Jony Ive created the iPhone to be the everything device. It’s a camera and a text messenger and a game console and a movie player and a web browser and a thousand other things, and it has a touchscreen because it has to — because a physical keyboard can’t be a shutter button, and a number pad can’t be a search bar. The touchscreen was the solution to a specific problem: how do you build one device that does everything?

Then carmakers looked at a product that sold billions of units and said, we should put one of those in the dashboard. But they took the wrong lesson. Your car isn’t supposed to do everything. It’s supposed to be a car. You need to adjust the temperature, change the volume, turn on the heated seats and keep your eyes on the road. These are not problems that require a general-purpose interface. They are problems that have been solved for more than a century — by knobs and buttons and switches — and the industry unresolved them in a decade.

Ive knows this. “The reason we developed touch — the big idea was to develop a general-purpose interface that could be a calculator, that could be a typewriter, could be a camera, rather than having physical buttons,” he told me. “To use touch in a car is something I would never dream of doing, because it requires that you look at what you’re doing.”

He paused. “Touch was seen as almost like fashion. It was the most current technology. ‘We need a bit of touch.’ And, ‘You know what we’re going to do next year? We’re going to have an even bigger one.’ That’s just the wrong technology to be the primary interface.”

So the man who inadvertently ruined car interiors is back to fix them. And on a Ferrari, no less — the new Luce.

The event was held at the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco. Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna explained the choice: the building was constructed by A.P. Giannini, the Italian-American founder of Bank of America; LoveFrom’s studio is nearby; and the architect tapered the building’s shape specifically so that light could reach the streets below. “Luce,” the newly revealed name of Ferrari’s first electric vehicle, means “light” in Italian. If you thought the symbolism was accidental, you haven’t spent much time with Italians. On the last night, they illuminated the Pyramid’s spire in red — for Ferrari, for light, for the start of something.

This was the second of three phased reveals for Ferrari’s first fully electric car. The first, in Maranello last October, covered the underlying technology — battery, motors, platform. This one was the interior and interface. The exterior comes in May, in Italy. Ferrari is spacing these out deliberately, and it’s the right call. There is so much going on in the Luce’s cabin that stuffing it into a single launch alongside the exterior would guarantee most of it gets lost.

They didn’t call the car “Elettrica.” Vigna told us he’d had a journalist suggest as much that very morning. Too simple, he said. Because the argument Ferrari is making — and it’s the same argument Ive, Marc Newson and LoveFrom are making — is that this is a Ferrari that happens to be electric, not an electric car that happens to be a Ferrari. The powertrain is a feature, not the identity. As Ferrari’s Chief Design Officer Flavio Manzoni put it: “Electric is a feature of this Ferrari Luce. This is why electric would have been a wrong name.”

Over dinner, I asked whether they’d approach a diesel powertrain — or any other technology — the same way. The answer was essentially yes: as long as it achieves the goal, whether that’s getting across the finish line first or enhancing the driving experience, the technology itself is irrelevant. You don’t do tech for tech’s sake.

The collaboration between Ferrari and LoveFrom has a backstory that borders on poetic. The idea to work with Ive and Newson predates Vigna’s arrival as CEO. In 2021, when Vigna was interviewing with Ferrari chairman John Elkann, he was asked: “What do you think if we work with LoveFrom?” Vigna didn’t even recognize the name — the company had barely started. “LoveFrom?” he asked. “Jony Ive and Marc Newson.” “Oh, okay.”

But Vigna’s endorsement wasn’t a guess. He’s a physicist by training, and in a previous career, his team developed the three-axis accelerometer that ended up inside the iPhone. He’d worked, if not directly with Ive, then on the same product — “designing a beautiful product that we use nowadays every day,” as he put it. So the man who built the iPhone’s guts and the man who designed the iPhone’s face are now collaborating on a car interior that rejects the damage the iPhone inadvertently did to automobiles.

Australian Marc Newson is one of the only industrial designers in the world who could give the British Ive a challenge — it’s perhaps little surprise that they’ve been best friends for 30 years. “As I’ve gotten older and grumpier, who I work with is more important than what I work on,” Ive said. He brought Newson into Apple in 2014 to work on the Apple Watch.

When Ive left in 2019, the two created LoveFrom, which now employs about 60 designers in San Francisco and London — “the best of the best of the best designers I have ever been lucky enough to meet,” Ive said, “and also the kindest. That’s part of my grumpy belligerence now — I’m done working with assholes.” The team includes typographers, industrial designers, mechanical engineers, UI designers and filmmakers, working across disciplines in a way that is almost unheard of in the automotive world, where departmental silos define the product.

Before LoveFrom drew a single line, they spent six months on research. They presented Ferrari with four books — substantial, rigorous volumes printed in both Italian and English, left page and right page, covering philosophy, design history, the cultural significance of Ferrari within Italy, the relationship between human attention and physical interaction. These weren’t mood boards. They were arguments — about why certain assumptions held, why others didn’t and what first principles should govern the design of a car interior in 2026.

Vigna still reads them. “When you write, you’re forcing yourself to explain better your thoughts, and you’re forcing the reader to go through the details,” he said. “Those books were forcing us to review why something was done a certain way. I remember the discussion we had on the position of the spokes of the steering wheel — why that angle? And this was an occasion for us to go talk with the test drivers.”

Manzoni, Ferrari’s chief design officer, gave LoveFrom full autonomy for those first months. When they came back six months after the first handshake, “their proposal was completely cohesive — exterior, interior, user experience... [and] very disruptive.”

Asked during the afternoon Q&A how much the final design had changed from LoveFrom’s initial proposal, the answer from both Ive and Newson was — barely at all. Manzoni said that if you saw their first models and the production components side by side, “you could be surprised about the similarity.” Any changes were proportions and ergonomic refinements, not fundamental rethinking.

I asked whether the fact that nothing changed meant they’d played it too safe. “Great question,” Ive said — and then didn’t answer. Newson stepped in and explained that the first eight or nine months was intense research, the design period was relatively short, and the last two and a half years — more than half the five-year project — was just getting it built. Getting it made.

The automotive industry works the other way around. Car companies sketch first, research later, iterate endlessly, compromise constantly. Every department fights for its priorities. The interior gets designed by one team, the software by another, the exterior by a third. The result is exactly what you’d expect from that process.

LoveFrom’s process inverts that entirely. Research drives the thinking. The thinking drives the shapes. If you do the research right, the design becomes almost self-evident. The obvious answers stay obvious because no one is in the room arguing them away. “I just love learning more than I love being right,” Ive said. “At the end of a project, there’s two products — there’s what you designed and what you learn.”

This article is sponsored by Nokian Tires. I ran their winter tires on my own cars for years before they ever sent me free ones. The Finnish have been making specialized winter tires since 1936 — they know cold weather.

If you’re curious about tire choices for your vehicle, email me and I’m happy to help.

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The Luce isn’t a car Ive has been designing in his head for 20 years. The concepts that drive it didn’t exist 20 years ago. Back then, “the concepts were so very different,” he told me. “What’s happened is people have become more and more disconnected from the physical world and more and more isolated.”

This car is a response to now — to the specific condition of 2026, where we’re drowning in screens and the one activity that used to force us into physical presence has been colonized by the same digital abstraction as everything else.

“I think we personally feel that we’ve become more and more isolated in our digital worlds from the physical world,” he said. “I think it’s one of the reasons we probably all love driving. And I think — rebellion is far too strong a word — but I think there is a growing desire to not be isolated, disconnected, whether it’s from each other or the real physical world.”

The Luce isn’t a nostalgia trip. It’s not a retro reaction against technology. It’s an argument that the things we touch and feel and move with our hands are essential to being human — and a car, a thing that moves your body through physical space, should connect you to the physical world, not insulate you from it.

It matters that this is a Ferrari and not some other car. “Of course, if we were designing this for somebody else, it would be very different,” Ive said, “but you want to drive your Ferrari and enjoy driving it.” The physicality, the paddle shifters, the manettino, the steering-column binnacle — all of it is specific to Ferrari’s mission and its drivers. LoveFrom didn’t impose an aesthetic on a car company. They spent years understanding what Ferrari specifically needed.

The interior components were displayed upstairs on individual plinths, like objects in a design museum. That wasn’t just for dramatic effect. Marc Newson explained: “Each one of these objects is, in itself, incredibly beautiful. I’d love to have any of these things at home.”

If you take a traditional automotive interior component out of the car and set it on a table, it looks like an orphaned piece of a larger machine — because it is. It was designed to fill a space defined by other constraints, sculpted to fit surfaces that were themselves sculpted for packaging or cost. Ive put it bluntly: “If you take, traditionally, an automotive part out of context, it’s a very odd shape, because generally you define a set of surfaces, and then you sort of say, ‘well, this is where the speaker goes.’”

LoveFrom’s approach was the opposite. They designed each component as a self-contained product — “as if they were a camera or a watch,” Ive said — and then integrated them into the cabin. Newson called it a project of a thousand products. The steering wheel is one product. The binnacle is another. The control panel, the central console, the shifter, the key, the vents — each one designed to be complete and beautiful in isolation, assembled into a coherent whole. Everything designed to look as beautiful from the back as it does from the front.

LoveFrom designed the interior and exterior simultaneously — not one wrapped around the other, as is standard in the industry. They designed the physical hardware and the digital software as one team. Jeremy Bataillon from LoveFrom explained: “We have industrial designers and we have UI designers, and we work together as one team. Usually it’s separate teams that do that work, and therefore they cannot come up with those ideas.”

The result is an interface where the physical and digital actually talk to each other. Press a physical button on the steering wheel and the display behind it responds — not with a static icon, but with a dynamic graphic that expands to show you more information. Turn a dial and the screen tracks your input in real time. The hardware and the software weren’t developed in parallel and bolted together at the end. They came from the same team, at the same time, as one thing.

When Ive walked us through the interior, he started with the organizational logic. “This is driving,” he said, gesturing at the steering wheel and binnacle. “Every other element augments the driving experience, but the focus of the steering wheel and this binnacle is very clearly about driving.” Then the rules: “This is output. This is input. Because these controls are mechanical.”

That clarity of organization sounds obvious. It isn’t. Walk up to any modern luxury car and try to figure out, from a standing start, how to adjust the climate. You’ll be three menus deep in a touchscreen within seconds, and you still might not have found it. In the Luce, Ive said, “When you look at this, you’re not wondering — how many layers deep am I going to have to go to find something to make my bottom warm?”

I asked whether there was ever a discussion about making the physical controls flexible — a button that could be a heated seat toggle or a drive mode selector, depending on context. Ive’s answer was instant and direct: “And you would have hated that.”

He didn’t need research to know that was a terrible idea. Everyone knows it’s a terrible idea. And yet the industry keeps doing it — multi-function touch surfaces, haptic zones that change depending on the menu, capacitive sliders that control different things in different modes. All of it requiring you to look at what you’re touching instead of keeping your eyes where they belong.

“I think we’re all really proud that when you look at the central console, it’s — ‘oh, I know how to turn on a seat heater. I know how...’” He trailed off, almost incredulous. “You just can’t do that anywhere anymore.”

“If you can’t use something, it’s ugly,” Ive said. “There’s a deep, deep ugliness to something that just drives you crazy.”

“Beauty takes many forms, doesn’t it?” he asked, almost wistfully.

This is Ive’s design philosophy compressed into a single thought. Beauty and function aren’t competing priorities that need to be balanced. They’re the same thing. A gorgeous touchscreen that forces you to take your eyes off the road at 80 miles per hour isn’t beautiful. It’s ugly. A palm rest that gives your hand a datum point so your fingers can find every control without looking — that’s beautiful. A toggle switch with precisely tuned mechanical feedback that tells your fingertip exactly what it did — that’s beautiful. The ugliness is the dysfunction. The beauty is the solution.

Formula One drivers know this. Their steering wheels have dedicated switches for the critical functions and deeper digital menus for mid-race strategy adjustments. Fighter pilots know it — the controls you reach for in a critical phase of flight get dedicated, physical hardware. You don’t bury the landing gear in a submenu.

Ive went further than design critique. Almost as an aside, he mentioned “the number of people dying because of dumb interfaces.” He said it like it was obvious. It is obvious. And it’s maybe the most damning thing a designer of his stature can say about the rest of the industry — that the way cars work right now isn’t just annoying or ugly. It’s killing people.

The steering wheel tells you everything about the philosophy in a single glance. It’s a three-spoke design — heritage Ferrari, traced back to the Nardi wheels of the 1950s and 60s — but in exposed, anodized aluminum. Most modern steering wheels have a metal structure underneath, hidden behind plastic or leather or both. Here, the aluminum is the point. You see it. You feel it. It’s cold when you first touch it on a winter morning, because it’s metal, because it’s real.

The heritage wasn’t an afterthought. Newson noted that they spent significant time with Piero Ferrari — Enzo’s only living son, now 80 — who “was instrumental in reinforcing some of these really important design cues that have been with Ferrari since the very beginning, like the three-spoke steering wheel.” Piero was keen on the purity of the design, deeply supportive of LoveFrom’s approach. Ive, who owns a 250 Europa — a roughly $2 million car and a serious machine, not a casual collector’s trophy — said: “We know the brand well. We love the brand. We drive it. People could see our deference and respect and our determination to really try to make a contribution.”

The wheel is made from 19 CNC-machined parts in 100% recycled aluminum alloy, developed specifically for this car. The monolithic hub alone takes more than four hours to machine from a solid billet. The spokes are impossibly thin — the Ferrari team told me there’s nothing this compact on the market. It weighs 400 grams less than a standard steering wheel. The controls are organized into two analog modules inspired by Formula One, and every button went through more than 20 evaluation tests with Ferrari’s test drivers.

