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The biggest car news and reviews, no BS Our free daily newsletter sends the stories that really matter directly to you, every weekday. Welcome to The Downshift, or TDS for short, The Drive’s morning news roundup serving up the biggest automotive headlines from across the globe. The Downshift gets you up to speed with quick recaps of stories, fit with links for those who want to dive deeper into the news. Here’s your bulletin for Thursday, June 11, 2026. 🏭 The Novelis aluminum plant in upstate New York that supplies many automakers, but particularly Ford for the F-150 and Super Duty, finally restarted production…

The biggest car news and reviews, no BS Our free daily newsletter sends the stories that really matter directly to you, every weekday. I like small cars, and I like small luxury cars. “Entry-level” offerings like the 2027 Mercedes-Benz CLA350 4Matic Electric, as we have here, or the BMW 2 Series are routinely dismissed as the lowest rung buyers can grasp to get the badge they covet. But why should only big SUVs get nice materials and pleasant design? The new CLA doesn’t feel like a product carelessly tossed out to appease those of us at the floor of Merc’s…

I love listening to music, podcasts, and audiobooks when I’m riding my e-bikes. Depending on the type of ride I’m doing, I’ve got an affinity for all of them. But I also love not getting hit by a car. And those two goals don’t always work well together. Traditional earbuds and headphones can be great for audio quality, but they also have a nasty habit of disconnecting you from the world around you. On an e-bike, situational awareness is a key part of staying safe. Hearing a car approaching, a cyclist calling out a pass, or a pedestrian running into…

It’s something of a coupé coup for a modestly powerful, fairly affordable hybrid like the Honda Prelude to have come along in 2026 and achieved so much.Nobody would have imagined that a powertrain like the four-pot petrol-electric one in the Civic and CR-V could have been enlivened so effectively as it has in the Prelude, just via a bit of creative thinking and some make-believe gear ratios.

Think of an old-school Porsche, and you’ll typically picture a rear-engine, two-door sports car of the type that made the German brand truly famous. Today, the company is also known for four-door creations like the Panamera, but even before they dreamed up that particular vehicle, Porsche had a lot to do with a different four-door sedan. Intriguingly, Porsche put a lot of effort into developing this car, but that sedan carried a Mercedes badge, and that’s particularly interesting considering that these two companies are great rivals. The 500 E turned out to be one of the great stealth performance cars…

The fine detail of exactly what this kind of crossover SUV gives you in terms of available passenger comfort and cargo space over and above a regular hatchback always tends to underwhelm a little when written down in black and white. That’s partly because the way we measure leg room and head room for an Autocar road test can’t fully reflect the benefits to comfort, convenience and visibility that a raised hip point affords. When you sit less recumbently in a car than you might otherwise (with hips at a higher point relative to your heels), your legs naturally take up…

A new Australian study is adding more weight to the argument against social media. And it’s even revealing how just how much social media is too much for teenagers. Research led by the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute found that adolescents who spent at least two hours a day on social media were more likely to experience depressive symptoms and poorer wellbeing one year later than those who used social platforms for less than one hour a day. The study does not prove that social media directly caused those mental health problems. But the link is notable because the research followed…

Luxury cars continue to become less accessible in the U.S. market. There are many reasons for this, some of which include more expensive development and distribution costs, driving up pricing for new cars across the board. Brands have also identified that luxury products yield higher profit margins, resulting in them adopting much higher MSRPs compared to their production costs. Many new-car buyers are demanding luxury, resulting in conventional mass market brands investing more time and resources into making formerly mundane sedan and SUV offerings that feel more special and upmarket. For 2027, there’s one Japanese SUV that’s benefiting from a…

The Dongfeng Nissan team celebrated the milestone of producing the 100,000th N-series NEV. Credit: Dongfeng Nissan This comes about 14 months after the launch of the N7 electric sedan, the first model in Dongfeng Nissan’s N series. The milestone underscores how joint venture automakers are staging a comeback in China’s EV market with locally led development and aggressive pricing. Dongfeng Nissan, Nissan’s joint venture in China, announced on Friday that the 100,000th unit of its N-series new energy vehicles (NEVs) has rolled off the production line. The milestone comes just about 14 months after the launch of the N7 all-electric…

Our early testing has already shown that Siri AI knows when to shut up, and that’s very much by design. In an interview with Mostly Human, Craig Federighi said Apple’s new Siri won’t act all sycophantic like chatbots made by OpenAI, Google, and others.“As you may know, if you use many of the existing chatbots, they’re really focused on engagement to a large degree,” said Federighi who is responsible for software at Apple. “And sycophancy, right? They kind of want to pull you in. They might encourage you to reveal things about yourself, and then use that as a basis…