When the Screen Is the Problem: Cars' Software Crisis

If you have ever fought your own dashboard to change the temperature in your car or answer a phone call, the data now backs you up. Infotainment systems have become the single largest source of complaints from new-car owners, and while nearly every other part of the modern vehicle is getting better, the screens are stuck in place. Roughly a quarter of everything owners gripe about now traces back to the multimedia stack. That figure comes from JD Power, which surveys tens of thousands of new-ca

Somewhere past hour six, the romance of the open road starts to wear a little thin. The playlist has looped twice, your lower back has filed a formal complaint, and you've been staring at the same stretch of I-70 in Kansas for what feels like geological time.A cross-country drive is one of the great American experiences when it goes well. When it doesn't, it is a very long, very expensive way to arrive somewhere exhausted and irritable.1. Sort the car out before you leave
This one should go with

Another one bites the dust. The list of sports car makers who swore they'd never build an SUV and then quietly built one just added its sportiest holdout. McLaren Automotive has confirmed it will produce its first sport utility vehicle in the company's 63-year history, joining a club that Porsche opened in 2002 with the Cayenne and that has since roped in Jaguar, Maserati, Lotus, and even Ferrari. The SUV is the centerpiece of a $670 million (£500 million) investment announced Wednesday,

We sit down with Lee Wilson to discuss his epic 8,222-mile (13,232 km) road trip around the entire U.S. in his all-wheel drive (AWD) orange Volkswagen ID. Buzz. If you've ever worried about EV range, Lee is here to prove that charging infrastructure is a solved problem. Lee shares how utilizing a Peace Vans kitchen box gave them the flexibility to camp, hit up hotels, or stay with friends along their eastbound and westbound routes. He breaks down their strategy of stopping every two hours for a

Volvo says it might bring back the wagon. That alone should perk up the ears of anyone who's spent the last decade watching the brand bulldoze its lineup into an all-SUV monoculture. The Swedish automaker has confirmed 13 all-new models by the end of 2030, and not every one of them will be a crossover. Of the 13, seven are earmarked for Western markets including Europe and North America. The remaining six? Reserved for China. Volvo calls this "the largest and most ambitious global product push

General Motors is hyping up the new V8 options that will be coming to updated versions of the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra — with other models presumed to follow. Considering the lackluster reputation gained by the V8 engines currently available on those models, the forthcoming changes will presumably be welcomed by customers.With the United States recently pulling back on stringent vehicle emissions, domestic automakers feel comfortable fielding more V8 motors. This change is especi

General Motors sits in an unusual spot for a legacy automaker. It sells a wide range of electric vehicles alongside a fleet of profitable gas-powered trucks and SUVs, and it has done so without building the hybrid bridge that nearly every rival leaned on. The only hybrid GM currently sells in the United States is the Corvette E-Ray. Everything else is either a combustion vehicle or a battery-electric one, with almost nothing in between. That looks like a problem right now. EV sales have softene

The 2020 BMW M2 Competition in this video keeps a fully stock exterior and interior, but don’t let that fool you — the S55 under the hood is far from factory.  The build highlights include: S55 3.0L inline‑six, 7‑speed DCT, MHD Stage 2 tune, MHD Flex Fuel + ECA analyzer, XHP Stage 3 trans tune, S5X crankhub upgrade, BMC drop‑in filters, running 50% ethanol. 
Power Estimate: No dyno yet, but this setup should land in the low‑to‑mid 600s WHP/WTQ

The Speed Academy team digs back into a BMW project that had been on the sidelines — until now. Speed Academy is a website and YouTube channel based on making things go fast and enjoying cars. Peter Tarach and Dave Pratte are the forces behind Speed Academy.The TTAC Creators Series tells stories and amplifies creators from all corners of the car world, including culture, dealerships, collections, modified builds and more.An AI-produced summary of the transcript, edited by a

In-car breathalyzers are already a fixture for repeat offenders. Court-mandated hardware that no one would mistake for a modern driving experience. Aftermarket ignition interlocks are clumsy, easy to tamper with, and prone to contamination from sitting inside a hot car. Hyundai has filed a patent with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office that proposes building the whole thing into the car from the factory.The system lives in the steering wheel. According to the patent uncovered by CarBuzz res

When General Motors Chair and CEO Mary Barra revealed in 2023 the automaker would begin phasing Apple CarPlay and Android Auto out of its vehicles in a few years the reaction was … quick and fierce. Scores of potential GM owners lined up to say, “Goodbye [insert GM brand here]!” To be fair, GM’s native software isn’t too bad as owners of the automaker’s electric vehicles (EVs) could attest. Despite that lukewarm endorsement from EV buyers who were forced to

Turns out the people wanted CarPlay after all. Who could have possibly predicted that?
General Motors revealed it is putting Apple CarPlay and Android Auto back into its vehicles, starting with the 2027 Chevrolet Silverado and 2027 GMC Sierra. This is the same company that in 2023 announced it would phase the technologies out of its EVs in favor of homegrown software, and whose CEO Mary Barra said late last year that the death sentence would extend to all GM vehicles, gas-powered ones included.