Those buttons. They’re glass and aluminum, no plastic. Each one feels different under your fingers — deliberately, so you can identify them by touch without looking down. There are toggle switches that snap with a crisp mechanical action (magnets pulling them back, not springs — very F1) and rotary dials with defined detents. The manettino — Ferrari’s iconic drive mode selector — gets a new electronic version on one spoke; the classic suspension manettino sits on the other.

And the paddle shifters. On most electric cars, there are no paddles — there’s nothing to shift. Some, like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, have tried to recreate the sensation of shifting with a simulated transmission that actually slows the car down to mimic the feel of an internal combustion engine. Ferrari would never slow a car down for the sake of theater. Instead, the paddles do something real: one controls the intensity of regenerative braking, the other adjusts the aggressiveness of the motor’s torque delivery. I want more regen going into a corner. I want more torque coming out. That’s what these do. Ferrari told me the idea originated early in the process — they wanted variable torque and regen settings to keep the driver engaged, as in any other Ferrari, and the paddles were right there waiting. It’s not nostalgia for a gearbox. It’s a new function that happens to live exactly where a Ferrari driver’s hands already know to reach.

Then there’s the turn signal. It’s a two-stage button — press lightly and you get the three-blink lane change; press fully and the signal stays on. You know by feel which one you’ve done. It’s a tiny detail, but it’s the kind of thing that tells you someone actually thought about what your fingers are doing while your eyes are on the road. Every button on this wheel has that quality. Nothing feels the same as the thing next to it.

The binnacle — the instrument cluster — is where the most technically ambitious ideas live. It’s attached to the steering column, which means it moves with the wheel when you adjust the driving position. This is a first for Ferrari, and it solves a problem that Ive finds absurd about conventional cars: “You have a driving environment, and what do you do to adjust the fit? You slide a chair backwards and forwards, which is quite crude, really.”

The binnacle itself is a layered construction of two overlapping Samsung OLED displays. The top display has three large cutouts — a world first, cutting holes in OLED panels at this scale — that reveal a second display behind it. Each cutout is covered by a convex glass lens, and as you move your head, you get parallax. Real parallax, the kind that comes from actual physical depth between layers. “If you want to avoid parallax,” Ive said, “just play computer games.”

And then, rising through the space between the displays: a physical needle. An actual, mechanical needle, illuminated from beneath by 15 LEDs injecting light through a fiber-optic guide, rotating with less than a millimeter of clearance from the display surfaces on either side. It reads your speed while the digital display behind it provides context. I don’t know what to call it. It’s not analog and it’s not digital. It’s something else.

Samsung Display’s VP Shawn Kim explained that the free-form OLED panels were only possible because of the technology’s inherently simple structure — no backlight assembly, no rigid layers — meaning they could cut them into shapes that would be impossible with LCD. When Ferrari first showed Samsung the design, Kim said it was challenging from a manufacturing perspective. “But we loved the enthusiasm of the engineering. We just took a look at how to make it happen.”

Andrea Binotti, Ferrari’s head of development, told me the double-screen binnacle was the element that surprised him most — the thing he’d never seen before, the idea that came from LoveFrom and that Ferrari’s engineers had to figure out how to build. Maybe that’s the answer to the question of whether Ive and Newson pushed far enough: the ideas didn’t change because they were the right ones all along. And getting Samsung to cut holes in OLED panels and getting a mechanical needle to spin between two displays with sub-millimeter clearance — that took two and a half years. Their design stretched the limits of possibility and got executed anyway.

The control panel — the central display, such as it is — sits on a ball-and-socket joint. You can grab it and swing it toward the driver or the passenger. But the key detail isn’t the movement. It’s the handle.

“It’s common sense, but something that’s bizarrely ignored,” Ive said. “It’s very hard to hold your hand out if you’re moving and find a button.” The handle serves primarily as a palm rest — a physical datum point. With your palm resting on it, every switch and dial on the panel is within reach, and you know where each one is without looking. It’s not complicated. It’s not new technology. Someone just had to actually think about what it’s like to reach for a button while a car is moving.

This is Ferrari’s own interface — not Apple CarPlay, not a third-party system. (It does support both wireless CarPlay and wireless Android Auto, but the native UI is entirely bespoke.) Binotti confirmed they built the UI layer themselves with LoveFrom’s expertise. “We have full control,” he said. “We didn’t compromise with anything.”

And then there’s the software philosophy, which might be the most radical thing about the whole car. Binotti said: “We are not used as Ferrari to have, let’s say, update software many times during their lifetime. That’s the masterpiece — it’s done.” It’s not that Ferrari can’t update its cars. It’s that they intend to ship a finished product. Every other automaker is spending billions trying to build update infrastructure they can barely manage; Ferrari is simply choosing not to play that game.

There’s a longevity argument here too. Ferrari’s current cars have intentionally minimal connectivity — one-way communication from the car to Ferrari’s app, sending basic information like tire pressures, but no remote unlocking, no location tracking, no cloud dependency. The Luce will have a new app and likely a new connectivity philosophy, but the underlying instinct is the same. Part of it is privacy, a real concern for their ultra-high-net-worth clientele. But part of it is durability. Ferrari has a division called Classiche that maintains and restores every Ferrari ever made — they have the original drawings for every part on every car, and can build replacements to original specifications. They’re already working to ensure the Luce can be maintained and restored decades from now, the same way they service cars from the 1950s today. Connectivity ages out. Aluminum and glass and precision engineering do not.

Embedded in the control panel is what Ferrari calls the multigraph — a precision instrument with three independent motors, three anodized aluminum hands, and a Corning glass crystal. Press a button and it transitions from clock to chronograph. Reach above your head and pull the launch control handle — mounted on the roof like an eject lever, gloriously dramatic — and it switches again, the hands sweeping to new positions. The engineering team told me the mechanism had to be maintenance-free and reliable over the life of the car. I asked if watchmakers were involved. They didn’t deny it.

The key might be my favorite part of the whole thing.

It’s a slab of Corning Fusion5 glass with an E Ink display — a first in automotive. In your pocket, it’s yellow. Ferrari yellow. It doesn’t drain power because E Ink is bistable: it only uses energy when changing states. When you get into the car, a magnet in the center console guides the key into its dock. Press it down, and the yellow fades to black as the key integrates with the glass surface of the console. Simultaneously, the binnacle and control panel light up — and the white glass of the shifter turns yellow, as if the car is saying: okay, now touch this part. The car comes alive in sequence, each element handing off to the next.

Ive called this “theater,” and he’s right. Electric cars fundamentally lack the ritual of starting up. There’s no engine turning over, no rumble settling into an idle, no mechanical systems awakening. The Luce’s key ceremony isn’t trying to fake that — it’s creating a new version of it, native to what this car is. A different theater from a Ferrari V12, but Ferrari theater nonetheless. “When you see it holistically, it’s not boom, boom, boom,” Ive said. “It’s — oh, that’s nice. Somebody actually thought about that process.”

A few years ago, I had a 488 for a week. Beautiful car. But there was no place to put the key. Ferrari’s solution was a tiny velvet-lined spot in the cupholder, and I remember thinking: someone didn’t think about where I’m going to put my key. With the Luce, someone did. It has a home, it has a ritual, and when you’re done driving, the black fades back to yellow as the key releases. Binotti told me they spent a lot of time thinking about the fact that this sense of ceremony was missing from most electric cars — and most combustion Ferraris, for that matter.

What runs through all of this — the steering wheel, the binnacle, the controls, the key — is what Ive calls “truthful materials.” The aluminum is aluminum. The glass is glass. Nothing is pretending to be something it’s not. And the entire interior is essentially just these two materials, plus leather where your body contacts the car — the steering wheel rim, the seats, the armrests. This is far from the first time Ive has crafted things from aluminum and glass. The iPhone, the MacBooks, the Apple Watch, the Apple Stores he designed with Norman Foster — his entire career has been spent understanding how these materials machine, how they anodize, how they age, how light moves through and across them. (The original iPhone even had a plastic back; Apple spent years iterating toward the all-glass-and-aluminum object it eventually became.) He knows what these materials can do. That’s a big part of why the execution here is at a level nobody in the car industry has come close to.

Corning, the company that makes Gorilla Glass for your phone (also at the behest of Steve Jobs, incidentally — you start to see the patterns), developed the glass components for the Luce using their Fusion5 formulation, which is stronger in flexure than sapphire and more scratch-resistant than conventional glass. Corning’s VP of automotive glass solutions, Mike Kunigonis, explained why glass and not polycarbonate: imagine you’re on a beach, he said, and your kid picks up a piece of sea glass — smooth, polished by the waves, light passing through it. You put it in your pocket, take it home, set it on your desk. Now imagine they pick up a piece of plastic. You tell them to throw it away. “Glass has this strong emotional connection,” he said. That connection is why there are more than 40 glass parts in the Luce’s interior. The typical car has one or two, maybe three.

Kunigonis’s team needed seven new process innovations just to meet LoveFrom’s specifications. The shifter alone required Corning to laser-drill more than 13,000 holes in the glass surface — each one about 40 microns, a third the width of a human hair — so that light could pass through uniformly, allowing the shifter to glow when the car is on and appear dark when it’s off. They tested the glass components, in some cases, to an equivalent lifetime of 50 years without failure.

And the vents — I know, nobody writes about vents. But lean in and listen to the Luce’s air vents. The precision of the movement, the quiet mechanical click of the louvers as they pivot. You don’t need an instruction manual. You open it, you aim it, you close it. “I would defy anybody to use this and just be nonplussed and walk away,” Ive said. He’s not wrong. You don’t need to go through three layers of a touch interface to direct the airflow. You just move it. With your hand. Like a person.

Near the end of the day, I asked Ive what he’d want the rest of the industry to take away from this. Newson jumped in first: “Nothing. We want it all to ourselves.” Everyone laughed.

Then Ive got serious. “What would be lovely would be for the thinking to be talked about, not the shapes,” he said. “We all know that there’s a frustration — our observations are hardly earth-shattering, in terms of the functional problems, or the number of people dying because of dumb interfaces. What we don’t like is when work is understood in terms of styling. Of course, the ultimate manifestation of an idea is form. So of course we’re obsessed with that. But the underlying thinking, I think, is really important. I think it’s nice when that becomes a discussion.”

The thing that drives him crazy, he said, “is this belief that doing something new is valuable. New is really easy. We could all sit down and do something new in half an hour. If difference and new is because it’s better — I think that’s what we would love.”

If you’ve ever watched Jony Ive in an Apple new product video, you see that they think through every step. It makes sense when a billion people are going to use the thing. The Ferrari Luce might sell a few thousand units a year. But every piece — every toggle, every thread on every vent louver — was created as if a billion people were going to touch it. That’s not because Ferrari buyers deserve more care than the rest of us. It’s because Ive doesn’t design to a volume; he designs to a standard: would this be good enough if everyone on earth had to use it? The shapes might be Ferrari, but the thinking is universal.

When I listen to my recording of our group Q&A session, I can hear him struggle to express the idea that’s perfectly formed in his head. The half-finished sentences, the trailing off, the idea circling three times before he lands on it: “What would be lovely would be for the thinking to be talked about, not the shapes.” He’s not simply being a polite Englishman. He’s lonely. He made the iPhone, and an entire industry looked at it and learned the wrong thing. Not the wrong lesson — the wrong thing. The lesson was: ask what problem you’re solving, then build the solution that solves it. What they took was: put a touchscreen in the dashboard. And people are dying for it.

Now he’s trying again, putting the thinking directly into a car, in a context where you can’t miss it — physical controls, dedicated buttons, a palm rest so your hand knows where it is while your eyes stay on the road. He’d make this car whether anyone in the industry learned from it or not. That’s the job: to make the beautiful thing. And to Ive, beauty and function are the same word. But, in both his words and his design, you can hear him pleading — wistfully, almost to himself — for someone, anyone, to look past the aluminum and the glass and see why.

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For years, automakers have chased a dream: what if selling you a car was just the beginning of the relationship? What if the vehicle itself became a platform for ongoing revenue — a subscription machine that keeps delivering value (and profit) long after you drive off the lot?

They’ve tried. God, have they tried. Automated payments at gas stations. In-car food ordering. Package delivery to your trunk while you’re at work. Pilot after pilot, partnership after partnership. None of it stuck.

But something’s different now. Fully autonomous driving — the kind where you’re not even in the car — isn’t a decade away anymore. It might be next year. And that changes everything about what’s possible.

The question isn’t whether your car will eventually run errands for you. It’s whether anyone can build that experience in a way that actually makes your life better, rather than just creating new ways to sell you things.

Let’s talk about why all those pilots failed.

Automated gas station payments — Shell partnered with Jaguar, Chevy tried too. The pitch: link your card, pull up to the pump, fuel flows automatically. No swiping, no PIN entry. Seamless! Except it wasn’t. You still had to tap through screens in the car before you got out. You still had to get out. The total time saved was maybe 30 seconds, and that’s being generous. It solved a problem that wasn’t really a problem.

Trunk delivery was worse. Amazon and Audi piloted letting delivery drivers open your car remotely and drop packages inside. The value proposition: no more porch pirates! Your stuff is safe in your car! But that’s Amazon’s problem, not yours. Failed deliveries and stolen packages cost them money. The customer got nothing for participating except the vague satisfaction of knowing their protein powder was sitting in a hot trunk instead of on a hot porch. Why would anyone opt into that?

These weren’t benefits. They were features dressed up as benefits. And customers saw right through them.

