Free Republic

Ranked: The Most Reliable Car Brands As the saying goes, “It’s not how fast you can go, but how far you can get”—and in today’s world, a dependable car is crucial for getting you wherever you need to go. Reliability, or how consistently a vehicle performs without experiencing mechanical failures or issues over time, remains a key factor when choosing which brand of vehicle to purchase. This graphic visualizes the predicted reliability scores of various automakers, as ranked by Consumer Reports. The data is updated as of November 2023. Asian Automakers Lead The Pack Lexus and Toyota ranked first and...

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg stated that building eight electric vehicle charging stations so far under the Inflation Reduction Act’s $7.5 billion investment in electric vehicle charging stations is “on track.” Because most construction will occur in the second half of the decade. Co-host Joe Kernen asked, “[O]ur designs on electrification of the auto industry, have we recalibrated there? And I’ll just give you one item and you can — maybe you can explain why, but under the Inflation Reduction Act, 7.5 billion for building these charging stations. The latest information, eight have been...

The automotive industry has lost one of the great saviors of speed. Michael Valentine, president of Valentine Research and one of the leading pioneers in the radar detection business, has passed away unexpectedly at the age of 74, according to an obituary posted by Cincinatti.com. If you’ve been around fast cars long enough, you’ve surely encountered a radar detector or two — and no brand of detector is as well-respected as Valentine Research. Michael Valentine’s interest in radar began during his stretch at the University of Cincinnati School of Applied Sciences, where he started his studies in 1967. Police departments...

W is considering axing as many as 30,000 jobs as it scrambles to save billions of euros amid a slowdown in the car market, German media has reported. The carmaker recently announced it could close some of its German factories for the first time in history as it struggles to reinvent itself for the electric era. Analysts at Jefferies said VW is considering closing two to three facilities, with as many as five German sites under threat, putting 15,000 jobs at risk. That job losses is feared to have doubled to 30,000, according to Manager Magazin, a leading German business...

Governments are pushing the public to switch to smart vehicles to reduce fossil fuel consumption, but there is also a second motive – surveillance. This September, Ford filed a new patent to eavesdrop on riders. They plan to share this information with third-parties to personalize the advertisements riders hear. Ford will also take the driver’s destination into consideration to determine location-specific advertisements and suggestions. The technology will factor in the weather, traffic, and all external sensors to fine tune when and what to market to passengers. Advertisements are perhaps the least ominous use of voice data based on the plans...

In Norway, electric vehicles (EVs) now outnumber gas-powered vehicles, according to latest vehicle registration data from the Norwegian Road Federation released on Tuesday. Norway, a major oil exporter globally, now has 754,303 registered EVs, slightly more than 753,905 of gas vehicles. The Scandinavian country has 2.8 million registered passenger cars, including diesel vehicles. The director of the Norwegian Road Federation, known as OFV, Oyvind Solberg Thorsen, called the milestone “historic” and said the ongoing electrification of cars is at a “high pace” and the country is closer to becoming the first in the world to have the majority of cars...

CEO Jim Farley is trying to learn from his greatest competitor and is now trying to copy parts of China's electric vehicle playbook. =================================================================== Ford’s CEO Jim Farley first sounded the warning back in May, after his visit to China, but it’s been quietly happening in the background for far longer; Chinese electric vehicles, or EVs, are gobbling up the Chinese domestic market. They may even be on pace to do the same globally. In a Wall Street Journal interview, Farley described the situation as an "existential threat" to Ford, highlighting the rapid pace at which Chinese automakers are advancing...

* Chinese-owned British automaker MG plans to build an assembly plant and R&D facility in Mexico. * The facility is being designed to assemble 100,000 units annually in its initial phase. * No other details on the facility—including exactly where it will be located—have yet been released. The Chinese-owned British auto brand MG has announced it will build an assembly plant and a research and development facility in Mexico. Before you spend an hour on its configurator for its new Cyberster EV sports car, be aware that MG has no plans so far to import any new vehicles north of...

At the turn of the 20th century, there were thousands of electric vehicles in operation around the world. ================================================================== By the 1890s, steam had established itself as the main source of power for trains, industrial applications and even the occasional passenger car. Gasoline-powered personal transportation was still in its infancy. So electric vehicles were preferred by most because they didn’t require a dangerous crank-starting procedure, they didn’t backfire and spew oil everywhere, and they were perceived as quiet and torquey. Remember, this was a time when you'd get gasoline from your local pharmacist or the area blacksmith, if you had...

Buying a car is a major investment. Not only does it need to get you safely from point A to point B, but the vehicle should also be reliable for many years. However, rather than determining if a car is “good” by how long it lasts, experts recommend going by how many miles you can accrue on it without encountering any major issues. For example, a car with 100,000 miles in five years that only needed maintenance (oil change, tire rotation, for example) would be considered “better” than a car with 100,000 miles in seven years but needed major repairs.Here...

