 10.9-inch display for the passenger, which can stream YouTube, show the navigation, or change the music. We found this to be novel but a bit limited. The navigation, for example, works well but is pointless when it shows on the main screen next to it.
Photograph: Audi
Photograph: Audi
Then there’s the HUD, which now comes with augmented reality. Part of the “Sound and Vision pack,” an expensive option, it overlays directions onto the road you see in front of you, moving as you do, all the while showing your regular HUD features including speed, speed limit, and turn-by-turn signals.
With the driving assistance systems turned on, it also displays in “danger red” when you’re getting too close to the side of the road, when you need to brake for upcoming speed limits, as well as brake warnings to ensure you don’t drive into the car in front.
With use we’re sure this all becomes less distracting, but the overall feeling was more overwhelming than helpful. The Chat GPT-integrated Audi voice assistant might be able to teach you how to use it, but this reviewer would rather turn it all off and enjoy the sweet ride comfort.
The interior is an otherwise pleasant place to be, although there is too much cheap-feeling plastic. The doors in particular feature a large plastic inlay where you control the windows, as well as a plastic storage section, which feels very out of place. The SQ6’s as-standard nappa leather, diamond-stitched seats are very attractive. But the cost is less so.
Speaking of which, prices start at £64,200 ($81,200) for the Q6 e-tron and jump sharply upwards to £92,950 ($117,500) for the top-of-the-range SQ6.
Photograph: Audi
The Q6 and SQ6 e-tron don’t reinvent the wheel, and while quick in a straight line, they aren’t as sporty as they make out. Where they shine is with the effortless ride comfort and class-leading range, which if we’re being honest is perhaps more important, shifting the goalposts slightly but assuredly.
It was the last week in June, and José De Bardi hadn’t gotten much sleep. The trouble had really kicked off on June 18, about a week earlier, when the electric vehicle company Fisker announced it had filed for bankruptcy protection. Now some 6,400 Fisker owners like De Bardi wondered: What will happen to their cars in the future?
The bankruptcy “lit a fire,” De Bardi says. “We had to get organized if we had any chance of representing owners’ interests.” Within days, he and a handful of other Fisker vehicle owners had established a nonprofit organization called the Fisker Owners Association, dedicated to keeping their cars running. (Hence, the lack of sleep.) By the end of the month, 1,200 owners—representing nearly a fifth of total Fisker cars sold—had registered through the group’s website, De Bardi says.
Fisker vehicle owners’ questions are mostly practical. Fisker began shipping the Ocean, its electric SUV—priced to start at $41,000 and ranging up to $70,0000—last year. Immediately, the vehicles were found to have serious build quality shortcomings and software issues, including a less-than-responsive central touchscreen. (WIRED’s reviewer declined to rate the vehicle entirely, calling it “just not ready yet.”)
Owners reported that some of the most serious issues, including a difficult-to-use brake hold and Bluetooth connectivity problems, were ironed out through software updates. But owners sometimes complained that it was tricky to get their vehicles serviced or repaired, because there weren’t enough certified Fisker repairers and technicians. Fisker initially launched with a Tesla-like “direct to consumer” model that eschewed the traditional “middleman” dealerships often seen in the US. But in January, the company began to sign dealerships to a new Fisker network, citing ballooning costs associated with the direct model.
Even now, as the carcass of Fisker gets picked over, the EVs still have niggling problems—window cracks, dysfunctional key fobs, sudden connectivity blackouts—and will unquestionably need servicing and spare parts to keep them running into the future. Without Fisker, the company, to provide that, what are owners to do?
The FOA is still in the early stages of figuring it out. A small band of volunteers have worked around the clock to define the problems owners might face down the road—legal questions about their vehicle financing; issues with the car’s app; finding parts—and start solving them. These people have full-time jobs, too. De Bardi, for example, who lives in the UK and has headed up the European owners’ efforts, is also the CTO of a telecommunications firm.
Experts say Fisker owners’ situation is looking increasingly tricky. Automotive companies have a playbook to handle bankruptcies, developed during the 2008 financial crisis, which led General Motors and Chrysler to file for Chapter 11 protection, as Fisker has. Thanks in part to support from the US government, those automakers were able to honor their vehicles’ warranties as the companies restructured.
