Cars

The automaker is preparing for a big reveal of a new car in Miami on December 2nd — amidst the internet jeering at the perplexing “JaGUar” rebrand this week. Besides its HVAC-like appearance, the car's rear seems to have a closed-off windshield, à la Polestar 4.

Audi’s A6 e-tron series, Q6 e-tron series, and A5 series vehicles in Europe will get the feature this month before it rolls out globally based on the “launch timeline of Audi vehicles.” Samsung Wallet already supports various Genesis, Kia, Hyundai, and BMW vehicles.

Unsurprisingly, President-elect Donald Trump plans to end the federal incentive, which encouraged Americans to buy EVs like Teslas for years. Now, Reuters is reporting Tesla is for it:

representatives of Tesla - by far the nation’s largest EV seller - have told a Trump-transition committee they support ending the subsidy

Meanwhile, Trump has tasked Tesla CEO Elon Musk with cutting “wasteful expenditures” in the new administration.

To celebrate its recent coupling, Volkswagen and Rivian brought a few journalists to its new Palo Alto-based office to see an example of the type of EVs they plan on building together. (Handelsblatt’s Felix Holtermann posted the first pic to his LinkedIn.) The unmarked VW test vehicles are running on Rivian’s software and electrical architecture, which the company boasts uses fewer electronic control units and less wiring than most other EVs.

Volkivian? RivWagen? I’ll leave the portmanteaus to more creative minds.

Rivian released a short film today in which the company’s CEO RJ Scaringe issues a call to action on climate change, arguing the time is now to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy solutions.

The scale of the challenge means we need to be making these changes now, and we need to begin working toward every increasing renewable content on our grid. We need to replace the roughly one-and-a-half billion combustion powered vehicles on our planet with electric vehicles, but also know that on the path to the end state, we’re going to have solutions that are imperfect, but we need to start.

The latest version of the app now includes support for CarPlay and Siri, alongside “stability and performance enhancements” according to Apple.

It’s more surprising that this wasn’t already available. MacRumors notes that CarPlay support also briefly appeared in January before mysteriously vanishing just hours later. I’m glad they brought it Bach.

In a Mazda Insider Blog interview, design chief Masashi Nakayama said:

This concept is not just one of those empty show cars. It has been designed with real intent to turn it into a production model in the not-so-distant future.

Mazda debuted the rotary engine hybrid electric coupe last year. However, as Road & Track notes, Mazda has reneged on promises it made in the past.

AT&T and curbside EV charging startup Voltpost announced a partnership to convert street lights “across Michigan and the Metro-Detroit area” into internet-connected EV charging posts. That connectivity means it’s easier to monitor and fix malfunctioning posts, as InsideEVs writes.

Curbside charging is very rare in the US. Voltpoint’s plans also include charging posts in New York City and Chicago, though, and Massachusetts has been testing utility pole-mounted ones since 2022.

That marks two more big executive departures for the EV startup; the company’s CTO left earlier this year.

The company has also furloughed 30 workers in Oklahoma, TechCrunch reports.

The new iPhone has two new buttons, stoves and washing machines are getting new knobs, and automakers are getting blowback for porting too many controls through the touchscreen. Rachel Plotnick, an associate professor of Cinema and Media Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington and author of the book Power Button: A History of Pleasure, Panic, and the Politics of Pushing, explains why we may be experiencing a re-buttoning renaissance.

But on the other hand, people seem to have a hunger for physical buttons, both because you don’t always have to look at them—you can feel your way around for them when you don’t want to directly pay attention to them—but also because they offer a greater range of tactility and feedback.