Transportation

VW’s first electric California camper skips the kitchen and the pop-top

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Misc. Tech, Transportation,

The camper van fantasy usually falls apart at the sink. You picture waking up at a trailhead with the doors thrown open, and then you remember the plumbing, the gas bottle, and the cabinetry you haul around all year and use four weekends of it.

Volkswagen's answer is to leave most of that out. The ID. California Cruise, shown today at the Caravan Salon in Düsseldorf, is the first fully electric van to wear the California badge, and it's built on the ID. Buzz Pro. You get a bed for two, blackout blinds on every window, two camping chairs, a table, and a 2,000-watt socket. You don't get a kitchen, and going by what VW has announced, you don't get a pop-top roof either.

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Spatial Audio in CarPlay Reaches the Volvo EX90, With a 25-Speaker Catch

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, Portable Audio / Video, Transportation,

The car is where a lot of people still listen to music on purpose. Alone, on a highway, with nobody interrupting and nothing else competing for the speakers, you hear the bass line in a way you never do at your desk. It's the closest thing most of us have to a listening room, and audio companies have been circling it for years.

Volvo is pushing Spatial Audio in CarPlay, powered by Dolby Atmos, out to the EX90 through a software update, and confirmed it in a press release this week. Back in July it named the EX60, EX90 and ES90 as the three models getting it. There's a catch, and it's an expensive one. The feature needs the optional Bowers & Wilkins sound system.

Click to continue reading Spatial Audio in CarPlay Reaches the Volvo EX90, With a 25-Speaker Catch

Xpeng Raised $900 Million to Build Humanoid Robots on a Car Assembly Line

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Misc. Tech, Transportation, Artificial Intelligence,

Xpeng's robotics business just raised more than $900 million at a valuation above $6.3 billion, in what the company says is the largest single private round China's embodied AI sector has seen. IDG Capital led it, Gaorong Ventures joined, and Tencent and Alibaba came in as strategic investors.

The money goes toward one machine: a humanoid robot called IRON, which Xpeng expects to enter mass production by the end of 2026.

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Expensive Gas Just Did What EV Subsidies Couldn’t

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Features, Transportation,

Fifty countries just posted record quarterly EV sales at the same time, and it happened in a year when the overall car market shrank. The thing that finally moved people wasn't a tax credit or a better charging network. It was the price at the pump.

That's the read from a new International Energy Agency report on the second quarter of 2026. Sales of EVs and plug-in hybrids rose 4 percent year over year and jumped 35 percent from the previous quarter, and electrified vehicles are now on track to make up 29 percent of global car sales this year. Meanwhile, total car sales fell 5 percent in the first half.

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2027 Kia Telluride X-Pro Review: The Rare Off-Road Trim That Doesn’t Ruin the SUV

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Product Reviews, Transportation,

Most off-road trims are a costume. You pay a few thousand extra for knobby tires, some black plastic cladding, and a pair of tow hooks painted a color that screams rescue me, and what you actually get is a family SUV that rides worse, hums louder on the highway, and never once leaves pavement. The 2027 Kia Telluride X-Pro had every opportunity to be exactly that vehicle.

It isn't, and that's the whole story here. Kia redesigned the Telluride from the ground up for 2027, and the X-Pro is the version that gets 9.1 inches of ground clearance, an electronic limited-slip rear differential, real all-terrain rubber, and recovery hooks that aren't decorative. The surprise is what it didn't cost: the thing still drives like the comfortable, quiet, absurdly practical three-row SUV that made the Telluride a phenomenon in the first place. That balance is harder to pull off than the marketing photos suggest, and almost nobody in this class has managed it.

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Tesla Is Selling a $225 Balance Bike for Toddlers

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Toys, Transportation,

Your two-year-old cannot legally drive. Tesla has found a workaround anyway. The company is now selling a $225 balance bike for toddlers, a pedal-free, motor-free little machine that a kid propels the old-fashioned way, with their own feet on the ground.

That is Flintstones-style locomotion at a Silicon Valley price. The bike targets kids aged 2 to 5 who weigh under 77 pounds, with a lightweight magnesium frame in white, a five-way adjustable black seat, the Tesla word mark on the side and a T logo up front. It comes with assembly tools. It is also, as of now, already sold out.

