Credit: Slate

Hello, dear reader. Another busy week of publications around the web. Let's dive right in!

Ford can Fathom

Just a logo for now. Credit: Ford

Ford's been talking up its plans to release a sub-$30k EV for almost exactly a year now, but talking in rounded-up generalities is a little less significant than sticking an MSRP and a name on something. That's exactly what the company did this week.

It's called the Fathom, and it'll start at a base MSRP of $28,350, plus $1,595 destination. That's just a few grand more than the Slate Truck for a machine that, by the sound of things, will offer just about all the creature comforts we've come to expect in a modern car.

Things like, you know, paint.

The good news for Slate is that the Fathom is still a year or more away. Is that enough time for the company to establish itself? I delve into the details a bit more over at The Verge.

• Ford’s first ultra-cheap EV is called Fathom, a full-featured truck for $28,350 - The Verge

The Grand Sport X is more than an E-Ray rebrand

Those stripes mean good things. Credit: Tim Stevens

A few months back I was lucky enough to spend a long weekend in one of the first Corvette Grand Sport X coupes to roll off Kentucky’s historic production line. I spent that time crossing many of the best roads that Colorado had to offer, coincidentally many of which I'd driven years earlier on the launch of the E-Ray.

The E-Ray, the first hybridized Corvette, was a machine that apparently confused many of the Stingray faithful. So, rather than bring it back, Chevrolet retooled it to create this new machine. Fitted with the upgraded hybrid system that powers the 1,250-horse ZR1X, plus an all-new V8 in the back, the Grand Sport X brings some substantial new hardware to the table.

More interesting, though, are the tweaks in the dynamic suspension and dynamics algorithms that create a surprisingly different feeling sports car. I really enjoyed it, but I'm also not convinced it's in keeping with the Grand Sport ethos of a pure, handling-focused Corvette.

• 2027 Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport X proves code is as important as hardware - Ars Technica

• 2027 Chevy Corvette Grand Sport X First Drive Review: E-Ray With Attitude - Edmunds

Mercedes-Benz Electric C-Class impresses

Not everyone will like the looks, but it drives great. Credit: Tim Stevens

While Benz's prior electric sedans didn't quite fit into the company's well-defined template, the latest is much more in keeping with C-Classes of yore. I drove it in Europe a few weeks ago and generally really enjoyed it. It drives great, is extremely comfortable, and while its styling is a bit debatable, I think most folks will find it more visually endearing than the EQE and EQS that came before.

I didn't love the interior, it has a similar vertical dash setup to the one I found claustrophobic in the CLA, but otherwise I was quite enamored of it. For all the details, check out my impressions here:

• 2027 Mercedes-Benz C-Class Electric First Drive - GreenCars

• 2027 Mercedes-Benz C-Class Electric first drive: A long-range triumph with a few cabin quirks - Engadget

A new GLA approaches with electric and hybrid power

Gas or EV? Your choice with the new GLA. Credit: Tim Stevens

That's not the only new EV from Mercedes. The company has a new GLA in the hopper, and this time its most accessible SUV is going to be available with either battery or hybrid power.

While I know which one I'd choose, choice is certainly good, especially in this incredibly fragmented global marketplace. From what I could see of the pre-production models I got to poke around in, there's nothing more than a tiny difference in cargo capacity between the two models.

The new GLA is not due out for about another year, so we have plenty yet to learn, but my initial impressions are good, and you can read all the details here:

• 2028 Mercedes-Benz GLA Photos, Range, and Hybrid System - Capital One Auto Navigator

• 2028 Mercedes-Benz GLA Preview - JD Power

That's all for this week. I'm off to Monterey in the week ahead to see the new unvevils, the impossibly limited series, and yet another raft of ridiculous restomods. It'll be posh as always, but more than a little humbling, too.

Stay tuned for more on that. Until then, be well, and do good!

No dogs? Fat chance. Credit: Tim Stevens

Hi there, dear subscriber. Back to my usual updates this weekend, because I finally have some updates to share! Lots of things have been in embargo limbo or just pending finally hitting the wire this week, but there’s one I really wanted to get in your inbox. Let's dive in!

Slate Truck driven free

Caption. Credit: Tim Stevens

I've been fascinated by the Slate since the first time I got to see it behind closed doors some time ago. This week, I finally got to slot the thing's chunky little key into its bare-bones dashboard and go for a drive.

I was given about an hour to tool around Newport, RI in the thing, and while I confess I didn't have much in the way of lofty expectations, they were thoroughly met.

The Slate Truck is, suffice to say, perfectly fine to drive and the interior is just comfortable enough that I wouldn't be miserable in there. More importantly, it has everything that I'd need to start customizing. I could see myself fabricating slings for the rear bulkhead to hold backpacks and grocery bags behind the seats, plus, of course, custom phone mounts and all sorts of things.

That's really the point of the Slate, the DIY truck, but I'm really hoping it catches on with those who are a little less creatively minded, too. I really wish they’d delivered on the sub-$20k promise, but even at around $25,000 it’s a compelling proposition for many. The American truck scene desperately needs a reboot, and I'm hoping this is it.

Anyhow, I had no issues in the truck beyond the usual pre-production interior creaks and squeaks, and I've been assured first customer deliveries will still happen before the end of the year. With any luck, I'll get a little more quality time with one before then, but we'll have to wait and see on that front.

Until then, you can read my full impressions over at Engadget:

• Slate Truck first drive: A minimalist's delight - Engadget

I've actually had so much drop this week that it feels like maybe we should spread things out a little bit, so I'll be back next time with my adventure behind the wheel of the new Corvette Grand Sport X.

There’s safety in the peloton, but only if you keep moving forward. Credit: Vzach

Welcome to a new series called the Rules of Effective Freelancing. Back when I started this little newsletter, I kicked things off with a few pro-tips on how to be a good freelance contributor gleaned both from my years as a freelancer and from my time as an assigning editor.

Since then, this list has grown by about a factor of 10, and as I'm trying to grow things further, I thought I'd dive back in.

Once upon a time, I used to race bikes. Bicycles, that is, the kind that don't go very far or very fast if you aren't pedaling. I wasn't particularly good at it. My brief career never took me past the amateur ranks, and the lowest tier at that. I am proud to say I did get one race win under my belt, but a year later, a bad crash convinced me that there were probably better ways to spend my weekends.

I learned a lot in those years of racing, not the least of which being that concussions take a lot longer to heal when you're approaching middle age. But on a more positive note, I picked up an adage that stuck with me: If you're not moving forward, you're falling behind.

Bicycle racing is all about positioning. For maximum efficiency, you want to be sheltered in the middle of the group, hidden from the wind. But, linger too far at the back of the peloton, and you run the risk of falling behind -- “getting dropped” in cycling parlance. Once you get dropped, you’re exposed to the full fury of the wind. That means having to work significantly harder to catch back up again. If your legs are dead, if your form is weak, or even if you just haven't been eating enough, that might be the end of your race.

Falling to the back is dangerously easy. You can be hanging out in the middle of the pack, safe, chatting with a few casual acquaintances about who has the best cycling kit or which energy gels go down the easiest. You can be surrounded by racers all moving at the same rate as you, riding just as hard as you, and before you know it, you're off the back and dangerously exposed.

That's because the peloton is a constantly shifting, evolving blob of riders. Aggressive riders are constantly diving around the outside and pushing themselves to the front. Every time that happens, if you're just hanging out doing your thing in the middle, you're falling behind. The name of the game, then, is to always be moving forward, always passing other riders, always taking every opportunity.

I think about this a lot in many aspects of business, but it seems particularly applicable to the world of the self-employed. No, it’s not because freelancing is a cut-throat race and other freelancers are trying to out-maneuver you. It’s because the industry is constantly shifting and you need to stay nimble to keep ahead.

That means two things: Finding new outlets and finding new sources.

Even at the best of times, outlets and clients stop taking work. Maybe they're suffering from a temporary budget crunch, maybe they have some new internal guidance on contributors, or maybe they've closed up shop entirely. Lately, that latter situation is happening with disconcerting frequency in the editorial world. It is a sad state that you need to be prepared for as a freelance contributor.

Hanging on to a few key outlets or clients and hoping they last forever is risky. You need to constantly be on the lookout for new places to ply your wares. On the editorial side, newsletters like my friend Abigail Basset's Six Figure Writing Jobs are a great resource, but you can also find a lot of opportunities just by trawling LinkedIn.

The flip side of the coin is finding sources. If you're doing editorial work like me, you can only carry yourself so far writing opinion and analysis pieces. At some point, you'll need a source of content, whether it be early access to news, products to review, or juicy happenings that you're not supposed to know about.

Just like your outlets, these sources also have a shelf life. Your favorite PR person will take on an internal role. That gossip-happy executive in your DMs will find themselves on the wrong side of a board reboot. Your best connections won't last forever, and if you're not constantly working to develop new ones, the race is moving up the road without you.

Sound exhausting? Yeah, it is, utterly exhausting, just like a bike race. I lost a fair few races because I let my mind wander, lingered at the back, and got dropped. Before I realized what was happening I was stuck watching the Lycra stretched over my competitors' asses as they rolled off without me.

In a race, when you're dropped it's often impossible to get back on, and the professional equivalent has been my number one fear since I went full-time freelance. I've been entirely focused and committed to not letting that happen here. I hope you can do the same.

Finding those outlets and developing those sources are topics for another time, but in the interim I hope that you’ll find this mindset productive. And if you have any other questions or topics you’d like me to delve into, drop me a note. Just like in bicycle racing, surviving in this industry is an awful lot easier if we all work together.

Yep, I typed this on that.

Greetings from the home front, dear reader. I've been enjoying a week getting caught up on a number of projects, firing up a new lawn mower, and tinkering with a virtual reality headset that I'm building myself, though that last one is admittedly not going so well. Lots more to come on all those things once I get the time to stop testing and fiddling and start writing and editing.