Autonomous vehicle (AV) technology advocates tout a variety of potential benefits when it comes to widespread AV implementation. However, the most important benefit is an increase in safety compared to the average human-driven vehicle. Nevertheless, with high-profile incidents like the Cruise accident last year that resulted in a pedestrian injury, convincing the public that AVs are indeed safer might be something of a challenge. Now, a new website published by Alphabet’s Waymo AV division highlights some of the statistics around driverless vehicle safety. Waymo currently operates a fleet of autonomous, all-electric vehicles across the U.S. as a means of developing...

When cars, planes, ships or computers are built from a material that functions as both a battery and a load-bearing structure, the weight and energy consumption are radically reduced. A research group at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden is now presenting a world-leading advance in so-called massless energy storage – a structural battery that could halve the weight of a laptop, make the mobile phone as thin as a credit card or increase the driving range of an electric car by up to 70 percent on a single charge. image: Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology have succeeded in...

Dallas has always been a hotbed for muscle cars and Corvettes, and Mecum Auctions has been on board that boogie train since the beginning. It should come as no surprise then that this year’s Mecum auction at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center (September 4–7, 2024) brought in 1,656 auction lots, a record for the company’s Dallas event. It’s pretty well known that Corvettes represent the most prolific model sold at Mecum (they account for around 10 percent of the company’s sales overall), and Corvettes represented six out of 10 positions in the top 10 muscle cars in Dallas this...

Would you be impressed by a car that gets 93 mpg? If the answer is yes, then you’re going to be impressed by the current Toyota Prius. While the current Prius may be EPA-rated for a “lowly” 57 mpg, it just completed a cross-country drive, from Los Angeles’ City Hall to New York’s City Hall, while averaging 93.1 MPG. That’s a 3,200-mile trip, so unlike a lot of fuel efficiency tests that take place over a few dozen or a few hundred miles, this one took place between two of America’s biggest cites, one on each coast . And yes,...

Lotus teases a new sports car ahead of its reveal next week, and it's likely a concept that previews the upcoming Type 135 EV. * Lotus is teasing a new sports car called the Theory 1 that will be unveiled on September 16. * The Theory 1 appears to be electric and is likely a concept car that will hint at the Type 135 sports car that will arrive in the next few years. * The teaser videos show an active rear spoiler and a rectangular yoke-style steering wheel. While Lotus still sells the enthralling gas-powered Emira sports car with...

The battery hit temperatures of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit while it was on fire. California firefighters used about 50,000 gallons of water to put out a Tesla Semi fire after a collision, the National Transportation Safety Board said on Thursday. According to the Associated Press, an aircraft also dropped fire retardant on the “immediate area” to bring the fire under control, the agency reported. The battery hit temperatures of 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit while it was on fire. The truck hit a tree while going around a curve on Aug. 19. Tesla's autopilot feature was not engaged, according to the agency report....

In yet another setback for the Biden-Harris regime’s push for electric vehicles, American consumers are showing a distinct lack of enthusiasm for purchasing new EVs. The latest Mobility Consumer Index (MCI) from consulting firm EY reveals a shocking drop in interest, with only 34% of US consumers planning to buy an electrified vehicle—down from 48% in 2023. This decline raises serious questions about the administration’s ability to force their “Electric Revolution” onto consumers. Now, after seemingly rushing to promote electric vehicles as the future of transportation, the reality is hitting hard: fully electric vehicle interest has plummeted to a mere...

NAGOYA -- Toyota Motor plans to significantly slow its production of electric vehicles, cutting its global output forecast for 2026 to 1 million cars, some 30% lower than the previously announced sales forecast for the same year, Nikkei has learned. The Japanese automaker's decision to cut EV production was prompted by the slowdown in the global EV market. Toyota has notified its parts suppliers of the decision.

Kamala Harris's campaign recently walked back Harris's position on EV mandates, stating she "does not support an electric vehicle mandate." But the campaign is now shying away from questions about whether Harris would sign or veto legislation she personally cosponsored in the Senate that would implement a nationwide EV mandate. The campaign on Wednesday ignored several questions from the Washington Free Beacon asking for it to clarify Harris's position on EV mandates. That came one day after a Harris campaign official declined to comment late Tuesday to Axios on whether she would even sign the so-called Zero-Emission Vehicles Act that...

Workers at a Tennessee battery plant have voted to join the United Auto Workers (UAW) — marking a significant victory in the union’s ongoing campaign to organize both the Southeast and the electric vehicle (EV) industry. “Southern workers are ready to stand up and win our fair share by winning our unions. And when we have a free and fair choice, we will win every time,” Trudy Lindahl, a worker at the Ultium plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., said in a statement. General Motors (GM), the Detroit-based automaker that runs the plant as a cooperative venture with South Korea-based LG...