If you want to build something that actually works — that customers actually use and partners actually pay for — it has to clear three bars simultaneously. First, real, obvious improvement for the customer. Not theoretical. Not “well, technically this saves you...” Real. Time saved, money saved, ideally both. And it cannot be any more complicated or difficult than what they’re already doing. Second, genuine economic value to the partner — significant enough that they’re not just willing to participate, they’re willing to pay for the privilege. Third, a sustainable cut for whoever’s facilitating the platform.

Most pilots hit one, maybe two. They never hit all three. That’s why they died.

This article is sponsored by Nokian Tires. Full disclosure: I ran their winter tires on my own cars for years before they ever sent me free ones. The Finnish have been making specialized winter tires since 1936 — they know cold weather.

If you’re curious about tire choices for your vehicle, email me and I’m happy to help.

What Actually Passes

Picture this: You’re on Amazon, checking out. Under delivery options, you see your house, Amazon Locker, Whole Foods pickup, and a new one — “Send your car.”

You tap it. Your car drives to the fulfillment center while you’re at work, pulls into a queue, pops the trunk, and an Amazon worker loads your packages. The car drives home, parks in your garage, and waits. You unload whenever you feel like it — that night, the next morning, whenever.

For this minor inconvenience (is it even an inconvenience?), you get 5% off your order.

Why would Amazon offer that? Because last-mile delivery costs them somewhere around $10 per package. If your car comes to them, they save most of that. They can share $3-4 with you, give a cut to the platform, and still come out way ahead. That’s a real benefit for the customer. That’s a real benefit for the partner. And the partner’s benefit is significant enough that everyone gets paid.

Now expand it. Dry cleaning. Prescriptions. UPS and FedEx package pickup. Anything that currently requires you to either wait at home or drive somewhere during business hours. Your car just... handles it.

Same logic applies when you’re in the car. You say “I’m hungry.” The voice assistant — because by now it’s deeply integrated with your accounts — knows your Starbucks order, your OpenTable history, your preferences. It doesn’t just show you a list of nearby restaurants. It checks Resy for availability, cross-references with your calendar, calculates exactly when you’d arrive, and makes a reservation at a place you’ll actually like that can actually seat you.

Or simpler: “Order my usual from Starbucks.” It knows your usual because you logged into Starbucks once, the same way you logged into Spotify. It shows you three nearby locations with wait times. You pick one — or say “whichever’s fastest” — and by the time you pull up, it’s ready. No app. No line. No fumbling with your phone while driving.

That’s not a feature. That’s magic. And the magic is in what doesn’t happen.

Why Tesla

Everything I’ve just described requires three things: a car that can drive itself, a platform that controls the entire stack, and the design discipline to make it feel native rather than bolted-on.

Tesla’s the obvious candidate. FSD version 14 is making genuine progress toward unsupervised operation. Cybercab production is reportedly starting next year — a vehicle designed from the ground up without a steering wheel, with a massive trunk and wireless charging, optimized for exactly this kind of use. The robotaxi rollout in Austin is already underway, with Tesla removing in-vehicle human supervisors just this week.

But it’s not just capability. It’s mentality.

Legacy automakers can’t do this because they have too many cooks. Partners, suppliers, dealers, infotainment vendors — everyone wants a piece, everyone adds friction, and there’s no one empowered to say “this is how it has to be.” The result is lowest-common-denominator experiences that satisfy no one. It’s like watching the same movie again.

Apple gets away with a 30% cut on the App Store because they built something worth 30%. They demand quality. They say no constantly. The result is an ecosystem developers want to be part of because customers actually use it. Tesla has that same energy — or could. Rivian might. Most automakers don’t, and probably can’t.

Here’s what makes this less speculation and more inevitability: the autonomous driving was the moonshot. That was the decade-long, tens-of-billions-of-dollars problem. Teaching a car to navigate the world safely without human intervention — that’s the hard part.

Warehouse queuing? Partner APIs? Figuring out where the car parks while a worker loads groceries into the trunk? That’s plumbing. Non-trivial plumbing, sure. But plumbing. Once the car can drive to a location, identify a loading zone, open its frunk, and drive home — everything else is execution. The pieces already exist. McDonald’s already uses geofencing to time when your food gets made. Starbucks already has order-ahead with estimated pickup times. Amazon already has curbside infrastructure at Whole Foods. Someone just has to connect them in a way that respects the customer.

The autonomous vehicle future isn’t about what you do when the car drives itself. Sleep, watch YouTube, answer emails — that’s obvious and boring. The interesting question is what the car does when you’re not in it. It sits parked 95% of the time. What if that time worked for you instead of just costing you insurance and depreciation?

The technology to make this happen is arriving. The question is whether anyone will build it right — where “right” means genuinely beneficial to the customer, not just another surface for advertising and upsells.

That’s the bet. And for the first time, it feels like someone might actually win it.

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We’ve seen this movie before. The industry convinced itself Tesla was about to fail, that hybrids were dead, that battery supply chains would materialize on faith. They were wrong about all of it — and Ford’s $19.5 billion writedown is the receipt.

Read part one → How (and why) Ford lost $19.5 billion betting on EVs

Ford just announced it’s writing down $19.5 billion in EV-related assets. BlueOval City — the Tennessee gigafactory that was supposed to be Ford’s electric future — is being renamed “Tennessee Truck Plant” and will build gas-powered pickups starting in 2029. Production of the current F-150 Lightning has ended. The next-generation Lightning will be an extended-range EV with a gas-powered generator onboard, not a pure battery electric. Model e, Ford’s EV division, won’t be profitable until 2029.

This is a confession dressed up as a pivot.

Ford isn’t alone. Remember in 2016 when Dieter Zetsche, then-CEO of Mercedes, predicted that 25 percent of the company’s sales would be electric by 2025? A few years later, Merc doubled down, then doubled down again, saying in 2021 that it would be all-electric by 2030. It has since rolled back most of its EV strategy and will be selling internal combustion engines for the foreseeable future.

GM has scaled back Ultium and quietly walked back the “all-EV by 2035” rhetoric. They eventually shipped the electric Silverado and Sierra EV — I drove the Sierra from Boston to LA earlier this year to test Super Cruise — but the volume ambitions have cratered. Volkswagen is closing a factory in Germany amid software disasters and disappointing ID.4 sales. Stellantis just pushed out Carlos Tavares with its EV strategy in disarray.

The common thread: around 2021-2022, every legacy automaker convinced themselves that Tesla had cracked the code and they needed to bet billions — immediately — or get left behind. The Biden administration’s EPA mandates added regulatory tailwinds that made the transition feel inevitable. The fear of being “the next Kodak” overwhelmed any sober analysis of actual consumer demand, battery supply chains, or charging infrastructure.

Then the political winds shifted. Trump’s back, and he just revoked almost all of the fuel economy mandates. The regulatory inevitability turned out to be politically reversible. Ford’s press release mentioned “regulatory changes” as one reason the business case “eroded.” No kidding.

Here’s the thing: two companies didn’t buy the consensus. And they’re doing just fine.

Toyota spent a decade getting roasted. Akio Toyoda was practically called a climate denier for insisting that hybrids were the bridge technology and that global battery supply chains couldn’t support mass EV adoption. The automotive press, the analysts, the EV Twitter commentariat — everyone dunked on Toyota as dinosaurs who didn’t get it.

Toyota understood something the consensus missed: you can’t electrify a global fleet if you can’t build the batteries. Akio was right.

And now Ford is announcing a pivot to... Toyota’s strategy from 2015. Hybrids everywhere. Extended-range EVs for trucks. Pure battery electrics only where the economics actually work.

Then there’s Tesla, which is printing money while legacy automakers write down billions. But Tesla didn’t win by building better cars (though it did that too). Tesla won by building the machine that builds the machine.

I stood in Tesla’s Gigafactory in the Nevada desert in 2016. A Panasonic executive told me something that stuck: the production capacity of that single factory would exceed the total output of the entire global battery industry. Not Panasonic. Not Japanese companies. All Japanese, Korean, and Chinese battery makers combined.

The obvious question — the one I kept asking — was: where are Ford’s batteries coming from? GM’s? Volkswagen’s?

The answer I got from several carmakers was some version of: “We have faith in our supply chain.”

The supply chain that didn’t exist.

Nine years and $19.5 billion later, we see how that faith was rewarded.

It’s worth noting: the products themselves were often good. GM’s Bolt in 2016 was a genuinely excellent car — 238 miles of range, around $30,000 after the tax credit, and what I called at the time “aggressively normal.” But LG made the cells, LG had finite capacity, and GM was never going to build its own gigafactory. The Bolt stayed a compliance car (and they were all recalled).

I loved Ford’s EVs — the Mach-E, the Lightning, the E-Transit. Good products, all of them.

But you can’t scale good products without the industrial foundation to build them. Ford’s engineers could design a great electric truck. Ford’s supply chain couldn’t build enough batteries to put them in customers’ driveways.

Meanwhile, the Hummer EV — which I also enjoyed driving — perfectly captured GM’s strategic confusion. A 205 kWh battery pack, the largest in any production vehicle. That’s roughly three Model 3s worth of cells stuffed into a single $110,000 truck so it could do a 3-second 0-60 party trick. Cool? Absolutely. A strategy? Absolutely not.

Tesla took a different path at every turn. Vertical integration from the start. Build your own cells. Build your own charging network. Create software that actually adds value rather than extracting rent from customers who already bought the car.

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But Tesla’s advantage wasn’t just manufacturing scale — it was making EV ownership effortless. Superchargers everywhere, one-click purchasing, software that improves the car after you buy it. Ford built some great EVs and then handed the keys to a dealership network that would rather sell you a Bronco, powered by a charging ecosystem that requires three apps and a prayer. When you’re asking customers to abandon a century of muscle memory around gas stations, “good product” isn’t enough. You have to make the switch feel easy. Tesla did. Ford didn’t.

By 2023, the “we’ll do it our own way” consensus collapsed entirely. Ford adopted Tesla’s charging standard, the first capitulation of many. GM followed, then everyone else. The Supercharger network that legacy automakers ignored for a decade became the de facto North American standard — not because regulators mandated it, but because it was simply better and customers knew it.

And here’s the part that’s almost too perfect: buried in Ford’s announcement is a “new” strategic initiative. Ford is launching a battery energy storage business, repurposing the Kentucky battery plants to build grid storage systems for data centers and utilities. They’re planning to ship 20 GWh annually by 2027. Jim Farley called it a “high-growth opportunity.”

You know who identified that opportunity? Elon Musk. In 2016. Standing in that same Gigafactory, he told me that stationary storage would “probably be as big as the car business long term” with “a super-exponential growth rate.”

Tesla’s Megapack business is now enormous. They’re building dedicated Megafactories. Last year, Tesla launched a $5-per-month unlimited overnight charging program in Texas — not as a loss leader, but because Tesla is an electricity retailer in Texas’s deregulated market. They’re building the grid-as-platform business while Ford is still trying to figure out what to do with stranded battery factories.

Ford’s bold new direction is Tesla’s 2016 roadmap, too.

So what went wrong? Groupthink. The same consultants, the same McKinsey decks, the same conference circuit, the same assumptions bouncing around the same rooms. Everyone validated everyone else. Nobody asked the basic questions — like “who’s going to make all these batteries?” — because asking would have revealed that the emperor had no clothes.

When everyone at Davos agrees on something, that’s usually a sell signal.

Which brings me to the uncomfortable question: what else is the auto industry getting wrong right now?

I’d start with autonomy. The industry has burned billions on LIDAR, HD mapping, geofenced cities, and safety drivers. Cruise imploded. Argo AI is dead. Waymo works but hasn’t proven the economics. Meanwhile, Tesla’s vision-only approach has been dismissed as “dangerous” and “reckless” by the same expert consensus that assured us legacy automakers would catch up on EVs by 2025. Tesla just started pulling human safety operators out of its robotaxis in Austin.

This has the same energy as the people who said SpaceX was nuts for trying to land rockets.

And here’s the thing: the real autonomous opportunity isn’t even robotaxis. It’s what your car does when you’re not in it — the errands it runs, the packages it picks up, the friction it removes from your life. I wrote about this separately, but the short version is: the moonshot was teaching the car to drive itself. That’s done. Everything else is plumbing. The same structural problems that killed Ford’s EV strategy — too many stakeholders, too much consensus, no vertical integration — will kill their shot at capturing it.

Then there’s the software-defined vehicle fantasy — the idea that automakers can build recurring revenue streams by paywalling features or selling stuff to the driver long after the initial purchase. BMW tried charging a subscription for heated seats and got laughed out of the room. The difference between BMW’s approach and Tesla’s is simple: Tesla’s software updates make the car better. They add capability. Legacy OEMs are trying to monetize the relationship; Tesla is trying to solve problems.

One of those approaches creates value for customers. The other extracts it. Guess which one people will pay for.

The lesson from Ford’s $19.5 billion education is simple: when the consensus is overwhelming and the skeptics are being laughed at, go find the skeptics and hear them out.

Toyota was the punchline. They were right.

Tesla was “about to go bankrupt” every year for a decade. They were right.

SpaceX was “nuts” for trying to land rockets. They were right.

The pattern isn’t complicated. Revolutionary technology confounds conventional expertise. The people closest to the old way of doing things are often the worst at predicting the new way. And when you ask a basic question — like “where are the batteries coming from?” — and the answer is “faith,” that’s your signal.

Ford’s executives aren’t stupid. Neither were GM’s or Mercedes’ or Volkswagen’s. They were operating in a system that punished dissent and rewarded consensus. They hired smart people who told them what everyone else’s smart people were saying.

And when someone asked where the batteries were coming from, they had faith.

Faith cost them $19.5 billion.