I still have a few articles in various digital hoppers waiting to go online, so I don't have a lot to link you this week. Such is the joy of freelancing in a digital age: often you fire over your hard-wrought copy and then wait for weeks or more before something quietly pops up online with your byline. But here's the latest list of where you can find me in print, plus one new online piece that's just a click away.

How you can 3D print your own keyboard case

I'm not just a nerd when it comes to weird pinball stuff and automotive topics. I also tend to geek out about the latest advancements in at-home 3D printing, plus the increasingly low bar of creating your own printed circuit boards. The world of DIY ergonomic keyboards is probably the ultimate convergence of those two trends, and thus a topic of intense interest for me, too.

I built the keyboard you see above quite a few years ago, but when my friend Dan Ackerman over at Micro Center said he was looking for topics on 3D printing, I offered to do a bit of a how-to on how to create your own custom cases for your own custom keyboards. Want to know how? Here's your chance.

• How to Design and 3D Print a Custom Case for Your Custom Keyboard - Micro Center

Latest exploits in print

Since last I gave an update, you can find me in a pair of magazines. In the current issue of Car Graphic, on Japanese newsstands now, I talk about the Copperhead reboot and how it might just be a new-age, big-muscle halo car for Stellantis.

And for Worth Magazine, I wrote about Audi's rebooted and electrified RS5.

Hopefully, you can find some of those on a newsstand near you.

That's all for me for now. I'm off to Helsinki tomorrow to drive one thing and get an early preview of another. It's a lovely city that, if nothing else, is far enough north of mainland Europe that I shouldn't have to worry about heat exhaustion.

I also have a few more reviews in the hopper for this very newsletter that'll be hitting your inboxes hopefully before too terribly much longer. Until then, be well and do good.

Sunrise on the mountain. Credit: Tim Stevens

Hello, dear reader, and welcome back. I'm home this week, and next, which is an absolutely delightful thing after spending most of the last few months bouncing around the world driving this, watching that, missing sleep and flight connections all along the way.

This past week, I was in Germany, driving the new Porsche 911 GT3 S/C, the open-top flavor of one of the company’s more purposeful machines. How was it? I sadly can't tell you just yet, other than sweaty thanks to Europe’s current heat wave, but I can at least talk about the weekend I spent in Colorado spent just before.

When is a record not a Record?

Laptops and touchscreens and roll cages. Credit: Tim Stevens

Last weekend was the 104th running of the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb (PPIHC), one of the greatest and most historic motorsports events in the world. Competitors from all over compete to get from bottom to top in less time than the rest to win their classes, but equally important is the goal of setting new all-time records.

Chevrolet was in pursuit of one of those, and the company's reps kindly invited me out to embed with the team to watch the proceedings, while also getting some extended seat time in a brand-new Corvette Grand Sport X -- more on that in a future update.

Chevrolet’s goal was, without a doubt, to set a new production car record, to beat the 2022 time of 9:53.541 seconds set by David Donner in the 000 Porsche 911 Turbo S. However, since that time was set on a non-race day, it wasn't an official PPIHC record.

Ahead of the race, Tony Roma, GM's Executive Chief Engineer, made it abundantly clear to me why they were there: "Our goal is to go after the fastest production car, period. And I think right now there's a difference in the record on race day and not on race day, so we're hoping to just settle that."

This Pantera has nothing to do with the story but looked so good on practice day I couldn’t help shooting it. Credit: Tim Stevens

On that day one week ago, IndyCar racer JR Hildebrand, at the wheel of a 1,250-horsepower Corvette ZR1X, the one with the electric motor at the front axle, roared to the top in 9:30.104, 23 seconds faster than Donner's time from 2022.

Donner, meanwhile, ran a 9:53.740 in the exact same 2022 911 Turbo S. That’s within two tenths of his previous run, a remarkable demonstration of consistency from four years earlier.

So, a new record for Chevrolet, right? Yes and no. Though built from a development mule and upfitted with safety hardware, the ZR1X is substantially still a production car, and it went faster than Donner’s 2022 time. So, it set a new best time for production cars up the mountain.

However, per PPIHC regulations, cars with any amount of electrification are not eligible for the non-division Production Car records set on race day. Therefore, according to PPIHC officials, it was actually Donner who set a new record on Sunday despite being two-tenths slower than in 2022.

Here’s the quote from the press release:

Why? Remember, Donner's earlier time was not set on a race day. This one was, and it's now the official number to beat. That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if PPIHC adds a “Production Hybrid” record to its official list of Race Records, which would surely go to the Corvette.

Anyhow, until then, there are records, and there are Records, and Hildebrand's time is still a remarkably impressive one for a car that is substantially the same as you or I could buy — if indeed we had a little over $200,000 to spare. It was also fast enough to handily win the Time Attack 1 class, which is certainly worth celebrating as well.

Much, much more on how Hildebrand prepared for that ultra-high-pressure run and the modifications made to his car in my full event writeup for Ars Technica.

An ode to Polestar

From a Polestar 3 drive in better times. Credit: Tim Stevens

We learned this week that Polestar is sadly not long for American shores. In what sure feels like a remarkable exhibit of singling out brands that certain people in the government haven’t heard of, Polestar received a U.S. sales ban this week that will prevent it from selling any future models here.

That's despite, of course, Polestar sharing corporate parentage, platforms, technology, and even manufacturing with Volvo, a company that can happily carry on with its American business.

Why was Polestar singled out? Officially, it's because the company's information technology infrastructure points back to China rather than to Scandinavia. That seems like a scant distinction to me.

As my friend (and former Polestar Americas Head of Communications and Public Relations) JP Canton posted on LinkedIn, this shows the increased importance of having a strong division within your company focused entirely on government policy, if only to keep the right pieces of bread well-buttered.

Anyhow, enough said on that. Going to be a bit of a slow week for me, one in which I'm desperately hoping to recharge my batteries. I'm completely wiped out after so many early mornings and late nights, but I’m also looking forward to tinkering on a few projects for a few features. More on those as they surface.

Until then, be well and do good.

The World Cup Has a Market for Every Match.

From the group stage to the final, trade real outcomes on Kalshi, official regional partner of the Argentine National Team. Who wins, who advances, who takes the trophy. Peer-to-peer, no house, cash out anytime. Get $10 free.

Trade Every Match

_{Trade responsibly.}

Cooler than a Caravan. Credit: Tim Stevens

Hello, dear reader, writing to you from Colorado Springs, Colorado. I was out here this week embedded with Chevrolet's Pikes Peak team as they made an attempt at breaking the production record set by 000 Magazine's Porsche 911 Turbo S a few years back. Chevy brought a 1,250-horsepower Corvette ZR1X and gave it over to racer J.R. Hildebrand to do the deed.

How did he do? Pretty damned well. I'll be back next time with a full report from the ground, and the sky, and everything in between. For now, let’s talk vans.

Very necessary. Credit: Tim Stevens

Is the VLE right for the USA?

If you spend much time in Tokyo, you'll see a surprising number of what we'd call minivans wheeling around the city. The JDM variety, models like the Nissan Elgrand or Toyota Esquire, tend to be taller and boxier than what we get in the States, occasionally brutalist even in appearance, but more importantly they tend to serve a different purpose than ours.

While your average American minivan is positioned as a family-friendly kid-hauler, in Japan they're often used as executive transporters -- a more roomy, more comfortable means of getting where you need to go.

Mercedes-Benz is looking to elevate that concept to new heights with the VLE. It’s labeled a "Grand Limousine," a somewhat evocative description for what is ultimately a really, really nice van, but after spending some time driving one around in Spain, I'm reasonably convinced.

Those vans are built atop a new, electric platform called Van.EA, which I got to sample back in prototype form last year. This architecture not only makes room for the typical skateboard battery pack in the floor and a pair of electric motors, but creates a more rigid and refined foundation for vans, something suitable for handling executives, not just their luggage.

The VLE I drove was outfitted with an 8K ultrawide television that swings down from the ceiling and a pair of second-row captain's chairs that offer much of the same luxury as your average narrow-body business class seat. The experience isn't perfect -- those seats need work -- but overall, I was really impressed by the way the VLE drove.

Is it good enough to convince the American market that vans can be cool? The VLE certainly looks sharper than your average Caravan, but those minivan preconceptions run deep in these parts. Personally, I couldn't care less. I'd love it if I had a VLE to shuttle me around, but it's going to take some serious red-carpet product placement to shrug off that family-hauler vibe.

More impressions? Check out my write-ups here:

• 2028 Mercedes-Benz VLE first drive: Your 8K living room on wheels has arrived - Engadget

• Road Test: The Mercedes-Benz VLE is a Private Jet for the Road - Robb Report

That's all for this week. I'm now off to Germany to drive a certain drop-top Porsche that online purists have been having a real good time hating on. Something tells me that, despite the vitriol, it'll be awful nice.

Oh, and sorry this is a day late. Those 3am wakeup calls to hit the mountain this week really messed with my clock, among other things.

5 Seconds a Day. Your Natural Color, Back.

Hair dye fixes gray. It also gives you a bad smell, a hairline that looks painted, and roots that remain gray. Particle Anti-Gray Serum targets the root cause — restoring natural pigment gradually, hair and beard, no dye, no mess. Five seconds a day. Thirty-day guarantee. 20% off with code BH20.

Risk-Free & 20% Off Today

A familiar face, but everything else is new.

Hello from somewhere between Bilbao, Spain, and Paris, France. I'm on a little commuter flight on my way to a bigger trans-Atlantic bird that'll take me closer to home. It's been another great week somewhere fabulous, driving a fascinating EV, in this case, Mercedes-Benz's upcoming VLE.

It's not every day that a new model tries to bring a wholly new segment to the United States, but that's exactly what the VLE, and its upscale cousin the VLS, are intended to do: make luxury vans a thing for Americans. Can it succeed in a land full of minivan-sized preconceptions? More on that soon.

Rivian's second act is its best yet

The views in Utah do not disappoint.