But in legal proceedings in Delaware this month, Fisker’s situation looked more dire. Lawyers for the firm’s creditors argued that Fisker should have filed for bankruptcy late last year. And Fisker plans to sell its remaining inventory, some 4,000 vehicles, to a firm that leases electric vehicles to New York City Uber and Lyft drivers, lawyers told the court.
The resurrection of Bugatti is one of the 21st century’s most notable automotive stories. Aristocratic, artistic, and more than a little arcane, Bugatti was a prewar marque that mastered luxury, design, and motorsport, the creator of Grand Prix winners, and arguably the most lavish motorcar ever made, in the shape of the early 1930s Type 41 Royale. Then it faded away.
It was the late Ferdinand Piëch, the monomaniacal kingpin of the Volkswagen Group, who bought the rights to the name and returned the brand to glory with 2005’s Veyron and its successor, the Chiron. The Super Sport version of the latter remains the world’s fastest production car, having achieved a top speed of 304.773 mph in the hands of racing driver Andy Wallace at a German test track in 2019.
How do you follow that—especially in a world in which 2,000-horsepower electrichypercars have comprehensively rearranged expectations?
As fate would have it, Bugatti is now controlled by Croatian EV powerhouse Rimac, as a result of a complex 2021 contra-deal with VW and Porsche. So you’d be right to wonder what kind of encore wunderkind Mate Rimac would devise for the 114-year-old French legend.
The result is the Tourbillon, an imperious super-coupé hybrid that sees Bugatti looking a hundred years ahead as much as it’s invoking its storied past—but not in the ways you’d expect.
The Tourbillon is Bugatti’s latest hybrid hypercar, the first to reveal Rimac’s influence on the manufacturer.
VIDEO: Bugatti
“Icons like the Type 57SC Atlantic, renowned as the most beautiful car in the world, the Type 35, the most successful racing car ever, and the Type 41 Royale, one of the most ambitious luxury cars of all time, provide our three pillars of inspiration,” Rimac says. “Beauty, performance, and luxury formed the blueprint for the Tourbillon; a car that was more elegant, more emotive, and more luxurious than anything before it. And just like those icons of the past, it wouldn’t be simply for the present, or even for the future, but pour l’éternité–for eternity.”
Yep, it’s safe to say Bugatti is pretty excited about it’s new creation and has an eye on the pristine lawns of the Pebble Beach or Villa d’Este concours events a century hence, positioning its new hypercar as both head-spinningly high-tech and as an artful riposte to built-in obsolescence.
Reskinning Rimac’s own brilliant and fully electric Nevera hypercar was surely one option, but Rimac is respectful enough of Bugatti’s history to know that would never fly. “So I came up with a proposal to make a completely new car,” he says. He’s come an awfully long way since being the sole employee of Rimac back in 2009.
Instruments of Success
The name Tourbillon will be familiar to adherents of haute horologie. Rather than honor a former Bugatti racing driver—as in Pierre Veyron and Louis Chiron—the new car references the most elaborate mechanism in watchmaking, a machine for the wrist whose complexity counteracts the effects of gravity in order to maintain the most accurate possible timekeeping.
The steering wheel of the new Bugatti Tourbillon spins around the central fixed instrument cluster.
VIDEO: Bugatti
Bugatti’s designers and engineers were seduced by the idea of mechanical timelessness when they were conceiving the new car, and thus the Tourbillon largely rejects large digital touchscreens in its interior in favor of machined components and a fully analogue skeletonized (another watch world reference) instrument cluster—though a small screen does slide into view if you want it, for Apple CarPlay or Android Auto.
The cluster consists of more than 600 parts, uses titanium, sapphire, and ruby in its construction, and remains fixed in place allowing the steering wheel to rotate around it. Two needles on the center dial display the engine’s revs and speed. On the left are analogue readouts for battery and oil temperature; on the right there’s a display showing the power drawn from the e-motors and engine.
Fisker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late on Monday, ending months of speculation over the future of the company. Now the EV maker is looking to sell its assets and restructure its debt after pausing production of is sole car model back in March.