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And it’s about to happen again — the same structural failures that gave Ford and GM and Mercedes so much trouble with EVs are about to kill their shot at autonomy.

Read part two → Why your next car might run your errands

Winter in the Rockies.

A lesson learned the hard way: the Model 3 doesn't have a spare... and Tesla roadside assistance doesn't cover third-party tires. Make sure you have a Friend With A Truck nearby if you're going to get a flat. Props to Nokian Tires for getting a replacement tire to the middle of Colorado in less than 48 hours.

Found some holiday spirit along the way.

An unexpected roadside companion.

Miles of empty road in eastern Arizona.

Old meets new — from steam power to hydroelectric.

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About our sponsor: I'm excited to partner with Nokian Tires. I've been running their winter tires on my own vehicles for years — both the studded and non-studded versions — long before they sent me free ones. Nokian has been making specialized winter tires since 1936, and they're genuinely the experts when it comes to cold-weather performance. What else would you expect from the Finnish?

They've also just launched the Surpass AS01, a new ultra-high-performance tire designed for longer tread life than typical UHP options.

Happy to answer any questions about tire choices for your specific vehicle and driving conditions — just comment below.

This was originally published in June 2024, following a Starship test flight and Apple introducing new AI features. Next week, SpaceX will launch another test flight (that I’m very excited for) and everything here remains true. Enjoy.

I wonder if, when world-changing inventions of the past came to be, people realized they were going to change the world.

When the Gutenberg press was invented, did people know what was to come? Or the steam engine, the automobile or the airplane?

What about the day Alexander Graham Bell made the first phone call or when Edison created the light bulb? Our history is filled with world-changing inventions, and I don’t know how many of them people knew would change everything forever. But I bet even Bell and Edison couldn’t have foreseen the impact their inventions would make upon the world.

Some folks probably knew when Wernher von Braun was developing the rocket or when Alan Turing was developing the first computer, but even then, regular people definitely didn’t see what was going on.

This week was different. This week, millions watched live as we reached milestones in the development of technologies that have the potential, at least, to reshape our world.

SpaceX sent a rocket the size of the Statue of Liberty into space and had half of it return to a controlled landing in the Gulf of Mexico and the other half to a controlled landing in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Australia. Elon Musk’s Starship has the potential to drastically reduce the cost of getting cargo and people to space. Not just to space — Starship has been specifically designed from the beginning to go not just to the moon but to Mars.

Two decades ago, the idea that you could land and reuse a rocket seemed like science fiction. Musk had an idea, and the competition laughed at him. Even a decade ago, his competitors at United Launch Alliance thought landing and reusing a rocket was crazy. Nonetheless, he persisted. Recently, SpaceX successfully landed its Falcon 9 rocket for the 300th time.

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With this successful soft landing in the Gulf of Mexico, SpaceX showed that Starship can be reused as well. For its next launch, Elon is hinting that they’ll try to use their insane “chopsticks” set of pincers to catch the ship when it returns to Earth.

If you thought flying a rocket to India was crazy, with an HD video feed watching a flap slowly burn away like something out of “Terminator,” you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Then, on Monday, Apple unveiled the most significant updates to its computer platforms since the invention of the iPhone: A deep integration of artificial intelligence into the iPhone, iPad and Mac that will change the way people use their phones and computers forever. Apple’s tagline for this was perfect: “AI for the rest of us.”

I’ve been playing with ChatGPT and its competitors for more than a year now and have been able to get some amazing results. But I still haven’t been able to talk to it like it was the computer on “Star Trek.” I had to be extremely specific, almost pedantic, to get it to do what I wanted, and even then, it wasn’t quite right.

Apple correctly noted that, in order to be truly helpful, an AI bot needs some sense of personal context — information about your life from your calendar, your email and your text messages. Only then can an assistant be truly helpful. This is what we were promised 13 years ago when Siri launched as the first voice-activated assistant.

It only took a decade and then some, but it seems this promise is finally here. You’ll be able to say things like, “When does my mom’s flight get in?” and it’ll know to check your messages and emails for messages from your mom, find her flight number, check its status and return the information to you in just a second or two.

No longer will you need to remember where she sent the information — was it in a text or an email? This seems like a small thing, but our brain doesn’t need to remember where Mom sent that information, just that she sent it.

It seems silly — or it will seem silly in five or 10 years — that we ever needed to remember things like that, in the same way a Rolodex is amusing when we see it on the set of “Mad Men.” No one remembers phone numbers anymore. The Yellow Pages no longer exist; the entire idea of them is an anachronism.

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What will Apple’s new artificial intelligence make obsolete? What will Starship landing and taking off multiple times a day mean for our species? I don’t know the answer, but I know that this was one of those weeks where everything might have changed. We just won’t know it for a while.

But boy, am I excited about it.

REDONDO BEACH, Calif. — It's after midnight when I finally pull into the drive of The Portofino Hotel, stopping in front of a marker featuring two digital clocks: One displays the local time, and the other shows the time in Manhattan.

This is significant because it marks the end point of the amusingly-named Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash between New York and Los Angeles, an "unofficial" time trial running nearly 3,000 miles between the two largest cities in the country. And I was the latest competitor.

Conceived in the '70s by Car and Driver editors Brock Yates and Steve Smith, the race was seen as a tongue-in-cheek celebration of the interstate highway system and protest against traffic laws. The traditional starting point is the Red Ball Garage on East 31st Street in Manhattan, finishing at The Portofino on the opposite coast.

The video above contains all my driving, with explanations of every disengagement and plenty of commentary. It also includes a 20x timelapse of all the “uneventful” driving — of which there was plenty. There’s also some great tunes running during the timelapse parts. Enjoy.

There are no "official" records, as winning involves committing numerous traffic infractions, but the modern record was set almost 20 years ago at 31 hours, 4 minutes in a modified BMW M5, averaging 90 miles per hour and using a spotter plane for some higher-speed stretches.

The current Cannonball Run record is an astonishing 25 hours and 39 minutes, but I'm not trying to break it today. It was set during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic — when there was minimal traffic — and may never be beaten.

There are other records on the same route, too, including a 39:25 electric car-record that my friend Kyle Conner set a few months ago in a 2025 Porsche Taycan.

I made the journey in my 2024 Tesla Model 3 Performance, not for time (I stopped at hotels along the way) but to set a new record for touching the steering wheel as little as possible.

My car is fitted with Tesla's latest Full Self-Driving (FSD) software, an advanced driver assist system that handles nearly all driving tasks while the driver needs only to supervise. As a professional automotive reviewer, I needed to put FSD through its paces, and the Cannonball Run seemed the perfect test.

Here's where things get complicated: FSD is software, and it's constantly being updated. I was running the latest version, released in November, that features a newly updated highway driving system. It can handle nearly all driving tasks, including red lights, stop signs and highways, but what trips it up is... the humble parking lot.

As a result, I knew I would need to manually take over for the last couple of hundred feet around charging stations. Other than that limitation, I hoped that I wouldn't need to touch the steering wheel at all. I was (mostly) right.

I had three cameras running in the car at all times to capture the run, and I'm still reviewing the video. However, after more than 40 hours of driving, I'd estimate that I touched the steering wheel for less than five minutes. Many drive segments required no manual driving at all.

It's definitely not autonomous, and the driver is required to keep an eye on the road, which is verified by a camera inside the car that watches your eyes. Look down at a phone, your breakfast burrito or even the car's giant touchscreen for more than a few seconds and the car will gently (and then more insistently) ask that you get your attention back to the windshield. If you look away for too long, eventually, the car will disengage and force you to take over.

For full disclosure, that happened once on my journey when I spent a bit too long poring over the navigation screen while examining my next sequence of charging stops. I pulled over immediately and reset the system, but it was my longest hands-on moment of the trip — and it was entirely my fault, not the car's.

FSD certainly wasn't perfect. While it did well going through toll booths when it had a car to follow, the system had trouble deciding which lane to go in when approaching a toll booth on its own, showing another navigation-related edge case where the system needs a little more guidance.

Among the concerning moments, FSD strongly dislikes passing tractor-trailer trucks on sharper curves and, on more than one occasion, slowed significantly while next to a truck in the passing lane. It would have been better to continue on ahead as there was plenty of room to do so.

There were also two incidents when the highway was narrowing from three lanes to two, with the far-left lane merging into the middle, when the car seemed completely oblivious of the impending merge and nearly merged into another car rather than moving over in a more orderly manner. That said, there were other merges where it worked perfectly, so I'm not 100% sure what the issue was.

But these were mere foibles compared to the 3,000 miles of perfect control exhibited by Tesla's astonishingly good Full Self-Driving software. It successfully navigated roundabouts, red lights, sunlight and darkness, rain and snow, and, trickiest of all, all the other cars on the road.

You can't yet take a nap or watch a movie while it handles the driving, but we're not far from that point. FSD takes a significant leap forward in the upcoming version 13 release, which has already gone out to a few outside reviewers. A future update will allow cars to drive themselves directly to chargers and even park themselves in a spot. FSD will also be able to plan better, helping with stuff like those tricky highway merges.

Of course, since the main place I needed to take over was the last few hundred feet approaching a charger, once the car can do that itself, we'll be awfully close to a cross-country drive without needing to touch the steering wheel at all.

I guess I'll need to plan another Cannonball.

If you end up purchasing a Tesla after reading this piece, use the button below use my referral code. You’ll get a discount and I’ll get a credit towards charging or a future Tesla purchase.

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Note: After I made my journey but before I published this or the video, my friend Alex Roy (who, ironically, I’d asked months earlier if he wanted to make the run with me), revealed his own FSD dash across the country. As his was nonstop and mine was made with stops, his is the more “authentic” Cannonball Run — however, we both saw impressive results and will likely make future attempts as the software (and its competitors) become more capable.

About our sponsor: I'm excited to partner with Nokian Tires. I've been running their winter tires on my own vehicles for years — both the studded and non-studded versions — long before they sent me free ones. Nokian has been making specialized winter tires since 1936, and they're genuinely the experts when it comes to cold-weather performance. What else would you expect from the Finnish?

They've also just launched the Surpass AS01, a new ultra-high-performance tire designed for longer tread life than typical UHP options.

Happy to answer any questions about tire choices for your specific vehicle and driving conditions — just comment below.

A few weeks ago, I joined a unique cross-country race: 10 cars driving from Seattle to Boston, including nine electric vehicles and one gas car. The most telling participant? A 2013 Tesla Model S that showed just how far electric vehicles have come in a decade — and how outdated most people’s perceptions of EVs remain.

The Competitors:

• 2013 Tesla Model S 85

• Genesis G80 Electric

• BMW i7 eDrive50

• Porsche Taycan

• Mercedes-Benz EQS 450+

• Hyundai Ioniq 6

• Tesla Model 3 LR RWD

• Tesla Model S Plaid

• Lucid Air Grand Touring

• Acura TLX Type S (The gas comparison)

Here’s the thing about electric cars: Most people’s understanding of them is stuck in 2013 with that old Model S. While that vintage Tesla needed more than 30 lengthy charging stops to get across the country, modern EVs tell a different story. Most completed the journey with just 15-16 stops across some 48 hours of travel time, each typically lasting 15-20 minutes — barely enough time to grab coffee and use the restroom.

The results challenged conventional wisdom about electric vehicles. The Tesla Model 3, the most affordable EV in our group at less than $40,000, finished second among the electric entries while besting competitors costing two or three times as much. While the new Porsche Taycan easily beat the rest of the electrics thanks to its astonishing charging capabilities, it was still only a few hours ahead after a 3,000-mile journey despite being the most expensive.

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The gas-powered car, an Acura TLX, did win overall, but even that comes with a caveat: Its team spent the first half of the trip taking it easy until they realized how quickly the Porsche was moving. Only then did they get serious about maintaining their lead.

Different cars took different approaches to the challenge. I might be a little biased because I was on Team Mercedes, but the EQS seems to have been designed with “normal” drivers in mind rather than range-optimizing nerds like us, maintaining largely consistent charging speeds regardless of battery level. Other cars have much more significant “charging curves” where charging slows dramatically as the battery fills up. It’s the difference between a car designed by engineers seeking maximum performance and one designed for how people actually drive.

What made the journey particularly fascinating was how the cars naturally grouped together despite different charging strategies and capabilities. Even over thousands of miles, we kept running into each other at charging stations, creating an impromptu social atmosphere that made the long journey more enjoyable and more competitive.

The charging infrastructure along America’s longest interstate proved remarkably robust. Tesla’s Supercharger network was the clear standout — while other networks like Electrify America are technically capable of faster charging for certain vehicles (like the Lucid, Porsche and Hyundai), Tesla’s chargers are more plentiful and more reliable. It’s no wonder most automakers are in the process of adopting Tesla’s charging standard, with Tesla planning charger upgrades to support even faster speeds.

Tesla’s Superchargers were also consistently located right off the highway with good amenities nearby, while other networks often required short detours to places like Walmart parking lots. In more than 3,000 miles, none of us encountered a completely failed or blocked charger — a milestone that would have been unthinkable just a few years (or months!) ago.

And modern navigation systems have made long-distance EV travel nearly foolproof. While most cars have smart systems for planning charging stops, the Tesla and Mercedes stood out by requiring virtually no thought beyond following the nav’s instructions about where to stop and how long to charge.

Range anxiety? That turned out to be a nonissue. Our EVs could easily travel 200 miles between charges, and while that’s less than many gas cars, it aligns well with how people actually road trip — and with 15-minute charge stops, the car will likely be ready before you are. Most drivers — especially those traveling with families — prefer to stop every few hours anyway.

The longest theoretical range doesn’t win races, either; smart charging strategies and convenient charger locations do. The Lucid had the longest range by far, but the uber-fast charging of the Porsche and the Model 3’s efficiency and Tesla Supercharger network were enough to best it.