I spent last week in and around Park City, Utah, driving the long-awaited R2. I was sadly sworn to secrecy about the whole thing, but now that the embargo has lifted, I can finally share some impressions.

They are almost universally positive. I confess I wasn't sure what to expect going into the drive. This is an SUV that the company has been positioning as the thing that would propel Rivian into the future, and that's a lot of pressure. Amazingly, it delivers.

While I've always loved the R1T, I confess I've not always enjoyed my time in the R1S. While incredible off-road, it always felt awkward and disconnected on the asphalt. I'm glad to say that's not the case in the R2. That's, of course, in large part to it being substantially smaller and lighter, but overall it just feels miles more pleasant on the day-to-day.

That's not only when you're behind the wheel. I was shocked to find the R2's second row is far more comfortable and spacious than that of the much larger R1S. It's easier to climb into, as well.

That it's so much cheaper than an R1S (fully loaded, it's about $20,000 less than an entry-level R1S) just makes the R2 all that much more appealing, but I have to say I was disappointed to read about some atrociously high lease rates that are turning off new buyers. Hopefully that changes once these things start hitting the roads in real numbers soon.

• 2027 Rivian R2 Review - Capital One Auto Navigator

• 2027 Rivian R2 first drive: Rivian's second SUV is its best yet - Engadget

Best harnesses for your little buddy

My dude.

My pup Koopa is just past 18 months old, meaning he's more or less full grown even if he doesn't always act like it. That meant it was time to start thinking about a proper harness for the dude, and as we began researching what to buy, I figured I might as well share my learnings with the rest of the world.

The result is my latest article for The Guardian, a buyers' guide for dog harnesses, including some great advice from a real veterinarian and dog behaviorist on the importance of a good-fitting harness. I learned a lot through my testing of 15 harnesses and evaluating dozens more. For better or worse, this is one of those places where spending more really does get you a much better product, but the good news is you don't have to spend hundreds to get a great harness.

Anyway, hopefully this piece will help you find the right option for your pup.

• The best dog harnesses in the US - The Guardian

That's it from me this week. We're getting closer to CDG, which means I'm getting closer to one of the most precarious places to make a connecting flight on the planet. With any luck I'll make it, and with a further bit of luck I'll be out at Pikes Peak next week. It'll be my first time at the race, and I am properly excited. More on that soon.

Until then, be well, and do good.

Panic is a financial news strategy. Clarity is ours.

Markets move. Headlines catastrophise. But somewhere inside the noise is the story that matters — the opportunity, not the fear. 

The Daily Upside was built by Wall Street insiders to find it — global business and finance, reported without the alarm.

Join 1M readers →

Welcome to Million Miler Reviews, a new series of product reviews with a big focus on how a given product survives a life spent on the road. I won't review something until it's gone around the globe with me at least once.

Like this kind of content? Please consider subscribing!

The XM6 were and are fantastic, but not the most durable.

When you travel as much as I do (201,890 miles last year, 143 days away from home), every single thing you take with you becomes a major consideration. I can list out to you every single item in my bag, and I regularly reconsider each item’s necessity, its volume, and its weight. If there's a lighter, smaller replacement for a cable or charger or even a paper notebook, I'll be right there to upgrade.

And so, committing to buy a set of Sony WH-1000XM6 (henceforth just XM6) headphones, given their eye-watering $450 price and considerable size, was not a decision I made lightly. But buy them I did, and I loved them too. They’ve been around the world with me countless times. And then, 308 days after I put them into service, they broke.

It wasn't until quite recently that I would even consider traveling with wireless over-the-ear headphones. Yeah, they sound great, and most offer some stellar battery life, but they're so massively bulky that I couldn't see myself giving up the space in my bag to bring ‘em along.

Instead, I traveled with my trusty Shure SE535 earbuds, which not only offer world-class sound but also feature a foam design that means I literally can't hear anything in the world around me when I put them in. They're blissful, and they’re tiny, but the True Wireless adapter I got only managed eight hours on a charge when new. A few years on, that's down by about a third, no longer good enough even for your average eight-hour trans-Atlantic flight.

That's what got me looking for new options last year, and it just so happened that Sony’s then-new XM6 had just dropped. My friend Billy Steele gave them a rave review at Engadget, and they seemed to offer an incredible set of features. They also looked comfortable and, at 254 grams (roughly the same as an average paperback), they wouldn't weigh me down too much.

So I took the plunge, splurged on a pair for myself, and immediately fell in love.

Like an auditory embryo of sorts.

Sound quality

I wouldn't call myself an elite audiophile. I run lamp cord to my speakers instead of something that costs $200 a foot and features tritanium-plated connectors and unobtanium shielding.

That said, I do appreciate good sound quality and am happy to pay the extra for it. For example, I run a PS Audio Sprout100 with a pair of Klipsch reference speakers for tunes in my home office. World-class audio? No. Way better than a pair of powered speakers plugged into my motherboard's 3.5mm output? Yes.

For me, the XM6 headphones sound very good. They are not the most powerful headphones I've ever experienced when I'm listening to punchy tracks like No Excuses from Alice in Chains or bass-forward tracks like Oi-1 from Biosphere, nor do they offer the most finesse in more nuanced songs like Tracy Chapman's Fast Car, possibly the greatest test track of all time. Still, they offer stellar all-round sound.

I never found myself wishing I'd paid more for something better.

Comfort

There’s no delicate way to say this, so I’ll just lay it out there: I have a big head. It’s seven and three-quarters if you're familiar with hat sizing, and so it's often difficult to find cans that fit me comfortably. That's another reason why I really like my Shure buds. They’re totally unaffected by my cranial expanse

A lot of headphones bind uncomfortably, but I was immediately impressed at how well the XM6 fits my head. Yes, I need to extend those arms all the way, but the lightweight construction and the foam padding on the headband make for something that's quite comfortable to wear for hours and hours at a time.

The cups are similarly plush, with a closed-cell foam surround that comfortably conforms to my head. Those cushy cups aren't just for comfort, though.

Noise isolation and cancellation

Everyone talks about active noise cancellation (ANC) as if it's the end-all, be-all feature of over-the-ear cans for travel. It's important, don't get me wrong, but a good set of travel headphones starts with good noise isolation: passive blocking of the world around you, before you even power them up.

While not as isolating as my Shure earbuds with their memory-foam tips, the XM6 still impress. Put them on in a busy space and suddenly the world around you gets a little less stressful, something that's key to me. I spend much of my time wearing these in places like CDG, among the most sweaty and stressful airports on the planet.

But turn them on, and that drone of humanity around you just disappears into the background. The XM6 really does a stellar job of negating noise, delivering extremely competent ANC without a trace of the hiss you can get on lesser noise-canceling devices.

You know they’re good when I give up this much room in my pack.

Convenience for travel

That comfort and ability to dial down the decibels of the world is part of what charms me about the XM6. Putting them on after I get through airport security is almost like wrapping myself in a safety blanket. My day instantly gets better.

I wish the case were smaller, and I really wish that it collapsed when empty, but it has a slender design and I appreciate the clever magnetic closure.

The headphones themself are mostly easy to manage while hustling from terminal 2E to 2G. Swipe forward or back to skip tracks, up or down to adjust volume, or tap twice to play or pause — settings that can all be customized through XM6’s dedicated app. You can even set them to dismiss phone calls just by shaking your head.

Take them off, and they'll automatically pause whatever you're listening to or playing, and they even make for a decent Bluetooth headset for calls. Even in busy spaces, people rarely have a hard time hearing me.

If I need to hear the world around me, I can cup my hand over the right can, which triggers the microphones to pass ambient audio through. For longer listening, there's a small button on the left can that toggles ambient sound on and off. This is perfect for when the gate agent is announcing just how long it’ll be before I can get home that night.

Sony even includes a short adapter for using the XM6 wired with airplane seatback entertainment systems, which comes in handy in the rare case you can find something worth watching between the turbulence warnings from the flight crew.

Battery life

Stellar. Sony promises 30 hours with ANC and, a year later, I'm still getting close to that on a charge. I've worn these on multiple, all-day journeys to faraway places and they've only ever failed me when I forgot to charge them between trips.

And even then, 3 mins on a USB-C port is enough to pull down the juice required to get me through a three-hour flight. That’s remarkable.

Sad trombone.

Durability

This is, sadly, where it all falls apart. Before I bought these, I read up on their predecessors, the XM5. They got almost universal praise, but I read a few instances of people suffering broken hinges. Though I was early in getting my XM6 headphones after their release last year, there were already a few reports of similar failures.

Given all that, I treated these things with care, gently folding and unfolding them to put them in and take them out of their case. I never dropped them, never strained them, and lived in fear of them breaking. Given their light weight, they do have a fundamentally flimsy feeling about them, one that sadly proved accurate.

Just this past week I noticed the right extension area on the top had cracked, a loop of plastic. At first I thought it was just cosmetic, no big deal, but I quickly realized it serves a functional purpose. With that piece broken, the right earpiece isn't held tight, causing it to swing outward, as you can see in the photo below.

The broken arm makes for an ill-fitting headset.

Everything still works. Indeed, I'm wearing them right now (listening to Jeff Buckley, if you’re curious), but because the right earpiece isn't held in place, noise isolation in that ear is dramatically reduced. I can hear too much the drone of the tired old A330 that’s shakily hauling me across the Atlantic.

I'm hoping I can maybe patch things up with a zip tie, but frankly, this is pretty unacceptable on a device this expensive and less than a year old. My wired Sennheiser HD555 over-ear headphones, which I paid $377.70 for 16 years ago, still sound great and look like new.

Wrap-up

Yes, I've probably put more time into my XM6s in the last 11 months than most people will in a lifetime, but I’m really disappointed, especially given how carefully I’ve treated them. I knew their non-replaceable batteries would die some day, but I'd hoped to get at least five years out of them.

So, it's a shame, but I can't recommend these. In addition to small and lightweight, a good travel device needs to stand up to the rigors of the road, and these have failed in that regard.