To anyone familiar with the Ocean all-electric SUV, the news of Fisker’s bankruptcy may have been predictable. WIRED tested the Fisker Ocean in July 2023 but, due to the obviously unfinished nature of the test car, was left in the unprecedented position of being unable to score or rate the EV. Our own test Ocean was plagued with squeaky pedals, an inoperative California mode (where the EV drops all its windows save the windscreen) forcing a switch in car mid-test, and poor handling.
After manufacturing issues and cash flow problems, Fisker admitted during its quarterly earnings in February that it might not have enough money to survive another year, and decided to pause car production, initially for six weeks. Reports began claiming it had been considering a possible bankruptcy filing. Fisker reported that it made $273 million in sales last year but was more than $1 billion in debt. It also issued a warning that there was “substantial doubt” about its ability to stay in business. It never resumed production.
The company, founded by car designer Henrik Fisker, was looking for a potential lifeboat. This resulted in negotiations with “a large automaker” for investment, joint development of one or more electric vehicle platforms, and to fund its North America manufacturing.
Such negotiations, reportedly with Nissan, failed to conclude positively, an outcome signaled even at the time by Fisker itself as it issued a statement saying “any transaction would be subject to satisfaction of important conditions, including completion of due diligence and negotiation and execution of appropriate definitive agreements.” The collapse of these talks reportedly resulted in a loss of $350 million in funding.
In the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in Delaware, Fisker has estimated assets of $500 million to $1 billion, and liabilities of $100 million to $500 million, and among its 20 largest creditors named Adobe, Google, and SAP.
Fisker’s rapid decline is a far cry from recent success in 2020, when the company went public with a valuation of $2.9 billion, affording the EV maker more than $1 billion in cash.
Since then, EV sales in the US have slowed more broadly, but Fisker has been especially badly affected. The company inevitably lost a degree of quality control when it ceded manufacturing to Canada-based supplier Magna, and subsequently build and software issues of its Ocean SUV surfaced. Since launch, the model has been dogged by quality problems, with owners citing sudden power losses, glitchy key fobs and sensors, and even allegations of hoods flying open.
The Ocean’s myriad issues embarrassingly caught out Fisker staff, too, with board member Wendy Greuel losing power on a public road shortly after taking deliver of the EV. Similarly, according to a cache of internal documents viewed by TechCrunch, Geeta Gupta Fisker, the company’s chief financial officer, chief operating officer, and cofounder Henrik Fisker’s wife, also experienced a shutdown in power while driving an Ocean.
Indeed, Fisker has had a checkered history beyond the Ocean. It was more than a decade ago when its eponymous owner, previously of BMW, Ford, and Aston Martin, last presented a car bearing his name. The Karma, a range-extender sports GT was dogged by problems, including a disastrous Consumer Reports test and fires. Fisker Automotive filed for bankruptcy in 2013.
Initially choosing to operate a direct-to-consumer sales model, after handing over to customers less than half of the more than 10,000 vehicles it produced last year, Fisker reverted to a traditional dealership sales model in January. Then in March the company drastically cut prices on its Ocean models in a desperate attempt to shift inventory.
Yesterday’s bankruptcy filing comes only a year after Fisker launched its Ocean all-electric vehicle to customers.
The launch of a new electric vehicle these days is invariably met with a chorus of “this car is too expensive”—and rightfully so. But for used EVs, particularly used Teslas, it’s quite another story, thanks to a glut of former fleet and rental cars that are now ready for their second owner.
“Due to a variety of reasons, Tesla resale values have plummeted, making many Tesla models very affordable now. Plus, for some consumers, an additional $4,000 federal tax credit on used EVs may apply, sweetening the deal even further. Buying a used Tesla can be a great deal for the savvy shopper, but there are significant things to look out for,” says Ed Kim, president and chief analyst at AutoPacific.
Indeed, a quick search on the topic easily reveals some horror stories of ex-rental Teslas, so here are some things to consider if you’re in search of a cheap Model 3 or Model Y.
“The prices are very appealing, but shoppers must keep in mind that rental cars can and do get abused, and some of these ex-rental units may have nasty surprises stemming from their hard lives. Be sure to have yours checked out thoroughly by a mechanic before buying,” Kim says.
Mismatched tires and minor dents, scrapes, and rock chips are fairly common minor issues. Many of the Teslas that Hertz is selling have been used as Ubers—you can tell it’s one of these if the odometer is approaching 100,000 miles. Battery degradation could be an issue, although most cars will not have lost more than 4 to 5 percent of capacity, and Long Range Teslas should have a powertrain warranty for up to 120,000 miles (or eight years).