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The Rivian R2 Is Almost Perfect But There’s One Big Problem (Video)

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Product Reviews, Transportation, Videos,

The Rivian R2 might be the most important vehicle Rivian has ever made. After spending a day driving it through highways, mountain roads, and dirt trails outside Park City, Utah, it is clear this is not just a smaller R1. It feels like Rivian took the best parts of its adventure-ready DNA and packed them into something more usable, more affordable, and much easier to imagine in a normal driveway.

Click to continue reading The Rivian R2 Is Almost Perfect But There’s One Big Problem (Video)

Lucid Gravity Grand Touring Review: Fast, Smart, and Almost Unreal

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Features, Product Reviews, Transportation,

There is a very specific fantasy car that keeps showing up in the EV era. It seats a whole family without punishment. It looks expensive without trying too hard. It charges fast enough to make road trips feel normal again. It handles like something much smaller than it is. And it does all of that without becoming another giant rolling refrigerator.

The 2026 Lucid Gravity Grand Touring gets shockingly close to that fantasy.

In its most efficient factory configuration, Lucid says it can go up to 450 miles on a charge. In the real world, that number moves around a lot depending on wheels, tires, and seating layout. The borrowed example here, loaded up with the third row and bigger wheels, wore a 386-mile EPA label, which already tells you the most important thing about the Gravity: this is a vehicle where configuration matters a lot.

The bigger story is that Lucid did not build a soft, compromised family hauler and then sprinkle performance on top. The Gravity Grand Touring makes 828 horsepower, uses a 123-kWh battery, supports charging at up to 400 kW, and has become the rare three-row EV that is both genuinely practical and genuinely exciting to drive. The Gravity is very fast, very spacious, very clever, and still a little unfinished around the edges.

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2025 Range Rover Sport PHEV Review: Turning Electrification Into a Luxury Feature

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Features, Product Reviews, Transportation,

There are luxury SUVs that try very hard to convince you they’re practical, sporty, efficient, and somehow still special. Then there’s the 2025 Range Rover Sport Autobiography PHEV, which skips the sales pitch and just shows up looking expensive. It has that particular Range Rover talent for seeming both aggressively modern and completely uninterested in trends. The plug-in hybrid setup only sharpens that vibe. This thing is not trying to reinvent the luxury SUV. It’s trying to make the existing formula quieter, smoother, and just a little smarter. In a lot of ways, it succeeds.

The version I borrowed was basically the full expression of that idea. Carpathian Grey. Black roof. Red calipers. Massive 23-inch wheels. A cabin trimmed like a private lounge. And under it all, a turbocharged and electrified straight-six making over 540 horsepower, backed by a battery big enough to make the electric side of the experience feel real, not symbolic. At $131,680 as configured, it also shows up with the kind of price tag that makes clear this is not a quiet little efficiency play. This is fast, rich, quiet, and deeply competent, but the “Sport” badge still promises more attitude than the chassis really delivers.

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How the Tesla Cybertruck Became a $10 Billion Mistake

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Transportation, Videos,

It has been six years since Elon Musk stood on stage and watched the "bulletproof" window of the Cybertruck shatter in front of the entire world. At the time, we thought it was just a funny PR mishap, but looking back, it was actually the perfect metaphor for what was coming. We need to talk about how the most hyped vehicle in history has turned into a maintenance nightmare, plaguing owners with everything from rust issues to a recall caused by assembly workers using literal soap as a lubricant. It is a classic case of what happens when a company prioritizes "cool" over engineering fundamentals.

But the hardware failures are only half the story. The financial data surrounding the Cybertruck is where things get truly ugly. We are looking at a reservation conversion rate of just 2.5 percent. This means that the vast majority of people who said they wanted this truck, even after putting their money down for one, walked away when it actually arrived. I’m breaking down the numbers, the massive depreciation early adopters are facing, and why Tesla’s refusal to report separate sales figures for this truck tells you everything you need to know about its performance.

This more than just a polarized design or a polarizing CEO. The Cybertruck flop is about a $10 billion bet that seems to be failing to deliver on basic utility. From the cancelled range extender to the struggle of doing basic truck stuff like driving in sand, the Cybertruck is proving to be less of a revolution and more of a warning sign for the future of Tesla. Let's dig into exactly where this went wrong.