I'm hoping I can DIY up a fix for mine, otherwise I'll be back on the market for something new. Maybe I'll go back to Sennheiser this time. The new Momentum 5 sure look nice, but they also look awfully big.

Bad news is good business. Not everyone buys it.

Markets move. Headlines catastrophize. But somewhere inside the noise is the story that matters — the opportunity, not the fear. 

The Daily Upside was built by Wall Street insiders to find it — global business and finance, reported without the alarm.

Join 1M readers →

Carbon ceramics and creeping uncertainty. Credit: Tim Stevens

Hello from the best seat in the world, the one at my desk at home. I spent the better part of this week off in Utah driving a thing that I'm sadly not even allowed to hint about, so that's the beginning and the end of my teasing there, but thankfully I can say more in the near future. And trust me, there's a lot to say.

A few new publications this week to discuss and some updates on this very newsletter, too, so let's dig in.

RS5 redux

Memories from behind the wheel. Credit: Tim Stevens

Back when I had the great pleasure of driving Audi's RS5 in Marrakesh, all of three months ago, I was one of just a few journalists invited out into the desert to have a go. Nobody else on the media side had been behind the wheel yet.

Meanwhile, the internets were ablaze with keyboard warriors lambasting the PHEV for its 1,000-pound weight gain, saying that Audi had totally lost the plot.

All that was very definitely in the back of my mind as I was writing those first reports. Why? Because the car was great, far more exciting and alive than the previous model, a radical change but one that was undeniably for the better. My takes were almost universally positive, directly against what the keyboard warriors were saying. Even for someone who's been doing this sort of thing for three decades now, that can inject just a slight feeling of uncertainty.

I remember writing video game reviews back in the late '90s and having similar doubts. Back then I operated in a complete vacuum, working for weeks on reviews of this RPG or that shooter with nary a word between myself and any other videogame journalist. When reviews were published, I'd look to my peers at EGM or IGN or GameSpot to see whether my conclusions had been totally off base. Thankfully I rarely missed the mark, which I suppose is at least partly why I’m still in the game.

Anyhow, I was glad to see more Audi RS5 takes appearing online in the past few weeks after Audi held a second drive event. My friends at Ars Technica, Jalopnik, and The Drive were similarly enamored by the dynamics.

Sweet validation.

If you didn't get enough of my early takes on the RS5, another one went online this week for Worth Magazine. You can read it here, and check out my earlier takes for continuity's sake, too.

• 2027 Audi RS 5 First Drive Review: Return to Form - Edmunds

• 2027 Audi RS5 First Drive: 630-HP Plug-In Hybrid Transforms the RS Formula - MotorTrend

• Audi’s Latest RS is Rebooted, Reinvigorated - Worth

Latest Car Graphic in Japan

My latest hot take in Japanese is on Waymo and its expansion in the Tokyo market. Want to read it? Sadly you’ll likewise have to be in the Japanese market.

Newsletter updates

If you're still reading this, then you've successfully made the transition over to the new platform, or found this newsletter online. Either way, hello, and thanks.

Just a few updates. This is the first newsletter I've sent with an ad in it, and you have my sympathies and apologies about that, but I do have bills to pay. I promise I'll do my best to ensure the ads stay as unobtrusive as possible.

That said, if you can't stand them, you've got options. I've added an ad-free subscription tier that's just $1 a month or $10 annually. Join up and, assuming I set things up appropriately, you'll never see an ad.

Or, if you're still hanging on to the Really Simple Syndication lifestyle, A: you have my endless respect and B: you can dust off your RSS reader and point it here: https://rss.beehiiv.com/feeds/2YJDRRVzqO.xml

Finally, if you're feeling generous, I have a Supporter plan that costs $8 a month, $90 annually, or $200 for a lifetime membership. You'll not only get no ads, but a personal email address you can use to ping me with questions, comments, and suggestions for what I should write about next.

To view the options and upgrade, click here.

That's all from me for now. I'm back to Bilbao next week to drive an electric machine that could do something rare: create a whole new market segment. More on that to come.

Until then, be well, do good, and my thanks again for your continued support.

It’s the coupiest of Cayennes. Credit: Tim Stevens

Hi there. What a week it's been. If I never see another Ferrari Luce hot take from someone opining based on a few photos they saw on the 'Gram, it'll be too soon. But, if nothing else, it's nice to see EVs in the mainstream conversation again, right?

Ahem, anyhow, welcome to the new home of my newsletter, now hosted on my own domain. I'll spare you the details, but for numerous reasons, I've decided to pack up shop and take you and me and the thousands of other subs to a new place. For now, at least, we're leaving Substack behind and, with any luck, the overall experience will be much the same.

For those curious, this came to your inbox via Beehiiv this time, which gives me a lot more power to both control where and how this content lives online and ultimately to maybe make a little money from its sharing along the way.

To those of you who have already generously paid to become subscribers, I very much appreciate you, and I am working to migrate those subs over to the new platform, so please stand by. To anyone else who'd like to become a benefactor, I’ll get that switch flipped soon as well. But, no pressure. Those on free subs may start to see an ad here or there in the future, which I hope you'll forgive, but shifting platforms does bring with it some rather more substantial fees that I need to recoup.

Anyhow, that's three paragraphs longer than I'd planned to prattle on about that, but I did at least want to be transparent about everything. Questions, concerns? I'd love to hear 'em. Now, on with the regular weekly update.

Cayenne, charged

Not sure which I love more, the Cayenne’s kinky infotainment screen or the pepita seat inserts. Credit: Tim Stevens

After driving the prototype electric Porsche Cayenne back in September of last year I've been quite keen to have a go in one where the exterior isn't wrapped in black vinyl. I got that chance a few weeks back in Germany, and now I can finally tell you about it without fear of legal repercussions. The new Cayenne, as you might expect, offers a driving feel that's not too dissimilar to Porsche's smaller battery-powered SUV, the Macan, only, you know, bigger and faster.

Very fast, as it turns out. I had a chance to really let it stretch its legs on a few de-restricted portions of the Autobahn. I was quite happy to see that the electric Cayenne, despite not having a two-speed transmission ala the Taycan, still had plenty of acceleration even as I was exceeding 200 kph.

What surprised me even more, though, was the harsh ride quality on the base model. Mine was optioned with the bigger, 22-inch wheels, which, in my book, is never a good move. I imagine smaller shoes would feel better, but the best setup was Porsche's Active Ride suspension.

I've sampled this high-voltage damping system on the Panamera and Taycan already, where its ability to dynamically raise, lower, and even incline the car impressed the hell out of me. It's just as good here, offering an ultra-plush ride when you need it, and a super-sharp feel when you want it.

That suspension comes at a $7,790 premium here, and sadly you can only get it on the top two trims, the Cayenne S and Cayenne Turbo. The Turbo starts at around $170,000, but the one I drove was optioned up over $220,000. No, dear reader, it's not just the 911 that's getting pricey.

• Driving Porsche’s most powerful car—and no, it’s not a 911 - Ars Technica

Cover of Excellence

Speaking of Porsches, my take on the 911 GT3 as compared to the 911 Cup appears on the cover of this month's Excellence magazine. Being in print is always a treat. Having the cover feature? Extra sweet.

That's all from me this week. Thanks as ever for reading. Again, if you notice anything weird on this week’s newsletter, please give me a shout. Comments are on.

Back in 1965, a young singer who’d already earned a strong following among the faithful of such folk greats as Woody Guthrie and Dave Van Ronk, took to the stage at the Newport Folk Festival, and almost created a riot by pulling out an electric Stratocaster guitar instead of his traditional acoustic Gibson.

At least, that’s what the Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown would have you believe. I wasn’t even a twinkle in my dad’s eye at that point, and he surely wasn’t cool enough to be there himself, but so I have no first- or second-hand recounting myself. From what I’ve read, though, the depiction of shouts and cries and dismay in the film is rather overstating the event itself. It’s more of an encapsulation of the angst that followed him and his decidedly rock-flavored backing performers over the next year or so, fans calling him Judas for what he was doing to the folk movement.

Nevertheless, that moment is something of a bellwether of Bob Dylan’s career, a time when he decided it was time to prove that soulful music doesn’t have to be plucked out on an acoustic guitar. Some of his fledgling fanbase surely checked out at that point, but in retrospect, that was still just the beginning of his global stardom.

At nearly 80 years old, it’s hard to see Ferrari as a company that’s just beginning, but this weekend it did something radical: it unveiled its first EV. It’s called the Luce, it has over 1,000 horsepower, and it looks all the world like a happy car from a happy sci-fi movie. It’s hardly the angry aesthetic that so many modern Ferraris skew towards, and, surprising nobody, it hasn’t gone over particularly well.

The response I’ve seen online has been overwhelmingly negative. I confess that I’m a little tired of people immediately hating anything new and different, and so my gut makes me want to be contrarian simply for the sake of shushing the haters, but I have a few more specific problems with this reaction.

The first is that to judge a car you’ve only seen in a 1:1 thumbnail on Instagram is more than a little unfair. The Luce is a car where the intricate details are everything, and those details simply aren’t conveyed in the aforementioned, low-res, overly compressed preview.

I spent a fair few hours over the past weekend pondering that car in person, and while I confess my initial reaction was, well, not positive, I genuinely started to come around to it. Does it give me a yearning deep in my soul like say a 355 or F40? No. Do I appreciate the originality here? Yeah, I do.

That’s doubly true of the interior. I really didn’t have a good reaction to that either when I got a first look earlier this year. But, seeing it inside the car, surrounded by leather and all positioned perfectly, I was blown away. It’s among the greatest interiors in the world.

The bigger problem I have with this knee-jerk online reaction is that everyone is dismissing this car based on a look when there’s a much bigger story to tell here. This isn’t some character-free blob that’ll drive you to work while you doomscroll your brain into oblivion. This is genuinely a car that’s meant to be driven.

Ferrari’s engineers told me they went to great flengths to bring genuine fun and engagement to the car, including a novel paddle system that adjusts torque output and regen to bring some of the feel of shifting to what should be a delightful amount of performance from the quad-motor setup.