“One side effect of Tesla’s widespread and reliable DC fast-charging network is that many owners end up relying on it to keep their cars charged rather than dealing with the often considerable expense of installing a home charger and associated home electrical upgrades,” Kim told Ars. As such, you should make sure to check the battery’s health (which can be done on the touchscreen or as part of the inspection) before you buy.
Rental cars can suffer from an excess of slammed doors and trunks—slamming the latter can mess up the powered strut. In the interior, you should expect high signs of wear on some touchpoints, especially the steering wheel and the rear door cards, which can bubble or flake, particularly if the Tesla was used as a ride-hailing vehicle.
Other Potential Headaches
Teslas are very connected cars, and many of their convenience features are accessed via smartphone apps. But that requires that Tesla’s database shows you as the car’s owner, and there are plenty of reports online that transferring ownership from Hertz can take time.
Unfortunately, this also leaves the car stuck in Chill driving mode (which restricts power, acceleration, and top speed) and places some car settings outside of the new owner’s level of access. You also won’t be able to use Tesla Superchargers while the car still shows up as belonging to Hertz. Based on forum reports, contacting Tesla directly is the way to resolve this, but it can take several days to process, or longer if there’s a paperwork mismatch.
Once you’ve transferred ownership to Tesla’s satisfaction, it’s time to do a software reset on the car to remove the fleet version.
Car enthusiasts mourn the commoditization of propulsion. Once petrolheads would have chosen a BMW for its sonorous straight-six or a Mercedes-AMG for its thunderous V8. Now many believe that distinctiveness is rapidly diminishing. Electric cars might provide mad, silent thrust, but a common complaint is they are mostly indistinguishable for the character of their drivetrains.
Carmakers worry about this too. Their engineering DNA is less apparent in the EV age, leaving them more reliant on design, brand power, and other types of technology to differentiate their cars and keep their customers. There’s no point trying to trump the competition on power when the quickest Teslas and Lucids already have far more than you can ever deploy on the public road. More isn’t better when you already have too much.
But soon there’ll be a choice again: between the conventional radial-flux motors that have powered almost every EV until now and something radically different.
Axial-flux motors won’t necessarily offer more power, but they are so much lighter and smaller that their proponents say they have the potential to transform almost every other key measure of an EV’s performance—and the entire architecture of a car designed around them.
By fitting axial flux motors into the wheels, the spaces in a car’s body currently occupied by motors could be largely vacated, clearing the way for more batteries, people, or stuff, and permitting the sort of design exuberance that EVs have long promised but never quite delivered.
More importantly, this new design of motor might help address the growing public backlash against overweight, expensive EVs. They might reduce the weight of a typical EV by around 200 kilograms (440 pounds)—half in the motors themselves, and half from the mass-compounding effect which allows you to reduce the weight of other systems such as batteries and brakes as a result.
By sending mass into a virtuous downward spiral, carmakers could increase range, decrease cost, and perhaps even preserve the agile handling of lightweight cars, which enthusiasts also worry might disappear with the advent of the EV.
Flux Capacity
The principle isn’t new. The axial-flux motor was first demonstrated by Michael Faraday in 1821, but in the intervening two centuries nobody had figured out how to mass-produce one reliably.
British academic Tim Woolmer, however, likes a challenge. He devoted his Oxford PhD to designing the optimum motor for an electric car. An axial-flux motor would make more sense than the almost ubiquitous and easily mass-manufactured radial flux design, he decided. But not only had his chosen design barely made it out of the lab in nearly 200 years, there simply wasn’t a market for it when he started in 2005: GM’s EV1 had long been canned, and the Tesla Roadster was still three years away.
In an axial-flux “pancake” motor, the stator (the stationary part of an electric motor) and rotors are discs, sitting alongside each other less than a millimeter apart, the flux flowing through the stator axially or parallel with the shaft, and acting on the permanent magnets in the rotors on either side to turn them.
More people are enjoying the benefits of driving vehicles with hybrid engines. Aside from spending less on fuel, owners of hybrid vehicles are taking advantage of being exempted from the coding scheme in Metro Manila.
