Analysts and economists are starting to sound the alarm over a different number than the price of a gallon of gasoline and this number has massive implications for the economy: the price of diesel.

One year ago, the average cost of a gallon of diesel fuel in America was $3.70. Today, at the time of this recording, it’s $5.60. That’s 50% higher, and some forecasts have it touching a record $6 a gallon by the end of the year. Not good.

America doesn’t actually run on Dunkin, it runs on diesel. Unlike gasoline, the Government can’t mess with the formulas of diesel to try and lower price, and it certainly can’t dilute diesel like it tried with gasoline earlier in the year.

Fact is, our economy runs on diesel fuel. It’s in the semi-trucks and freight trains hauling all your Amazon packages, the buses taking your kids to school, the tractors and combines harvesting your food, and even the tanker trucks carrying regular gas to your local station. Not to mention the millions of heavy duty pickup trucks used by fleet operators and tradesmen across basically every sector. The price of diesel is a cost that almost every business and municipality in America has to account for, directly or indirectly. So when it goes up by 50%… well, that pain can only be contained for so long.

There’s no easy fix—just as the kids are going back to school, farmers are hitting peak harvest time, and holiday shopping season is almost upon us. On the latest episode of The Drivecast we discuss the domino effect of the diesel price spike. How bad will it get, how far will the ripple effects reach, and is $5 a gallon just the new normal?

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Full Transcript

Kyle: So, Caleb, let’s set the record straight here. How much diesel do you buy?

Caleb: Really, I should buy more than I currently do, because my 7.3 Ford Power Stroke is broken and has been for way too long.

Kyle: Ooh, sore subject.

Caleb: Yeah, you said we wouldn’t talk about that on this podcast. But no, for real, we have a Kubota tractor that we run often, and you fill that up 5 gallons at a time or so, so you don’t feel the pain nearly as bad. Still, doing it a few times a month, you definitely feel the pain. I don’t have it half as bad as over-the-road truckers or guys who are farming their fields and have got to go in harvest time. It could be worse, I feel for them for sure.

Joel: Just imagine if boats—wait, other people’s boats run on diesel. Thank goodness our boats don’t run on diesel. We run on 91 non-oxy premium, which is not cheap, but not diesel.

Caleb: Come on, baby.

Kyle: Nothing is cheap these days. Diesel prices—many people are used to seeing it on the gas station sign, but most people don’t pay attention to it because most people don’t drive diesel. It’s just another number that’s out there. In the past, it was often lower than regular gasoline at various points in time, and it’s one of those invisible costs that, as we said in the intro, affects literally everything in this country. Every kind of business, every kind of product, somewhere along the way involves being transported, made, or powered by diesel fuel. It is a really important thing that most people just look past. We’ve had plenty of other high prices to complain about; if you don’t actually use diesel yourself, it’s out of sight, out of mind—until it’s not. So, Caleb, just to sum it up, why has diesel gotten so expensive as the year’s gone on, and at a faster rate recently than regular gas?

Caleb: There are a few reasons, and at least two of them involve international armed conflicts. There’s the war between Russia and Ukraine, and also the closure, or at least serious restriction, of ship traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. While it’s maybe obvious why it would matter that the Strait of Hormuz traffic is super limited—obviously you can’t carry a whole lot of oil through there—the Russia-Ukraine conflict is a mess for a lot of reasons. In relation to this topic, Russia is actually the world’s second-largest exporter of refined fuel. There have been several successful Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refineries that have totally knocked out their capacity. The crude oil supply actually isn’t that bad or too badly affected in terms of being a choke point on this whole process; it’s the refined fuel—what people can actually use on the other side of it—that has been an issue. Whenever we talk about the supply of diesel being low, it’s not because there’s less oil being pumped out of the ground or less being sent to the refineries; it’s that it just can’t make its way from the refineries out to the people. One more important point on this is that the global supply of diesel is affected by all of this. It’s not like, “Oh, I get my diesel from somewhere else.” There is tremendous demand for diesel across the world, not just in the United States—you could say maybe especially in the United States—but it doesn’t matter. Nobody is better off in this situation than the rest of us, so we’re all pulling from the same supply, and that supply is really low.

Joel: You got a little ahead of it there, because I was going to say, when you talked about the Strait of Hormuz and Russia and Ukraine, I live in Minnesota, Kyle lives here, why do those wars and conflicts over there affect the price at my pump for diesel? That was definitely on my mind.

Caleb: It’s exactly that. We are all going to the same place saying, “Can I have some more, sir?” Right now there just isn’t any of that; there’s not enough to go around. I couldn’t tell you off the top of my head what the price increases are elsewhere in the world. Here, we saw it’s nearly $2.00 a gallon more than it was at this point last year. Everybody is struggling with this, and we are starting to see the pain of that already—the knock-on effects of what happens when diesel price goes up and the rest of the economy has to respond—but I fear it’s just going to get worse from here.

Kyle: Yeah, and the U.S. hasn’t built a new refinery—this might sound crazy—since the ’70s. We have just expanded and invested in existing production facilities. I remember when Iran first started lobbing missiles at a bunch of facilities in the Middle East, it’s one thing to rebuild a pipeline, or pull off a diplomatic coup and reopen something like the Strait of Hormuz, but it takes time to build a refinery. You’re talking hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, and years-long construction. This is not like a switch that can be flipped, or backup refineries just waiting to come online. The stat from Goldman Sachs was telling—take what those guys say with a grain of salt, sure—but right now global refinery capacity outages are currently 60% higher than usual at this time of year compared to the seasonal average. That is really what’s going to put the ongoing squeeze on consumers eventually into next year. This is not something that, once the Strait of Hormuz opens, suddenly all this oil gets released and everything goes back to normal in due time. This is a much bigger issue with no easy fix and a lot more complex factors at play that we’re going to be feeling for many months.

Caleb: Exactly. Here recently there was a Reuters report that said Russia’s fuel export ban is likely to continue throughout September. Don’t be surprised if that gets re-upped for the next month, and the next month, and the next month. This has already been renewed several times at this point, so it’s a slow process. There are physical limitations on what you can do in order to make these facilities, build them back up, and get them fully operational. We are all feeling the pain from that.

Joel: If you think America runs on Dunkin’, you’re just a sucker for marketing, honestly, because it really runs on diesel. In theory, it takes fewer steps to produce diesel than gasoline, but regulations and taxes drive the price up even when there aren’t global conflicts, drone strikes, and shipping choke points. Caleb, talk to us about the modern realities of the situation in terms of diesel alone.

Caleb: Sure. Think about everything that you could buy at the grocery store—it was delivered there on a diesel truck, very likely. Sure, you talk about last-mile delivery maybe taking place with EVs depending on where you live, but diesel was very much involved in getting the goods to where you are. That’s just the reality of it. We might have the benefit that we’re not all truckers or farmers, but all those extra costs get passed down to us. I hear the argument a lot, especially from old farmers around here where I live in the Ozarks. They say, “It’s not even that hard to make diesel, why should it be this much more expensive than gas? I could probably make this tractor run on peanut oil, whatever.” Hey, maybe they could, right? But you have to take into consideration, especially for on-road use, you’ve got to use ultra-low-sulfur diesel that is taxed, right? There’s absolutely no chance that that’s going to get removed just to make it lighter on people’s wallets. I did a little bit of napkin math, so take this for what it’s worth, but we have the price of diesel almost $2.00 more per gallon than it was a year ago. Take into consideration a semi-truck; a lot of them have dual 100-gallon tanks, okay? Per fill-up, that is an additional $388. If you’re going from empty to full, that’s an extra $388 per fill-up. You can be generous and say a loaded semi gets 8 miles per gallon—lots of them don’t get that, all right—and factor in how many miles they can go in a day based on the time they’re allowed, they’re probably stopping for fuel twice in a week. I know this is all rough math, but if you’re filling up with fuel eight times in a month—not crazy to think for a semi—that would total $9,040 in diesel fuel alone. That is $3,100 more than it would have cost in August of last year. You can’t escape that.

Kyle: And that is one truck. That is one truck. So you can imagine a fleet company that has even 100 trucks.

Caleb: Oh, yeah.

Kyle: That is $300,000 more per month that needs to come from somewhere. There are lots of areas like this, as we discussed: trains, farm equipment, construction equipment, even pickup trucks. But semis are hauling the majority of goods in America, especially to the final destination, the final place where it’s sold or picked up. It’s kind of like the situation we had when the tariffs were first introduced at the beginning of last year. There’s all this freak-out and panic over what this means, how costs are going to go up, and how it’s going to get passed down to consumers. Then, for a while, nothing really happens because companies, especially bigger companies, are operating on longer timeframes. They’re projecting costs a couple of quarters in advance, so they’re figuring out ways in the short term to absorb that while they simultaneously figure out how to pass it on to consumers and get that money back from somewhere, either by cutting costs or raising prices. With this diesel thing, we’re in that staggered window where prices have spiked a lot this summer, and if they remain at this level, it’s going to take maybe a couple of months, but it’s not going to take that long for people to start to feel the increase in prices as all these companies charge more to ship all of the goods in America. Then the companies that make those goods need to charge more because they’re paying more for shipping, and we end up in this vicious cycle where suddenly the cost of diesel is almost like an inflationary force. It is really not a good picture.

Joel: I want to be clear, we’re not a political outlet and we’re not getting into politics, but we’re literally running into an election season. We’ve got a war going on that’s affecting this, we have the cost of goods—you talk about the cost of eggs—it’s not just diesel, it’s everything, right? So it’s interesting to see how this all plays in the political sector and whether it affects the outcome of all these things this fall, right? Because whether it’s flock cameras or diesel prices, everybody loves a lightning rod they can latch onto.

Caleb: Yeah, for sure. At my house, my kids eat so many blueberries, strawberries, and salads. We’re having to pay a lot more for our Cyclospora outbreaks; it’s really starting to impact us.

Kyle: That diarrhea does not come cheap, that’s for sure. But anyway, I’m curious—I live in Los Angeles, Joel lives in Minneapolis, and Caleb, you live in Missouri. Prices are so high out here anyway that people are feeling it, but I haven’t heard anyone talking about the price of diesel out here. I would assume, Joel, it’s probably the same for you. But Caleb, you mentioned your friends and acquaintances and the farmers wondering why they can’t just make cheaper diesel. Is this something that people who use diesel vehicles or equipment every day are now talking about in the same way that high gas prices are talked about by everybody? Has it really been picked up like that?

Caleb: Oh yeah, unquestionably so. Fortunately where I live, the average gallon of diesel price is lower than the national average. So whereas at the time of recording that’s more like $5.60 a gallon, we’re closer to $5.10 a gallon.

Kyle: Big savings.

Caleb: Big savings, big savings, everybody. Come to Missouri, get your fuel. But that’s still a huge leap from where it was. We’ve seen lots of fluctuation over time, of course. I started driving 12 years ago, and at that point it was pretty common to pay about $4.00 a gallon. Then that was unthinkable, it was wild, this is crazy. I, yet again, had a 7.3 Power Stroke during those days; that one ran, this one that I have now does not. You had dual tanks, man, you could spend a whole lot on diesel. I’m personally glad that my 7.3 is not up and running right now, because filling up two tanks at $5.10 a gallon, even though that’s a lot lower than the nationwide average, man, I just wouldn’t. Being real honest with you, in my case it’s largely optional; we have a gas truck that we’re able to pull with. I would just park that sucker, so maybe it’s doing me a favor by having never-ending electrical gremlins.

Kyle: Thank you, Ford.

Caleb: Thanks to the dude that tuned this thing up before I bought it. It is so massively screwed on just the dumbest issues. It’s not a Ford problem; we can blame Ford for a lot, but the 7.3 Power Stroke was one of their gifts to man, and man screwed this one up.

Kyle: As he often does. The other thing we should mention is that although the average price of diesel in America is extremely high right now, it is actually not the record. The record came in 2022 right after Russia invaded Ukraine—again, Russia and Ukraine, big factor. That was a peak of $5.82 a gallon. Obviously, inflation has happened a lot since then, so the inflation-adjusted costs, we’re still a fair ways off of what it was at the beginning of 2022. But that was very time-limited, and everyone knew why it was happening, and there weren’t all these compounding crises around the world making it difficult for everyone to adjust. So if you look at the line graph, there’s a big spike right when it happens, and then over the next two years it drops back down, not to where it was exactly, but close-ish to where it was right after the big COVID disruptions and right before Russia invaded Ukraine. So we are not quite in unprecedented territory yet, but we’re getting close, and this time there’s not this one thing that happened that everyone can figure out how to work around and suddenly everything goes back to relative normality. We are in a very weird and unpredictable time. It’s not looking good.

Caleb: Yeah, we’re all worn out on that saying “the new normal.” I hope that’s not the case forever with this, but certainly in the interim, this is the new normal.

Joel: I think our senior editor, Adam Ismail, is always saying, “What I wouldn’t give for some precedented times.” I think that applies here.

Caleb: Yeah, I’d agree.

Kyle: I’m tired of living through history. Another ripple effect that we touched on briefly in the intro is on school districts and local governments. School districts operate fleets of school buses; by and large, those also run on diesel, although some run on natural gas. A medium-sized school district with a normal fleet of buses could be looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional costs over the coming months. That is another big problem; it’s not like they have a ton of money to begin with, and I think we’ve all seen what happens when districts have to make tough choices: teachers get laid off, teachers don’t get raises, class sizes rise, and then there’s a whole ripple effect from all of those things within the schools. So, Joel, I hope you’ve got your seatbelt on, that’s all I’ll say.

Joel: Yeah, I mean, we didn’t get a note from the school district saying fuel is going to be more expensive this year so you owe us more money, but I’ve gotten a lot of other emails about my kids going back to school. Some people in this house are excited, some people are not; it’s a very emotional time.

Caleb: Where I live it’s rural, and all of the towns around, the kids from each of these towns go to one high school for the entire county. It’s no stretch to say that they’re going 60 miles in terms of starting at one place and ending there at the last stop. There are lots of side roads that they’ve got to go down. It’s the same story here. Whenever you’ve got that much distance to cover, you’re doing it in the morning, you’re doing it in the evening. Yeah, it is not looking too good. I tell you, it might be enough to stop the bleacher construction for the football field at our local high school, and I don’t know what our kids will ever do about their education if the bleachers can’t be completed.

Joel: Meanwhile, in the state of Minnesota, we’ve got the State Fair going on, and I guarantee you no diesel prices are stopping anybody from making their trip to the State Fair. I’m just saying, you’ve got to get the corn dog and the fried pickles.

Kyle: Well, that’s kind of everything in a nutshell here, because drivers around the country have spent the last six months adjusting to these higher prices. They’ve remade their household budgets, or they’ve gone into credit card debt, or they’ve just—that has mostly been accounted for, even if it’s not a sustainable thing, at least people have adapted. But the price of diesel, because the way that people will feel it is so widespread and in so many different areas that really vary depending on where you live and your situation in life and if you have kids and whatnot, it’s not this thing where suddenly the price goes up, you see it on the sign, and you’re like, “Okay, now I know how much I have to spend on gas this month.” You have no idea of knowing how much prices are going to rise, which prices are going to rise, and when. It all just trickles down when it does. So, yeah, people may say, “I’m still going to go to the State Fair even if I drive a diesel truck,” but that’s just one area where the cost of diesel impacts their life. All those other areas, it’s just going to have to be wait-and-see and then try to adapt. Again, this is happening just as people are starting to get into the holiday shopping season, and people have already reconfigured their household budgets so they can buy their kids’ Christmas presents or Hanukkah presents, and suddenly those costs may also go up. We’re just trying to express that this is something that most people have no idea of how it’s going to impact them, if they even know that it will at all—but it will.

Joel: I think that’s it, right? Hank going to the Minnesota State Fair, he’s going to feel the pain when he has to fill up to drive to the State Fair, and he’s still going to buy fried pickles or whatever. But Mom and Dad buying Halloween candy, they’re not going to know why the Twix and the Reese’s are more expensive. They’re just going to say, “Well, eggs cost more, so this costs more,” and they’re not going to realize it might be because of diesel fuel, right? The reality of the situation is that it’s going to affect everything. Goods and services are going to cost more money, especially as we head into the holiday season, and this time it’s because of fuel.

Caleb: Yeah, and you’re not going to see any big tax cuts on diesel to make it more affordable on people. Think of—we can use this hypothetical again, right? We’re talking about a state fair. Let’s say that taxes just get totally stripped on diesel so that way it’s cheaper to fill up at the pump. Well, what happens whenever you have an event like that? There’s a million and one semi-trucks, heavy-duty pickups pulling trailers that love to just totally obliterate interstate highways, bridges, anything that they come across, right? Heavier vehicles take a heavier toll on infrastructure. Then suddenly they’re going to say, “Hey, where’s the money at that we would normally use to fix this?” That would never happen, that would never happen, that’s the point that I’m getting at. The hypothetical seems unlikely because it is incredibly unlikely. Don’t count on the Feds doing some kind of switcheroo like they have and diluting regular gasoline with ethanol. The same tricks don’t apply here, folks.

Kyle: Yeah, and also another place where the same tricks don’t apply, or the same expectations don’t apply: when gas prices rose at the beginning of the year, you saw an immediate spike the next month in hybrid car sales in America, and EV sales, too. This is, again, after the whole tax credit kerfuffle and the price of those went up by $7,500 by default, and everyone predicted, “Well, that’s it for EV adoption for the next 10 years.” Sales did drop, but then there are always people in the market for a new car, so when they are deciding on that and suddenly there’s a geopolitical catastrophe and gas prices go up by two bucks, it’s pretty easy for someone to adapt and say, “Okay, well, I’m just going to buy a hybrid next time,” and then they get to enjoy those savings. So there’s basically one practical electric semi-truck on sale that you can buy in America, and that’s the Tesla Semi. Other than that, it’s not like any of these fleet operators can just suddenly, next month’s purchase order, “I’m going to buy a bunch of electric semis instead, and then we can reap those savings elsewhere.” All these heavy-duty pickup truck operators—heavy-duty electric trucks are not a thing. There is no backstop to help with the demand destruction, as the economists put it, to just get the demand to a place where the supply can actually catch up. It just doesn’t work like that with vehicles in America, especially. We’re used to people seeing high gas prices and changing their purchase decisions on new cars accordingly; that can’t happen for a number of reasons with the price of diesel.

Caleb: Exactly. I’ll tell you this: a lot of people who are buying diesel trucks for leisure aren’t about to admit they can’t afford one, they’ll just get a bigger loan.

Joel: That’s the perfect place to end it. Let’s not even get into start talking about truck loans.

Caleb: See that? I told you everybody, I own a diesel, I am one of you. It’s just the fact of the matter. Nobody is going to skip out on a diesel and tell somebody else it’s because they can’t afford the price to fill it up. Come on, boys.

Kyle: Someone help Caleb with his budget, his family is dying. Too much diesel, too much diesel.

Caleb: Too much diesel, too much diesel.

The post The Feds Diluted Gas to Cut Prices. Diesel Has No Such Fix appeared first on The Drive.

It’s happening, officially.

On Saturday, Tom Cruise announced via Instagram that Days of Thunder will return with a sequel in summer of 2028. The announcement included Anne Hathaway, who will apparently be part of the resurrected cult classic.

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Filming for the new Days of Thunder has not commenced. Cruise and Hathaway joked in the announcement they’ll go make the movie after Hathaway has her baby. Hathaway is pregnant with her third child.

What exactly the Days of Thunder sequel will be called is unclear. The NASCAR race car shown in the announcement post simply had Days of Thunder with “Summer 2028” on the side while painted in the iconic livery used in the first movie. Cole Trickle’s name was above the door on the car, which is the race car driver that Tom Cruise played in the first movie.

In July, it was reported that Cruise had signed on to the sequel with Paramount . Reportedly the production house was seeking a director for the new movie. The original Days of Thunder was directed by Tony Scott, but Scott died in 2012.

Robert Duvall also starred in the original movie, but the iconic actor died in February. But Randy Quaid, who played Tim Daland, a car dealer owner who wanted to start a NASCAR race team, is still alive and is currently 75 years old.

In 2025 NASCAR legend Jeff Gordon said he wanted to be part of the new Days of Thunder sequel, but this was before the movie or Cruise’s involvement was confirmed.

After the success of Top Gun: Maverick Cruise said he wanted to resurrect Days of Thunder and give it the same treatment. The original Days of Thunder came out after Cruise made the original Top Gun.

Mark your calendar for two years from now, Days of Thunder fans. Special tires will undoubtedly be included.

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The post Tom Cruise Confirms ‘Days of Thunder’ Sequel Coming Summer 2028 appeared first on The Drive.

That sound you just heard was Lincoln dealers breathing a sigh of relief as the automaker commits to bringing its smallest and least expensive model back from the dead in 2027.

On Tuesday, Lincoln announced the 2027 Corsair, which will be imported from China as a refreshed hybrid-only model bookending the automaker’s lineup as the entry point. Lincoln dealers will start taking orders today, with the Corsair now costing $48,790 including a hefty $2,295 destination charge. At the opposite end of the pricing spectrum sits the flagship Navigator full-size SUV.

The Corsair was last updated for 2025 and then killed alongside its platform mate, the Ford Escape, with production ending at the end of 2025. The automaker retooled the Louisville Assembly plant where the compact crossovers were built for the upcoming $30,000 Fathom electric truck. Dealers were terrified about Ford’s decision, knowing it could cost sales. The returning Corsair costs $7,310 more than the outgoing 2026 model, but the previous base model lacked a hybrid powertrain and standard all-wheel drive.

To bring the Corsair back from the dead, Lincoln is tapping its Chongqing Plant in Chongqing, China, and will import the small crossover starting next year. The larger midsize Nautilus is currently built in China and imported to America. A Lincoln spokesperson told The Drive, “The 2027 model Corsair has been part of our cycle plan, so it’s not something that is a new decision. When we stopped production of Corsair in LAP [Louisville Assembly Plant] late last year, we always said that the segment is important to Lincoln and that we would have more to share on Corsair in the future. So we never closed the door.”

Earlier in August, Ford announced it would be moving Chinese-based Lincoln production to the U.S. by 2030, but has not elaborated where specifically the Nautilus, and now Corsair, will be made once production shifts to America in the coming years.

The reborn Corsair will come standard with a hybrid powertrain. A 2.0-liter turbo-four paired with two motor generators will be rated at 305 horsepower combined, and all-wheel drive will be standard. If that sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because Lincoln’s cribbing the powertrain from the Nautilus, though it’s been retuned for the Corsair and is down five hp compared to its larger sibling.

Lincoln noted the returning Corsair has been refreshed, but it will take a keen eye and maybe even a Lincoln enthusiast to spot the updates. The exterior’s been smoothed over with a focus on the details. The grille is a little larger and blends more seamlessly into the front bumper without a dedicated frame. The full-width LED taillight features a sharper edge and is harmonized with the larger Nautilus design. New five-spoke turned alloy wheels arrive, and buyers will find 18s, 19s, and 20s on the order sheet. A Jet Appearance Package will serve as a blackout option, eliminating any shiny bits. Earlier in August, Lincoln revealed the updated Nautilus with similar design tweaks.

Inside the Corsair, Lincoln said a new “softer one-piece seat design that further enhances cabin comfort and support, focused on real comfort,” but we’ll have to reserve judgment until we see, touch, and ride in the updated Corsair. Upgraded 24-way power seats, which Lincoln dubs “Perfect Position” seats, will be available on the Reserve trim featuring heating, ventilation, and massage functions.

A large touchscreen still looks like a table mounted on the dashboard, featuring split-screen functionality with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto functionality. The automaker’s Level 2 hands-free driver-assist system called Blue Cruise will be standard, along with four years of service.

Got a tip about future product? Drop us a line at tips@thedrive.com

The post Lincoln Is Building the New Corsair in China and Shipping it to the US appeared first on The Drive.

It was supposed to be a one-year special and die, yet here we are. Never would I have guessed that in the year 2026 I’d drive a new Hellcat-powered WK2-based Durango, but I did, and it’s exactly the vehicle you know and remember.

The 2026 Dodge Durango Hellcat is the only three-row, supercharged V8-powered crossover SUV with a factory warranty. It’s loud, it’s quick, it’s fast, it’s comfortable, it’s thirsty, and it’s the same as it ever was. 

The Basics

Dodge has turned the three-row family hauler into a V8-only affair and leans heavily into the Americana muscle persona. The V8 basically kept the WK2-based Durango, which is now 15 years old. The Hellcat models, well they’ve been a breakout success. Now you can “Jailbreak” the thing, opening a dizzying number of build configurations. There are four seat belt color options alone. That’s before the six wheel options, four brake caliper colors, six paint choices, six badge color choices, five dual-stripe designs, a gloss black hood option, five interior color choices, three seating configurations.

The Durango doesn’t look any different. We are three facelifts deep, and there’s a fourth coming. I’ve seen it but wasn’t allowed to take photos. The current car? It’s sharp. The curved fenders hid the wide rolling stock on the Hellcat-powered model. The hood gets scalloped vents to extract heat and let cool air in for that supercharged V8. Large dual exhaust tips indicate this thing is going to be loud. Personally, I appreciate that the wheels are only 20s and barely clear the huge brakes. This isn’t flashy, but it looks the business.

Inside, the Durango’s been kept surprisingly competitive and modern thanks to all its refreshes. The 7-inch digital gauge cluster is augmented by a 10.1-inch touchscreen, which features a bevy of SRT-specific screens, ranging from digital gauges for the various powertrain systems to launch control settings and more. Even better, the climate control screen features a driver with a racing helmet, because Hellcat. Traditionalists are going to love that this is augmented with buttons and knobs for the entire climate control system, plus a volume knob.

Something in all my years of experiencing the WK2-based Durango that marked a first was the five-passenger seating configuration in the car tested. There was no third row. Instead, there were two under-floor bins that opened to reveal a healthy amount of hidden storage.

Driving the 2026 Dodge Durango Hellcat

You’ve heard this before. The 2026 Dodge Durango is powered by a venerable supercharged 6.2-liter Hemi V8 engine rated at 710 horsepower and 645 lb-ft of torque. A ZF-sourced eight-speed automatic transmission sends power to all four wheels. Dodge quotes a 0-60 mph time of 3.5 seconds, a quarter-mile time of 11.5 seconds, and a top speed of a hilarious 180 mph.

Look, this thing rips. It’s loud as hell, especially on cold start or at full throttle. It can drone on the highway depending on the speed and RPM, and you’ll always, always hear that supercharger whine when under load.

The ancient WK2 chassis is still fantastic and shames plenty of newer platforms in both packaging and feel. The semi-adaptive dampers are tuned to be firm, but never jarring even on broken Midwest pavement. This is completely livable as a daily driver.

That said, it’s hard not to ignore the EPA fuel economy ratings of 12 mpg city, 17 highway, and 13 combined. That’s for the good stuff, too: Premium. Over the course of 307 miles of mixed suburban driving, the Durango Hellcat averaged 13.7 mpg according to the onboard trip computer. 

Quick Verdict

At $81,990, including a $1,995 destination fee, the 2026 Dodge Durango Hellcat isn’t cheap. As tested with the Jailbreak options, including the stripes, red badging, red seatbelts, and the Premium Group, which added niceties like a 19-speaker Harman Kardon sound system with an 825-watt amplifier, I was all in for $88,160.

Ironically, a Rivian R1S dual-motor with the Performance Upgrade will deliver essentially the same 0-60 mph sprint time and similar power (less hp, more torque) for the same money. But that’s with the Large battery, not the Max battery, and a 329-mile EPA range estimate.

Living well beyond its original shelf life, now on every one of its nine lives, the 2026 Dodge Durango Hellcat might be the most American three-row crossover SUV money buys. It embodies what our country values on multiple levels, and nothing else in the market directly competes against it.

Dodge provided The Drive with a seven-day loan of this vehicle for the purpose of writing this review.

2026 Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat Specs

The post 2026 Dodge Durango Hellcat Quick Review: Unapologetically American appeared first on The Drive.

“There will be sooner or later a limit, because zero is the limit,” Lamborghini Chief Marketing Officer Federico Foschini told The Drive, noting you can’t do 0-60 in zero seconds.

One of the most powerful men at the storied Italian automaker noted the reality of physics just before saying, “emotion is not only the sound, but also the way you are engaged while driving in time of braking, accelerating, and shifting.”

In an era where three-row SUVs now have more power than Lamborghini’s latest supercar wearing a Super Veloce badge, Foschini explained how improving a car’s performance must now be broader than it has been historically.

Foschini told The Drive, “So, for this reason we decided not only to improve the performance of the car on the longitudinal performance, but we decided to bring these [other attributes] on the test track. And what is important, and I think that you will discover with [the power] routing, it is not only the pure performance, it’s also the feeling that it’s giving you as such a complex system, to be able to handle, let’s say, a powerful car, completely reducing, or, let’s say, eliminating the sense of the weight, being able to dominate, or to handle properly this kind of powertrain over in 1000 hp.”

That “feeling” of being able to handle and dominate a track with over 1,000 hp is what Foschini pointed to as emotion via engagement.

“As you can see, we were working exactly this kind of field, no? We were working on the field of the braking, on the field of reducing the shifting time, increasing the responsiveness. So these are all elements that are giving you additional driving emotion, increasing your engagement, but also giving you the feeling, if you are not a professional driver, to be able to handle a car with each kind of, let’s say, power, but also able to deserve this kind of performance, also for not professional driver,” Foschini said.

Foschini continued “And this is what we are aiming to do, you know, to bring the performance, not only to people that are racing drivers, but also to people that are driving the car normally, maybe our skills, but not really professional drivers.”

To that end Lamborghini introduced a Pilota driving mode in the new Revuelto SV. The new mode is said to be derived from the automaker’s GT3 racing program with five levels of control across the ABS, traction control, and stability control system.

How else Lamborghini will evolve emotion beyond sound and into engagement is yet to seen. Foschini didn’t elaborate but the latest Revuelto model hints at the future.

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Lamborghini’s SV badge, which stands for Super Veloce or “super fast” in Italian, just entered its electrified era. Welcome to the future.

On Friday, leading into Monterey Car Week at Pebble Beach the Lamborghini Revuelto SV debuted with more power, more high-voltage energy, new aero, and a new GT3-derived driving mode. Yes, there’s a wing, and no you probably can’t buy one because only 1,963 units are being made–a tribute to the year Lamborghini was founded–and surely you didn’t place an order already.

The Revuelto sits atop Lamborghini’s current lineup with a plug-in hybrid V12 powertrain. The SV model takes the “basic” model’s powertrain and adds both power and energy. Total system output is up 50 horsepower for a total of 1,050 hp and system torque is up 18 lb-ft for a whopping 1,051 lb-ft. But the power increase isn’t from the gas-fed 6.5-liter V12 engine. No, it’s from the plug-in hybrid powertrain’s high-voltage battery that basically doubles its output by adding 3.8 kWh for a total of 7.3 kWh. But the battery didn’t actually get physically larger, it’s just more energy dense. The extra juice increases the electric motor’s output by 190 kW and enables 4 laps worth of electric juice around Hockenheimring.

The extra power shaves 0.1 seconds off the standard Revuelto’s 0-60 mph time with the SV only taking 2.4 seconds to complete the sprint. Lamborghini said the Revuelto SV’s top speed is over 214 mph, but did not disclose a firm number.

But the “super fast” Lamborghini is not supposed to be a numbers car despite the four-figure horsepower rating. SV models are about handling and dynamic upgrades that enhance the driving experience. To that end Lamborghini’s swapped in what it calls “racing-inspired” adjustable passive dampers, a set of next-generation carbon ceramic brakes all paired with model-specific Bridgestone Potenza Race R tires. The result of these upgrades is 23% better heat dissipation and 12% lower brake disc temperatures, 10% more lateral grip from the dampers alone, and 13% more overall grip with 5% better traction thanks to the tires at full throttle compared to the standard Revuelto.

Lamborghini President and CEO Stephan Winkelmann said, “With the Revuelto SV, we’re further refining the already high-performance and razor-sharp Revuelto, offering drivers an even more intense driving experience. The Revuelto SV embodies exclusivity, technical perfection, and pure driving pleasure. This makes it a pure driving machine and the essence of our Lamborghini DNA.”

Though, it’s the new Pilota driving mode that drivers should really be taking note of. Lamborghini said it was developed for “genuine fun to drive” characteristics. Pilota will remap the ABS, traction control, and stability control systems and is said to deliver reduced braking distances, better corner braking, better balance and increased sharpness, and increase performance with curbs and jumps. The Pilota mode can be activated via a new dedicated rotary knob on the steering wheel and unlocks a five-stage traction control setup derived from Lamborghini’s GT3 race car.

As with other modern SV models the Revuelto SV sharpens the standard car’s design. The wedge-shaped car’s angles and creases are extended, sharper, cut deeper, are outlined in red paint, and are capped with a fixed rear wing. The staggered 20-inch front and 21-inch rear wheels feature an available center lock design.

Inside lightweight carbon fiber door panels and racing seats are swapped in. Sport seats with carbon shells will be standard but monocoque carbon fiber race seats will be on what is sure to be a laundry list of options.

Lamborghini didn’t disclose pricing, but if you have to ask, or you don’t already have an order in, you probably aren’t getting one.

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On Thursday, Flock Safety Founder and CEO Garrett Langley took ownership of police abuse of Flock’s services and said “I’m sorry the system has failed you.“

Flock called out the situation involving myself and my wife, where we were surrounded by police who thought I performed grand theft auto with a $155k Range Rover due to the LA Sheriff’s department inputting a partial plate into the National Criminal Information Center database and being flagged by Flock cameras, in a press release. “A recent story described a wrongful traffic stop involving an auto journalist. The central point is simple: an alert is a lead, not a conclusion, which should be confirmed by an officer,” said in the release with the emphasis being theirs, not ours. While skirting responsibility and shifting it to the police Langley announced sweeping changes.

Langley said Flock will institute new mandatory audit monitoring that will detect unusual activity and repeated queries. Additionally, searches using Flock’s system will now require search justification by requiring case codes for all law enforcement searches with an exemption for emergency searches, which will still be reviewed.

Unusual searches, which seem to include repeated patterns, will result in a user being locked out of the system pending an administrator review, according to Flock.

Additionally, Flock will be reducing default data retention period to seven days, which to date has ranged state-by-state to follow local laws. Some states only allowed for 7 or 21 days worth of data retention, while others might have allowed 30 or up to 100 days worth of data to be stored.

Notably, the new 7-day data retention period is the default recommendation. “Existing customers will keep their current, democratically approved retention periods,” Flock said.

Langley said “Historically, my point of view as a chief executive of a private company was, I don’t know if I should be making these decisions. I don’t know if it’s my job to say how long data should be retained.”

The BBC reported, “He added that he has come to agree with groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation that police should need an active case number to search Flock’s data.” and quoted Langley as following with “They’re right. I think it should be required.”

Langley told CNN, “What’s changed for me is realizing that we have a responsibility, maybe an obligation even, to the communities we serve to set the standard.”

Flock said it will also introduce a new Offense Filtering feature that enables cities to choose which type of offense is permissible for other agencies to access their cameras.

Langley said, “We are not perfect, so we will keep listening, improving, and building a better standard for public safety technology together.” These changes will roll out in the weeks and months ahead, the CEO said.

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The post Flock Admits Failures That Put Innocent People at Risk, Overhauls Police Search Rules appeared first on The Drive.

The Internet armchair critics crying foul and other automakers squinting real hard can all stop wondering, questioning, and doubting whether the Ford Mustang GTD Competition achieved the unthinkable on street-legal tires.

The Drive can confirm the Ford Mustang GTD Competition that obliterated the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1X’s Nurburgring lap record was in fact rolling on street-legal tires. The tires are Michelin Pilot Sport Cup FR. Not slicks.

Ford brought the record-setting car to Laguna Seca Raceway for Monterey Car Week on the exact rubber used to set a ‘Ring time. There are even melted bits visible on the outer edge of the tire with feathering.

The FR designation on the Michelin Pilot Sport Cup tires stands for “Felgenrippe,” which is German for “rim rub” or “flange rib.” This refers to its built-in rim guard in the form of a rubber ridge on the lower sidewall to help protect wheels from curb rash.

In April, Ford announced the Mustang GTD Competition had lapped the Nurburgring in an astonishing 6:40.835. That’s one of the quickest times of any street-legal car money can buy bested only by the Mercedes-Benz AMG One hypercar, which has a Formula 1 powertrain.

Ford has been coy about what upgrades the GTD Competition model carries over the standard GTD, which is a $325,000-plus Mustang. But we do know it has more than the standard car’s 815 horsepower thanks to both upgraded hardware and tuning. Ford also admitted there’s been rear wing modifications via the DRS system and an additional set of dive planes mounted on the front bumper. It’s hard to miss the carbon fiber aero discs on the rear wheels. Those wheels are now made of magnesium. An additional weight-saving measure are carbon fiber bucket seats. There are even lighter dampers, though it’s unclear what that means truly at this point. Ford’s also copped to “additional actions to help reduce weight,” but won’t say that those measures are.

In 2024 the Ford Mustang GTD became the fastest American car to ever lap the Nurburgring. Then Team Ford reset and beat its own record by an eye-popping 5.5 seconds in May of 2025.

But Team Chevy came along and bested the Blue Oval’s Nurburgring record, not once but twice, two months later. Ford CEO Jim Farley took it personally and said, “Game on.”

Months later The Drive spotted a modified Mustang GTD lapping the ‘Ring at speed in an clear attempt to either set a new record or shakedown modifications. A record was clearly not set because Ford headed back to the ‘Ring in March and started hot laps again with a prototype. Ultimately the modified and upgraded GTD smashed the Corvette’s records—and not by a little bit.

Somehow the GTD Competition shaved 11.237 seconds from the GTD’s lap time. This astonishing gap left competitive automakers and Internet armchair critics questioning whether the Mustang GTD Competition was on street-legal rubber. It was.

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The post Ford Mustang GTD Competition Used Street-Legal Tires To Obliterate the Chevy Corvette ZR1X’s Nurburgring Lap Record appeared first on The Drive.

Families, luxury SUV buyers, and everyone with an Internet connection and a keyboard, Rivian has heard your pleas and answered: The R1S is getting second-row captain’s chairs.

On Thursday, the 2027 Rivian R1T and R1S debuted with a reconfigured trim lineup, new color option, and yes, second-row captain’s chairs for the R1S. Both are now on sale with prices holding steady. The R1T starts at $81,885 and the R1S starts at $85,885 including an $1,895 destination charge.

Rivian’s ditching today’s matrix of motor-driven trim lines and aligning the R1 models with the new R2 configurations. The base dual motor models are now called the Premium model with the tri-motor models morphing into the Performance trim while Quad stands pat at Quad. Power outputs, performance specs, battery configurations, and range all stand pat with up to 410 miles of EPA-estimated range on a Premium R1S and 420 miles of range on the R1T.

Rivian said second-row captain’s chairs have been the most requested interior feature to date. With the second-row captain’s chair option joining the R1S lineup the three-row SUV can now be configured to seat six or seven passengers. But the new seating configuration is part of a dizzying pricing and options matrix that will translate to the six-seat configuration adding $4,000 to $6,000 to the bill depending on the trim and interior color. The seats themselves are basically a $1,500 option, but they require bundling of packages or costly interior colors.

The captain’s chairs are on rails and will slide while tilting the seat back forward to access the third row at the touch of a seat-back mounted button just like today’s bench seat. The captain’s chairs can fold flat, like today’s bench seat, to enable a completely flat cargo area for those who want to use the six-seat R1S to camp with an air mattress in the back at night. The captain’s chairs are heated, feature LATCH and top-tether anchors, have individual arm rests that fold flush into the seat edge, and have built-in cup holders that flip down from the seat’s inside edge.

Rivian clearly expects the pricey second-row captain’s chairs to be a popular options as the bench seat will be limited to the R1S Premium and R1S Performance and Quad with the Black Mountain Signature interior. Buyers hoping to configure an R1S Performance or Quad with a Slate Sky or Ocean Coast interior and second-row bench seat will be out of luck as they are now six-seater configurations only.

A new Esker Silver color that is said to give the R1 a liquid-metal appearance hops from the R2 to the R1 lineup and replaces LA Silver. Rivian also introduced a new standard 20-inch wheel design on the R1T wrapped in Goodyear all-season rubber and it’ll be an option on R1T Performance models.

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Stellantis is preparing to be on a tear with new and refreshed product including 60 new vehicles and 50 refreshes by 2030. Part of that plan? Making Chrysler more than just a minivan brand with three new SUVs costing less than $40,000. But for now, in the meantime, Chrysler just refreshed the Pacifica, again. That might have just been the start of the what’s to come with the Pacifica.

On Saturday, in Pontiac, Michigan at Roadkill Nights two modified Pacificas debuted, and both are lowered. Both are being called concepts, but are they?

While the red van, that is a collaboration between VANkulture and Chrysler, could be chocked up to a one-off custom build, the black one caught our attention.

The Chrysler Pacifica Concept, as it was so blandly named, “shows how a few factory upgrades can quickly transform the Pacifica into a custom-looking seven- or eight-passenger minivan.” Stellantis used the word factory two times in one sentence, and the modifications are basic bolt-on upgrades.

The “concept” took a Diamond Black 2027 Chrysler Pacifica Limited AWD with the S Appearance Package and added Mopar stripes, black-painted brake calipers, a 1-inch lowering kit, 21-inch Geode Wheels wrapped in 245/45R21 Pirelli PZero summer tires, and red seat belts from the America250 edition van.

The lowered minivan looks production-ready right down to wheels with a design name. The Drive asked Stellantis if Chrysler is considering putting a factory-lowered Pacifica minivan into production and was told “we launched a variant recently .. the Chrysler Pacifica A250 Special Edition!” and a quote from Chrysler CEO Matt McAlear saying ““Pacifica has always been about making life easier for families, and these two concepts show customers can make their minivan their own, stand out and have some fun. Concepts give us an opportunity to explore ideas that resonate with customers and demonstrate the flexibility of the Pacifica platform. We recently launched the Chrysler Pacifica America250 special edition with unique design details, including dark ruby seat belts, black leather seats with Ruby Red stitching, blue accents beneath the perforated leather seating surfaces and other exclusive interior and exterior touches. These concepts continue that spirit of personalization and creativity. Stay tuned.”

That’s not a “no.”

Chrysler noted that the minivan segment is an “opportunity” as Gen Z and Millennial buyers have increased 143% in the last 10 years, and retail sales are forecasted to grow 18% in the next five years. Chrysler didn’t provide sources for this data, but the numbers are impressive.

Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research at Telemetry, told The Drive, “Yeah, I absolutely think that there is a potential for minivans to start growing again. You know, we’ve been on this kick with SUVs and crossovers for quite a while now. New generations like to shift directions from the prior generation.”

Before the “RoboCop” design update came in February Chrysler debuted the Grizzly concept in August of 2025. The Grizzly gave the Pacifica a 2.75-inch lift up front and 2.5-inch lift in back and placed it on 31-inch BFGoodrich all-terrain tires. That’s before even addressing the TYRI light bar and Baja Designs fog lights, not to mention the ARB retractable awning.

Could the Grizzly be put into production? In November, at the 2025 Los Angeles auto show McAlear told The Drive, “The response has been overwhelming and it’s a terrific package and it’s something that we’re looking at, but we’re looking at things across every segment all the time, trying to build business cases that make sense for where consumers want us to go. And that’s a great opportunity.”

“During the pandemic we saw interest in the whole van life thing, but I think people are now taking a look at the minivan and seeing this has some potential. When you can do something like the Grizzly, something that’s lifted has a little bit of off-road capability, I think that there’s, there’s an opportunity there to grab some buyers that, and certainly in the past decade, might not have considered minivans, but now see it as an interesting solution to the problem of having a lifestyle vehicle that’s a little different from what maybe their older siblings or, you know, the previous generation was focused on,” Abuelsamid said.

Chrysler’s now shown two factory-backed concepts, in the span of 12 months, one lowered and one lifted, along with launching a variant that features red seat belts. The automaker’s acknowledged segment growth and made it clear the sportier S Appearance Package already is optioned on one-third of Pacificas sold today.

Stay tuned indeed.

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The post Chrysler CEO Teases a Factory-Lowered Pacifica: ‘Stay Tuned’ appeared first on The Drive.

The entire auto industry is in upheaval, let alone the rest of the world. And tires are downstream of all of that. When tariffs hit, the price of the raw materials spikes. When gas prices go up, people drive less, and replace their tires less often. When the price of everything goes up, people balk at spending $800 for a new set and more and more, opt for a cheap Chinese import over a legacy name like Goodyear.

On the latest episode of The Drivecast, Goodyear CEO Mark Stewart sat down exclusively with The Drive for a candid discussion about whether the company can actually grow its business by selling more expensive tires to fewer people, cautious support of tariffs, the competition to land lucrative deals with automakers for factory-equipped tires on new cars, and yes, the blimp. There was blimp talk.

Everyone knows the name Goodyear, everyone knows the Goodyear Blimp, but that visibility hasn’t kept it out of the woods recently. A net loss of $1.7 billion in 2025 and $249 million in the first quarter of 2026 have been attributed to weak consumer demand along with rising input costs, and of course we can’t overlook the competition from both China and South Korea among others. It’s had to consolidate plants, lay off thousands of employees, and take a hard look at itself.

Stewart’s been swift and divested Goodyear of its non-core assets, refocused the company on tire manufacturing, shifted from a regional to global centralized approach in the name of efficiency, and put a focus on more premium tires and sizes. 

Tires are actually one of the most important aspects of a car’s performance and safety. It’s the only part of your car that actually touches the road. Good tires can transform the way it drives. Bad tires can turn it into a basket case. And bald tires can get you killed. You might say tires are important even if most people find them boring. But can the man tasked with figuring out how to save an iconic tire brand solidify the company’s future and make people say, “I want Goodyears?”

First time here? The Drivecast is The Drive‘s weekly podcast that takes you behind-the-scenes on the largest controversies, stories, and characters shaping the automotive industry along with the way our roads look today. Powered by The Drive‘s inside access, original reporting, exclusives, and insights, The Drivecast aims to make everyone an insider.

Listen to The Drivecast via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music. Love it? Like it? Want to help? Leave a five-star review on your platform of choice to help get The Drivecast in front of more people. Have a suggestion, tip, request, or feedback? Drop us a line at feedback@thedrive.com. I promise, we read every single email.

Full Transcript

Joel: All right, so we are back and we have Mark Stewart, CEO of Goodyear Tires. Mark, I hear you’re a car enthusiast, and you actually have a small collection of cars, including a car that belonged to someone quite famous and talented. Is that accurate?

Mark: That is accurate. It was owned by my dad. Oh, wait, that’s not the one you’re talking about, is it? You’re not talking about my CJ-5. I got actually four years ago—I’m the proud next holder of Aretha Franklin’s 1986 Rolls-Royce Corniche II, black-on-black convertible. It is pretty badass, I’ve got to tell you.

Joel: Do you roll around in it?

Mark: Well, at the moment I have the roll-away board that I’ve been replacing the window lift motor. I will not tell you how many months it took me to figure out that jigsaw puzzle, but it was victory and success on Sunday. I finally got the old lift motor out so that I could put it back together and then roll around on it the proper way, behind the steering wheel.

Kyle: How did you end up getting that? That’s not something you stumble on, I imagine.

Mark: Yeah, it’s actually a pretty cool story. So, we had a retirement family house and the couple we bought it from, the guy, a New York guy, used to have this fashion brand in the ’70s and ’80s called The Italian Mob. And he used to dress all of the big Motown stars back in the day, including Aretha. And she was at his house one weekend, and it was in ’89, I think, so the car was three years old, and she’s like, “Ron, I’ve got to get rid of this beautiful car.” He’s like, “What is it about it?” She goes, “Well, the seats don’t go back far enough for me at this time, right?” As we know, she was a very vivacious lady. And so she sold the car to Ron, and Ron’s had it all these years. And Ron got to his early 80s, a couple years after I bought the house from Ron and his wife. He called, he goes, “I’ve been talking a lot about it. You guys are good friends. That’s a Detroit car. It needs to head back your way.” He goes, “I’m shipping it to you tomorrow. Figure out what it’s worth and write me a check.” I was like, “Done, done, and done.” So, I’ve had it ever since.

Kyle: The power of friendship. Well, congratulations on owning a piece of history there. And, you know, I have to know, Mark: Will Goodyear Tires supply the new tires for the new Days of Thunder movie? Not a reference—Joel put this question in the rundown. He’s the one who really wants to know.

Joel: I’ve got to know. I’ve got to know.

Kyle: Exclusive news here on The Drivecast.

Mark: I don’t know that we’ve—I’d do the phone-a-friend to Travis. I think even if we had that info, we would be embargoed at this time.

Joel: Oh, Mark, between friends you can tell us.

Mark: But, you know, given the success of Eagle F1 coming back out into the market and its prominent place in the number one Tire Rack, I think whether it’s on there or not, it’s the logical choice 100% that it should be on it, if it is or if it isn’t.

Kyle: We demand continuity here in this culture. It would be nice to see, but I guess we’ll stay tuned on that. Okay, so let’s dive in here. To start with the big question, Mark: it has been two and a half years since you were brought in to transform the company. What exactly led Goodyear to that point where it needed a transformation, and really what has changed since then?

Mark: Goodyear is such an iconic company, right? So, everybody knows the name Goodyear, everybody knows the blimp. But if you’re below a certain age category, you may not know that those blimps flying in all the major events around the country and around the world are tied to tires. And so that’s a little bit of the trajectory of Goodyear being such an iconic company with amazing products. But over the last 20 years, a lot of the marketing and advertising in tougher times got reduced significantly. As well, when you think about the market, the market has changed a lot when it comes to how people go to market, and Goodyear really was an inventor of some of the powerhouse marketing and advertising through the decades.

And without going away, thank goodness we still have that powerful relationship with NASCAR, powerful relationships on the European side with endurance racing, and going through the GTs and so forth, but we really need to bring that back. Goodyear was really struggling in terms of growth story. We bought Cooper in the ’21 time period coming out of COVID, but the world has changed a lot with the big influx of tires from Asia at a much different price point. And so, it’s really important that Goodyear meaningfully mix up in the profit pool in terms of really being back to performance, back into what we call the 18-inch and above, or the more modern or contemporary sizes. That’s where the profit pools are. And Goodyear had been really hanging in the large-volume middle, and that area was really getting attacked—really super attacked on low-price tires.

And so, in coming in, it was an honor to be able to come in. I grew up as a Dunlop baby, so coming back into the tire business from the side of actually working in it instead of being fed and clothed by it was really an important responsibility to come into the business and to lead that transformation to get it turned around, because Goodyear is really working hard to generate meaningful cash flow, to generate meaningful profits, and to secure the next 128 years of the company.

And so, we had to divest several non-core assets that really, when we think about the core of the business, it really is about our consumer tire business that everybody knows from the racing world and all of the great history that we have there, same thing on the commercial side, and aviation. We’ve got 30-plus percent of the world market share in aviation so that we could focus. So, we paid down the debt, get our balance sheet as healthy as it’s been in 30 years, and we cut a lot of the things out of the system that was not about cutting our way to success, but it was about right-sizing the business for profitability.

Kyle: Got it. It’s well-known that we’ll come back to the motorsport stuff and the blimp. I do want to talk about the blimp. I mean, who doesn’t want to talk about the blimp? But on a more serious note, part of this did involve a number of layoffs. It was earlier this year that you guys announced a number of plants would be consolidated and closed. I think it was about 1,700 jobs being cut in North Carolina.

Mark: Yeah, North Carolina, yes.

Kyle: How does the restructuring look now, and are there any plans for continued consolidations going forward? Is the plan complete, and now it’s about just optimizing the structures that remain?

Mark: The last two and a half years has been about what we call the Goodyear Forward program, which was specifically around divesting those three assets: the Dunlop brand and namesake, the chemical business, and then the mining business, or OTR as we call it. Because again, Goodyear had underinvested in quite frankly all three of those, and one was kind of a messy part of the world with Dunlop. We had part of the world, one of the competitors had the other part of the world, so it’s hard to invest in a brand that you’re not getting a global reach from, right? So, those things made sense and needed to happen from a business perspective, to your point, right?

We’re talking about our Goodyear family of folks, right, and a lot of folks that are multi-generations of families in the company. It’s something we definitely take very seriously, but something that we had to do to address our cost structure, also to address the supply and the demand of each of the marketplaces. When we look at some of the—particularly what we said, the tier one or the upper tier, the premium tires; tier two, close second; and then tier three, tier four—much more to the price points and in older parts of the car park at lower rim sizes. As that market just got taken over by low-cost imports, we just could not compete in that space. In Europe as well as in the U.S., it’s very challenging.

When we’ve got our cost structures in place, we all enjoy our lifestyles in the Western zone here, but we just couldn’t compete against a tire that was costing $10 or $12 to make as opposed to $85 or $89 to make. It’s a massive—even with tariffs, it was not enough to help in that. We appreciated the tariff legislation in our marketplaces to give us time, and we’ve been doing a lot of automation, a lot of renovation, a lot of upgrading and modernization of our sites, but when you’ve got that kind of delta, it’s difficult.

Joel: You’ve actually, Mark, hit a lot of points that are questions we want to talk about today. You’ve teed off a lot of questions Kyle and I were coming into this with.

Kyle: You primed the pump.

