To put it mildly, Uber has had a tumultuous year. The company’s highs, which include knocking off the ubiquitous yellow taxi as the most used ride service in New York, have been tempered by scandal after scandal, ultimately leading its CEO, Travis Kalanick, to resign over the summer. Now...Read More»
It's happened to all of us: you're driving down the street on a beautiful spring day with the windows down, and something unusual catches your ear. A new squeal, a squeak, or maybe a clunk is coming from underneath the hood. Perhaps it's something simple to repair, like an aging belt. Then again...Read More»
As we tumble headlong into the Era of the Connected Car, one thing engineers are struggling to address is the possibility that evildoers might hack our cars' burgeoning networks. Unfortunately, a new report suggests that automakers have left open a fairly large back door for the bad guys--a back...Read More»
We learned a lot of interesting things in the first decade of the Smartphone Era. We now know that, though nearly all of our friends have mobile phones, few like talking on them. We've learned that "freemium" is never free. And of course, we know that if you really want to make bank in the App...Read More»
It'll probably be another week or two before the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration releases its official stats on 2015 traffic fatalities. However, early data suggests a significant uptick from 2014--potentially 7.7 percent or higher. What's to blame for that sharp increase? According...Read More»
Autonomy, electrification, ride-sharing: tomorrow's auto industry is going to look very different from today's. Some automakers and dealers are fighting the tide of change tooth and nail; others, like Tesla, are charging headlong into the unknown, often without much success. A new app called...Read More»
Now, there's something else that Alec Baldwin and Missy Elliot can do with Amazon Alexa: start a Hyundai Genesis. If you're not familiar with Alexa, it's a voice-operated digital assistant, like Apple's Siri, Microsoft Cortana, or Google Now. It runs on a growing family of Amazon devices like...Read More»
Analysts may be feeling bearish about Apple's lack of innovation on the iPhone front, but smartphones aren't going anywhere anytime soon--and neither are apps. On the one hand, that's a good thing, because many of us depend on those apps for navigation, communication, entertainment, and...Read More»
No matter what some politicians say, America is already great at many things--for example, fostering innovation, generating game-changing technology, and finding new uses for Twinkies. However, that's not to say that we don't have room for improvement in areas like energy efficiency, education, and...Read More»
Depending on your perspective (and possibly, your age), Pokemon Go is either the worst trend to hit America since Car Lashes, or it's a fantastic game that encourages sedentary teens and Millennials to get out of the house and be social. No matter which camp you fall into, though, one thing's for...Read More»
The auto world has been thinking a lot about hacking lately. For years, it wasn't much of a concern, but now that many new cars are connected to telematics networks like Uconnect and OnStar and to cellular networks via dongles attached to their onboard diagnostics ports, our rides are becoming...Read More»
If you live in a city long enough, you get to understand its traffic lights. Some places, they're synchronized, so when your light turns green, you know how fast you can drive and hit the next one without slowing down. When it works right, it's a thing of beauty. BMW has now made the light-timing...Read More»
A couple of weeks ago, two hackers made headlines when they wreaked havoc on a Jeep Grand Cherokee by exploiting a weakness in the vehicle's Uconnect telematics system. (Jeep's parent company, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, subsequently issued a recall to patch the security hole.) But as we pointed...Read More»
Every week, it seems like some pundit or other predicts the death of the auto industry. Most of the reasons they cite seem far-fetched, but a few have a ring of truth about them. One that fits in the latter category is ridesharing, an increasingly disruptive travel trend that's exploded in recent...Read More»
The smartphone has become a central component of daily life. It's where we go to make calls, send texts, keep up with endless Facebook feeds, and store frequent-shopper cards. In Iowa, it will soon be where motorists keep their driver's licenses, too. ALSO SEE: 2016 Audi Q7: First Look According to...Read More»
Remember AOL? Remember its subsidiary, MapQuest? One of the two wants to become relevant again by helping stranded drivers. (Hint: it's not AOL, which is probably beyond help.) MapQuest won't be towing cars or fixing flats itself. Instead, it's partnered with Urgent.ly to provide those services...Read More»
Once upon a time, aftermarket add-ons were marketed almost exclusively to motorheads. Apart from stereo upgrades and the occasional set of ill-advised Car Lashes, mainstream drivers didn't spend much time looking at specialty rims or undercarriage lights or insane suspension tweaks. But cars have...Read More»
Back in May, we told you about MonkeyParking, a new app that lets desperate drivers in San Francisco pay for parking -- or, more to the point, it lets them pay the owners of parked cars to leave prime spots. When MonkeyParking debuted, many feared that it would make parking in the Bay Area even...Read More»
San Francisco is not without its charms. The Bay is beautiful, the weather is pleasant in some of the city's microclimates, and.... Hmm. Did we mention the Bay? ALSO SEE: Pay-Per-Mile Road Taxes Coming To A State Near You? One of the complaints that many people have about SF is that it's far too...Read More»
