Electric Vehicles & Cars - Page 9

If you own a Tesla you're probably already very aware that you can't plug your iPhone in and use CarPlay like owners of cars from most other manufacturers. Tesla CEO Elon Musk hasn't given anyone hope that will change at any point soon, but a new report suggests that there might be something different in the works instead.

If that report is correct, Tesla appears to be getting ready to add a new AirPlay option to its cars that will allow drivers to wirelessly stream audio, and perhaps video, to their vehicles. That would work with more than iPhones as well, with iPads and Macs also supporting AirPlay.

The report comes courtesy of the @Tesla_iOS_App Twitter account that reports on changes to the Twitter for iPhone app. Based on references found in the latest Tesla app, that account believes that AirPlay support is on the way or at the very least being worked on. A string that references allowsAirPlayForMediaPlayback appears to suggest that there will be AriPlay support in the future.

Ford has announced that it will be recalling nearly one million F-150s as the trucks can unexpectedly engage their electric parking breaks.

The company has announced the recall in a new document posted by government safety regulators, Where it states that 870,000 of its F-150s between the years of 2021 and 2023 that have a single exhaust will be recalled. The document was posted last Friday and details that the rear wiring bundle can sometimes come in contact with the rear axle housing, resulting in the wiring experiencing chafing and, in some cases, short-circuiting.

This short-circuiting can result in the parking brake turning on without any interaction from the driver, which obviously increases the chances of a crash, hence the recall. So how often has this happened? According to the documents, there have been 918 warranty claims and three field reports of wire chafing across North America. Additionally, of those 918 warranty claims, 299 indicated unexpected parking brake activation. 19 of those claims happened while the truck was being driven.

Tesla announced the Cybertruck in 2019, and after what seems like countless delays and setbacks, the company has built its first vehicle.

The Cybertruck was originally unveiled in 2019 by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and after the hilarious demonstration of the not-so armor glass windows, news began to dwindle about the highly anticipated vehicle. Every now and again, there were murmurings about the Cybertruck, and they typically weren't the most positive ones as it was mostly production delay announcements attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic tying up materials.

Notably, during Tesla's 2023 annual shareholder meeting, Musk said that Tesla expects to deliver between 250,000 and 500,000 units of the Cybertruck per year once production has reached maximum capacity, which it anticipates will occur later this year. Reports from Kelly Blue Book state that while Tesla's original price for the Cybertruck would be $39,900, that price has been jacked up to $50,000. The dual-motor, all-wheel drive model is believed to start around $60,000, and the tri-electric motor model at around $70,000.

Mercedes-Benz has taken to its website to announce new features coming to Mercedes vehicles, and according to the German car company, Mercedes owners can expect an AI-powered upgrade.

The company explained in a blog post that it will be rolling out updates to its Hey Mercedes voice assistant, and that customers will be able to opt-in to the beta program by simply saying, "Hey Mercedes, I want to join the beta program". Once the correct words are spoken, the vehicle will initiate an over-the-air update that will upgrade the MBUX Voice Assistant with OpenAI's extremely popular chatbot, ChatGPT.

Mercedes says on its website that ChatGPT will "greatly improve natural language understanding and expand the topics to which it can respond. Soon, participants who ask the Voice Assistant for details about their destination, to suggest a new dinner recipe, or to answer a complex question, will receive a more comprehensive answer." Mercedes says this new ChatGPT integration with its vehicles was made possible through Microsoft, a massive investor in OpenAI, the developers behind ChatGPT.

YouTube channel WhistlinDiesel has posted a new video showcasing a modified Tesla Model 3 with 10ft tall wheels driving along the road.

Cody Detwiler, the host of the WhistinDiesel YouTube channel that has amassed more than 5 million subscribers, explains that the goal of the above video is to test the Tesla Model 3 to see if it meets all of the claims Tesla has made about its vehicles. Notably, there is a strong vein of comic essence running through all of WhistinDiesel's videos, and the testing process is purely for entertainment purposes only, as Detwiler decides to set his own testing parameters.