Joel: You primed it all up. And I’m going to let Kyle take—we’re going to circle back to a bunch of stuff as we go through this, but I actually do want to talk—you mentioned about how you coming in and your history and everything, and I wanted to just delve into that, because your history and your past is from Stellantis, right? It’s actually not in tires. And tires, as you mentioned—you used the word family—this is a very historical business, it’s a historical name, it’s a historical industry, people are generational, which, by the way, is a lot of the things you could say for automakers, right? People that work for Ford, Stellantis, and GM. But your background’s not tires. As a tire outsider now in charge of this historic tire brand that is, again, full of multi-generational people, I am curious how you view, as you come into this table to turn this company around as a tire outsider, your experience coming from Stellantis.

Mark: I would tap even before Stellantis as well, Joel, right? I grew up in the tier one auto space in a company, TRW, started off down the road in Cleveland, actually, probably 35–40 minutes from our headquarters here in Akron. And that was in brakes, and steering, and seat belts, airbags, and radars and cameras and that type of thing. So, also very much a legacy company, 100-plus years old, right? Then going to FCA, becoming Stellantis, the same thing, 100-year-plus histories. And just all those things over the years gathering in my toolbox, and the things of going through different cycles of growth, of transformation, of turnarounds and mergers, divestitures, and all of those things were very helpful for all of them coming in for the Goodyear transformation.

Whether you’re dealing with the car design and the final production, but all of the components going into it, and certainly similar to my past in TRW with a steering wheel, seat belts, etc., and the brakes, you’re interacting with that consumer or that vehicle every single time from that part of the tier one, just like on tires. If you’ve got great rolling resistance, if you’ve got great performance, great stopping distance, the end consumer sees that every day, just like they do in the OEM space.

But just like in the OEM space, as I mentioned earlier, this cost to produce or cost to convert a tire is so important, right? Because at the end of the day, it really is about our ability to produce something that the OEMs can afford to buy, produce something that the end consumer can buy at one of our retailers or our partners in the retail space, and at the same time us have the ability to make money on it. And so, just that attention to cost detail—details matter. Details matter in Stellantis, details matter in terms of the tire business as well, and at the end of the day it’s all about people in both, right? It really is about: what is our mission, what are the KPIs we’re driving to, how are we doing against those, and what do we need to do differently?

Kyle: That all makes sense. Something you said earlier also kind of solidified the connection in my mind, the parallels between the OEM space and the tire space, and that’s the fight against lower-priced imports taking your business, right? Like that’s the whole game in the automotive industry right now, and the same is true of tires. I was interested to hear you say that you appreciated the tariffs—the tariff actions—is that an accurate statement? Because I know obviously that you’re dealing with the imports, as we just said, and so tariffs could help take a bite out of that. But at the same time, it’s also adding to your costs, right? Because you’re importing a lot of raw materials, you also source a number of tires—a lower percentage, but still significant—from non-USMCA countries. So overall, would you say the tariffs have been good for business, neutral, or slightly negative, or where has that landed?

Mark: It depends on where in the world, Kyle, right? Because for us, when you think about it, wherever possible, we make in-region for that region, like within a USMCA zone, within Europe, within Asia, and so forth. There’s a few exceptions to that, but by far and large, that is the bulk of our stuff here in the US, coming from US or USMCA—a little bit on the outside zone, especially when it comes to the consumer business. But that’s where, again, for us, because we have such a large U.S. footprint, and then in Europe we’ve got a large European footprint too, so for each of those geographies, localized tariffs, things coming from offshore in, should be a benefit, right? Overall, as far as, yeah, you get everybody—everybody’s on par with a tariff for raw material, but a finished product coming in, it can be a differentiator to help gain time for more modernization in the plants to be able to be competitive and make money on those.

By far and large, as we’ve shared in our earnings results, though, the amount of those tariffs versus the conversion cost of where some of the products were coming from, it was not enough to make a substantial difference. What we actually saw happen last year was a pre-buy. So, there was a lot of pre-buy as the tariffs were announced, where distribution really had a big stock-up of low-end product that had to work its way through the system, and then we started seeing some better results on the tariffs towards the end of last year and into this year.

And then within Europe, by the way, a new set of tariffs or duties on foreign products coming from Asia, and China specifically, into the Europe market had just gone into effect in the last month. That was about a year and a half or two years of investigation from the EU Commission. We believe as an industry that that should help for the next 12 to 18 months until those tires get repositioned somewhere else in the world.

Kyle: Do you think that absent the tariffs, if low-cost imported tires, especially from China, were just allowed to flood the market here, do you think that would be an existential thing for a business like yours or for the whole tire industry that’s based in America?

Mark: I think it’s really a big part of us going into the Goodyear Forward transformation, right? It really was an existential thing when you think about—we were used to serving all parts of the market, right, every price point. And then the market in the last 20 years has changed so drastically, and in the last—since COVID especially—even more so in terms of the amount of tires in that low end coming into the space. And again, it’s why it’s so important for Goodyear to re-embrace our historic icon status and say, “Hey, we’re Goodyear.” It’s why in our marketing campaign, right, we went back out, we started—you guys have seen it, hopefully still, right, our “Still” commercial, that was really a nod to our past in terms of performance, you know, the lunar tires on the Moon, all of the racing success, and just all of the tech advancements that Goodyear provided in the industry. And then from the look back to “still” and “forever.” We’re still doing it and we’re forever going to do it, right?

And that’s why, again, we continue on this drumbeat of continuing to refresh the products and the marketing. Some of our products were a little long in the tooth, and you could do that before. Things staying in the marketplace longer, but products have to be refreshed much faster with other tires coming into the marketplace, different performance criteria, and it’s why Goodyear had to move up so that we can use the cost base that we have. We have to have a different value proposition for customers. Meanwhile, we need customers to go in and say, “Hey, I need Goodyear products on this,” whether it’s a Goodyear, a Cooper, or Kelly, Mastercraft, whatever it is.

Joel: Obviously, customers could be someone like a consumer, Kyle and me, right? But that’s a onesie-twosie customer. A real—and people that are—I know a lot of people actually that work in the industry listen to this podcast. A lot of customers and volume in this business comes from suppliers to OEMs, right? You are a tier one supplier. Just like you sell tires to Kyle and I at a consumer level, you are a tier one supplier to automakers, and you guys are on—historically, and I’m not going to quote right this second, but you’ve been on everything from F-150s and Broncos to Wranglers, etc., and the Goodyear name is synonymous with these things. And I know I just mentioned trucks and SUVs, but you’re on cars, too. But what I was going to ask you about is: the competition for OEM business, has it changed from when maybe you were at Stellantis as an automaker itself, and what that looks like today?

Mark: Well, it’s one of the things in coming to Goodyear, of doing a bit of a fresh-eye look on it, and really amping up our OEM business, right? Because we are predominantly aftermarket, as an industry most are, right? But we are between 20 and 30 percent of our business is to OEMs. We’ve moved that up between 3 and 5 percent just over the last year with successful new bids, new partnerships. So for me coming in, it was like, guys, it’s really important that we have the partnership with the procurement teams at the OEMs, but also with the technical teams, right?

The tighter we can get in with the upfront engineering and development for—whether it’s a low rolling resistance tire that’s needed to help a Monroney label, whether it is a new tire for hybrids or EV fitments that are going to have those batteries with the extra weights so that folks can have that—the vehicle engineers, the dynamics folks can have their ride and handling that they’re looking for, but then entering into that downstream for the customer, the end consumer getting it, it’s like, “Oh wow, I just chewed through these tires. I’ve got to get them fast.” And that causing a problem for both a Goodyear as well as an OEM, right, of a dissatisfaction event. So again, working more closely with the engineering community and the procurement community is super important, right?

And then you have a little styling, right? Differentiated products. And I’ve been a big push on us going back in, and I always laugh, it’s like, yes, with my white sidewalls on my hair, it’s like, we should bring white sidewalls back to the tires, something where people can see the Goodyear name, right? They can see the Cooper name. And we’re doing some cool stuff with that, by the way. Unfortunately, not on my hair, but we’re doing it with the tires, so.

Kyle: For the record, I fully support that. Lettering on white lettering on tires, white-wall tires, like, let’s bring those back. I mean, I’m sort of joking, but I’m also not, because to the points you were making earlier, like, attention is everything, right? Like attention is everything today, and tires are ubiquitous. I don’t know, I just think that there is a lot of ways that, you know, visually you could stand out, but also the cultural connection to that, and like, I don’t know. Personally, I think any car looks better with white letters on the tires. Like, it stands out. It’s a cool thing. I think you should do it.

Joel: We are going to come back to that topic. It’s very important and it’s on our question list. But before we move on from the OEM and the competition, and I know Kyle has questions about where tires are made and all that in a second here, I do want to ask, following on this OEM business talk: so, one of the more recent trends, this was definitely not something when I started in the industry that was as prevalent as it is today. Look, you came from Stellantis. You know as an automaker, every 10 cents on a light bulb counts, right? Every dollar on a tire counts. And I have witnessed in the last—I actually want to say 10 years, but honestly, the amount, how prevalent it’s become in the last 5 years is alarming to me.

Cars on manufacturers launching a vehicle with what I would consider a tier one tire, right? So, Goodyear, Michelin, Pirelli, etc. And it’s a big deal. And usually, if it’s not a car that’s an enthusiast car—so, either a sports car, an off-road car, or a truck—it doesn’t get—most people aren’t paying as much attention in journalism at tires. But when you get in a Bronco or a Mustang, you’re darn well paying attention to the rubber on that car. And then what I’m noticing is, is that after—usually it’s model year three or four, but even I’ve seen it on model year two, if we’re really trying to get cheap—I’ve watched as they quietly swap out those tires and do a running change for the next model year or two, and they save a ton of cost. So, you might go from a Goodyear or a Pirelli or Michelin, and suddenly—and by the way, I just, I know people are like, “Well, give us an example.” I watched a Wrangler launch with tires that were tier one, and now you buy Wranglers with Nexens. They did not launch with Nexen tires, but they saved a ton of money. Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid also launched with Michelins, and they swapped them out on year three. So, these are just examples, and I know those are both Stellantis examples, but they are not alone. Everyone is doing this. This is not a Stellantis thing, it is an industry thing.

But I am curious how that’s affecting your business, because as you’re developing these relationships, you’re developing tires for a specific model, and then all of a sudden they change it. That really dramatically affects your business—everyone in the tire supply business.

Mark: What I would say, though, is tariffs are a disruptor to that, Joel, right? Getting back to: Has it been good or what has it been for the business side? And I’ll say, you know, since the tariffs came in, meaningful discussions with the OEMs and some stuff that has been mid-cycle resourced to our team, to Goodyear, that’s actually happened and launching now, right, for that side. But it goes back to—to your point, right? We’re all under the pressure, right? OEMs are under pressure, the tiers are under pressure, certainly tire makers were under the pressure to the cost side.

So, that’s why, again, being our very best in terms of fine-tune, fine-point, what we can do to make things the absolute most competitive we can, so that there’s margin and performance built into there on a balance. But, and it ties back to the other, right? Also, those balanced discussions with procurement, with engineering, and ultimately tying back to the end consumer, because that’s what we’re all here for, right? It goes back to, if you’re not happy with that performance, right—and a big part of performance does come from tires—that it’s super important that we’re all beating the drum on that, too. So, we’ve seen some great progress, right, in our growth with the D3, as we talk about here in the local market, and beyond the D3, right, across the localized manufacturers in the U.S., particularly in the last year and a half.

Kyle: Speaking of localized manufacturing, we talked about the plant consolidations earlier, but I’m curious: Where does “Made in America” actually stand now with all the stuff, all the work you guys have done to restructure the business and make it workable in today’s landscape, especially when the imports aren’t going away? I mean, it may get more expensive to bring them in, but also Goodyear’s not just an American business. Like, you sell tires all around the world. So, where does Made in America actually stand now, and what’s it look like going forward?

Mark: No, it’s a great question. For us, we like to make in the region for that region, right? Because with 128 years under our belt, right, and selling in pretty much every country we’re all allowed to sell in, right, is one that we’ve got a product that is coming from within that region. So, we really do want to be local, we want to be part of the community—communities that we live in, that we work in, that we sell in, and that people buy in. So, for us, that stays very important in our DNA, right, that we’re able to do that.

And it’s why we have been investing so much within our local plants to make them to where we can produce, but we can’t produce a tier four tire and expect to be able to make money off of that. That’s why we have deprecated or we’ve really been rationalizing older SKUs and SKUs that, again, fall to the lowest end of those specifications that, again, part of it is about our brand image, and we are working very hard to position Goodyear in that tier one space, and our Cooper solidly in that upper tier two space, and then have our Kelly, our Mastercraft, and our Starfire brands here in this marketplace have the portfolio that we need so that we can do shelf space in the aftermarket for all of our customers, so that we’ve got the right thing for the OEMs for that particular platform that they’re looking for, as well. But super focused on the premium of those 18-and-aboves that the OEMs are running, because that’s where Goodyear can be successful.

Kyle: Yeah, I do understand that. And actually, it’s funny because it lines up with something Joel and I were discussing, not related to tires, but I think it does apply here, at least it’s worth asking, before we started recording, and that’s that there are a lot of industries right now that are focused on chasing the whales, because that’s where the profit margins lie. As you go for the customer that can spend more, that’s looking for more specialized product, and that, at least projection-wise, shows much more growth than trying to compete for this shrinking middle. Do you worry at all that you’re going to run out of specialty buyers, you’re going to run out of people looking who want to think a lot about which tire they buy and cross-shop and compare, and OEMs looking for a tire to fit their latest big SUV that needs to meet all these engineering requirements? Like, is there a ceiling on where you can go with this strategy as opposed to the way the company used to operate?

Mark: To be fair, right, Goodyear, we talked about it for a long time, but we weren’t actioning the mix-up into the premium space. So, we had a lot of blank space or white-space products that were not in the market, of certain segments we just weren’t participating in. So, we’re talking many, many millions of tires of opportunity where we just didn’t have a fitment that would fit that. So, as we move forward into the future space, we still see lots of room in terms of the ability for us to go in there with our performance characteristics. Our engineers are wicked with the compounding and the development and the tread patterns, so that we know, just like with our new Eagle F1 All Season, right, we can come out with a number one product in the marketplace.

So, if we get in the boxing ring, we know we can box it out and win. And so, from that standpoint, we’ve got lots of room with that. We’re not abandoning the middle, right, but we are moving away from being a mass producer in the lowest ends of the segment. But we will offer a full portfolio string for all of the customers, that’s for sure.

Kyle: Including with white letters on the tires, right?

Mark: And yellow as well.

Kyle: Heck yeah. Heck yeah.

Joel: Kyle just really has latched onto that and he wants to jump to it. He’s skipping over.

Mark: I’m glad he did, then. I’m super glad he did. It’s awesome.

Joel: We’re going to come back to that. Just mark my words, okay, boys? So, Mark, I’ve got to tell you, I’m not sure we’ve ever had a guest on here that parlays his answers in the next question so seamlessly. Very impressive work. I was actually going to talk to you—you know, my wife tells me all the time, “You guys live in a silo, you’re enthusiasts, you’re out of touch with consumers,” because I live in this world, right? Like, cars to me aren’t daunting, buying a car isn’t scary. But she’s like, “A general consumer isn’t you, Joel. You guys are so blinded by the world you live in.” And so this actually is a question she’ll be so proud of me when she listens to the proof of this podcast, which she loves doing.

I’ve got plenty of friends that are simply not car enthusiasts—Kyle will never believe it—and tire talk would make their eyes gloss over. But a serious question I do get all the time from these non-car enthusiast people, because everybody needs tires, doesn’t matter whether you like cars or not, is: Why do tires cost so much? And specifically, is a $200 tire twice as good as a $100 tire, or are we just paying for a brand name? And I think it’s a really valuable question when we’re talking to a tier one tire supplier who is trying to compete, and is competing, with lower, newer entry-point tire brands.

Mark: I think it goes to, while to your point, right, there’s those of us in the enthusiast category that go through every speed rating, break distance, wet, dry, snow, you name it, and there’s others that, “Ah, crap, I’ve got a flat tire, I have to change it,” and they all need to look good, so it is apples and oranges. So, I think it goes to, first of all, segmenting the consumer base, right, about what are different folks looking for, right? Is it the enthusiast, the high performance? Is it the enthusiast that, “I want the look, but it doesn’t need to go to the sand dunes this weekend, I just want it to be on the road, look cool, and not make the sounds, right? I want to look that way without it.”

Then there’s the buyer that needs to bundle with other things, right, other services that retailers or ourselves would offer. And I think making sure that our messaging is to those folks and on point, to make it from either a grudge buy or “I don’t care” buy into, “Well, you know what, I care a little bit. Hey, these tires involve your safety every time you get in it. Don’t you want to pay a little bit more to make sure you’ve got the best engineering that could possibly happen to make these tires so that they’re not going to fail, you’re not going to have a blowout, you’re not going to have an instant lose-all-your-air kind of moment and lose control of your car? At the same time, these are going to last, right? They’re going to last 60, 70, 80,000 miles, and you really don’t have to worry about that because you’re going to be in your next car by that point in time.”

So, I think it really is from our side, it goes into really segmenting that consumer base for what people are looking for and finding a care point for that, right? Because even though people may not care about tires, they care about the outcomes that a tire input can do. And there are very different input costs on a $200–$300 tire than there is on a $40–$50–$100 tire, right? And it’s around the compounds, and what those compounds do in terms of—and it’s not just high performance, right, but it really is about how they handle in wet, how they handle in dry, how they handle in the heat, or how they handle in the snow, on grade, how long they’re going to last, and all of those things enter into it. I know that sounds like enthusiast talk as well, right, but those are just some practical, daily things of how we all need to sell the tires to folks that it’s not their favorite, glamorous thing to buy, right? But we love the enthusiasts that it is their glamorous thing to buy, as well, so.

Joel: I will tell you, we just put new tires on our 1990 300ZX, and I was excited. Like, I do get excited about tires. I will just tell you, like, it was—that was a fun day. Like, I drove it into the shop, and it was like, that was my afternoon, and it was a highlight of the week. And then I drove out of there, I’m like, “Oh, listen to how quiet they are, listen to how soft they are, listen to how…” like, anyway.

But the moment that Kyle’s waited for dearly, it’s ironic this is my question, so he’s just going to have to sit here and smile. But the moment we’re coming back to, we’re coming back to the white walls, boys. So, I did have a question, honest to God, this is in the rundown. Goodyear’s always been an outlier in terms of tires in the—and I say that in a good way—in the way that you’ve intertwined so much of the marketing and cultural history with the brand, right? So, the blimps, and Le Mans, and the Lunar Rover, and all of that stuff, which, I mean, they’re intertwined with tires, but like, they’re cultural things, these are cultural marketing moments. And yes, the blimp still exists, and we touched a little about this earlier, but the question I was going to ask you is: Do you think it’s been a mistake for Goodyear to not be more involved in current cultural modern history, and more importantly, will it get more involved, and in what ways might we see that? Because cultural moments, attention, that’s everything in today’s viral environment, right? A reel, we’ve all seen the bodycam footage of me almost getting arrested for Grand Theft Auto a couple weeks ago, we had millions of views on that in minutes. And so I think that those kind of cultural moments, I remember the Toyota Tundra towing the space shuttle through LA, that was a cultural moment, right, and that went viral. How do you guys plan on capitalizing on that as you go forward? I know we touched on this topic a little earlier.

Mark: Absolutely. Again, for 100 of 128 years, now 101, the blimp has been there, right, for every major event, not just sporting events, but huge events around the world, the blimp has been there, meaning Goodyear’s been there. And so for us, it is—we pulled back way too much from participating in those. And the pride inside the company is as huge as it was 100 years ago, right? Meanwhile, we forgot to tell people about these great products and these great things and missing those moments. So, for me, that was a critical step for us to pivot and meaningfully do that, right?

And so, we are doing those things, right, as far as for the 100th year last year, we had 100 cities across the US. I look at the efficiency and the utilization of the blimp the same way I would at a tire building machine in a plant, right, because it is our most powerful marketing element, and by the way, they need to sell tires. When I first came in, it was a joke with part of Travis’s team with Doug Grassian and the team, and it was like, “Hey, could we use these to sell some tires?” And of course, yeah, they got all funny with it and made these T-shirts that, “Hey, blimps are cool, buy Goodyear tires.” And those T-shirts went viral, right?

And so, it just got things kind of started, because people love the Goodyear merch, right? It’s just a cool part of Americana, and even six months back or whatever, Sweeney was on the cover of GQ in an old-school Goodyear shirt, and they’re like, “Man, that was awesome. How did you guys do that?” It was like, she did it on her own, there was no collab, it was like she was on it, right? So, there’s still a pull for that.

And so, this past year, right, we were at Coachella, we’re really collaborating with a lot of influencers, a lot of stuff with Ice-T and some historical nods as well, and just a lot of fun things, but finding ways to be part of culture, right, the way Coachella has become, and the way so many other things across. And it’s important that we’re part of that, right? And it’s again why our latest commercial too, kind of “The Fast is in Us,” is another nod to that also, right? When you’re a kid in your room, and you’ve got your little plastic race track out and you’re fighting it out with your buddies, you know, for the pole position and to be the winner, and that’s really what that is, to generate that excitement that we all had, right, to race, to win, to have fun when you’re a kid.

And that’s what we’re doing now when you fast forward to introducing some of these concept stores around the country with us launching one in Detroit here next weekend, a destination place to go to, right, where people can come and hang out, have cars and coffee, chill out, buy Goodyear merchandise, not just the tire that you may or may not want to buy if you’re an enthusiast, but have fun with it, right, and to put ourselves back at the center of something fun. And I think that classic enthusiast store is a start to it that we plan to do a lot more of.

Kyle: You know, you finally brought up the blimp. Now we can finally talk about the blimp. No, I think Goodyear is a brand that has a lot of nostalgic connotations for people, and the history is very apparent, and even the logo itself is—I’m so glad you guys haven’t changed that, by the way. Like, don’t make a sans-serif logo like everyone else, please keep some character in the brand image. I think we’re all desperate for that.

Mark: There’s been some OE learnings on that in recent years, right? We would not want to, yeah.

Kyle: Exactly, exactly. But it is a brand, I think, that people are hungry for a reason to care about it and to have it in their lives and dedicate their attention to it for however long they do. The blimp, I think, is fascinating because, first of all, you guys are like the only blimp operators in America, and there’s only a—how many blimps—isn’t every—there’s some stat like, all the blimps in America are Goodyear blimps because there are no other blimps outside of military stuff, right?

Mark: Sometimes they masquerade a little bit. So, back to Joel’s earlier comment, right, we are in a collaboration right now actually with Grand Theft Auto for the 6 release, so it’s reskinned, there’s a Grand Theft Auto and Goodyear co-branding, so another thing about some pivotal moments there. But anyway, sorry, go ahead.

Kyle: So, my unserious question is: Do you get free rides in the blimp as CEO? Like, can you just pick up the phone and be like, “I want to take a blimp flight today, get one ready”?

Mark: So, the nice thing with one being housed 10 minutes from here is they’re always headed to somewhere, so you can hitch a ride, right? It would be in bad taste of me, right, to call up and ask for that unless it was already hopefully on the way somewhere else to do something else if I’m thrifty people about making sure we’re competitive and not wasting blimp money, either. But it’s, yeah, it’s pretty cool. And I did actually use a privilege once upon a time. My mom’s 80th birthday, I took my mom up in the blimp. So, that was pretty cool.

Kyle: That’s awesome. I mean, if I was becoming CEO of Goodyear, that would be in my negotiation process for the final terms of the job. It’s like: Day one, ride in the Goodyear blimp. But on a more relevant note, I’m very curious about how it actually works for you guys. I assume the blimp is like a marketing line item. So, correct me if I’m wrong there, and also, how do you decide where to send it? Because there’s only four, and there are lots of events all around the country. I live in LA, and so I see it, you know, every couple of months floating above some sporting event that’s going on, but how do you guys decide where to put it, and how do you track what you’re getting out of that attention?

Mark: Yeah, so you’re right, there’s four, and three of them are housed in the U.S, one is in Europe. One is in Carson City, right, not so far from you, and then we’ve got one in Pompano Beach, one here in Akron. It’s one of our premier advertising marketing tools that we’ve got in the toolbox, but we are very fortunate to have such strong relationship with the networks, also with sports in terms of, whether it’s PGA, whether it’s with college football and NFL football, you name it, NFL Draft, we have so many partnerships that we do.

And also helps offset the cost, right, where we’re actually filming games as well from the blimp, so we’ve got a staff of 14 that are there on part of the air coverage is with us as well, so that’s a pretty cool fun factoid on the blimp, as well. But it really, as we look on an annual basis, right, we try to look, back to your point, right, what are the things happening, you know, around the world, particularly in the U.S. and in Europe, over the course of the next year? So, which ones are we already a part of, which ones make sense for us to be a part of? Coachella was one of those, right, as we look to that, NFL Draft was one of those, right? Having it in Detroit for that moment was super special.

And again, looking at where it’s going for things, that it’s headed to a ballgame, okay, what is between Akron and wherever it’s headed, or Florida where it’s headed, California, etc., and finding ways to activate it, right, for our customers, to utilize with the end consumers, and ways just to keep the excitement about the blimp. So, that’s how we think about it.

Kyle: So, interesting, so you guys get paid for filming the games or whatever you’re covering, like you get money through that from the network or from the league.

Mark: Yeah, we get some money through that as well, which is very helpful.

Kyle: Yeah, I wouldn’t have thought about that. I mean, it is crazy that your entire company that operates blimps, right? Like, just objectively, if you take out the history of it, and the fact that we all know what it is, if you just wrote that down on paper, it’s like: We make tires and we fly blimps. Doesn’t really line up, but it’s a very unique thing, like there’s no other company that has that in their repertoire.

Mark: Well, it was 100 years ago, 90 years ago, we produced blimps ourselves, right? That was a product from the rubber, because the package in itself actually was rubber, and I don’t know if you guys have heard that story, but in World War II, we were part of the air patrol that was on lookout and helping to protect and give insights into the fleet, the allied fleets of looking for subs and other battleships out in the zone, so to speak. So, that’s the history on the Goodyear side.

On the Cooper side, we got a really interesting one, too, by the way. We have done a little tweaks on both the Goodyear and the Cooper brands back to more of our historical branding in terms of the fonts, the colors, and really getting ourselves back to a classic look, and with Cooper, we did exactly that. Cooper has also a similar kind of thing in World War II of supporting with rubber dinghies, right, with the rubber boats for the allies, as well, so that was a side product they made, cause so many people made other things during wartime.

Kyle: Yeah, no, it is fascinating, it’s a fascinating history. Speaking of history, and then I’ll let Joel get back in, because I’ve been monopolizing this for a minute, the attention, the activations, the cultural moments: Motorsports kind of having a thing in the last five years, and obviously F1 is a huge part of that. You guys left F1 in, I think it was 1998, but what I think a lot of people who especially are new to the sport wouldn’t realize is that you guys actually have the most Grand Prix victories in terms of a tire supplier. That’s going to be surpassed by Pirelli this year, because they’re the sole one right now, but still, Goodyear had a very long and prosperous history with F1. Do you see any world in which that is something you would want to compete for or even look at again, and if not, what else in motorsport is really catching your attention?

Mark: Well, race in general is really important to us, and coming back in, again, for me, of us with this pivot point, back into performance, and our internal mission is clear: number one in tires and service, and what better way to show your number one than being on a podium every week? The beauty of our NASCAR one is we’re always on the podium every week, that’s pretty awesome, right? In terms of Le Mans as well, you know, in our tire categories with 70% of those tires ours, same, same.

But we created the global race team, so we brought all of our race teams together, you know, into one team so that we could really work on our development for bringing ourselves back into the other parts of racing where we’re not. So, certainly, we would want to be in a position to where we could compete for a tender like that in the upcoming years as things become available. And we’ve been doing proof points throughout the course of the last two years in different races in the U.S. and across Europe, and our race engineers have come out with some unbelievably wicked tires that are getting great, great traction, no pun intended. But no, they’re getting great feedback from the race teams around the world. We were just in Imola last month and had some just unbelievable great feedback from the Ferrari, from the BMW M Racing Team folks. Just super impressed that, hey, we are back, right? We’re back, we’re developing, and we’re looking for those opportunities.

Joel: Goodyear is intertwined with motorsport, right, and theoretically, hopefully, right, race on Sunday, sell on Monday, that’s the goal, right? But you also, and as you mentioned, you’re on the podium all the time with Goodyear on NASCAR and everything, but you just mentioned all the stuff that you’re learning engineering-wise, whether it’s Imola, with Ferrari, any of this stuff, I’m curious: Can you expand on and explain some of the tire tech and developments you’re getting out of NASCAR, and racing as a whole, right, because it’s not just NASCAR you guys are in?

Mark: Oh, absolutely. The, from a kind of advanced mobility side of the house, on sensing and what we call SightLine, on the inside. So, we’ve actually got the sensing on the track all around the world every weekend. So, we—our engineering and our race teams like to say “from race to road.” So, we’re doing early developments that we put into play in the race, and then we industrialize them for serial production with the OEMs, and then to the end consumers, as well. So, it’s a fantastic way to develop it.

Our SightLine technology is it, right? So, in terms of all the way from basic, just what’s old-school tire pressure monitoring, but then going to, yeah, here’s what’s happening to the tread, here’s what’s happening to the performance of those tires, and we can tie that back in to that vehicle dynamic system to better control the vehicle, right, and to better—one, make the racing safer. On the road within consumers through the OEMs, be able to, if something happens, be able to tie in with that vehicle dynamics system and get to the side of the road safely. So, that absolutely is hand-in-hand, and the SightLine technology that the team has developed here is unbelievably great. And so, we’re really looking forward to launching that from, again, on the tracks every weekend into serial production with several OEMs.

Kyle: You know, it’s interesting that you pointed to the SightLine as one of the developments that’s come out of your collaboration with NASCAR, because I did want to ask you about the concept of smart tires in general. To be honest, in the past, I have rolled my eyes a bit at all these tire companies coming out with smart tire concepts, because it’s a tire, like, how smart does it need to be? We already have tire pressure monitoring. What, you know, the seemingly incremental gains that a driver will actually see and benefits that they’ll actually see from having much more advanced sensors in the tire, or a sensor that’s actually connected to some cloud server that can help it determine algorithmically what the weather’s like and what the conditions are and alert the driver. Like, it, I think it ties into the larger concern that a lot of people have that like all this stuff that we’ve made, all these smart devices, do we actually need them, and what’s happening to the data and the privacy of it? And it’s just, it’s a moment where I think a lot of people are reconsidering the trade-offs we’ve made over the last 10, 15 years as a society, not just within the tire industry.

But how are you guys looking at smart tires? Is it a really core part of the next 10 years, is it something that you’re kind of going to continue to work on and develop, or just how are you looking at that?

Mark: I think it’s got potential to really be a part of the core, and the reason being, as you said, right, it’s less to the data privacy concerns and so forth, because it really can be car-contained, right? It’s not about—if it’s a commercial fleet, absolutely, right, we’re monitoring, we’re inflating, deflating, and helping them optimize their cost of ownership. But when it comes to a consumer and passenger vehicle tires, it really is about the safety of that driver and their family in the car, because it goes to—if you get into, you’re right, TPMS has been around a long time, right? Okay, it’s nice to know what pressure is. But if you’ve got a rapid air loss, right, you hit something, to where your tire can signal that control unit in the car, again, you’ve got to stop, right? You’ve got to get over safely and stop, and it takes over, like auto emergency braking, right? It’s saved a lot of lives. This has the potential to save a lot of lives in terms of somebody having a blowout and doing a reactive steering move, as opposed to: you’ve got a rapid air loss and then the vehicle dynamics system takes over, gets you to the side of the road safely without you having to try to course-correct and wind up making a situation worse, right? So, I think it’s got huge potential, it really can make a difference, right? It can make a difference in: Did you stop before you hit somebody, did you get to the side of the road, or it’s the “go change your tires now, you’re out of tread,” right? You don’t want to be in the next rain or storm in this thing.

Joel: That is a good marketing slogan: “Did you stop and not hit somebody? Do you need new tires? Smart tires, buy Goodyear.” I’m just saying, free idea.

Kyle: We’re solving problems here. And then one last quick question, and I know we’re right at time here, but one last quick question: Airless tires, is that ever going to be a thing? Is that just, we’re just messing around with that, like, I feel like that’s never going to be a thing.

Mark: I’m going to give that one the crystal ball, right? I think they are cool, they are super cool. Every time I go to Le Mans, we’ve got the airless tires on our go-karts scooting around, and it gets more looks and more attention when you’re cruising around Le Mans in that go-kart with the airless tires. But really, when you think about driverless cars, from that standpoint, there is a real value to that product for that, where you don’t have to worry about the things we just talked about. Meanwhile, with the SightLine, you can deal with it that way, too. So, there’s a way to deal with that, there’s some complexities in the engineering side of the airless tires that the team has done a great job of working through on that, but when you think about manufacturability of those tires and the cost to do that versus the SightLine sensing, I think it depends on a use case. But for sure for driverless taxis, there’s a strong use case for that.

Joel: I know we went way over time, Mark. Thank you for coming on, we will absolutely have you back. It was too much fun.

Kyle: Just skimming the surface here.

Joel: Really appreciate your time.

Mark: Now, thank you, guys. Good to see you.

Kyle: Yeah, thanks, Mark.

The post Goodyear Can’t Make a Tire for $12 Like China. Here’s Its Plan appeared first on The Drive.

There’s no question the launch of the new Dodge Charger has been rough. Dodge is doing everything it can to make people like the new muscle car outside of shoving a V8 under its hood, for now. But lack of V8 aside, there’s no question the design and marketing team understood the assignment. The reincarnated icon even has an Attitude Adjustment feature. You can’t make this stuff up. It’s even on the car’s window sticker!

While my time with the gas-powered 2026 Dodge Charger Scat Pack resulted in the car bricking itself three times, the features and design were an eye-catching high point. While shooting photos of the four-door charger in a parking lot I was scrolling through the menus and stumbled upon a an app dubbed Attitude Adjustment. What the heck? Opening the app revealed Stellantis’ marketing and branding genius at work.

The Attitude Adjustment app in the Dodge Charger is the branding for the vehicle’s interior ambient lighting controls. There’s nothing inherently new about interior ambient lighting, but, the way in which the Dodge Charger’s team went about branding the feature falls somewhere between cheeky and cringe. Your opinion will likely vary.

But Team Dodge didn’t just rebrand its ambient lighting system in the Charger to speak to its buying demographic. No Ma’am. Attitude-Adjustment Lighting is an actual line item on the car’s window sticker. The feature is part of the test car’s $4,995 Customer Preferred Package 22B, which included among other things, ventilated front seats, heated second-row seats, a 16-inch digital gauge cluster, Performance Pages in the infotainment system, a head-up display, a surround-view camera system, a wireless charging pad, a power rear hatch, a 12.3-inch touchscreen infotainment system, and a laundry list of other features.

The Attitude Adjustment is a far cry from the first example of Stellantis’ marketing and branding machine at play. When Ram brought back the Hemi V8 in the Ram 1500 it called the move a “Symbol of Protest.” But the automaker didn’t stop there. The “Symbol of Protest” is a real badge on the truck’s fender. More than that, the badge is an actual line item on the truck’s window sticker. The three-row Dodge Durango SRT Hellcat? It’s a family hauler that has the little human icon on the climate control screen wearing a racing helmet in a family hauler. If we hop into the Wayback Machine the original Challenger Hellcat was supposed to have a Supercharged badge on the front fenders. A pre-production car I tested even had the Supercharged badge on the fender. The Hellcat logo wasn’t originally going to be on the front fender, but then it roared to life just before production started and an icon was cemented into the history books.

You have to hand it to Stellantis and its marketing team, no other automotive company comes up with more creative spin aimed at their buyers.

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The post Dodge’s ‘Attitude Adjustment’ Is an Actual line Item on the Charger’s Window Sticker appeared first on The Drive.

Everyone wants an SUV, and it seems that no one (except wealthy enthusiasts) wants a wagon. That’s the vibe, and Subaru got the memo.

The 2026 Subaru Outback arrived late last year with a more upright and squared design, modern tech, a boxer engine, and all the functionality you’ve come to expect, while the Wilderness model kicks things up a notch.

The Basics

When the first spy shots of the new 2026 Outback came out, I argued with a Subaru spokesperson about whether it would still be a wagon. When the Outback debuted at the 2025 New York Auto Show, I walked up to them and said, “Fine, if you squint real hard, it’s still a wagon, but it’s as square as an ‘80s Volvo.” We are bordering on crossover territory here, folks. The reason? The roofline’s been raised 1.4 inches, and it plays mind tricks with you.

It’s polarizing, but the Outbacks from the ‘90s and early ‘00s were square right down to the headlights. Then the last few generations of Outbacks started getting sweptback designs in the name of efficiency and aerodynamics. Over time they started bulking up again, and now we’ve come full circle. The Wilderness model adds an extra 0.8 inches of ground clearance, bringing the total to 9.5 inches. It also gets the gold trim accents, but man alive, there are a lot of textures. The various plastic bits outside the car feature different finishes, and it’s not exactly cohesive. The rear end is a lot for the eyes to take in, and you’ll know it’s a Subaru, because it’s spelled out across the front grille like it’s a Ferd Fteenthousand or something.

The inside is less divisive in design and puts form with function. The dashboard ditches its neatly organized, vertically oriented center stack in favor of a chunky 12.1-inch horizontal touchscreen and 12.3-inch digital gauge cluster. There’s a real volume knob stuck between the two. The infotainment system’s interface feels really similar in design layout to what Toyota’s using, but it’s not a direct rip. Unlike the old system, the new one boots up instantly, wireless Apple CarPlay works flawlessly and without lag, and it didn’t feel like the processor was underclocked. Personally, I liked the vertical screen in the previous Outback for its integration more than this new, larger screen, but the old system was headache-inducing to use because it was so slow. Hard buttons and knobs still remain for the entire climate control system. Bless you, Subaru. The same goes for the buttons and rockers on the steering wheel, which still provide a satisfying click. I also really appreciated that the steering wheel still features super-tight and neat-looking stitching.

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But inside, the materials, both in terms of type, texture, and finish, overwhelm the senses. In just a few inches, I counted five different finishes on the dashboard, all while the car tested had Nappa leather seats that felt out of place. I miss the last Outback Wilderness’ wipe-friendly material for when you got into the car a hot mess after a hike.

Seat space all around is good with plenty of room both up front and in back. Subaru’s packaged this thing with families in mind, and I (5-foot-10) was able to sit in the rear seat with the front seat adjusted with room to spare. Headroom is truly fantastic, and it’s because of that raised roofline. In the back, the cargo area isn’t just generous; it’s only 3.1 cubic feet shy of the Jeep Grand Cherokee at 34.6 cubic feet. Fold the rear seats down and space swells to 80.5 cubic feet.

Driving the 2026 Subaru Outback Wilderness

Every Outback Wilderness gets the 2.4-liter turbocharged flat-four with 260 horsepower and 277 lb-ft of torque here. A CVT is still the only transmission option, and it is paired with standard all-wheel drive. But like the previous Outback Wilderness, the latest model still cribs the larger three-row Ascent’s 4.44 final drive ratio to make it quicker off the line and easier to roll up a hill.

A Subaru spokesperson confirmed the powertrain itself didn’t change, so the new Outback Wilderness being smoother comes down to the engineers tuning the powertrain and that final drive ratio to mesh together in harmony. There’s plenty of power on tap for the Outback’s mission at hand.

More impressive is the ride quality with the Wilderness model’s adaptive dampers. Despite the increased ground clearance, the Outback Wilderness doesn’t feel like it’s on stilts and feels planted. All that tall, squared-off glass around the cabin provides fantastic visibility, which I appreciate, especially nowadays where everything feels like driving in a bunker.

All those positives aside, the 225/65R17 Bridgestone Dueler A/T tires, marketed as all-terrain tires, look like street tires. They don’t appear as knobby as the previous generation’s Yokohama Geolandar A/Ts, which are also on the current Crosstrek Wilderness.

Verdict

The 2026 Subaru Outback costs $36,445 including a $1,450 destination charge, but the Wilderness model costs $46,445. The Emerald Green model tested cost $50,930 thanks to a 4,090 package that included everything from navigation and a power moonroof to a surround-view camera system and black Nappa leather-trimmed upholstery with copper stitching and cooled front seats.

The reality is simple: The 2026 Outback Wilderness delivers on everything it is meant to by bundling a wagon body and driving dynamics with everyday functionality and all-weather capability. Nothing truly competes with it unless you want an SUV or a more complicated luxury wagon for more money. The new design might be more divisive than before, but we live in an era where everything needs to get attention. It’s a crowded timeline.

Subaru provided The Drive with a seven-day loan of this vehicle for the purpose of writing this review.

2026 Subaru Outback Wilderness Specs

Quick Take

Function isn’t always pretty.

The post 2026 Subaru Outback Wilderness Review: So Good You’ll Forget How Bad It Looks appeared first on The Drive.

America’s roads are finally getting modern headlight technology that the rest of the world has had for over a decade. A few automakers, including, Tesla and Rivian, have dipped their toes into the adaptive lighting waters in recent years. Now legacy automakers are bringing the advanced lighting technology to the U.S. market.

With the debut of the 2027 Audi Q7 and Q9, both of which will arrive in U.S. dealers later this year, the automaker will be bringing its new digital Matrix LED adaptive lighting system to America for the first time. On the latest episode of The Drivecast, Head of Exterior Lighting for Audi AG Michael Kruppa and vehicle lighting and regulation subject matter expert Daniel Stern, who serves as chief editor of Driving Vision News a global lighting industry technical journal of record, break down what the new lighting tech coming to America means, what took so long, and the differences in how automakers are implementing the lighting systems.

The U.S. is laughably behind the rest of the world when it comes to headlight technology. It’s not because the technology didn’t exist, but rather because outdated U.S. laws have prevented automakers from bringing these modern technological marvels to U.S. roads. Until now.

Back in 2021, a lifetime ago, the government finally got its act together and brought U.S. headlight regulations and laws into the modern era via the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act, also known as H.R. 3684.

Enthusiasts have been clamoring for modern headlights for years. It’s the same story for safety advocates. And now, the time has come.

First time here? The Drivecast is The Drive‘s weekly podcast that takes you behind-the-scenes on the largest controversies, stories, and characters shaping the automotive industry along with the way our roads look today. Powered by The Drive‘s inside access, original reporting, exclusives, and insights, The Drivecast aims to make everyone an insider.

Listen to The Drivecast via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music. Love it? Like it? Want to help? Leave a five-star review on your platform of choice to help get The Drivecast in front of more people. Have a suggestion, tip, request, or feedback? Drop us a line at feedback@thedrive.com. I promise, we read every single email.

Full Transcript

Joel: All right, everyone, we’re here in Munich, Germany today with a super special episode. We’re talking to Michael, who is at Audi. He’s a doctor, and he’s Head of Lighting and Exterior Lighting for Audi—all of Audi. We’re going to talk about modern lighting, laws, and how all of a sudden we’re about to get modern lighting. We’re about to be in the modern age finally in America. Europe has been there for years, correct?

Michael: Absolutely.

Joel: We’re about to catch up over here in America.

Michael: Yeah, that’s the task.

Joel: Give us a little background on you and how you got into lighting where you are today, so that everyone knows your background.

Michael: First of all, thank you. Nice to meet you. My background: I got a PhD in chemistry, which is a little crazy to work in automotive. Spent a year in San Diego for a postdoctoral fellowship, and after that, I joined Osram Opto Semiconductors in Germany. So this was my first hands-on lighting. This was around 2006. During the time, we were fighting very hard to bring solid-state lighting into automotive. We really had to convince the people that LEDs are so reliable that you really can put them in the exterior light of a car.

After several years, getting to know what Audi was doing out of that, I still loved the daytime running lights—I think it was A5, first I saw on the road. This was my biggest dream: to work for this company. I was applying in 2012, 2013, got the job possibility, and then I joined Audi years later in the lighting team. First starting in the rear, doing a lot with the digital OLED, which you also saw today, and then following step-by-step: pre-development, function development, and now ending up in front lighting.

Joel: It’s crazy to hear someone in charge of lighting talk about how with LEDs we had to convince people these are the future, we had to convince people they’re reliable. Because back in my day, I remember my first car was a 1997 Jeep Cherokee XJ, and it had the sealed-beam halogens. I removed those lights, I put in Hella housings, and then I put in PIAA bulbs so you could switch out the bulbs and all that stuff. Now we’re in an era where you can’t just change out your headlights anymore. They’re crazy expensive; headlights are $1,000 to $9,000, and they’ve got crazy active elements to them and everything.

Now we’re about to go to that next level, right? LEDs are about to look like incandescent bulbs almost. We’re about to take the next leap with OLED technology and adaptive Matrix LED headlights. So, let’s actually talk about that. One of the things before we get into the new technology itself, let’s talk about laws and how we got here. America is behind in so many ways, of course, as people know on the podcast. But in lighting specifically, we are behind Europe and the rest of the world in many ways.

The rest of the world has what’s called matrix lighting. They’ve actually had laser lights. They’ve had so many advances that we missed out on because of our outdated 1980s-era regulations. That just changed recently—we’ve done many stories about this. Back in 2022, the laws changed. But as people that listen to this podcast know, cars aren’t developed in a year or two, right? So if a law changes in 2022, it takes years for someone to develop, even at a rapid pace, to get modern lighting over to America and meet regulations. Can you talk to us a little bit why we had the old laws and what changed to enable us to get modern lighting?

Michael: I think your description is absolutely right, but also the rest of the world is still a challenge to talk through authorities and regulation. What are the new possibilities solid-state lighting is bringing? The LED is something people had to get to know. They had to learn what are the possibilities, what to do. Step-by-step, we were increasing the functionality. It’s not only light on, light off. As soon as you go to smaller light elements, which the LEDs are, you can really create crazy things like light patterns. You can create arrays which are creating light distribution in total. By this, you can do things contributing mainly or massively to safety, especially safety at night. This is what we have to keep the focus on.

The other thing is, you see it also in your private life, light is getting everywhere. You use light for decorative elements, and this is really what we have to avoid. Because we don’t want to be a disco ball on wheels. We have to do something that is helping you to travel safe at night. This is also, to my understanding, what the regulation is really focusing on. Even understanding the possibilities, they’re going in small steps in the direction to avoid overflowing traffic with light which you don’t need.

This is exactly what we’re also experiencing in the U.S. In the end, something everybody has experienced while driving at night is glaring. I think everybody knows if you have a situation where you have a lot of light coming against you, you don’t feel safe anymore. You feel offended, you feel maybe dangerous, you don’t know whether you’re doing the right things, and this has to be avoided. This also has to be respected. This is, from our understanding, also what the regulation in the U.S. is trying to do: to go in small steps to understand what you can do good, but also to understand where you are in the dangerous area where you do too much. This is something we have to regulate.

The good thing is starting in Europe, in the end, we could prove that this has a contribution. With the regulation of matrix lighting in the European market, we were able to show, also with European cars to the U.S. authorities, what is really the benefit of an autonomous driving headlamp beam. Really getting the feeling that you don’t have to pull the trigger to deactivate your high beam; the car is doing this autonomously. Even if you’re lazy and not doing that, or you forget it or something like this, the car is taking care and is avoiding that the car coming against you is being glared by you driving in an Audi which has lovely light in front of you. You feel safe, you have all the light on the road you need, but the person coming against you says, “Oh no, this is an Audi, this is what we have to avoid for any cost.”

In combination with that: understanding a system, possibilities versus what is allowed or what is not allowed. Within a dialogue, you have to understand what are the fears or what the people are afraid of, and trying to really contribute to safety. Not only loving the technology and putting it in the car because you can do that, but really understanding what is your contribution to safety at night. This is what is continuing, what has been done many years in the past. Really understanding, our colleagues from Audi of America and everybody, what is the possibility to do.

Joel: I think you actually hit the nail on the head there for a second. A couple things: one, the thing you mentioned is safety, and I want to get into that; two, light pollution; and three, blinding people. One of the problems that I hear from so many people—we’ll go in a couple different orders here—one of the problems I hear from so many people is, “Oh my gosh, that car’s got LED lights,” because in America that’s like the technological marvel at the moment, “LED headlights, and oh, it’s blinding me! The headlights are too high!”

What a lot of people don’t understand is that modern headlights, specifically in a lot of higher-end cars, have auto-leveling systems, right? So when the car is loaded down, the headlights will go down; when the car is unloaded, the headlights go up. I think that’s a thing of the past, right? After the XJ, I had a WJ, a second-gen Grand Cherokee, and I put in bright, bright lights and HIDs. What I would do is I’d raise them up until I started getting flashed by people, and then I would go, “Oh, I’m too high,” so then I would lower them down. But all that was mechanical; I had to turn a screwdriver or whatever.

Now, dealerships, this is all electronic, and it’s all levels and all that stuff. People just need to understand that people are scared of the technology because it’s very advanced. To your point earlier about the disco ball, I think that that is what consumers believe automakers are trying to do: make this a rolling disco ball. So I’d like to dive into that safety element, right? Because we’re on a podcast, we’re talking visually, people can’t see what we’re talking about, but describing a little about some of these safety elements that can be had with OLEDs and even LEDs, and the matrix lights that are coming to America—to explain these safety elements and why these advanced headlights enhance safety would be great for people to understand.

Michael: Sure. So starting in the front with the LED: once more, the LED itself as a lighting technology is not intrinsically glaring people. It’s just about leveling. So in the end, if you build in the lamps properly, you have it in the right trim link, everything is fine. So it’s not that switching from halogen to LED automatically blinding is taken care of.

The second thing is what you always have to take care of—also small details—you have to have a clean headlamp. If you have any contamination, light will be scattered. This is nothing you can avoid from the light source itself; this is something you can contribute yourself, taking care of your car.

The good thing about the LED is the light color. In the end, what we can do, we can really simulate daytime from how white the light is. Some of you might have the feeling with older cars, you have a little yellowish light or something like that, or it seems like to be not really bright because it seems to be very dimmed. All of this in combination is helping your eyes because you’re using the right color point and simulate daytime. This is helping your eyes because your eyes are receiving blue light, which also activates you being more awake, being more aware. All of these small contributing points are coming hand-in-hand with an LED.

The second thing is how light is being distributed on the road. Just putting light straight in front of you is not helping you. It’s a question of: is it only on the road, or do you get a little bit left and right? This is what we name “field of view,” so that you’re not running down a road with a very narrow sight only on the street; you also would like to see a little bit what is happening next to the road.

Joel: Like the ditches, so that if a deer was coming in the ditch…

Michael: Exactly, wild animals approaching. So you would appreciate to see them 1 second or 0.5 seconds earlier before it’s on the road, so you’re able to hit the brake and avoid any kind of car accident. So this is now the possibilities we have with the LED in front lighting.

If it comes to the rear, like our digital OLED for example: first of all, the rear is not projecting light on the road; you have light on the car. In the end, what you don’t want to have is to have a lot of light blinding you when you’re driving behind that. We would like to have a very homogeneous distribution on the trunk, on the rear of the car, and also it must be very simple in understanding what it is.

Just giving you one example: if the turn indicator is too close to any other, let’s say, brake light for example, you might have some irritation—is the turn indicator on or is a brake light being used? If it comes to the tail lighting you’re driving, you want to see what is the width of the car. Coming really from coast to coast, you can really get an estimation: the car is big, the car is small, what is your distance? All of this is helping you to be pre-alerted on the traffic situation you’re approaching.

I think this is what everybody is experiencing at night. You want to have a clear vision what is happening in front of you, because it’s dark outside, you don’t know what’s happening from the unknown left and right and so on, and all of this in combination is helping to create safety. From digital light sources in the rear—and this is what we’re also doing now in the Q7 and Q9—we start to put in some communication content. What we can now do is to explain a little bit more if a light is changing, what’s the meaning of that.

I think all of you learned red light means something is in front of you. Even brighter red light means the item in front of you is getting slower, so this is something you learned. Now if you’re putting, for example, like our communication lighting, you get information: “Hey, there might be a tricky situation in front of us.” Or the proximity indication which we have, if you’re approaching the car, all the OLEDs are being turned on, which you can also experience on the Q7. This is giving you a first car-to-X communication possibility, understanding, “Hey, the car would like to give me some information I did not have before.” More red light means maybe to back up a little bit and see what’s happening, so to be pre-alerted.

This is our philosophy. At the moment, you hit the brake, you see the brake light, the only thing you have is reacting on that. What we would like to change is be proactive, so getting information before something dangerous is happening. This is our philosophy which we would like to continue doing in our lamps.

Joel: So then—and I think that that is helpful context of reactive versus proactive, right? I think in America, Rivian is one of the first automakers in America at the moment—and I think it was a timing thing, the timing of this vehicle, the generation two R1S and R1T came out for model year 2024, if I remember correctly, and 2022 was the regulation change. So once those regulations changed, they were able to adapt their lighting to have Matrix LED headlights in America rapidly. That was a timeline thing.

I’ve driven a Rivian, I don’t know if you have, and the lighting is very active in the front. You’re going down the road—and to be clear for those listening, it’s active for the driver. So if you’re coming at me, you don’t see it being crazy active, you’re just never getting blinded. But as the driver, to your point earlier about the ditches, it’s almost like I’m driving with my high beams on at all times, which I’m not, but it acts like it. Then as another car comes at me, it kind of adapts the lighting to be the low beams, but only around that car, right? So this is the best explanation I can do to someone who’s not seeing it visually.

They’re hyperactive. I would call them hyperactive. They are constantly moving, it’s dazzling, it’s a wow factor. Obviously, I haven’t experienced yours yet when we’re recording this, but can you talk a little about your guys’ philosophy in terms of how active the lighting is and how it’s moving and dancing in the world versus that kind of system?

