Americans love their pets. More than 60 percent of US households have them; more than half of pet owners say they’re as important to their families as any human. So maybe it makes sense that more people are taking their pets on flights. More than 1 million pets travel by …
Read More »The Auto Industry Finally Has a Plan to Stop Electric Vehicle Fires
Last month, a Mercedes Benz EQE 350 electric vehicle caught fire in a South Korean apartment building’s underground parking garage. Reportedly, 23 people were sent to the hospital and approximately 900 cars were damaged. The fire reached temperatures of more than 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit (1,500 degrees Celsius), and took firefighters …
Read More »Where Is CarPlay 2?
For lots of smartphone owners, Apple is the conduit to the internet. Since 2022, Apple has made it clear that it wants to be the same for lots of drivers, too. That’s when the company announced “next-generation” CarPlay 2, which is set to extend CarPlay’s convenient phone-mirroring technology beyond a …
Read More »Waymo Is Picking Up at the Airport. That’s a Big Deal
On Tuesday, Alphabet’s self-driving vehicle developer Waymo said it would begin operating all-day, curbside pickups and drop-offs at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in Arizona. The announcement came with little fanfare—a post on X. But it signals that after years of delay, self-driving vehicles might be (literally) moving in the …
Read More »How Much Will It Cost to Charge Your Electric Car? It’s Complicated
There’s good news about electric vehicle charging, according to new survey results from the analytics firm JD Power: Drivers are more satisfied with their public charging experiences than last year. In fact, it’s the second quarter in a row that’s seen happier EV drivers. When it comes to public fast …
Read More »Elon Musk Is No Climate Hero
WIRED has been writing about Elon Musk—he of the electric cars, space rockets, tunnel-boring machines, implantable brain interfaces, Mars mission, and internet shitposting—for a long time. He’s always been unpredictable. And yet the most shocking part of his two-hour interview with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, broadcast live on X …
Read More »Humans Are Going to the Moon’s South Pole. This Is How They’ll Drive There
In 2030, about six years from now, American astronauts will return to the surface of the moon. When they land, they’ll face the same challenge as millions of freshly licensed teenagers the world over: They’ll need a sweet ride. The lunar mission, called Artemis V, is slated to send two …
Read More »You Won’t Believe What Car Headlights Have in Store
Sure, duh: Vehicle lights serve the important and vital safety function of allowing drivers to see where they’re going, and everyone else to see when they’re coming. But for decades, car designers have clocked headlamps and tail lights as an opportunity for creativity, to build a distinctive brand that says, …
Read More »Cars Are Rolling Computers Now. So What Happens When They Stop Getting Updates?
In 2022, Jake Brown, a telecommunications professional living in Chattanooga, Tennessee, bought a used 2017 Volkswagen Passat from a local dealership. Brown describes himself as a techy guy, and was excited about the car’s newer, internet-enabled features, including the ability to start it up remotely from his phone. Brown had …
Read More »Why the Global CrowdStrike Outage Hit Airports So Hard
Early Friday morning, a flawed software update from the security firm CrowdStrike took down Windows computers across the world. For the aviation industry, the outage created the kind of chaos usually reserved for sudden, catastrophic weather—except all over the world, all at the same time. The outage highlighted an assumed …
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