And yes, it’s Ferrari’s heaviest car by a long shot, but in the world of performance EVs, it’s remarkably light. It’s within 100 pounds of Porsche’s Taycan Turbo GT with the Weissach Pack, a car that is an absolute thrill ride.

To get the Taycan that light, Porsche’s engineers had to evict the rear seats. The Luce, meanwhile, still has a full interior. Ponder that for a moment when you think about what Ferrari’s engineers could do when they decide to make something properly sporty and battery-powered.

But the most interesting aspect for me is how Ferrari created the sound for the Luce, pumping the raw output from an accelerometer attached to the rear motors through an amplifier. It’s the same concept as an electric guitar, which makes but a tiny twang without an amp, but screams an unholy racket with the right combination of pedals and skill.

And that’s why Dylan was in my head this past weekend. Much like fans struggled to make sense of the noises made by early pioneers like Charlie Christian and Les Paul, I’m not surprised that many casual tifosi can’t get their heads around the Luce.

And maybe that’s okay. There’s a lot more changing here than just sound. Ferrari seems content to be creating something for a new generation of enthusiasts here -- or, as Ferrari CMO Enrico Galliera put it, to extend the “Ferrari Community.”

Will it be successful in that regard and become the car that brings Ferrari into a new generation of motoring? Or, will this unveil be the motoring equivalent of the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where many of Bob Dylan’s fans rioted when he started strumming on an electric guitar?

61 years later, that guy’s career seems to still be doing alright, and he, of course, went to reshape his sound again and again. That big shift in 1965, though, really helped catapult him into the massive, mainstream superstar he became.

Will the Luce help Ferrari do the same? The company hopes so. You can’t talk of extending the community without going more mainstream. But there’s one key area where my over-wrought folk/Ferrari comparison here falls apart: price. The Luce is set to become one of Ferrari’s most expensive models, starting at €550,000 in its home Italian market.

That makes it nearly twice as expensive as the Roma, the company’s current most accessible model. Now, I fully realize that Ferraris have never been exactly attainable, but pricing this thing above such exotics as the 12Cilindri effectively rules it out as a market-expansion machine. It just pushes it further into a curious niche of mainstream practicality but an ultra-exotic price tag.

Will it be a success? Can the Luce be the kind of appreciating asset that the brand relies upon? And, most importantly, does this thing drive well enough to silence the armchair critics and keyboard warriors? Only time will tell on all those fronts.

In the meantime, you can read my full take on the Luce and all its details at these fine outlets:

• Ferrari’s First EV Is Here! Meet the Polarizing, Powerful and Seriously Expensive Luce - Edmunds

• Ferrari Luce unveiled: Here’s the first car from Jony Ive’s design house - Engadget

Greetings from Italy, where I’m getting an early look at a thing I’ll tell you all about soon enough. I hopped down here from Munich, where I was getting a little go behind the wheel of a Porsche I likewise can’t tell you much about.

I can at least say it was the new electric Cayenne Coupe, Porsche’s 1,139-horsepower super-SUV that seats five in superb comfort before scrambling their brains by accelerating from zero to 60 mph in 2.4 seconds. More on that soon enough.

What can I tell you about? A certain Volvo. It’s the new EX60, the all-electric counterpart to the brand’s most successful SUV in the United States. I spent a few days wheeling a few different flavors of the all-new machine around the greater Barcelona region, and I was left generally impressed.

The EX60 is a calm and extremely competent SUV, whether you go for the lower-spec, 369-hp, single-motor P6 trim or dial it up to the 503-hp P10 trim. There’s even more coming, with a 670-hp P12 model for the future.

That’ll be the longest-range version as well, with Volvo promising something in the area of 400 miles on a charge. Sadly the other two come up quite a bit short of that: 320 miles for the P10 and 307 miles for the P6.

That’s honestly plenty of range, but with BMW’s iX3 hitting dealers soon doing 434 miles on a charge and offering similar performance as the P10 at a lower price, I fear many cross-shoppers will tend towards the Bavarian option. Those who select the Swedish route, though, I don’t think will be disappointed.

That’s just the highlights. You can read my full impressions of the SUV here:

• 2027 Volvo EX60 Review - Capital One

• 2027 Volvo EX60 first drive: An ultra-smooth SUV for around $60k - Engadget

That’s all from me this week. Next time, I’ll have all the details on the Italian and German reasons for this week-long European sojourn. And, with any luck, I’ll be writing from somewhere a bit more domestic.

Good morning, dear reader. I’ve been at home for more than a full week now, enjoying some mostly miserable weather here in New York, a trend that is finally shifting this weekend.

I’ve not only had time to catch up on so many of my projects around here that have been dragging on, but also to get to drive my cars for a change. Don’t get me wrong, wheeling the cars of others all around the world is a real privilege, but when you’re away from home as much as I am, there’s real joy in taking your old, familiar machines out to run errands or catch a movie -- even if refueling them stings an awful lot right now.

But it’s not always driving that I’m doing on my travels. On one of my recent trips to Japan, I headed north out of Tokyo to ride a train. The Smile Train, to be exact, a railway line more formally called the Akita Nairiku Jukan Tetsudo Railway. It’s reputed to be Japan’s most scenic railway. I’ve visited Japan many times, rarely straying more than a day trip away from Tokyo, and was really looking for an opportunity to get out into the country.

This was it. That line runs through Akita Prefecture, a place that Amanda and I had hoped would be filled with fuzzy, photogenic dogs. Alas, we saw only one of that particular breed of inu while we were up there, but the Smile Train itself was literally littered with pictures of the things. They were romping in the snow, standing majestically in fields, and generally looking a lot warmer and more welcoming than I know their breed can sometimes be.

The train ride itself was fun, but the time we spent on either end was a real joy. On one side, there’s Kakunodate, full of authentic, Edo-period samurai homes that are a trip back to a time I’ve seen recreated in so many Kurosawa films. On the other end, we stayed in Hirosaki, land of more varieties of apple pie than I could sample during my brief stay there. And that was despite my best efforts.

It was a lovely trip, and I feel very fortunate to be able to document part of it for Mastercard’s travel site.

• Japan’s most scenic train ride takes you to sakura heaven and apple pie nirvana - Mastercard

A question for you

On that note, I’m really enjoying my limited forays into travel writing, and I’m also struggling to find homes for reviews of various products I get access to from time to time.

I’ve been professionally writing product reviews for going on 30 years now, and it’s a little sad to me that placing them is harder today than ever before.

So, I’m tempted to do more of that on here. My question, then: Would that be of interest? It’d rarely be more than once a week, and I would of course try to keep it interesting. There’s a little poll up there for ya, or of course you’re always welcome to comment, email, or find me on some other platform.

My latest ink

Showing up in print is an increasingly rare treat these days, so I’m happy to share that you can catch me in three magazines this month.

In Excellence, I wrote about Porsche’s latest electric Macan, the GTS. For Roundel, my impressions from behind the wheel of a prototype of BMW’s upcoming i3. And finally, for Car Graphic in Japan, I wrote about Lucid’s current struggles in the States and whether its next models will really change its fate.

That’s all from me for now. I’m soon off to Germany to drive another electric Porsche, and then I’ll head down to Rome for the unveiling of what will almost certainly be the most controversial electric car of the year... maybe the decade. I can’t wait to see it and show y’all what it looks like.

Until then, try not to be too controversial yourself, and enjoy what’s left of your weekend.

Hi there, writing from an unpleasant seating area in an unpleasant airport as I await the flight that might just take me home. It’s not the flight I was supposed to take. That one left about four hours ago, without me of course. With any luck, I’ll get home while there’s still some weekend left, but the travel gods have not been kind to me lately, so I’m trying not to get my hopes up.

Since my last note I took a few weeks off to tour the Japanese countryside with my better half. We had a mostly wonderful time, which I’ll be sharing a bit more on in a future update, and part of the reason why I had such a good time was because I did my damndest to completely ignore my phone while I was away.

After reading a Washington Post piece on the benefits of even short-term digital detoxing (gift link here), I’ve been actively trying to break the cycle of reaching for my phone whenever I have a spare moment, getting back into the pattern of gazing around idly instead of tapping and swiping and sharing.

The results have been surprising. I constantly found thinking it was later than it actually was, that the days were going by more slowly. I was more engaged and happier and having more fun whilst wandering through rural Japan, even when I was walking around in sopping wet shoes thanks to my failure to pack appropriately.

Happy to share more on my developing process there if there’s interest, but before moving on to this week’s links, I’ll just encourage you to give it a shot. Forget timers, forget daily limits, just try a little time away from your phone. I think you’ll like it.

How AI is aiding car design

Semi-intelligent, questionably sentient agents are invading new car infotainment screens like a plague, providing occasionally helpful, generally accurate suggestions. I’m hardly an AI zealot, but I confess I’m actually seeing in-car AI as a useful feature in many cases. But what about AI designing new cars?

That’s not exactly what’s happening, but the agentic wave is absolutely cresting over new-car design. For The Verge, I spoke with experts at several companies to get a sense of how AI is shaping that process. For the most part, AI is contributing to reduce the traditional five-plus year design cycle for a new car, helping manufacturers better surf the increasingly chaotic global waves of trade.

For now, the humans are very much at the reins, but it’s only a matter of time before some manufacturer rolls out an AI-shaped concept, probably something with a vestigial fifth wheel hanging off the rear or a pair of headlights not quite pointed in the same direction.

If you’re more into listening than reading, you can catch my thoughts on the latest episode of The Vergecast.

• The AI-designed car is taking shape - The Verge

• What an AI-Designed Car Looks Like - The Vergecast

Inside Toyota’s semi-dystopian future city

I love all sorts of speculative fiction, but I have a particular affinity for stuff with dystopian or post-apocalyptic angles. A significant portion of that former category takes place in corporate worlds where things sure seem awfully nice, but give the surface a little fingernail scratch and you see some horrors lurking underneath.