Michael: In the end, I think a very important point: adaptive driving beam. This is really something you have to rely on the system if you activate it, that you’re not glaring anybody. By this, you have to respect regulation. This is the special task the U.S. government or regulation gave us: that the U.S. requirements are different from the rest of the world. We have many, many years of experience. We started with this technology in 2013. We had our first A8 on the market where we really showed that this is something really contributing to safety, and we learned a lot.

In the way you’re applying this kind of active regulation—of the light on, light off—you can really create something which is a little hectic or a little smooth. You can play with dimming ramps, you can make it get a huge distance from the car so that you’re not running to also, if you’re following a car, you put a lot of light in the trunk, in the back mirror, where you don’t want to have that. By this, you really can apply this technology differently. This is what we experience also looking to other cars in the market in Europe or the rest of the world. Every company has a little bit of a different philosophy.

We at Audi, we are focusing so much on that you really get a smooth impression on what’s happening. For example, in Europe, it’s starting with that if you activate the system, it’s like a theater curtain opening. Even if you don’t understand how it’s working, you get the feeling, “Okay, now the complete system is active, some kind of intelligence is helping you to travel safe through the night.” By that, of course, the camera system is detecting where is the car coming against you. With this information, you can now play around with different car segments—I will show you later in a presentation—different elements which can be activated or deactivated.

Now with the new technology that we are running, our Digital Matrix LED light—not all our competitors are using that at the moment—you can really get even closer and really fill up areas where you’re losing light if you’re going too far away of the system. Because this is our promise: we want to give you the best light feasible in the market you’re driving in. We don’t want to cut away light so that you just have the matrix feeling and you’re missing 50% of your headlamp because then it’s no high beam anymore.

This is the Audi philosophy: to really provide light when you don’t have the active system, meaning low beam, fulfilling other regulations which we are also seeing to whatever safety picks or whatever we are talking in addition to really have a good system, not only fulfilling everything for the high beam. If you have the high beam on, you must be clear you’re never glaring anybody. The application doing that, the software which you’re putting inside, the camera system which is inside, we are convinced the Audi system is superior to what we see from our competitors, because the application is really going not to jump in and jump out, to really be more smooth following what’s happening, so you can really see how the light tunnel is working so that you really have the tunnel and the car in front of you is not being glared.

Joel: So the two things I just heard, the differentiators—correct me if I’m wrong, but the way I just interpreted it—was, one, yours is more of a, the keywords I heard were “smooth” and kind of like an opera or show where it’s like a curtain—people can’t see me, but I’m using my hands as if you’re at a show where the curtains are going open and closed, right? Whereas the Rivian system, which I’ve experienced, it’s more dancing, right?

Michael: Click-clack…

Joel: That’s a good—I would agree. Click-clack, it’s dancing stars and little elements are moving and shaping and it’s constant, and it’s amazing and incredible to watch because it seems like a marvel of technology to think of when I was a kid, the halogen lights that were yellow, to your point, in a snowstorm, and this is just dancing all over the road. It’s crazy.

But I would not call that system elegant. I would not call it by any means an opera opening and closing of the theater. What I’m hearing from you is the reason the differentiator that enables your system and that system to be different is a higher resolution camera, or a clearer camera, more advanced camera, something about the camera?

Michael: Camera, software, application. Of course, in the end, you just can imagine you have different triggers you can activate. So you can program—I think it’s an easy way to program our systems like the Rivians are running. The question is if you want to do that. In the end, it’s the way how you apply that, and this is I think every car brand is doing this a little bit different. How fast you’re turning it on, how fast you’re turning it off, how close you want to get to a car, all fulfilling regulation.

Our philosophy is really that this kind of experience is the same in every car in the future. I mentioned in Europe we have this system really from an A3 up to an A8. Our philosophy: you as an Audi customer, you’re getting the same matrix impression or experience from the small car to the higher cars. This is some kind like a fingerprint. We are not so much into the click-clack because we think if you’re traveling a long time, this might be a little bit of annoying because it’s too much happening in front of you. In the end, you can see how the system is working, and this might be quite a nice impression in the first instance, but if you’re doing this for one hour, everything is jumping the whole time. But this is also something which is giving you a personal flavor, so in the end you might be a favor of the one system or the other because you want to be really into the system to see it. Our philosophy is more to really have a premium impression that all of these systems are working very smooth to each other, and this is the way we are doing that.

Joel: Fair enough. For people, a bunch of family members of my family orbit have current cars that theoretically the hardware have matrix lighting and laser lights and all this cool stuff that Europe has, and in America it’s not—it didn’t, when those cars were sold, it did not pass regulations, and so it’s turned off in air quotes for America. For anyone that’s listening to this that might have a vehicle like that, would it be something that Audi is capable of doing for an over-the-air or even a dealer-installed software update to enable this for America, or is the hardware in these new cars that have this coming to America different enough that we can’t retrofit this, if your car has it, it’s not going to get it for America?

Michael: Unfortunately, the last point. In the end, you really have to respect this from the very first beginning you do the hardware development. Just taking the European system over and do exactly the same, even if you have the software or the camera, the hardware is not capable to distribute the light in the way to pass testing. Because this is really what you have to do. Of course, first of all, you don’t want to glare anybody. We say the European system is fine for that, but fulfilling testing and regulations in the U.S., these systems are not equipped in the way to distribute the light properly.

So you cannot just say, “Okay, now activated, you can use it.” You really have to work inside the headlamp, you really have to modify plastic parts, you have to modify the lenses of the light modules, you have to modify the light distribution of those lenses, and this is just something we cannot do over the air. Unfortunately, you have to wait for all the new cars coming, because this is our philosophy to continue now the story starting with the Q7 and Q9. So this is now, we have this technology on hands, and our vision is to really bring matrix to everybody on this world.

Joel: Just to be clear, I heard it’s not that it wouldn’t work in America. To your earlier point when we started recording earlier, it’s a difference in market regulation, right? The headlights in someone’s Q8 today that have matrix technically as far as hardware and the laser lights, it’s not that they wouldn’t work in America, but they were designed and developed for Europe, and they just were disabled for America because they don’t meet our regulations. To enable them in America, it’s not that they wouldn’t work, they wouldn’t meet our regulations because of market differences, correct?

Michael: That’s absolutely right. The system will be functional, you get all the information you need to operate it properly, but if you put these cars on a test track or test drive to fulfill U.S. regulation, you will fail. This is clear, and that’s the reason also why it took some time for us to develop those systems to really fulfill everything we’re demanding in regulation, but also our promise. It’s not only fulfilling regulation, it’s also an Audi light which is premium impression for you behind the steering wheel. You get the premium light distribution on the road fulfilling all these regulations. This is why we are convinced it’s not only fulfilling regulation, it’s also our philosophy how we would like to bring light to our customers.

Joel: Talk to me a little about regulations in America versus China versus Germany. Obviously, these are different markets, they have different road conditions, they have different market conditions, different driving dynamics, and all these things. A lot of people talk about whether it’s safety crash tests or design or lighting, that it’s really frustrating that this country or that country gets this cool technology and we don’t. Arguably, America is behind in many things, specifically when it comes to automotive, and it’s all regulations because they haven’t been addressed for the modern era. Headlights is a great example of that, of course. Our headlight technology and our laws were back in the ’80s, and now all of a sudden in 2022 they finally were addressed. Can you speak a little as an automaker to: would it be more convenient, or would it be just as complicated for different reasons, if the world had one global standard for lighting and all that?

Michael: To be frank with you, I would like to develop one world headlamp. This is, of course, the ideal situation, and if not, I have to think about how can I respect local demand. But in the end, this is also our philosophy. What we are now doing with the Digital Matrix lighting is we put digital content inside, and digital means I can change it by software. This is our vision to go.

First of all, showing to, of course, authorities what can be contributed good. I’m totally respecting that there will be small steps to accept new technology, but I think you have to be open-minded to really see what is the feeling on the road, how do you really contribute to safety. By this, I think we are still not finished. We are continuously showing this to authorities to really give them a first hands-on. We talk to them, we also listen to them to understand, “Okay, why it is like it is?”

With the new technology development, I think we can more contribute exactly to the questions which we are getting. In the end, whether we are really successful to have from China to the U.S. to Scandinavia or to Africa, everything in a homogeneous way, I don’t know. I dare, because I think there will be different road conditions, there will be different day or nighttime conditions, it will be snow or sandstorms or whatever it is. But just imagine a future where you can contribute exactly the demand of the driver coming from one light source, understanding what’s happening. This is our vision: to really analyze what’s happening around you and giving you the best light which can be contributed.

Joel: Hey, I really appreciate the time. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast, this was a lot of fun. Modern lights, we’re entering a new era, and it’s aimed in terms of an automaker in terms of safety. I really appreciate the time, thank you so much.

Michael: Safe traveling, especially at night.

Joel: All right, now we are joined with someone who I think is especially exciting because I am a lighting nerd, but Mr. Daniel Stern, who’s a vehicle lighting and regulation subject matter expert, and he also serves as the Chief Editor of Driving Vision News, a global lighting technical industry journal. That means this man consults for everyone from automakers to the Canadian government because the man knows lighting. Daniel, welcome, thank you for coming.

Daniel: Thanks for having me.

Joel: So, I know that you’ve heard what Mr. Kruppa said about the Audi lighting Matrix LED system. You obviously know a lot about Matrix LED lighting systems and headlights in general. I’ve experienced a bunch of these. I want to just, as broad strokes for people: why has it taken so long for America to get what I would consider modern headlights, when the rest of the world have had these things for a decade or more?

Daniel: Well, basically because the United States does not follow the same regulatory structure as the entire rest of the world. The U.S. alone…

Joel: Boy, it sounds like every other part of the cars! Like every other part of the cars.

Daniel: Pretty much. We live on a regulatory island. The rest of the world uses the UN safety standards, and the U.S. devises its own. They’re structurally very different.

Joel: Kruppa actually said something during all that that alludes to this, and he was like, “Boy, it would be really easy if everyone just used the same headlight standard, if we had one headlight for the whole world.” That is something that Kruppa said.

Daniel: He’s right about that, and in fact, there’s really good quality research from years ago showing that there’s really no justification for different regulations in the United States, because—this is kind of fascinating to me—because the differences in road conditions and amount of alcohol consumed and number of bicycles on the road and all these other parameters that could matter to something like this vary more state-to-state than they do between the U.S. and Canada and Australia and Germany and Japan and all the other countries they looked at. There’s more variation within the U.S. than there is between the U.S. and these other countries, so there’s really no justification for the U.S.—no safety-related justification for the U.S. to have its own special, different regulations. But the U.S. moves slowly, and the regulatory wheels grind especially slowly, and yeah, so that’s why it took so long.

Joel: It’s funny because what I just heard is, we’re all people, and yet we need to be different. God bless America. So, I want to tap your mind. Audi and Rivian—Rivian was one of the first in the US to get Matrix LED headlights on the road, that was for model year ’25 with a very mild refresh externally, very extensive refresh internally under the metal skin. Now Audi’s about to be one of the second automakers or early automakers as well to bring them at the end of the year, this year, in the Q7 and new Q9.

Kruppa and I talked about this, and you obviously heard this, there’s variations in how these automakers are doing it. Audi is going to be more like an opera curtain opening and closing, it’s a very soft transition. I’ve experienced both these systems, and I would call it fluid. Rivian, their setup is much more like a tap dancing, it’s a constant light show adapting as you go, here and there and everywhere. So I’m curious about your take on the different automakers doing it in different ways. Even though we’re using the same technology, their implementations are different.

Daniel: Well, and we’re not even using the same technology. There are a lot of ways to do this. There’s a huge number, and companies, suppliers have been enormously innovative. There are scanning systems, raster scanning systems, and there are spinning mirrors, and there are micro—there are MEMS devices. There’s just all kinds of ways to do it, all kinds of optical techniques and different ways of putting the light source and everything, lots of ways to do it.

You mentioned the difference between the sort of dancing light effect in a Rivian versus the much more, much smoother, sort of much more subtle appearing effect in an Audi, and yeah, that’s absolutely a thing. Which way’s better? My vote would probably go for the Audi approach because I really don’t want to be distracted by dancing light. But we’re at a stage in this, particularly on this continent because it’s so new here, that it’s—you know, maybe you’ve heard the expression “lighting is the new chrome.” We’re kind of doing with lights what we did in the 1950s with tail fins and, yeah, chrome. You know, “Whee, look what we can do!” So I think there’s some element of that in systems that really sort of put it in your face, “Look how this light moves around, isn’t this cool?” But I think once the novelty wears off, I’d really rather have something more like the Audi system.

Joel: That’s fair, and I would say I don’t know which I’d rather have, having experienced various situations in both these cars. I’d say they’re very different. They’re very different. The Audi system is, it just kind of fades into the background—this is going to support your argument, by the way—whereas the Rivian system, it is an ooh-and-ah show. It is an ooh-and-ah show.

That said, I also acknowledge the fact that I’m getting in and out of these cars, whether it’s hours, days, a week at a time. I have to imagine at some level, whether it’s the Rivian, the Audi, whatever, that eventually the novelty wears off, as with all things do, and it just fades into the background and becomes part of your daily life. But again, I don’t know that because I haven’t lived with the system for months and years.

Daniel: Right, neither have I, and what I sort of go on is many years ago there was a popular Lexus model that the headlamps happened to be built such that there was a reflection off of the chrome bezel inside the headlamp. And so there was this sort of “X” of light way above the low beam pattern, and if you were driving towards a wall or if you were driving towards a road sign, you could see this “X.” It wasn’t detrimental to safety or anything, but I lost count of how many people would say, “How do I get rid of that stupid ‘X’? It’s driving me nuts!” It seems a small thing, but when you’re driving, at least it’s to be hoped you’re focusing, and anything that distracts you is, well, it’s going to distract you. But that said, yeah, I haven’t lived with the Rivian system long enough for it to become routine, maybe that does fade into the background.

Joel: TBD. So, Kruppa mentioned three different reasons that Matrix LED adaptive headlight technology is really important, and the three were safety, light pollution, and blinding people. I’d love to get your take as an expert and independent person on this topic as far as these three, and do you agree with him, is it all or nothing? Safety, light pollution, blinding people.

Daniel: Well, I think I’ll take the second point there first. It’s a little difficult—I mean, yeah, I suppose in theory maybe you have a slight bit less stray light. I think the light pollution argument is a bit of a reach. There was some activity from the Dark Sky people and I think one of the other outfits saying, “Hey, you know, headlights are getting brighter and brighter to the extent that it’s messing with wildlife,” and that’s interesting. But I’m not going to sit here and say he’s wrong, but I would love to know more about where that argument comes from because just on its face I have some difficulty with that.

As far as safety: yeah, anytime you can put more light on things and people that we would like not to hit while we’re driving, and you can do it without increasing glare, absolutely that’s going to be a win for safety. That said, an adaptive driving beam system has limitations, it’s not magic. Above a certain degree of traffic density, when there are enough cars in front of you—you’re driving a car equipped with ADB, when there are enough cars in front of you—the system can’t generate enough shadows to sort of shadow out all of these cars and still have anything left of a beam pattern, so it reverts to low beam. So in dense city traffic, that’s not going to be of a great benefit, but in lesser density, in sort of medium density traffic, absolutely it’s much better than low beam.

Low beam for a hundred and some odd years has been inadequate for the tasks that we ask of them. In order to keep glare to some kind of livable level—and even that, you know, we’re pushing the boundaries on that, there’s a lot of glare complaints lately—you just, geometrically with a low beam, you don’t have enough seeing distance for the speeds that we drive. So anything that’ll get more light further down the road to sort of accord with the speeds that we’re driving at is great, and ADB, at least in theory, resolves this century-old conflict between seeing and glare. So yeah, I’m very much on side with the safety argument.

Joel: To be clear, so am I! As you and I were talking before we recorded this, I’m a headlight nerd, and the more light the better in all situations. There is probably to an extent of being too bright—I may have done that with my Cherokee at one point, but…

Daniel: Well, yeah, I don’t agree with “the more light the better.” What’s really crucial, even more than the amount of light, is how the light is distributed. It’s better to have less light properly distributed than more light poorly distributed, and that’s why an adaptive driving beam system is so brilliant, because it’s doing a better job of directing the light where it needs to be and keeping it away from where it shouldn’t be than just a static low beam does.

Joel: So, something else Kruppa said that, of course, he would say, you would expect him to say—he works for Audi—but you don’t work for Audi, and you don’t work for Rivian, you don’t work for any automaker, you’re independent. Kruppa mentioned that he believes the Audi solution is superior because it’s not jumping around, because it’s smooth and you see the light tunnel working, but not blinding the car in front of you or the car coming towards you. He mentioned something called the “light tunnel,” and I think that’s a really important term here, based on exactly what you just said of the distribution of light and how it’s blinding people coming to you or away from you or in front of you, and that’s why he believes the Audi system is superior. Do you agree with Kruppa that certain technology or implementations might be better in terms of the quote “light tunnel” and blinding cars coming to you or away from you? He was referring to the Rivian system that we were discussing at the time.

Daniel: Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, in general, it’s always going to be the case whether we’re talking about headlamps or computers or any technology, anything, there’s the concept and then there’s the implementation. A terrific concept can be spoiled by a crummy implementation, and a terrible idea can be shored up by an amazing implementation, although that’s less common. So yeah, as they say, the devil’s in the details.

I’m not going to sit here and say, “Oh well, the Rivian system is poopy,” because it’s not. I will say that Audi have been—they made a conscious decision some years ago to put themselves at the forefront in lighting. I think it was the 2011 Detroit Auto Show, I saw enormous new lighting content on Chrysler products, and I called up their lighting lead and said, “You know, I’m not complaining, but what made this difference between last year and this year?” And he said, “Oh yeah, well, Audi, you know, we call it the Audi curse in this industry. Audi started spending money on lights, so now everybody has to spend money on lights.” Obviously that means everyone who drives at night wins.

I do think I agree on this particular point with Mr. Kruppa, that I would rather have sort of smoothly morphing tunnels than jumping ones. But to sort of narrow in on this idea of the light tunnel, so that people probably understand from your talk with Mr. Kruppa, but just for a quick review: an adaptive driving beam system dynamically shadows other drivers out of what is otherwise a high beam pattern. So it keeps track of where other people are in front of you and it shadows them out.

Here’s where the difference really gets large between the US system and the rest of the world system. The rest of the world, the philosophy is: make the tunnels as small as possible, so concentrate really on keeping the light away from driver’s eyes—maybe light up the rest of their car, but keep the light out of their eyes—and make the tunnel as dark as possible. The U.S. system says the tunnel has to be large—it actually specifies a size—and the tunnel cannot be darker than a low beam would be at whatever point the tunnel is. So if your other car happens to be situated in a place where the regular low beam would glare them, they’re still going to get glared with the U.S. ADB system because the law says it can’t dip below the intensity of a static low beam.

So I feel that’s kind of unfortunate because it really kicks one of the legs out from under ADB. ADB was supposed to free us from this conflict between seeing and glare that we’ve been stuck with for a century, and that requirement in the U.S. regulation is really unfortunate because it artificially restores this compromise between seeing and glare to a system that was meant conceptually to eliminate that.

Joel: Hmm. It’s really unfortunate that America’s coming late to the party, and then we’ve kicked out a leg that is a benefit to the modern systems. But, suppose we could say that about so many things with America and how we do things. We got to be different, to your point, Daniel, we got to be different.

Last question and then we’ll let you go, I know your time’s valuable, but we will definitely have you back on, you are beyond knowledgeable. I am curious, if you ask me, in my lifetime there have been certain moments in history where we’ve had these monumental leaps in terms of safety: seatbelts, airbags, anti-lock brakes and traction control, electronic stability control around 2000, and automatic emergency braking. These are the pillars of—every decade, half a decade, pick your timelines here—these massive leaps in safety that got democratized over time very rapidly, and cars abound had them and it really did save lives and stop crashes. Would you feel that—and I never probably would have put halogen or sealed beam or HIDs or LEDs into this category personally, but I am curious your take on adaptive lighting and whether you feel it is that monumental or it’s not as monumental in terms of safety as the things I just listed?

Daniel: I have a hard time seeing how adaptive driving beam as implemented in the United States will make that list. If for no other reason than it will be—the regulation as NHTSA has put it out and insisted on is difficult and costly to comply with, and that’s going to make it hard to democratize. There are popular price cars in Europe and the rest of the world, mass-market cars with basic but effective adaptive driving beam systems—we’re talking like Toyota Corolla-level cars, high volume, low price cars.

Joel: You don’t see that happening here.

Daniel: Not for a long time. It might, but I don’t foresee it anytime soon. I think for the foreseeable future it’s going to remain the province of really cool, really expensive cars in the United States.

Joel: For context for everyone, the cars that currently have it are the Rivian R1T and R1S, and upcoming Q7 and Q9, all of which are $60,000–$70,000+ vehicles. That said, even something like an Audi Q3, to what Daniel just said, you can get this system on an Audi Q3 and I’ve experienced it in Europe, and that is a less expensive car. So TBD on how far, but I would agree with you. A Toyota Corolla, they really democratized LED tech and put that in that car early. I don’t see that happening here with this technology that costs more than an LED headlight setup. Daniel, thank you so much for being here today, really appreciate your time. We will absolutely have you back, and just thank you for coming.

Daniel: You’re very welcome, thanks for having me on.

The post America Finally Gets Modern Headlights. Your Experience May Vary appeared first on The Drive.

As I sat at a dead stop in traffic on Highway 494 in Bloomington, Minnesota, the car ahead of me began to move. I pushed the gas pedal on the four-door 2026 Dodge Charger Scat Pack and the reborn muscle car… didn’t move. An alert popped up on the digital gauge cluster: “Shift to P then desired Gear.” I did this, twice, and nothing happened. The car wouldn’t budge. Suddenly a pit in my stomach, you know the one, opened up.

This was the situation I encountered within moments of sliding behind the wheel of the gas-powered 2026 Dodge Charger I was testing after traveling about 14 hours and getting off a plane coming home from Japan. Not ideal.

Traffic began moving ahead of me, horns began honking behind me, and I decided to turn the car off and back on and pray. Except, the Charger didn’t turn off when I pushed button. (Score one for keys.) Alarmed, I hit the button again, still nothing. Third time was the charm—it finally shut down and when I turned it back on, the issue was cleared, the car allowed me to shift into Drive, and I finally started moving.

There was a split second where I questioned if I imagined the whole thing since I was completely exhausted from the long-haul flight home. That thought evaporated when it happened again.

Two days later, while in a parking lot taking photos of the Charger during my son’s soccer practice, I went to move the car for a new angle. I had left it idling in Park, but when I slid the pistol-grip gear selector to Drive, I was met with the same alert in the cluster: “Shift to P then desired Gear.” Could’ve sworn that’s exactly what I was doing. Going back and forth between Park and Drive did nothing, nor could I even get it into Neutral. And once again, the power button didn’t work either. Thankfully it only took two tries to shut it off this time, which again cleared the error and allowed me to shift into Drive.

The Charger’s digital gauge cluster has a messages page that you can pull up, but the issue left no trace. As far as the car was concerned, nothing had gone wrong. Twice.

Finally, a couple days after that I was sitting at a red light after dropping my kid off at school. It turned green, I pressed the gas, and wouldn’t you know it, the same error message popped up and the car refused to move. Same song and dance: it took three tries to turn it off as people honked at me, and when I finally got home and checked, the onboard diagnostics acted like it never happened.

I called Stellantis, whose rep told me this was the first time they’d heard of this happening. The 2,770-mile Scat Pack I was driving was technically a pre-production car with “production-intent” software, and they said they’d immediately pull it from the review fleet and send it to a dealership in Detroit for a full system scan, before sending those results to their engineering team back in Detroit to analyze. But the scan wasn’t enough to pinpoint the cause, so eventually the car itself was send back to headquarters for a hands-on look.

It took nearly four weeks, but Stellantis was finally able to tell me what happened and why.

“The team identified the event you experienced, which was caused by a body control module (BCM) software issue. During an engine start stop (ESS) event, the BCM that reads the hood latch sensor sent a brief, irregular voltage level to the engine control module (ECM). Due to the irregular voltage level, the ECM could not determine if the hood was open or closed. The Charger’s safety protocol does not allow an automatic ESS restart with the hood open, thus prompting your cluster message and requiring a manual restart. Our team completed a software reflash to the BCM we believe eliminated the event you experienced on this pre-production unit, which has not been reported on any customer vehicles,” a spokesperson said.

It’s true that a failing or faulty hood sensor could conceivably immobilize any new car, but Stellantis’ explanation didn’t fully address why I wasn’t able to power cycle the car without repeated attempts.

I asked Stellantis for a clear definition of what a “manual restart” requires as two of the three times the issue took place I was driving the car on the road. “Manual restart refers to the vehicle needing a standard key cycle (shift to park, foot on brake and press engine start button) because the automatic ESS restart was blocked due to the BCM voltage irregularity. The event you experienced is not related to the transmission limp mode outlined in the owner’s manual,” a Stellantis spokesperson said. Notably that means the car wasn’t demanding I open the driver’s door and lock the car to put it to “sleep.” A feat that would’ve been unrealistic in these on-road situations.

Searching around the Internet I was unable to find other complaints or noted instances of this situation occurring with 2026 Dodge Chargers (though plenty of other bugs). The NHTSA has no recorded complaints of this issue. Though, notably, the same error is all over the Internet with reports from owners of both the last-gen gas-powered Dodge Charger and various Ram 1500 models. The root cause with those cars seems to be a shift interlock or electronic gear selection fault typically triggered by a weak 12-volt battery, failing shifter module, or transmission control sensor. None of which were the issue with the new 2026 Charger situation I experienced.

Still, whether or not any other customer complaints have surfaced about this specific condition on this specific car, it’s notable. The reason? Well obviously, a car randomly being unable to move or even power cycle is kind of a big problem! But it’s also not the first time the new Charger has had an issue with how its hood operates.

In 2025, reports surfaced highlighting the fact that slamming the Charger’s hood could break the latches. The requirement of gently closing the hood and then pushing it shut with two hands with specific hand placement is in the vehicle’s owner’s manual for both gas- and electric-powered Chargers models.

The new Charger hasn’t had a smooth launch. Initial reviews were mixed at best. Then the cars started making their way into the wild. Edmunds reported a case of unintended acceleration only to learn their car had what some might have called a software glitch, but it in fact turned out to be, as Stellantis deems it, a safety feature. It’s not just Edmunds. The Internet is full of issues such as a red wrench of doom, charging issues and countless fault codes that even allowed the a car to “push through its brakes” into an intersection, locks not working with check engine lights all presumably attributed to 12-volt battery issues.

In April, Dodge CEO Matt McAlear told The Drive “it’s way too early” to deem whether the latest Charger is a sales dud, and “I’m still excited. I’m still bullish on this car.” McLear said the reason is because “I think it offers something that no one else sees coming in the industry and it wakes up some mundane car segments that there’s not many of them left.”

Stellantis has since put that specific car I experienced issues with back into the fleet and loaned it to other media who told The Drive the issue I experienced has not resurfaced.

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The post My 2026 Dodge Charger Test Car Bricked Itself Three Times In Five Days appeared first on The Drive.

Hard to imagine a timeline where something like vehicle door handle design would be controversial, and yet here we are in the year 2026. Audi’s CEO didn’t just acknowledge the topic, he stepped in at the eleventh hour before the automaker’s new flagship entered reality.

In Munich, Germany in May, at a media preview for the 2027 Audi Q9 three-row SUV, Audi CEO Gernot Döllner told journalists, “One special item I’m really proud of are the quite a conventional topic, the door handles.”

Döllner revealed “We changed that actually 45 weeks ago, and we were happy to be able to do so.”

The decision and change didn’t come until the executive test drove final validation Q9s to sign off on the flagship, according to Döllner. “We had an innovative door handle concept on that car as well. And then we had a final test drive and said, it’s innovative, but from a customer perspective, it’s worse than a conventional door handle. And we were absolutely lucky to be able to change,” the CEO said.

A change of that magnitude 45 months from a media reveal is a monumental undertaking. Döllner said, “Normally, it takes two years to change that [door handles], but our body engineers did an outstanding job, and we were a little bit lucky that it worked package-wise.” The automaker had to change out tooling that was already in place, according to Döllner.

Döllner said the quiet part out loud, “We are really happy to have this conventional door handles as a kind of, it’s not an innovation, it’s simply good. Yeah.”

The automaker had originally planned to chase the hot trend of electronic door handles like we’ve seen on the Volvo EX60. Döllner said the decision was made in parallel with the banning of unconventional door handles in the Chinese market, but that was not the driver of the design change.

The “innovative door handle” that was dropped from the Q9? Döllner described it as “A little wing on the door that worked with piezoelectric physical effect behind. So you only had to touch it slightly and then the door would open electromechanically, but we will have that solution on an European car in a different segment, but it definitely does not work on a full-size SUV with requirements for everyday usage.”

The door handles weren’t the only wrong that Döllner sought to right with the Q9, and subsequently the flagship’s smaller sibling, the 2027 Q7.

Döllner noted that the new Q7 and Q9 were the first two products he made a real impact on after joining Audi 2.5 years ago. The man in charge of Audi took customers feedback to heart and made sweeping changes beyond the door handles right down to packaging and features.

“We reworked the center console, introduced cupholders that Stanley Cups are the right sizes. We rearranged the smart door panels we have in our A5, A6, and Q5 cars, and came back to dedicated switches, optimized the interior cooling, and of course, seating the roof concept, all that with a clear customer focus,” Döllner said.

My Daughter will thank Döllner for the fact the Q7 and Q9’s cup holders aren’t made for ants. Her words, not mine.

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The post Audi CEO Admits New Flagship SUV Almost Got Those Electronic Door Handles Nobody Asked For appeared first on The Drive.

Flock has become a lighting rod topic across America. I myself got caught up in the dragnet-like system, which tracked me for days resulting in four cops ambushing my wife and me. I was one of the millions of countless mistakes made each month. But beyond those millions of mistakes is the misuse of the technology and platform itself.

During an exclusive one-on-one interview on The Drivecast Flock Safety Founder and CEO Garrett Langley said, “The abuse is a problem.” The man in charge of Flock is aware of the problem and said, “We need to continue to get that down to zero. Any level of abuse is unacceptable.”

Listen to the entire conversation starting at the moment Langley discusses the issue of police abusing Flock’s systems below.

Langley admitted that years ago Flock did not require municipalities that subscribe to Flock’s services to use multi-factor authentication (MFA). Not using MFA would make it much easier for unauthorized users to get into Flock’s systems, and much harder for Flock or anyone else to perform an audit and follow a trail as to who accessed and viewed what. Flock now requires the use of MFA.

The mandating of MFA isn’t far enough and hasn’t solved the misuse issues. Langley said, “To your point on auditability and accountability, yeah, I actually think this is a problem more broadly in law enforcement—that we’re one of the only systems that actually has auditing and has abnormal behavior detection in it.”

Langley took credit and said, “All these cases you see happening are because our system is flagging, ‘That’s pretty weird.’ It’s not necessarily illegal—innocent until proven guilty—but a criminal investigation should have occurred.”

Going further, Langley leaned into the lack of regulations on how the tech his company is selling is used by saying, “I wish more state regulations pushed that every system law enforcement uses needed to have this level of sophisticated auditing and abnormal detection.” Continuing the thought with, “We’ve got to do more there.”

As for the abuse of Flock’s platform today Langley said, “The abuse is a problem. We need to continue to get that down to zero. Any level of abuse is unacceptable.” But Langley defended Flock’s services as whole by quickly following the abuse statements by saying, “To be very clear, but I don’t think we should miss the fact that over a million cases were solved last year with this technology, and the level of abuse is incredibly low relative to that.”

While MFA has been mandated and audit logs have been used to expose police misusing the system in various states such as Texas and Georgia, the latter is where Langley lives, the man running Flock did not expand on what guardrails are being put in place within the system to further make it so authorities can not misuse the system going forward.

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The post Flock’s CEO Admits Police Abuse ‘Is a Problem.’ Then Defends His Company appeared first on The Drive.

Flock isn’t just at the center of a national debate, it hit at the center of my life after the system tracked me for days and led to four cops ambushing my wife and me. I was one of the countless mistakes made each month between police and the new technology, and the discussion throughout America concerning privacy, warrantless tracking, and the Fourth Amendment is loud at the moment.

Flock Safety Founder and CEO Garrett Langley sat down in an exclusive one-on-one interview on The Drivecast to discuss the growing public discourse over public privacy, the Fourth Amendment, and where Flock sits. The executive was definitive in he doesn’t believe there’s a legal issue today and won’t be one in the future either.

Listen to the entire conversation starting at the moment Langley discusses the issue of tracking and people’s rights.

Langley told me, “People tend to have three concerns or three questions about the company: privacy, constitutionality, and accountability.”

Addressing the Fourth Amendment and legal issue Langley said, “You mentioned the constitutional one. That one’s pretty cut and dry. You and I don’t get to pick what’s a constitutional violation and what’s not. We have judges, we have elected officials, there’s a process for that. We follow the law, we follow the Constitution. So far, in our belief and what will be for a long time, the courts have deemed this is not a warrantless search; this is a valid product as it relates to the Fourth Amendment. So I don’t see any change there.”

Regarding privacy and data retention Langley said, “On the privacy one, though, there’s some real questions that we ask as well. Here’s a good example: Before I started Flock, this type of ALPR data was stored in perpetuity. It was resold for commercial purposes by repo trucks to insurance providers. It was pretty nasty, in my opinion. We were one of the first companies to say there’s going to be a 30-day default retention, and we aren’t going to sell the data.”

Langley brought data into the privacy discussion noting, ” We solved just over a million crimes last year on the Flock system in partnership with local law enforcement. If I told you that if we reduce the 30-day retention to 14 days, 30% fewer crimes would be solved—so roughly 300,000 more victims without justice—would you make that tradeoff?” The Drive was not provided any verification of these statistics or their source.

Who should decide whether your community is using automatic license plate reader technology? According to Langley, “You and I shouldn’t pick. Actually, the Mayor of Plymouth [the city I live in and we used in countless examples during the discussion] and the City Council should make that decision, because that’s a fair tradeoff. We elect people who we believe match our values to make these very difficult, non-black-and-white questions.”

How cities use and implement Flock is up to them, Langley said. But those decisions will, according to Flock’s CEO, greatly impact public safety and the effectiveness of the system. “You could go down with something like Flock and say, ‘We like the idea of Flock, but we only want to focus on Amber Alerts and Silver Alerts.’ So there’s zero retention of the data, just alerts. I’d say, ‘Okay, you’re going to get about 50% of the value of the system, but if that’s what you want in Plymouth, great, we’d love to help you, but you’re still going to be safer.’ Now, you’re going to be less safe than San Francisco, but that’s an option,” Langley said.

Langley continued, “For us, we don’t want to push our opinion as individual citizens. I live in Atlanta, you live in Plymouth. We just wish that more elected officials would do their research, do their homework, form an opinion, engage the community, and then set a standard that makes sense for them.”

What makes sense for each city is unclear as debates and arguments rage on the topic of Flock and automatic license plate reader tech across America. But Langley wants Flock to expand from the 7,000 cities its in today to hopefully every one of America’s 17,000 cities in the future.

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The post Flock CEO Claims Its Cameras Aren’t a Constitutional Violation: ‘Cut and Dry’ appeared first on The Drive.

Flock cameras recently tracked me for a few days in Plymouth, MN, which resulted in my wife and me being surrounded by police who thought I had performed grand theft auto. I was innocent. Today there are only 18 Flock cameras in Plymouth, but what about tomorrow?

Flock Safety Founder and CEO Garrett Langley sat down in an exclusive one-on-one interview on The Drivecast to discuss Flock as a company today, as a company tomorrow, and what he thinks the future looks like. Will there be a Flock camera on every street corner and inside every school?

Listen to the entire conversation starting at the moment Langley talks about Flock’s future below.

Before answering the question outright of what his vision for Flock is and were are we going in the future, Garrett gave context as to his personal why behind his vision. “Just like you, I’m a father of three kids. My primary objective as a father is to keep them safe. They’ve got to be safe. Then I’ve got to make sure they’re educated, that they’re good people, productive members of society. But if they’re not safe, everything else starts to crumble. I think that’s true for a lot of kids. That lack of feeling safe starts to lead to these erosions of society.”

Garrett then addressed the question of where Flock is today by using San Francisco as an example. “What we’ve noticed is in certain places like San Francisco, four years ago, you could get away with almost any crime. Then two or three years ago, Mayor Breed and Mayor Lurie said, ‘Flock, we need help. It’s too easy to be a criminal, and our businesses are leaving, our people are leaving. This isn’t working for us.'”

The result of that situation, according to Garrett, “We deployed hundreds of license plate readers, we deployed our drones, we deployed our real-time crime center software to make officers more efficient. Now it’s one of the safest cities in America. Mayor Lurie has one of the highest approval ratings of any major city mayor—he might actually have the highest, last I checked.”

As for the future of society and Garrett’s vision of what part Flock plays? “For me, the future is a future where more cities look like San Francisco, where crime is incredibly hard to get away with—so hard that people just choose not to do it. That might seem like a distant future, but it’s happening in San Francisco. I think we’re going to do the same thing in Oakland. We’re in 7,000 cities today, and I’d like to get us to all 17,000 cities in America and create that future, because it’s quite doable. Whatever technology we need to build to help get there while maintaining our local societal norms is what we’re planning to do. That might sound crazy, but I said it 10 years ago, and now it’s really happening at scale. It’s a pretty exciting time.”

Whether that vision will play out or not is yet to be seen.

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The post Flock CEO Wants Its Cameras in Every One of America’s 17,000 Cities appeared first on The Drive.

Millions of people have seen the story of Flock cameras tracking me in a $155,000 Range Rover and subsequently four police officers surrounding my wife and me in a parking lot. Human error was involved, but Flock cameras working off the company’s AI tech compounded everything at an exponential rate.

Now on the latest episode of The Drivecast, Flock Safety Founder and CEO Garrett Langley sat down with me for a candid discussion about what happened to me and countless others in the last few years, the future vision for Flock amid the public backlash over privacy and Fourth Amendment concerns, the growing calls for regulation, and his previous comment that people who destroy or vandalize Flock equipment are “domestic terrorists.”

On a daily basis there’s reporting of cops misusing Flock’s tech to stalk people, which in turn ends up getting them arrested and sent to jail, misread situations taking place, arguments at city council meetings, and people targeting the automatic license plate readers and cutting them down, shooting them, covering them with trash bags and more. You might call this a hot topic, and somehow, I landed right in the middle of it.

New here? The Drivecast is The Drive‘s weekly podcast that takes you behind-the-scenes on the largest controversies, stories, and characters shaping the automotive industry along with the way our roads look today. Powered by The Drive‘s inside access, original reporting, exclusives, and insights, The Drivecast aims to make everyone an insider.

Listen to The Drivecast via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music. Love it? Like it? Want to help? Leave a five-star review on your platform of choice to help get The Drivecast in front of more people. Have a suggestion, tip, request, or feedback? Drop us a line at feedback@thedrive.com. I promise, we read every single email.

Full Transcript

Joel: Garrett, thank you for agreeing to come on the podcast. I know you’re extremely busy and there’s a lot of controversy at the moment surrounding Flock. You’re living your life on an airplane, even though you’re a family man. Just to get it out of the way and start, aside from a thank you, typically every executive we’ve had on this podcast, I kind of know them. I’ve worked in the industry for 15 years, so I usually know them, we’ve had a relationship. This is the first time I’ve ever met you. Given the podcast and everything, I have to ask: Are you a car enthusiast? Do you like cars? Do you care about driving? I’m genuinely curious.

Garrett: I hate to spoil it for your fans. I am not a car guy. Now, I have a deep appreciation for F1, and that’s more from an athletic standpoint. You look at the sheer engineering behind it—they’re optimizing every single millisecond, every single millimeter of the engine and of the design. But funny enough, up until two or three years ago, I was driving the same Toyota Prius that I’ve been driving since college. Everyone was like, “Why don’t you drive another car?” It works. It works really well. Gets me from A to B. It’s a great car. I wound up upgrading the dash to have Apple CarPlay, because the Toyota didn’t have it, so I retrofit that myself. But no, I get a hard time from some of my friends who love cars, saying that I should be more into cars. Between three kids, a wife, and a business, I’m trying to find time for the simpler things in life.

Joel: I can appreciate that. I didn’t really know what you were going to answer, because the reality is that you’re not a car company, you’re not a supplier of car parts or any of that stuff, so I think it was just context. By the way, a Prius, a Corolla, a Camry—there’s nothing really wrong with them. They’re not enthusiast cars, but to your point, if you’re looking for fuel-efficient, safe, reliable, get you from point A to point B, it’s hard to beat, specifically a Prius. The most recent one looks awesome.

Obviously, I have 99 million questions. There is zero chance we could ever cover all the topics today in the short period of time that you and I have together. I have to start with my situation, because that’s how we got here. There’s no way we could not discuss this. I don’t want to sit and belabor anything. You’ve read the stories, I’m sure you’re up to speed on what happened. I’ve written the stories, I’m well-versed with what happened. I’ve spent countless hours on the phone with your Chief Communications Officer, Josh—super nice guy.

As a recap, if you’re one of the millions of people that did not read the story or hear the podcast, a human error led to a police officer entering incorrectly an incomplete plate number into the National Crime Information Center database. That is managed by the FBI; that’s what all the police from across the nation pull from. That is also what gets fed into automatic license plate readers. Whether it’s Flock, Leonardo, or Axon, Garrett’s team doesn’t have its own database; they’re pulling from the FBI Criminal National Information Center database.

They were fed bad, partial, incorrect information. The system was told, “Go look for a license plate of 34DTM.” It was told to do that. It found it, but the problem was that the one it found—the one on my press car that week, a $155,000 Range Rover—also had a ’10’ in there. Flock saw it, the system saw it. It wasn’t asked about a ’10’, it wasn’t programmed to care about a ’10’, it was programmed to find the bone that it was asked to find. It did, and basically it fed it to the police. The local police then didn’t do the back-end loop, and they did not cross-check the actual plate. There was a photo of the plate, I saw it, they showed it to me, it had ’10’ on it. They either didn’t know what to do with it, they disregarded it, they didn’t enter it into the system. They looked at my plate, they didn’t understand the ’10’, and then they looked at my plate and thought I performed Grand Theft Auto, which I did not.

Basically, we had human error that led into Flock as a technology exponentially increasing the rate at which that error spread, but it wasn’t the source of the error. Then human error on the back end of that loop, not cross-referencing it. A compounding amount of issues at hand.

You can’t change human error; that’s not your job. What I am curious about is, I know Josh mentioned you guys talked to the FBI who manages NCIC, and he tried to talk to the LA police that entered the incorrect information. I’m curious from this situation: What will Flock as a company take away, what have they learned, and what changes will we learn from my edge case? We learn from edge cases.

Garrett: One, I appreciate you sharing and hitting on the facts, which is that there were a lot of things that went wrong. It’s easy to potentially try to aggregate that down to “Flock did this,” and a lot of mistakes happened to create this edge case. Sadly, you weren’t the first person who’s had an edge case, and to your point, Joel, the biggest issue remains this national database at the FBI called NCIC, and how archaic its structure is. There’s no feedback loop mechanisms; it’s really just a static comma-separated file.

We’ve tried to build around it. We have this concept called “suppression.” A local agency—let’s take Atlanta, where I live—might see that there’s a stolen plate out of California, but it’s already been resolved because it’s a rental car or a dealer car. They can, in Flock, suppress that: “Never alert us on that for the next year.” That’s to get around the fact that they can’t force another agency to remove it from NCIC.

Ideally, the way it would work is if enough agencies—let’s call it one, two, or three—flag a tag as no longer valid or a bad entry, it should just get removed. Or at least it should get pushed more aggressively by the FBI. For us, we maintain a productive relationship with the FBI. They obviously play a critical role in broader public safety, and I’m hopeful that they’ll see there’s an opportunity to make something like NCIC, which is an important tool not just for companies like Flock, but for police departments to work together, start to make some enhancements to modernize what’s a central part of our policing system.

Joel: I’m curious because you said something I hadn’t heard yet, whether talking to the chief of police or Josh. When my situation occurred, one of the things I learned from my local police that this all went down with is they asked me where I was going to drive the car, if I was going to drive to other suburbs. I said yes. They warned me that other police officers might be trained differently—Minneapolis might be more aggressive, they might show up with guns drawn, which mine didn’t.

They warned me that I have the case number and my police officer’s name that went through everything with me, and they’re like, “In Plymouth, you have a safety net now; you’re not going to get flagged. But if you go into another suburb with Flock, it’s going to flag you again because it’s pulling from the NCIC.” If Plymouth had done the suppression thing you just mentioned, that doesn’t translate to the Minneapolis Police Department.

Garrett: No, it only impacts Plymouth, because we don’t necessarily want to make a decision on behalf of Minneapolis or Los Angeles. We very much have this structural viewpoint that local decisions should stay local. Plymouth made a decision to suppress that, that’s their right to do that, but that doesn’t impact Minneapolis’s setup.

Joel: Do you believe that in this situation, Plymouth police quickly realized—”quickly” is a relative term in the scheme of life—in the scheme of that day, my wife will tell you so, but do you think that, to your point about the NCIC database, Plymouth police told me the only ones in the situation that could have updated that partial plate in the system would be the officer’s unit? In this case, it was the LA Sheriff’s Department, Malibu Lost Hills station. They’re the only ones that can update that issue. Do you think that as you are talking with NCIC and the FBI about how to modernize the system, it should be able to allow Plymouth police, if they run this down and talk to LA and figure out the situation, to correct this? We shouldn’t have to have this weird loop of Jaguar having to call LA.

Garrett: A proposed solution would be one where—let’s make it you and me so it’s easier and fewer words. Garrett puts in a tag “FEDER” as a stolen car. If Joel says, “Wait a second, I just pulled that person over, that’s not valid anymore,” you should have the ability to say, “I think this should be removed.”

Then to me, I should have some clock—called a day, a week—to say, “No, Joel, you are wrong, I want to keep this.” That to me makes a lot more sense, where you have the ability to say, “Hey, I should delete this,” and I go, “Okay, well I can either let it disappear because I’m not going to fight it, or I could choose to say there’s a reason why that you might have misunderstood.”

I agree with you, there needs to be more collaboration. That’s how more modern systems work. Similarly on our side, I think to your point…

Joel: To be clear, in this situation where I’m Feder and you’re Garrett with the license, are you talking about you as Flock, or you as the FBI NCIC?

Garrett: Us as police departments. Let’s make it easier: I’m LA County, I enter in FEDER as this stolen car. You’re Plymouth and you’re like, “I don’t think it’s stolen anymore, this looks normal.” You should be able to say, “I think it needs to be deleted.” As LA County, I should have a day or a week to say, “No, it is really stolen,” or it automatically gets deleted and removed from the list.

Inevitably what happens is, let’s take the rental car example: A car is reported stolen by the rental car agency. I’m LA County and I put it in NCIC. But then, low and behold, the car was returned a month later. It was not stolen, someone just forgot to return it or something. To me, there’s either an expiration—if you look at the way the Flock system works, which is a little bit different than NCIC, we require an expiration period. You can’t just put something into a list forever. It either is going to be there for 7 days, 30 days, 90 days—you have to define this expiration. I think that would also be a meaningful and positive change to NCIC, to have a 7-day or 30-day max expiration period so that you don’t wind up with this stale data in the system like you experienced.

Joel: Last question on this topic. Flock has an expiration, but NCIC doesn’t. So in this case, let’s make believe in some timeline that didn’t happen and my wife got a manicure that day. She would have been much happier. If 34DTM had been in the system and not gotten pulled over, you’re pulling from NCIC, it wasn’t in the Flock database. You said there are expirations, it can’t be searching forever. How does that work if it’s not expiring out of the NCIC?

Garrett: Here’s a good example: Let’s take Plymouth. Let’s say Plymouth has reasonable suspicion that Feder’s license plate was associated with a residential burglary. They could create on their local version a hot list entry to say, “Hey, this is our Plymouth-only hot list.” There’s NCIC, and we force an expiration on the local level. I think it would be great if NCIC had a similar expiration requirement of, let’s call it a week or a month, so that as a criminal investigator, every month you have to reconfirm, “Yes, I am still looking for this car, it is still an active investigation.” I think that would help a lot. It puts more onus on law enforcement, but your story is a prime one of why the extra work by the law enforcement agency is worth it. It’s not that much work relative to your experience.

Joel: Got it. Let’s pivot from my experience into the future of here and now, and where we go from here, but staying on my topic a little as a joiner setup.

Josh made mention—and it’s all over your website—that there’s a 99% success rate. I don’t want to sit here and question that, so let’s use that in this scenario. You guys are doing about—these are round numbers to be clear, because they’re big—20 billion reads a month. 20 billion reads a month and a 99% success rate means there’s a 1% error rate, misread rate, call it whatever you want to call it. 1% of 20 billion, which is a huge number, is a huge number. I was one of them. Now, I wasn’t a misread, to be clear, but it was an error situation with a bad outcome that ended up with an outcome we don’t want.

What exactly are we doing, what’s Flock doing, what’s being done to bring down that 1% error rate so we’re not at 200 million? Which sounds like an immense number—not an immense number when you have 20 billion, but it’s still a big number.

Garrett: Your experience wasn’t even a misread; that’s a flaw in the error. The math you used—we don’t need to debate it, but what I would articulate is that doesn’t express the false positive rate, which is actually what you should be worried about. A false positive rate would say we read a license plate, FEDER, we’re confident it’s FEDER, and it’s stolen according to NCIC, so we send an alert.

It’s not just a function of how accurate we are, but how confident in our accuracy. There’s an important detail in how the system works, because technology will never be perfect, just like human eyes aren’t perfect. The question is what redundancies and what guardrails are you building into the system to prevent and reduce the likelihood of something bad happening.

In our case, let’s say it’s FEDER, and we’re 99% confident it’s an F, 99% on an E, 99% on a D, 99% on an E, and we’re only 80% confident that R is an R. We don’t send the alert.

Joel: Is that how it’s set up today?

Garrett: Yes, that’s how it works today. That’s an important detail because we will save that image, and we will store that under a certain confidence interval, but there is a very high bar for us to notify a local law enforcement officer in their MDT, in their patrol vehicle, of an NCIC alert. We have to be very confident, because even though we do the training and say you need to human verify this, and even though we do the training and say you need to double-check NCIC that there’s an active warrant, even though we do all that training, we know that humans are going to make mistakes.

We know that for many people, myself and yourself included, being pulled over by an officer is scary. It is. I’ve been pulled over before, I’ve sped, it happens. It’s scary, your heart races. We want to put that at a 0% likelihood that there is a wrongful traffic stop.

Joel: What’s the threshold? You said 80%, 99%. What’s the threshold that it has to be?

Garrett: I don’t think the number matters as much, because if I told you it’s 50%, you’d say, “What does that mean?” Here’s a way to think about it: It’s less than one in a million alerts that an officer says, “I’m not sure if that’s right.” Less than one in a million. To me, it’s incredibly low. Now, should it be one in a billion? Sure, that’s an interesting tradeoff.

For me, to your point, I want the OCR or the character recognition to be as good as possible. I would argue we have the best license plate reading camera in the world. We definitely are the largest provider of it in the world, so we probably have the best. For me, I think we’ve built these multiple redundancies to prevent—your situation is hard because I can’t control NCIC. What I can control is a wrongful traffic stop due to an OCR misread, and that I think we do have a lot of control over.

Joel: That’s a great transition to some broader questions about where we are today, what’s happening, and where we go in the future. I’d like to start with the future. You’re the man behind Flock. You founded it, you’re in charge of it, you’re the CEO. What is your vision for the future?

For context, I live in Plymouth, Minnesota. There are 18 cameras in Plymouth right now; that’s not every street corner today. Now, there are cities that have a lot more than that, and cities that have a lot less. My question is, what’s your vision for the future? Is there a Flock camera on every street corner, in every school? I know you guys are introducing new technology that’s not just cameras on top of streetlights. What’s your vision for the future, where are we going?

Garrett: One, thank you for the chance to talk about this, because I’ve spent the last decade of my life thinking about this. Just like you, I’m a father of three kids. My primary objective as a father is to keep them safe. They’ve got to be safe. Then I’ve got to make sure they’re educated, that they’re good people, productive members of society. But if they’re not safe, everything else starts to crumble. I think that’s true for a lot of kids. That lack of feeling safe starts to lead to these erosions of society.

If I zoom all the way out, we’ve always thought about crime and safety in two big buckets. You’ve got one bucket, which is emotional crime—crimes of passion. I hate to say it, we’re not going to stop those. They’ve been around for thousands of years. However long humans have been around, we have unfortunately been having passionate crimes, which is horrible. So we’ve got to solve those, but we’re not going to stop them.

The opportunistic crime, though—that’s actually very controllable. The majority of crime, let’s call it 95% to 99% of crime, is truly opportunistic. “I walk by your car, I believe I can get away with stealing it, so I choose to steal it.” That is the thought process.

What we’ve noticed is in certain places like San Francisco, four years ago, you could get away with almost any crime. Then two or three years ago, Mayor Breed and Mayor Lurie said, “Flock, we need help. It’s too easy to be a criminal, and our businesses are leaving, our people are leaving. This isn’t working for us.”

We deployed hundreds of license plate readers, we deployed our drones, we deployed our real-time crime center software to make officers more efficient. Now it’s one of the safest cities in America. Mayor Lurie has one of the highest approval ratings of any major city mayor—he might actually have the highest, last I checked.