What’s most striking is how normal it all felt. This real-world test proved that it really doesn’t matter which modern EV you buy, as long as it’s the latest generation and not an older or slower-charging model like a Chevy Bolt EV or Ford Mustang Mach-E. They all completed the journey successfully, though some certainly proved more capable than others.

Gas cars still hold advantages for cross-country travel, but the gap is surprisingly narrow, and for the kind of road trips most Americans actually take (not many folks are driving coast-to-coast!), modern EVs are more than capable.

The 2013 Tesla that joined our race was revolutionary for its time. But using it as a benchmark for modern EVs is like judging today’s smartphones by the original iPhone. The technology has evolved — it’s time for our perceptions to catch up.

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The four episodes of “I-90 Surge” are below. Enjoy!

Tesla just launched a seemingly boring, throwaway promotion for customers in Texas: $5 per month for unlimited overnight charging of a new Tesla. That's it. No solar panels required, no Powerwall battery storage system needed — just plug in your car at night and pay less than the cost of two gallons of gas for a month's worth of charging.

It seems simple at first, but reveals something far more ambitious: Tesla isn't just trying to sell cars — it's positioning itself to revolutionize how we interact with electricity.

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The exciting part isn't the price (though who doesn't love a bargain?). It's that Tesla can offer this deal at all. In Texas's deregulated electricity market, Tesla isn't just a car company — it's also your power company. This means Tesla can optimize across both sides of the equation: when you charge your car and how much you pay to do it.

It's the first glimpse of a much bigger transformation. Today, electricity flows one way: from massive power plants through transmission lines to your home. Tesla is laying the groundwork for a future where power flows in multiple directions, with homes and cars acting as nodes in a vast energy network.

Everyone thinks of hot summer days, when the air conditioning gets cranked up, as a tough test for the power grid. But it's actually unpredictable power usage that's the problem. If the weatherman says it's going to be 90 degrees today, and it is, power companies can plan for it. But if the forecast is for 90 and it turns out to be 100 — or, just as bad, turns out to be 80 degrees — then power companies need to scramble to produce more (or less) electricity.

In 20 or 30 years, I suspect electric vehicles won't be the burden on the power grid that many fear — they'll be its salvation. Because cars sit parked 95% of the time, they represent an enormous untapped resource for grid stability. Imagine millions of car batteries that can absorb excess power when renewable generation is high (think sunny afternoons or windy nights) and feed it back when needed. Or to provide extra juice on an unexpectedly hot day or absorb extra power generation when it's surprisingly cool.

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The current electrical infrastructure wasn't built for this two-way power flow — most local substations can only send power in one direction. When a Tesla Powerwall or car sends power back today, it only reaches their immediate neighborhood.

Tesla's approach — combining home Powerwalls with utility-scale Megapacks — could solve this without requiring massive infrastructure upgrades nationwide. Instead of needing expensive peaker plants that run only during high-demand periods, utilities could tap into a vast network of distributed batteries — in homes and cars — to manage supply and demand at a neighborhood level, while Megapacks take care of balancing flow systemwide. This makes the grid more resilient, more efficient, and more sustainable.

What makes Tesla unique is its vertical integration. By controlling the full stack — from solar panels and home batteries to cars and now the retail electricity relationship — Tesla can create a seamless, consumer-friendly experience. This is crucial because transforming the grid isn't just a technical challenge — it's getting consumers on board as well.

It needs a compelling user experience, an attractive app interface, well-designed hardware and, most importantly, a clear value proposition. Tesla has proven remarkably adept at making complex technical solutions feel accessible and desirable — look at how they transformed the image of electric cars from glorified golf carts to objects of desire.

In other words, Tesla is going to make boring old electricity as exciting as the iPhone.

It follows a familiar Tesla playbook: build in capability before it's needed, then activate it when the ecosystem is ready. The company's new Cybertruck already supports vehicle-to-grid power flow, even though the feature isn't yet enabled. This is reminiscent of how Tesla used its Supercharger network to make its cars infinitely more practical: create the infrastructure first, then expand its capabilities over time. And now, every carmaker in the country is making its cars Supercharger-compatible.

Envision utilities offering free car charging in exchange for the ability to draw power when needed while guaranteeing it'll be recharged for your commute: "Your car will be charged to 75% by the time you leave, and in exchange, we can use your battery capacity down to 50% when you're plugged in." Free electricity for doing nothing? I think most folks would take that deal.

The economics are compelling. Utilities spend billions maintaining peaker plants that run for a handful of hours per year. By tapping into distributed storage instead, they could reduce costs dramatically. These savings could be passed on to consumers through programs like Tesla's $5 charging deal — or even more ambitious offerings as the technology matures.

Texas's deregulated market makes it the perfect laboratory for this future. While traditional utilities are constrained by regulations and legacy business models, Texas allows for the kind of innovation Tesla is pursuing. Once this model proves successful, other states will face pressure to adapt their regulations or risk falling behind.

The brilliance of Tesla's approach is that it makes this complex transformation accessible and desirable. No one needs to understand the intricacies of power markets or grid infrastructure — they just need to plug in their car at night and watch the savings add up. It's the same strategy that worked for electric cars: make the sustainable choice the attractive choice.

This $5 program is just the beginning. As more Teslas hit the roads, more Powerwalls get installed, and more solar panels go up on roofs, we'll see increasingly sophisticated ways for homes and vehicles to interact with the grid. The future of electricity won't just be about consumption — it'll be about participation.

And that future is starting in Texas, five dollars at a time.

BOSTON — Electric cars have finally moved past the novelty of being “electric” and are now competing on a similar footing to gas-powered vehicles. But that doesn’t mean carmakers aren’t leaning hard into “the future” — maybe even leaning a bit too hard.

Case in point: the Mercedes-Benz EQE SUV is so excited about its electric powertrain that it forgot to bring along some of the luxury touches we’ve come to expect from a $90,000 German SUV.

It’s a rolling contradiction. From the outside, the EQE SUV is inoffensive and slightly bloblike. Inside, you’re on the Enterprise, kind of. The centerpiece is a nearly 13-inch OLED touchscreen running the latest version of MBUX, Mercedes’ infotainment system, which is both beautiful and functional. The “Zero Layer” interface means everything is accessible with a single tap, no menu diving required.

But the more impressive part is the ambient lighting. A strip of LED lights wraps around the entire cabin at shoulder height. You can choose a pretty color like purple, blue or green, but, if you want, you can make it a bit more interactive.

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The light strip ties into the throttle, so when you accelerate, a series of white dots fly out from the center of the dash like electrons out of a battery. Put your foot down hard, and it blinks red! When you’re recharging the battery while braking, blue lights flow towards the center of the dash. It’s utterly pointless and completely awesome.

But here’s where things get weird. Last week, I was cruising around in the Mercedes-Benz GLE SUV — same size, same price tag, but with a gas engine under the hood. I expected the EQE to be its electrical doppelganger. Not quite.

Where the GLE offers sumptuous materials and ventilated, massaging seats, the EQE SUV’s cabin feels more restrained. The reduction in traditional luxury touches — less wood trim, fewer soft-touch materials, more black plastic — suggests that much of the EQE’s cost is tied up in its electric powertrain.

It’s like Mercedes decided to go all-in on the tech and forgot about the luxury. No massaging seats? In a $90,000 car? I suspect they spent so much on the powertrain that they had to raid the C-Class parts bin for the interior.

It’s still nice inside — it’s a Mercedes, after all — but it’s more “I just got my first big promotion” than “I’m a captain of industry.” It’s a reminder that we’re still in the awkward teenage years of electric vehicles, and you must make sacrifices somewhere.

The dual motor setup in the EQE SUV 350 makes 288 horsepower and 564 torque, good for 0 to 60 in about 6 seconds. Faster options are available if you spend even more money. It’ll run about 300 miles on a charge, which is pretty good.

But — and there’s always a but — finding a reliable public charger when you need one can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack ... if the haystack was actively trying to thwart you. Eventually, Mercedes’ electric cars will charge at Tesla Superchargers, but until then, it’s a significant weakness.

On the road, though? Pure magic. The air suspension makes potholes disappear like they’re government secrets, and the rear-wheel steering lets you pull U-turns that would get you around the Savoy in London. If you’re the type who values cutting-edge tech over traditional luxury and you’ve got a charger at home, you’ll probably love the EQE. The lack of a frunk is disappointing, and some might find the exterior design a bit too conservative.

Ultimately, the EQE SUV is like an incredibly enthusiastic dog who’s always ready to play fetch. It’s exciting, full of energy and packed with tricks that’ll impress your friends. But sometimes, you wish it would curl up on a ventilated leather seat (that it doesn’t have) and let you enjoy a quiet, truly luxurious ride.

The Mercedes EQE SUV offers a tantalizing glimpse into the electric future of luxury cars — brilliant in some ways, baffling in others, but at least it’s never tedious. It’s a compelling package for tech enthusiasts who value cutting-edge features over traditional luxury — as long as you don’t expect it to massage your back while you sit at that charger.

SEATTLE — Reports of the death of the electric car are greatly exaggerated.

Yes, sales growth has slowed a bit, but that’s natural. Initially, we were supply-limited with not enough EVs for all the buyers. Now, every carmaker has released new electrics — some better than others — so anyone wanting an EV can buy one.

However, increased supply doesn’t necessarily translate to increased demand. Many automakers believed that making more electric cars would automatically result in higher sales. However, as supply increased, demand plateaued, leading to a surplus of EVs. This is basic economics.

Despite this, EVs are here to stay. They’re not going anywhere, and there’s still a lot of innovation happening in the industry.

In a campaign speech earlier this year, Donald Trump mentioned rolling back the 2030 EV mandate put in place by the Biden administration. However, he wasn’t advocating against EVs; rather, he suggested that the market should decide. This implies that for EVs to compete, they need to offer interesting features comparable to those of gas-powered cars.

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Which brings us to my recent trip to Seattle to test the new Ford Mustang Mach-E Rally. This off-road-focused twist on Ford’s electric car includes a lifted suspension, different tires and aerodynamic elements. Most importantly, it features custom software designed to handle loose surfaces.

Think of rallying as blasting down a forest trail at maximum speed, using the loose surface and lack of grip as an asset rather than a liability. Drivers will enter a turn completely sideways, waiting for the car to slide into position, then blasting up the trail, ready to do it again on the next turn. It’s fantastic — and insane. The Mach-E Rally isn’t a full-blown off-road racer, but it does give you a taste of the electric slide.

Unlike traditional gas-powered cars, which rely on clever differentials and fancy hardware to drive power to the wheels, the Mach-E Rally uses two motors — a larger one in the back and a smaller one in the front, one for each axle.

Instead of hardware wizardry, software wizardry sends power to the front or back wheels. While it may not compete with off-road rally-focused cars like the Subaru WRX STi, it’s perfect for those who want to take their car to a rally school, drive off-road or just have a cool-looking vehicle.

The Mach-E Rally stands out with its Shelby striping and a massive rear wing, adding to its visual appeal. The regular Mustang Mach-E offers several drive modes, including the sportiest “Unbridled” mode. The Mach-E Rally adds a “Rally” mode, which provides more power bias to the rear, allowing the tires to spin more and freeing up the traction and stability control systems. You can further loosen the traction control for more wheel spin or even turn off the system entirely for more sliding and 360-degree spins.

Our test drive took place at DirtFish, a rally school in Snoqualmie, Washington. The facility is gorgeous and a great place to learn how to rally. We started on a small, gravelly autocross course to get a feel for the car. The Mach-E Rally, despite its heavy battery, is impressively balanced. With a touch of the brakes, you can shift the weight over the front wheels, making it eager to turn in, somewhat like an enthusiastic puppy. While it may not be precise, it offers an exhilarating driving experience.

We then moved on to a longer course with more expansive, faster turns to see what the Mach-E Rally was capable of. The car’s abilities well-exceeded my own, and it was surreal to navigate a rally stage without the noise of an engine: just the sounds of grip, rocks, dirt and mud.

The drive was impressively predictable, a testament to Ford’s software team since almost every input has to run through a bunch of computers to result in the car doing what you want. That’s true with a lot of cars these days, to be fair, but especially so with an electric car.

The trip’s highlight was, as ever, a hot lap with a professional driver. He didn’t hold back, showcasing the Mach-E Rally’s true capabilities. It’s clear Ford could make a racing-focused version of this car, and I hope they do. An actual electric rally car would be impressive, which might not be surprising considering Ford’s recent focus on motorsports.

The Mach-E Rally reminds me of Subaru’s Wilderness edition. Both vehicles feature cosmetic enhancements, different colors, raised suspensions and unique wheels, adding personality to the cars. The Mach-E Rally shows that Ford has a sense of humor and isn’t just releasing an EV for the sake of it. They’re committed to special editions and customized versions, indicating Ford is not resting on its laurels.

One significant update in this year’s Mach-E is the new in-house designed and built rear electric motor. This motor, also used in the Ford F-150 Lightning, allows Ford to create its own software and calibration, resulting in a more impressive vehicle. I visited Rivian last year to see that company’s new in-house motor and learned how significant such a development can be.

Ford doesn’t see the need to introduce new EVs as frequently as General Motors. Instead, it’s focused on refining existing cars and preparing for the future. In the short term, Ford says the future looks like hybrids, something Toyota has known for over a decade. Long term, we’ll see. I’m still bullish on EVs, but it will take time for technology, infrastructure and public acceptance to catch up.

The tech will get better, the cars will get better, and we’ll end up with some truly impressive vehicles. I can’t wait to see what the Mach-E Rally looks like in 10 years.

