Photos of the Week: Wildfire Losses; Maha Kumbh (RNS) — This week’s photo gallery includes the aftermath of California wildfires, the Maha Kumbh festival in India and more. The post Photos of the Week: Wildfire Losses; Maha Kumbh appeared first on RNS.

New EV Registrations Surge As Customers Try To Cash In On Incentives Trump Wants To Kill Shoppers are looking to cash in on automaker discounts and electric vehicle tax credits ahead of Donald Trump taking office on January 20. The incoming President is expected to either cut the incentives or completely repeal them. The result of that is the end of 2024 seeing a marked uptick in new EV registrations in… Read more…

DJI Will No Longer Stop You From Flying Your Drone Over Airports Or The White House Less than a month after drone swarms haunted New Jersey’s night skies, DJI removed the geofencing features that finally ended the panic over the Garden State. The Chinese drone producer announced a software update that replaced the guardrails that prevented operators from flying into restricted airspace with an in-app… Read more…

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Rubik’s Cube and School Reform Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice: Rubik’s Cube and School Reform When the Rubik’s Cube appeared in the 1980s, I tried twisting and turning the colors to get them all aligned. I failed. Finding out that there are 3 billion possible ways to turn the Cube’s corners, edges, and center to get the solution comforted me…

Why Doesn’t Your Car Have A Headliner With Illuminated Dragons On It? 2024 was the Year of the Dragon, which, sorry to say for everyone else, is definitely the coolest of the Chinese zodiac signs. (I’m a Rooster, which I at least enjoyed as we grew up with pet chickens.) To mark the conclusion of the lunar Year of the Dragon, a “discerning” Rolls-Royce client in China commissioned a… Read more…

More People Owe At Least $10,000 On Their Auto Loans Than Ever Before Among the news of all the shiny new models coming for 2025 and beyond is a dark reality looming over the auto industry: Millions of people are upside down on their auto loans, and the amounts owed are at their highest level ever. Read more…

UK Seizes Illegal Cybertruck Caught Driving On Its Mountains Green Police in the UK finally did something useful after officers in the northern city of Manchester impounded one of the first Tesla Cybertrucks to make it across the pond. Officers cleared the Manchester streets of the electric menace Thursday and impounded the Cybertruck as it is “not road legal in the UK.” Read more…

Polestar Continues Growing Its Lineup With New Small 7 SUV Polestar used the start of the new year as an opportunity to release a roadmap for its future, and all the typical buzzwords were included. EBITDA. Positive free cash flow. Securing new equity and debt funding. Strong product momentum. The future is bright, and Polestar will soon sell more cars. It wasn’t a very… Read more…

What can a pastor say to people who have lost everything? (RNS) — After the fire, there are no words. The post What can a pastor say to people who have lost everything? appeared first on RNS.

What Those Spikes On Semi-Truck Wheels Actually Do Next time you’re on the highway, check out your surroundings. Take a long look at those semis, tractor-trailers, and 18-wheelers in the adjacent lanes, and see if you spot any spikes sticking out of their wheels. Have you ever wondered what those do? Well, the answer may be less interesting than you expect. Read more…

Here Are The Performance EVs You Wish Existed With seemingly hundreds of all-electric car buying options in 2025, it might seem like there is a car to fit everyone’s personal style. Some of us, however, like to sit and daydream about the potential for a performance version of an otherwise “regular” electric car. Are you looking for something that’s a little more… Read more…

This 1991 Chevrolet Astro Tiger GT AWD Camper Has Me Seriously Considering Van Life The concept of van life really blew up during the early days of the pandemic. Social media was suddenly teeming with crunchy millennials documenting their experience converting sketchy school buses into cringey “live laugh love” mobiles decked out in dream catchers and culturally appropriative fabrics. Mercifully it… Read more…

‘We Lost Some Customers’ Mercedes Concedes Some Buyers Were Turned Away By Four-Cylinder C63 Word to the wise: don’t mess with people’s engine displacement. It’s a message Mercedes-Benz clearly didn’t listen to, and now it’s costing the German automaker in sales. Back in 2022, the company ditched its much-loved 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 in the AMG C63 in favor of a new plug-in hybrid four-cylinder powerplant.… Read more…

Chargepoint Introduces ‘Cut-Resistant’ Chargers With Built-In Alarms To Deter Vandalism And Theft The charging infrastructure for electric vehicles in the U.S. has been criticized for years, and though much of the criticismsurrounds malfunctioning chargers, vandalismis another issue. According to the Electric Vehicle Charging Association, vandalism affected about 20 percent of charging stations in the country in… Read more…

Jeep Says It May Have Been Too Ambitious With Wagoneer Pricing Jeep has more than a few problems it needs to fix, but chief among them is probablypricing. The brand’s upmarket push with models like the Wagoneer has turned off many would-be buyers because they simply cost too damn much. Jeep may have jumped the gun a bit, and surprisingly one of the brand’s executives admitted… Read more…

Traffic Jams: Victoria Canal – ‘June Baby’ Happy Friday, we made it through another week unscathed — just about. How was yours? Mine has been mixed, truth be told, after I found out I don’t have to move apartments next month (good), went to see Sigourney Weaver in The Tempest (bad) and got a hefty repair bill for my saxophone (ugly). Read more…

Elon Musk Plans To Cut $120 Billion In Federal DEI Initiatives Good morning! It’s Friday, January 17, 2025, and this is The Morning Shift, your daily roundup of the top automotive headlines from around the world, in one place. Here are the important stories you need to know. Read more…

The Next Batmobile Should Be An Electric Vehicle The Batmobile is an iconic vehicle for one of the most popular superheroes. From the retro-futuristic convertible on the 60’s TV show, the Tumbler from the Nolan films and most recently the monster-muscle car creation from the Matt Reeves movies, and more, the Batmobile has undergone an interesting evolution. Here is… Read more…

Falling Rocket Debris Diverts Dozens Of Flights After Spectacular SpaceX Starship Explosion The seventh launch of SpaceX’s Starship rocket ended in disaster yesterday after the craft exploded less than nine minutes into the flight, scattering debris above the Caribbean. The Federal Aviation Administration delayed and diverted flights as a result of the explosion so that planes weren’t caught up by the… Read more…

The Moon Is Now Listed As A Heritage Site To Help Protect It From Looters Following the recent launch of two SpaceX lunar landers this week, which will be used to conduct feasibility research for future commercially manned missions to The Moon, the World Monuments Fund has placed Earth’s moon on a list of threatened heritage sites. The organization fears that commercial moon trips will come… Read more…