I couldn’t help picking up vibes from both subgenres whilst wandering through Toyota’s Woven City, a proto tech utopia that has the potential to be a privacy nightmare. I counted eight cameras at one intersection, all connected to and monitored by an AI-based system Toyota is planning to license to other businesses and municipalities. The promise of those cameras is to create city streets that can warn passing cars about kids chasing balls or runaway baby strollers, and yet the demonstrations I saw in Japan spent more time identifying shoplifters in stores and automatically tracking them across multiple cameras.

The overall off vibe wasn’t helped by streets that seemed completely bereft of residents. I spoke with a few, preselected people who live there, but I didn’t see anyone wandering the pristine sidewalks, didn’t spot a single pup watering the immaculate gardens, and didn’t hear a single kid playing.

I did, though, see some impressive technology, like a rolling robot that helps non-autonomous cars drive autonomously and a three-wheeled, leaning scooter that looked like a total blast to ride. If Toyota can keep this place focused on that kind of tech and maybe dial down the Big Brother stuff a smidge, this could turn out to be a genuinely fascinating experiment.

The presence of some real-life human beings in there might also liven up the joint, but it’s still early days.

• Toyota built a $10 billion private utopia—what’s going on in there? - Ars Technica

• Toyota Built a City From Scratch, But Is This $10 Billion Future Utopia Too Perfect to Work? - MotorTrend

That’s all from me this week. I’m still trying to get home from Spain, where I spent a few days getting familiar with Volvo’s upcoming EX60 SUV. It’s an all-electric crossover that looks great and is set to face off against BMW’s iX3 and Mercedes-Benz’s electric GLC later this year. Sadly, that’s about all I can tell you about it for now, but stay tuned for more. Until next time, be good and do well.

p.s. I did finally get home, a mere 10 hours later than scheduled.

If you liked it this far, please consider sharing!

The slow and steady march towards full automotive autonomy has, from the very beginning, been closely related to the advancements we’ve seen in the world of artificial intelligence. However, few companies working to develop autonomy are happy to let the machines do all the learning. Most have some way of getting in there and massaging the data, annotating or tagging or otherwise categorizing objects or scenarios to enable more control over the resulting digital driver that will, some day, take you from A to B.

Nissan and its partner Wayve have taken a different approach with what will be the next-gen ProPilot driver assistance system. Nissan’s engineers didn’t spend time teaching the car what a pedestrian is or how they move, what a cyclist is or how they behave, or indeed how to deal with a double-parked car on the side of the road.

They simply took a ready and willing digital brain and showed it how to drive. They fed it raw footage of good drivers driving in good ways and basically let the network figure it out. According to Tetsuya Iijima, Executive Chief Engineer of ADAS at Nissan, who led me on a scenic trip around Shimbashi and Ginza, the cars simply picked up the habits of those certified drivers. I have to say, the result was quite impressive.

The system, which Iijima called a brain, runs on a single Qualcomm SoC, but he was adamant that they’re not using Qualcomm’s dedicated automated driving software stack. The software I experienced comes to Nissan via Wayve, a British AI startup that’s helping Nissan make a big leap forward in the autonomy game. It’s potentially a great business pairing for Nissan, a brand that, in the U.S. at least, isn’t exactly known for pushing the envelope technologically. The company is indeed taking a somewhat conservative approach here, too, but we’ll get more into that in a moment.

Nissan doesn’t have a formal name for how it will market this system, just calling it a next-generation ProPilot, but as you can tell by the pictures, it relies on some extra hardware. The hat that Ariya is wearing isn’t just for style. Some extra sensors are hiding up there. The full suite includes 11 cameras and five radars looking all around the vehicle, plus one lidar sensor looking straight ahead.

Interestingly, though, there’s no complex sensor fusion happening here. The car relies entirely on the cameras at lower speeds, which meant my trip through Tokyo didn’t touch the lidar sensor at all. That’s only called in for higher speeds on the highway, where Iijima said cameras can’t see far enough to make the vehicle safe at speed.

And what about the radar? Those are for redundancy, but they’re not really tied into the autonomy feature at all. The Ariya still has its basic automatic emergency braking, which provides something of a safety net for this AI driver, much as it would for a human one.

Iijima slipped into that autonomy trope of saying the system is already safer than a human driver, but in the roughly 45-minute tour of Tokyo I received, I didn’t spot anything that contradicts that. He didn’t have to intervene once. The car handled everything from illegally parked delivery vans to indecisive pedestrians making a last-minute dives for the crosswalk.

Turns across busy lanes were handled without issue, even when the late-day sun was shining right into the car’s main lens. Most impressive was how smooth the car was. There was no jerkiness to the steering, no abrupt applications of gas or brake in reacting to those flocks of on-foot commuters.

That was helped by the system’s overall relaxed way of driving. The car accelerated slowly and took its time progressing through intersections. Chances are, you or I would have been more aggressive, even in this most polite of driving countries. But honestly, when the car is handling the duties behind the wheel, I never find myself in a rush. I certainly wasn’t on this day, anyway: My destination was the starting point of our Ginza loop.

Overall, this Nissan and Wayve mashup didn’t do anything that Tesla’s “Full Self Driving” can do, or the new MB.DRIVE Assist Pro that Mercedes-Benz is set to debut on the CLA this summer (which I wrote about here). But, it did it all more smoothly, and in about as bustling an urban environment as you can get.

So it’s all very impressive, but how is Nissan being conservative about it? The company is taking its time with the rollout. It won’t hit Japan until sometime in the fiscal year 2027. Iijima said it will come to the United States, but not until some time after that.

The big question is whether and where it will be hands-off in the U.S. Iijima said the technology is more than capable, even to the point of operating at Level 4, eyes-off mode. How Nissan restricts the system in the U.S., then, is largely a question of liability. Given the litigious nature of American drivers, it’s probably a safe bet that we’ll still be required to keep our hands on the wheel and our eyes on the road.

Iijima said that this feature will likely be an options package, and while he wouldn’t speculate on pricing, it’ll follow Nissan’s value-packed brand image. “We don’t want to sell at a very high price tag,” he said, and it actually could be cheaper than you might think.

“Currently, each sensor has its own brain,” Iijima said, resulting in a series of processors scattered around the vehicle. But with the new Qualcomm processor, there’s enough to process all that data centrally. “[It] is so intelligent and capable that the raw signal can be used. The hardware is reduced,” he said.

Iijima said that, once the initial R&D cost has cleared Nissan’s books, this could actually be cheaper than ProPilot 2.0 on cars today. That’s because current systems rely on a mesh of processors and sensors scattered about the car. This next-generation system simplifies all that onto a single chip.

Beyond that, Nissan won’t take the approach of just throwing the sensors on every car and then charging a fee to enable it. You’ll only get it if you pay for it.

It’s all sounding very promising, but it’s also sounding a long time away. In the accelerating world of driver assistance, 18 months is a lifetime. I’m tempted to say the autonomy landscape will look radically different in a year and a half, but then all this stuff is taking much longer to come to market than anybody thought, so it could just turn out that Nissan’s timed this perfectly.

Thanks for reading Around the Next Bend! This post is public so feel free to share it.

Tires deserve more respect. We media types in the automotive industry are inundated with press releases touting some new performance benchmark by some new performance car -- quicker 0 - 60 times or greater G-forces on the skid pad or, best yet, some new Nürburgring lap time that makes a new car the fastest thing ever in whatever hyper-specific vehicle niche that the manufacturer has decided to play within.

These releases talk about horsepower gains, suspension tweaks, aerodynamic efficiencies, and sometimes even the heroics of the drivers behind the wheel. Often, it’s the high-performance Michelin, Pirelli, or other weapons-grade rubber that delivers the lion’s share of the performance, tires that rarely get more than a token mention in those effervescent press releases.

Why? Because tires don’t sell cars, and even the most exciting ones are still black and round and largely hidden from view. Yet there’s some fascinating improvements being made down there, while most in the interest of higher grip and longer life, factors you’ll never notice on a casual Sunday drive.

That’s not the case with the latest from Nokian. Before I’d even left my driveway on the things, I could tell that the new Hakkapeliitta 01 tires were something different from what I’d experienced before. I’ve been running and racing Nokian’s studded winter tires on my Subarus for well over a decade now, going back to the Hakka 7, tires that spit out their studs with more vigor than an ‘80s outfielder with a mouth full of chaw.

I swore I’d never buy another set after that, but the Hakka 8s did markedly better at keeping their studs where they belong, with each generation improving from there. This past year, it was the Hakka 10s I ran, which lost but a few studs over a full season of running. This new Hakkapeliitta 01 tire, though, does something very different: hiding its studs altogether when not needed.

It’s not quite the James Bond-style magic trick that some more creative headlines might have made you think when the tech was announced a little over a month ago, but it is impressive just the same. Each of the hundreds of studs in the surface of the tire is backed by a temperature-sensitive material that softens when warm. Simply driving the tire on a dry surface generates enough friction and heat to allow the studs to be pushed back into the tread of the tire by the weight of the vehicle.

However, driving on snow and ice, the cold surface causes the backing material to harden and expand, keeping the stud extended even when crushed by the weight of your car.

I dig into the details quite a bit more over in my review for The Verge, but the net result is a tire that is substantially quieter on dry roads, which is what most people drive on most of the time, even in the dead of winter.

The noise reduction was immediately apparent, but the tires also promise a 30 percent reduction in road wear, which should also result in a corresponding reduction in suspended particulates. That’s the formal term for dust kicked up by tires like these, which is a genuine health concern.

So, even though they weren’t designed by Q Branch, the tech here genuinely impressed me, and it is a rare example of a new tire development actually getting the attention it deserves.

• These retractable studded tires might save our roads, ears, and lungs - The Verge

Thanks so much for reading. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend! It’s the only way newsletters like this can grow.