More full electric vehicles are also now available which also offer similar benefits, aside from manufacturer claims of lower operational and maintenance costs.
Still many remain wary about shifting to hybrids not quite sure about how they drive in day-to-day traffic and on the highway.
This is especially true with sedans, SUVs, and crossovers with batteries that power electric motors. Do they drive like vehicles with ICE powertrains.
Those who are curious about how to operate hybrid and battery-powered vehicles can test drive and compare them with ICE vehicles at the Auto Focus Summer Test Drive Festival (AFSTDF) making a return to the SM Mall of Asia Open Grounds in Pasay City.
The annual event brings together in one venue the country’s biggest and best brands to showcase and provide test drives of their local lineup of vehicles.
This year 17 automotive brands, many of them offering hybrid vehicles as well as full electrics, are participating in the festival which place on May 9 to 12.
These include BYD Cars Philippines, Changan Auto Ph, DFSK Philippines, Ford Philippines, GAC Motor Philippines, Geely Philippines, GWM Philippines, Honda Cars Philippines, Hyundai Motor Philippines, Isuzu Philippines Corporation, Jetour Auto Ph, Kia Philippines, MG Philippines, Mitsubishi Motors Philippines, Nissan Philippines, Suzuki Philippines, and Toyota Motor Philippines.
At the festival, prospective buyers can also discover and compare the best deals, discounts, and financing offered by participating brands.
Those who want to know more about how hybrid powertrains work and about the range and charging times of battery-powered vehicles, as well as the all-important warranties, can learn these things from team members deployed by participating brands to help showcase the advanced features of their models.
The Auto Focus Summer Test Drive Festival will be held from May 9 to 12, 11:00 AM to 9:00 PM at the SM Mall of Asia Open Grounds. Entrance and test drives are free.
A controversial bill that would require all new cars to be fitted with AM radios looks set to become a law in the near future. Yesterday, Senator Edward Markey revealed that the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act now has the support of 60 US Senators, as well as 246 cosponsors in the House of Representatives, making its passage an almost sure thing. Should that happen, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would be required to ensure that all new cars sold in the US have AM radios at no extra cost.
“Democrats and Republicans are tuning in to the millions of listeners, thousands of broadcasters, and countless emergency management officials who depend on AM radio in their vehicles. AM radio is a lifeline for people in every corner of the United States to get news, sports, and local updates in times of emergencies. Our commonsense bill makes sure this fundamental, essential tool doesn’t get lost on the dial. With a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate, Congress should quickly take it up and pass it,” said Markey and his cosponsor, Senator Ted Cruz.
About 82 million people still listen to AM radio, according to the National Association of Broadcasters, which, as you can imagine, was rather pleased with the congressional support for its industry.
“Broadcasters are grateful for the overwhelming bipartisan support for the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act in both chambers of Congress,” said NAB president and CEO Curtis LeGeyt. “This majority endorsement reaffirms lawmakers’ recognition of the essential service AM radio provides to the American people, particularly in emergency situations. NAB thanks the 307 members of Congress who are reinforcing the importance of maintaining universal access to this crucial public communications medium.”
Why Are They Dropping AM, Anyway?
The reason there’s even a bill in Congress to mandate AM radios in all new vehicles is that some automakers have begun to drop the option, particularly in electric vehicles. A big reason for that is electromagnetic interference from electric motors—rather than risk customer complaints from poor-quality audio, some automakers decided to remove it.
But it’s not exclusively an EV issue; last year we learned the revised Ford Mustang coupe would also arrive sans AM radio, which Ford told us was because radio stations were modernizing “by offering internet streaming through mobile apps, FM, digital, and satellite radio options,” and that it would continue to offer those other audio options in its vehicles.
In response to congressional questioning, eight automakers told a Senate committee that they were quitting AM: BMW, Ford, Mazda, Polestar, Rivian, Tesla, Volkswagen, and Volvo. This “undermined the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s system for delivering critical public safety information to the public,” said Senator Markey’s office last year, and AM radio’s role as a platform for delivering emergency alerts to the public is given by supporters of the legislation as perhaps the key reason for its necessity.