For me, the future is a future where more cities look like San Francisco, where crime is incredibly hard to get away with—so hard that people just choose not to do it. That might seem like a distant future, but it’s happening in San Francisco. I think we’re going to do the same thing in Oakland. We’re in 7,000 cities today, and I’d like to get us to all 17,000 cities in America and create that future, because it’s quite doable. Whatever technology we need to build to help get there while maintaining our local societal norms is what we’re planning to do. That might sound crazy, but I said it 10 years ago, and now it’s really happening at scale. It’s a pretty exciting time.

Joel: Societal norms—you mentioned that. I want to be very clear, we’re not a political podcast, that’s not where we’re going to go, and I don’t really want to get into that here on the podcast. But societal norms—at one end of the spectrum, we’ve got people that are like, “If we have these on every corner, we’re going to have a dragnet map of your life without a warrant, and a Fourth Amendment violation.” Where do you fall on this whole topic of where Flock sits today, where the company sits tomorrow as you expand, and the warrantless Fourth Amendment concern—people’s concern of you doing a digital map of their entire life without a warrant?

Garrett: People tend to have three concerns or three questions about the company: privacy, constitutionality, and accountability.

You mentioned the constitutional one. That one’s pretty cut and dry. You and I don’t get to pick what’s a constitutional violation and what’s not. We have judges, we have elected officials, there’s a process for that. We follow the law, we follow the Constitution. So far, in our belief and what will be for a long time, the courts have deemed this is not a warrantless search; this is a valid product as it relates to the Fourth Amendment. So I don’t see any change there.

On the privacy one, though, there’s some real questions that we ask as well. Here’s a good example: Before I started Flock, this type of ALPR data was stored in perpetuity. It was resold for commercial purposes by repo trucks to insurance providers. It was pretty nasty, in my opinion. We were one of the first companies to say there’s going to be a 30-day default retention, and we aren’t going to sell the data.

I’ll tell you an interesting stat: We solved just over a million crimes last year on the Flock system in partnership with local law enforcement. If I told you that if we reduce the 30-day retention to 14 days, 30% fewer crimes would be solved—so roughly 300,000 more victims without justice—would you make that tradeoff?

Before you answer—I won’t make you answer that one on the spot—my point would be you and I shouldn’t pick. Actually, the Mayor of Plymouth and the City Council should make that decision, because that’s a fair tradeoff. We elect people who we believe match our values to make these very difficult, non-black-and-white questions. There’s no answer there, because you could go down with something like Flock and say, “We like the idea of Flock, but we only want to focus on Amber Alerts and Silver Alerts.” So there’s zero retention of the data, just alerts. I’d say, “Okay, you’re going to get about 50% of the value of the system, but if that’s what you want in Plymouth, great, we’d love to help you, but you’re still going to be safer.” Now, you’re going to be less safe than San Francisco, but that’s an option.

For us, we don’t want to push our opinion as individual citizens. I live in Atlanta, you live in Plymouth. We just wish that more elected officials would do their research, do their homework, form an opinion, engage the community, and then set a standard that makes sense for them.

Joel: Let’s go down the elected officials route; this was actually one of my questions. I’ve seen Congress members—not one, not two, a couple of them now—post on Instagram about introducing bills that would withhold federal funding from municipalities that would use Flock. I’m curious what you make of that. None of these, by the way, to my knowledge, have been introduced as of the time of this recording; they’ve all just been discussions, but they’re being thrown out there. It is being talked about.

Garrett: At the highest level, nothing would make me happier than if we had state-by-state regulation on this type of technology. That to me is so crystal clear, because the lack of regulation on this type of technology just shows that our elected officials need to move faster than they have historically. I’m not the first person to say that. That’s the case with technology in general, where we just tend to build and innovate as a country faster than we can regulate. That’s generally okay, but in this case, they’re behind.

The proposition of federal defunding of roughly, in this case, 80% of police departments because they use technology to keep their community safe is completely… I don’t know how that’s logical to people when there are so many better alternatives to regulation.

I think that there is a very low likelihood that anyone is that irresponsible to even propose such legislation. When it has been discussed in the past—which was about six months ago—it barely made it out of someone’s mouth before it was killed. I would just challenge those Congress folks, men and women, instead of being critical of the men and women who work tirelessly to keep us safe and the tools they need to be effective, maybe we should actually just talk about what guardrails are necessary for everyone to feel good about what’s required.

To me—and Joel, I don’t know if you agree, I hope you do—I think it’s crazy that in America today, there’s a 50/50 chance of getting away with homicide. That seems completely unacceptable as a society. Banning tools that allow us to drive clearance rates higher…

I say this because in Atlanta, where I live, there was a woman who was violently murdered in the middle of the night in Piedmont Park, our biggest park, five years ago, and that case is still cold. You know why? Because even though there were cameras, the cameras weren’t working. If those cameras were working, that woman’s family would have justice. They don’t today, and I think that’s horrible. We should not be comfortable with that as a society, and I know in Atlanta we are not.

Joel: We talked about Congressmen and elected politicians. I have to get your viewpoint on what you make of the public pushback, or towns canceling contracts, or not renewing contracts. By the way, I want to be clear on the podcast, I actually felt there was a lot of miss and/or shoddy reporting on a couple of the towns that “canceled” contracts, because they actually were set to expire and didn’t get renewed, and I dug into that. As a journalist, it irked me. But that’s not the point.

I am curious, what’s your viewpoint on the public pushback, towns either canceling or not renewing contracts? Flock’s not something that people use; it’s not something I use. It’s not something I’m opting into like iCloud or whatever, it’s something you have to accept, because you’re driving down the road and I didn’t opt into it like I do with my AirPods or my phone. I’m guessing that’s kind of some of the public pushback here when we were talking about the whole map and dragnet. We discussed your take on that, but I’m curious about your viewpoint on this public pushback and towns canceling or not renewing contracts.

Garrett: It’s a really interesting phenomenon, because in most businesses—I’ll take the case of your business—if one of your advertisers or one of your partners chooses not to renew, it’s not a headline. When you add a new advertiser, it’s not a headline. It’s been interesting because we’ve added probably 10 times the number of customers that are new than who have not renewed their service in the last 90 days, but you won’t read that in the headlines, right? Because it’s not an interesting story to say, “Oh, this city adopted Flock.” It’s only interesting to say, “This city has paused their service” or canceled it.

What’s also interesting to me is the media hasn’t reported on the dozens of agencies who paused their service, saw crime go up, and have now turned them back on. It’s just interesting. I don’t know why, but to your point, some are turning it off, and that’s their choice. What they will find is they will be less safe, and then they will call us back, whether it’s in a week, 30 days, or a year. We have a demonstrable impact on public safety, and some cities have tried the experiment and it fails, and they have an obligation to keep their citizens safe.

Joel: Final question before we go into a hot round of however long we have left: You’re a private company, and you’re the middleman between the public and the government. You’re helping the police, but you’re not a supplier, you’re a service. You’re selling a service, it’s a SaaS. It’s a subscription service, and if they stop paying, like we just discussed, you turn it off; they no longer have access to the service. But it’s a service to the government, but you’re serving the government in between the public, because you’re taking pictures of the public’s license plates or whoever’s running through, and then it’s going to the government. You’re not a government-owned entity. It’s not a common place thing in this type of situation.

Garrett: This is a really interesting question, so it gives me a chance to hit on a few points. One, and this has been misreported as well—hopefully you can help me get this word out—we do not own the data, the government owns the data. We don’t have access to it. We are the custodian, and the reason why we did this goes back to my example.

We got questions from our customers like, “We’re used to just buying equipment.” I said, “Well, how’s that going for you? Are you experts in camera installation, camera maintenance?” My Atlanta example before is a prime example of what happens when we ask our government to do too much. Law enforcement is really good at one thing, which is hopefully solving crime. That’s what we ask them to do. They’re not necessarily good at building cameras, designing cameras.

It’s important to know our customer owns the data. I would actually agree with you, one of the hardest parts about building this business is that the last company to go public in this space was 25 years ago. That’s not every measure for success by any means—you can build a great business that doesn’t go public—but when you think about other industries that have seen the sheer benefit of technology, we’ve left behind local government. No one wants to service local government.

This is one of the reasons why, as you and I talked about, this is a controversial company. I appreciate that. We are not setting up the next generation of entrepreneurs to get excited about working with local government when, honestly, they need more innovation, local government needs more technology. It’s hard, it’s really hard, but I think it’s worth it.

Joel: Let me ask you—Josh and I, if anyone’s cutting in now and hasn’t heard this, Josh is the Chief Communications Officer I talked to, and he’s been in a couple of our stories—he did make a mention of something you just noted, that you guys don’t own the data, it’s stored on AWS (Amazon Web Services), and that it’s bucketed by municipalities, and certain municipalities can have sharing with other municipalities.

We see in the news countless examples of whether it’s in Texas, or your home area, Georgia—bad actors, bad police misusing your system, stalking women, stalking ex-girlfriends and their family members, checking a certain license plate 179 times in a certain period of time, etc. Obviously, there are audit logs—Josh told me about this and this is how people get caught with audit logs.

I am curious, do you guys have multi-factor authentication? The reason I ask this is because even my iCloud and my Meta accounts have multi-factor authentication, and it makes it easier to track who that actual person is in the audit log and the audit trail to get caught. Does that make sense?

Garrett: Yes, so let’s hit on a few of these. As a matter of fact, we do. We do require multi-factor authentication, which is a step in the right direction. We’ve had that for years. Now, we used to not require it, it used to be optional, and the main reason why being if you’re a town of 10 sworn officers, you’re unlikely to be offering both a laptop and a mobile device that are government-issued. To do proper multi-factor authentication, you need to have multiple devices.

We’ve evolved our thinking and said any version of MFA is better than no MFA, so we will just mandate it now, which we’ve now done.

To your point on auditability and accountability, yeah, I actually think this is a problem more broadly in law enforcement—that we’re one of the only systems that actually has auditing and has abnormal behavior detection in it. All these cases you see happening are because our system is flagging, “That’s pretty weird.” It’s not necessarily illegal—innocent until proven guilty—but a criminal investigation should have occurred. I wish more state regulations pushed that every system law enforcement uses needed to have this level of sophisticated auditing and abnormal detection.

We’ve got to do more there. The only other point I’d add, Joel, is I was just earlier today on the phone with one of our customers in Ohio, and they were sharing a success story on an ICAC crime—Internet Crimes Against Children. Let’s think about society, let’s think at the bottom of society, some of the most evil people. He was sharing with me this story of how the case was completely cold, but then they were using Flock and they found the individual, they’ve arrested him. You’re not going to go to the 5:00 news and talk about an ICAC case; it’s not appropriate, people don’t want to hear about this stuff.

I have the benefit of hearing from my customers every single day of these incredibly heroic stories where they found that one needle in the haystack. I wish the media and I wish our customers did an even better job of selling that story, but I also can appreciate that as a society, we don’t want to hear about all the evil that’s out there, and we rely on local law enforcement to catch those bad people, and state law enforcement and federal law enforcement to catch those bad people.

The abuse is a problem. We need to continue to get that down to zero. Any level of abuse is unacceptable, to be very clear, but I don’t think we should miss the fact that over a million cases were solved last year with this technology, and the level of abuse is incredibly low relative to that.

Joel: I would be remiss—this was not in my original rundown, but I know you’re in the news all the time, you are, and Flock is as well. The fact that we’re sitting here and that we were brought together because of my situation that I experienced, I’m sure in the comments on the internet, people would skewer me if I did not ask the question.

Weeks ago—the last month’s kind of a blur with everything that’s happened—weeks ago, a journalist asked you a question about what you make of the people that are cutting down, shooting, etc., the Flock cameras. You gave a passionate response that used the word “domestic terrorists” or something like that. I know since then you’ve apologized for it, I’ve seen that video as well and that coverage. If we went back in time, I have to ask about it.

Garrett: Look, I clearly could have done a better job delineating between individuals who commit felonies—where, to be clear, destruction of government property, destruction of property, is a felony in many states. We can change the law, but currently the law says that if you vandalize something, that’s illegal. To individuals that are promoting breaking the law, I just find that confusing. We’re a company that, by and large, by design from our founding, was that people shouldn’t break the law. I don’t know why that’s controversial, that I don’t agree with breaking the law.

Now, what I got wrong, and what I apologized for to your point, a comment that I made 18 months ago, was not clearly separating that viewpoint from organizations like the ACLU or the EFF, and now groups like DeFlock, who are trying to make sure their voice is heard. I think that’s great. We might disagree on some of the details, but I think that’s perfectly fine. Just like I have a right as a business owner, as a father, to share my voice, to vote, to do that—I think that’s great.

I didn’t delineate that enough, and I should have been clearer that I think committing a felony is bad, and I think voicing your opinion is A-OK, it’s great. I actually think the more of it, the better. I think people should be more involved in local politics. I don’t know what your level of engagement is in Plymouth, but I can tell you that you have an ability to influence what’s happening, and it also impacts your life more than you think than state and federal politics.

Joel: I really appreciate your time. I really appreciate your team setting this up, I appreciate you coming on the podcast. You’re definitely welcome to come back. I would love to continue the conversation another time in the future. I think there’s so much more that you and I could talk about in terms of technology, what your company can do, what other companies are doing, the differentiation points, and I’d welcome the opportunity.

Garrett: Awesome, awesome. Thank you very much, appreciate it, and we’ll talk to you soon.

The post Flock’s CEO Faced Me After Its Cameras Led to My Wrongful Stop appeared first on The Drive.

Just as Audi kills the A8 luxury sedan comes the automaker’s new flagship, and of course it’s an SUV because that’s how things work in 2026.

On Tuesday, in New York, the 2027 Audi Q9 debuted as the automaker’s largest people mover with three rows of adult seating, a massive glass roof, turbocharged engines, all the over engineered tech you could ask for, room for Stanley cups, and of course, quattro all-wheel drive. The German automaker’s new flagship will arrive in U.S. dealers just in time for the holidays later this year starting at $89,095 including a $1,395 destination charge while the SQ9 will cost $119,395.

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The Q9 measures in as the largest production Audi money will buy clocking in at 209 inches long with a wheelbase of 123.5 inches, is 86.8 inches wide, and a 71.4 inches tall. For those wondering, the now dead A8L was 209.5 inches long but it only had a wheelbase of 123.1 inches, and it certainly didn’t have three rows of seats or the Q9’s cargo space. All of which is immense. For reference, the Q9 is about 3 inches shorter than a Cadillac Escalade, but 3 inches longer than the Mercedes-Benz GLS-Class and over 5 inches longer than the BMW X7. An Audi spokesperson noted to me that the Q9 is as large as the automaker could make it while still being able to reasonably sell it in Germany.

The Q9 will be available in either six or seven seater configurations with LATCH anchors on every second- and third-row seat for families regardless of configuration. Second-row seats slide and tilt making third-row access easier. The third row is large enough for an adult to sit comfortably. At 5-foot-10 I found enough foot, leg, and headroom even with a 6-foot-5 adult seated in the second row. Rear doors that open at a 90-degree angle makes ingress and egress even easier, though makes for huge rear doors. Available power-operated doors can be closed at the touch of a button on the front touchscreen.

Families looking to haul everything from soccer gear to hockey bags and luggage will find 19.3 cubic feet of cargo space behind the third row and that grows up to 50.0 cubic feet with the third row folded flat. With both the second and third rows folded cargo space swells to 87.7 cubic feet.

Audi’s moved back to the same sausage different lengths situation in terms of design with its latest lineup. The new design language was introduced on the pint-sized Q3 crossover in 2025, and followed up on the new 2027 Q7 that debuted in June. Now the Q9 takes the design elements and stretches them in every single way, but all the key elements remain from its two smaller stablemates. Up front split lighting elements place the horizontal LED daytime running lights above the headlights, the latter will be available with automaker’s new digital Matrix LED technology. Those headlights bookend the front with a grille full of vertical slats on the Q9 and an egg-crate design swapping in on S-Line and more powerful SQ9 models. The pillars, particularly the D-pillar, are more upright than any Audi SUV in history. In back the clamshell tailgate seen on previous Q5 and Q7 models is now a thing of the past, but optional curved OLED taillights featuring three-dimensional effects and lightning signatures look neat. Surely they’ll cost a fortune if they break. Base models roll on 21-inch alloy wheels with 22s and 23s available to fill the wheel wells.

Audi revealed the Q9’s interior in May and there were a handful of surprises along with a mostly predictable overall design. The dashboard follows the path laid forth by the A6 E-Tron with a triple-screen setup consisting of a digital gauge cluster and touchscreen infotainment system housed under a single piece of curved glass. A front passenger touchscreen is standard. Almost all the controls are embedded in the touchscreen, but there is a dedicated volume knob on the center console. Two wireless smartphone charging pads sit front and center, and Audi’s trick, and incredibly over engineered yet functional, one-piece stalk that puts the gear selector, turn signal controls, and wiper controls in one housing is here and will still be fantastic. Thankfully, there isn’t a lick of shiny piano black plastic. Thank you, Audi.

An important note that my daughter will be thrilled to hear: both the front and rear-seat cup holders can fit Stanley mugs. Please, feel my pain, people.

The entire Q9 is a tech tour de force with an available Bang & Olufsen 4D surround-sound system with 24 channels, 22 speakers, and 2 actuators in the front seats to make them vibrate so you can feel the music. There’s also a 16 square-foot glass roof that tilts and opens. It can be optioned with an electrochromatic-like function relying on Polymer Dispersed Liquid Crystal (PDLC) technology that can make the entire panel, or just certain sections, opaque to block the sun and 99.5% of UV rays. Audi will further offer embedded lighting as an option in the glass with 84 LEDs that will make a statement.

The Q9 will be powered by a 2.9-liter twin-turbo V6 with 23.2-pounds of boost to produce 429 horsepower and 442 lb-ft of torque. The more powerful SQ9, which Europe will not get, will swap in a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 with 21.8 pounds of boost to produce 591 hp and 590 lb-ft of torque. Both the Q9 and SQ9 have an 8-speed automatic transmission and standard quattro all-wheel drive. Audi said the Q9 will do 0-60 mph in 4.9 seconds on the way to a top speed of 130 mph while the SQ9 drops the 0-60 mph time to 3.8 seconds and ups top speed to 155 mph. Five-link independent suspension with adaptive air suspension is charged with controlling the 5,000-plus-pound SUV, and regardless of engine Audi said the Q9 and SQ9 can tow up to 7,700 pounds.

Audi provided The Drive with travel, accommodations, some German pretzels, and access to the vehicle for the purpose of writing this story.

The post The 2027 Audi Q9 Is the Largest Model In Automaker’s History and Its New Flagship appeared first on The Drive.

Dodge really wants you to get excited about the new Charger, even if it’s had a rocky launch.

On Tuesday, what can only be the return of the iconic Super Bee namplate was teased by Dodge with a reveal date set for Friday, August 7, 2026. That’s the day before the automaker’s 2026 Road Kill Night’s festivities that will encompass an entire weekend of burnouts, drag racing, and more.

The teaser video, which is all of 15 seconds long, features a bunch of bees on a drag strip light tree, the loud sound of buzzing (from the bees), and at the end a song saying, you know what it is, black and yellow, black and yellow.”

The teaser video above doesn’t leave much to the imagination as to what exactly Dodge plans to debut on August 7.

Dodge accompanied the teaser video by saying it’s for the most powerful sixpack-powered Charger. That’s marketing speak for a Charger with a more powerful turbocharged inline-six Hurricane engine. The current Charger Scat Pack with the high-output Hurricane turbo-six clocks in with 550 horsepower and 531 lb-ft of torque.

Dodge has been open that a more powerful Hurricane-powered Charger is in the works. In March, Dodge CEO Matt McLear told The Drive, “We’re gonna continue to push the limits of this engine [the Hurricane I6] and see what it can do.”

The Super Bee isn’t the first Bee nameplate to return to Stellantis this year. In May, the 2027 Ram SRT Rumble Bee was revealed with a 777-horsepower Hellcat-sourced supercharged 6.2-liter V8 engine.

The new Charger Super Bee clearly will be powered by six cylinders and not a Hemi V8, but a Hemi is bound for the Charger. Later in May Stellantis announced a huge turnaround plan that includes 60 new vehicles and 50 refreshes by 2030. One of those vehicles is a new Charger SRT with a huge rear wing straight out of the Superbird era, and you can bet dollars to donuts there’s likely a Hellcat-sourced Hemi under its hood.

For now, the Charger has no Hemi and that will remain the case next week, but the Super Bee will return for a new era.

Got a tip? Send us a line at tips@thedrive.com

The post It Sure Looks Like the Dodge Charger Super Bee Is Coming Back With a Turbocharged Inline-Six appeared first on The Drive.

Typically I report the news, but sometimes, rarely, I am the news. That time just came. Millions of people saw the story about my wife and I getting surrounded by the police after errors made by law enforcement and Flock Safety’s systems led authorities to believe I had performed grand theft auto with a $155,000 Range Rover. The body cam footage of the situation went viral.

The reason this story became a lightning rod placing my face on countless news programs and my voice on a laundry list of radio shows and podcasts isn’t a secret: It landed in the middle of a heated debate around the country about Flock Safety’s, among others, growing network of AI-powered surveillance cameras, which police and the feds can tap into to track people’s lives.

It was just weeks before my encounter with the law that we had an episode of The Drivecast featuring security expert and Ent.AI CISO Matt Hurewitz talking about how license plate cameras are tracking your life without a warrant. At the time, Hurewitz said, “I think if you wait long enough there will be examples that affect people in a very real way, and that will cause a conversation to happen, which I think is really important.” Except we didn’t have to wait long, at least I didn’t.

Flock automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) have constantly been in the news as police get caught using them to stalk people. And Leonardo’s ALPRs are using a technology called SignalTrace to scrape electronic bluetooth hardware codes from your smart devices to build a digital map of your life without you ever even needing to own a car. It’s a scary world and suddenly America is barreling down the possibility of becoming a surveillance state, if it isn’t already one now.

On the latest episode of The Drivecast we go inside the story of my grand theft auto adventure, answer questions people have been asking right down to why were there four squad cars and four cops, and discuss the surveillance state looming over America’s roads along with what comes next.

First time here? The Drivecast is The Drive‘s weekly podcast that takes you behind-the-scenes on the largest controveries, stories, and characters shaping the automotive industry along with the way our roads look today. Powered by The Drive‘s inside access, original reporting, exclusives, and insights, The Drivecast aims to make everyone an insider.

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Full Transcript

Kyle: Hello everyone and welcome to The Drivecast. I’m Kyle Cheromcha, Editor-in-Chief of The Drive.

Joel: And I’m Joel Feder, The Drive’s Director of Content and Product.

Kyle: The Drivecast is our weekly podcast giving you an inside look at the biggest stories, controversies, and people shaping the automotive industry. Sometimes we report the news, and sometimes we are the news. That’s exactly what happened two weeks ago when Joel published his report about being mistakenly tracked by police via Flock license plate cameras and ambushed in a strip mall parking lot, which, wow, I still can’t believe I’m even saying those words. Anyway, that story has absolutely ripped around the internet, made global headlines, and it’s not even close to over.

Joel: Yeah, I’ve had a few busy weeks, legit. I’m emotionally and physically exhausted. But importantly, I did not get shot, I did not go to jail, and because this is me, I ended up working tirelessly and easily on the largest and most important story of my 15-plus-year career.

Kyle: Which, while I was angry and naturally concerned over Joel’s well-being when he called me on that fateful Sunday right after police let him go, he was already working headlines and copy out loud in real time. That guy is dedicated to his craft, among other things. Anyway, we’re incredibly thankful that Joel and his wife are okay, and that his kids weren’t in the car with them when it went down. But it’s worth pointing out the reason this story hits so hard is because it landed in the middle of a heated debate around the country about Flock Safety’s growing network of AI-powered surveillance cameras, which police can use to track a lot more than just license plates. Every week, there are more headlines about one city entering a new partnership with Flock, another city ending theirs after residents push back, or people just running around and cutting down every Flock camera they can find.

Joel: Even more so than data center build-outs, the spread of Flock cameras is a physical representation of how AI and Big Tech are creeping into every aspect of our lives and communities without citizens being given a choice in the matter. At the same time, my experience notwithstanding, I will say police have used Flock cameras many times over to help solve real crimes. You might remember back in June, just a couple weeks before my incident, we had Ent.AI CISO Matt Hurewitz on the podcast with me and Adam to talk about Flock, Leonardo’s Signal Trace tech, and what all these new systems mean for the future of privacy. What timing, right? Now, after one of the craziest couple weeks of my life, I’ve learned a lot more about how and why I ended up in Flock’s dragnet and what could be done to prevent something like this going forward.

Kyle: So today, it’s Flock, the surveillance state looming over America’s roads, and the inside story of Joel’s Grand Theft Auto adventure. By the way, if you like what we’re doing here, do us a favor and hit us with a five-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It really does help get The Drivecast in front of more people. Okay, let’s go.

Kyle: Joel, it’s been a minute since we’ve been on the pod together. Obviously, what a topic to be talking about. But hey, missed you.

Joel: It feels like forever. Legitimately, it makes me happy to see your face because whether I’ve been traveling, or you’ve been traveling, or I’ve been off, or you’ve been off, or I’ve been dealing with police, it feels like every interaction we’ve had in the last couple weeks is under either duress, or scrambling to get a story out, or “this ought to make your knees this.” It’s kind of nice to just sit here and chat for a minute. Even if it is work, Kyle, it’s nice to just sit here, chat, and see your face.

Kyle: Even if it’s just talking about how you were almost arrested for Grand Theft Auto.

Joel: Minor details.

Kyle: Minor details, minor details. But yeah, it’s crazy that this happened. It happened in the middle of this stretch where we’ve been incredibly busy with a lot of other things running The Drive and making things happen. This is just one story that we’ve done in the last month, but it has turned into the biggest story we’ve done pretty much of the entire year. I also appreciate the fact that you called me right away. I take it that means if you do actually get arrested for something, I’m your first phone call from jail?

Joel: I suppose we really should discuss: are you going to give me bail money if I call you, or should I call my dad? I think the first call has got to be you’re going to pick up and you’re going to bail me out. How ride-or-die are we, Kyle?

Kyle: Depends on the crimes and what the police want for you to be sprung from jail.

Joel: Fair point, fair point.

Kyle: Okay, so I know literally millions of people have seen our story, have watched the bodycam footage of you—playing it really cool, by the way, I might add. I got a lot of people telling me that they were really impressed with how you handled yourself in this situation. But for those who haven’t or just to recap, what happened?

Joel: So, normal Sunday, as one does, my wife and I went to Kohl’s. No Kohl’s Cash, I swear. Literally, we were there for returning an Amazon box, which is the most 2026 thing ever, right? You go to Kohl’s, you return an Amazon box, maybe you’ll buy some shampoo, who knows. Anyway, I’m in a press car that week. I had a $155,000 Batumi—I might be pronouncing that wrong—Gold, just really neat, Batumi Gold on a white interior, gorgeous car, Range Rover, stunning car, $4,000 23-inch wheels, gorgeous car. Anyway, back out of the space by like two feet, and suddenly, I’m surrounded by four cop cars, four cops, lights, sirens, the whole deal. You would think I’m a terrorist. And I’m like, “What is happening?” I legit told my wife, “I wasn’t even speeding.” Even in the moment, you’ve got to be Joel Feder and got to make a joke, right? I’ve got cops coming at me and I’ve got, “We weren’t speeding, dear.” Anyway, get out of the car, we go through the whole, “Are you armed?” They pat me down, “What’s your ID?”, whatever. And then, “Who owns this car?” Kyle, it’s complicated. You’ve been pulled over in a press car before, it’s complicated.

Kyle: Yeah, they never understand.

Joel: And so I literally said—you can watch on the bodycam footage—with my hands up, I might add, “It’s complicated, can I explain?” The officer says, “You can explain.” I don’t know what else he was going to say, right, by the way? Like, “No, you can’t.”

Kyle: And you know, in that footage, when he says, “You can explain,” it sounded like, “You can explain, but I’m taking you in.” He was expecting this explanation to be BS.

Joel: You can explain, but your cousin Vinnie’s plates are stolen, bro. So I explain the whole press car thing, I work at The Drive, blah, blah, blah. And the guy, you see this look of confusion on his face and he’s like, “What’s The Drive?” I was offended. I was offended! And he’s like, “I’m not a car guy.” I’m like, “Ooh, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble.” One of the police officers, supporting officers, said, “I’ve heard of The Drive.” I’m like, “Thank you, I like you. You’re the hero here today.” Anyway, once we got through the whole who owns the car and I’m showing them all the registrations, I said, “What are we doing here? Why are we here?” Now he’s realizing I’m not a threat and they’re no longer a threat. I’m like, “Why are we here?” He says, “Well, this car has stolen plates, and we need to determine if the car itself is stolen.” I look at him, I must have looked like he is from Mars, because I’m like, the car is owned by Range Rover, the plates are owned by Range Rover. Could someone have grabbed plates and changed them in a parking lot or on a truck? Maybe, sure, whatever, anything’s possible in the world, but not likely. But the car is owned by Range Rover. This is crazy. The license plates on that car were manufacturer plates from Jersey, that’s where Jaguar Land Rover is based, and they’re a weird format: two big numbers (34 in my case), two small numbers (10), three big letters (DTM). 34 10 DTM, very important. Basically, as he’s running the plates and figuring out whether this car or the plates are stolen—to be fair, the car is not stolen, neither were the plates, I might add—another police officer and I are standing there, and I said, “So how’d we get here? You got the stolen plates and whatever, but how’d we get here?” He’s like, “Well, actually, we’ve been tracking you for days. Flock cameras picked you up two days ago. I was the responding officer,” he tells me, this is not the main officer, and he said, “I was looking for the car, we couldn’t find it”—because it went into my garage—”and then we got another hit today. We’ve been looking for this thing for a couple days. We got another hit today, and then we found it in the parking lot. We’ve been using the cameras at Kohl’s parking lot, we watched you, the whole thing.” And I’m like, “I’m sorry, did you say Flock?” Because you know, we just had a whole podcast about that.

Kyle: I’ve heard of that.

Joel: We’ve done some reporting on that, you might have seen it if you read The Drive. And I’m like, if I don’t get shot and I don’t go to jail, this is now a thing. I was like, this is a thing, wait until I call Kyle on this. Even then I was thinking of you, Kyle. I just missed you. And so I’m like, “Okay, so two days ago?” He’s like, “Two days ago I got the hit.” Whatever, and so, being Joel Feder, I said, “Can I see the Flock hit?” And he said, “Sure, no problem.” And he grabs his phone, pulls up an app, Flock app, and sure as heck, he pulls up the thing, and there’s two images. One image got sent—they both got sent to police. One image is the full car going through the green light, I might add, full car. And then the second is a really zoomed-in image on the license plate, which said—everyone listening, say it with me—34 10 DTM.

Kyle: Yeah, and it was high enough resolution that the 10 was clear. It wasn’t like…

Joel: It’s a photo of just the plate. The whole photo is the plate.

Kyle: Yeah.

Joel: And so I’m like—at this time, by the way, I had limited knowledge, right? I’ve learned a lot in the last two weeks. And I was like, “Huh. Okay.” Again, I didn’t know anything at the time. And then we went to the whole thing of like, calling, they were like, “Can you…” It turns out I learned then, I was told, that the plate had been reported stolen from a Jaguar Land Rover dealer in LA per LAPD. All of that was wrong, by the way, just so you know. And so we had to call LAPD, they said, and we got to figure this out, and I’m like, “What is happening? Are we on Mars right now?” Turns out the plates that were quoted stolen—I’m using air quotes here—were 34 03 DTM. What does everyone say my plate was again? It was 34 10 DTM. Totally a different plate!

Kyle: But critically, it’s that little number in the middle, which literally is like half the size of the rest of the characters on the plate. That’s what was different.

Joel: By the way, the whole thing was about an hour, hour and a half, I don’t remember exactly. We clear the car, clear the plates as not stolen, but they basically said what happened was, while it was 34 03, it was entered into the system as 34 DTM.

Kyle: No middle number.

Joel: No middle number. Just 34 DTM. So critically, what they told me then was, “Where are you going today?” And I’m like, “Well, this is the first of many stops.” By the way, this is really important, husbands always listen to your wives, always listen to your wives, because we had all these errands to run today. And I tell the guy, “Yeah, we got to go to Minneapolis, we got to go to Maple Grove, all these errands.” This was our first stop. And he said, “Oh. If you had gone to Minneapolis or another city, they might have come at you with guns drawn, aggressive. Different police departments have different protocols, right? Because this is a felony. Stolen car, stolen plates, that’s a felony technically. And so they’re assuming I’m an armed car thief and I’m going to run. I wasn’t, to be clear.” And so he’s like, “Look, this is clear in our system. Here’s the case number, here’s my officer name, whatever, whatever. But the systems don’t talk. If you go to another suburb with this car, Flock cameras are going to pick it up, they’re going to spit the same thing out, you’re going to run into this over and over again, and not every police department is going to act the same. When does this car get picked up?” I said the next day. This was a Sunday, he said Monday. He said, “Where do you live?” And I told him where I live. He’s like, “That’s close,” and I said yeah. He said, “Go park this car. Don’t drive this car around. Or drive it without license plates on, and then if you get pulled over, you’re going to pull over with no plates.” I’m like, “Then I’m going to have a different dance, and then they’re going to see 34 DTM. That’s a terrible plan, by the way, Mr. Sir Officer.” So I was like, all right, we’re going to go park this car. At this point, by the way, I had already talked to the fleet, I already talked to Range Rover. We’re just condensing an hour timeline here. Over the coming weeks, last two weeks-ish, I’ve learned a lot. But that next day, before we ever published our first story, I asked for the police report. It was in the police report I learned that it wasn’t a Jaguar Land Rover dealership. It was—and I don’t know if it was Jaguar Land Rover, I don’t know if it was a media company that was working—it doesn’t really matter. Someone had a media vehicle, they were doing a photoshoot in LA, they lost a plate.

Kyle: Right, because usually for these photoshoots, they take the actual license plates off, they put on like a special plate that’s for some brand or whatever.

Joel: And you know, they probably put it on the side of the road, put it who knows, put it on top of a trash can and it fell in. It doesn’t really matter, they lost a plate. It happens, it really does. They called, at the time I was told LAPD, LAPD and I had gone 10 rounds, and it turns out it wasn’t LAPD, it was the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, Lost Hills Malibu Station, very nice area. When you report a plate lost, it gets filed as stolen. The reason is because, yeah, it’s lost, but if someone finds it and puts it on a car, now it’s stolen. Sure, no problem. Except it was entered into the system as 34 DTM, not 34 03 DTM. This is human error, but a big one. And the system didn’t catch it and it allowed them to enter a partial plate. That went to the National Crime Information Center database, which is held and run by the FBI, which is what every police department then pulls from. It is also, critically, what Flock, Axon, Leonardo—name an automatic license plate reader here—pulls from as well, because these cameras don’t have their own database. They just pull from the National Crime Information Center database that’s run by the police and the FBI. So if you put bad data in, what’s going to happen, Kyle?

Kyle: Bad data’s coming out.

Joel: Just like an Excel formula.

Kyle: Yeah, exactly. To the point the officer was making to you, like, okay, Plymouth police, you have this interaction with them, they can put it in their internal system that, okay, this guy’s plate is good. But they can’t correct the NCIC database on the federal level. So when he said, “Yeah, if you go to another town, they’re going to get flagged,” it’s like, yeah, because it’s like a one-way street. They can’t tell… only the person who filed or the officer who filed the original report would be able to correct it. So it’s kind of just like this mistake hanging out there in the wild.

Joel: He literally said, “Range Rover needs to call and they need to correct the error in the system.” Which, by the way, I don’t know how long… even if you call on Sunday, you get someone to do it, I don’t know how long it takes to populate. There’s so many steps involved in all of that. It’s a mess. It’s an absolute mess. And that’s before we get into everything else.

Kyle: So that pretty much brings us up to when we published the first story. But before we continue on that, I just want to say: your poor wife, who was just innocently out for a nice Sunday of errands with her husband, and she just gets swept up in this. I think we owe Karen something here.

Joel: A nice manicure.

Kyle: How did she handle this?

Joel: To be fair, at the time we were split up. I didn’t know, I couldn’t hear what was interacting between her and the police.

Kyle: They separated the two of you when they pulled you out of the car.

Joel: They separated the two of us. So one of her biggest things was, they asked me if I’m armed, they patted me down, all this other stuff. They never asked her if she was armed, they never patted her down, etc. I don’t know if they know our marriage very well, but she’s the brains of the operation, just so you’re all aware. First off, just so you know, criminal enterprise ever booms out of this house, she will be behind it, I’m just saying. But more importantly, I watched the… that’s what she told me later. I have since watched the bodycam footage, and it’s funny because the police officer says, “Who are you driving with today?” She says, “My husband,” whatever. And then he says, “Well, what car are you driving in, who owns this?” Look, we have a different car every week. This is not her job, this is my job. So she literally—I watch her on the bodycam footage—lean over and look at the car to see what car it says. She’s like, “Uh, it looks like we’re driving a Range Rover this week.” Could you imagine someone saying, “It looks like we’re driving a Range Rover this week?” And he said, “Well, who owns that?” She’s like, “I don’t know who the parent company…” This is such an auto journalist wife comment. “I don’t know who the parent company of Jaguar Land Rover is.” She couldn’t tell you Jaguar or Tata or anything. She’s like, “I don’t know who owns Range Rover, maybe it’s Range Rover? The car is definitely owned by Range Rover or whoever owns Range Rover,” is basically what she said. I’m like, I love you. That’s hilarious.

Kyle: Amazing.

Joel: The cop is looking at her like, “What is going on?”

Kyle: Yeah, well, we would all like to know what the heck’s going on there. So okay, you mentioned the bodycam footage. We requested that from the police under Minnesota law. You have, as the subject in the footage, a right to that footage, so we were able to obtain that. We got the police report, and we published the first story wrapping all of this up. It went absolutely crazy. I mean, we had a feeling that it was going to, because as we said in the intro, it touched on a lot of hot-button issues and was just a crazy first-hand account of the kind that I don’t think anyone’s published before. And then we had a very interesting week after that. So what did you learn? How did you get in touch with Flock to publish the follow-up story that we ran, and what did they say? I think particularly what people want to know and what I wanted to know is, okay, the plate entered into the NCIC was 34 DTM. Your plate was 34 10 DTM. Did Flock’s AI system just screw up and ignore that 10? Did it intentionally disregard it? Give us the answers there.

Joel: Sure. So basically, I was very busy initially with all the local news and attention that came with that and everyone asking for me to come on and talk about the story. But in the churn of all that, another automotive journalist reached out to me and said that a friend of theirs works at Flock. Just incidentally, they’ve known each other a very long time. And that Flock had seen the story—shocking! Flock was very concerned—shocking! And that they had a strong interest in communicating with me. This person knew that this person was a journalist, so they thought maybe we could connect that way instead of a cold call, and they said, “Can you get his information?” So this person, being respectful and a friend of mine, said, “Can I share this information with them?” And I was like, you can… I didn’t know really what they wanted at the time, right? So I was like, you can give them my email. I mean, this guy’s got everything of mine, but I was like, you can give my email, we’ll start there. Someone in PR reached out to me and they said, “We’re so sorry, we saw the story. An executive would love to speak with you about what happened.” And I’m like, sure. Like, I got 99 questions for this person, right? At the time, I didn’t know who the executive was going to be. They connected me with a gentleman named Josh Thomas. He’s the Chief Communications Officer at Flock Safety. We hopped on the phone, we’ve had many calls. And he’s been nothing but nice, he’s been nothing but answering all my questions, he never was defensive. He gets on the phone, the first thing he says is, “I’m so sorry. Like, this was a bad outcome, this was a screw-up, thank God your kids weren’t in the car, I’m sorry.” Which, that is what you want to hear, right? You want to hear someone take ownership and say, “I’m sorry, and this shouldn’t have happened.” But then of course, naturally, I go into the questions. How did this happen? It was very clear I have a plate that says 34 10 DTM, that is not 34 DTM. And I understand that it was a misprint into the system, so it’s not looking for 34 03 DTM, I get that. But my plate is not an exact match. How’d this happen? Basically, in many different scenarios and conversations we had, A: bad data in, bad data out, right? Like any LLM, you go to Anthropic Claude, you put bad data in, you’re going to get bad data out. More importantly, he explained to me the police want this set up this way, and the reason it’s set up this way today is, a lot of times you don’t have full information to work off of, first off, right? Partial plates or whatever, because an eyewitness only sees the first three letters or whatever. So basically, the police want this set up to basically get an alert, a hot alert off the list, right? It’s a match. So the system was telling Flock, “Go look for 34 DTM.” That’s what the system told Flock, and Flock has been built to do in its current form. So it went looking for 34 DTM, and it found 34 DTM. I had a 34 DTM plate, it just happened to also have a 10 on it. Nowhere in the code or the system is it written “AND see if there’s anything else, see if there’s a catch.” It’s just written: find 34 DTM, if found 34 DTM, it did its job. It found what it was asked to find, it then spit it out to the cops. Mr. Thomas explained that this is supposed to be a human interaction loop, just like any of your other AI LLM systems, right? Human enters stuff into AI or LLM to tell it to do something, AI does it, and then it spits out a result and you’re supposed to verify and check it or whatever, right? So it spit out the photo, spit out the alert, sent it to the police, and he said, “They got the photo, they should look at the photo. There’s a 10 on it, right? They can put 34 10 DTM into the system.” They didn’t. He’s not wrong, they didn’t. He is accurate. He’s also accurate that Flock was told to go look for 34 DTM and it did, and it found it, and it spit it out. That said, I asked him: it saw the 10, I saw it in the photo, right? And he said, “Yeah,” because he saw the photo, right? They went and looked at this. And I said, “Why can’t it be programmed to literally say, well, there’s an ‘AND’, there’s something else, right? There’s a 10, and there’s a flag there?” And he basically said, that’s not how the police want it set up today with the machine learning, that’s not what they’re asking for. It’s very clear it could be set up that way, right? Before I even talked to him, according to Mr. Josh Thomas, they had already talked to the LA—well, he said LAPD, but I’m sure he meant the LA Sheriff’s Department, right?—about who entered this, how did it get into the system wrong. They said they already talked to the FBI and the NCIC database to understand when it gets put in there wrong, how can we understand that it’s wrong, and more importantly, what can we provide then an officer for context of like, this isn’t an exact match, it’s not a direct match, this is a match of what you asked us to look for, which would kind of be like a hybrid, right? So like it would still spit out the result of “34 DTM, I found it,” but it would give a match and say, “By the way, there’s also a 10 on here,” flag it kind of thing, right? So he said they talked to the FBI about the NCIC database, how to provide context to the police of what the result is to provide more information if it’s a partial or whatever. And then of course, he basically said, “I wanted to talk to you, I wanted your feedback. I wanted to understand your experience,” because a normal consumer, they don’t hear about this.

Kyle: I understand what he’s saying. The system’s programmed the way that the cops want it to be, and that’s what they’ve decided is most useful, and it’s basically assuming that there is good, valid data in terms of a complete license plate or a correct license plate going in, and therefore it’s going to just go after that combination of characters. It’s worth noting that it has happened in the past, Flock’s been around for a few years now, there have been cases where it does actually misread the plate and messes up a digit or a number, and then someone gets stopped incorrectly like this. So what he’s saying is that that didn’t happen here, it actually was intentional that it ignored the 10 because that’s what it’s set up to do. Which, I hear that and I’m like, why wasn’t it something from the beginning that they had a system in place where it could say “this is close to a match” or “this is an actual match”? Seems like a very easy distinction to program in, and the fact that they didn’t is kind of mind-boggling to me.

Joel: I mean, like I said, he literally—and I’m going to quote him now because I have the story up—”The way that law enforcement likes to use these tools is if any of the characters that they have put into these hotlists get read, they want to get these alerts.” And then he also said, “Now what we try”—this is him speaking about Flock, right?—”We try to train officers to do what you said, which is to verify that 34 DTM is what I’m looking for and what I’m seeing is 34 10 DTM.” Which, by the way, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. I also talked to the Plymouth Chief of Police Eric Fadden about this, because to Mr. Thomas’s point, the police did get a photo, it had 10 in it, they saw the real car before I was even at the car, while I was in Kohl’s, which had a real plate on it. And so I naturally asked Chief Fadden a bunch of questions. I’m getting ahead of ourselves, but I agree with you, Kyle. Whether it just doesn’t get hit, whether the cops are asking for it to be this way, then to Mr. Thomas’s point, working with the FBI and the NCIC to provide context of like, fine, this is a hit of what you want, but by the way, there’s more info here, like flag it, circle the 10, I don’t really care, but you saw it in the image. And he didn’t deny this all happened. He said, “I’m really sorry, thank God your kids aren’t here.”

Kyle: Yeah, I mean, like I said, I bet he’s very glad your kids weren’t there, because I think you would be a lot less cool about this if your kids had been in the car. And he’s right that if police had just done that final check and been like, “Wait a second, there’s a 10 on this license plate, that doesn’t actually match,” then maybe this whole thing could be avoided. Maybe they actually wouldn’t have stopped you, they would have run that plate, realized it wasn’t related, and none of this would have happened. But it does… I don’t think like, personally, it doesn’t make me feel any better for the position to be, “Well, the system is designed like this, and it depends on a human to make sure ultimately in the end that it’s not being misused or that it’s being used correctly.” I don’t think that’s the sales pitch they’re giving to these police departments when they set up these partnerships. I don’t know the sales pitch, I’m not saying this definitively, I just based on the way that we’ve seen Flock cameras be used and misused, I think there is a belief and an assumption out there on both sides, civilians and police, that, oh, this thing’s just doing it, like this thing is just finding things that we need to see or we were looking for, and when it flags it, that’s it. And I know that in the story we put a quote in there from Josh Thomas that an alert from Flock is not probable cause for a stop. That is their position as a company. All they’re doing is just saying, “Hey, over here, this thing you’re looking for, it might be here.” But at the same time, it’s like, humans aren’t perfect, machines aren’t perfect. And you had a really strong statistic in the story as well. Josh claims it’s 99% accurate. Well, if they’re doing—what is it?—20 billion reads a month?

Joel: 20 billion reads a month.

Kyle: They’re reading 20 billion license plates a month across America, that’s 200 million errors it’s making. We don’t have any actual statistics on how many of those 200 million actually lead to a stop. It’s probably a lot less, but a lot less of 200 million could still be hundreds of thousands, right? And it’s probably less than that, even tens of thousands is a lot. So this is not a situation where, to me and I think to a lot of people listening, this explanation really makes anything feel like, “Okay, well then they’ll figure this out.” Josh did say that your feedback—that hey, there should be a way to flag, Flock should have a system for flagging partial matches and complete matches—he said that was “fair feedback.” Agreed, agreed.

Joel: Agreed. Look, this is a private company that is a service, just like so many things in our lives that are tech-based, right, like iCloud and all these things. And the reality is you opt into all those, but you don’t opt into this. Like, I’m not opting in as a Plymouth resident to now I can have my voice heard, I can go to City Council and all these other things, but I’m not opting in like I am on an iCloud and hitting a little tick box. But what I will say is that as a private company, every company’s got ethics committees, every company has committees that run and do decisions. It’s up to them to absolutely make some decisions about how their tech is being allowed to be used, just like there’s differences between how, you know, what Anthropic, Claude, versus ChatGPT and OpenAI and with Gemini, we’ve seen it play out in our government. Guardrails need to be put in place internally, but also, like the automatic license plate reader laws in the state of Minnesota, fun fact: they currently say, you know, the 2025 version, if you go to the website, it doesn’t get updated to 2026, but those laws were actually enacted and put in place on August 1st, 2015. Just so you know, fun fact: the next month, the iPhone 6s came out.

Kyle: That’s crazy, that’s crazy. And that’s a great point, because automated license plate readers of some kind, license plate cameras, that has been around for a while.

Joel: These are not new technology.

Kyle: What’s new is the influence of AI speeding up the way that these things can be read, and using a database that may or may not have perfect data in it to literally broadcast a nationwide alert or send out a nationwide hunt, basically, for this combination of letters and numbers that it can find immediately. The point of Flock being a private company is an important one, because this is, functionally… before, police obviously use tools made by private companies, and they have for decades, right? Name a tool, police don’t make their own tools. But I think there is a feeling out there, reflected in the response to this story, that police are outsourcing the work that they used to do to a private company. And that private company, who controls it? I mean, we know who controls it, but there should be laws in place that very, very specifically say what Flock can and can’t do, how it works, and just like, this is a part of our infrastructure now, and it is under the control of a private company. And people are really, really desperate for more transparency there, and that’s what we’re not getting. I mean, I do give Josh a lot of credit for reaching out to you and knowing that we had written a story that made them look not great. Props to him for speaking openly about it, at least. But I don’t think anything he said really puts anyone’s mind at ease.

Joel: I don’t know anything he was going to say that was going to put my mind at ease, let’s be honest, right? I appreciated the “I’m sorry.” I appreciated like a human being calling me and not being super, super defensive and being like, “I don’t care about you.” He reached out, he apologized. At a human level, for being like not the worst human in the world, I appreciated that. Like, I appreciated it. That said, I’m not sure what he could have said that was going to make me feel better, right? Like, it all happened at the end of the day. More importantly, and this goes beyond Flock, and we discussed this, but we never even touched this, I’ve just learned so much. We didn’t discuss this on the last podcast about the topic, and now I’ve learned so much. Forget laws. Right now, we have a state-by-state law that is governing how long the data for this kind of stuff can be kept. It’s a patchwork. So certain states can keep the data up to 30 days, some can keep it 28, some keep it seven, some keep it 100! And then I got 99 questions of like, okay, so if a state can only keep it for seven, but another state can keep it for 100, and the state that can keep it for 100 requests data from the state that can only keep it seven, what happens then? There are so many different scenarios that aren’t edge cases. Why do we not have federal—this is to your point—this is federal infrastructure. This is governance. We need laws. This is data that is being stored of, I mean, essentially, where people are going, their whereabouts. And there is a difference between dragnet life, The Matrix, and public safety. I don’t know where that line sits. As a parent, I’ll tell you, I can see a scenario in the world where these would be, if I had my hair on fire and I needed my kid back because some awful human did something awful, I would be willing to throw away a lot of Fourth Amendment rights to have people get life back. But that’s a very specific scenario, right, as a parent? And a lot of people aren’t parents, and that’s not a scenario every day. We do have rights, there’s a Constitution. I do want to mention, I talked to, as I mentioned earlier, the Plymouth Police Chief Eric Fadden. He didn’t deny anything. By the way, he was very keenly aware. The whole Plymouth police station knew exactly what happened within 12 hours. I called the next day to get the police report, whoever the front desk worker, I’m not sure like titles or whatever, but whoever answered the phone at the Plymouth police station that Monday morning, I didn’t even need a case number, she knew exactly who I was.

Kyle: “It’s Joel.”

Joel: Oh, everyone at that police station knew Joel Feder, The Drive, and I think they were all bracing of like, “Oh boy, we got a problem.” And it was Fourth of July week, so I think by Wednesday or Thursday when nothing came out, they’re like, “Maybe we’re in the clear, whatever,” and then the next week, bam! But he basically was like, “Our police screwed up. There’s 8,000-plus unique license plate combinations in the US in terms of formatting, there’s 50 different states.” They didn’t see the 10. He’s like, “If I pulled up behind you at a stop light, forget Flock for a second, and I looked at the plate and I missed the 10, I looked at the photo, the 10 was really small, if I missed it, I put 34 DTM in the system, you and I would have had the same interaction.” He also said, “If you’re driving down the road, I definitely would have missed that 10,” right? He’s like, “That’s human error.” He said, “My cops didn’t pull their guns.” I watched the bodycam… he was very clear he watched the bodycam footage, I’m sure they were bracing. “My cops were courteous”—this is what Police Chief Eric Fadden told me—”My cops didn’t pull their guns, my cops were courteous, my cops gave you time to explain everything.” And he’s like, “My cops did everything right by the book. I was proud of their behavior and what they did. The outcome wasn’t obviously perfect, human error led to this.” He said Flock did its job, Flock did what was requested to do is what he also said. He had no clue I talked to Josh Thomas, so that was interesting to hear that. And he apologized. He said, “I’m sorry this happened to you.” He was nice enough about it, but he was just like, it was one step away from “shit happens.”

Kyle: Well, even that is… I also give Chief Fadden credit for reaching out to you and saying openly… or that you reached out to him?

Joel: I reached… Flock reached out to me, I absolutely reached out to the Plymouth Police Department, but he was ready. He knew exactly who it was when I came to him. He did not reach out to me personally.

Kyle: Well, then I don’t give him credit for that, but I give him credit for saying openly… I think there are a lot of police officers and chiefs of police out there who feel like there’s every reason in the world to not admit that police can make mistakes. And he is correct that they followed the book. If they had just seen the 10 and noticed the 10, then again, this wouldn’t have happened, as Flock said. But it is also true, and I think there have been a few responses, a few comments on the story in all the places it spread, that are fair that, like, this license plate format from New Jersey is kind of messed up. Why is that number so much smaller in the middle? And it is true that a police officer just sees a plate, is curious why there’s this New Jersey plate in their small town in wherever in America, and just misses the little number in the middle, types in 34 DTM, and it comes up as stolen, they’re going to pull it over. That could have easily happened without Flock’s existence or involvement or a partnership with that agency. So, you know, New Jersey, come on, you guys, what are you doing with these plates?