Hello, dear readers. Writing from home at the moment, though much of this week was spent out in Pahrump, NV, a former desert wasteland and global conspiracy theory hotspot that’s increasingly turning into a motorsports paradise thanks to the remarkable success of Spring Mountain. I was out there playing with some Corvettes whilst also getting a little too much sunshine and heat. Upper 90s F in mid-March? No thanks.

It feels like just yesterday I was up on the ice in Sweden. That trip was to test out a bunch of different prototypes, the first being BMW’s i3, which I discussed a few weeks back. This week, I can finally tell you what else I was up to up there.

The only way to grow newsletters like this is through reader sharing, so if you like this, please pass it on. It means a lot!

Elaphe’s in-wheel motors could change everything

When it comes to suspension design, reducing weight at the wheels is key. Any pound out there counts double against you when it comes to handling prowess or ride quality. With that knowledge, it’s understandable why so many performance enthusiasts feel physically ill when they see big heavy electric motors hanging out with the brakes and knuckles and ball joints and everything else.

But talk to an in-wheel motor company like Donut Lab or Elaphe, and they’ll tell you such concerns are vastly overblown and easily outweighed by the potential benefits. I got a chance to sample that myself at the wheel of three different prototype cars created by Elpahe, the company that was to build the hub motors for the former Lordstown project.

Elaphe thankfully survived that sad debacle, now leaner and meaner and making a case for much more widespread adoption of its technology. I was incredibly impressed by what I saw and felt. A quad-motor Ioniq 5 was a blast, but even more remarkable was how a pair of motors bolted over the brakes on a certain large American performance car turned it into a real joy on ice, without reducing the sound or fury of its 5.0-liter V8.

Sadly, ice is not the best place to verify those aforementioned unsprung mass concerns. Still, the experience changed me from skeptic to believer, and Elaphe’s team tells me they’ve had equal success opening the eyes of engineers at multiple global OEMs. You can read all about the why at these fine outlets:

• A New World of EV Performance? Testing the Elaphe Hub-Motor Prototype on Ice in a Hyundai Ioniq 5 - MotorTrend

• In-hub motors make this humble Hyundai a monster on ice - The Verge

The smartest Corvette spec is back

Even though I’d generally prefer a light and nimble sports car to a big sledgehammer of a thing, I have a strange affinity for Corvettes. I think it’s somehow baked into my DNA. I don’t know how many of my relatives own or have owned the things, but it’s a lot, up to and including my dad, whose Roman Red C1 came and sadly went long before I did.

While the current-generation ZR1 is the edition that most set my world on fire, the previous-generation Grand Sport was the one that gave me the most smiles. It’s still something of a high-water mark for the breed in my eyes, attainable and quick and lacking in nothing. Now, there’s a new Grand Sport, and it’s got a lot more of everything, including hybrid power, thanks to the ZR1X’s electric motor at the front axle.

Personally, I feel like I’d still prefer the C7 Grand Sport, but we’ll have to wait until I get a go in this new one before I can say that for sure.

• The Corvette E-Ray is dead, long live the Grand Sport X - Ars Technica

Audi’s new Q3 is a step in the right direction

It wasn’t just Audi’s epic RS6 Avant that I was driving out in California a few weeks back. I was really out there sampling the new Q3, one of the most important models in the company’s lineup. The new Q3 predictably grows with this new generation but also makes a few key steps forward in interior design and other features that make me think that Audi is starting to find its mojo again.

• Audi Q3 review - Capital One

• Audi Q3 review - JD Power

RIP Afeela

Finally, this week came the news that the fruit of the Sony Honda Mobility mashup is dead. The Afeela 1 is no more. Despite my repeatedly calling this project misguided, I take no joy in this turn of events. I spoke with several engineers and other folks at SHM, all of whom were excited to be doing something different, and now we’ll never get to see whether it would have fared better on the open road than it did showing up on that same CES stage year after year.

That’s pretty much a clean sweep for Honda’s future American EV plans, a tabula rasa that seems short-sighted given the cost of gas right now. I’m still optimistic for the future of EVs here, though, a topic I delved into a bit with Tom Merritt and his DTNS crew this week.

• EV Boom But Not in USA - DTNS Live

• The Afeela 1 came too late and now is gone too soon - Engadget

And just like that, we’re all caught up. I’m here at home for two solid weeks, a fact that brings me no small amount of joy and might just mean I can finally find enough time to clean both my office and my inbox. But there’s still plenty of good stuff coming up online soon enough. More on that as it all goes live.

Until then, do good and be well.

The only way to grow newsletters like this is through reader sharing, so if you like this, please pass it on. It means a lot!

I’m no Snake Plissken. I’ve never been arrested, don’t have a single tattoo, and prefer my shirts with sleeves. I do have an eye patch, but I don’t wear it very often.

Where Mr. Plissken’s goal was getting in to and then back out of a dystopian, burning Los Angeles, I had already managed my escape. Now, it was time for the return. I’d just completed a day of wheeling in Audi’s newest and littlest (for America, anyway) SUV, the Q3. I was up in the scenic, quaint, and generally lovely town of San Luis Obispo, a place that surely felt a lot farther away from Los Angeles than 200 miles.

But that’s how far Google Maps said I had to traverse the morning of my return, back down to LAX to catch a noontime flight. It was to be a drive across some of California’s most lovely coastal scenery, a prospect clouded by LA’s ever-present traffic.

Plissken dodged gridlock with a glider in his first film, a submarine in the second. Me? I had something even more potent at my disposal: An Audi RS6.

For the uninitiated, the RS6 is a weapons-grade, 4.0-liter V8 making 621 horsepower and 627 pound-feet of torque, clad in a nondescript wagon shape. Looking with a bit more intent, though, reveals the 21-inch wheels wrapped in summer performance tires, plus the hulking fenders required to contain them.

The theme is definitely subtle muscle, further sold thanks to the Nardo Gray that this one had been sprayed. Pair that with black wheels and trim, and you have a vaguely ominous, thoroughly classy, and incredibly desirable means of escape. Or, in my case, reentry.

The prospect of spending three hours behind the wheel of this thing would normally be one of unmitigated joy, despite the traffic that I knew was in my future. This trip, though, was tempered with a bit of sadness. I figured this would be the last time I had a go in the car that is, to me, Audi’s most desirable still on offer.

But not for long. The last RS6s have rolled off the line in Germany, and so whatever’s left is whatever’s left. I’d better enjoy this, then.

To best mitigate the traffic situation, I planned to get up early, hitting the road around 5am to try and beat the worst of the sorry souls who drive into or through Los Angeles on an average morning. However, something woke me up at 2:30 and, after a few minutes of restless pondering, the promise of dark, open roads and 600-plus horsepower had me up and out of bed.

The car was waiting for me outside the hotel, staged to swallow my biggest suitcase with ease. (I’d brought along my full racing suit for my recent drive of Porsche’s 911 Cup.) 30 cubic feet of cargo space is the kind of practicality you won’t often find in a machine with this kind of potential velocity. Even BMW’s M5 Touring falls short, managing 27 cubic feet under the hatch.

That done, I grabbed a few murky photos in the valet area, then hit the road. First stop? Gas. The RS6 was at about a quarter tank, and that wouldn’t do. I swung by the closest Chevron, put in my card, started pumping, and immediately exclaimed something so profane I was glad that, at 3:55 am, there was nobody there to hear me. $6.19 a gallon was a bit of a shock coming from New York, where the same stuff costs about half that.

70-odd dollars later, I was back on the road and heading into the darkness. The route down from LA is sadly not the most exciting. You’d need to make a hell of a detour to make it truly enjoyable, and in my eagerness to get to the airport, I couldn’t wander ftoo far afield. That said, a route with long stretches on the highway punctuated by a few twisty bits felt just about ideal for an Avant that exists in the Germanic ideal of big speed on big roads.

The 101 and 154 are hardly the Autobahn, and the mélange of materials used to pave them drove some unpleasant noises and vibrations up through the stiffened chassis of the RS6. Its air suspension is actually quite compliant in Comfort mode, but those big wheels and low-profile tires with rock-hard sidewalls weren’t fitted to minimize NVH.

So I simply turned up the excellent Bang & Olufsen sound system and settled in. I started with some mellow tunes, a mix of mostly Kruder and Dorfmeister, an appropriately chill Germanic soundtrack for cruising down the California coast hours before sunrise.

On the highway, the RS6 is as effortless as any other Audi, with adaptive cruise control and active lane-keep, meaning I could sit here and ponder the interior. The dash with the carbon-look weave and satin aluminized trim looks classy, and while the dual-screen MMI system has always felt a bit discordant, the more I see of Audi’s current line of interiors, the more I miss this generation.

Everything looks and feels great, and while I could do with a lot less piano black plastic, I greatly miss the physical controls that Audi scattered across the steering wheel here. This generation of Virtual Cockpit, too, offers far more configurability and capability than what they’re slapping in current cars. So much for progress. Concept C and its complete interior re-think can’t come soon enough.

Few modern cars offer the feel and aggression of this thing, too. Tapping the RS button on the wheel (which really should have been red) turns this Avant into a far angrier animal. On the highway, it might as well be an EV, its V8 is so silent. But after you hit the button, it clears its throat and is suddenly the perfect accompaniment to your rowdier driving.

Despite its 5,000 pounds, the RS6 is still a joy through narrow, twisty canyon lanes. The steering is quick and eager, and the grip prodigious, even when encountering an unexpected spray of mid-corner gravel.

The brakes are likewise sharp, so much so that this thing is difficult to bring to a smooth stop. I had planned on mentioning that as a mark against, but at one point on the PCH, just coming out of Malibu, some indecisive soul couldn’t choose whether to stay on or get off. Instead, they simply stopped in traffic. The RS6’s too-quick brake pedal saved me an uncomfortable conversation with Audi’s fleet manager that morning.

More awake now, chasing the orange crescent moon on the horizon, I decided to go up-tempo on the soundtrack. I switched over to Spiral Staircases from Alchemist, Curren$y, and Larry June, which I’ve been listening to on repeat since its release. Solo Driver seemed perfectly apt, though I wasn’t driving either a Spyder or a vintage Rolls.