Tech and Auto Industries Aren’t Happy
But critics of the bill—including the Consumer Technology Association—don’t buy that argument. In October 2023, FEMA and the Federal Communications Commission conducted a nationwide test of the emergency alert system. According to the CTA, which surveyed 800 US adults, of the 95 percent of US adults that heard the test, only 6 percent did so via radio, and just 1 percent on AM radio specifically. Instead, 92 percent received the alert pushed to their smartphone.
“Requiring the installation of analog AM radios in automobiles is an unnecessary action that would impact EV range, efficiency, and affordability at a critical moment of accelerating adoption,” said Albert Gore, executive director of ZETA, a clean vehicle advocacy group that opposes the AM radio requirement. “Mandating AM radio would do little to expand drivers’ ability to receive emergency alerts. At a time when we are more connected than ever, we encourage Congress to allow manufacturers to innovate and produce designs that meet consumer preference, rather than pushing a specific communications technology,” Gore said in a statement.
Following recent reports that Fisker has been preparing for a possible bankruptcy filing, today the embattled automaker announced that it is suspending all manufacture of its electric vehicles.
“Fisker will pause production for six weeks starting the week of March 18, 2024, to align inventory levels and progress strategic and financing initiatives,” the company said in a statement.
Fisker further said that it has secured a financing commitment from an existing investor of “up to $150 million.” The money would be organized in four tranches, but is by no means guaranteed; Fisker said it is subject to “certain conditions,” including the filing of the company’s 2023 Form 10-K, a comprehensive report filed annually by public companies about their financial performance.
WIRED asked Fisker’s PR representative to expand on what exactly the “certain conditions” are to secure the new investment. They declined to provide additional detail.
EV sales in the US have slowed more broadly, but Fisker has had an especially rocky run. Arguably, it lost a degree of quality control when it ceded manufacturing to Canada-based supplier Magna. Moreover, Fisker seemingly prioritized style over substance, as borne out by build and software issues of its Ocean SUV. These issues have fueled the view that in the car world there’s simply no substitute for the experience gained from making vehicles for a century, like, say, BMW has.
Likely looking for a potential lifeboat, Fisker has also confirmed it is in negotiations with “a large automaker” for investment in the company, joint development of one or more electric vehicle platforms, and North America manufacturing. That company is reportedly Nissan, according to Reuters. However, it sounds like these negotiations are far from completion, as the Fisker statement also says “any transaction would be subject to satisfaction of important conditions, including completion of due diligence and negotiation and execution of appropriate definitive agreements.”
WIRED tested the Fisker Ocean in July 2023 but, due to the unfinished nature of the test car, was left in the unprecedented position of being unable to provide a rating for the EV. Our test Ocean was plagued with squeaky pedals, an inoperative California mode (where the EV drops all its windows save the windscreen) forcing a switch in car mid-test, and poor handling that was supposedly to be fixed with a software update. Simply put, too many features were missing or “coming soon,” making the Ocean SUV an EV we just couldn’t rate properly.
Since launch, the Ocean has been dogged by quality issues, with owners complaining of sudden power losses, glitchy key fobs and sensors, hoods flying open, and brake problems.
Indeed, shortly after Fisker board member Wendy Greuel took delivery of her own Ocean SUV, it lost power on a public road. Similarly, according to a cache of internal documents viewed by TechCrunch, Geeta Gupta Fisker, the company’s chief financial officer, chief operating officer, and cofounder Henrik Fisker’s wife, experienced a shutdown in power while driving an Ocean.
Fisker has a checkered history beyond the Ocean. It was more than a decade ago when its eponymous owner, previously of BMW, Ford, and Aston Martin (where he was design director), last presented a car bearing his name. The Karma, a range-extender sports GT, was ahead of its time in many respects, but it was dogged by problems, including a disastrous Consumer Reports test and fires.
The company’s current situation looks bleak. Fisker states that it has approximately 4,700 vehicles in its inventory, carried over from 2023 and including 2024 production, and believes the completed vehicle value for this inventory is in excess of $200 million. It has delivered 1,300 vehicles in 2024 and shipped 4,900 to customers in 2023.
In February, Fisker reported that it made $273 million in sales last year but was more than $1 billion in debt. It also issued a warning that there was “substantial doubt” about its ability to stay in business. The prolonged pause in production seems to reinforce that doubt even further.