Joel: Something else I want to address that has been brought up many times by friends, family, commenters across the internet, and it’s not in any of the stories, I didn’t address it, but since we’re here, I will. A lot of people said: four cops, four cop cars, the box and pin thing, super unnecessary, why, right? They could have just pulled you over, they could have just had one… someone said they should have had a cop walk up to you when you came out of Kohl’s and said, “Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?” All these things, right? I did address it with Chief Fadden, and I was like, the box and pin, the whole four cops, the whole shebang, right? Like I’m a fugitive and a terrorist of the state. What’s the deal? And he was like, look, you have to understand statistically speaking, this is a felony. The plate was registered stolen, we didn’t know if the car was stolen. Statistically speaking, you’re armed and you’re going to try and run. If we pull you over on the road, you’re going to try and run. If we box and pin you, you can’t leave. And if you look at the bodycam footage, when the cops get out of the car, the cop that asked me “are you armed?”, the leading officer, he was behind his door a little, so like had I been armed and had I tried to shoot him…

Kyle: Yeah, no, he was ready. He was ready for anything in that moment, you can tell. That was the scariest part to me, because he’d calmed down pretty quickly once he realized you weren’t armed. But when he actually got out of the car, he assumed the position where, if he needed to, he could have taken out his gun and fired over the open door. That’s just what they do.

Joel: They didn’t know I wasn’t an armed car thief. And so, but a lot of people have asked the question: four cops, four squad cars, box and pin, why not just pull you over on the road, like you have a broken taillight, why not just walk up to you and talk to you in the Kohl’s parking lot? And the answer is, because what they thought was an issue is a felony and they thought I was probably armed and going to try and run. That is legitimately the answer. So I just wanted to address, since I had an answer to that question, that keeps coming up.

Kyle: Yeah. I mean, it really is a comedy… I would say a comedy of errors, but none of this was funny. It was a cascade of errors that led to this, both human errors and I would say technical errors on the part of Flock, just not expecting something like this to happen, not anticipating this, and setting up a system in a way that it could happen. And we’ll continue to… it’ll continue to happen until they get that police report corrected in California.

Joel: It’s my understanding that that police report is corrected, but I don’t have proof of this.

Kyle: It’d be nice if the LA Sheriff’s Department actually called us back, we’re still waiting for that.

Joel: Yeah, they don’t respond to me, it’s weird.

Kyle: Yeah, how about that? So where do we go from here? What is next?

Joel: So multiple things, right? Two nights ago, actually two nights ago from when we’re recording this, July 14th, like half a month after this happened, Plymouth City Council in my city had a City Council meeting, there was an open forum. A resident, who—thank you for reading The Drive, hopefully you listen to this—saw the story, was concerned, and brought it up in the forum. The mayor and council members were like, “We’d like to see a report.” Eric, Chief Eric Fadden, apparently is the safety director of the city, weird. And he was there, weird. And he’s like, “Yeah, I’m well aware of this,” also weird. And he said, “We were already preparing a report for this council,” weird. And the council was like, “Well, maybe we need to look at the Flock setup in this city, there’s 18 cameras today.” And they said, “We should look at that.” So Flock has already been discussed in our city right now. Since then, LAPD has—I want to use air quotes here—”canceled” their contract. I think the reporting was really strong on this and everyone gave me a lot of credit, which I really want to be clear. What happened was actually, they signed the contract in 2023, I looked all this up, it was set to expire last week and they didn’t renew it, and they’re going to review the contracts, conditions, and terms. No one has reported and/or said whether if they don’t replace Flock, renew with Flock, whether they’re going to go with another system, right? Like there’s no saying they won’t go with Leonardo’s or Axon’s systems. No one’s saying they’re not going to have automatic license plate readers, they’re just saying, “We did not review the current contract as written with Flock,” that’s all that happened.

Kyle: Well, in LA I can tell you, given how people are cutting down streetlights for copper wiring or whatever, I think they have a lot of trouble maintaining that network here, they probably have already. So it might make sense that they decided to go with something else.

Joel: Chief Fadden told me that obviously they learned a lot about New Jersey license plate formatting, right?

Kyle: They had a whole seminar now!

Joel: Probably had a whole seminar before our story went live or after about the formatting of those small little plates, so if I should happen to have a New Jersey press car, maybe this won’t happen again. And I guarantee if anyone pulls me over, they’re going to know my name in that department. But more importantly, obviously I hope that every police department in the nation somehow has seen this story, I would hope, and is going to triple check when they enter license plates into the system it’s correct. Personally, I don’t understand, if you go and pay your taxes or do anything in the system, you can’t mistype, you can’t put a Social Security number in and mistype it, it’ll kick it back. You can’t type in a login with the squiggly mark in the wrong place, right? So the fact that you can type in an incomplete license plate number into our system is absolutely… I understand mixing up and typing in the wrong plate number, that’s one thing, but not having a complete license plate number in the system is mind-boggling to me in the year 2026, right? Just tells me how archaic the system is. Josh Thomas told me that before he and I even talked, they talked to the FBI who manages the NCIC, they talked to the LA police that were in charge of this, they’ve obviously talked, I’m assuming that they’ve reached out to Plymouth police, but I don’t really know, and they’re looking at this. Now I’ve given them the feedback of like, dude, your system should not allow, in my opinion, a partial read. And if you’re going to allow a partial read, it needs to be flagged. He did mention he talked to the NCIC and the FBI about how do we give a context if it is a partial read along with that read to the officer, and we flag it. Like whether you’re just putting a circle around those numbers, the 10, that would do it. If you wrote a note, I don’t really care what you do, but the officers should have gotten flagged or highlighted in this scenario if you’re going to give them a partial read, that there was more on that plate to make sure they saw it. I’m hoping that Flock will take that and run with it.

Kyle: That was my takeaway, too. As wide as the story spread, as heated as this debate’s getting around the country, I don’t think any single story is going to end the spread of Flock or cause a massive pullback on the part of law enforcement. They like this tool. This tool has proven useful to them, they’re going to keep signing on to it. What needs to happen—and it sounds like the conversations are happening—is that Flock and these agencies need to figure out how to work together more. They need to update on the government side, a lot of these systems need to be updated, they’re very antiquated as you pointed out, and Flock needs to be more aware of how officers are using it and very proactive in training people or just adding those guardrails to prevent these cases from happening. This is only in the last few years, as we said, that Flock has been a thing and has really spread, and so we’re in the early stages of this, and it really needs to evolve as quickly as these cameras are spreading, the laws really need to evolve.

Joel: We need laws and regulation, whether it’s how they’re being used, what kind of data is being spit out, who has access, how long can it be stored, all of these things. We need laws and regulation that are uniform.

Kyle: Here’s hoping, here’s hoping. That’s it for this week’s episode of The Drivecast. Thanks to Flock, the LA Sheriff’s Department, and the Plymouth Police for handing us the easiest scoop we’ve ever had, Joel for keeping us cool in a tense situation, our editor Tyler Mark, and thank you for listening. We’ll be back next Wednesday.

Joel: Be sure to check out thedrive.com for our full coverage on this topic and a whole lot more. Subscribe to one of our fine newsletters, they are free, by the way. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, and subscribe to us on YouTube where we have a lot of cool stuff coming up with Kyle.

Kyle: That’s right. We’ll see you next week. Bye, everybody!

The post I Reported on Flock’s Cameras. Now I’m One of the System’s Mistakes appeared first on The Drive.

Nissan has delivered a vehicle that replaces the Toyota Land Cruiser. Did you have that on your bingo card? I’ll admit it: not me.

The 2026 Nissan Armada Pro-4X is a full-size, three-row, body-on-frame SUV with a twin-turbo V-6 powertrain and an off-road kit that delivers most of the off-road capability you’ll ever need. It’s underrated and, frankly, being slept on.

After a week with the Pro-4X, I was shocked that Nissan’s delivered where Toyota stumbled. Wipe that away, and the winners here are off-road enthusiasts. Families might possibly be better off elsewhere, though.

The Basics

The 2026 Armada returns to the market, and there’s even a new performance-oriented Nismo model. It’s supposed to be, I am told, inspired by the GT-R. The Armada entered its third generation for 2025, which saw the model drop its naturally aspirated V8 engine for a twin-turbo V6 while getting a modernized interior. Aside from the Nismo model, it arrived for 2026 without much fanfare for year two.

The exterior of the Armada is cut from a different cloth than every competitor’s. It’s notably shorter than a Chevy Tahoe or Ford Expedition. The square profile is upright with tall glass, short overhangs, and a design that actually looks like it was intended to go off-pavement. Even the fog lights are mounted up higher, away from things that might damage them. The front end isn’t overly tall or intimidating, and it doesn’t feel like this is compensating for anything. It just looks like an SUV. I love the throwback triple-slot design nod to the OG hardbody-based Pathfinder. The orange flourishes, such as the tow hooks, stripe on the D-pillar, and badging, give it the mildest of flair without screaming “look at me, I’m the off-road model!”

Inside, the low-set dashboard provides great forward visibility, with the tall glass around the cabin extending that feeling all around. There are two 14.3-inch displays: one serves as the digital gauge cluster, while the other serves as the touchscreen infotainment system, under a single pane of glass. These are augmented by real honest-to-goodness buttons, knobs, and toggles. I love a good toggle, and the climate control system has three of them. The pushbutton gear selector didn’t bother me here, as each chiclet operates the same, unlike the last GMC Yukon with its push-and-pull situation.

All three rows of seats are covered in leather, while the first two feature quilted orange stitching and orange stripes. All four doors feature soft-touch materials and stitching. The padding on the front center console is thin along the edges, and my elbow sank through and hit hard plastic in certain spots along the leading edge. The second-row captain’s chairs feature the same tilt-and-slide function as the Pathfinder, making it so car seats installed with LATCH don’t have to be removed to access the third row. A clutch feature the Tahoe lacks, by the way. However, the third row of the Armada is notably smaller than that of the larger Tahoe, Expedition, and Jeep Grand Wagoneer. There’s also less cargo space in the very back, regardless of the third row’s position. Worse, the packaging of the independent rear suspension system means the fold-flat third row isn’t actually flat. When down, the floor actually slopes towards the rear of the Armada, which is really fun when soccer balls roll out of the back end.

I did love the small cubby of underfloor storage in the cargo area, which is the perfect size for towing gear.

Driving the 2026 Nissan Armada Pro-4X

Every Armada is powered by a 3.5-liter twin-turbocharged V6 rated at 425 horsepower and 516 lb-ft of torque, except in the Nismo, which bumps output up to 460 hp. A nine-speed automatic transmission sends power to the rear wheels, but four-wheel drive with a two-speed transfer case is standard on the Pro-4X. As is locking rear differential, air suspension system, triple skid plate setup to cover the fuel tank, oil pan, and engine. The behemoth rides on 20-inch wheels wrapped in Yokohama Geolander All-Terrain tires.

Both around town and on the highway, the Armada has plenty of power, and the turbo-six doesn’t moan like the turbocharged V6 found in the Lexus LX. There’s a proper grit to this V6-based powertrain that makes it feel like it belongs in a truck, but no one is going to mistake it for the deep growl of a V8. Those days are over.

The nine-speed automatic transmission behaves well and leaves little to complain about, but I prefer the quicker, crisper shifts of Toyota’s 10-speed automatic in the Sequoia.

The suspension is soft and absorbs broken Midwest pavement with ease. There’s noticeable roll when taking corners on the all-terrain rubber and air suspension.

The two-speed transfer case engages quickly and delivers a delightfully old-school Nissan 4Lo icon in the digital gauge cluster. A total throwback I’m here for. The rear electronic locking differential icon provides the same joy.

The black running boards that are standard on the off-road Pro-4X model seem hilariously out of place. Hard to imagine they wouldn’t get crushed during an adventure, but they are family-friendly.

Around town, the Armada’s smaller-than-Tahoe, Expedition, and Grand Wagoneer size shines. Especially at the grocery store parking lot. It’s easier to manage, easier to park, and requires far fewer three-point turns. 

It’s worth mentioning that EPA fuel economy ratings for the turbocharged V6 powertrain clock in at 15 mpg city, 18 highway, and 16 combined. Over the course of 375 miles of mixed suburban driving, the Armada averaged 15.9 mpg. Those EPA ratings are on point, not stellar, but far better than the outgoing V8. It’s also about on par with what you’ll get in the competition, whether it’s with a turbocharged V6 or a V8.

Quick Verdict

At $61,030, including an obnoxious $2,190 destination fee, the 2026 Nissan Armada stands out from its longer and more spacious competitors while retaining all the technology and amenities consumers want. It even features more family-friendly access to the third row than its rivals. But more importantly for consumers, the off-road Pro-4X model offers real capability that the competition lacks when the pavement stops.

At $81,675 as tested, it isn’t cheap, but that’s slightly less than the outgoing Land Cruiser 200 Series, and America doesn’t get the 300 Series except in Lexus form.

Nissan’s given us what feels like, or is as close to, a true Toyota Land Cruiser—not some Prado by a different name—and enthusiasts might just be sleeping on a great off-road rig.

Nissan provided The Drive with a seven-day loan of this vehicle for the purpose of writing this review.

2026 Nissan Armada Pro-4X Specs

Quick Take

The 2026 Nissan Armada Pro-4X isn’t the full-size, three-row SUV for everyone, but if you’re an off-road enthusiast, it fills the void that Toyota left behind.

The post 2026 Nissan Armada Pro-4X Review: Closest Thing to a Real Land Cruiser You’ll Get in America appeared first on The Drive.

By now, millions of people have seen our story about how a series of errors between Flock Safety and law enforcement led police to track me for days via automated license plate cameras and ambush me in a coordinated takedown. Millions more have seen the body cam footage of the incident we obtained and published. It’s become part of an even larger and more heated conversation about privacy in America, and one week later, I’ve learned a lot more about how and why it happened—including from Flock itself.

What I found is that the clear combination of human error, the limitations of Flock’s AI-powered system, and an overall lack of guardrails that led to me being detained on suspicion of grand theft auto was not a perfect storm. It’s a situation that has, can, and will continue to happen to anyone until large-scale changes are made by both Flock and law enforcement, neither of whom seem to know exactly how to work together to prevent it. And in fact, it just happened again.

In the meantime, our story has already prompted the city council of Plymouth, MN, where I live and where the stop took place, to open a conversation about the use of Flock cameras within the city. The Plymouth Police Department has a transparency portal as part of its Flock setup and it notes there are currently 18 cameras in the city and they have read over 580,000 license plates in the last 30 days with over 14,800 hotlist hits, which I was one of, and 45 manual user searches.

How It Happened

A brief recap: a few weeks ago I’d taken the $155,000 Range Rover I was testing out to run some errands with my wife in Plymouth, Minnesota. I was backing out of a parking space in front of my local Kohl’s when four cop cars came screaming up and “initiated a box and pin on the vehicle,” as the police report says. Hands on their guns, the officers ordered us out of the vehicle, patted us down, and eventually told us the Range Rover’s license plate—New Jersey 34 10 DTM—was stolen, they suspected the vehicle itself was stolen too, and they’d used Flock cameras to track me down over the last two days.

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It would be quite a thing for Jaguar Land Rover to loan a car with stolen plates to a journalist to review, so I knew that couldn’t be true, but the officers were convinced it was. It took a few phone calls to JLR and JLR’s fleet management company as they held us at the scene, plus a follow-up interview with the Plymouth chief of police to learn what happened.

A similar New Jersey manufacturer license plate—34 03 DTM—had been reported stolen in California (actually it was lost by Land Rover during a photo shoot, I later found out). That “stolen” plate was entered into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database missing the middle two digits, which are smaller than the rest of the characters on the physical plate. Just 34 DTM.

Flock’s uses NCIC data to flag suspicious plates, and when it saw mine, its AI vision system ignored the “10” in the middle of my plate and alerted police of a match. And finally, when police got that alert and saw the photo Flock had taken of my plate, where the 10 is visible, they didn’t enter the full 34 10 DTM sequence into their system to verify. Both the humans and the machines were locked onto 34 DTM. Target fixation, I guess. Whoops.

The whole sequence was so absurd, I initially called the situation an edge case within an edge case that Flock’s AI camera network was unable to handle, but it just happened again.

On Wednesday, fellow auto journalist Tim Esterdahl, publisher of Pickup Truck + SUV Talk, was pulled over by two officers in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska while driving his 14-year-old kid in a $105,000 Range Rover Sport that JLR loaned him to review. The plates on it? Yep: New Jersey 34 08 DTM.

The lead officer informed him that the plates on the vehicle were reported stolen. Having seen our story, Esterdahl in turn showed it to the officers to hopefully prove to them he wasn’t a master thief. He says the officer reacted calmly, no pat downs, no hands on weapons, and after about an hour he too was let go. But it’s worth noting the officers who detained me predicted this would happen—any car with a New Jersey plate with the 34 ## DTM sequence would continue to get flagged by Flock because that’s what it was hunting for.

Jaguar Land Rover has a number of vehicles with a 34 ## DTM plate sequence circulating around the country as loaners for journalists, dealers, or other corporate uses. For its part, a spokesperson told me it’s been attempting to swap those out and get the original police report in California corrected. But it didn’t happen in time for Esterdahl.

What Flock Says

I didn’t reach out to Flock prior to running the first story because it wasn’t necessary to publish my firsthand account—the officers literally showed me the Flock app on their phone and explained how they used it. But after we ran it, I heard from someone with inside knowledge that Flock was very concerned about the attention it was getting, and eventually, I had multiple phone calls with Flock’s Chief Communications Officer Joshua Thomas.

Thomas told me, “I’m just telling you that my intention was not to try to get coverage or defend the system or whatever, it was legitimately to try to understand someone who’s experienced something that you experienced. I’d love to hear from your point of view. You seem very rational about this whole thing.”

The obvious question was that Flock cameras were looking for 34 DTM, and the plate on the car I was driving was 34 10 DTM. Why was that flagged as a match?

“The way that the ML [machine learning] works is it correctly read what it was supposed to read. It was fed those characters that you said, 34 DTM, and it spit back out [a result] with the characters, 34 DTM,” Thomas said. “It was asked, can you find this? And it did find that. It just didn’t say if there’s more here, then don’t do it. It just simply said, is it there? And the answer was yes.”

He explained that even if the 10 was normal size, Flock would still have flagged it as a match, because that’s how they’ve set it up according to law enforcement’s requests. Sometimes partial plates are all they have to go on at first.

“The way that law enforcement likes to use these tools is, if any of the characters that they have put into these hot lists get read, they want to get those alerts,” he said. “Now, what we try to train officers to do is to do what you said, which is to verify that 34 DTM is what I’m looking for, and what I’m seeing is 34 10 DTM.”

Clearly, that didn’t happen in my case. But it is true that had the officers taken that step, they (probably) wouldn’t have come after me so aggressively, or even at all, and the whole thing could’ve been avoided. But still, the main question we’re left with is why Flock’s system doesn’t have a way to distinguish partial reads from full reads and alert police accordingly.

“I think you’re right. I think there’s a lot to what you said about anything that’s an automated alert that isn’t put in as a custom alert by an individual agency, but it goes to the NCIC, our machine learning should look to see: Is it a perfect match as opposed to just, is it there?” Thomas said. “I mean, that’s fair feedback that I should take back to our team and see what can we do about that.”

Thomas explained some of the steps Flock is taking in the wake of this, including trying to get the original police report corrected and meeting with the FBI officials who curate the NCIC database to establish a way for bad or incomplete data to be quickly and obviously labeled as such for officers in the field who are simply seeing automated alerts flash across their screens. At the same time, Thomas kept coming back to the idea that Flock’s system depends on both valid data inputs and humans in the loop to double check the outputs. 

“A human entered this into a system. And a human didn’t put enough information into the system,” he said. “The system made a read. And the outcome was a problem. But the steps to get there were riddled with errors of humans making mistakes.”

Though we initially reported that the incorrect or incomplete plate number entered into the NCIC came from the Los Angeles Police Department, the LAPD later told us it was actually someone with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department who did so, and LASD has not returned our request for comment. It speaks to how messy and hard it is to ensure the data will always be clean going into a system like Flock—what it needs is stronger guardrails within it.

The scenario involving my wife and I is just one of many like it. Thomas noted that the system is 99% accurate today, but it’s performing 20 billion reads a month. That 1% error rate, of which I was a part of in June, makes for two hundred million misreads a month. How many lead to aggressive stops that put civilians and officers in a dangerous situation? We don’t know.

But Thomas was clear, Flock’s position is that an alert from one of its cameras “does not equal probable cause. It’s like an alarm going off. It doesn’t mean that there’s necessarily anything there.” They believe they’ve made a valuable tool for law enforcement that can make communities safer. It’s up to law enforcement to use it correctly. This is similar to the position being taken by companies like ChatGPT or Anthropic regarding AI safety. They’ve proudly made LLMs they claim are powerful enough to change the world, but it’s up to us to not use them to destroy it instead. They just built the thing.

The Police POV

My last stop—for now—was a frank chat with Plymouth Chief of Police Erik Fadden, where he acknowledged his officers didn’t get it right, but always being 100% correct isn’t a realistic expectation for any system, human or otherwise.

“Everything comes down to the fact that people sometimes make mistakes. So that’s the one human factor piece that we’re never going to be able to completely eliminate,” he said. “In the case with this too, is we also have a very unique and not very common license plate [format].”

Chief Fadden noted there are over 8,000 different license plate formats across the country, and a single police officer can’t be expected to be familiar with every one. Had an officer seen the Range Rover’s plate, skimmed past the 10, and just typed 34 DTM into their computer at a stoplight, it would’ve come back as stolen because of the initial error made in California, and the result might’ve been the same regardless of Flock’s existence.

“Unfortunately, with human error, this kind of stuff happens pretty frequently where officers have a vehicle that they come across that is reported stolen or the persons wanted. 
And, it’s simply when an officer comes in contact with a stolen plate. That’s why we have to verify them. We have to check the entering agency to make sure that, you know, the vehicle is in fact wanted or the plates are stolen,” Chief Fadden told me.

This time, the plates were not stolen. The Range Rover wasn’t stolen. My wife and I were not “persons wanted.” The same story goes for Esterdahl, and who knows how many other people are getting caught up in the 200 million misreads a month by Flock’s cameras and the police making mistakes. The technology is moving so fast without guardrails in place and it’s amplifying human errors, humans aren’t catching the errors on the front or middle or back end of the loop, at least not in this case, and it could’ve led to someone getting hurt or even killed.

Thomas agreed and told me, “This was a really bad thing that happened to you. I’m really thankful that your kids weren’t in the car. I’m thankful.” I’ll bet he is.

Got a story tip? Send us a line at tips@thedrive.com

The post Flock Says Its Cameras Worked ‘Correctly’ When Police Tracked and Ambushed Me for No Reason appeared first on The Drive.

As a car enthusiast, I can’t help but wonder, “Why?” when I see a ton of Lexus NXs all over the road. As in, why did someone choose that over a BMW X3, Mercedes-Benz GLC, or Audi Q5?

The 2026 Lexus NX 350h F Sport is arguably a rolling bit of irony, but the NX nameplate is one of the automaker’s best-selling models. It plays in the heart of the compact crossover market and dominates as a consistent player fighting in a three-way battle for sales supremacy. It’s built its reputation on reliability and efficiency.

After spending a week with the latest iteration, I get why. Not saying it excites me as an enthusiast, but at least I understand it better. Here’s why over 76,000 people bought Lexus NXs last year.

It’s funny, but I wanted to say the Lexus NX is an honest-to-goodness crossover, but frankly I’m not sure. The fact that an F-Sport Handling model exists—like my tester—kind of proves my point. The F-Sport Handling model’s gaping front end with squiggly piano-black plastic grille inserts, fat dual five-spoke wheels, and F-Sport high-back bucket front seats that hugged my 5-foot-10 frame all give it flair. The two-tone red-and-black interior, contrasting with the leather, felt rather out of place, and so did the new Infrared exterior color.

Over the course of a week and 407 miles of mixed driving, the hybrid powertrain averaged 34.3 mpg according to the onboard trip computer. Arguably, this thing sipped fuel. Factor in the same reason my mother, at one point, had a Lexus RX: proven reliability,  and the sales numbers no longer make you squint.

Absolutely, a BMW X3, a Mercedes-Benz GLC-Class, or even an Audi Q5, with just a turbo-four engine, will be more fun to drive than the NX. But none of them will be as efficient, and certainly not as bulletproof in terms of proven long-term reliability.

The 2.5-liter inline-four is paired with two electric motors (front and rear) along with an eCVT, which is fancy speak for a planetary gear set instead of a transmission, for a total combined system output of 240 horsepower and 270 lb-ft of torque. Front-wheel drive is now an option on the NX 350h, but the model tested had all-wheel drive, which added an electric motor to the rear axle.

It’s not particularly quick, but the instant torque from the electric motors gives the NX 350h more scoot off the line than one might expect. That surge of power fades quickly as speed increases. Worse, this powertrain, which is from the Toyota RAV4, isn’t particularly refined-sounding. Not exactly what you might expect in a Lexus. Then again, would you expect a two-tone red-and-black interior in a Lexus NX?

The engine does turn off and disengage quite often, more so than one might expect, considering this is not a plug-in hybrid. Yet, the system runs on electrons only a fair bit of the time. Particularly at low speeds around neighborhoods or in parking lots.

Inside—and aside from that two-tone interior—the high points include a real volume knob and defrost buttons, wireless Apple CarPlay that worked every single time, and a wireless smartphone charger that not only worked but also slid away to reveal a small hidden storage cubby one might never expect.

But at $61,655, including a $1,295 destination fee, the lack of front passenger lumbar support is unforgivable. Sitting inside the NX, especially when seated up front, there’s no way around the fact that this thing feels narrow. A Volvo XC60 or BMW X3 doesn’t feel this way. 

That brings me to the final point: at this price point, a Volvo XC60 shames the Lexus NX in terms of refinement, materials, fit and finish, and overall luxury feel. A BMW X3 shames the Lexus in terms of dynamics.

But while not exciting, not particularly refined, and somewhat confused in F-Sport Handling spec, the Lexus has earned its place in the triple-crown sales race by building a reputation and standing on it for reliability and fuel efficiency. If those two things are the key criteria on a shopping list, the NX tops the list of options. Now I get it.

Lexus provided The Drive with a seven-day loan of this vehicle for the purpose of writing this review. 

2026 Lexus NX350h F Sport Handling Specs

The post 2026 Lexus NX Hybrid Quick Review: I Finally Get Why People Buy These appeared first on The Drive.

Remember concept cars from your childhood? The long hoods, the low fenders, the crazy angles. What happened to concept cars?

The faltering business of concept cars could have huge implications for the future of cars. The futuristic one-off cars were used to market-test new ideas, flex design capabilities, experiment with new technology, and simply get people excited about what’s next. They showcased what a company could do without budget restraints and regulatory issues. Will they disappear entirely?

The signal that a concept car is supposed to create for both sides, for companies and consumers, is getting weaker. When people are geared to greet concepts with suspicion because they represent anxieties about the future instead of hope, the market research aspect breaks down. When car companies can’t get valid data from that response, their aim falters. And when companies build fewer ambitious concepts because it feels like a waste of money, the one window for both sides to have a conversation about what the cars of tomorrow should look like, or do, or represent gets smaller and smaller. Where does this leave the whole business?

On the latest episode of The Drivecast we discuss the business of concept cars with Jon Ikeda, the former head of design for Acura, what was, what is, and what will now be the norm going forward along with what that all means.

New here? The Drivecast is The Drive‘s weekly podcast that takes you behind-the-scenes on the largest controveries, stories, and characters shaping the automotive industry along with the way our roads look today. Powered by The Drive‘s inside access, original reporting, exclusives, and insights, The Drivecast aims to make everyone an insider.

Listen to The Drivecast via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music. Love it? Like it? Want to help? Leave a five-star review on your platform of choice to help get The Drivecast in front of more people. Have a suggestion, tip, request, or feedback? Drop us a line at feedback@thedrive.com. I promise, we read every single email.

Full Transcript

Kyle: Hello everyone and welcome to the Drivecast. I am Kyle Cheromcha, editor-in-chief of the Drive, and the Drivecast is our weekly podcast taking you behind the scenes of the biggest stories, controversies, and people shaping the auto industry.

Joel is on a well-deserved vacation after making global headlines last week with his report about getting tracked by police and nearly arrested thanks to a Flock license plate camera screw up. That story is live on thedrive.com, and if you are not one of the millions of people who saw it, what are you doing? Time to catch up because we got a lot more coming on that.

So anyway, this week, I am stepping back in with another special interview episode on a problem that could have huge implications for the future of cars, and that is the faltering business of concept cars.

Every year, automakers spend many millions of dollars building full-size, one-off concept cars to market-test new ideas, flex design capabilities, experiment with new technologies, and just get people excited about what is next. They are a showcase of what a company can do when they are freed up from pesky things like crash regulations and mass production budgets. Most never make it to the showroom, at least not without a lot of compromises, but that is not the point. The point is to push, see what happens, and apply those findings to the cars of tomorrow.

Historically, this has all worked pretty well. An amazing concept car can turn someone into a brand loyalist for life, and you can trace almost every element of a new car in 2026 back through initial concepts over decades. But we cover a lot of concept car reveals on the Drive, and in the last few years, I have noticed something shift. They don’t really have that magic pull on the public anymore. Outside the occasional home run, more often, they are making people mad. Too many screens, too much tech, too ugly, too cold, not enough cylinders—whatever, you name it.

And okay, people like to complain online, water is wet, what else is new? But there is something bigger going on here. Concept cars are a tangible glimpse of the future, and 20 or 30 years ago, they were being made to explore a much wider range of hopeful ideas about what that could be. Today, the future of cars feels narrower, grimmer, more expensive, and more software-defined. Automakers have cut back on how many concepts they are making because a CGI render is a lot cheaper, and the ones they are making are primarily trying to solve the massive twin challenges of electrification and self-driving technologies. There is just a big convergence happening.

I am generalizing because not every concept is a tank-like crossover or an autonomous electric blob. Some cool stuff is still being made—look at the Mazda Iconic SP or any recent concept from Genesis. But overall trust that concept cars will actually lead to better, more desirable production cars is at an all-time low.

And here is why this is a problem. The signal that a concept car is supposed to create for both sides, for companies and consumers, is getting weaker. When people are geared to greet concepts with suspicion because they represent anxieties about the future instead of hope, the market research aspect breaks down. When car companies can’t get valid data from that response, their aim falters. And when companies build fewer ambitious concepts because it feels like a waste of money, the one window for both sides to have a conversation about what the cars of tomorrow should look like, or do, or represent gets smaller and smaller. I think it is possible it could disappear entirely, and then where does that leave this whole business?

Anyway, this was on my mind a lot earlier this year, but fortunately for you and me, I don’t have to wonder if automakers are worried about this. I can just ask them, and I did. Over the last few months, I sat down with five leading car designers from Honda, Toyota, Stellantis, Hyundai, and GM—all of whom have worked on pretty big concept cars—to get the insider view on the state of concepts today: what they think is working, what is not, and whether there is a way out of this moment.

We just published a big video wrapping up all those interviews on our YouTube channel today, but they were really fascinating conversations. So, here on the pod, we are sharing the full cut of my chat with Jon Ikeda, the former head of design for Acura. He is a candid guy. He definitely didn’t hold back on the mistakes he has seen and made himself, why concepts are harder to nail these days, but also why he thinks they are more important than ever if the industry can get them right. I think you are going to enjoy this one. Okay, let’s go.

Jon: So, my name is Jon Ikeda. Currently, I am at Honda Racing Corporation, running the business development division, but I have a long history at Honda. I am on my 36th year, man. Wow, 36 years. But 25 of that was designing cars. And I had the opportunity to learn design in Japan for six years—my first six years were in Japan—and then I came back here to the states at Torrance and the facility you are here, a lot of Acuras and Hondas here. And then maybe I complained too much about the sales guys, they punted me over to become General Manager of Sales in Acura. But I have been working with the sales side of things for a while now, yeah.

Kyle: You still consider yourself a designer? Like if you were to say one word, “who I am,” designer?

Jon: I would say yes, I would still say that. Well, I don’t know, I think more of a creative guy. I am not an Excel sheet crunching numbers, you know, monthly sales, daily things like that. It is hard for me to work the left side of the brain as much. I can tell you if I am sitting in a meeting, I am still doodling, you know? It is just a way for me to concentrate. So, most of the time I walk away and a lot of, “Could I have your doodles?” you know, whatever, yeah. Whatever, you know, but it is just who I am, yeah.

Kyle: You know, having demand for your doodles is, I think, a sign of something. That is a sign of something. So, my first question is, in your view, both from your time as a designer and your time running Acura, what is the real value of concept cars or show cars for automakers today, also versus say 25, 30, 35 years ago when you first started? Because you have got the ROI calculation of the marketing potential, the R&D playground potential, the feedback potential from possible buyers. So, where do you think the real value lies?

Jon: I think you have hit all of the value points—the, how do you say, the logical viewpoint. Meaning, hey, let’s test some ideas, get it out in front of the market, see what people react to it, and what they say. We can get some data points and whatnot. The other is you want to try something new as a designer, and you are still years out, and if things are well-received, that gives the engineer time to kind of work on something that might possibly become something new for a vehicle, whatnot.

Purely, you know, from a designer guy perspective—and I know there is other design people that might see this—but for me, it is just a excuse for a lot more freedom because it is a one-off. And, you know, a hot rod might be a good representation, if you will, but you get to spend the time and just purely have the room to express something that has been on your mind that somebody has been telling you, you know, “you can’t,” you know? It just opens up the box. And especially, you know, when you are starting out, it is an amazing thing to be able to work on show cars and basically really express your ideas and things, and it is a sense of freedom for designers. So, there is different reasons behind it all, but selfishly, from a designer’s perspective, it is a play day to go out, express yourself, yeah.

Kyle: Which one do you think actually delivers the most value to automakers, though?

Jon: I think all of them do, you know? I think you have to give the designers some freedom to express themselves because out of that—and when we say freedom to express yourself, some of it just purely naivety because a kid out of school or something might not know how to put a production vehicle together, right? And, but it is industrial design, so there are parameters and things you have to hold on to, to make a real vehicle out of it. But you don’t have the constraints, and yet, being naive allows you to push limits that an experienced designer who has gone through several rounds already limit themselves, you know, in a box. “Oh, that can’t, they can’t do this, they can’t do that,” and it just slowly starts to hold back, you know? So, from a value perspective from an OEM, they want the new ideas, right? And it is very important for each OEM to let the guys and gals loose a little bit from time to time to just see what they could come up with that is new. All right, I think the new component of it is very valuable, yeah.

Kyle: Yeah, that is something I have heard before as well—that name a car designer, they you can’t end up designing a really emotional, powerful, long-lasting production car without getting your bones on concept cars. Like it is an essential part of a designer’s development.

Jon: Yeah, it is. Well, and it is interesting, too, though. I mean, I have had the opportunity to meet some big, big design guys from the past, right? For instance, Larry Shinoda, you know, he did the Vette, you know? And he had all those amazing show cars from Detroit General Motors back in the day. And I remember he befriended me a little bit, and we were talking at a bar one night. “So well, you have done all these amazing-looking show cars and things, which one is your favorite? Which is your favorite car, right?” And he specifically mentioned at the time, he loved the Monza GT that he did, all right? And he said just the ideas, the way it turned out, that was his favorite.

Now, you talk to another person like Giorgetto Giugiaro, and we are talking about at one time, “You have done so many amazing vehicles, what is your favorite design of any?” And you would think they would poke at a sports car, or a show car, or something, and he said the Volkswagen Rabbit. And I said, “The Rabbit?” It kind of took me by surprise, but he spoke out like a true industrial designer. He said they were trying to do something that would replace the Beetle, basically, a global vehicle, and to have that car become such a well-received vehicle globally, it really made him feel good about himself being an industrial designer, a car designer, right? So, it just depends on the kind of individual you are and what you are into at that time, but two completely different answers for from a really, really amazing designers.

Kyle: Yeah, that is really fascinating. Personally, I have always loved when a car, the form is defined by the function, and you see, I would say, less of that. I mean, obviously, crossovers are everywhere like people want to carry a bunch of stuff, fit their family, but there is something about how the lines on a car like that are just so straightforward that really helps me.

Jon: Yeah, it is clean. It is simple, and it is so hard to do, yeah.

Kyle: And what is not simple is most concept cars today. How expensive—and I know that we are talking about the present and you have been out of the studio for a minute—but how expensive has it gotten to make a functional show car? Either that has interior and exterior done, and maybe even has a powertrain, or even just electric motors to roll it around? Like…

Jon: Wow, yeah, it is the sky is the limit. But what I do see trending, after the BEV world and the BEV push, is the simplification of interior designs, right? Back when we were doing it, all the little, you know, meters and needles, and everything was, everything had to be made physically and show that it is unique and it is fun and whatnot from an interior design perspective. I thought that was something they had to do in my day. But recently, things are a lot more open and simple, and you have panels and screens, and a lot of the entertainment that occurs to get a driver engaged is digital, right? And it gives you the freedom to choose the color you want, or the meter that you want to see, and the size of the font you want, and all of that could be a lot more customized because of the technologies that are in general. But the space itself has simplified, you know? And I think there is less buttons. So, I dare say probably, man-hour wise, it probably should take less time to make show car interiors of today than maybe in the past where you had 50 buttons and this and that. Now, obviously, even with the new cars, where you do details and things, it is going to take quite a bit of time. But also, 3D printing and all of these technologies that came into play to make these things that we couldn’t make before easily can be done a lot simpler. So, I am imagining, I don’t know, inflation everything maybe it equals out, but if it went equals to equal, to make a show car of the past probably should have cost more in terms of man-hour, I think, yeah.

Kyle: Yeah, that makes sense. I can see that. At the same time, though, we were just saying how designing a show car is really important for a designer’s development. Do you think that having to put that much more time into say the interior to match what was in vogue at the time versus today, when it is there is just less to do, do you think that that is a problem, or do you think it is part of making modern interiors feel more emotional and impactful?

Jon: Well, I think it is a different look and feel, I am sure. And if I said this as an exterior designer, the interior designers watching this are going to say, “He doesn’t get anything.” No, there is a lot more things that you could focus on that are that might not have gotten attention to just improve the whole experience inside. You are getting into aromas and ceiling lighting and mood, this and that, and things that they didn’t really think about too much with older show cars, maybe. But how an individual experiences themselves inside the car is so important now, right? It just is. And there is so many new tools. Like, I have been out too long. I see how presentations are done, you know? It is completely different. Things are moving now in presentations. You got videos and things to give you a sense of feel of what it might look like driving down the street. We had to draw everything, you know? We drew absolutely everything. Our Google download pre-internet was we would spend hours at a bookstore looking through magazines for the right image so we could cut it out and put it on a poster board to make concept boards and something. So, yeah, it is way, way more advanced. And I am sure with the information that, you know, young designers could get these days, the solutions and things are way more unique and different for the time, yeah.

Kyle: You know, your career as a designer and then as a brand manager for Acura kind of tracked with the internet developing and turning into the default form of communication. And the way that most people now receive a concept car is through pictures or video online. I mean, magazines it is similar, but I think we all know that like the way that we used to use magazines and consume media through that, it just it is different. But auto shows have also really fallen off. And in your view, does that change the way that a concept car is developed, the idea that most people are going to see this online versus in person, and that that physical presence isn’t going to play as much of a role?

Jon: I don’t think any designer approaches it that way. You know, there is nothing like the real thing, at the end of the day. How many times have I seen something online and I am like, “Ah, that is kind of weird,” or whatever, and then you see it, you know, you go to Monterey Car Week or somewhere, and you see it, and you see it in the space that it needs to be at, it is like, “Wow, it is completely different than what I thought I saw,” right? But the comments are running because so many people can’t see the real concept car because it is one of one traveling around the world or whatever, and it doesn’t make it to your town or whatever. So, you are basically relying on images and things. But it is always amazing to me how, “Yeah, that is not what I thought once I saw it.” And it could go the other way, too. It looked amazing on the screen, but I don’t know what happened. I don’t like it in real life, whatever. It could go both ways, but yeah, it has you know, it is a physical thing, it is a 3D thing.

Kyle: So, we are talking about show cars that are seen by the public. Behind you is a design study that was not made for the public consumption until it ended up in the museum. What is the approach, both logistically and creatively, when you are making something that is for your guys’ eyes only versus something that is intended for the public? Because I look at that and I think that could have been shown at an auto show, that that could have been presented.

Jon: Yeah, absolutely. And it is interesting sometimes. It goes both ways. You make it internally because what you do want is some alignment. You are trying to build a brand, you are trying to build a certain look and feel that you all want to target. And you got a team of designers that are going to be designing an SUV, or a sedan, or whatever it is, variations of vehicles, but you do want to tie it to some theme so that every single one isn’t completely different, you know, other than the grill or something, you know? So, it is kind of a 10-year vision for internals to say, “Hey, that is what we want to be doing in the next few years here.”

Obviously, for this car to be where it is, it is an inside-outside mockup, if you will. There were several other designers that were they were competing with, but this is the car and the design that won out as the theme model for the 10-year vision, right? And as you work on an MDX, or as you work on an RDX, or whatever vehicle you were working on at Acura, you would come to this, you know, “Hey, you know, there is some nice subtleties of this that is missing in this car. We should try to use a little bit more of that.” And it is a talking point, but it kind of helps guide a direction, if you will, so that it doesn’t branch off into 50 different ways of things, you know? It kind of helps manage a brand look and feel for a little bit.

Kyle: That is fascinating. So, there was a contest between multiple designers to make something that would again never be seen by the public but would set the direction for the brand?

Jon: Yeah, it is for ourselves. Now, if it is liked by a lot of people like this one, they might not let you take it out, you know? Or, you know, it is so cool, we got to show it, let’s show it, you know? So, it just comes down to decisions at certain times, you know, for what. But I can tell you when I was interning at in Detroit, there must have been a million shapes and things that were at Tech Center, you know, at General Motors that never saw nobody ever saw. Amazing, amazing designs and things, and drawings and stuff, you know, back in the ’80s and ’90s that every OEM, I am sure, has. Some make it out, some don’t. But for people that are around it every day, it is just stuff. It is just like going back to school. Yeah, you know, that is Jimmy’s or that is, you know, James’ or whatever. It is just whatever it is, yeah. Tools of the trade. It is part of what they do.

Kyle: It is amazing to think of how many, like you just said, how many designs have never made it out and never been seen, and are just floating around in history for maybe to be discovered one day or brought to the surface. But maybe not, like we will just never know. Crazy.

Jon: Yeah, yeah, I am sure there is plenty of memories of a lot of people and designers that worked in, you know, different companies like, “Yeah, there was this one that was crazy,” or whatever. The one thing that is cool with designers is though, you know, if you have a napkin and a pen where at a bar, it looked like this, and they could pretty much kind of draw what it looked like. “No way!” you know? It is like, “Really? Yeah, we were trying to do that,” you know? But yeah, those there is plenty of those, I am sure, around the world.

Kyle: So, you were just talking about concepts coming out of Detroit in the ’80s, and before we started recording, you you brought up the Japanese concepts from the ’90s. I think, something I have heard from from a number of people, is that they feel like show cars and concept cars from that era were just so much more, I don’t know, joyful and varied, and and seemed to represent a much wider range of ideas versus today. There there is sort of a convergence happening, both stylistically and in terms of the goals of these cars. Why do you think that is?

Jon: Now, this is just my own personal opinion, right? I am sure there is other reasons, but when I was in school, and if I wanted to know what somebody in Italy was doing, right? Or somebody in France was doing, or Germany, I had to go find a magazine that a Japanese print house, publishing house, had called Car Styling. And it would have volumes of these, and every month or so, they would come out and they would talk about a particular vehicle at a particular studio, and they would have concept stories and clay model pictures and sketches that they did. It could be about interiors as well as exteriors. But you you flip through these things, you know, and and go, “Wow, that is so cool,” or whatever.

I think today, because the information is so easy to get, what happens with designers, it is hard to be the only one that saw that and thought it was cool. Right, so you got all kinds of people looking at it, and cool is cool. And before you know it, there is pieces of that cool on somebody else’s sketch and somebody else’s ideas and things. And maybe it just kind of melds after a while. Why did cars in the ’30s and ’40s and ’50s look so different based on which country it came from? Right? And yet, you know, Ferrari is still Ferrari, Porsche are still Porsches, right? And, even with Honda, we, you know, Hondas and Acura, we are trying to be who we are, and BMW, everybody is trying to hold on to their their roots. But it gets more and more difficult. It gets difficult because the information that inspires you, it is just everywhere. It is just everywhere, and some of this stuff that I used to gawk at was like, “How did they come up with that idea? That is so fresh, that is so cool. I need to do more research on British cars’ history or something,” because somebody will tell me, “Yeah, have you ever seen the, you know, the shape of a fender on a D-Type Jag? You know, have you really looked at it, Jon?” You know, not pictures, “Have you really looked at one? And you realize it is like, holy cow, it is way more voluptuous than I thought it would be,” you know? You think all those shapes are the same, and then you walk up to a Ferrari P6 or something, and there is a little crease at the top of that full fender, you know? And these are little things that nuances and things that, um, you might not even notice unless you ran your hand over it. But once again, difficult. It is not easily accessible, you know, to see the details and things like it probably is today. And, but people that like cars, they are looking. They are getting inspiration, right? Maybe there is a little bit of a melding of the mind happening? Not saying good or bad, because cool is still cool, you know? So, uh, yeah.

Kyle: I do agree with you that the intentionality that was needed to find that kind of creative inspiration, it was it was just different when the media landscape was different, and now there is, and in any creative field, right? There is a there is a convergence happening as everyone can have any idea that they want. But I want to run a theory by you and tell me if you agree.

Jon: Okay.

Kyle: I think that especially, we were just saying like ’80s and ’90s concept cars, the gap between what was possible and what was in production at the time was was very wide, especially when it comes to tech and interior tech. And I know you are an exterior designer by trade, but, you know, screens were not in cars yet, so you put a screen in a concept car and you are like, “Oh my god, that is crazy.” And you also had the sense of possibility of where cars could go, just seemed I think a little bit more wider. And now, you got as much tech as you can kind of fit, and it is more about how do you express that tech versus the addition of something totally new. And that just maybe makes it feel like there is less of a of a bridge that a concept car represents to the future.

Jon: Cars used to be the utmost futuristic thing, right? So, it is the closest thing to people trying to make almost like a humanoid robot. It is a machine, but it is a, you know, it has soul. For car people like me, you, you know, it is it there is something there, right? Now, there is a lot of other things that represent those kinds of things, too, right? And so, if you are not a car person, yeah, I mean, look at the transition you talked about, auto shows and things. CES, huge following, right? For what is the future bring? You know? And rightly so. It just people evolving and machinery and technology evolving and things are moving, and yet, mobility is just still a part of it. So, where does the automobile live in this ecosystem, right? Yeah. So, used to be auto shows, and all of a sudden all of a sudden, the car companies start showing up at CES, right? So, there is some merging thing that is just naturally from an evolutionary point of view that has to occur.

And the hard part is the expectation of just regular consumers with just technology in general, with your phone or your iPad or whatever it is that he has to offer. Now, you get that kind of, “How is my car can my car meet that?” For people like myself, who drives an Integra Type S, manual, you know, I am a caveman, man. I am so that guy, you know? When I always talk about this with friends sometimes, it is like, remember when cars came and people were told that, yeah, the days of the horses are over, right? And the guy on the horse just said, “Well, there is no roads to get out there, and it can feed itself, and I take it to the water river and it drinks, and we just keep going.” Mhm. Right? But it didn’t take long before the infrastructure allowed the car to be the best mobility device from going from A to B. And in that evolution, technology is always going to keep coming, and it is going to evolve mobility for everyone, and there is going to be some that are autonomous. And yet, humans are a very finicky people, especially here in the US. We love our cars, and we love our freedom that is associated with that, and uh, it is just part of the process, I do believe.

Kyle: Yeah, we we love our cars a certain kind of way, that is for sure. It is funny you brought up, you know, the future mobility because I also think that there is a particular challenge for designing a concept car that can really resonate both when you are trying to showcase self-driving tech, because that is like an abstract thing in a concept car that doesn’t fully function, and with EVs. And with EVs, I think it is interesting because concept cars of the past for the most part still had ICE powertrains ostensibly, and yet they look crazy, and so you are imagining they took the same packaging constraints that a production car has and somehow have a plan at least to figure out how to make it look like that. But now with an EV, you don’t have those constraints, and so the shape of it has almost less meaning in a way that comes through in in the final product? Do you think I am way off base there?

Jon: Well, no. I think um, I always thought that once everything goes BEV, all right, that well, you don’t have an engine in there anymore, right? So, the whole packaging parameter could change. We talk about like in-wheel motors and all of these things and skateboard batteries, all the pieces start to change, and then you could change the architecture. The only thing that won’t change is probably seats and humans. They are going to be in this thing. And I wanted more dramatic changes in things, you know, to occur, but safety, you know, just purely just safety and things that you just can’t get around, it is always going to be, you know, if not more, you know, regulated as should be, right? Is going to dictate the architecture.

Now, I find it interesting that some of the good transitions like, I am going to say it, but, you know, the Teslas, the first ones, it was just a beautiful car. And I think they were very smart to do it that way, you know? Because, when you design things that are so new, and I used to talk about this with some of my, you know, designer friends, is you go so new, what do you, you know, it is a life life decision for the owner. You know, they might have to be some, you know, they still live in houses that are that look like this, it is still here, it is still around this. What is the proper transition?

For designers, exterior designers will tell you, it is all about proportions. It is not how a sheet metal is bent this way or the headlight shape is that or this, it is the basic proportions of the vehicle that is going to justify if people kind of lean into it as something that looks good or not. All right, and that is like your wheelbase length to how high it is, how wide it is. You know, one of the key things that I always talk about is how high is the cowl of the vehicle? All right? The cowl sets everything because the cowl, the lower you can make it, the lower you can lower your seat point, lower you could lower the roof point. Most likely, your hood is going to be lower, right? And it is not going to go straight out, it is going to probably line down. Your fender probably is going to be a little bit lower, which means you better have a double wishbone suspension or something, right? But that will dictate how big your wheel arch is, and then your overall circumference of the wheel and tire, okay? And we talk about this, it is like, um, if you look at cars, especially Japanese cars that are like late ’80s, ’90s, how come they look so good with 15-inch rims? That is a good question. All right? And it is because the cowl, especially like Hondas and Acuras, the cowls are so low. The hood height is so low because there is no pedestrian safety in those things, right? All right, not safe. But the regulation wasn’t that. So, your fender thickness is really thin.

Now, with pedestrian safety and everything else that is necessary, cowl of vehicles started to get taller, and you got that clearance between the hood and the top of the engine and all of these things for safety reasons. Now, your fender ends up being taller. The cars’ belt line starts to get higher, the doors get thicker, but you don’t want your wheel arch to be the same size as before, you are going to end up with this fender thing that is going to be this thick, so designers will make bigger wheel arches and you need bigger wheels and tires to fill in that space, right? That was going to be one of my questions is why so many concept cars have massive wheels? It just it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger, and this is where I think a lot of cars are. I prefer my Integra Type S because of the size that it is. It makes me feel comfortable with what I grew up with, I guess, more than anything. You know, size-wise, there is a certain level of comfort that I have for size when I when I want to own a vehicle, right? Yeah, it is proportions everything. Now, if you make it big wheel arches, and everybody goes, “Oh, the wheelbase, well, the wheelbase is still long,” but you are looking at wheelbase from the outside from the inside of the rear and the inside of the front, and whatever body color you got left in between is visually your wheelbase, mhm, all right? So, what happens? Well, that looks kind of stubby, so what do they want? They want the wheelbase to be high, so those big wheels and tires could be further apart, so you get that length that you want. All right? Yeah, it is it is endless proportion games. This is why you have cars with belt lines that seem so high or dashboards that the dash seems so high, and yet they look like they are chopped tops, like the side glass is lower, it is because if you just did it regular, it would just look like a very tall car with a very small person in it. So, you do the chop top look pretty much to make the car look lower and wider, right? Yeah. To get the proportion that lower and wide working for you, and these are all the challenges that designers continually have to face, you know, but it lends itself to vehicles that are big, and now you are talking about 22-inch rims, you know, to just make it look right.

Kyle: And not only that, but also things like vertically oriented headlights because you got to fill the front-end gap, which is not something that Honda has done. Honda has been one of the holdouts in like keeping a traditional face on a car. I think it is very interesting to hear you talk about the cowl kind of setting the height and shape of everything. Clearly, that must have entered the calculation and why Hondas still look like normal cars in a way.

Jon: Well, it gets more and more difficult for everybody, right? So, now your cowl is higher, your engine, everything, you got you meet all your points, the hood is higher than you want, so you might either end up with a power bulges where you could try to lower the fender as much as you can, where the bump is over the engine or whatever, mhm, or you will see companies where they will hold out as long as they can, and then they will pull the headlight as low as they can. So that when you look at the face, it looks kind of low and thin, a little bit bigger forehead maybe. Yeah. But they are trying to make it look low, right? And when you work with horizontal things, it is easier to make things look wider. When you do vertical treatments of things, it it doesn’t lend itself to making cars feel wide. So, yeah, all these are tricks in the trade that every designer around the world is trying to tackle to get their vehicles with these incredible hard points that they have to meet, to look the way they wanted to look. All right, so if you go to a beauty salon and, you know, “Oh, you have a big head, Jon, you know, really you should have longer hair like you, and you could just cut it this way so you don’t see as much of your face.” Right? And then you pull it back like holy cow, you have a full face. Those types of games is being played with designers with cars all day. You are hiding things, you are trying to do things to make it look a certain way, it is just same as fashion, how do I make a overhang look shorter than it really is, you know? Well, you bevel the shape, or make the corner look like it is way over here, so when you are looking at it from three-quarter, it looks like there is nothing there. But if you park the car in a big parking lot, look at it from a hundred hundred yards away or a hundred meters away, holy cow, that front overhang is just huge! Never knew that because you are just kind of up on the car all the time, right? But games like that is what really good car designers are always having to deal with to try to make it look like their sketch, or trying to make it look like your show car.