Over the course of the drive, I kept thinking about this car’s demise despite it still feeling ripe for action, and those thoughts carried me back to my own lot in life, a freelance writer adrift with no safety net in an industry made more turbulent by the moment. It’s a bad time to be a journalist, dear reader, and the amazing journey that has been my career feels less certain than ever before.

Whenever I start feeling fatalistic, I throw on something stoic to add a little apathy to my mood. This morning, it was Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, my favorite Stoic work. If you’ve never read it, it’s a thoughtful discourse written by the most powerful, most wealthy man in the world, a literal Roman emperor telling you that you should be happy with whatever miserable lot you’ve been dealt in life.

For that reason and more, I don’t agree with all that he wrote. In fact, I disagree quite heartily with a good chunk of it, but he asks plenty of questions that make me think. I like listening to philosophy on long drives because thinking is all too easy to stop doing when you’re stuck in traffic.

It was about then that I made a slight detour over to US 1 in Malibu to see some of the devastation from last year’s fires, which my good friend Elana Scherr had reminded me of at the previous night’s dinner. 14 months later, it was still a terrible sight, dozens of people’s dream homes brought down to bare concrete supports.

It was a sad, sobering sight, and that was about the time I ditched Marcus Aurelius and switched over to something a bit more motivational. I’ve been spinning Alfredo II plenty since its release, and while there are perhaps fewer lessons I can apply to my own life on there, few performers can drop a cultural reference and make it significant like Freddie Gibbs.

I’d left so early that the dreaded traffic was no problem at all, so early that I had plenty of time for breakfast before I had to return my ride. I stopped at The Coffee Company with the goal of getting a bowl of oatmeal and collecting my thoughts for this very piece. But between the ashes of homes I’d seen and the AI-fanned embers falling onto my own industry, I figured it was a good time to stop pondering the John Carpenter-style dystopia and splurge on something a bit more decadent.

As I sit in the driver’s seat of the RS6 now, stomach full of pancakes, typing out these last few sentences before handing over the keys, I’m still a bit melancholy. This’ll probably be my last time in an RS6 Avant, at least one like this. I’m sad I never got a chance to drive one in its element, on the Autobahn with enough speed to challenge its twin-turbo V8.

But most of all, I’m thankful that I ever had a go at all. And that’s probably the most important lesson: Enjoy what you can while you can. And when you no longer can, be only glad that you did.

This week, the American EV segment got some more bad news, with Honda’s surprise cancellation of its 0 Series EVs. This includes the 0 SUV and Saloon, a pair of cars that made a huge splash at their CES unveilings, and the Acura RSX as well, which was likewise turning heads at last year’s Monterey Car Week festivities.

That stirred up plenty of discussion this week about whether or not this move, which Honda itself says may cost upwards of $15 billion, is the right way to go. I don’t have a lot to add on that front, so I recommend checking out Mack Hogan’s take over at Inside EVs if you’re looking for some perspective.

Well, okay, I’ll just briefly say that it feels like a curious move to eviscerate your EV future in the face of an international conflict that’s set to spike oil costs to unforeseen levels. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about today.

I’m here to say that Honda killed the wrong cars. Honda euthanized some of the freshest and compelling EV designs I’ve ever seen, yet the increasingly tepid Sony Honda Mobility joint venture is “operating as usual” per this Car and Driver report. So, Honda’s charming $50,000-ish EVs are dead, but the $100,000-ish Afeela 1 is, for now at least, still on target to enter production later this year at Honda’s Ohio factory.

I’ve been watching the Afeela 1 take shape for six years now, and each year its announced specifications just got less and less compelling. In 2025, I said it looked like “A PlayStation 4 in a PS5 era” and in 2026 it didn’t look much better.

I don’t like saying negative things about a product that many, many extremely talented people have worked extremely hard to develop. And indeed, there are some compelling ideas in the Afeela 1 that may have found success if we were to have sprung forth in the midst of a booming economy full of open-minded consumers.

Instead, we’re at war and still feeling the turbulence from the misguided political attacks on EVs during our last election, waves that are clearly still rattling a lot of executives. The best way to fight that is with right-priced, compelling cars. BMW, Mercedes-Benz, and Volvo’s latest EVs are all hitting the right marks on that front, and Honda’s 0 Series looked set to do the same. That they were to be built right here in the U.S. of A. certainly didn’t hurt.

Meanwhile, the Afeela 1 not only targets the dying sedan segment, but is priced comparably to a Lucid Air despite offering none of the range or performance. I’m extremely skeptical that this niche, software-first, luxury sedan will find enough success to warrant its existence, and yet it lives on while Honda’s mass-market, right-priced EVs are dead.

That may change. While Honda can do whatever it likes to its own product portfolio, Afeela 1 is part of the 50/50 Sony Honda Mobility joint venture. Nixing that will require some higher-level negotiations and many more furrowed brows. I’m guessing there’s plenty of frowning going on in Japan right now.

Thanks for reading Around the Next Bend! This post is public so feel free to share it.

It’s hard to imagine terrain more different than the snowy middle wilds of Sweden and the desert expanses of Morocco. It’s those dizzying extremes that I’ve covered over the past few weeks, zipping from one to the next with a quick stopover at home to repack the suitcase and see the ones I love to remind myself why I’m doing all this to myself.

It’s been a lot the past few weeks, let me tell you. Here are some of the highlights.

Worth the Weight?

Meet Audi’s new RS5, which has followed BMW’s M5 bravely into the land of the performance PHEV. Yes, it’s got a plug and a big battery, which, as we’ve seen, causes two things to happen. First: The car’s weight increases dramatically (over 1,000 pounds here). Second: The masses on these great internets commence their whining about how Audi has ruined a car that few of them have ever driven or ever even aspired to own.

Here’s what I can tell you: I had zero interest in the previous RS5, but I really, really want one of the new ones. Audi’s last attempt at an RS just felt tame. It looked like an S5 from a distance, wasn’t much better differentiated from up close, and simply wasn’t aggressive enough from behind the wheel.

Literally within seconds of getting behind the wheel of the new RS5, I was drifting it through a tight slalom and giggling like a little boy. Much of the new drama is thanks to a curious electrified rear differential setup, which pairs with the car’s mechanical Torsen center diff to do some wonderful things. Wrap it all in a car that finally has the fenders an RS deserves, and you have a desirable package.

The only real bummer? That we’re not getting the long-roof Avant version pictured above. Maybe if more of you salty keyboard warriors had bought RS6 Avants, we wouldn’t be left pining. I’d do my part, but, well, sadly, neither of these things is exactly compatible with my budget.

• 2027 Audi RS 5 First Drive Review: Return to Form - Edmunds

• 2027 Audi RS5 first drive: Big thrills with a big battery - Engadget

• 2027 Audi RS5 First Drive: 630-HP Plug-In Hybrid Transforms the RS Formula - MotorTrend

i3 on Ice

From Morocco’s dry desolation to Sweden’s icy expanses, we also make the mental trip from Ingolstadt to Munich to sample BMW’s next great sedan, the i3. While the i4 is pretty great in many respects, the i3 gives us a first taste of how good an electric 3 Series can be when it’s designed from the ground up to be battery powered.

I drove it on ice and snow, my two favorite surfaces, got it well and truly sideways, and loved every minute of it. That’s despite this not being a particularly performance-oriented variant. I drove what will be the i3 50 xDrive, with no high-performance drivetrain or suspension upgrades.

If all goes according to plan and the bottom doesn’t completely drop out of the EV market, we’ll see a variety of amped up variants to come, including ones with three and even four motors. I’m excited, and you should be too.

Oh, and make sure you pour one out for the humble i3 hatchback, which never got the love it deserved and is now, thanks to this badge reshuffle, has been properly relegated to history.

• 2027 BMW i3: Prototype Drive - BimmerLife

• 2027 BMW i3 Prototype First Drive Review: Neue Klasse on Ice - Edmunds

• BMW’s i3 prototype conquers the ice with power and technology - Engadget

Intro to Ice Racing

It wasn’t all that long ago (May, to be exact) that I wrote an Ode to Ice Racing for Hagerty. My ice racing club hadn’t held an event in years, thanks to thin ice. Talk was that everything was going to be shut down… and then we got a wild cold snap and everything changed.

My club managed five events on three lakes this season, a fair number for even the glory days when I started racing two decades ago. One of my editors at Ars Technica was kind enough to express interest in a how-to piece of sorts, and I was more than happy to oblige with this explainer on my favorite form of racing.

• Zero grip, maximum fun: A practical guide to getting into amateur ice racing - Ars Technica

The CX-5’s Most-Needed Upgrade

No, it’s not all drifting priceless prototypes and overpowered hybrids. I drive regular cars too, people, cars like Mazda’s new CX-5. It’s bigger and better throughout, but the big update is in the dashboard. The company’s dated infotainment experience finally gets a big reboot, and it’s genuinely good, but I confess I will miss the rotary controller.

• 2026 Mazda CX-5 Review - Capital One

• 2026 Mazda CX-5 Review - JD Power

The World’s Largest Arcade -- Both of Them

Some stories are more fun than others to tell, but few are going to ever top this. Last year, I visited two amazing arcades, both of which proudly proclaim to be the World’s Largest. My mission: to find the truth. Is there a bitter rivalry here? Creative bookkeeping? Guinness recordkeepers paid off in shiny tokens?

Nah, it’s just a case of a couple of stellar places that are both well worth your business.

• Which of these two arcades is the “world largest”—and does it matter? - Ars Technica

That’s all from me this week, this entry written from 39,208 feet above northern Quebec. I’m headed home for one whole solitary day but, by the time this newsletter flies, I’ll already be back in the air myself, this time headed west to drive a few more special things. I’ll have details on that soon, plus full impressions of the other things I was driving up in Sweden, which in many ways were even more special than those priceless prototypes from BMW.