In 1980, when International Harvester switched off the assembly line for the original Scout II, nobody in their right mind could have predicted that four decades later a German automotive empire would resurrect the badge to lead an all-electric offensive across the American heartland. Volkswagen essentially scooped up the dormant trademark by chance when it absorbed commercial truck maker Navistar… Read more…

MINI is one of the most recognizable automotive brands in pop culture, even among people with little interest in cars. Today, we are testing one of its new additions, the MINI Aceman JCW e, a compact crossover positioned below the Countryman while offering more space and versatility than the traditional MINI Cooper. The Aceman is MINI’s first model available exclusively… Read more…

Hypermiling is very much like competitive meditation – it demands a monk-like discipline, bordering on clinical obsession. Tires pumped to granite firmness, every comfort accessory banished, climate systems powered down, and a right foot operating with the featherlight delicacy of a watchmaker. Nobody actually drives like this in the real world, yet car companies simply cannot resist the siren song… Read more…

When Charles Spencer King sketched out the very first Range Rover in the late 1960s, he thought of a utilitarian aristocrat – a 4×4 trimmed in hose-down vinyl that could shepherd flock of sheep across a soggy Yorkshire moor before parking outside the Savoy without a hint of shame. Five decades later, the vehicle’s defining paradox is still intact, only… Read more…

Spend five minutes reading industry headlines, and you could swear the electric transition had hit a brick wall. We love a good crisis – tales of unsold inventory on dealer lots, companies dusting off combustion blueprints, and buyers going back to the familiar embrace of gas station. But walk into an American showroom right now, and sales don’t show any… Read more…

Zeekr is rapidly expanding across Europe, and its models are becoming an increasingly common sight on the road. With a growing and diverse lineup, the brand now offers something for any kind of buyer. Today, we are testing the Zeekr 7GT Privilege AWD, the quickest and most luxurious version in the lineup. Neither advantage helps much in an efficiency test… Read more…

SUV Coupé – a curious breed of vehicle engineered to solve a riddle nobody asked for. It usually comes about by chopping off rear headroom and ditching visibility in the name of athletic posturing. Polestar applied that avant-garde dogma to its absolute extreme with the Polestar 4 coupé, deleting the rear window entirely and insisting that an HD roof camera… Read more…

Xiaomi Auto announced that its monthly vehicle deliveries stayed above 30,000 vehicles in August, extending the streak of five months in a row past that baseline. On paper, moving thirty thousand high-tech EVs every thirty days sounds like a win for a fledgling car division. But dig under the sheen, and the picture gets a bit murky. Xiaomi decided not… Read more…

Today Waymo has announced its expansion into three new cities in the US: Denver, San Diego, and Tampa. With these three, the total number of cities where Waymo operates in the US is now 14. The company says “tens of thousands” of people in Denver, San Diego, and Tampa signed up and expressed their interest in Waymo’s autonomous ride-hailing service,… Read more…

Nissan is currently testing a new EV on the streets of southern Europe, with a heavy coat of camouflage. It’s basically going to be Nissan’s version of the new Renault Twingo, and it’s going to be called the Nissan Wave. It’s expected to launch next year at a starting price of under €20,000. Aside from the obvious competition with the… Read more…

Leave it to the French automotive industry to turn a routine refresh into a masterclass of branding. There is a lot of charm to how Gallic marques approach the “special edition” – a splash of bold paint here, a bit of contrast stitching there, and suddenly a familiar EV is reborn with added swagger. Peugeot is calling its mid-cycle refresh… Read more…

The grand road trip is the ultimate acid test for the electric era, and cross-country marathons mean playing a wild game of hopscotch between highway charging stations. But while automakers in the West spent years talking up pure battery solutions, Chinese engineers recognized something possibly a bit more practical: families hitting the open road do not want to spend their… Read more…

Honda and Nissan are teaming up to jointly develop standardized electronic control units (ECUs) for software-defined vehicles (SDVs). The companies will introduce an architecture that will incorporate the jointly-developed ECUs and software in next-generation vehicles arriving from 2029 onwards. They aim to establish common specifications for core ECUs for their upcoming vehicles’ electrical and electronic systems, as well as operating… Read more…

Like it or not, first impressions are what really count. It applies to people as much as it applies to cars. If the car fails to spark your interest in the first 30 seconds, it’ll struggle to convince you even with outrageous performance or crazy tricks. If you are buying a car, it has to “zing” with you. And if… Read more…

The Nissan Micra has been a familiar name in urban mobility since the early 1980s, evolving through multiple generations while remaining true to its compact roots. The latest model, internally named K15, introduces perhaps its biggest change yet, becoming fully electric for the first time. Remarkably, despite the industry-wide trend toward ever larger cars, the Micra has consistently remained below… Read more…

We were lucky enough to secure one of the first customer allocations for a BMW iX3 50 xDrive, and over the coming months we will be sharing what it’s actually like to live with. Our iX3 will serve as both a daily commuter and a family car for longer journeys, giving us plenty of opportunities to test it in very… Read more…

In China, the confusing theater of the world’s wildest electric vehicle market, logic seems to have gone on holiday. To survive the bruising price war started by the local automakers, Toyota has set its rulebook on fire, rolled up its sleeves, and delivered the refreshed 2027 bZ5 with a price tag that feels like a misprint. Built under the FAW-Toyota… Read more…

Range Rover announced the new GT last month as the fifth member of the family. The brand revealed at the time that prototypes were completing final global testing wrapped in a camo design. And someone just spotted one of those prototypes “near the Nürburgring”. We can’t verify the location independently, but anyway, here’s the Range Rover GT on the road… Read more…

Every hiker (even a weekend warrior like yours truly) knows the sickening feeling of a false summit. You sweat for hours, legs aching, lungs burning, 100% convinced that the final peak is just over the next ridge – only to climb over it and discover a near-vertical rock face stretching into what feels like the clouds themselves. In the multi-billion-dollar… Read more…

Colin Chapman’s sacred motorsport gospel – “Simplify, then add lightness” – has taken a proper beating in the electric era. Every time I fling a modern, high-voltage missile into a tight hairpin, I can feel the tortured rubber screaming under the mass of it all. We have built remarkable machines with earth-shattering torque, but the dirty secret beneath every carbon-trimmed… Read more…