Kyle: So, it is funny you bring up the idea of trying to like make things that can reach production and dealing, you know, melding creative vision with the hard points and the safety requirements and all that stuff. So, the the Precision Driving concept that Acura did in was that 2016, 20… Yeah, ’16. ’16, yeah. That clearly looked like a show car, like it did not have proportions that were realistic for a production, but you did end up seeing a lot of those design elements come through in the Type S concept, and then the TLX, and the Integra. And so, I am curious when that was made, was it like, “Oh crap, now we have to make figure out how to actually do this in production but and that meets all these requirements,” or was it less of a concern at that time and then you just kind of figured it out? Because like I imagine like the low the low cowl is pretty pretty definitive there.

Jon: That is the curse of the show car. All right? The curse of the show car to production is because you are not constrained, you make it as high as you want, you make it as wide as you want, you could do all kinds of things as you want, and it looks amazing. And then you got to meet the production regulations and things, and if you are too far off base, and you can’t meet the tricks that we were just talking about all earlier to cover for that, then you might find yourself in big trouble. Because you come up with a production version, this happens all the time where it has happened to us, it has happened to a lot of companies where show cars are amazing, why does it why does it production look like this? Well, you we surpassed the limits of our or manufacturing capabilities or being able to we could always make one, right? But when you are trying to sell a vehicle, you are going to sell 50,000 of these a year, there is sheet metal stamping coming out, and you got a certain amount of minutes that it has to go on a line and does this and people have to work so diligently to put everything together so the line keeps moving, there is a lot of things you have to think about—engineering, manufacturing, all of these that are good people, UI have to go through and in Indiana all of our factories have to go through, and every factory, every OEM has to go through. But yeah, you put all that in and sometimes you just can’t you can’t get it, or sometimes somebody, the engineer goes, “I figured it out.”

You know, I remember working on the Gen 3 TL, and they were telling me, I just begged them, I said, look, if we are going to make this car, I need a 235-45-17 as the tire. And I was laughed off the face of the map by experienced engineers, and they were saying, “It is going to be a 215-65-15, Jon, or maybe we will give you a 215-60-16s. Yeah, what are you talking about, 17-inch 45-series tires, are you out of your mind?” It is built on an Accord platform, Jon, you know? And wha, wha, wha, wha, wha, wha, and it took one engineer to say, “If I change this $3 knuckle piece on here, we could put those wheels on.” And we were able to do it. But because of that passionate pursuit to do that by this individual, it helped the car look more like the original concept, right? Otherwise, it would be very much more like the Accords of the time. Yeah, you have to have great uh, what we call Large Project Leaders—the guy that the engineering guy that runs the whole program, right? Dynamics, engine, chassis, design, he is the king lord of this vehicle. If you have the right guy and gets people motivated, you know, you can do a lot of things.

Kyle: Solutions can be found.

Jon: Yeah, yeah.

Kyle: What is what is your personal reaction when people say, “Oh, the concept car looks so much better, they screwed it up in production.” Is it like is it offensive to you as a designer, you just kind of roll it off?

Jon: No, uh, you know, some people might spend the time to explain why, you know? And it is okay, and you could tell the guy just click-baiting you or whatever. It is so easy to but, you know, to complain, and it is their right to, you know? It is a if you are a car designer and you can you don’t have thick skin… you are in the wrong business. Okay? You are absolutely in the wrong business because making a vehicle, you are spending five to six years of your life, right? From a napkin sketch till somehow miraculously it is coming out from a production line. It is a lifetime of involvement and the more passionate you are, more involved you are, probably it will end up being closer to what you wanted it, you know?

In that context of things, it is like a kid, and then you make the kid, you love your kid, and somebody is saying your kid is not cool. You can see how personal it could get, right? And it can be for a lot of people, but that is part of design, you know? It is part of car design for sure. And because it is like that, when you win, though, they you feel good about it. You know, it is okay. The flip side, yeah. The flip side is good, too.

Kyle: It is part of doing anything for public consumption, honestly. I mean, we we get the same thing. We can write a article that people love, they are like, “Oh my god, this is the best thing I have ever read, we are really happy about it,” or in a video, and then we do one that doesn’t resonate as much, and they are like, “You guys are the worst, I can’t believe I wasted five minutes of my life on you,” and it is like, well, all right, well, thanks for the five minutes, I guess, you know? What are we supposed to do?

Jon: There has been a couple of moments where we have done things at Acura where, you know, you had killjonikeda.com come out somewhere, by somebody, right? It just but, I mean, there were memes made about the Integra, you know? And the way we presented that car and introduced it just didn’t, we didn’t do a good job, all right? But at the same time, people were so passionate, you know, about Integra, we knew what we were going to get into. NSXes, Integras, these are real emotions that people have towards a vehicle experience that they have owned. And so, to go away for a while and all of a sudden, you know, she is coming home and the doorbell rings, you open the door, and it is the wrong person standing there, they are going to say something, they are going to say something. Cars are an emotional thing. But over time, they you, you know, I am hoping that not everybody is going to forgive us, but over time this Integra is good, too, because I could tell you the the man that led that program, his first two cars when he joined Honda was an Integra, right? So, when he was trying to find the concept of things, I just sat down with him and said, “Hey, stop overthinking all this stuff. Why did you buy the Integra?” and he told me this and this and this and that, and then, “Why did you buy another one? I bought the second one, why then? Because of this, this.” Let’s make that the best you can. Just make that, man.

Kyle: Yeah.

Jon: Just make that.

Kyle: I love that.

Jon: And they tried, and they had a team that enjoyed themselves immensely working on that car in Japan. And when you have a group of people that are enjoying themselves and are totally to the point where like, “Can we do this? Should we do that? You know, we should do this.” You got a group of people doing that, you know the product is going to be it is raised right by right parents and the right village, if you will, right? I I have fun in my Integra because I I know the people that made it, and I like it, you know? It is all those little details are taken, but is it the DC2? No. It is a different it is a different person. Different era.

Kyle: What what would you have done differently in introducing that?

Jon: Camera angles maybe? As we were saying before. Yeah, yeah, camera angles and things, you know? It was a very high angle and they wanted to do YouTube Live, or whatever. I didn’t even know we were going to do YouTube Live at all, I thought we were going to be able to edit things or what, but it is like, yeah, it wasn’t the best angle, you know? And then people all over the world were, you know, watching the countdown for this thing to come in, and here comes this crazy man, “Here it is!” And as it was a wah-wah moment for them, and it is real, right? It is pure. There is you can’t argue that. It is real feeling. The only thing I would say, and there was memes and I was in the meme, I was fired by Trump, you know? So, you know, and I am there, and I sent it to my kid. I said, “Dad is a meme.” And my kid’s one response to that was “Bro.” Not a good thing. No. But uh, I appreciated the the time they took to express their feeling. For sure. Right? There were others a little bit more forgiving, “give it a chance, I want to see the real car first,” kind of thing, too. But, you know, a year later it was the North American Car of the Year for whatever reason, and then it is on from there, and then the Type S came and more people like that variation of it, right? And things are calmed down a little bit, but it is all part of a designer’s life. It is a very emotional thing.

Kyle: Yeah, I mean, as you said, change, no one likes change, right? And, and when you bring back a name like that, it is inevitably going to be different, and I don’t know, I don’t think even if you had different camera angles, people would have maybe some people would have been placated, but most people are just going to react like that. Yeah, yeah. And it, you know, it is something I wanted to ask about was the the concept you did in 2008 or nine, the A- S- C- C or what is it? The ASCC, yeah. The front-engined NSX successor that never was.

Jon: Yeah, that never was. Except for in a race car, kind of.

Kyle: Right, exactly. No, I love that front-engined NSX car in Japan, that thing is sick. But when you are designing something like that, you have I know that you guys didn’t use the NSX name when it was when it was shown, but that was the heavy implication that that is what it would be, then the recession killed the project. But you are taking ostensibly an iconic name and having to recreate it not just like for a new era with new regulations, but a totally different format. Can you tell me a little bit about what that experience was like and what what you took away from it?

Jon: It was a it was an interesting time because the NSX is NSX, right? And we knew that this is what it might end up becoming. We knew the engine was amazing. But it was an FR effort. And so from a designer’s perspective, okay, let’s celebrate the FR in proportion, right? Let’s not trying to make this look like the NSX and it is a mid-engine or something. Let’s just be very pure with it because it is a show car, all right? And how it if we were able to continue that program, how it values out we will deal with it then, but one of the key things was just keeping it clean as possible. But there is no denying that it was going to be an FR. Right? And at almost too good to a point, you know, some of these it can’t be, you know, people were making all kinds of comments. An NSX is a mid-engine, but that was the direction that the company wanted to take at the time, and as a designer, it is our job to just try to do our best to set it up, if you will, all right? Because that is what a show car is, once again. It is to set up for what is about to come. And so, we didn’t want any confusion. Because back then, you know, the engines that they were making, I mean, I think that thing was a V10 or something.

Kyle: V10, yeah.

Jon: So, whatever people are saying, once they turn it on and hear it, they will forgive us.

Kyle: If only we could have lived in that world, yeah. That would have been awesome.

Jon: They will forgive us once they hear it. But from just a styling exercise perspective, it was just to make sure that everybody understood that it is going to be an FR, yeah.

Kyle: It is also funny that, I know these timelines kind of overlap, but that car never made it to production, and it it sort of reflected the design cues of Acura at the time less of like setting the next 10 years as the one behind you is, but that front end is very similar to the NSX on this design study here behind you.

Jon: Well, I think there is some cues, right? So, we went through several years of, front facial images and things. Every OEM was trying to figure out their character or grill tactics or whatnot. And some of that carried over into the NSX as well as the team working on this car, you know, “What are some of these key elements that we wanted to do?” I can tell you right now that the break point that we did keep for very long time until even now, we still have it, came from a show car, right? That was done if you go back over to the lobby, you can see it. It is what became the original CL. You want to talk about a jump between a show car and the production car, I think they are right next to each other in the lobby over there. You can see what can happen between Dreamland and the reality check of creating a wonderful vehicle in Marysville, yeah. We’ll go check it out. But that is where the, you know, the center break line started. And we we talked about it. It was Acura, accuracy. Accuracy is not vague, it is a point, you know? And there is some reason and logic behind why we did and it differentiated us with what Honda was doing, right? So it was just something that we we were working with, yeah.

Kyle: Do you think there is some tragedy in the fact that you can work really hard on something that gets shown once and then gets crushed, or is never seen by the public, and you are really proud of it, but like no one knows that you did this amazing thing? Like How how does that feel in after all the work is done on this concept car and it may never go anywhere else?

Jon: Depends on the type of designer you are. But you know what they say, is there is nothing older than last year’s show car. Yeah, guess so. From a designer’s perspective, yeah, we could still say this thing is being around and it still looks cool, but if you don’t have the frame of mind as a a car designer where you say to yourself, “There is nothing older than last year’s show car.”

Kyle: Is uh, is is that why you in your opinion, you really don’t see that many retro concept cars? I mean there was maybe a burst of that in the ’90s, 2000s, but for the most part, most concepts are not referencing the past in any meaningful way.

Jon: Um, there is successful ones and not so successful ones in my book. And it is the same thing with Integra. If you try to copy exactly, it could get difficult. It could get difficult. And you will see stuff online now that they look amazing, but if I gave you your true safety hard points and crush zones and everything else, it won’t look like the cool image you made. But I could see why everybody is excited about it. And there is places to play and there is places to push, but it should always look new. There is some nostalgic games you can play, and, it is okay to do that. But it better look new.

Kyle: So, was there an Integra design study at some point with the circular headlights, or did you just

Jon: I am sure I didn’t see it, but I am sure somebody had to draw it, you know? Somebody in Japan, somebody here, somebody was drawing it, I guarantee you somebody was drawing it.

Kyle:Yeah, that would have been cool to see. Yeah, it would have been interesting. But I do I do get I do get the the need to look forwards, as you said, um, especially with something that is ostensibly to do that.

Jon: Well, it is so funny, too, because when when the American version had the round lights, and the Japanese version didn’t, right? Kids over there wanted the round lights, and the kids over here wanted the, you know, the other ones. So, it is everybody wanted the Euro lens back in the days, you know? “I wanted the amber lights on my thing,” and they wanted all clean like you would get with just the red and clear, you know, like the Americans, and it is whatever you don’t have, you kind of want. So, it is very, you know, it is it is your personal thing, right? Yeah, it is situational. It is situational, yeah.

Kyle: Is there a concept that you really wanted to drive home and or steal or and never give it back? Like is there one that you think of like, “man, if only I could have that car,” or, “if only we could have made that car?”

Jon: Personally, no. Oh. Just me personally. That is cool for somebody else to drive. Yeah, you will look amaze—they would look amazing in show cars, right? He just has that persona, it is just not me per se, but there is just too many cool looking cars, right? Um, yeah. Once again, like walking through Tech Center as an intern was just mind blowing. Mind blowing. One of the fun things that they did have is like they would uh, every studio had their own room, but you wouldn’t you can’t walk in, so there is a main corridor hallway that all the designers would use to get to the studio they were working in. Mhm. And there is a T-intersection and they have they would always make things in third scale and so there is a third scale model that some studio made. It could have been Buick or it could have been Pontiac or Chevy, whatever, something really cool, right? Looking at it, it was sometimes it is really weird looking cars. You know, “like, man, I think that is weird looking.” “Yeah, I did, too,” you know, whoever you are you are working with. And uh, it was a point where they would uh, the ones that were like pushing the boundaries too much and people weren’t comfortable with, they would just park it out there. And and the the logic there was after 10 days of all these designers looking at it, and everybody still thinks it is too wacky, it is wacky. It is wacky. If after 10 days of walking around you got half the guys saying, “You know, it is kind of growing on me,” it is new. There is something new, something there. You know, they they used to play games like that, it was fun.

Kyle: That is interesting because I think there is a big difference in how a concept car is received when there is some basis in reality versus not. Like I am just I it is an example that comes to my mind, I don’t expect you to comment on it, but, you know, Audi made a concept car in 2019 that had an extendable wheelbase, you know, it was a GT and then a small sports car. And it is like no one thinks that is going to make production. Like, that is just impossible in the next, I don’t know, 20-30 years at least. But it was also a design study for them, and some of those design cues showed up. But I do think people may be more willing or likely to see it for what it is supposed to be when there isn’t a feature or a function like that that is so obviously never going to happen that it is almost distracting. Yeah.

Jon: Yeah, new too much new is too much sometimes. So, and it is it depends on the individual, right? Yeah. If you do something where everybody likes it, might not be new enough. Might not be new enough. So everybody, “Oh, that is so cool,” everybody thinks this is cool? Ah, it is probably not new enough. So, if you want to be in that weird zone…

Kyle: And Acura for the most part has stayed out of crazy batshit concepts. Like all the concept cars that I can remember from the last 15 years have been grounded in reality at least.

Jon: Well, good and bad. Good and bad. There is some uh, crazy show cars that we I wish we could do a little bit more crazy show cars, you know? Just let just cut loose. Let it rip. So just let it rip, let’s just see what it looks like 20 years from now, you know? Let’s let’s see what happens, let it let it go. And you know, it is it is okay. It is okay to do that. I think it is important like I said in the beginning, yeah. I think it is important for designers to be able to cut loose like that. Some of it is just because the show car to the production jump went from “amazing” to… You know, that kind of pull the sheet and you get that then it is like well, we had enough of that. Let’s not do that, it is what the sales guy is going to tell you. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we got enough. We got enough feedback here. Just let it let it go.

Kyle: So, to get back to the initial question, do you do you see the value of concept cars changing in the next 10-20 years, or pretty much it is what it is and it is, even if the expression is different, it is still going to matter to the industry and to designers and to the public?

Jon: I think it matters. It should always matter because it is a way for designers to express themselves freely. And you are seeing it at its purest form. And all the ideas are very pure, right? And out of those, you know, you play the Pareto principle, 80 of those is junk ideas, but if you don’t do these things, you are not going to find the 20. Right? You are not going to find a 20 that is like, “Holy cow, there is something here.” That would be cool, right? And being a division director at one point and even chief designers, you have to let the the young designers just cut loose. Yeah, you know, you can’t do that, no. It is not about “nos” so much. You got to if you don’t have a listening or having an open opinion, if you are a designer to open to new things you are in trouble anyways to start out with. But if you don’t have that openness to whatever ideas that might be creative, you are going to miss out. Yeah, 80 will be junk, you know, but 20 there is something happening. You know, they You need the churn. You need it. You need it. Otherwise, things don’t move, yeah.

Kyle: That is it, man.

Jon: That is it? All right.

Kyle: That is it, yeah. I mean, I we could talk all afternoon but…

Jon: Yeah, yeah, but we can have a martini or a beer. Yeah, yeah, exactly. doing this sober… Oh. All right.

Kyle: That’s it for this week’s episode of the Drivecast. Thanks to Jon for a fun chat, Honda for letting him speak so freely—not that anyone lets Jon do anything, if you couldn’t tell—our editor Tyler Mark, and thank you for listening.

Remember to head on over to our YouTube channel to see the full video with the rest of the designers and stay tuned there for more extended interview cuts that will be dropping over the next week. And let us know if you enjoyed this one by leaving a comment or emailing feedback at thedrive.com. I don’t want to turn this into a concept car podcast, but we can always drop another full-length interview in the future here if enough people want it.

And if you like what we’re doing here, do us a favor and hit us with a five-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It really does help get the Drivecast in front of more people. Also, be sure to check out thedrive.com for more stories of Joel almost getting arrested, subscribe to our fine newsletters—which are free, by the way—follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and yeah, hit that subscribe button on YouTube while you’re watching the full video. Joel’s not here to make a joke about my hair, but yes, I do have cool hair, you can see that there, too.

All right, we’ll see you next week. Bye everyone.

The post Concept Cars Used to Sell the Future. Acura’s Former Design Boss Explains What Went Wrong appeared first on The Drive.

Taking a pulse of the auto industry a few years ago would have resulted in most people thinking, at least for a hot minute, that the immediate future was going to be electric with a quick and hard shift away from fossil fuels. Automakers started swapping gears and gas for batteries and inverters. Then it all fell apart despite everyone taking different strategies.

Ford made a normal-looking F-150 that just happened to be electric and resurrected the Lightning nameplate, then killed it. GM went all-in on a dedicated platform with huge batteries for mega trucks featuring eye-popping range. And Ram? It never even launched its electric truck with ridiculous specs before killing it off. But it was the startups, Rivian and Tesla, that laid blueprints for a path forward while competitors scribbled notes. Now we have round two on the horizon, but do electric trucks even make sense?

History books will show that the first-generation of electric trucks brought forth an arms race of who can do what, but things didn’t play out as planned or expected. These money-losing vehicles by many accounts can be filed as flops and false starts. While Ram killed its electric truck before even launching it, Ford bailed out on the F-150 Lighting, GM’s stuck with things, for now. But sales are about 3% of what the automotive giant has originally predicted. Now the next crop of electric trucks are taking shape with smaller footprints, smaller battery packs, less power, and less capability, but much lower price tags.

On the latest episode of The Drivecast we discuss the short-lived history of the electric trucks we saw come, go, and flounder, how we got here, where the market is today, what the next-generation of electric trucks look like, and whether an electric truck even makes sense.

New here? The Drivecast is The Drive‘s weekly podcast that takes you behind-the-scenes on the largest controveries, stories, and characters shaping the automotive industry along with the way our roads look today. Powered by The Drive‘s inside access, original reporting, exclusives, and insights, The Drivecast aims to make everyone an insider.

Listen to The Drivecast via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music. Love it? Like it? Want to help? Leave a five-star review on your platform of choice to help get The Drivecast in front of more people. Have a suggestion, tip, request, or feedback? Drop us a line at feedback@thedrive.com. I promise, we read every single email.

Full Transcript

Joel: Today, we are talking about electric trucks. For a hot minute, it looked the immediate future was going to be electric with a quick and hard shift away from fossil fuels. Automakers were swapping gears and gas for batteries and inverters, but some moved quicker than others and everyone went about it differently.

Andrew: It’s been interesting to see different adoption strategies play out, right? Ford made a normal-looking F-150 that happened to be electric. GM went all-in on big battery mega-trucks. Rivian built a lifestyle brand around a tech-forward product and, of course, Tesla gave us the chrome dumpster of doom. Plenty of other automakers stayed in wait-and-see mode, too.

Joel: From literal heavyweights with insanely huge battery packs and eye-popping range figures to industry-leading innovation and out-of-the-box thinking. Just like gas-powered trucks, the boom of the first generation of electric trucks brought forth an arms race of who can do what and how. But the history books will show that the first shot at electric trucks didn’t play out how everyone expected. Arguably, these were money-losing vehicles that, by many, are viewed as a flop and false start. Now, a crop of next-gen EVs are taking shape and of course, because this is America, trucks are at the forefront and leading the charge, no pun intended, with a bevy of body style variants set to follow. But these next-gen electric trucks are vastly different than what we’ve seen to date, and arguably will change the industry. From the price and capabilities to their size and even how they are built, we are about to witness a possible revolution as automakers scramble to fend off the Chinese, appease America’s appetite for trucks and SUVs, and push into the electric era. Then there’s the outliers and noise: the resurgence of V8s and the lack of hybrids, the supposed extended-range electric vehicles known as EREVs, and even a back-to-basics gas-powered idea. So today, it’s all about electric trucks, what happened, what’s coming, and does this all even make sense?

Joel: All right, so real quick, let’s just give context for the listeners as to us and our backgrounds, you know, where we live, how we use vehicles, trucks and SUVs, use cases. I just think it’ll help people understand a little more context for our lifestyle and our viewpoints on how we come at some of this stuff.

Andrew: Sure. So I live in a rural suburban-adjacent area. I’m two hours from New York City, but I’m also surrounded by woods. I use trucks for standard dump runs and Home Depot runs, but I also do a lot of off-road driving. I actually work as a part-time guide over at a local off-road training school, so I spend a lot of time thinking about the science of off-road driving specifically, and I will say electric trucks, it’s a unique experience. We can come back to that a little bit later.

Caleb: Yeah, and I live in the Missouri Ozarks, about 18 and a half hours away from New York City, so, you know, a little bit further than Andrew. But yeah, I mean trucks are everything here. That’s what everybody drives, that’s everybody’s first vehicle, that’s what they learn to to drive on. And so that’s really just the vast majority of my experience, you know. My first vehicle was a 7.3 Power Stroke Ford F-250, old body style. Man, I never should have gotten rid of that one. But that’s the world that I come from, right? So that being said, I do have experience with electric trucks as well, but I think my background in regular old body-on-frame, you know, archaic type stuff definitely helps inform what what I think about these rigs and what they do well and what they don’t do so well.

Joel: I also live very far from Andrew and the New York City. I’m sure people know from previous podcasts, so I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We have a family cottage up north and so, you know, we tow boats, we drive in very cold weather in the winter, we all run winter tires, Nokian Hakkapeiliittas, got to love them. And so, you know, I got two kids and a wife. We’re hauling around soccer gear and whatever. But really, the towing the boats, driving in the cold, the snow, etc. My first car was a Jeep Cherokee XJ, so the definition of an iconic SUV. We’ve owned a lot of Jeeps, we’ve owned a lot of Quattro from Audi. But everything we own, nothing my wife or my dad or I own at this point doesn’t tow 7,000 pounds. You know, we have boats that weigh 5,000 pounds, you need a 20% gap just to have some safety gap there. And so I do a lot of towing, usually short distance, just I really do want to put a context here. You know, typically the distance that we’re towing the boats is short, and that can be up to about 180 miles of towing at one shot. So that’s the context on the towing aspect and the weights and everything like that. And Andrew, I’ve done a lot of off-roading in gas and EV powered vehicles. So with all that context, real quick before we get into the topic, I want to just give everyone some context on our personal feelings on EVs in the marketplace as a whole. Andrew, let’s circle back to you.

Andrew: Yes, absolutely. I like EVs, full stop. I am an old-school guy, borderline luddite when it comes to technology in general. I own, I think, four carbureted vehicles right, maybe five, right now, but I absolutely appreciate the benefits of electric, both in terms of emissions and just simplicity. It has a lot of practical benefits off-road, too, frankly. And so I’m pro-EV, broadly speaking, I just like my gas, my old-school gas as well.

Caleb: Yeah. So for my part, probably the most memorable experience that I have with an EV is I tested a Polaris Ranger Kinetic. They built that electric side-by-side, and we use it—our family owns a campground here, and I had a canoe trailer that was down the road a ways, down the dirt road, and the wheel fell off. And so we actually used zip ties and a T-shirt to make a wheel bearing, a makeshift wheel bearing for that canoe trailer. And we towed the canoe trailer back with that electric side-by-side. It was great because, you know, you could just go at a steady two miles an hour, right? It was the perfect vehicle for the job. But that actually has been one of my favorite side-by-sides that we’ve tested. And the reason I think that’s even relevant to this conversation is because we used it to work hard, right? I tested that for quite a while, honestly. We used it during flood cleanup, I hauled a ton of brush, a ton of logs with that thing. So in the sense of EVs doing work, they’re absolutely capable of it, but it’s just kind of like, you know, what’s been brought up already, range tends to be a big issue. Whenever you’re using it at one property, that’s not such a problem. You know, I could go a week without charging that side-by-side, but if you need to be towing anything for 100 miles or more, then you run into problems. So all in all, I also am impressed by EVs, what they’re capable of doing. Ford F-150 Lightning, you know, as we’ll get into here in a little bit, but I also don’t believe that everything is set up perfectly for those to work for the majority of people where I live. Obviously, difficult for me to speak for anybody else that lives somewhere that’s more urban or suburban. I really am just quite rural in general. So different strokes for different folks, I guess is where I land.

Joel: Yeah, and it’s funny because if you read The Drive and you’re a commenter, you would think everyone that reads The Drive and is a commenter thinks I hate cars that hate gas engines when I own a V8-powered Grand Cherokee, which by the way, that’s a life choice. Most Grand Cherokees are not V8-powered, by the way. There is no question that there is gas running through my veins. At the same time, you know, I drive something like an Escalade V with a supercharged 6.2 V8, right, and I’m sitting there idling at a bus stop and I’m like, this is kind of dumb. I almost feel obnoxious. I’m just what, killing the planet and drinking 91 premium at the rate of zero or negative miles per gallon? It’s crazy. And so I’ve driven a bunch of EVs that are just so capable on-road, off-road, a Lightning, I’ve towed with these. They’re really cool, but to Caleb’s point, depending where you live, range in the winter can be an issue for some people, charging can be a real issue for some people. So I think that it’s not a one-size-fits-all situation, especially in the current timeline. It’s a use-case situation. I mean, I really like EVs and I really like gas-powered cars and I think each has a place kind of, in the grand scheme of things. So with all of that said and the context on our backgrounds real quick, let’s get into the topic at hand. So which of you boys wants to get into the quick history rundown of of these early electric trucks where we had and have?

Andrew: I think I can run you down pretty quick. So basically, you know, we’ll definitely want Caleb to chime in with the F-150 Lightning launch experience, but I feel like that was kind of F-150 Lightning was the moment where people were oh, electric trucks are going to be real. I mean, Rivian R1T was was around, too, but that had the novelty of what is this weird brand? When Ford was doing an F-150 Lightning, people were okay, electric trucks are happening. And I do think that kind of, you know, egged on GM to get us to the Sierra and Silverado and, of course, ultimately Ram, which we’ll we’ll circle back to. So yeah, so we had that, we had Ram promising to build a super high-range the REV that I remember seeing at New York Auto Show a few years ago. And that ended up I don’t know I don’t want to go out of order here, but basically that was totally scuttled, ultimately, and that’s now a range extender and I think it’s mild hybrid now, right, Joel? Is that right?

Joel: It’s a whole mess. They brought the V8 back, it was a mild hybrid, but then they’re killing the mild hybrid because, you know, car guys don’t want a mild hybrid, we want a simple V8 with a with a whatever. Caleb is literally shaking his head like at the—

Caleb: Well, because I don’t even remember what the range extender one is called anymore. It’s been changed—

Joel: Yeah, it’s bad. So now it’s called the REV, right? So the range extender was originally called the Ramcharger, and the REV was the electric one. And now the Ramcharger’s going to be the three-row SUV Wagoneer rebadge, and the REV is going to be the range extender, and none of us, no one ever drove the electric REV. The electric Ram, it was DOA. We were going to have a 500-mile version with like a 200 and fifty-some kilowatt pack. It was going to it was, dude, it was going to easily weigh like 10,000 pounds. There’s no way that thing wasn’t going to weigh 10,000 pounds. It was crazy. It never it never got off the ground. I look, you know, the Rivian R1T and the Cybertruck and all these things that debuted and or launched, but the Ford F-150 Lightning, an electric F-150 that looked like an F-150 and it drove like an F-150, that was a moment, right? Because America runs on F-150. It’s the best-selling vehicle in America. It’s not even a contest. And so when Ford said we’re doing an F-150 that’s electric and we’re calling it an F-150, that that felt a stake in the ground of this is the future, guys, this is happening. This is happening.

Caleb: Definitely. And like whenever, so I was part of that that press launch, so we showed up, they did it in in Texas, I believe it was San Antonio, and so you show up in truck country and it’s like there you go, you have this lineup of trucks that look F-150s, just kind of different. And they had all of these tests lined up for you, you know, obviously you do your normal on-road driving, but they had an off-road course there, they had several different trailers, you know, set up for you to tow. And I remember I got to a stoplight getting ready to go onto the interstate. And so the on-ramp was uphill and I think I had 7,000 pounds behind me. So, you know, a decent load, not the max, but, you know, pretty high. And I just romped it and it was diesel but with no turbo lag. It just went, and I was okay, here we go. So from that moment on, man, I was pretty convinced that we were onto something, but the market had different plans.

Joel: All of these trucks were expensive. All of them. The Lightning was supposed to start at $40 grand. I don’t think one ever arrived for $40 grand, ever. It was the Model 3 that was going to be $35 grand, right?

Caleb: Yeah, well, it was but it was the Pro that could only be sold to fleets, right? And then they were like, actually, actually, we’re not going to do it. Yeah, yeah, and it was no time and they were $60 grand.

Joel: Yeah, so they were, so the average Lightning, the Lightning you wanted was $75 grand first of. The Lightning that got bought was $95k, okay, first off. Okay? Second off, these were all expensive. The Rivians, they launched at $70 grand. Those Bosch motors, they launched with four Bosch motors per truck. They were about $5,000 a piece. It was like $20 grand of motors in those original trucks that launched originally $70,000 before you account for the battery pack. They lost their butts on those first trucks. And then they did the price increase and there was backlash, so they had to grandfather everybody in. But now the Rivian you want is basically, let’s call it $90 to $130 grand, okay? And then you’ve got the the GM twins or trio: the Hummer, the Sierra, and the the Silverado. These trucks have 205 kilowatt-hour battery packs. These things go up to 470-some miles of range, but they weigh 9,000, 8,000 pounds. Like, they have so much range not because they’re efficient. They have so much range because they have a really big tank. They are inefficient vehicles of the highest caliber. And which is not the future, right? Like, that’s the opposite of what we’re trying to do here. But they have a lot of range and capability. The two things that I want to mention before we move on are what I would consider a success: the Rivian and the Cybertruck, and just hear me out before you roll your eyes about the Cybertruck, I am not a fan, okay? But these two vehicles innovated and paved a path forward. And the reason I’m going to say that is because they are a clean-sheet dedicated vehicles with no compromise packaging. And I want to explain that. The Rivian is so capable off-road. It is so surreal on-road, which I know Andrew is shaking his head yes, and you all just can’t see this, he agrees with me. And it is ,the R1T specifically, the truck, is the most innovatively packaged modern vehicle money can buy no matter how much you spend. It is the most innovatively packaged vehicle. And it shows truly what you can do with a clean-sheet EV if you set your mind to it. And then and then on the other end of the spectrum, you have the Cybertruck. Just hear me out. It runs a 48-volt system, it runs Ethernet, it runs CAN bus systems that I’m sure someone’s going to be more knowledgeable about than me. These are innovative things that most modern mainstream cars don’t have. And more importantly, more importantly, it modernized how you build cars, right? It is, I believe, the first truck that has megacastings, which means there are just like three main or four main components to that truck’s sub system, like beyond the metal exoskeleton dumpster-looking awfulness, that bolt together and glue together and that you can remove one, add one back. It’s built to be when you crash it, you can actually replace just certain parts of the subframe stuff that glue back on or bolt back on. It’s really cool. And so those innovative things that I just mentioned from both these things, we are going to see play out in other vehicles we’re about to talk about. So they laid the ground game in what we’re going to see. And innovation usually costs a lot of money initially. It just is what it is. Look at anything, whether it’s LED lighting, touchscreens, Bluetooth, infotainment, all that stuff, it came to expensive cars first. And so certain things, the Rivian, the Cybertruck, there are things about these things that are not failures, and they’ve paved the path forward. Now, where are we going on that path forward?

Caleb: Well, and that’s where, you know, it’s easy to dunk on the startups that go nowhere, right? That have these wildly different ideas and don’t have either the engineering or the financial backing or the design or whatever to make it happen. Everything that we just talked about right there are some big-name players that fully bought into this. And so that’s why I think, you know, people can be forgiven for believing that electric trucks were were imminent, is because you had Ford, GM, Tesla, and Rivian who is no longer a startup, right? Those are those are all real players in the space. Those are the ones that you’re going to see continue on building electric trucks into this next, you know, we say next generation, it’s really a, it’s a new iteration of what electric trucks probably should have been in the first place, right? So they had to launch with those six-figure trucks so that way, you know, they could actually afford to put these out, even though, like you mentioned, Rivian lost a whole bunch of money. But none of those were obtainable by average people. That’s what we’re looking forward to with Ford’s $30,000 electric truck, right? This one that seems to be smaller than a Maverick, one that you could actually buy, park in a city, get around easily. That is supposed to be another Model T moment that changes the way cars are built. And Ford has put so much into that. You know, if you’ll remember our friends at The Autopian, David Tracy was chasing this prototype down the road, you know, like it was in full camo and he was pretty much like getting up in the driver’s face like, “We saw it, we saw it.” But that truck had a QR code that you would scan, it would take you to a launch page or whatever on a Ford website. And I mean, they know that this is a big deal. They know that once they unwrap this thing, that there are going to be people who are interested, and arguably even those who aren’t into any other EVs. And I think that’s the part of the market that Slate was able to grab hold of, right? Luddites like Andrew and and maybe like myself. You know, it’s somewhat common, you know, for my friends that I don’t necessarily talk about cars very much with to reach out and say, “Hey, what do you think about this? What do you think about that?” But very few times have I had as many people come to me as they did about Slate. Those that see a super, super simple single cab, you know, like build it into an SUV if you want to, wrap it yourself, hand-crank windows, like I have a buddy who that is him to a T. And it doesn’t matter if it has 150 miles of range or whatever the heck, right? $24,950 starting price before destination, so obviously that’ll end up being a little bit more. But I think that the response to Slate should be a huge encouragement to Ford, because there are people who won’t buy into a new startup automaker because they don’t have the the recognition. Many more people, if I had to guess, would buy into a Ford knowing their history with trucks, right? So to me, those are the two standouts, but they of course aren’t the only ones that are coming.

Joel: So Ford’s $30,000 electric truck, right? First off, that is one of like five, don’t quote me on that, something like five vehicles that are going to come on that platform, right? They’re just starting with the truck. It’s going to be about the size of a RAV4 inside, then it’ll have a very small bed. It’s going to start about $30 grand. Unclear if the one you want is going to be $30 grand. Let’s, you know, very big asterisk. Unclear the mileage and range out of this truck and different battery packs and all these things. I believe it’s going to be LFP. That does change the factors for the cold. But this is going to be a small truck. This is not this is going to be the size of a just a little bigger than the Slate. Like, this is not a Lightning replacement. And what I really want to talk about there is the Lightning was supposed to get a second-gen truck. It was originally going to arrive in like 2025, then 2026, then 2027. At one point, Jim Farley, CEO of Ford, called that truck the Millennium Falcon of trucks, which I’m not sure if Mr. Farley’s seen Star Wars and understands—

Andrew: Yeah, that’s not a good—

Joel: —that was a really interesting comparison, I got to be honest, but like I think it was one of those things of look at this bucket of bolts, we’re going to—

Caleb: “This is the Titanic of EVs, baby!”

Joel: Probably not the—

Andrew: Maybe not what you’re looking for, yeah.

Caleb: “This is the OceanGate Explorer, baby!”

Joel: Probably not the best qualifier, but what was interesting was this was going to be a big truck. This was going to be a future-forward, it was probably cab-forward, I believe, based on the patents we saw. We’re talking about like they patented swiveling seats, they patented like a desk that folds out, they were looking at this being like a remote office. This was going to have a frunk that you could configure with different shelving units. Again, we saw all the patents for these different things. This new $30,000 truck is nothing like that. Let’s just, you know what I mean? Like, this is going to be a simple, back-to-basics truck. It’ll have a touchscreen, of course, but like, you know, I doubt it’s going to have climate control knobs because even a Maverick doesn’t now, right? It wouldn’t be surprised if it has a screen out of a Maverick. So it’s going to be a different truck than what we were had and are going to get. It’s not going to be something that’s towing our boats. And also, the way they’re building it, they’re looking to revolutionize the assembly line. That’s what they their words are to be clear and not mine. Caleb’s laughing at me. But the interesting thing is, and and Andrew wrote a whole story about this, is the skateboard situation, like three lines merging into one, but the point where I was going with this is they’re taking a play out of the Tesla Cybertruck book. This thing’s going to use megacastings. It’s going to be cab-forward, and it’s going to have like three or four main components that all bolt together so it’s simpler to build, it’s simpler to repair, and it’s a simpler truck. Like, they this came from a Cybertruck. And I think that’s really important to to give credit to the rolling chrome dumpster for, I guess. You guys are like looking at me like I’m an idiot.

Andrew: Do you guys think there’s any chance that the Ford truck will use a midgate like the Sierra Silverado EV have or like the Chevy Avalanche had, where—

Joel: No, that’s way too expensive for this price point, no way.

Andrew: Dang it, because that would be awesome. I was so impressed with that in the Sierra EV. I was so. If you got a little bed, this is the perfect supplement. All right. Because that’s always my thing with these tiny trucks, right, like these Maverick-sized trucks. It’s like the bed, it’s good it’s good to have a bed and yes, it’s nice to be able to to carry around filthy things, but like, if the bed is less than 6 feet long, it’s just kind of, I don’t know, I’m like—

Joel: I’m glad you brought this up, Andrew, because something that Caleb alluded to that we didn’t get to was a startup called Telo, T-E-L-O. Telo is exactly what you’re talking about. It is a very small truck. The standard bed is like 60 inches long, okay, but it has a midgate and it will fold down and then with the seats, right? And it’ll allow you to extend that bed without the actual bed extending to like 8 feet. And it’s supposed to be a truck that is all it’s like it’s kind of like the Mini Cooper, like there’s no front end almost, right? It’s a cab-forward design, just crush up there. And basically, supposed to hold four adults the size of like me, you, and Caleb. And then have a bed behind it, and it’s supposed to have rapid fast charging, like a really expensive EV. It’s supposed to be able to, I don’t remember the exact range off the top of my head, I don’t remember any of the actual specs. We don’t actually have, by the way, all the specs yet. Like, this is not in production. But they are looking at what they’re looking at like it coming later this year, hopefully. Like, we’ve seen it, they’ve got preproduction trucks rolling around LA. We’ve seen photos of it, so that’s an and this is the same size like that Slate and Ford situation.

Andrew: When it comes to capability, especially and this is especially relevant to electric trucks, I don’t mind if it can’t do everything at once if it has multimodal capability. Like, I don’t need to be able to haul five people and 1,500 pounds worth of lumber. I’m fine if it can do a lot of cargo and one person, or a lot of people and no cargo. Like, it’s very, very rare that I’m doing everything at once. As long as like if you’re going to have a small platform, if you can if you can like kind of cycle between jobs, that’s how I think you get a winning formula with these small trucks.

Joel: I want to go to Caleb, but I did look up the Telo specs that I didn’t have off the top of my head: 4-second 0-60, 350 miles of range, all-wheel drive, $40 grand.

Andrew: Wow, yeah, that’s that’s pretty—

Caleb: Just what everybody wants in a pickup truck.

Andrew: Yeah, right.

Caleb: You know what I mean? The thing, you know, Andrew, you’re talking about it doesn’t have to do everything all at one time. What you have to remember about about truck customers, of which I most certainly am one, is that like they’re probably just going to do it anyway. You know what I mean? Like, the idea that like people in the cab actually affect payload, like there’s going to be a lot of old boys that don’t really heed that. So it’s funny because you have those that like totally know everything, like they know the doorjamb sticker by heart, they can tell you GVWR, no problem, and then there are those who are like, “What are you talking about? Google says I can do this and also this,” and they assume that it means at the same time. Oftentimes those people end up buying a dually Ram with a Cummins and they put the 6,000-pound slide-in camper in the bed. But again, that’s that’s not a knock on truck drivers, that’s that’s I am one of you, okay? It’s just people overestimate.

Joel: I think part of the issue is is that, you know, a lot of these truck owners, they’re they’re taking their kids to hockey. They’re taking their kids to soccer. They’re doing what I’m doing, right? They’re most of these guys aren’t even ever towing. Their receiver’s probably never seen an actual hitch put into it. And I think that the issue here is is that people aren’t buying what they need, they’re buying what they want. They want a big F-150. They feel safe, right? They’ve got all the room in the bed for the soccer the hockey gear, the soccer gear, whatever. And they’ve got all this space in the back. Gas is expensive. I don’t know.

Andrew: That’s going to be that’s kind of what makes me so fascinated by Slate, just like and what they’re going to do because they have the aesthetic like absolutely nailed. It’s like that is that is old school truck, like perfectly. And it’s not going to be that expensive. It looks cool, exactly. But, but, critically, it’s it’s little. So it’s going to be really interesting to see. I feel like it’s a put-up-or-shut-up car. Like, if you’re like, “I want an old truck,” like, bro, there it is. Like, that’s your old truck, that’s a modern truck, but yeah.

Joel: Caleb’s got kids, I got kids, right? Like, by the time you install rear seats, your bed’s going to be now tinier, right? And I’m not sure my kids are going to be on a daily basis excited and jazzed about the idea of me having to flip forward the front seat so they can get into the back seat in and out of school constantly every day and functionality-wise, it’s not a great family car, it feels like to me. But to your point, it looks cool.

Andrew: And Joel, you’re you’re touching exactly on why people didn’t use pickup trucks as daily drivers 30 years ago because it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Until we made everything crew cab and everything actually a family car because, like as we’re saying, like a lot of people just want to just want to look like they’re driving a truck.

Joel: I don’t even know if there’s a Costco buy where Caleb lives, and that’s not a like a dig or a joke.

Caleb: I live in Walmart country, we have Sam’s Club, baby.

Andrew: Yeah, right, right.

Joel: Okay, so you’re about to prove my point, okay? You get in a Ram 1500, an F-150, a Hummer EV is actually changes the game because it’s got the four-wheel steer, right? And it’s a little shorter than those bigger trucks. But like an F-150 or a Ram 1500, the parking lot is littered with them. And I got to be honest, it’s a pain. Like, that’s a full three-point turn truck. It’s kind of a nightmare, and I look at these guys that own these things and I’m like, you drive this everywhere? Do you need to? Do you want to? You don’t find this to be a pain? Does it fit in your garage?

Caleb: Dude, I got a crew cab long bed F-350, all right. It’s a big truck, and I drove it to the airport, got there early, you know, there was nobody beside or behind me. I get back a few days later, I got cars right beside me, and no kidding, there’s a Jag right behind me. Like, across the aisle, but there was not enough aisle for me to turn that thing around. It was an easy eight-point turn. And uh,

Joel: Eight-point turn. I’m going to include that in the title of this podcast: Eight-point Turns. See, but you’re not going to have that situation in a Slate, a Tello, the Ford’s upcoming EV. Like, these are smaller trucks. And and by the way, all of these small trucks—so let’s say you don’t want to start with the the Slate because it’s too basic, and let’s say you don’t want Tello because it doesn’t look conventional and you don’t trust it, I don’t know, whatever. So let’s say you want the, Ford, you’re like, “I’m going to buy a Ford, I trust Ford.” So let’s say you buy this $30,000 EV. If it has a 4-foot bed and you can fit it has the interior room of a RAV4 and you can get it for, let’s call it $35, $38 grand. I think the average market price of a car right now is $52k, I think that just came out this week or last week or whatever. So yeah, you could put your kid’s hockey gear in the back and it wouldn’t it wouldn’t smell. You could put your kid’s soccer gear in the back, you’re going to fit your kids. Is it going to have the F-150 legroom? No. But could you fit in your garage? Yes. Is it going to be a pain in the butt at Costco? No. I think that it’ll be really interesting to see how the market responds to these new, smaller, cost-effective pickup trucks in an era where the average car costs $50 grand, the average truck costs $66 grand. And by the way, that’s not EVs, that’s just cars.

Andrew: It would be great if this little EV moment kind of like railroaded us back full circle to a smaller, more practical vehicle.

Joel: That cost less money. Wouldn’t that be like ironic? Heavily ironic?

Andrew: It would, it would be very funny. But I mean, I’m for it, I think it’s great.

Caleb: I got a deep pull for you, all right? Canoo. You guys remember Canoo?

Joel: Oh my God, dude, I was so excited about Canoo. It was so cool.

Caleb: It was going to be so cool. They were going to put a stinking thing on the moon. You talk about a truck that can also be a van that can also be a this or a that. Dude, I so, there for a hot minute, okay? They were like headquartered less than an hour from my house. I was driving back from the airport, maybe that same time I got stuck in the parking lot, and I passed a Canoo prototype. And I was like, those are going to be so sick. Of course they never came to be, but

Andrew: So for those of you at home, that’s spelled CANOO, not canoe like the boat. This was a little like pill-shaped vehicle, basically, yeah, that could be a pickup truck, it could be converted to a van, it was a very and Walmart was going to buy a bunch of them, speaking of Walmart country, and then what was the what was the actual death? Like, they they just ran out of money or something, like how did they

Joel: Dude, they they blew through management and they changed their business model at one point, like they were going to be like lease-to-own or fleet-only, like they started out with a really great concept. They didn’t move quickly, they ran burned through a bunch of cash, they had a bunch of management shifts, then they had a bunch of business like actual plan shifts. And dude, as soon as they started burning through CEOs and and they changed the business model, I was like, that and it’s dead.

Andrew: Yeah, too bad. It it was quite novel looking, but yeah.

Joel: So, couple other things I want to talk about real quick. So let’s we did mention this in the intro, EREVs, extended-range electric vehicles, and hybrids. So hybrids are absolutely having a moment if you look at the sales data, right? Ford sells a grip of PowerBoost, Toyota’s got a Tundra that’s a hybrid that we’ve had a whole podcast about reliability about, Caleb and I did. EREVs, we do not have any EREV pickup trucks. EREVs are extended-range electric vehicles, basically the idea is, it’s like the Chevy Volt. You’ve got a really big battery pack, let’s call it 100 kilowatts, 100 kilowatt-hours, right? And then you have a, in the the sense of the Ram, you have the V6 we all know, Pentastar, iconic engine at this point, hilarious, under the hood. But that Pentastar V6 does not connect to the wheels, doesn’t drive the wheels, it provides power to the battery, acts as a generator. The battery then sends power to the electric motors, there is no clutch, there’s no connect, etc. So now we’ve got Ram that’s delivering the REV, which to be clear is no longer an electric truck, it’s an EREV. That’s coming. We have the next-gen Lightning, supposedly, coming with an EREV powertrain that is going to be a quote air quote freight train and have like 750 miles of range and tow all the things. And then GM has said they’re working on hybrids. They were not real clear if they’re hybrid hybrid or like EREV hybrid. My gut tells me hybrid hybrid. And and so and then we’ve got Scout. Scout with the buttons and the knobs and the and the iconic name and design. They’ve got electric vehicles and then they have EREVs, and now everyone, 80% of the people that reserve Scout, have reserved an EREV, and so they’re going to do the EREV first, if they actually produce the car.

Andrew: I think a hybrids are amazing. I think that is like conceptually the most logical like setup. EREV, I really like the idea, I guess I’m kind of conflicted on EREV, actually, because I’m like it it seems like a maintenance nightmare. Like a motor that only occasionally runs, like in my world of maintaining power equipment and ATVs and chainsaws and quads and stuff, it’s like the the engines have the hardest life when it’s like run briefly and hard and then put away for months, so it’s just like oh God, there’s such a pain to keep alive. So I worry that that will like rear its head in the maintenance of these machines, but we’ll see, we shall see. Caleb?

Caleb: I don’t know, I don’t know how I feel either. You know, like with the with the Scout, okay? I think they nailed a lot of parts of that truck, right? Like the vibe of it, I do really think that they got right.

Andrew: Design is perfect. Yeah.

Caleb: Design is sweet. Dude, whenever you were sending me, because you were at the event, right, where they unveiled that? Dude, you were sending me pictures of the bench seat in the front, I was like, yes, oh, that’s that’s it, that’s it. And I don’t think that, you know, an EREV takes away from that. I just I have a gut feeling they are going to regret not offering at least a regular hybrid. I think that a lot of people who even know what an old Scout is are going to be like, “I don’t want anything that’s that runs on electricity.” Maybe not, I don’t know, but

Andrew: Yeah, I agree. I think, yeah, mild hybrid on that maybe would have, no question it would have sold more quickly. Let’s be real, no question.

Joel: I got to just say, I agree with Andrew’s initial knee-jerk reaction. An EREV, it seems like a great idea. It’s going to run forever when I run out of juice, I have a battery, I can tow forever, whatever. But like couple things. One, we backwarded the math on the Ram thing with the Pentastar V6 and the EREV, and I think once the juice runs out, we mathed it to something like, I don’t know, 18, 19 miles per gallon right. It’s going to get what a Pentastar V6 gets on the highway, but now you’re dragging a 100 kilowatt-hour battery pack along. That’s dead, first off. So now it’s just as efficient as you’d just bought a regular V6 Ram. Second, the duty cycle, what a nightmare, right? This is not a Volt, this is a pickup truck. And you’re starting and stopping and the engine cold and all that stuff, how long does it warm up, how often you changing the oil, all these things. But most importantly, the complicated nature. It’s not a regular hybrid. It’s an EREV. And it’s kind of like the worst of all worlds. Like, I’m carrying two powertrains with me now, guys. Like, not one powertrain that’s integrated together. I’m carrying a gas engine, so when I run out of juice, I have a generator built in because then I don’t have to carry like a Honda generator in my bed. What if you just had a big enough battery and didn’t run out of juice and we had a better charging network? What if we’re focusing on the wrong problem? Like, what if trucks just charged fast and we had chargers?

Caleb: Quit, quit getting logical, stop it.

Andrew: No, over the course of the last 20 minutes I have been like, oh, EREV kind of makes sense, and then it’s just like, no, no, I don’t like this anymore.

Caleb: Well, dude, just think of it, right? Like, like Tom and and and Joey and all these guys are going to be like, “Hey, come get in this new it’s electric, but it’s not,” you know. Hop in, and he’s going to take them for a ride, he’s going to do his 0-60 launch, and they’re going to be like, “Wow, this is amazing.” And then that Pentastar V6 is going to kick on and it’s going to go grrrrrr, and they’re going to be like, “What’s that?” And he’s going to say, “Oh, it’s just the battery charging.” That’s a cool that’s a cool thing, that’s a cool thing. I got a Pentastar. Like, no, dog. I don’t you think they’re ever going to even charge it? Like, are the good old boys going to charge it?

Andrew: Oh god, this was a, you know, funny you should mention that. Even this has even been a problem with Volt people. I remember um, you know, Matt Farah, Smoking Tire, he was telling me somebody he knows had a Volt and had owned it for years and never charged it. He’d borrowed it and he was like they were like, “Oh yeah, the car’s been driving like shit for years.” And he was like, “Yeah, it’s there’s no power.” Like, you’re using you’re running off like the backup generator. I was like, so yeah, it’s I yeah. I think mild hybrid is great, EREV, I’m not so sure.

Joel: Let’s wrap it up here with some final thoughts. So, I think we went into this, okay, just to the context in there, like the genesis of this episode was, you know, we had the confluence of Slate, we had the confluence of Telo nearing production this year, Ford’s been now talking about it’s $30,000 truck that’s coming. And and you know, we’ve watched everything else that’s happening, it’s just time to address it. But the question, like the working question was, do electric trucks make sense? Do EVs make sense for trucks? And so I think that I want to come full circle and just kind of have each of us address our thoughts on on that.

Caleb: Okay. So this is simply it, okay? As someone who acknowledges that whenever they have range, electric trucks tow phenomenally, they have great weight distribution, they just go, they’ve got so much power, all of those things, right? The fact that Ford, Chevy, and Ram are not trying to make their heavy duty pickups electric tells the story.