Maybe I can come back to DirtFish and try it out again.

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ANN ARBOR, Mich. — I have a complicated relationship with the Ford Explorer. I’ve driven a few variants of the venerable SUV over the years. Still, I’ve never come away particularly impressed — too much plastic and not enough pizzazz for an ultra-competitive segment.

Ford’s strengths in the past decade or so lay in the full-size Expedition and its pickup trucks (and the Bronco), not its midsize SUV offering. But Dearborn’s designers have been busy, and the refreshed 2025 Explorer sitting before me in rural Michigan promises to right those wrongs.

The first thing that catches my eye isn’t the massive 13.2-inch touchscreen dominating the dash (though we’ll get to that). It’s a simple, elegant solution to a problem that’s plagued car designers for years: where to put your phone.

Just below the giant screen sits a divided cubby — wireless charger on the left, regular storage on the right. It’s not revolutionary, but the thoughtful design makes you wonder why it took so long to come up with a good solution.

This attention to detail extends throughout the cabin. The redesigned interior addresses many of the complaints leveled at the current generation. Gone are the awkward ergonomics and dated tech. Ford has adopted Android Automotive, transforming the Explorer into a rolling computer nearly as smart as the phone in your pocket. This isn’t just another way to mirror your smartphone — it’s a full operating system embedded within the vehicle.

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Google Maps, Assistant and even the Play Store are integrated seamlessly into the dash. Want to use Waze instead of Google Maps? Download it directly to your Explorer. It’s a leap forward in automotive tech, though it remains to be seen how extensively this feature will be utilized by consumers and supported by developers. Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are still on hand for the phone-faithful, but Ford’s betting big on Google to bring its in-car tech into the 2020s.

Under the hood of my tester sits a 2.3-liter EcoBoost four-cylinder engine. It’s a peppy little number, capable of hustling this three-row SUV around with surprising verve. But let’s be honest — the real star of the power show is the available 3.0-liter EcoBoost V6, churning out a whopping 400 horsepower. In a family hauler. What a time to be alive.

On the road, the Explorer is a mixed bag. The EcoBoost engine provides ample grunt, but it’s not exactly whisper-quiet. Road noise is more prominent than I’d like, especially with the sportier tire options. Turn up the tunes, though, and you’ll never notice. And, to be fair to the engine, the exhaust note is pretty pleasing.

However, my favorite part of the improved Explorer is that it offers Ford’s BlueCruise hands-free driving system. It’s not autonomous driving, but on premapped highways, you can take your hands off the wheel and let the Explorer handle the steering. The system uses cameras to ensure you’re still paying attention (no napping allowed), but it takes a significant amount of stress out of long highway slogs or endless commuter traffic.

Practicality remains a strong suit. With room for seven (though adults might want to avoid that third row for long trips), plenty of cargo space and various drive modes — including some light off-road settings — the Explorer is ready for everything from school runs to weekend camping trips.

Pricing starts around $41,000 for the base model and climbs into the $60,000 range for a fully loaded Platinum trim. This puts the Explorer alongside segment standouts like the Kia Telluride and Hyundai Palisade. Those Korean twins offer compelling packages with longer warranties, but they can’t match the Explorer’s performance options or its new tech suite. The prior Explorer came out nearly at the same time as the Kia and Hyundai, and the fight was over before it began. But things are more evenly matched now.

The 2025 Explorer isn’t a clean-sheet redesign, but it didn’t need to be. Ford has addressed the most glaring issues of the current generation while adding genuinely useful new tech. The addition of BlueCruise and the Android Automotive system puts it at the forefront of tech in its class, while the potent engine options and improved interior make it a strong contender in the midsize SUV segment.

Is it perfect? No. The road noise could be better managed, and you’ll pay a premium for the top-end ST and Platinum variants. Privacy concerns around data collection and potential cybersecurity risks are worth considering as vehicles become more connected, but this isn’t an Explorer-specific quibble — every new car faces these challenges. For families looking for a do-it-all SUV that can handle the daily grind and weekend adventures with equal aplomb, the new Explorer makes a strong case for itself.

Ford has sold more than 8 million Explorers since its introduction. This latest iteration proves they aren’t resting on their laurels. The Explorer nameplate might be familiar, but this 2025 model is tech-savvy with plenty of oomph under the hood.

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The venerable Explorer (remember the Eddie Bauer edition?) represents a new era where cars aren’t just transportation but extensible platforms that can grow and adapt to our needs over time. It’s not quite the trailblazer the original was, but Ford still has a few tricks to teach the new kids in town.

NEW YORK CITY — There’s a moment while cruising over the Manhattan Bridge in all-electric silence when you realize that you don’t need a fully electric car to enjoy (nearly) all the perks of an EV.

The 2024 Mercedes-Benz GLE 450e showcases again why a plug-in hybrid is perhaps the perfect vehicle for the mid-2020s.

This version of Mercedes’ popular midsize SUV offers an impressive 48 miles of all-electric range, enough to cover most daily commutes without burning a drop of fuel. It’s a significant improvement over previous plug-in efforts from luxury automakers, which often struggled to deliver even 20 miles of electric driving.

The GLE 450e splits the difference between the smaller GLC and the gargantuan GLS in Mercedes’ alphabet soup lineup. Think of it as a competitor to the BMW X5, Audi Q7 or Volvo XC60.

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As tested, my Twilight Blue Metallic GLE 450e was priced at $90,990 and came loaded with nearly every option imaginable. The AMG Line exterior package gives it a sporty flair, while the Pinnacle trim adds goodies like the excellent Burmester surround sound system and augmented video for navigation.

But it’s what’s under the hood that really matters. A 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine pairs with an electric motor to deliver a combined 381 horsepower and a whopping 479 lb-ft of torque. That’s enough grunt to move this 5,600-pound SUV from 0-60 mph in around 5.5 seconds, which is plenty zippy.

More importantly, the 23.3 kWh battery pack allows for significant electric-only driving. During a drive from Brooklyn to Manhattan, I was able to complete the entire journey without the gas engine ever firing up. The car estimated 12 miles of range remaining when I started, with just 7.4 miles to go. I made it with electrons to spare.

In an interesting twist for a plug-in hybrid, the GLE 450e comes equipped with DC fast charging capability. It can charge at up to 50 kW, allowing you to top up the battery in about 30 minutes. While this feature might seem superfluous for a vehicle with a gas engine backup — actually, it’s totally unnecessary, and I doubt most folks will ever use it — it is kind of cool.

Inside, the GLE 450e is pure Mercedes luxury. Two 12.3-inch screens dominate the dashboard, running the latest version of the MBUX infotainment system. The implementation of wireless Apple CarPlay is excellent, taking full advantage of the widescreen display.

Ambient lighting bathes the cabin in a customizable glow, lending a discotheque vibe to the otherwise traditional luxury aesthetic. It’s an interesting juxtaposition of old-world craftsmanship and cutting-edge tech that somehow works.

The massaging seats offer a variety of programs to keep you relaxed on long drives, but one of my favorite features is the “seat kinetics” function, which subtly adjusts your seating position during long drives to reduce fatigue. It’s the kind of thoughtful touch that makes a Mercedes into a Mercedes.

But my favorite needless feature has to be the heating and cooling cupholders. With the press of a button, you can keep your coffee hot or your iced latte cold. It’s the kind of over-the-top feature that makes you wonder how you ever lived without it.

The Burmester sound system is a standout, though I discovered an interesting quirk: For the best audio quality, you’ll want to plug your phone in via USB rather than relying on the wireless connection. It’s a small price to pay for audiophile-grade sound (and it’s worth it).

On the road, the GLE 450e offers a supremely comfortable ride. The adaptive air suspension soaks up bumps with ease, while the electric drivetrain provides smooth, instant torque. When the gas engine does kick in, it’s nearly imperceptible.

Mercedes’ latest driver assistance tech is on full display here. The “Intelligent Drive” system combines adaptive cruise control with advanced lane-centering for a near-autonomous highway driving experience. Unlike some competitors, it allows for seamless driver intervention without fully disengaging.

It’s not all roses, however. The GLE 450e’s hefty curb weight is evident in corners, and the brake pedal feel can be a bit spongy — a common trait in plug-in hybrids. It’s also pricey but not out of range with its competition.

But these are minor quibbles in an otherwise exceptional package. The 2024 Mercedes-Benz GLE 450e manages to be both a cutting-edge plug-in hybrid and a traditional luxury SUV. It’s equally at home silently gliding through city traffic or cruising down the autobahn at triple-digit speeds.

For buyers looking to dip their toes into electrification without sacrificing the comfort and capability of a premium SUV, the GLE 450e makes a compelling case. It’s a bridge to an all-electric future that doesn’t feel like a compromise.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find a parking spot in Manhattan. At least I won’t have to worry about finding a gas station. Maybe they’ll even charge it up for me.

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BOSTON — Let’s get one thing straight: The BMW i7 isn’t just another luxury sedan with an electric heart. It’s a declaration of war against the Tesla Model S, and it’s coming armed with a level of opulence and technology that might make Elon do a double take.

As with many BMWs these days, the first thing you notice is the enormous kidney grille, which is large enough to swallow a small village. This is a BMW hallmark, but the 7 Series’ almost severe design gives it a presence that the Model S — now more than a decade old — can’t match.

BMW’s decision to make its flagship EV a mere variant of the regular 7 series — the interior is nigh-identical and the outside distinguished only by badging and little else — turns the choice to go electric into just that: A choice. Aha, sir would like a 7 Series. Electric or petrol?

Step inside, and you’ll be transported to a futuristic cocktail lounge. It doesn’t make you feel like you’re on the bridge of the Enterprise like the Mercedes EQS does; rather, it feels like you’re at the controls of the Heart of Gold, the immaculately designed ship from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

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The doors close themselves because it’s far too much work to do it manually (and because this is a superlux feature borrowed from BMW stablemate Rolls-Royce), and you slip into some of the most comfortable seats around.

Wrapped in a fabric so soft that it makes cashmere feel like sandpaper, these thrones offer massage functions that can turn even the most stressful commute into a spa day. And if you’re lucky enough to snag a ride in the back, you’ll be treated to airline-style reclining seats and a 31-inch drop-down screen bigger than some TVs that is, coincidentally, the best place to sit while the thing recharges for half an hour.

But don’t let all that luxury fool you. The i7 is still a BMW, and that means it’s the Ultimate Driving Machine. The electric drivetrain pumps out enough power to make the i7 scoot to 60 mph in a swift 4.5 seconds, and the adaptive suspension keeps you from being disturbed by anything from the outside world. Even better, thanks to the rear-wheel steering, this Bavarian barge drives far smaller than it actually is.

As always with a 7 Series, the i7 is also packed with an eye-watering amount of tech, most of which will be ignored, but BMW has done an excellent job making the smarts unobtrusive. They’re there if you want them, or ignore all of it and just drive.

With a 300-mile range, the i7 is comparable with many of the EVs in this price bracket, but it’s not quite as good as the Lucid or the Model S — but that may not matter. BMW is spending a fortune developing its electric cars and is the only brand — aside from Tesla, it seems — seeing real sales success.

I think a lot of this success comes from BMW not treating its electrics like they’re something weird and different. The Mercedes-Benz EQS is downright ugly, shaped like a swoopy UFO in a quest for maximum aerodynamic efficiency. Meanwhile, BMW takes its elegant sledgehammer of a new 7 Series design and offers it to buyers with whatever powertrain they wish. That’s smart. Just make it a car; don’t get weird with it.

Now, all this luxury and tech does come with a hefty price tag, starting in the $125,000 range and rising quickly from there, but that’s a 7 Series for you.

At the end of the day, the BMW i7 isn’t just a car. It’s a statement piece, a rolling work of art that happens to be emission-free. It’s got the luxury of a Rolls-Royce, the tech of a spaceship and the performance of a sports car.

And while the Tesla Model S may have had a head start, the i7 is here to show that BMW isn’t just catching up, it’s ready to take the lead.

I don’t write this to say it’s a Tesla killer. It isn’t, and I don’t think anyone will be for quite a while. However, it is a worthy competitor, which is more than can be said for most cars that have been absurdly touted as potential Tesla killers. The 7 Series has consistently been one of the finest automobiles in the world for decades, and that continues here — only now you can get it with an electric powertrain.

Bavarian bravery? Nah. Just a logical progression into the future.

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DETROIT — The 2025 Ford Expedition will roll into dealerships soon with new tech and clever features borrowed from some of the best SUVs in the world.

Ford’s flagship SUV, the new Expedition makes a bold move for supremacy in the competitive full-size SUV market, going up against stalwarts like the GMC Yukon and Chevrolet Tahoe.

I recently got a sneak peek at the redesigned Expedition a few weeks ago in Detroit, and it’s clear that Ford knows how families use these large vehicles in their everyday lives.

The most striking change is the new dash, with a 24-inch-wide screen running along the base of the entire left side of the windshield. It replaces the instrument cluster and allows drivers to keep their eyes up and on the road while still accessing crucial information like speed and navigation.

In the middle is a large touchscreen running Google’s automotive platform. It offers built-in Google Maps, Google Assistant and access to the Google Play Store for additional apps.

It’s called the Ford Digital Experience, and it debuted earlier this year in the Lincoln Nautilus and new Ford Explorer, delivering a connected experience that is becoming mandatory in modern cars. It even supports video streaming services like YouTube, perfect for keeping kids (and parents) entertained during long waits at soccer practice. Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are also on board, as is Alexa integration for those who prefer Amazon’s virtual assistant.