One of the biggest claims from Tesla is that electric cars are greener for the planet than petroleum-powered vehicles, and while that may be true at face value, it really depends on where the electricity is sourced from. For example, if the electricity that is powering any electric car comes from a renewable source, such as solar-powered energy, then the vehicle would be greener than a typical combustion engine vehicle.

We're all very familiar with the idea of wirelessly charging our phones, watches, and earbuds but have you ever considered wirelessly charging your car?

That obviously only applies to people who have electric vehicles, but wireless charging would fix one of the bigger problems with owning an EV - having to plug it in all the time. Now it appears that Tesla is working on fixing that with some sort of wireless charging technology.

While Tesla hasn't confirmed that it's working on anything of the sort, the company might have teased something during this week's Investor Day.

Ford has filed for a patent on a new type of system that is designed to cause drivers "discomfort" if they happen to miss consecutive car repayments.

The car manufacturer filed for the patent back in August 2021, but it only became public last week when it was published online. The Drive reports that the patent includes technology that would revoke key features of the vehicle in the event of car repayments being missed by the buyer. Features that would be taken away incrementally would be air conditioning, GPS, and even the radio.

Furthermore, the patent describes a new system called the "repossession system computer", which will serve as the brain for carrying out all these discomforts. The patent states that this new computer would begin with minor annoyances to the driver, such as removing air conditioning, cruise control, or the radio. Then if warnings of missed payments are continued to be ignored, the system could initiate an "incessant and unpleasant sound" whenever the driver is around.

Flying cars has always been this benchmark for something futuristic; that is, once flying cars are real - we're well and truly living in the future. And that's precisely what we've got here, with the Airspeeder MK4 from Alauda Aeronautics - based in Adelaide, South Australia.

A fully crewed flying racing car because we're already at the flying racing car stage. The Airspeeder MK4 is described as the world's fastest hydrogen electric "Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft."

It can reach its top speed of 360km/hr (225m/hr) in 30 seconds from a full-standing start and is set to debut in the burgeoning field of Airspeeder racing. Yeah, it's a flying racing card built for performance motorsports. As mentioned above, this is a hydrogen-electric flying car with an impressive range of 300km - with the vehicle weight being just 950kg.

Tesla has made an appearance at the Super Bowl, but it isn't a positive one, as the advertisement comes from one of the company's biggest critics Dawn Project.

The above Super Bowl ad was created by Dawn Project, an organization committed to making "computers safe for humanity". The organization was created by tech entrepreneur Dan O'Dowd and has been going after Tesla since the company began rolling out its Full Self-Driving (FSD) feature. The Super Bowl ad is designed to bring awareness to purported faults within Tesla's FSD software, and these faults are demonstrated numerous times throughout the duration of the video.

Dawn Project shows Tesla vehicles failing to stop for child-sized dummies that are crossing the street, failing to stop for stop signs attached to the side of a school bus, crossing illegally into the oncoming lane, driving past 'do not enter' signs and even hitting a stroller in the middle of the road. Dawn Project's goal for the Super Bowl ad is to bring awareness to FSD in hopes that lawmakers will ban the feature from public roads.

Mercedes-Benz has received a new level of driving automation for its Drive Pilot system, which is a direct competitor to Tesla's Autopilot system.

Mercedes took to its website with a press release that states its Drive Pilot system is approved for use in Nevada, receiving the first Level 3 "conditionally automated" driving certification, making it the very first car company to reach Level 3.

According to the announcement, Mercedes' Drive Pilot system at Level 3 capabilities will be able to keep the car in a lane, change lanes, and maintain the car at a safe distance behind the one that it's in front of by adjusting speed and more. However, all of this new technology is only permitted at speeds up to 40 mph. Notably, Tesla currently sits at Level 2 autonomy with its Autopilot system, but many of the features that make up Level 3 autonomy are already present in Level 2, which are already present on the road.