The fact that there is no electric Super Duty or Ram HD or Silverado dually electric version coming out, I think is a pretty good sign that even they know it’s not where it needs to be yet. Capability-wise, performance-wise, sure, right? But it’s not time for that yet. And whenever you’re talking about the types of customers who are buying those, you know, it’s like I hear somebody that drives a, you know, an F-450 that’s just out of warranty, you know, they complain about, you know, price on this or that. I got to, you know, like diesel trucks are expensive to maintain, too, but you’re not you’re not replacing a a wheel motor, right? And nobody is doing an electric solid rear axle in mass like that yet, even though such things exist in concept.

I think that tells the story. That yes, they can do truck things, and they can do it really well, but they can’t do it in the circumstances that normal true truck people, true truck people “air quote” can tend to use them in. Air quotes, right?

Joel: All right, all right. Andrew, what’s your what’s your thought? What’s your take?

Andrew: I’ll speak to the off-roadiness a little bit, because Caleb was talking like commercial-related stuff. So, a lot of, one thing people reference a lot is, oh, you got that low-end power, which is great instant torque, which is great for off-roading, and yes, but I think a off-road electric advantage that people don’t think about enough is the low-speed control. A lot of things that we teach when we’re rock crawling is you’re almost, you’re really driving with the brake, because low range in a gas vehicle will naturally pull you ahead. Now, with an electric truck, you’re able to control the amount of power with a level of precision that is significantly higher than than a vehicle with a torque converter or a clutch. You’re not like slipping, you’re not trying to kind of mess with multiple inputs, you’re just have one pedal and you are very, once you get good at it of course, takes a little getting used to, but the level of control off-road is absolutely incredible. And, the gimmicks like Hummer’s crab walk and like rear-wheel steering actually do pay dividends. I was absolutely shocked. We took a we took a Hummer EV at our tight trails here in New York, and this is not desert, this this is very tight stuff, and we got that thing through because it was able to walk diagonally through trails and uh, you know, counterpoint, it’s like, well, it wouldn’t need all these fancy tricks if it weren’t the size of a shipping container. But, but, it does make use of its unique powertrain. I mean, the way having the back wheels be able to steer is really genuinely useful in an off-road setting. So, I think off-road electric future is bright, for sure.

Joel: I actually just want to say that I love how we’re wrapping this up because, like you know, Caleb came from the commercial work duty cycle angle of it, Andrew came at at the off-road duty cycle angle of it, and so I’m going to I’m going to split the difference, right? I’ll come into for my life, right, like taking the kids to soccer practice, towing boats short distances, living in the winter. And I think where I come from is as I’m listening to both of you is they make a lot of sense, but it’s determined by the use case. To your point, Caleb, they don’t make a Super Duty or an electric heavy duty Silverado because they know that it’s not going to do what those guys need to do of like hot-shot 40,000-pound towing of car car hauler down the road to make it makes no sense. Absolutely, makes no sense.

And look, if you’re buying an F-150 because you’re towing 8,000-pound boat 500 miles in a shot on the regular, it doesn’t make sense for a Lightning. Like, legitimately, it doesn’t, because you’re going to spend so much time charging all the time. It makes no sense. And also, if you’re fast charging only, you’re not going to save a ton of money, like compared to charging at home. That’s the use case, right? But for someone like me, our family cottage is it’s a real distance, it’s 204 miles. It’s a three hours flat plus or minus, depending on traffic, right? So, that’s a serious distance. Basically, a Rivian or any any of these vehicles, to be clear actually, right now that were or are on sale, they can on one charge leave my house and get to the lake, right? I can charge home, I can leave here, I can get all the way to the lake. I might be either close to dead or have extra charge, depends on the vehicle. And then I’d plug in at the lake with a charger and charge up and then I can drive home, like after the weekend. And I don’t tow long distances often. So like, the Lightning was the single greatest vehicle I’ve ever hauled the boats out of the lake with, because it’s like to Andrew’s point, I just took my foot off the brake and just a smidge of throttle and it’s just right out of the water. It was just no wheel slip, no nothing, no four-low, no, it was just a simple.

And so my my thought is, I think the F-150 Lightning didn’t get a good as chance. I think there was a lot of slant pieces and a lot of things of like, oh, it only tows 100 miles if you put all these things, so oh, it, you know, and it’s like, are you towing that often? Like, are you being honest? Like, are you just taking your kid in your F-150 to soccer practice? Would you like to pay 13 cents a kilowatt-hour instead of $5 a gallon, $3 a gallon, whatever it is? I think that if people had thought about what they were doing with their F-150, I think there was a study out there, was like 7% of F-150 owners, and I’m going to get this wrong, don’t email me. I mean, you can email me, but 7% of F-150 owners either use their beds or tow with them regularly. It was an Axios study like a year or two ago, I don’t remember anymore, but it was like a single-digit number for F-150 owners, and it was either towing or bed. But the point I’m making here is that a lot of people, when you’re selling almost a million trucks a year, are using these F-150s like cars and SUVs. And a Lightning or any of these electric trucks could do that, but that’s not what they’re marketed as. And when you read a slant piece that you’re going to lose all your range in the cold and you’re not going to be able to tow 500 miles in a shot, it’s scary. You’re reading it on the internet. So I think I think the answer is yes, they make a lot of sense based on a use case. What is your use case and it does not make sense for every use case and for every person? And these next trucks are going to have a very different use case and a very different set of qualifications that make sense for different people. 
And it’ll be interesting how that plays out, which I’m sure we’re gonna have this topic again.

The post Big Electric Trucks Flopped at Ford, GM, and Ram. What Comes Next? appeared first on The Drive.

“Are you armed?!” the police officer screamed. “Get out of the car!”

On an otherwise normal Sunday afternoon in late June, I’d decided to take the $155,000 Range Rover I was testing that week out to run some errands with my wife. Little did I know that choice would complete a technological chain linking surveillance cameras, AI, and law enforcement that led to me and my wife being surrounded by police, hands on their guns, in a Kohl’s parking lot in suburban Minnesota.

After dropping off our Amazon returns, we’d just gotten back in the Range Rover and reversed maybe two feet out of the spot when four cop cars came flying out of nowhere and boxed us in. The officers jumped out and started shouting. It’s a situation that can quickly and frequently turn bad, so as unprepared as I was, I followed their orders, got out with my hands up, and tried to figure out what the hell was happening.

Eventually, after a tense hour, I did. The Plymouth Police Department had been tracking me for days using Flock license plate cameras, waiting for the right moment to strike, because they thought I’d stolen the Range Rover. And the reason I was ID’d as a dangerous car thief was a simple data error made 2,000 miles away in California, creating an edge case within an edge case that Flock’s AI camera network was unable to handle.

We now live in a surveillance state where cameras mounted on stoplights are tracking our cars, our devices, our pets, and even us. This is just the beginning; next, these cameras could be put in motion using our kids’ school buses. Whether you’ve actually stolen a car or are just rolling down the road having done nothing wrong, like me, once these systems have you in their crosshairs, there’s pretty much only one way it can go. Welcome to the future. It’s scary out there.

Back in the Kohl’s lot, I was standing there with my hands up, still getting over the shock of throwing the Range Rover in reverse and seeing four cop cars materialize on the backup camera, lights blazing. Officer Max Ganshyn asked me again if I was armed or if I had any firearms in the vehicle while two officers circled around the passenger side to get my wife out. He patted me down, and when he realized I presented no risk, he asked for my ID. Then he asked who owned the Range Rover.

“It’s a complicated answer, and I’m happy to explain, but I’m going to need you to be patient,” I replied. I tried explaining what The Drive is, what I do for a living, and how I could be driving a six-figure luxury SUV that doesn’t belong to me. A confused look crossed his face. “Yeah, I’m not a car guy,” he said. Fortunately, one of the other officers had heard of us.

On the other side of the car, the officers were busy grilling my wife; our stories lined up because we were telling the truth, and they seemed to relax a bit. But they still weren’t letting us go. I sensed my opportunity and asked point blank: What is going on here, and why are we being detained?

“The plates on this car are stolen,” Officer Ganshyn said. My face must’ve twisted in disbelief because he continued, saying they weren’t sure whether the car itself or just the plates were stolen. This made absolutely no sense. Car companies keep meticulous track of the fleets they loan out to the media. The vehicles all have special manufacturer or dealer plates that are logged every time one enters or exits. The officers eventually ran the Range Rover’s VIN, and it came back clean, but in their view, the plates were definitely stolen.

Before I could even process that, another officer dropped the big surprise: they’d actually been tracking me around town for days via Flock cameras. But they kept losing the trail, so when a camera alerted them that the Range Rover had been spotted turning into Kohl’s that morning, they quickly set up their ambush and waited for me and my wife to walk out of the store and get into the SUV.

I was blown away, but somehow still with it enough to ask if I could see the camera footage. One of the officers pulled out his phone, opened the Flock app, and showed me two photos: a wide shot of the Range Rover going through the intersection and a zoomed-in shot of the New Jersey license plate, which clearly reads 34 10 DTM and says VEHICLE MFR along the bottom. Critically, the number 10 is in a much smaller font than the rest of the tag, which is the non-standard structure New Jersey uses for manufacturer plates.

Again, I tried to explain that I had no idea why a license plate on a press car would be flagged like this. “Can you get Range Rover on the phone?” Officer Ganshyn asked. A tall order on a Sunday. As I started dialing, he added that the plate was reported stolen by a Jaguar Land Rover dealership in Los Angeles.

After a few tries, I managed to get someone at JLR on the phone and handed the call off to the officer, who spoke with them for about 10 minutes. He hung up and came back over with an explanation that clarified everything in an instant, but somehow made it worse.

The New Jersey plates that were allegedly stolen from the LA dealer were 34 03 DTM, not 34 10 DTM. But when the police report was created and the plate was entered into Flock’s system, it was just recorded as 34 DTM. Just the five large characters, no little number in the middle. And Flock’s AI tech wasn’t registering that non-standard little number when it began picking up the Range Rover around town. It just saw 34 DTM in large type and started alerting the local police.

As we all stood there shaking our heads, including my wife, who was finally allowed to join me, I connected the final dot. A lot of vehicles in JLR’s media fleet have a New Jersey manufacturer plate with the same alphanumeric structure—34 ## DTM—and Officer Ganshyn observed that meant it was now a nationwide issue. Anywhere a police department has a partnership with Flock, any other JLR-owned car with the same plate structure is going to get flagged as stolen. In fact, four other 34 ## DTM cars were being tracked around Minnesota that week, according to Officer Ganshyn. I was just the first one to get nabbed. The only way to stop it would be for the LAPD to correct their initial report and update Flock’s system, which Jaguar Land Rover was now racing to make happen following the phone call.

Still, he warned me to drive straight home, park the Range Rover, and leave it there. If I were to cross into the neighboring town, I’d probably get flagged again and go through this entire ordeal again with a different set of officers. His parting words were ominous: “You’re lucky we’re in Plymouth. If you were in Minneapolis, they definitely would’ve come at you with guns drawn.”

How ironic that this was happening not two weeks after we published a report on the privacy risks of Flock license plate cameras being turned into an all-encompassing surveillance system. The article went viral and has been shared tens of thousands of times on social media. I guess Officer Ganshyn didn’t see it. Can’t say I saw myself being caught up in the system so soon, either, but here we are.

A couple of days later, I got a copy of the police report that added a fun kicker to it all. Turns out, the 34 03 DTM plate that kicked everything off was, in fact, not stolen. “One of the fleet vehicles, bearing NJ 34(03)DTM, was used in a photo shoot in Los Angeles. During the photo shoot, that plate for the vehicle was misplaced,” it read. “The corporation had to report the plate as lost to law enforcement. The plate was reported as NJ 34DTM instead of NJ 3403DTM.”

It’s embedded above for you to enjoy. It was also kind of fun to read a clinical description of police watching me before they boxed me in. “I observed the driver, who was a white male wearing shorts and a green shirt, as he was putting something in the back seat of the car. I could also see a white female getting into the front passenger seat. When the driver started getting into the driver’s seat, officers initiated a box and pin on the vehicle.”

Also: “Both the driver and the passenger were cooperative and exited the vehicle without issue.” I told The Drive‘s EIC, Kyle Cheromcha, I’d like that in my permanent file.

But finding at least some humor in one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever experienced in over 15 years of reviewing cars doesn’t negate how completely insane—and avoidable!—this all was. A simple data-entry error, magnified and broadcast nationwide by a growing surveillance network operated through an opaque partnership between a private company and public agencies, led police to identify me as a car thief and set up a sting to take me down. I mean, they even had a drone flying overhead during the “bust.”

And the more I’ve sat with the aftermath, the more I’m thinking about how, with a different set of officers in a different city, or a different unsuspecting driver with 34 ## DTM New Jersey plates who was a little less collected, this could’ve ended so, so much worse. Thank God our kids weren’t with us. I’m not sure if I would’ve been able to react as calmly.

Got a wild story? Send us a line at tips@thedrive.com

The post How Flock Cameras Wrongly Tracked Me for Days Over ‘Stolen’ Plates and Sent Police After Me appeared first on The Drive.

Is Minneapolis, Minnesota on Tesla’s punch list as the automaker eyes new markets for its robotaxi service?

On Saturday, an eagle-eyed reader named George with Victory & Reseda spotted a Tesla Cybercab in an unexpected location: Minneapolis, Minnesota. George said there were actually two units of the gold Teslas quietly sitting unattended in a parking lot. Why?

George told The Drive the two Cybercabs were sitting in a parking lot outside of a Tesla-owned office in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Park and were clearly visible to anyone driving down MN Highway 610.

The two cars had VINs ending around 650, according to George, indicating these two cars might be early production models.

Both cars had steering wheels, but lacked a plastic shroud around the steering columns, according to George. The two production-intent-looking black leather seats we’ve seen before were onboard.

EPA documents revealed Cybercab specs that Tesla has held close to its chest. The filings indicated that the two-seat coupe has a 219-horsepower front motor and a curb weight of 3,113 pounds. A smaller battery pack of about 50 kWh is indicated as the power source and driving range nets around 280 miles per charge.

Currently, Waymo is actively laying its ground game to bring its autonomous robotaxi service to the Minneapolis area. Two weeks ago I spotted a few of the company’s next-gen robotaxis, sourced from Zeekr, charging with Waymo handlers in the western suburb of St. Louis Park.

Today, Tesla operates its robotaxi service in five U.S. markets including Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, and San Francisco. The obvious question is what are two Cybercabs doing in Minneapolis? Is Tesla planning to expand its robotaxi service to Minnesota?

Got a tip? See something? Send us a line at tips@thedrive.com

The post Two Tesla Cybercabs Just Landed in Minneapolis. Nobody Knows Why appeared first on The Drive.

Ford’s next attempt at getting America onboard with electric trucks is just around the corner with prototypes now out testing in the real world.

The upcoming $30,000 electric truck from Ford was spotted testing in Dearborn, Michigan with heavy camouflage covering what appears to be production-intent lighting, body, and interior giving us a good look at the pint-sized truck.

To date, it’s been made clear by Ford that this new electric truck, which shares nothing with and will be nothing like the full-size F-150 Lighting that is now dead, will be about the size of a Toyota RAV4 with a small bed along for the ride. If that sounds like a Ford Maverick, you aren’t wrong. These photos of a prototype not only confirm all this, but also provide perspective. The small electric truck was spotted alongside a Ford Expedition for visual scale.

We can also confirm this particular prototype is rolling on 19-inch wheels wrapped in Michelin E Primacy tires, sized at 245/55R19. Though, it’s unclear if this is the standard wheel and tire package or some sort of upgrade and or option.

The truck features less of a cab forward design than we expected and cuts a more traditional shape. Though, note how raked back the windshield is for aerodynamics in the name of efficiency. The blunt front end features a camera on this prototype, and the lower intakes appear to feature active shutters for efficiency.

Real door handles can be seen (thank you, Ford) along with what appears to be a spoiler off the back of the cab. The back glass is hard to make out due to the camouflage.

What can be seen is a huge touchscreen inside the cab hanging off the dashboard. The clad dashboard and angle doesn’t allow us to see whether there’s a digital gauge cluster or if this will be more of a Tesla-like situation with a single screen inside the cabin. Thick A-pillars are clearly visible and those might hamper visibility of pedestrians, but we’ll reserve final judgement for now.

We’ll continue to update this story as development of the $30,000 electric truck continues at Ford.

Got a tip? See something? Say something by dropping us a line at tips@thedrive.com

The post Spied: Ford’s $30,000 Electric Truck Caught Next to an Expedition appeared first on The Drive.

Are independent mechanics about to get locked out of wrenching on new vehicles? Should you be allowed and able to choose who fixes the car that you own? Should you be able to work on your own car?

The quiet battle brewing over the right to repair could decide the answer to these questions all within the walls of congress without you ever getting a say. The fight has been brewing for over a decade, and now it’s back in spotlight. Ford CEO Jim Farley made a comment about the topic that should make every car owner uncomfortable.

Farley’s comment that modern cars are too complex and his argument that it’s a safety issue for you to work on your own car is just one piece of the puzzle. The larger question, and the real danger, is what happens if automakers win this fight that you didn’t even realize existed. The feds are involved and President Trump is now urging the EPA to clarify what repairs are legal, but the current administration’s latest move only takes aim at emissions equipment. It also is a memo and by no means changing the current situation. This isn’t a new topic and has been on the docket for years with bipartisan coalitions introducing bills, U.S. Senators calling out automotive executives for opposing right to repair, and even the feds telling automakers to ignore right to repair laws in certain states. The issue can affect things as simple as changing brake pads on your car. And cars being more connected and complicated than ever isn’t helping things.

On the latest episode of The Drivecast we discuss the right to repair, how we got here, why it’s back in the news, what’s happening, what it means for you, and what you can do about it.

First day here? The Drivecast is The Drive‘s weekly podcast that takes you behind-the-scenes on the largest controveries, stories, and characters shaping the automotive industry along with the way our roads look today. Powered by The Drive‘s inside access, original reporting, exclusives, and insights, The Drivecast aims to make everyone an insider.

Listen to The Drivecast via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music. Love it? Like it? Want to help? Leave a five-star review on your platform of choice to help get The Drivecast in front of more people. Have a suggestion, tip, request, or feedback? Drop us a line at feedback@thedrive.com. I promise, we read every single email.

Full Transcript

Joel: Today’s topic, right to repair. And you know, let’s just get into it. First off, start with the basics, Andrew. What is right to repair for people that don’t know?

Andrew: Yes, so I’m going to start with the kind of broad conceptual definition because slightly different ways of phrasing it have made their way into various pieces of legislation. Broadly speaking, right to repair is talking about the consumer’s right to basically understand and diagnose their own car. I mean, we typically talk about it in terms of cars, especially since this is a car site, but it absolutely also applies to home electronics, tools, technology. I mean everything, it applies to everything. And one of the most important things that I really want listeners to understand and everyone to understand is that this is not just about you and me tinkering on our old 90s vehicles in our shops. It’s about independent mechanics existing, basically, and being able to fix your late-model car. I mean if OEMs own every aspect of vehicle diagnosis, then they’re going to be the only game in town when it comes to servicing them. And I don’t think anybody any consumer wants that.

Joel: Well, I mean it overlays about modern cars and whether it’s gatekeeping itself for a mechanic. And I’m sure we’re going to touch on that today. You know, I remember there’s a shop here, we’re not going to start naming names, but there was a shop here who had to make a life decision of we’re going to spend X number of dollars so that we can basically license and have access to one of the German automakers’ tech systems so that they can actually work on modern cars from this German automaker. And eventually, they were like, “That ROI is not there for us. We can do oil changes and all basic stuff without that, so we’re going to not invest in that,” which means that certain things for that German car, if you owned it, you couldn’t go to this third party. You would have to literally go to the dealership, which actually that part of it is something we’re going to talk about. But it’s gatekeeping. So given that context, Andrew, and the broad conceptual definition we just went through, how do we get where we are today with talking about Jim Farley and obviously President Trump, but it goes even before that, right? This has been the news on and off for years.

Andrew: Yeah, absolutely. So I’ll give you kind of the run-up before we talk about what’s happening right now. I mean, we could go back to the dawn of industrial economics, really, but we’ve only got an hour here, so we’ll fast forward to let’s start with 2013. This is kind of the first time that people really heard the phrase right to repair in the news. My home state of Massachusetts passed a law that basically said all vehicles built after a certain year had to have had to be diagnosable with non-proprietary technology, kind of trying to avoid the situation you were just describing. And standardizations did exist before then, you know, we had things like OBD-II, which is where all cars made after ’96 had to be scannable with a certain kind of computer. But that Massachusetts ruling was really when when the American public first started hearing about this right to repair term, 2013. Okay, so then shortly after that, 2014, aftermarket and auto industry groups got together and joined a voluntary agreement that kind of codified the same thing, again, voluntary, codified the same concept, but their concession to OEMs was they would back off trying to push right to repair on a state level and try to do it federally. So we’re this is 2014, okay, this is now a long time ago, and automotive technology has changed a lot. I mean the Tesla Model S was still brand new basically back then, right? So critically, that kind of voluntary agreement doesn’t mention anything about vehicle data and telemetry, and this is going to become very important soon in this part of the story. So now we get to why this legislation is kind of on people’s minds again, and why we just saw executives from Ford and GM meeting with the President at the White House. So now there’s something being debated called the REPAIR Act, and that stands for Right to Equitable and Professional Auto Industry Repair, okay? That’s being tucked in to something called Build America 250 Act. This is also known as the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act or, commonly known as, the highway bill. This is currently being actively debated. Now, stay with me here. So very recently, there was language in the REPAIR Act that covered that data and telemetry stuff. So this see data telemetry this is very important because modern cars collect a lot of data, they use a lot of data. The data that lives inside their car computer brains becomes important to diagnosing them. OEMs want to keep that for themselves. Independent mechanics are like, “Hey, I need this. I need to be we need it to be able to diagnose modern cars,” which I think I agree with, personally. So the reason this is being debated again now, and I’m talking now, like as you’re listening to this, this is currently happening, language was removed about data and telemetry to go back to this 2014 era kind of language to get it into this highway bill that is in front of in Congress now. So you’ve got people on small-bizz advocates who are trying to get that reversed. As a matter of fact, an organization called the NFIB, which is the National Federation of Independent Business, that’s actually the largest small business association in the U.S., they sent a letter to Congress basically pleading to reinstate that language about data making sure that like an independent mechanic should be able to access vehicle data, basically. And there are some other spurs to come off of it, but basically that’s where we’re at right now is there’s two the two sides to the coin are you’ve got consumers and independent mechanics and small operations on one side, and then big corporations and shareholders on the other. It’s really that simple.

Joel: Tale as old as time.

Andrew: Exactly, yeah.

Joel: But now in modern times. And as you were saying something about all this stuff, you mentioned 2014 and all that, I was just thinking what happened around that era was the the the first real electric car that we all would know came into real mass production, right? The Model S, right? So it came in around 2012, 2013, and then it started picking up and then after that came the Model 3 and the Model Y. We had the second-gen Leaf, and now we have really truly connected cars. But even a RAV4 is a connected car now, right? We just did the story about that guy ripping out the Bluetooth and the GPS and the sat radio just so his car couldn’t be tracked, which is the podcast we did last week about being cars being tracked via license plate readers and signals from the the numbers on all of your smart devices. We live in a connected world. So now it’s in the news again, thanks to President Trump and Ford CEO Jim Farley. Take us behind the scenes on what the latest is on this.

Andrew: So basically there was a meeting with Mr. Farley and one of the GM execs, maybe Mary Barra, might have been someone else, in the White House, and they all they left and there were some follow-up questions, you know, of course, people wanted to know what like many things that come out of the White House, it was quite murky about what was actually decided. And someone from the Detroit Free Press caught Jim Farley at another event and they asked him point blank, “So you don’t want people repairing your own vehicles?” And you can watch the video on on Freep’s website. He kind of does these like Homelander eyes and is like, “Well, you know, no, it’s it’s a safety issue. Oh, you know, I can work on my old Bronco but I wouldn’t want to work on a new Bronco.” And as I was listening to that, I was thinking like, what a weird car to pick. Like if he had said Ford GT or like even Mustang Mach-E, I might have been like, yeah, okay, I guess. But a freaking Bronco, man, that’s like caveman technology. But I mean, I will concede there are some stuff, you know, there’s ADAS, there is some stuff that I wouldn’t want to touch as a private citizen, but certainly independent mechanics would want to be able to mess with that. And his comment, you can just watch the body language and the very careful way he phrased it. He was trying to make it about safety. And this is what you’re going to hear auto execs talking about this for the next as long as this is being debated. In the coming weeks and months, it’s they’re going to say oh, it’s not safe for people to work on their own cars. But like I said earlier, this isn’t about people working on their own cars. It’s about these companies hoarding all this data and information from us. When they sell you a car, you it should be your car to tinker with as you see fit. And so all this to bring it back to, of course, I wrote that up on the site and I will I will say I feel a little bit bad about using Mr. Farley’s name because it’s really not a Jim Farley issue or even a Ford issue. It’s an industry-wide issue. He just happened to be the guy who had the juicy quote and people really resonated with people because it is infuriating. You know, I’m sorry for Mr. Farley if he had any annoying meetings with his PR staff, I’m sure he did after that. But yeah, it’s an industry-wide issue and, you know, we’re going to keep seeing it.

Joel: You know, the couple things you said that are interesting is and I’m just going to try and go in order, I don’t remember everything, but like one, it was interesting that Farley would choose, like you said, the Bronco versus like a Mach-E, right? Like or a Lightning. Like if he had picked an electric car, we probably wouldn’t have batted an eye because like, you know, high-voltage batteries and whatever, but like picked a car that you can unbolt the doors. So in the defense of Mr. Farley, right? Okay. Even a Bronco, even a Bronco. So and let’s just side-step the ADAS stuff. By the way, ADAS is like adaptive safety equipment, right? So forward automatic emergency braking, automatic headlights, you have forward collision warnings, etc. If you let’s just side-step that, which by the way, that stuff is really important and if you take some of those sensors out, they need to be recalibrated. So like when you if you crash a car and you go to a repair shop, you need to either A, go to a certified repair shop or B, a shop that can bring in a certified person or take it to the dealership to calibrate that stuff, otherwise it really could like screw your car up if you were to be in traffic and it thought it was going to be in an accident, you weren’t going to be in an accident, then it then it hit the brakes or whatever. But that’s not the point. So like even a Bronco, the days of like when you would modify a car, probably even not truly in my lifetime because like electronic control systems came in play in the ’90s. My my E34 M5, which was a 1991 car, had electronically controlled powertrain through a first-generation board, okay? And we can talk about that another time, whatever. But so a modern car, like a Bronco, the powertrain’s running off electronics, right? So you used to cam the crap out of a car or you would modify all these other elements to the actual engine. Now, you plug in a computer and you just give it a a software code that’s employs a new tune that modifies the turbo or the boost or any of this other stuff, and suddenly you have more power, right? Yes, you can still increase like the size of the turbo and the boost pressure and all those things, that’s mechanical, arguably. But you can literally plug in one of those Summit tuners. Ford approves this, by the way. It’s like a $1,300 option on the Ranger the 2.3 turbo-four that’s on the Ranger and the Bronco. And suddenly you have more power. Like you just push a button. And that takes software and code, which is what that powertrain’s running on. Now, if you uploaded a bad piece of code, you can brick your car. You it would just not start. Like that car runs off electronics when you push a button, that’s how the car starts. So I mean, and I’m not trying to defend him, it’s just like there are so many electronics running through every piece and every element of the modern car at this point, that you got to ask yourself, I mean, I don’t know how to code. Like like I couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t know if a piece of code I’m putting in the car is bad. Would you?

Andrew: It’s actually not as hard as you might think. Not to contradict, but I mean, you know, I had an eighth-generation Honda Civic and, you know, that was home-coded. I mean it’s basically, I had a fuel map that was running off a piece of software called Hondata and I had to talk to it with a laptop and I would email the car’s information to a to a professional who knew how to read it. He would give me settings, I would input the settings, and we would go back and forth emailing each other. And we could refine, you know, things like throttle response and even power delivery. But all this to so I’m agreeing with you in one sense that

Joel: But you just said the same thing. You had to email the dude who was the expert or whatever. You had to still rely on someone, someone that knew how to code and make the tunes for you. And yes, it was collaborative or whatever, but like I guess actually, if I wanted to argue your point, I could just go to Claude and say I need a code but then again, what if I load a bad code and like I misfire my engine or I whatever, right? Yeah.

Andrew: But we’re kind of straying from right to repair here. I mean you’re talking stuff like modding and I mean that’s been around for a while and it’s even, again it’s not really about the home tinkerer. It’s about the whole OEM owning this information and walling it behind their their garden. I mean yeah, of course, in the broad sense of should just anybody be dicking around with their car in their driveway? No, I mean absolutely not, you know, they are dangerous pieces of equipment and you do need to be careful with them and treat them with respect, absolutely. But the the safety comment really disappears when you’re talking about independent pro mechanics, that’s who I’m the most nervous about losing access to this this information and, you know, I’m already feeling this frustration with my freaking lawnmower. I’ve got a Cub Cadet zero-turn electric lawnmower that I bought some new blades for and I bought them directly from the manufacturer and I went to put them on and I couldn’t find the spec anywhere, the torque spec. I mean this is a blade that’s going to be spinning on a very powerful motor, and they said, “No, you need to have it installed by a certified Cub Cadet person.” And I’m like, “Well, I live in a rural area, I I don’t have a way of executing that, and so I basically had to convince the customer service person. I was like, ‘Look, I’m going to bolt this blade to this motor and it’s the blood is on your hands if the spec is wrong.'” And they ultimately did give it to me. But I can’t I don’t want to count on that for like all my future stuff. So yeah, I guess that does bring it back to the driveway tinkering.

Joel: I mean, I suppose what if they gate keep an oil change? I mean that wouldn’t be a thing for an EV, but like, you know, in our Grand Cherokee, when you change the oil, there’s the oil maintenance minder on on the gauge cluster, right? And to change that, you’ve got to go through this this touch your nose, wiggle your finger, whatever. I never remember the sequence. I have to go to YouTube and look it up every time because you got to put it into run, tap the brake three times, hit the gas, blah blah blah, and then turn the car off again and then you turn it on and then it does it. And I’m like, all right, this is insanity, right? Yeah, I mean it it they’re so complicated, truly.

Andrew: Yeah, yeah, they are, yes. And and I’m not, I’m not disagreeing that modern cars are complex and heavily computerized, absolutely. And you know, another thing is like you were talking about stuff like the modern Hummer and I mean with CAN bus another layer of complication is everything is so interconnected within the car. On some vehicles like you were talking about a light bulb can brick the vehicle because it does it’s getting the wrong signal from the taillights so it won’t activate some ancillary system that you wouldn’t think is connected, but yeah, the days of like just having an old spool of wiring connecting ignition to a starter, that’s over. It’s all interconnected now, for sure.

Joel: Well, I mean that’s an interesting topic, right, because you went to the Rivian R1 Gen 2 launch and you saw where they took from 17 ECUs to 7 ECUs and made a zonal architecture and it’s a northwest southwest northeast thing. They took all this wiring out, which takes weight and complexity out. But also now, the entire car systems are running on seven ECUs, seven computers, right? And like if one of those ECUs goes out, you’re not going to, to your point about the, you know, the headlights are running on one wire and this wire and whatever, like those days are gone. They’re stripping as much out of these cars as they can and trying to have everything do everything. It saves weight, it saves cost for them.

Andrew: Yeah, the Rivian one’s an interesting example, I like electric vehicles in general, honestly, because I really like them. I loved the EV Sierra, I like the Rivian, I honestly am enjoying the Hummer much to my own surprise, quite a bit. Electric propulsion is awesome. I really like it and I love the idea that of Rivian, you know, reducing their wire usage and simplifying.

Joel: Feel a but coming on.

Andrew: Oh yeah, no, no, well, the but is I just want to still be able to get the specs to fix it if like I’m in a Rivian and the motor fails in 10 years, I want to be able to not necessarily, if Rivian goes out of business, I want the aftermarket to be able to build the part, right? I want things to to keep going on. This is, I mean, this is another thing that is connected to right to repair very much so is if a company like let’s use Honda for example

Joel: Fisker, Fisker, Fisker, use Fisker.

Andrew: Yeah, okay, perfect example, right, let’s use a real example, yeah, Fisker. You know, all their stuff is locked down and once the company goes away, it’s like, well, now these cars are giant paperweights. It’s, well, if the aftermarket was able to step in and supply things, that might not be the case, but yeah, so right to repair’s really going to affect your ability to keep a car for a long time. Once you get past 15 years, you know, I just have this problem trying to find a freaking windshield cowl for my 2003 beamer, BMW doesn’t make it anymore, they’re not interested in building it, so you got to go to the aftermarket. And if right to repair doesn’t pass, that won’t happen anymore. You won’t there won’t be an aftermarket. This is what’s at stake.

Joel: It’s interesting, too, because so that 300ZX that’s in our garage, Nissan doesn’t make a lot of parts for that car anymore. It’s very annoying. And during our interview with Ponz, he’s the VP of Nissan North America and he was on the Drivecast a couple months ago, he he announced, we broke the news, that they’re going, he’s got a guy in place that over the next, I don’t remember what it was, 12, 16 months, they’re going to literally spin up a program that is going to bring parts that are for defunct cars back into production and support the aftermarket and blah blah blah. And I was like, cool, I may need like a blue dashboard or whatever, right? Like I was like, bring me some blue plastic clips, man. I need some plastic clips. But the point is, to your point, that so that car is 30 25 years old, 30 years old, 25 years old, 1990, I math is hard. But and the average car on the road today is I don’t remember what, 12 and a half, ish years, something like that. Something like that, 11 to 12, yeah. Yeah, so to your point about 15, and and we’re actually coming up we’re coming up on that with the original OG Model S, right? So the Model S launched in I mean, I think really low volume in 2012, but like 2013 was like when we really started getting numbers. Like 2012 was low. But that puts us at like 13, 14 years old on the original OG Model S’s, and they are still out there with a lot of them with original battery packs and impressive range for what they are at this point, they’ve held up much better than we ever anticipated. Maybe not so much for their digital gauge clusters that were bleeding, but that’s because they didn’t use automotive spec parts. Nobody believed they were going to be a real company at that point. They improved that car as the car went on and time went on. Point is, you’re probably not replacing that digital cluster in the Model S yourself, right? Like you’re not. Or or maybe you are a headlight? Like I don’t know how complicated it is, but we are getting to that point now where certain early EVs are hitting the 13, 14, 12-year mark, right? That average age of car on the road. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out as whether it’s an independent mechanic or a do-it-yourselfer or what what is going to happen to these cars as the first Model 3s start really aging out, right?

Andrew: Yeah, I don’t know. There’s probably uh some total EV uh nerds that would love to get into that, but I don’t I mean, I would like to see them still mobilizing, I mean, why the heck not? If the if they still work, then keep them running.

Joel: Well, and a battery pack’s probably a lot less expensive than a new car.

Andrew: Right, exactly. Yeah, I know, that’s it’s a throwaway culture, man, it’s in everything.

Joel: We do live in a throwaway culture, right? Like how old do you really live with your iPhone? I don’t think I’ve kept an iPhone ever past three years, three and a half years, you know? It starts feeling slow, and the battery isn’t as good anymore, like then you get a new one, you’re like, “Wow, the camera is so amazing.” Exactly. You know, we live in a throwaway culture.

Andrew: Yeah, it’s it’s uh deeply unfortunate. It’s funny, I mean, it was to bring it back to the Hummer I’m driving. I mean it’s got carbon fiber wheels, and I’m thinking to myself, I mean, they’re super cool, but if you if you scratch them off-road, I mean, you’re not that’s not repairable, I don’t think.

Joel: Nobody’s taking the carbon fiber wheels on the Hummer EV off-road. Stop it. They’re going to Starbucks. Yeah, I guess, but I don’t know.

Andrew: I was just looking at that and then like the body’s all aluminum and it’s really cool, but it’s like, man, this is going to be hard to fix. I guess, you know, as I’m saying this, I’m like, I mean, it’s a Hummer, so it is supposed to be like a supercar, effectively. So I’m like, all right, well, that I guess that can be hard to fix. But It’s funny for as throwaway as our society and even the automotive scene is becoming.

Joel: Like if you look at the cars and and I want to say that we grew up with, but I really think actually even really goes up beyond our age range of like cars built before our time, you know, cars didn’t last then. And someone’s going to email email, someone’s going to email me and be like, “You know, back in my day, these cars lasted forever and we had the push thing for the headlight.” I was like, yeah, but guy, they rusted. They rusted out, they did not have the paint protection they had single-stage paint once we even got like We are in an era where cars don’t rust as quickly, cars literally start when it’s negative 10 below every time, even diesels, right? That didn’t exist when I was a kid. You didn’t always know your car was going to start when it was 20 below zero. And that’s how it is today. So I think that I think we forget about this and the modern conveniences, and cars do last a lot longer than they ever did.

Andrew: Yeah, that’s it’s totally true.

Joel: Despite the throwaway culture.

Andrew: Despite the throwaway culture. Yeah, I know, that’s it’s uh They they may be on their fourth owner, but they last longer than ever.

Andrew: I’ll just take a quick, since, you know, since this is an enthusiast site, I mean, I always think personally that like ’95 to ’05 is kind of like peak automotive technology. It’s like early traction control, it’s like things were easy enough to work on and computerized enough to be reliable, but still simple enough to be basically maintainable. That’s my that’s my little soapbox.

Joel: I would actually mostly agree with that, and I would also add like a point in because I grew up and and I’m sure people that have listened to every episode have a pretty good understanding of my background and automotive from Datsun Nissan to to Mopar to the Germans, specifically Audi with a little BMW and Mercedes in there. Um so I will always tell you when we talk about specifically let’s say Audi, right? I will say Audi’s peak era peak era was late ’90s and very early 2000s. So it’s like the B5 A4, C5 A6, D2 A8, and I will also emphasize that in 2001 was the model year that Audi introduced electronic stability control. So there’s certain things in history you look at that were like really modern marvels that maybe enthusiasts were like, “Why do I got to wear a seatbelt? Why do I need that? I know how to drive,” but they were really impactful and important. And I would say like seatbelts were one of them, airbags were one of them, ABS and traction control, and then legitimately, the more modern in my lifetime and your lifetime, the ABS but then electronic stability control was a life-changing thing for people. And then after that, I would say automatic emergency braking, right? Like these are things that legitimately save lives. I don’t care the hill you’re going to die on of like, “I know how to drive, blah blah blah, blah blah.” Yeah, guy, it saves lives. It does. It I don’t care, you know, we had a 2000 Audi and then we had a 2001 Audi. And the 2001 Audi had the ESP, electronic stability control. And my dad drove it and was like, “I might need to trade in my car.” Like legitimately was that life-changing that it was because because it’s not that he didn’t know how to drive, we live in Minnesota in the winter and we run Hakkapeliittas, but like the difference between ESP and no ESP is dramatic when you’re driving around with your kids.

Andrew: Oh yeah, oh, absolutely. Oh yeah, I guess I should interject like I definitely am I mean, I understand that like my 1975 International Scout is objectively terrible in so many ways, like.

Joel: It’s a death trap.

Andrew: Yeah, exactly. Oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah, so I’m not going to say like we need to go back to ’70s technology, that is not at all what I’m trying to say here, just for the record.

Joel: No, you’re just arguing that we shouldn’t it gatekeeping, and I agree with that. Gatekeeping. This goes way beyond automotive. Right, there are so many court cases in different countries. Let’s just use Apple and the iPhone and the app system the App Store and the ecosystem and sideloading apps and all that, same thing, different fruit. Ironic Apple fruit. But like legitimate it’s it’s literally just gatekeeping. That’s what it comes down to, and the idea that someone that is a qualified mechanic can’t work on a Bronco, crazy, right? Uh even even Rivian have Rivian certified uh repair centers for now, they do it for collision, they don’t have their own in-house collision, but they have their own they have their own service service, right? So like, you know, I don’t want to get into because I don’t know for sure whether you could third-party independently work on a Rivian itself. I know you can for body repairs. But I mean, again, gatekeeping. Like the can third-party mechanics work on Teslas? This is it’s a real issue as we go forward, truly. As cars are more software-defined than ever, this is an issue that we’re no longer talking about brakes. We’re talking about can you Do you remember changing out head units when we were teenagers?

Andrew: Of course, yeah, of course, yeah.

Joel: Yeah, like you just changing out a head unit. Forget doing that these days. Have you been to Crutchfield.com in any recent years? Right, no no no, that that era is long over. It’s all it’s all interconnected now, for sure. Remember when you used to walk into Best Buy, you could see all the stereos on the wall and I used to look at that. Yeah, yeah, Sony Explods speakers.

Andrew: I had the uh the eight-bit dolphins in my 1989 RX-7, the like animated dolphins.

Joel: I didn’t have the dolphins, I wasn’t that cool. I had a Pioneer head unit in my XJ, but I was not cool enough for the dolphins.

Andrew: Yeah, well, that’s uh I would say there’s still time, but there is definitely not. I don’t know where you’d even find that.

Joel: I don’t know where you’d even find that. Anyway, so final thought final thoughts on where you think we’re going and what what And by the way, if you’re a consumer and you wanted to be an advocate or or fight, like, you know, what would you tell somebody?

Andrew: I would say definitely look into this Build America 250 Act, and specifically dive into the REPAIR Act. That’s just REPAIR in all caps. If you Google REPAIR Act, you’ll you’ll find what you’re looking for. And again, that stands for Right to Equitable and Professional Auto Industry Repair. There are a lot of groups uh consumer advocate groups rallying, trying to make things happen. We are going to be covering this a lot more on The Drive, trust. After I posted that story about Mr. Farley’s comments, I got so many emails, including some from political consultants and people at SEMA, true experts in the industry, and I will absolutely be following up on that and talking to them and getting their perspectives and bringing that uh bringing that to TheDrive.com in the near future, for sure.

Joel: Yeah, I mean you can obviously when you do research this, email your your congressman, senator, anything like that. This is a national issue at this point, right? I mean the President was weighing in.

Andrew: 100%, yeah, 100%, yeah.

Joel: And I will I will also close as a call out like we ran a story, this is I think last year, about a and we got a tip, it was a tip from someone, about like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N and how it was being gate kept from being able to change your own brakes. This is a track car, right? And we ran this whole story about it and then we talked to Hyundai, we we we investigated it, we reported two different stories about that topic. So if you know of an issue, there’s something being gate kept from being able to be repaired, worked on, etc., definitely hit us up, tips@thedrive.com. We will definitely investigate, look into it, and report on it, you know? Uh we we appreciate the tips. A lot of stories come in that way. So I think that’s about it.

The post Ford’s CEO Doesn’t Want You Fixing Your New Bronco. He Says It’s About Safety appeared first on The Drive.

The U.S. government’s decision to ban Polestar from selling cars in America under a rule prohibiting Chinese technology has thrown the automaker’s nascent 32-dealership network into chaos. Now dealers, owners, and Polestar’s corporate teams are struggling to figure out how vehicle service, selling the remaining 2026 stock, and even disposing of real estate will work as the company is abruptly forced to wind down operations, according to multiple dealer sources who spoke with The Drive.

This is an unprecedented situation. Brands come and go over the years, but even when automakers are shuttered for financial reasons, the writing is on the wall. This time, dealers say they weren’t given any heads up that a decision was even imminent when Geely-owned Polestar shared the news last Thursday that the government had revoked its certification to operate in America.

At least one is in the middle of constructing a flagship retail building that might never get used. Others say they saw it coming and their advice to turn the brand around was ignored. Frustrations are sky high, and flashes of anger are already obvious.

A dealer that wished to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from Polestar told The Drive that there are still about 2,800 new Polestars inbound for the U.S. market. That would make most if not all those cars Polestar 4s, since the 2026 Polestar 3 wasn’t sold in America as the automaker planned to skip to 2027 for that model.

“What’s the program on the car?” the source asked rhetorically regarding lease incentives. “We’ll be selling these 2026s halfway through 2027. I have no clue what the consumer demand is going to be on these, it’s going to just have to be the cheapest lease and risk it. I don’t know who else is going to sign up for it. There’s no appetite for the cars when there’s no brand to support it. Seems like way too many cars on the ground here for us to ride out.”

“We don’t know what we are doing. We can’t pull the levers that fast!” the source added. “What are we doing with hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of fixtures?”

Adding to the frustrations is the fact that Volvo, which Polestar spun out from in 2017 and is also owned by Geely, did receive authorization to continue selling cars here earlier this spring despite its ties to China. As such, Volvo’s dealer network is an obvious fallback to handle Polestar service or even helping to sell the remaining inventory, but even that is fraught with complications. Polestar has been forbidden from selling cars at Volvo dealerships since it was established as an independent company. A Polestar and Volvo dealer can share the same campus, and Volvo dealers can service Polestar’s cars, but the showrooms must be in separate buildings.

To spotlight one example of how messy this is becoming, a Polestar enthusiast and owner reached out to The Drive and provided an email sent on Friday by Polestar Los Angeles General Manager Reza Fatemi, 24 hours after Polestar announced the ban. The email states that the dealership, which is owned by Galpin Motors, would be relocating to Galpin’s Volvo location “to serve you even better.” A similar notice was pinned to the top of their website as of Wednesday.

Galpin Volvo just completed a massive renovation last year and doesn’t have much room to construct a new building for Polestar on its lot, so it’s unclear how it will work. We reached out to Fatemi for comment but he declined to take our call, though on Tuesday a salesperson confirmed the move was happening.

Tuesday night the Polestar enthusiast and owner received an email from Polestar Los Angeles with an “urgent update” stating that as of today, July 1, 2026, Polestar Los Angeles “will be consolidating our sales operations into our Galpin Volvo campus in North Hills.” The email also stated that the Beverly Hills showroom will close, and all sales, inventory, and staff will relocate to North Hills.

Given the highly-charged nature of all of this, this didn’t sit well with our anonymous source.

“A year ago we went to Polestar and said this isn’t working and we should fold into Volvo. Polestar was for it, and Volvo wasn’t on board. Can’t believe Volvo is going to allow this [now],” they said. “We are operating as status quo that’s not status quo, unfortunately. I would’ve loved to do this a year ago, we knew the brand wasn’t going to make it. It should’ve never left Volvo,” the dealer source said.

The Drive also spoke with Matthew Haiken, president and CEO of Prestige Auto Collection Group, which includes a Volvo dealership, Lincoln dealership, and Polestar dealership in New Jersey, who threw cold water on the idea that Volvo would be willing to allow Polestar sales through its facilities, but added that they expect to handle a fair amount of used Polestar sales through next year.

“Volvo is not going to let us sell the remaining 2026 inventory out of our showrooms. Once the remaining 2026 inventory is done and gone we can sell the remaining off-lease vehicles however we want,” Haiken said. “Volvo can’t tell us what we can and can’t sell (used). Having customers come into our Volvo showrooms to sign paperwork isn’t a breach of our licensing agreement.”

After we shared our findings with Polestar, a spokesperson told us that Polestar Los Angeles’ move to the Volvo dealership was “planned for some time and is not related to last week’s announcement.” They added that Polestar “will have its own dedicated retail space and brand experience,” and that the move is part of a “broader transition from a direct-to-consumer sales model to a retailer-based retail strategy.”

Meanwhile, when we checked in with Volvo, a spokesperson pretty much washed their hands of the whole mess.

“Volvo Cars and Polestar are two different companies and have separate retailer networks and servicing agreements. Polestar has stated that they ‘will continue to support customers, including providing access to its service network.’ For further comment, we kindly ask that you reach out to Polestar directly.”

Haiken’s New Jersey Polestar dealership started in an original Tesla space within the Short Hills mall. His dealer group is currently in the process of building a flagship Polestar dealership that isn’t complete yet. “I don’t know what I’m going to do with my building. I don’t think any of us know what we are going to do with our buildings.” Haiken said. The dealer principal is hoping someone reaches out and wants a flagship building. “I don’t think any of the 32 dealers know what they are going to do with their buildings at this point.”

Max Muncey of LaFontaine Automotive Group, which owns Polestar Detroit, told The Drive, “We are currently evaluating our options both with Polestar and existing brands and of most importance is communicating with our existing customer base about their leases and future ownership.”

We called a number of other Polestar dealers around the country, and few had any answers about potentially folding in with Volvo or how their operations would look in the coming months. A salesperson at Polestar Tampa hung up the phone abruptly upon being asked what the plans were with the dealership going forward. At Polestar Austin, a salesperson named Michael told The Drive, “I’m not sure, nothing been discussed with us yet.” And a salesperson named Junior at Polestar Miami said they “still have a lot of meetings and communication that needs to happen. Still waiting for the plan of action to come down. Right now we are running normal as usual, but clearly things are not normal in the long run.”

Haiken made note of the situation and how it’s never happened in modern times. “This is really unfortunate, because the brand is still around. It’s not a bankruptcy. You can go up to Canada and buy a 2027 Polestar 2. You can go to Sweden where Polestar lives in the same showrooms with Volvos, and I called them, and they are selling more Polestars than Volvos. Plus, we have a very healthy lease maturity coming back and we are going to have to market these cars. This is a very different scenario than Saab, or Fisker, or another brand that left the U.S. or went bankrupt.” 

Know more about the mess at Polestar? Send us a line at tips@thedrive.com

The post ‘We Don’t Know What We’re Doing’: Inside the Post-Ban Chaos at Polestar Dealerships appeared first on The Drive.

The U.S. Federal Government is meddling with the automotive industry, the free market, and capitalism. Ironically, the current administration claims it’s for the latter two items on that list. But on Thursday, the U.S. Government essentially killed an automotive brand in America by forcing Polestar to stop selling new cars.

Pandora’s Box continues to open with no end in sight. The precedent that’s being set is both dangerous, and the ending is unclear at this point.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security denied Polestar an authorization under the current Connected Vehicle Rule to sell cars in the U.S. from model year 2027 on. That’s because Polestar is a subsidiary of Geely, a Chinese automaker.

Ironically, Polestar’s sister brand, also owned by Geely, Volvo, was granted the authorization in May. Why Volvo was granted the authorization and Polestar was not is unclear. “We have no insight into Polestar’s authorization approval process,” a Volvo spokesperson told The Drive.

But Polestar clearly didn’t see this situation coming. The automaker announced a reboot plan in February, which would’ve seen a slew of new product coming to the U.S. as the company grew the lineup.

Global production of the Polestar 3 was moved from Chengdu, China, to Volvo’s Ridgeville, South Carolina, plant specifically to avoid the Trump Administration’s tariffs. The Polestar 3 currently rolls off the South Carolina assembly line alongside its platform mate, the Volvo EX90.

The future of Polestar 3 production is now in limbo despite the model being sold outside the U.S. market. “It’s too early to speculate on that. We have just received this information from U.S. authorities and need to work with Volvo Cars to what our options are. Polestar benefits from the flexibility of our asset-light business model, which is a great strength given the current situation,” a Polestar spokesperson told The Drive.

Subsequently, a Volvo spokesperson told The Drive, “It’s too early to speculate on any potential impact that this might have for Volvo Cars. At the end of September 2025, Volvo Cars announced new investments in our state-of-the-art plant in Charleston, to bring two additional Volvo vehicles into production before 2030. These investments still stand.”

The death by U.S. Government force of Polestar is an eye-opening moment, especially for consumers who are in favor of a free market and capitalism. But it’s just the latest, rather large, moment in a continuing saga.

China’s BYD has taken the world by storm and grabbed the spotlight with its EVs. The automaker already believes it’ll reach 16% market share in Europe by 2030. It’s circling the U.S., both in Canada and Mexico, but the Federal Government is blocking BYD and other Chinese automakers from entering the U.S. market.

That artificial wall is what lets other automaker CEOs sleep at night. Ford CEO Jim Farley went to China and came back terrified. Western automotive companies are aware of China’s cost advantage and advanced technology that would run circles around the cars sold here in the U.S. today. The words Farley used were “existential threat.”

It’s not just cars. Hyundai is committed to investing $26 billion in the U.S. between 2025 and 2028. The money will localize the automaker’s supply chain to try to minimize the impact of the Trump Administration’s tariffs. Despite the investment, Hyundai was given the cold shoulder by the Trump Administration and was not exempt from tariffs. That was only a month after hundreds of federal agents raided Hyundai’s Metaplant in Georgia.

Ford builds the Maverick pickup truck in Mexico, while some Super Dutys come from Canada. Ram builds its Heavy Duty trucks in Mexico. Toyota builds a bevy of models in Kentucky, including (now) the RAV4, Lexus ES, and Camry. The auto industry is global in a way Henry Ford could only imagine in the 1920s.

But regardless of whether an automaker is investing in the U.S., or whether its vehicles are competitive (or world beating), the Federal Government is now picking and choosing, and today, without clear logic, who’s in business and who’s not.

Got a story idea or tip? Send us a line at tips@thedrive.com

The post Feds Killed Polestar and Spared Volvo. That Should Terrify You appeared first on The Drive.

The automotive landscape continues to shift with the road crumbling beneath automakers with constant policy changes with the daily political winds. Today’s victim is Polestar.

On Thursday, Polestar announced it will wind down operations in the U.S. and focus on Europe. The decision is a direct result, and forced by, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security failing to grant the automaker an authorization under the current Connected Vehicle Rule to sell cars in the U.S. from model year 2027 on.

A Polestar spokesperson told The Drive that the automaker will continue to sell current stock as it does today. However, moving forward Polestar will stop marketing and sales of new cars in the U.S. market.

