Author: kirklandc008@gmail.com

I’ll be the first one to admit that the auto battler genre isn’t everyone’s jam, but for those who enjoy the blend between econ management, team building and tactical positioning, Batomon Showdown hits hard. The game came out about two weeks ago and I’ve been completely hooked ever since. It’s available on both mobile ($6 on Android) and PC ($15 on Steam), it’s super affordable and it has that addicting quality you get from great roguelikes: At the end of a run, all you want to do is launch into another. The gameplay can largely be summed up as Pokémon…

The Drive 🤝 your inbox. Every weekday The Daily Brief wraps up the biggest stories and our exclusive reporting on the auto industry and car culture. It’s tough to get people to agree on one thing—it hardly happens here, and we’re all buds working at the same publication. That said, we all agree that the Goodwood Revival is the best car and racing event in the world, and nothing else comes close. I’ve done a lot of the other “premier” events, and for those I haven’t gone to myself, my colleagues have, and they agree. Yet I’m not here to…

For decades, carmakers have searched for ways to make smaller engines deliver the performance and effortless torque normally associated with larger-displacement powerplants, without sacrificing their potential efficiency advantages. It is a difficult engineering compromise, particularly when extracting more performance traditionally means, before modern hybridization, increasing displacement or adding forced induction. Mazda approached the problem from an entirely different direction, combining an unusual combustion cycle with a supercharger to overcome the inherent limitations. The result was a remarkably sophisticated engine concept that anticipated the efficiency-focused powertrains now becoming increasingly common, proving that some seemingly unconventional ideas were simply ahead of their…

The last couple of decades have seen some impressive and important engines debut. Powerplants such as the 1,064-horsepower, twin-turbocharged, 5.5-liter flat-plane crank V8 sitting behind the driver in the Chevrolet Corvette ZR1, BMW’s reliable yet powerful S58, and Lexus’ screaming 4.9-liter V10 show there’s still life in the internal combustion engine. The technology in engines like these overshadows what was done in the 20th century. However, without those earlier efforts that challenged how automakers approached motivating their models, we wouldn’t have the technological masterpieces we all love and celebrate today. In 2000, Wards Auto selected its top 10 engines of…

Some developers are using Full Disk Access in ways that could put users at risk, exposing everything on their systems—including files, mail, messages, and even browsing history—without users’ full knowledge and understanding… As AI agents become increasingly capable and autonomous, the risks associated with this level of access will grow substantially.

The Drive 🤝 your inbox. Every weekday The Daily Brief wraps up the biggest stories and our exclusive reporting on the auto industry and car culture. One sweep of the Internet and it’s not hard to find someone somewhere saying “EVs won’t work until they can be charged in the same time it takes to fill my car with gas.” And while China’s getting there, an executive in the U.S. aren’t so convinced that’s true. During an interview on The Drivecast Ionna CEO Seth Cutler said, “This idea that charging has to be done in five minutes or people won’t…

In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss the Tesla Roadster delay, EV deliveries in the US, battery swap coming back, and more. The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel. As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in. After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio…

Uber and Lyft were sued by the state of California in 2020 for misclassifying employees as contractors. BreizhAtao/Shutterstock Lyft will pay $272.5 million to settle a May 2020 lawsuit that alleged both it and Uber were misclassifying employees as contractors, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced in a statement on Thursday. The lawsuit was filed following the passage of Assembly Bill 5, which classified gig workers as employees, but before the reclassification introduced by the passage of Prop 22. If the settlement is approved by the court, Lyft will pay $272.5 million in penalties, with at least…

The 2027 Audi Q7 is a ground-up third-generation redesign arriving at US dealers in late 2026 with official pricing now confirmed from Audi’s own configurator. Audi dealers may already be taking orders on the 2027 Q7, making now the right time to gather competing quotes before units arrive on lots. AutoFinder confirms the 2027 Q7 spans three trims from $70,900 to $84,900 before destination, with the high-performance SQ7 at $98,700 to $99,995 in a single consolidated trim. The headline change for 2027 is significant: the 429-horsepower twin-turbocharged 2.9-liter V6 is now standard on every single Q7 trim ,…

Buying a new car has always been a significant purchase, but as the years march on, it’s a purchase that’s getting more expensive, and therefore more and more out of reach for many motorists in the US. Thankfully, shopping new isn’t the only way to get behind the wheel of a car, as there is always the used market to consider. However, the latest research conducted by Edmunds reveals that even the used market is beginning to squeeze buyers, as the average price of a three-year-old vehicle peaked during Q2 of 2026 at an all-time high of $32,461. A Brand-New…