But the real winner is the split tailgate at the rear. This clever design combines a traditional SUV liftgate with a fold-down tailgate similar to what you’d find on a pickup truck. The lower portion can support up to 600 pounds and includes a fold-down seatback that can transform into a table. It’s a versatile setup that’s perfect for tailgating or impromptu picnics.

The split tailgate setup has been used in the Range Rover for years, and the fold-down seatback is reminiscent of a $10,000 seating option available on the Rolls-Royce Cullinan. Getting the same features as luxury SUVs that cost twice or six times as much is a clever move for Ford, and it’ll sell a lot of SUVs. It’s reminiscent of the fancy tailgate that GMC introduced on the Sierra a few years back, which left competitors scrambling to respond.

In the cabin, Expedition’s new Flex Powered Console (an awful name) can slide back nearly 8 inches, revealing a secure storage area up front while giving second-row passengers access to their HVAC controls and cup holders. Moms looking for a place to put purses will be thrilled with this development.

There’s also a new mount for securely holding tablets or smartphones on the back of the front headrests, a terrific alternative to wildly expensive (and generally terrible) permanently mounted rear-seat screens. It’s another feature borrowed from more luxurious SUVs, as I remember Volvo offering something similar in the XC90 nearly a decade ago.

To improve road trip life, Ford is expanding the availability of its BlueCruise hands-free highway driving system across the Expedition lineup. It’s now available on nearly 90% of all models, including the new Tremor off-road variant. Speaking of which, the Tremor is an exciting addition to the Expedition family, offering serious off-road capability for adventure-seeking families — and, if we’re honest, a terrific look that will attract even more attention than its functionality.

The Expedition Tremor boasts 10.6 inches of ground clearance, the highest in its class, and rides on 33-inch all-terrain tires. It’s powered by a high-output version of Ford’s 3.5-liter EcoBoost V6, producing 440 horsepower and 510 lb-ft of torque. With additional features like skid plates, off-road auxiliary lights and special drive modes, the Tremor will be popular for those heading off the beaten path.

Like with its pickup trucks, Ford seems to know that it can keep packing lux features into its full-size SUVs, and people will keep buying them. With that in mind, the new Expedition gets premium touches like available massaging seats, a panoramic sunroof and a 28-speaker B&O sound system. The interior design is a significant step up, with higher-quality materials and a more modern aesthetic across all trim levels. Finally, Fords no longer look dated the moment they come off the assembly line.

A pair of 3.5-liter V6 EcoBoost (aka turbocharged) engines are available, one with higher output, but the base model offers 400 horsepower and 480 torque, so there’s plenty of power. However, in a segment where some competitors are moving toward hybrid powertrains, it will be interesting to see how the Expedition’s fuel efficiency stacks up — I was disappointed that Ford’s terrific PowerBoost hybrid wasn’t coming over from the F-150. Company spokespeople didn’t have a great answer as to why there wasn’t a hybrid option, and I spoke to a current Expedition owner who was passing on the new one because of the lack of one.

Still, it’s clear that Ford has put a lot of effort into making it more than just a people mover. The Expedition is a versatile family tool that’s equally at home on the daily school run, a cross-country road trip, or even an off-road adventure. It pairs well with the Ford F-150 for buyers who need to decide whether they want the flexibility of a pickup’s open cargo compartment or a third-row and family-friendly SUV.

MARYVILLE, Tenn. — The Ford Bronco Sport, the smaller “baby” Bronco SUV, is getting a new “Sasquatch” package for 2025 that brings all manner of hardware upgrades that will significantly increase its off-road prowess.

When Ford first introduced the Bronco Sport, many folks thought the small, RAV4-sized vehicle was meant to be the New Bronco.

It wasn’t, but because of production delays, the smaller, rounded family SUV came out well ahead of the larger, beefier, full-size off-roader, and the Bronco Sport became the butt of much derision and jokes.

It wasn’t big enough, it was too soft and, most importantly, it wasn’t A Real Off-Roader.

It’s not that the Bronco Sport is bad — it’s actually extremely well-designed and capable for what it is: a small, family-focused, outdoorsy SUV. But because it had that prancing pony emblem, Bronco purists howled even though the Sport was actually a quite capable vehicle for the sorts of outdoor pursuits that buyers of a small sport utility vehicle would undertake.

I never bought into this criticism and have happily joked that the Bronco Sport is the baby Bronco but is still an excellent and worthy alternative to competitors like the Toyota RAV4, Chevrolet Equinox and Hyundai Tucson.

But the new Sasquatch package, available as an upgrade to the Badlands and Outer Banks trims, adds 29-inch Goodyear Territory all-terrain tires adapted from the full-size Bronco and clever tech features like Trail One-Pedal Drive that allows you to navigate off-road with a single pedal that doubles as both throttle and brake (like an EV). The Badlands variant also gets Bilstein rear shocks with position-sensitive damping and piggyback reservoirs, as well as actual underbody protection, something usually reserved for more hardcore off-road vehicles.

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Redesigned bumpers include modular mounting points for accessories like brush bars and driving lights, and I’m told that it might even be possible to mount a winch, though Ford will not be offering one through official channels as it does for the full-size Bronco.

That, plus new front and rear springs increasing ride height, gives the Bronco Sport Badlands Sasquatch 8.3 and 8.7 inches of front and rear suspension travel, respectively, and the ability to ford almost 2 feet of water.

If you’re an off-road enthusiast, these may seem like trivial numbers, but they’re actually quite impressive when you consider the size of the Bronco Sport and its place in the market. Though competitors like Subaru, Toyota and Jeep offer “wilderness” or “trail” editions, they haven’t gone so far as to offer true off-road capabilities quite like Ford has with the new ’Squatch.

The 2025 Bronco Sport also gains new standard tech like an enormous 13-inch center infotainment screen (with wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto now standard) and the horribly named Ford Co-Pilot360 Assist+, which includes a host of standard safety features, including automatic emergency braking with pedestrian detection, adaptive cruise control with lane centering, blind spot monitoring and automatic headlights.

Available as an optional extra is a 360-degree camera and automatic rear-emergency braking — an interesting feature that automatically stops the car if you’re about to back into something (or someone).

In all, Ford has taken a modest midcycle refresh of the Bronco Sport that I first drove three years ago and made it far more interesting. It has real off-road capabilities now and, in a brief demo and drive last week at Ford’s new Bronco Off-Roadeo in the Smokey Mountains of Eastern Tennessee, the upgrades are not just for show.

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The Bronco Sport may be the baby of the Ford SUV family, but it’s now far more capable — and more unique as a competitive offering — than before. Plus, Sasquatch is just a cool name.

The 2025 Bronco Sport will arrive in dealers in November, and the Sasquatch package will ship in the new year.

ANN ARBOR, Mich — The 2025 Ford Explorer isn’t just another SUV. It’s a rolling computer, signaling a fundamental shift in how we interact with our vehicles. By adopting Android Automotive into its infotainment system, Ford is attempting to transform the Explorer into a device as clever and connected as the smartphone in your pocket.

Android Automotive isn’t an extension of your phone, like Android Auto or Apple CarPlay, which effectively transforms your car’s touchscreen into a display for your phone. Instead, it’s a full operating system embedded within the vehicle itself. This means the car becomes a standalone smart device, capable of running apps, receiving updates, and integrating deeply with the vehicle’s systems.

The Ford Digital Experience integrates a suite of familiar apps and abilities directly into the dashboard. Google Maps offers real-time traffic updates, intelligent rerouting, and voice-activated searches that feel natural and intuitive. The ability to seamlessly send destinations from your phone to your car bridges the gap between devices, creating a more cohesive ecosystem.

Perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of this system is the inclusion of the Google Play Store. This opens up a world of possibilities for expanding your car’s capabilities over time. Want to use Waze instead of Google Maps for your daily commute? You’ll be able to download it directly to your Explorer and use it as if it were the native mapping app. This feature has the potential to keep vehicles feeling fresh and capable long after they’ve left the showroom floor, although it remains to be seen how extensively this feature will be utilized by consumers and supported by developers. The promise is there, but the execution is wait and see.

Ford isn’t alone in this push toward software-defined vehicles. Other major brands including GM, Honda, Volvo and Nissan have also adopted Android Automotive with Google Automotive Services, while BMW, Stellantis and Porsche are using the platform without Google’s suite of apps. This convergence could lead to a more fulfilling experience across brands and potentially allow for greater innovation as developers can create apps for a wider audience.

As vehicles become more connected, privacy concerns naturally arise. One particular point of concern is the potential for data sharing between automakers and third parties, such as insurance companies. Ford and other manufacturers will need to navigate these waters carefully, ensuring transparency in how data is collected and used. While many users have shown a willingness to trade data for convenience in other aspects of their digital lives, vehicle location and data like speed and driving style feel more intimate.

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Expect things like vehicle location and speed data to increasingly become a topic of divorces, car crash investigations and the like over the next few years. We’ve already had automotive black boxes sharing information, but this is a whole new world of transparency and vulnerability. The risks around cyberattacks — imagine ransomware locking millions of car owners out of their vehicles — are immense, and it remains to be seen if carmakers are ready for this threat.

Ford’s move toward a more software-centric vehicle experience comes as a direct response to Tesla’s success in this area. Tesla is more a tech company than a carmaker, with a Silicon Valley ethos rather than one focused on Detroit iron. As a result, it’s long emphasized the importance of software and frequent updates, and traditional automakers are struggling to play catch-up more than a decade after the Model S first came out. However, it’s worth noting that while Ford’s system will allow for relatively easy updates to the infotainment system, it doesn’t extend to the entire vehicle in the same way Tesla’s does. Ford will be able to update its screens with relative ease, but complex updates are trickier because of how its tech works.

The shift toward software-defined vehicles (an awkward name that basically means screens and apps) presents both opportunities and challenges for the automotive industry. On one hand, it allows for greater customization and ongoing improvement of vehicles post-purchase. On the other, it requires automakers to develop competencies far, far outside their traditional wheelhouse.

The biggest risk for Ford is not in adopting these technologies but in screwing them up. A buggy, unintuitive interface can be far worse than a simple, reliable one. This is why many automakers are partnering with Google and Apple, tech giants who have spent literally tens of billions of dollars — likely greater than the entire R&D budget for most of the car industry — developing user interfaces and studying user experiences.

Interestingly, Ford is maintaining support for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto alongside its new Android Automotive system, emphasizing user choice. This stands in contrast to crosstown-rival GM’s decision to phase out these systems in their new EVs. It remains to be seen which approach will resonate more with consumers, but Ford’s strategy allows them to hedge their bets while still pushing forward with more integrated solutions.

The venerable Explorer represents a future where our cars are not just boxes to move from point A to point B but extensible platforms that can grow and adapt to our needs over time (as we move from point A to point B).

For consumers, this means the software experience should soon become as important a factor in car-buying decisions as traditional metrics like horsepower or fuel efficiency. For the automotive industry, it represents both a challenge and an opportunity — a chance to redefine what a car can be in the digital age but also a chance to really screw it up. The history of smartphones is littered with epic failures, even from huge brands like Microsoft or former success stories like Palm and BlackBerry. There’s no reason to expect companies like Ford or GM to pull this off on their own.

Ford’s hiring of Doug Field, a former Apple and Tesla exec, to run its software is a good sign, however. The more carmakers adopt Silicon Valley smarts and, more importantly, culture, the better off they’ll be.

The road ahead is sure to have its bumps, but one thing is clear: The car of the future is as much about bits and bytes as it is about nuts and bolts. And with the new Explorer, Ford isn’t quite the trailblazer it was with the Model T, but it’s not (yet) falling far behind either.

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PEORIA, Ill. — If I were 10 years old, Caterpillar’s Edwards Demonstration and Learning Center would be the greatest place on earth.

While the learning-focused classrooms, complete with giant screens for PowerPoint sessions on safety (that’s big here), aren’t particularly exciting, the massive demonstration area is best described as an enormous sandbox for some of the biggest toys on earth: dozens of examples of Caterpillar construction equipment.

I’d come to the midwest of the midwest to tag along with a bunch of Caterpillar’s best dealers and customers as the company demonstrated how its fanciest new tech helps build better bridges, roads, golf courses and anything else you might care to sculpt out of, or into, the earth.

If you’ve never operated an excavator, the one I played with had two joysticks, buttons, pedals and all manner of things. Move one stick one way and the bucket pivots to fill or dump. Move it the other way and the boom pivots at another joint to help you get the bucket exactly where you want.

And then, as if things weren’t complicated enough, the other joystick controls a third joint. In the hands of Caterpillar’s highly skilled demonstration team, it looks like ballet. In my hands, it looked like what I probably look like trying ballet.

Sure, I dug a hole and moved some dirt around, but what if there was a gas main five feet down, and I needed to dig a three-foot trench? Luckily, Caterpillar has some whiz-bang cleverness to help me out.

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With a few taps of a screen, you can set virtual fences that the teeth of your bucket will refuse to cross. I adjusted my limits and was suddenly digging a perfect hole, precisely 3 feet deep. No matter what I did, the teeth wouldn’t go any deeper than that, keeping the imaginary gas line safely intact.

Other electronic nannies prevent you from sending the bucket into the excavator’s cab, which is a terrifying thought I’d never considered. And you can set a virtual fence that prevents you from swinging the whole thing into an adjacent lane in a highway construction zone or up into overhead power lines.

And that’s just the start — the construction equipment equivalent of automatic emergency braking in an automobile.

While those features are focused on safety, a site engineer can (if you subscribe to the appropriate services that Caterpillar offers for a price they declined to share with me) upload schematics and plans straight to a tablet in the cab. This allows an operator to see exactly what they’re supposed to be working on and will dynamically set a virtual fence so the bucket only digs where it’s supposed to.