“Customers will enjoy the same access to service and customer service as they do now,” the spokesperson said.

The wind down of marketing and staff will drop off relatively quickly and no 2027 model year vehicles were en route to the U.S. yet, the spokesperson said.

Today, Polestar has about 100 employees in the U.S. along with 32 dealers. Those dealerships will continue to exist to support and service current Polestar vehicles and customers. The spokesperson said dealers will sell through current inventory and then support service efforts while also selling used vehicles.

At the current moment Polestar sells two models, the Polestar 3 and Polestar 4. The former is a sportier, swoopier two-row variant of the Volvo EX90 while the latter is a high-riding fastback crossover with a hatch with no rear window.

In February Polestar announced its plans to reboot and regroup. Five months later its ceasing sales operations in the U.S. market.

Got a tip about an automaker? Send us a line at tips@thedrivecom

The post Polestar Is Done Selling New Cars in the US appeared first on The Drive.

Good morning and welcome to The Downshift, or TDS for short, The Drive‘s morning news roundup that grabs the latest automotive headlines from around the globe and puts them in one spot.

The Downshift summarizes stories into a single sentence and provides a link for those seeking more information. Here’s what’s happening on Thursday, June 25, 2026.

The latest episode of The Drivecast, The Drive’s weekly podcast, went live yesterday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.

GM might lose its U.S. sales crown, again, to Toyota as the Japanese automaker dominates the sales chart thanks to its bet on hybrid vehicles; GM’s market share is expected to fall 16.8% in the first half of 2026 while Toyota’s is expected to grow 15.8%.

 JD Power released its 2026 U.S. Initial Quality Study and Ford was ranked the highest mass-market brand and third overall (Porsche came in first with Genesis in second) despite already recalling 11.2 million cars this year.

Amazon’s Zoox robotaxi has been redesigned with more padding on the seats and headrests before heading into large-scale production in Hayward, California.

The Trump Administration asked Congress for $1 billion to boost the pensions of former General Motors employees who were part of the Delphi auto parts unit cut during the automaker’s 2009 bankruptcy restructuring.

Chinese automakers now believe they’ll reach 16% market share in Europe in the next four years.

Jaguar Land Rover Chief Commercial Officer Leonard Hoornik said “We are really trying to go against what is happening in the market trend,” as the automaker confirmed it will launch five EVs in the next 18 months and plans to price the electric vehicles higher than the equivalent gas-powered models.

Porsche revealed the new $375,000 GT4 race car, which for the first time in history is based on the 911 instead of the Cayman.

Chevrolet revived its iconic “Heartbeat of America” ad campaign, though its “Like a Rock” campaign is still MIA.

The overwhelming success of the BMW M wagons will lead the automaker’s performance division to give us a M3 Touring in the Neue Klasse era.

Got a tip? Send us a line at tips@thedrive.com

The post Toyota Might Steal GM’s US Sales Crown Thanks to Hybrids: TDS appeared first on The Drive.

Pandoras box is now open in a way that only movies depicted, and the situation is already spiraling.

Automatic license plate readers (ALPR) sold by surveillance companies are now using a technology called SignalTrace that uses sensors in the ALPRs to scrape electronic hardware codes from your smart devices. Worse, it’s being made available and marketed to law enforcement agencies including police, border security, and other government agencies. Of course it didn’t take long for new technology like this to be abused and cops are already getting caught using license plate readers to stalk people.

We aren’t just talking about your connected car being tracked. This tracking is extending to phones, wearables like smartwatches and smart rings, and even your pets’ microchip or the AirTags in your kids’ backpacks. Though, it also grabs information from your vehicle, which in itself is extremely complicated to disconnect. There’s no opt out to this situation and no guardrails in place because the technology that enables all this rolled out so quickly. The law hasn’t caught up. Security expert Matt Hurewitz who is currently the CISO at Ent.AI said on The Drivecast “the laws are way behind” and noted, “I think if you wait long enough there will be examples that affect people in a very real way, and that will cause a conversation to happen, which I think is really important.”

On the latest episode of The Drivecast we discuss with Hurewitz how suddenly new technology is enabling the government to create a digital map of your life without you even knowing it, and how there’s no real way to stop this from happening today.

New here? The Drivecast is The Drive‘s weekly podcast that takes you behind-the-scenes on the largest controveries, stories, and characters shaping the automotive industry along with the way our roads look today. Powered by The Drive‘s inside access, original reporting, exclusives, and insights, The Drivecast aims to make everyone an insider.

Listen to The Drivecast via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music. Love it? Like it? Want to help? Leave a five-star review on your platform of choice to help get The Drivecast in front of more people. Have a suggestion, tip, request, or feedback? Drop us a line at feedback@thedrive.com. I promise, we read every single email.

Full Transcript

Joel: Hello everyone, and welcome to the Drivecast. I’m Joel Feder, director of content and product at The Drive.

Adam: And I’m Adam Ismail, a senior editor at The Drive.

Joel: And the Drivecast is our weekly podcast giving you an inside look at the biggest stories, controversies, and people shaping the automotive industry. Today, we are talking about how the devices you carry will enable law enforcement and the government to track your every move. Scary thought. Time to break out the tin foil hats.

Adam: That’s right Joel, a new kind of license plate reading camera is said to be far more than its name. It will be able to scrape the smart devices you take with you and wrap all that data in a neat little bow for law enforcement and government agencies.

Joel: To be clear, we aren’t talking about your connected car being tracked here, right Adam? Because that’s a topic, dare I say, old and tired.

Adam: No, unfortunately it goes way beyond that. We’re talking phones, wearables, infotainment systems, even your pet’s microchip if they have one.

Joel: Yikes. And my dog is definitely chipped. Who would have thought AirTags and smart watches would enable someone or something to track you, right? This topic all started last week when Adam covered the story on The Drive. And boy, did it get some reactions. Shocking. Today we are going to dive into what’s really going on and have a special guest to help us dissect fact from fiction, my friend, and more importantly, security expert, Matt Horwitz, who is currently the CISO at Ent AI. By the way, if you like what we’re doing here, do us a favor and hit us with a five-star review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. It really does help get the Drivecast in front of more people. Okay, let’s go.

Joel: So Adam, I swear, we’re living in a movie. And I say this all the time, with Elon’s robots and all this stuff, I always say, “has no one seen the movie I, Robot or whatever with Will Smith?” And now, there are so many movies that literally depict what we are living or about to live through. And I swear, if my grandmother was alive today and saw electric cars and robots, she would be like, “what is this?” It’s like a movie.

Adam: Yeah, and you know, in times like this I always go back to, I don’t know, somebody tweeted this a long time ago, but it’s like, “dang, it would be really nice to live in some precedented times for a change,” because, you know, I mean, the technology accelerates so quickly in so many facets of life. And the world is only starting to grapple with something that I’m sure our guest Matt will be able to speak to, how big the automated license plate reader camera situation is globally. Those have been out for years. To now have to deal with this on top of that is just a whole new field, you know?

Joel: Well, and so we’re going to get to Matt and the topic at hand. The one thing we’re going to do real quick, I think this would be fun because it’s going to lead into the topic, I thought it’d be fun to admit to each other all the stuff that we carry on our person on a regular, or our dog. I mean, I’m always walking around with, I mean, I have my iPhone, I’ve got my smart watch, I have a smart ring, I’m very into fitness for those that don’t know, and tracking everything. I have AirPods, I have AirTags, my dog is chipped, our cars are modern enough that they have infotainment systems and GPS in them. I’m sure I missed something, but that’s just a high level. How about you?

Adam: Yeah, I think you covered pretty much every single possible category that they list here and things that they track. As for me, on the surface, I travel pretty light I guess. I have my phone, sometimes I wear my smart watch, I’m not good about wearing it every single day. But the thing is, it almost doesn’t matter, right? TPMS sensors were covered here, right?

Joel: Just so everyone knows, he just used the acronym for tire pressure monitoring systems, so it’s the thing that tells your car to go “ding, your tire is low on air.” But that brings us right into the topic. And so we’re going to get to Matt here in a second, but before we can ask Matt for all his expert information on the topic, I think we need to just dive into the story itself and what actually is happening and the report. So specifically, what are we talking about today and what did you report on, Adam?

Adam: So Leonardo, which is an Italian defense contractor, they make surveillance systems, all that kind of stuff, they are coming out or rather I should say they have come out, it’s already being introduced in certain markets around the country, but they have this new technology called Signal Trace. And what it basically is, as I said earlier, we’re all familiar now for the most part with automated license plate reader cameras. And this supplements those cameras, which are already able to, basically if you stitch enough of the data points together and enough of what’s been captured, day in and day out, you can pretty much gather a person’s sort of path through life through just their vehicle and their license plate being photographed repeatedly. This now attaches data from smart devices that you carry with you to that vehicle, or to that thing you’re traveling with. It kind of packages everything together so it knows okay, you have this car, and with this car I see an iPhone 13 or something with a unique ID, I see this smart watch. Maybe you’re traveling with your pet or your dog. If your dog’s chipped, as you said earlier, Joel, that’s in there too. And there are so many things today obviously that we rely on. And it’s also taking stuff that’s built into the car. So, infotainment systems, 5G modems for your Wi-Fi hotspot if your car has that feature, TPMS sensors, like everything. It really runs the gamut. And once you’re able to do this and take a vehicle and associate it with sort of a mix of devices, I mean, everyone’s mix of devices is unique. So what that does is it allows whether it’s police, law enforcement, government agencies, investigators, whatever it may be, that allows them to get pretty much like a digital fingerprint for who you are because everyone’s mix is unique. And so the ramifications here are obviously wide-reaching and kind of an absolutely dystopian minefield, right?

Joel: And before we talk to Matt, one last question. If I remember correctly in reading the report that you did, they made a claim that they’re not decrypting any of this information, right? So it’s anonymous, whatever. So what was that claim? And then I have some questions for Matt, we’re going to bring him in.

Adam: Yeah, so, and this is a quote from Leonardo’s own literature here. They say, “Signal Trace captures only publicly broadcast device frequency activity. It does not decrypt or store any content from devices or communications. It functions like a license plate reader by capturing identifiers without accessing personal or message data.” And what’s really interesting about this is this disclaimer is in there basically for saying like, “we’re not getting any unauthorized access. We’re just picking up on what your devices and what you’ve purchased and choose to carry with you just put out into the air.” And I think, and this is I think part of like a really interesting part of the discussion, is that seems to on the surface absolve them of some legal, you know, culpability there. But we’re living in a time where again, the technology is advancing so quickly that, you know, there should be laws around that, right? But there aren’t yet. And so they’re kind of able to run with the ball here.

Joel: Boy, is that a perfect segue to bring in our friend Matt. So Matt Horwitz, friend of mine, poker player at my house, actually lives here in Minnesota. We know each other from outside of the work world, ironically, we’re friends. But sometimes our work worlds collide. You are a security expert, correct?

Matt: Yes, though I would never use that language to describe myself, but yeah.

Joel: But I do, because I love you and you are a security expert. So just off the top here, Matt, so everyone knows, how nervous should consumers be? Is the strong reaction to this story justified or are people just overreacting? Like, high level.

Matt: So listen Adam, you did a fantastic job representing the technology and the uses broadly. It’s a hugely important part of the conversation because the consumer, high level, is used to giving up certain information for convenience or what they perceive as value. This, what I’ll call a dual use, you know, is probably not what they signed up for when they clicked the buttons that everybody knows they should read to accept the use of the thing. I’m sure Adam and Joel read them, I also read them as well, but many people do not. And so, gosh, there’s a lot to unpack.

But they’re correct in saying this information is broadcasted. Saying “I don’t encrypt something,” as Joel touched on, is technically correct, but encryption is a specific control that stops a very specific type of thing from happening. That doesn’t mean that what they’re doing is any less creepy or invasive. And from a policy perspective, I think yes, the courts are way behind and the laws are way behind. But there’s something that feels weird about somebody outside of my vehicle extracting information from devices that I didn’t know was broadcasting it, or I certainly didn’t know for this use, so that law enforcement can grab stuff from outside of my car to know things about me. There’s probably, like, I’m not an attorney, but there’s probably Fourth Amendment issues that need to get navigated there.

But generally, I say this: if you give a security practitioner access to you while you’re inside their car, and they’re outside of it with our tools, you might be very surprised with what we can extract out of the air. And then we can connect that to other things about you that’s generally available on the internet, and we have a very good picture of things that you didn’t know was readily out there.

Joel: That is a perfect setup for what I wanted to ask you. I wanted to know, you can’t opt out. Because you mentioned in here about how you’re driving around and you, I mean, like, you get an iPhone, you get AirPods, you get any new electronic device, you basically have to click the terms and conditions and you accept it. And again, while the three of us absolutely read every word of those things, the consumer probably doesn’t. And I’m sure Matt prints them out and puts them in a file. But the reality is that you really don’t know. And to your point, you’re driving down the road and you’re just broadcasting all these things, and you can’t opt out. Now if I invite you in my car, I invited you, a security expert, into my car. And while we’re friends, you could do things. You could do things that I probably wouldn’t even know you could do. But what about my dad? What about my friends that don’t even know about cars and didn’t realize their tire pressure monitoring system could broadcast their location?

Matt: It doesn’t protect them. Ignorance for what you’ve bought and what you’re using, at least according to laws today, doesn’t protect them. And what makes it even more difficult to suss out is that you have something in mind when you opt in. When you buy your iPhone and you click through and you log in, you’re thinking about talking with your friends and family, staying connected in social media, accessing your photos, all of those things. And to make those ecosystems work, there are great conveniences built in.

So like, when you go to the airport and you want to get online, and you open your laptop or your phone and you see 30 different Wi-Fi things and you pick the one you want to connect to, the reason you know they’re there is because they broadcast things out into the world: the name of my network, the MAC address, like, various things, so that you as the end user can pick MSP Free Wi-Fi and get online. And those protocols that are there to help devices discover each other and know who they are can be used in interesting ways.

When you broadcast, whether it’s a Bluetooth Low Energy device, the things that, the beacons that you hear about that let you find your wallet when you lose it and your keys, they’re constantly broadcasting a few pieces of information that are relative to make that experience work: signal strength, the name of the tag, there’s a MAC address, which is like an identifier for the device and some of the pieces on the device. When you put all of that together, it helps you find your wallet, but it also would let somebody like me discover, like, signal strength is a decent proxy for how far are you from the thing that is receiving this signal or sending this signal. So that gives me proximity to where you are at a given time.

When you connect to a Wi-Fi network, or some vehicles have Wi-Fi that the users can connect to, if I’m driving around in the car next to you and I’m looking to see, we’ve all done that. We’ve seen our neighbors’ Wi-Fi even if we can can’t connect to it, we can see where it is. And that data helps build a profile and a picture. That technology that is broadcasted publicly, it is only available over a certain distance that is not super far, but it’s far enough that if you’re close to it or if you can otherwise harness the signal, that information is technically out there. So yes, it is not encrypted, you don’t technically need a key to make sense of the information. So that is correct. But how somebody might use that information is probably not what the end user had in mind.

Joel: So these devices that are already out there and doing these single function or dual function things, now having the ability to track basically all the things that are putting off these Bluetooth and RF signals. So whether it’s your tire pressure monitoring system, your AirTag, your dog’s chip, your iPhone, your Oura ring, your watch, again, we can just go through the list of all the things that I own in my life, and you don’t realize that these things are now being picked up. But the scary part of it is, it’s not just being picked up at this stoplight or that stoplight. Because when you’re going from this stoplight to that stoplight to this stoplight to that stoplight, you’re not creating a map, you’re on a grid. And these things can paint a picture of your actual location and your whereabouts. And to be clear, a lot of people have routines. So you can suddenly paint a picture of someone’s life on the daily or on the regular, and you could use this for very nefarious uses. Did I summarize all this correctly, Adam, and why people are nervous?

Adam: Yeah, and you know, getting caught up with this most recent development and what Leonardo is doing, and you know, obviously they’re not the only company, we can talk about others that kind of run the gamut more in terms of like the ALPR stuff. But like, I remember back in 2019 what turned me on to this was I think there was a New York Times report that was just basically sort of laid bare like all of the ways that data brokers can track you. And it’s just as simple as like knowing where you are and that you do that routine every single day, and that’s it. And this is something to kind of go into I guess, and Matt would be a good judge of this, but like, has the horse left the barn in a way? Have we already given up so much just with the license plate cameras already and the technology that existed previously, that obviously I won’t say this doesn’t matter, this seriously matters, but I think what’s almost happening is when things like this happen, when this technology becomes aware, or when the public becomes aware of it, we’re all just getting caught up. You know, and then you’re waiting for policy to catch up. And it’s just like, how much of our lives have we already been living like this without even knowing it? I guess is just kind of a question that I just keep reflecting back on.

Matt: So we’ve been talking about this in the practitioner community for a long time. And what’s generally accepted is convenience and value tends to trump security most of the time for most people. There is a lack of meaningful policy regulation, what have you, around this. But I think if you wait long enough there will be examples that affect people in a very real way, and that will cause a conversation to happen, which I think is really important.

There’s some other things that you guys should probably kind of think about in this kind of problem space more generally. As chips get better over time, they get more powerful, they get smaller, it becomes much easier for a manufacturer to buy a chip that does more than they need. And so like, what does that mean? I want to buy a small chip that opens a door knob or, you know, like pulls a cord or whatever it is in the digital equivalent. The chip that I’m buying is one of 10 billion made a year by a large manufacturer somewhere in the world, and they build a chip that’s most readily appealing to the market. So that chip may have capabilities above and beyond the door knob and the string that go into the device that don’t get used or don’t seemingly get used because of the function, right? Like, all I’m trying to do is turn a door knob, I’m not expecting it to open my garage door. But it’s already in the chip, it already is powered, there’s already like the built-in wiring there.

We think about that as like third-party supply chain risk in like the parlance you hear a lot of. Congress is starting to talk about, and federal agencies are starting to talk about, the bill of materials and the risk of the bill of materials that go into the thing, right? And so this is kind of an extension of this, where if you buy a new car off the lot now that’s mid-priced, it probably has 120 computers in it. Everything is super technical, right? There’s a lot of questions as to what else these things can do. And every once in a while you’ll see interesting research come out about security researchers that have found ways to abuse stuff that’s that’s something to keep in mind as well. So it’s not just this particular vendor using a signal that is broadcast publicly to do something that’s unexpected to the consumer, much more broadly, this is going to happen more and more in the automotive space, but in the world in general.

Joel: I think consumers, ignorance is bliss and you just agree to the terms of service or whatever. And I don’t think people realize how complicated cars are. And so we, and I’ll put this story that I’m about to note here in like one sentence in the show notes here so that people can click and read it. But we just recently, in a couple within the last couple weeks, did a story about a guy who went and bought a new Toyota RAV4. To your point Matt, that’s a mid-priced, you know, let’s call it a $32,000 very mainstream, it’s one of the best-selling cars in the world. This is not a fancy luxury car. But those cars have big screens, they have a ton of chips in them, they’re computerized, most they’re all hybrids now. And it has GPS and Bluetooth and AM/FM radio and SiriusXM radio. And he didn’t want anybody to be able to track his car. I’m dead serious. This is a guy that was in the security field or whatever like that, and I don’t know whether we’re in the tin foil hat realm or not, I don’t know this person. But the story goes that he wanted his car to be untrackable. And to do that, he literally had to rip out Bluetooth and GPS and sat radio and he had to rip all the communication electronics essentially.

So to your point, we are living in an era of connected cars. Just to have your phone via Bluetooth, that is a connected car. And we now live in a society where people can literally not go down the road without texting someone. That’s why we have CarPlay and everyone argues whether you need CarPlay. Stop texting while you’re driving, people. But that’s not the point. So now we have to have these Bluetooth and all these other signals, because otherwise we have hands-free laws, because people can’t drive without talking on the phone. But cars are data themselves. And now we’re talking about expanding to the stuff you’re carrying on your person in the automotive world for license plate readers and all that stuff, to literally connect you that way and make a digital map of your entire life. It is scary. It is totally scary. Matt, what can people actually do? I mean, beyond this guy, other than this guy who like ripped everything out of his actual car, aside from that part of it, right? What can people do? Should they really be concerned? Should they not be concerned?

Matt: I think people should be aware, and they get to determine how much concern and how much, like, behavior change they want to make based on that. Like, my biggest problem is when people don’t know, and then they find themselves caught up in the bad and had no idea. So I think that, listen, I’m surprised that gentleman’s car still worked because I imagine you disable a bunch of the electronics and you’re on your own, no warranty, maybe it doesn’t even start. I have no idea. But like, the average consumer needs to have like three sentences before they make a choice, or iconography that they can trust, or or something, so that at the speed in which I make my purchase, I can take a beat and understand what’s going on.

There’s a secondary issue that, much like you mentioned in like with related to your phone, those ecosystems in and of themselves right now don’t have a lot of choice, especially for the average consumer, you know? It’s like, are you using Apple or are you not? And for most people, not using Apple is a non-starter, right? And so, I think in the short term it could be painful, in the long term it could lead to more choice, more meaningful legislation, potentially regulation that helps consumers. And I’m not a huge pro-regulatory person, but I think the consumer has to know in a way that makes sense to them as to what the risks are. And I think that’s a big gap right now. People are going to be very surprised.

Joel: I would agree with you, and it is funny you mention that because like, you go on Reddit or you go to, I mean, even the comments on The Drive, and if you go to a car like a Rivian or a Tesla or even any of GM’s new EVs, and you make mention in the story as we would as journalists that these cars don’t have Apple CarPlay, you either have someone in the comments who owns one of these vehicles and they’re like, “well, it’s not that big a deal, I live with it and it’s fine or I miss it,” or you have people in the comments who are like, “well, I won’t buy a GM EV or I won’t buy a Rivian or I won’t buy a Tesla because they don’t have CarPlay. And I need CarPlay and you know, stick it in my veins, I can’t drive without it.” It is a very big lightning rod for people of “I need it, I don’t need it.” And in those cases, a lot of people have tried to live without it, and so then you end up with people in the comments that own one of these vehicles saying, “I miss it or I don’t,” and it’s it’s very interesting.

But I want to do, because we want to keep everything tight here, let’s round through some final thoughts here. Adam, I want to start with you. Final thoughts on the topic as the one who originally reported on all this for us.

Adam: Obviously, dangerous, very interesting times. It’s going to be interesting to see what stories like this, because obviously it won’t be the last, are going to do with public awareness, as Matt mentioned earlier, and also policy. I’m also curious how, you know, device makers and technology companies and stuff like that respond to this because like, I’m just thinking off top of my head like, if I turn off Bluetooth on my iPhone, it turns itself back on. Like, I have to go, at least in like the the pull-down control center whatever, if you tap that, it turns itself back on tomorrow, right? People don’t even know that. They might think they’re turning it off, and they’re turning it off for good. Cars work the same way, too. Your level of control in a car might not be as granular as you need it to be. And obviously, like, this isn’t something, as we’ve said multiple times, you can just opt out of, right? It’s going to be really, really hard if you really want to try and be that person who who rips the SiriusXM out of your RAV4. That that might be what it takes. You know, I guess it’s one of those things like, watch this space, because this conversation is going to only deepen. And also shout out, by the way, to 404 Media, who they were the ones who, Joseph Cox there, who did that story that, you know, kind of got a lot of people aware of of what Leonardo’s doing and then what’s been going on there. So shout out to them.

Joel: Matt, final thoughts on this topic for today at least, because I think Adam is right about this won’t be the last time.

Matt: There’s a small number of people that care about privacy holistically all of the time. There’s fabulous work being done at like the the EFF and other orgs that are very like intellectual about these types of things, and in the practitioner community. I think broadly, privacy only becomes a consumer concern when something bad happens and they get caught up in it. And so, I would love to see us get a little bit ahead of that happening, but there is a lot of convenience in these electronics. I don’t think it’s a malicious conspiracy among, you know, like I’m not in that way. I think that in this case, these are protocols that are being used that were designed for convenience and efficiency and bring a lot of meaningful interactions into people’s lives through technology, which I think is really important. But when people decide to use it for alternative means or in ways that are unexpected to the consumer, or in this case, it’s it’s essentially, if I understand this correctly, to help coordinate with law enforcement for some reason or other, I think that that’s an area that we have to tread into very carefully, because privacy is important. And I’ll just leave it at that.

Joel: And I will say, to wrap my final thought into things with everything you guys said, I don’t disagree with anything you said. I would love to see some kind of legal framework being talked about or put around this. I mean, we’ve all seen the news that whether it’s Anthropic with the with the current government or or any of the AI systems and the framework they’re talking about and guardrails they’re putting up within that system. You know, it was just a couple weeks ago that Caleb and I were on this podcast talking about the Feds coming for diesel truck owners, and it’s starting with your phone because of this OBD2 app that was allowing tuners and people to basically skirt their emissions equipment. And so, the irony that we’re sitting here literally, actually not almost a month, almost a month to the day, and talking now about the government being able to track you via all these other devices using license plate readers. It’s to your point, the conversation, it’s it’s continuing a month later. It’s it’s not the first time, it will absolutely not be the last time. And I just want to say thank you to Matt. I mean, Adam obviously, but you have to do this, you work here. Matt does not have to do this, he doesn’t work here, and I really appreciate him taking the time to join us. I’m sure you’ll be back, and I appreciate your time, insights, and and your knowledge.

Matt: Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you, guys, this has been a lot of fun, and look forward to talking again.

Joel: So if you know something that concerns you related to the auto industry or on this topic, absolutely feel free to drop us a line at tips@thedrive.com. We’d love to hear from you. I read every email, I promise. That’s it for this week’s episode of the Drivecast. Thanks to the defense contractor Leonardo for opening another iteration of Pandora’s box, to Adam for his reporting on this important story, to Matt for his time and insights, thanks to our editor Tyler Mark, and thank you for listening.

Adam: Be sure to check out thedrive.com for our full coverage on this topic and a whole lot more. Subscribe to one of our fine newsletters, they’re free by the way. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, and subscribe to us on YouTube where we’ve got a lot of cool videos coming up.

Joel: We’ll be back next Wednesday. Bye everyone.

The post License Plate Cameras Are Tracking Your Life Without a Warrant appeared first on The Drive.

The box is back. Or, it will be, but in three years.

Honda fans and Element cultists can rejoice because on Wednesday Automotive News reported the Honda Element will be revived as a hybrid crossover arriving in 2029.

The new Element is reportedly going to be a major player for the Japanese automaker with a target of nearly 100,000 sales for the first full year of production. That’s just 35,000 units shy of Ford Bronco Sport sales in 2025.

Honda showrooms are about to get crowded with small crossover SUVs with the Element slotting between the HR-V and CR-V.

AN said production of the new Element is expected to commence in Central Ohio in the second quarter of 2029. Honda was planning on building its new Zero Series family of EVs in Ohio before pulling the plug on the program at the eleventh hour.

With the pivot away from EVs Honda said its making hybrids the core of its business. The automaker is preparing to launch a new clean-sheet V6-based hybrid powertrain for all its midsize and large models.

The Elements return will come 18 years after the iconic nameplate died. The original only had a one-generation run that lasted nearly a decade with a single mild refresh.

Got a tip about future product? Send us a line at tips@thedrive.com

The post The Honda Element Is Returning in 2029 as a US-Built Hybrid Crossover: Report appeared first on The Drive.

Good morning and welcome to The Downshift, or TDS for short, The Drive‘s morning news roundup that gathers the latest automotive headlines from around the globe and places them in one spot.

The Downshift summarizes stories into a single sentence and provides a link for those seeking more information. Here’s what’s happening on Wednesday, June 24, 2026.

The latest episode of The Drivecast, The Drive’s weekly podcast, will go live today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Toyota and Nissan are now importing American-made vehicles to Japan, but in an embarrassing plot twist the automakers are selling these vehicles with a notice telling buyers the quality is not up to Japanese standards warning there might be thin paint, panel gaps, or leftover residue.

Porsche is now shedding non-core assets and might cut its workforce as the iconic automaker pushes forward with turnaround efforts.

Ferrari replaced its marketing chief with the former BMW exec, Massimiliano Di Silvestre, after unveiling the Luce EV.

Nissan plans to slash software development time from months to hours by using AI in an attempt to catch up to software-defined vehicles from China.

Subaru said it will shift to “ultraefficient production” after a $362 million write down on EVs and product delays in an effort to streamline operations and remain competitive in the age of electrification.

The 2027 Audi A3 trades buttons for bigger screens.

Porsche CEO Michael Leiters said there will never be a fully electric 911.

Ford has already recalled 11.2 million cars this year.

Morgan revealed the stunning Midsummer hard-top, which will be limited to just nine cars.

The long wheelbase Tesla Model Y L will reportedly launch in North America this fall.

Rivian is facing a class action lawsuit over its first-generation R1 models after originally marketing the vehicles as capable of Level 3 autonomy and true hands-free driving.

Got a tip? Drop us a line at tips@thedrive.com

The post Toyota and Nissan Admit Their American-Made Cars May Have Thin Paint, Panel Gaps, and Leftover Residue: TDS appeared first on The Drive.

Manage to get your Rivian stuck or someone off-roading with you get stuck? A winch would sure be handy, and Rivian’s aware of that.

In Park City, Utah during a one-on-one interview on The Drivecast with the R2 launch as a backdrop, Rivian Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe told The Drive, “a winch is something we’ve long wanted to put on an R1.”

Listen to the entire conversation starting at the moment Scaringe addresses a winch on the R1 below.

We’ve seen patents Rivian filed with the United States Patent and Trademark (USPTO) office for a winch on the front of the R1, but to date, nothing’s come to fruition.

Scaringe explained, “You know, a winch is something we’ve long wanted to put on an R1. It is a bit challenging, though, because it’s a—it really impacts from a regulatory point of view, it’s, you know, it’s a challenge to put a big chunk of incompressible metal on the front of the car. So it affects crash and pedestrian protection.”

Rivian isn’t like Ford, it sells its vehicles directly to the consumer with no dealership middle men and very few third-part accessories offered. That makes things a little more complicated. “The way that historically happens is third parties do that work. And so the aftermarket can can do these things. Because we create our own accessories and we are the OEM, it is a bit more challenging. But we’ve thought about it a lot,” Scaringe said.

In February, Rivian introduced RAD, which is short for Rivian Adventure Department. It’s the automaker’s new in-house performance division. While Scaringe said RAD vehicles will be fundamentally different, the department won’t be limited to only vehicles.

“Coming back to RAD, I think there again, remember that discussion. I think there’s a lot of cool things that can come when we talk about RAD. We we the second word adventure, we intentionally use the word adventure department as opposed to like performance. The performance is an element of adventure, but adventure is a broader category, so that means that can enable a whole host of things. Things like winches,” Scaringe said.

When asked for clarity if RAD will be more than just vehicles Scaringe said, “Vehicles plus things that make the vehicles more exciting.”

For Rivian owners present and future, in the words of Lloyd Christmas, “so you’re saying there’s a chance.”

Got a tip about future product? Send us a line at tips@thedrive.com

The post Rivian Has Long Wanted to Put a Winch on the R1. RAD Might Finally Make It Happen appeared first on The Drive.

Good morning and welcome to The Downshift, or TDS for short, The Drive‘s morning news roundup that gathers all the latest automotive headlines from around the globe and puts them in one place.

The Downshift summarizes stories into a single sentence and provides a link for those seeking more information. Here’s what’s happening on Tuesday, June 23, 2026.

The chief engineer of the Toyota RAV4, Yoshinori Futonagane, said that while there are “no official plans” for a RAV4-based unibody pickup truck to compete with the Ford Maverick, the idea and market is “quite appealing” and despite no plans at the moment “deep in our heart of hearts, we all think, wouldn’t that be fun?”

Federal safety investigators are now looking into a fatal crash involving a Tesla that drove into a home and killed a woman in Texas.

Nissan CEO Ivan Espinosa confronted unruly investors who attempted a vote of no confidence and even put forth a motion to reinstate former Chairman Carlos Ghosn, who was ousted after his 2018 arrest on financial misconduct charges.

Mitsubishi President Keisuke Kishiura is aware that enthusiasts want the automaker to bring back icons such as the Lancer Evolution, Galant, and Diamante; during the automaker’s annual shareholder meeting the executive said, “Models such as the Lancer Evolution, Diamante, and Galant are extremely important to Mitsubishi, and we consider them treasures. While we do not have any concrete plans to launch these models at this time, we aim to build a company capable of bringing these wonderful cars back to the market in the future so that we can meet your expectations. I will lead the way in this effort, and I would be grateful for the continued support of our shareholders.”

Roush teased a Ram-based performance truck that will debut later this summer.

A reborn Ford GT40 isn’t even a Ford; the icon returns via South Africa’s Cape Advanced Vehicles (CAV) as the GT MkII with a supercharged 4.2-liter V8 and all-wheel drive.

Volvo is bringing plug and charge capability to the EX60 and EX90 at over 35,000 fast chargers in the U.S.

Hyundai is discounting its EVs to entice buyers to not pay for gas.

The Jaguar Type 01 electric GT will debut in New York in October.

Hyundai is said to be developing “even more realistic” electric N cars with a new EV platform that will do an even better impression of a gas-powered car.

European automakers are now pooling their resources to build code for software-defined vehicles to try and catch up to, and compete with, China.

Lucid’s new CEO laid off 18% of the staff to “simplify the company” as the automaker struggles with production and bleeds cash.

The Chevrolet Corvette ZR1X shattered the Pikes Peak Product Car record.

Waymo recalled almost 4,000 self-driving taxis because they were driving into construction zones.

Ferrari might be preparing to unveil a supercar with a manual transmission.

Got a tip? Drop us a line at tips@thedrive.com

The post Toyota RAV4-Based Truck Is ‘Quite Appealing’ Top Engineer Says: TDS appeared first on The Drive.

That noise you just heard was your financial planner wincing as you consider whether or not to buy the resurrected Ram TRX.

On Monday, the 2027 Ram 1500 TRX order books were opened and the Hellcat-powered truck is going to cost a pretty penny. To be exact, it’ll be $102,790 including a ludicrous $2,795 destination fee.

That’s for the standard truck. For the limited-run, of which we aren’t actually sure how limited, Bloodshot Night Edition package (pictured above) you’ll have to add another $9,995. That money buys a hand-painted Blacktop upper with Flame Red hood strip, splash graphics on the exterior (it’s like the ’90s again!), red interior accents, and beadlock-capable wheels.

Ram was quick to note that the TRX (and subsequently the turbocharged inline-six-powered RHO sibling) are the only high-performance off-road trucks to offer a Level 2 Plus hands-free driver-assist system, which Stellantis dubs Hands-Free Active Drive Assist. That’s a poke at the Ford Raptor.

The resurrected TRX arrives with the venerable supercharged 6.2-liter V8 engine, you know, from the Hellcats, now rated at 777 horsepower and 680 lb-ft of torque. It hooks to an eight-speed automatic transmission. Ram said with full-time four-wheel drive (which is standard) and Launch Control the truck will run from 0-60 mph in 3.5 seconds on its way to a top speed of 118 mph.

How long the reborn Hellcat-powered TRX lasts in the market is anyone’s guess. Ram CEO Tim Kuniskis told The Drive, “Call Washington” when asked.

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The post The 2027 Ram TRX Is Back, and It’ll Cost You $102,790 appeared first on The Drive.

Jeep really wants you to have the new Cherokee on your shopping list, and part of that sales pitch is the notion that its small SUV is adventure ready. But, the lack of a Trail Rated (Jeep’s marketing lingo, not ours) model has been notable since the iconic nameplate returned earlier this year. That changed today.

On Monday, Jeep confirmed the Cherokee Trailhawk is returning and provided the first glimpse of its latest model to deliver “more off-road capability.”

Last year, Jeep CEO Bob Broderdorf told us the new Jeep Cherokee would still be capable off-road. To date, that’s been a promise that hasn’t been met, yet. But Broderdorf did say it would take time for additional models of the hybrid-only crossover to roll out. Indeed.

The Cherokee Trailhawk sports a revised front fascia with red tow hooks. It’s hard to see much else from the tight shot aside from the fact that the main bumper isn’t body colored, but we would hope that approach (and departure) angles are improved over the street-oriented models on sale today. Smaller wheels and larger rubber would be appropriate and expected.

Don’t expect much change to the powertrain. Today, the Cherokee is only offered with a 1.6-liter turbo-four hybrid powertrain with 210 horsepower and 230 lb-ft of torque sent to all four wheels via an e-CVT. A two-speed transfer case is likely out of the picture, but a rear locker might be onboard for the Trailhawk model. Extra off-road drive modes surely will be along for the ride.

Jeep hasn’t said anything beyond releasing the single teaser image, noting the automaker is gearing up for more off-road capability, and that more information will come at a later date.

Not a moment too soon as the automaker’s been a bit lost in the wilderness and fans are hoping it can find the trail again.

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The post Jeep Just Confirmed the Cherokee Trailhawk Is Coming Back appeared first on The Drive.

The 2026 Mazda CX-90 Plug-In Hybrid delivers the pros (and cons) of the turbocharged inline-six model, but with enough electric driving range to likely avoid using gas to haul the kids to and from school. And thanks to several updates, it no longer feels like it somehow left the factory in prototype form.

The Basics

For the most part, the CX-90 plug-in hybrid is the same model we all know and some love. The 12.3-inch digital gauge cluster is now standard along with the 12.3-inch infotainment system screen. The trim configurations have been tweaked, with the Preferred model now including ventilated front seats and a heated steering wheel. Oh, and 21-inch wheels are now standard, so I hope you didn’t want those smaller 19s with more sidewall. Minor, though for some, possibly meaningful stuff.

Visually, it will still take a keen eye and a close look to tell that the CX-90 you’re looking at is the plug-in hybrid. It’s as the kids say, lowkey. There’s a secondary fuel-filler door, one per side, covering the charge port on the rear passenger-side fender, a PHEV label in the fender jewelry, and a small badge on the lower right side of the tailgate. Minor bits. Overall, this is still the gorgeous, curvy, and most premium-looking mainstream three-row SUV on the market. Acura’s still dreaming about this thing’s dash-to-axle ratio.

Inside, the CX-90 plug-in hybrid is the same as the gas-only model. In fact, some of the packaging compromises across the board stem from the plug-in hybrid model’s battery pack. The second-row seats are arranged stadium-style, with those in the back looking over those in front. It’s notably tighter in the second row than a Honda Pilot or Hyundai Palisade. The third row’s foot room is also affected by the raised floor for that battery pack. Worse, the fold-flat third row, on all models, both gas and plug-in hybrid, doesn’t actually fold flat. The load floor slopes toward the rear hatch due to the packaging, which allows round objects to roll toward the tailgate. Soccer balls are fun with this thing. Quick hands, people.

The dashboard is a lovely affair with real buttons, knobs, toggles, and switches that deliver a satisfying click. The infotainment system’s quirks (though plenty of angry Mazda owners noted it might be a feature) have been covered. The short version is that the touchscreen isn’t a touchscreen unless you enable it to be, and still it can only operate as such with Apple CarPlay. Yes, that’s confusing and silly. Navigation for the infotainment system is mainly limited to the console-mounted round click wheel and quick buttons. The materials? All a full step above any Honda and two steps above any Toyota. You aren’t finding suede or linen in either of those vehicles.

Driving the 2026 Mazda CX-90 Plug-In Hybrid

The CX-90 Plug-In Hybrid pairs a 2.5-liter inline-four with an electric motor, sandwiched between the eight-speed automatic transmission and the rear axle, that sends power to all four wheels. Combined system output checks in at a healthy 319 horsepower and 369 lb-ft of torque, but that’s on 87 octane. Mazda notes you’ll gain 4 hp if you fill up with the good stuff, 93 octane. You probably won’t notice 4 hp.

That electric motor is powered by a 17.8-kWh battery pack. The electric motor on its own is rated at 173 hp and 199 lb-ft of torque, which is how much power you’ll have when driving in electric-only situations.

Around town, and even on the highway, there’s plenty of punch off the line thanks to the electric motor’s instant torque. When both the gas engine and electric motor are running, this thing can probably sprint to 60 mph in about 6.0 seconds. Passing power is fine at any highway speed. But when only running on electrons, things change. That 173 hp and 199 lb-ft of torque are what you might call adequate while ramping to speed. It gets the job done, but that’s about where the story ends. This is no EV, and should you need more power, pushing past a detent on the accelerator pedal will fire the gas engine. I found the electric-only power to be enough not to start the gas engine on school runs in mixed suburban driving.

After multiple technical service bulletins—five for the transmission alone and 12 for the powertrain itself—the plug-in hybrid system no longer feels like it’s a prototype somehow released to the public. The implementation having the eight-speed automatic transmission still shift even when driving on electric-only power was a choice by someone, and it wasn’t a good one. The TSBs are the proof. But now the 1-2 and 2-3 shifts while in electric-only mode no longer judder, and power transitions from electric-only to hybrid mode no longer come with a lurch. The entire system is no longer described as indecisive. Polished? Perhaps that’s a stretch, but acceptable is a good way to describe this now.

Range, Charging, and Efficiency

The CX-90 Plug-In Hybrid is rated at 27 miles of electric-only range. In my experience, that’s about accurate in the real world, even with ambient temps in the 20s. The 26 mpg combined rating is less impressive.

I plugged into a Level 2 240-volt charger anytime the CX-90 Plug-In Hybrid was in my garage. The battery took just over 2 hours to recharge when fully depleted. Mazda said a Level 1 110-volt outlet would take 11 hours to go from 0% to 100%.

Over the course of 477 miles of mixed suburban driving, the onboard trip computer somehow used some unclear calculation based on the gas used and electricity run on to display a meaningless average of 49.3 mpg, though that’s a big number for a three-row crossover SUV. Though the EV-only average of 1.7 mi/kWh is far less impressive and about the same as a Hummer EV.

Verdict

At $52,025, including a $1,530 destination charge, the 2026 CX-90 Plug-In Hybrid isn’t cheap, but it does come well equipped with leather-trimmed seats, 20-inch alloy wheels, a power moonroof, and real buttons and knobs! The top-spec Premium Plus trim tested cost $60,625 and added a Bose audio system, a heads-up display, 21-inch alloy wheels, adaptive front lighting, and even a windshield wiper deicer system.

In reality, there aren’t any other competitive options for this size three-row crossover SUV with a mainstream non-luxury badge and a plug-in hybrid powertrain for any money. To enter Volvo XC90 territory, which can be had with a nicer interior and a smoother, more powerful plug-in hybrid powertrain, you’ll have to pony up quite a bit more.

The CX-90 Plug-In Hybrid is the only game in town, and after many, many updates, there is finally an option for families seeking a mainstream three-row plug-in hybrid. The gorgeous design hides its discreet, and now acceptable, plug-in hybrid powertrain. But the turbo-six model still feels and sounds more polished.

Mazda provided The Drive with a seven-day loan of this vehicle for the purpose of writing this review.

2026 Mazda CX-90 Plug-In Hybrid Premium Plus Specs

● Quick Take

The 2026 Mazda CX-90 Plug-In Hybrid is polished and ready for prime time.

The post 2026 Mazda CX-90 Plug-In Hybrid Review: Finally Ready for Prime Time appeared first on The Drive.

If you spent the weekend trying to buy a Land Rover Defender, Discovery, or Range Rover chances are you found that wasn’t an option. That’s because Jaguar Land Rover isn’t selling these models at the moment.

A Jaguar Land Rover spokesperson confirmed to The Drive that the Range Rover, Discovery, and Defender models are currently under a stop-sale order and have been recalled due to an issue with the airbag system.

“JLR is voluntarily conducting a recall to address a potential issue affecting the driver’s airbag system in certain Range Rover, Discovery and Defender vehicles manufactured between April 2019 and June 2026,” the spokesperson said.

How many Discoverys, Defenders, and Range Rovers were built, and sold, during that time is unknown at the moment.

New models affected by the recall can not be sold until the situation has been remedied for safety reasons. JLR has resolved the issue for models in production, which are rolling down the line and shipping to dealers now. A repair service campaign is underway now and customers can continue to place orders for new models today. But already built models sitting on dealer lots will need to be fixed “as quickly as possible,” according to JLR.

JLR said it is not aware of any issues with airbag non-deployment situations so far. The recall and stop-sale is a preemptive action after internal engineering testing discovered the issue.

JLR said it has informed the NHTSA of the situation, though as of the time of publishing no recall or stop-sale notice has been published by the safety agency.

Owners of potentially affected vehicles will be notified and informed of next steps for repair. Repairs will be carried out free of charge, and every effort will be made to minimize inconvenience to customers, JLR told The Drive.

Customers can contact their local dealership to inquire about repairs, but JLR will be sending out recall notices to alert owners of the recall.

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The post You Can’t Buy a New Defender, Discovery, or Range Rover — and It’s Because of the Airbags appeared first on The Drive.

America, we have a size problem. Vehicles are larger than ever, and it turns out, it really doesn’t matter what powers them. Exhibit A: The Chevrolet Silverado EV.

Last week I spent time in the 2026 Chevrolet Silverado EV TrailBoss. The truck is 19.4 feet long. As a point of fact, no full-size truck sold in America today fits length wise in my garage, which is not tiny. Our house was built in 1997. With a gas truck, not a huge deal, the truck will just sit outside and get dirty, which admittedly will kill me bit-by-bit each day. But with an electric truck, that poses a new challenge. Turns out, extension cords for electric car chargers exist for this exact reason.

The Level 2 240-volt 48-amp EV charger wired in our garage is mounted in the front. This was done so regardless of an EV I am testing that week an issue wouldn’t arise. Charge port’s on the front fender or front end? Pull in. Charge port’s on the rear fender? Back in. No big deal. Truck won’t fit in the garage? That’s a problem.

Companies like A2ZEV and EVDance to Vevor and SKYSHALO EV all make extension cables for EV chargers both in J1772 and Tesla-style NACS configurations. The former, A2ZEV heard through the grapevine, also known as friend of The Drive and the man running Out of Spec, Kyle Conner, that a full-size electric truck wouldn’t fit in my garage where our EV charger was. Suddenly a box showed up from A2ZEV with a J1772 extension cord.

Last week I tested it, and low and behold, the simple device worked. Solved what is a rather dumb issue.

A regular extension cord should not really be used with any EV charger, and certainly not a Level 2 240-volt charger, which would pose its own challenges.

You can technically use a regular extension cord theoretically with a Level 1 120-volt EV charger in a pinch, but it’s not recommended, not what one might call safe, and really needs to be a thicker cord that is well insulated to deal with the continuous flow of energy and heat. From experience, the cord can get warm and that’s concern on it own.

These Level 2 extension cords from the various companies range in price, length, and even ratings for amps and output. The cord from A2ZEV is 16-feet long, rated for 48 amps, has an over-temperature sensor switch, and is certified by the FCC (EMI), CE certification on the connector, and UL certified as well. It costs $179.

Others, cost less or more money, depending on their specifications and your needs. EVdance’s cord is rated at 50 amps and is 40 feet long, but costs $339.95. Meanwhile, the cord from SKYSHALO EV is rated for 32 amps, is 21 feet long, and sold at Home Depot for $87.78. Vevor sells a cord with the same specs as SKYSHALO EV’s cord for $100.

Most Level 2 EV home chargers have cords that are 18 to 25 feet long. If a vehicle’s too large for the garage, like a pickup truck, and your EV charger is in the garage, turns out extension cords exist, and solve the problem.

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The post Turns Out You Can Buy an Extension Cord for Your EV Charger appeared first on The Drive.

Over the river, through the woods, or just down the highway. Regardless of where you are, Rivian’s mobile service team will come to you, and that’s the goal, according to the automaker’s CEO.

In Park City, Utah during an exclusive one-on-one interview on The Drivecast with the R2 launch as a backdrop, Rivian Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe told The Drive, “So if you need service and you’re on the side of a mountain, we can send a truck there.” Bold claim, but also, one few, if any, automaker CEO’s would probably make.

Listen to the entire conversation starting at the moment Scaringe addresses mobile service below.

Service for Rivian has been a hot topic since day one. At one point the automaker had customers waiting anywhere from 40 to 50 days for their vehicles to even get into a shop for repairs. Though, Scaringe said those days are over. Part of the solution is the company’s mobile service setup.

Scaringe said, “You know, one of the things about service that we have not talked about enough, and I see it starting to emerge in customer forums, is more than half of our service is done with mobile service. And so the goal is for that to grow to a very high percentage. 
We’d like that to be 75, 80% of our service activities.”

Mobile service is exactly what it sounds like. Scaringe explained the program as, “for those that haven’t experienced it, your car sitting in your driveway, it has an issue, you flag a ticket or you said, like to have it worked on. And we send a technician to your house. And we have a fleet of around 800 mobile service vehicles, so it’s a mostly our vans, which are like a service station inside a van. We also, have some what we call RSTs, Rivian service trucks.”

“The cool thing about the trucks is they can go anywhere. So if you need service and you’re on the side of a mountain, we can send a truck there,” Scaringe said.

While the goal is for 75% to 80% of service to be mobile today that number sits at just under 60%, according to Scaringe. “The beauty of that is you don’t need a loaner, you don’t need to worry about dropping off. You don’t even need to be there. We can let ourselves into the car,” Scaringe said.

Scaringe deemed the mobile service aspect of the automaker “Super convenient.”

In a previous life, then Jeep Senior Vice President Mike Koval Jr told me at the 2025 Chicago Auto Show that the automaker was preparing to roll out a mobile service program in 2025. That never happened. Tesla pioneered the concept of mobile service, and some legacy automakers have followed including Ford and Lincoln, amongst others.

If your Rivian breaks down on the side of a mountain we want to hear about your experience, especially if the automaker sends a team out to fix the vehicle.

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The post Broken Down on the Side of a Mountain? Rivian’s CEO Says They’ll Come to You appeared first on The Drive.

Good morning. Welcome to The Downshift, or TDS for short, The Drive‘s morning news roundup that gathers all the largest automotive stories from around the globe and places them in one spot.

Here’s a distillation of what’s bubbling accompanied by links for full stories for those seeking more information as we shift into Thursday, June 18, 2026.

The latest episode of The Drivecast, The Drive’s new weekly podcast, is now live on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.

Mazda, the automaker that swore up and down touchscreens were dangerous and distracting while buttons were safer, has changed its tune; the Japanese automaker’s program manager for the CX-5, Koichiro Yamaguchi, said, “Air conditioning, you can operate with a finger, and if we have to put the physical button, that will be at the lower position. Then the driver has to look down, and [there are] 15 similar looking switches. That means that you rather have to look down and select the correct button—actually, requires the driver [to take eyes] off the road. So rather than that, it’s better to have this control on the screen—minimize this change [distraction].”

Ram is aiming for 60% sales growth by 2030 as part of Stellantis’ turnaround efforts; this would have the truck maker top Jeep as the company’s volume leader in North America and become its most important brand.

Jaguar Land Rover is reportedly looking at building vehicles at U.S.-based Stellantis factories including a U.S.-focused Defender to avoid import tariffs.

Ford’s latest Super Duty debut features a Proud to Honor Package that is a rolling tribute to America if America was a stick-on graphics package.

Ferrari, shocking no one, is reportedly nudging its clients to buy the Luce EV if they want to move up and make the wait lists for its more exclusive gas-powered models.

The Jeep Recon’s EPA rating surfaced as 222 miles of range per charge; shocking no one, it appears the Recon will not be efficient, or have impressive range, despite its large 100-kWh battery pack.

Telo’s tiny electric truck is going to have the ability to charge surprisingly fast thanks to tech that will split the 400-volt battery pack in a parallel configuration enabling a 400-kW peak charge rate on an 800-volt charger.

The first GMA T.50s Niki Lauda supercar debuted, and it’s a stunner.

Waymo recalled nearly 4,000 self-driving robotaxis to stop them from driving into highway construction zones.

Uber plans to bring its premium robotaxi service to Houston, Texas in 2027.

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The post Mazda, Once the Loudest Critic of Touchscreens, Now Says They’re Safer Than Buttons: TDS appeared first on The Drive.

Wagon fans, pour one out for another Porsche wagon.

On Thursday, the 2027 Porsche Taycan was revealed with fake gear shifts from a fake transmission, amongst other changes. Notably absent and overlooked? The Taycan wagons, both the Sport Turismo and Cross Turismo, are gone. Dead. A Porsche spokesperson confirmed to The Drive it’s not our imagination and the wagons are indeed gone.

A moment of silence, please. Also, we can only blame the public, not Porsche. Had more people bought these clearly they would exist still today. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this happen. The Panamera Sport Turismo died in 2023 because people didn’t buy those either. The irony is the BMW M5 wagon and Audi RS6 Avant have both far exceeded those respective automaker’s sales expectations in the U.S. market. What is even happening here?

The Drive reached out to Porsche and asked why specifically the wagon models, which are the best models, of the Taycan are dead. We’ll update this story when we get an answer.

The Taycan Cross Turismo was confirmed back in 2021. At the time Porsche noted it had a Gravel Roads driving mode. Last year, Executive Editor Andrew Collins reviewed the Cross Turismo and noted it might just be the best all-around EV. That man is rarely wrong. Though, his dog, Bramble, didn’t like Porsche’s electric wagon. Clearly Bramble has bad taste.

Editor-In-Chief Kyle Cheromcha, who definitely is almost never wrong, reviewed the Taycan GTS Sport Turismo after it launched in 2022 and called it, at the time, the best electric Porsche. Cheromcha noted, “Haters who snub EVs for not having any soul need to get behind the wheel of a Taycan GTS.” Clearly, the haters did not in fact get behind the wheel of the Taycan GTS wagon.

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The post Porsche Killed Its Best Cars Because You Didn’t Buy Them appeared first on The Drive.