Even a novice like me could easily dig a 50-foot-long, 3-foot-deep trench if the schematics were correct. Anyone who has ever been involved in construction, whether at a house you were building or even just some landscaping project, knows that the risk of digging in the wrong place is real.

With Caterpillar’s cloud-connected 3D planning tech, the measure-twice is suddenly complete, and the operator is sent on to handle the cut once.

Difficulties in attracting labor were a common theme throughout the event, and I asked an instructor if all this tech made it challenging to get operators into cabs. But I had it backward: The safety and 3D planning features made it so relatively unskilled operators could do complicated jobs that would have taken decades of experience to pull off if they needed to be done manually.

While I still couldn’t do ballet, Caterpillar offered a pair of shoes that could handle the fancy footwork on my behalf.

And then they took me out of the cab entirely. Sometimes, there are places where you need to operate heavy equipment that isn’t entirely safe for a human being — an unstable hillside, perhaps, or when cleaning up a chemical spill.

That’s why Cat has all manner of remote controls for its equipment, everything from a belt-mounted “belly box” — a control console with joysticks that lets you walk around the machine, controlling it as if you were inside — to a screen-filled virtual setup that allows you to control a machine remotely from the other side of the world if you need to.

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Sitting in an excavator all day, even one with comfortable seats and air conditioning on max, isn’t the most fun job in the world. But if you could do it from home, you might be more interested, which could help with the labor shortages.

Caterpillar reps told me, rightfully proud, of the job opportunities the remote setups can provide injured vets who can’t do physical construction work but could easily operate heavy machinery from a wheelchair.

Though I was happy to play in the giant sandbox for a day, I walked away with a lot of respect for those construction workers toiling away hour after hour, building new highways and byways. Surprisingly (or not), it takes a shocking amount of skill to move dirt just so.

Caterpillar’s fancy cloud connectivity and smarts lighten the load considerably and, perhaps, can help build that new highway a little bit faster, too.

I’m not 10 years old anymore, but even (and perhaps especially) for a 40-year-old, the sandbox is still a fun place to play.

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CHICAGO — It’s not flawless. Nothing ever is. But the 2024 Volvo XC60 T8, with 35 miles of electric range, a clever, Google-powered infotainment system, and a mid-century modern design aesthetic that would make Frank Lloyd Wright proud, comes awfully close.

Volvo buyers want understated luxury, so this compact luxury SUV is not flashy. It’s the IYKYK of car brands — if you know, you know.

If I told you that a car sold in 2024 had seats made from wool, you might think I was messing with you. If I told you that they were some of the softest, most comfortable car seats you can buy this side of a Rolls-Royce, you might think I’d lost my mind.

And yet.

Volvo is, perhaps unsurprisingly, looking to minimize its environmental impact, including removing animal products like leather from its lineup. Instead, we get animal products like wool that are more renewable (or at least friendlier to the critters).

Unlike some firms — I’m looking at you, Apple, which replaced its leather phone cases with awful ones made from cloth — Volvo seems to have created an even better seating material than the leather ones it replaced. The company calls it a “tailored wool blend” on the window sticker, but that doesn’t capture how delightful these seats are.

They’re far cooler in the summer, which is key, and they deliver a surprise and delight moment when people climb in and invariably say, “What are these seats?” Ah, you see, these seats come from sheep. I doubt they’re Swedish sheep, but you never know.

Under the hood, a turbocharged two-liter engine drives the front wheels, and out back is an electric motor for the rear axle. Between the two, you get all-wheel drive and an impressive all-electric range of 35 miles.

Prior versions of Volvo’s plug-in hybrid couldn’t manage 20 miles and turned the engine on if you so much as considered accelerating briskly — but a new 18.8 kWh battery packs higher voltages and, when combined with a beefier electric motor, the XC60 accelerates to highway speeds with aplomb without so much as a sip of gasoline.

It might not be an EV, but you wouldn’t know any different while running errands or even taking a modest commute, and 35 miles is more than enough to cover most everyday driving.

But the real benefits of the electric motor are, much to the chagrin of the writers at The Atlantic, peace and quiet. It’s not until you don’t use your car’s engine that you realize how noisy it is. And this is a Volvo, which is quieter than most cars. If you’re anything like me, seeing how far you can push the XC60 without the engine firing up almost becomes a game.

The second and, perhaps, more immediately practical benefit of the electric motor is the sleeper levels of oomph that the combined system delivers should you put your foot down.

Between motor and engine, you get 455 horsepower and 523 lb-ft of torque, approaching Mustang GT-levels of performance from this unassuming, woolen-lined Swedish SUV. Motor Trend clocks the 0-60 time at less than 4.5 seconds, which will elicit a “whoa” from almost any normal person — and is sure to get you to the front of the school pickup line with ease.

But let’s get back to the luxury for a moment. My test unit, which priced out to $76,270 (base price is $69,045 for the Ultimate trim) after adding a $750 climate package, $1,800 air suspension and $1,475 22-inch wheels, also included Volvo’s sensational $3,200 Bowers & Wilkins sound system, which is the highlight of the car.

Only the upgraded Burmester stereo in top-end Mercedes cars costing twice this can best it, and even then, it’s a matter of personal preference. Put on your favorite tracks and your day improves, no matter how much traffic you find yourself in. Whether you’re into CCR or YeeDM, the B&W system delivers.

And, perversely, the worst part of the car makes the music even better.

The most annoying thing about the XC60 is that it somehow doesn’t have wireless Apple CarPlay. You need to plug in your iPhone, which seems small, except basically every other car on the market (and certainly in this segment) supports wireless connections.

The music-related bonus is that you’ll get higher-quality audio by physically connecting your phone to the car than by using Bluetooth. I use Apple Music, which has a lossless audio option for music — and you can absolutely tell the difference between a physical cable and wireless when connected to a high-quality automotive audio system.

Unlike Mercedes, where you can spend five stacks or more just upgrading your stereo only to use inferior wireless tech to rock out, I like to pretend that Volvo intentionally makes you plug your phone in so you can get the most out of Bowers & Wilkins’ hard work.

OK, I’m lying: It’s incredibly annoying to keep plugging my iPhone in (especially after getting used to wireless CarPlay in basically every other luxury car on the market), but having better tunes is a nice consolation prize.

And if a USB cable is the biggest complaint I can come up with for this car, I think the Swedes have done a pretty good job.

SEATTLE — As a car journalist, I’ve long had the privilege of being at the cutting edge of transportation innovation, and I try to keep that in mind when testing new tech.

I’ve spent dozens of hours chatting with carmaker engineers, learning the intricacies of advanced driver assist systems like GM’s Super Cruise and Tesla’s Autopilot: how they work, why they do (or don’t) certain things, their limitations and strengths.

Last week, I was in Seattle to test the updated 2024 Ford Mustang Mach-E (more on that next week), but I was particularly interested in the latest version of Ford’s hands-off driving system, BlueCruise.

Up to version 1.3, the latest update doesn’t add any new features — instead, it adds a lot of polish and, for lack of a better word, driving experience. It’s like going from a 17-year-old behind the wheel to a 25-year-old. It’s smoother and less tentative, and easier to trust.

At least, that’s what I thought. I’ve been testing these systems for years, and I could immediately tell that BlueCruise 1.3 was a giant leap forward. I’d say it’s even closing in on Super Cruise’s driving ability, an impressive feat as I’ve long felt that GM’s product is the best in the industry.

But then I swapped with my co-driver, another auto journalist who had never driven BlueCruise before, and I was reminded that not everyone has spent so much time learning about why these systems are trustworthy.

He was tentative, understandably hesitant to remove his hands from the wheel, even with my encouragement. His hands floated next to the wheel, waiting to take over.

BlueCruise allows drivers to remove their hands from the wheel on certain preapproved roads, typically interstates and other major highways, while still paying attention to the road. The car is smart enough to recognize both the lane lines and other cars, and to keep the vehicle heading in the right direction.

Think of it as a very advanced version of the lane departure warning you might have in your car (if it was built in the last 10 or 15 years). Instead of just beeping when you touch a lane line (or steering you back if you have a more advanced system), it just steers for you.

And you can’t take a nap. The system watches your eyes — including through sunglasses, luckily — to make sure you’re paying attention to the road. Look away for more than a few seconds (even to adjust the radio or to look at the navigation map, annoyingly), and the system beeps angrily at you. Eventually, it’ll just shut off entirely.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Why do I care? How hard is it to steer?

I’ve written about these systems before, including an L.A.-to-Vegas road trip where I used Super Cruise for hours. You have no idea how much mental effort driving is until you use and get used to a system like BlueCruise.

Driving along, watching the highway to ensure nothing weird happens while the car steers for you is almost relaxing. An interstate is one of the easiest places to drive: There are (probably) no pedestrians, no cross-traffic, no vehicles coming the other way, and everyone else (mostly) stays in their lane.

Of course, sometimes weirdness does happen, which is why the driver always needs to be paying attention. Future versions of this software will be able to handle crazy situations, but we’re not there yet.

If a deer runs out in front of you, BlueCruise may try to brake, but it won’t be able to perform evasive maneuvers like a human could. But those incidents are rare. Most of the time, driving on the interstate is boring and tedious.

But then, as I watched my co-driver, I realized that this is an entirely foreign concept for many people, and it would take years for folks to get used to it.

A half-decade ago, I was an Uber driver for a hot minute and would converse with my passengers about the adaptive cruise control in my Volvo. As we sat in stop-and-go traffic, I’d show them how I didn’t need to touch the brake or throttle, and the car would handle it for me. People marveled at that, and BlueCruise is a giant leap forward from that impressive tech.

Then I meet people, like my auto journalist co-driver, who don’t even like regular cruise control and prefer to manage their speed manually at all times.

We have a long way to go before using a hands-free system like BlueCruise is as second nature as cruise control (or even automatic headlights). New technology, especially when it comes to steering a car down the road, can be bewildering or downright alarming.

But these systems are slowly making their way into the world. Ford and GM are equipping more vehicles with the tech every year, and as people get exposed to them (and journalists like me sing their praises), I think enthusiasm and acceptance will continue to grow.

At least, I hope it will. It’s just so convenient ... once you learn to keep your hands to yourself, anyway.

For the last decade, it has felt like fully autonomous cars have been about five years away. Today, it often still feels like they are five years away, but every once in a while, we get a big step forward to remind us that this technology actually is progressing.

Today, it comes from Aurora — an autonomous tech company co-founded by Sterling Anderson, who used to run Tesla's self-driving team.

For years, Aurora has been quietly working on a self-driving tractor-trailer platform that could revolutionize how cargo is moved around the country. Through partnerships with companies like FedEx and Schneider, Aurora-powered trucks have been driving themselves all over Texas, moving actual real-world cargo, completely autonomously (albeit with a safety driver behind the wheel).

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Aside from the "easy" problems of ensuring a truck weighing 80,000 pounds stays in its lane and doesn't hit the car in front of it, the Aurora team has also been solving more complex issues like when and how to pull over to the side of the road safely without causing problems with the shoulder, how to deal with highway construction, or how to handle being pulled over by law enforcement.

Many of these are truck-specific challenges, but all must be overcome to deliver a final, commercial-ready product. That product is about to arrive.

The new Volvo VNL Autonomous takes the proven flagship of Volvo Trucks (the company no longer has any connection to the Chinese-owned Swedish carmaker, but kept the name after a corporate split) and equips it with a full suite of Aurora tech and software.

The end result is a Transport-as-a-Service model that will allow customers to buy autonomous cargo movement rather than purchasing a truck outright. Instead of needing to provide its own employees to drive the rig, FedEx will pay an all-in-one price that includes the software, support, and technology needed to make the VNL Autonomous work.

It's designed for hub-to-hub traffic, running from, say, a Houston FedEx warehouse to another FedEx facility in Dallas and back again. Companies might run dozens of these routes every day, moving freight around in predictable ways — something perfect for an autonomous system to handle. The routes would be easily mapped, and, perhaps more crucially, as warehouses are typically located close to major interstates, the trucks wouldn't need to navigate much by way of surface streets.

The Aurora Driver, the name for its self-driving platform, is an amalgamation of redundant computers, cameras, radar, and an in-house lidar sensor that combine to allow the Driver to navigate the world. Aurora says it has traveled 1.5 million real-world miles already, on top of many times that in simulation.

It has handled both interstates and rural highways, even operating at night and in bad weather.

While companies like Tesla get most of the attention with products like "full self-driving," outfits like Aurora (and, it must be said, Google's Waymo) have quietly been working to solve real-world problems.

Far from AI putting everyone out of a job, autonomous trucking has the potential to make a real-world impact on pricing. Freight costs — particularly labor — have a significant impact on the price of goods, and autonomous truck drivers have the potential to reduce those costs in a major way.

The announcement with Volvo brings self-driving trucks another step closer to reality. While you're right to ask questions about safety, both Aurora and Volvo are safety-obsessed and are doing everything possible to get it right.

“We built the Volvo VNL Autonomous from the ground up, integrating these redundancy systems to ensure that every safety-critical component is intentionally duplicated, thereby significantly enhancing both safety and reliability," said Shahrukh Kazmi, Chief Product Officer at Volvo Autonomous Solutions. That boring, corporatized answer basically translates to: We have two of everything — which is more than can be said for a truck being driven by a human.

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The trucking industry continues to experience a shortage of drivers, and this partnership between Volvo and Aurora could help alleviate that challenge. The Volvo VNL Autonomous is built at Volvo's flagship New River Valley plant in Dublin, Virginia, on the same assembly line as the company's other VNL trucks, and the company promises to be able to meet industry demand for the vehicle.

And, if things work out like Aurora expects, there will be plenty of demand to go around.