Jaguar Land Rover reportedly wants into the American pickup market, and the vehicle to do it is a Defender-based truck built in the United States through the joint venture it's cooking up with Stellantis. That's the report from Britain's The Times, which pegs the U.S. pickup segment at $80 billion and frames the move as a fightback under JLR boss PB Balaji, who has already cut 4,000 jobs.The reason a Defender truck makes sense right now comes down to tariffs. The current Defender is assembled i

Reports have claimed that Costco has been forced to raise the price on its Kirkland Signature oil blends and will even be rationing how much customers can purchase within a given timeframe. This has led to subsequent concerns that other major retailers may soon do the same.
We recently discussed how escalating warfare in the Middle East and Ukraine have helped drive up the per-barrel cost of oil and thereby fuel prices. But we’re now getting reports of large retailers claiming that they wo

Ram brought back the Rumble Bee. The very first retail example just changed hands for $1.5 million, and the buyer is UFC President and CEO Dana White, who scooped up the one-off truck at Barrett-Jackson in Las Vegas on Friday, along with a customized 2005 Dodge Ram 1500 SRT-10 thrown into the deal.The marketing shots show the 2027 Ram 1500 Rumble Bee SRT in the expected yellow-and-black livery. The truck White actually took home is different. It wears a hand-painted Molten Red Pearl and Diamond

Today, if a car company announces a 700-horsepower luxury SUV with a six-figure price tag, the reaction is usually a shrug. Of course it does. Every luxury manufacturer has one. Bentley has the Bentayga. Lamborghini has the Urus. Aston Martin has the DBX. Rolls-Royce has the Cullinan. Ferrari even joined the party with the Purosangue.  But back in 2006, the idea of an exotic super-SUV was almost absurd. Sports car companies built sports cars. Luxury brands built limousines. SUVs were thing

You’ll say it’s “just a Hyundai,” but check out these luxury features on the Genesis G70. Friend of the site Connie Peters reviews the 2026 Genesis G70. Take a look at the video or transcript below to see what she thinks. 
The TTAC Creators Series tells stories and amplifies creators from all corners of the car world, including culture, dealerships, collections, modified builds and more.
A transcript, summarized by AI and edited by a staffer, is below.
[Im

Buying a new car in America keeps getting more expensive. The exception, oddly enough, is the segment that spent years being written off as too pricey to bother with.Kelley Blue Book's August pricing report puts the average new vehicle at $50,089, up 1.9% year over year. EVs moved the other direction, averaging $54,813 — down 2.7% annually and 1.2% from July.
Yes, electric cars are still more expensive than the average new vehicle. But the premium is now $4,724, and it's shrinking. For a

Meet the Bentley Blower Jnr, a handcrafted, 85% scale electric replica of Bentley’s legendary 1929 supercharged race car.  Built by Hedley Studios, this fully street-legal EV blends vintage charm with modern electric performance. Powered by a 15-kW motor and a 10.8 kWh battery, it delivers up to 65 miles of range and a top speed of 45 mph in Europe. Only 349 will be made, making this a truly collectible piece of automotive history.
The TTAC Creators Series tells stories and

President Donald Trump said Friday what many predicted he would: China’s welcome to build cars in the U.S. — with certain rules, of course. "If China wanted to come in and open a plant to build their cars here, I'd be okay with that," Trump said on Fox ​News, adding, "Japan does it, but they hire our people. The ​big thing is they hire our people."The revelation came after he called U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin’s (D-Michigan) assertion that Trump would sup

Ford Racing rolled out its first-ever Formula One apparel line, and the pitch is history rather than the present. The Ford Racing x Formula 1 collection leans hard on a vintage Ford F1 race car, splashed across T-shirts and hoodies, with prices running from $55 to $125 on the Ford merchandise website.The "Debut" graphic shirts put a single race car under the F1 logo with a checkered flag motif, and a Ford Racing engine wrapping the lower third. Flip one over and you get a printed "placard" tall

Oil pipelines were struck in Saudi Arabia last Thursday, encouraging rampant speculation about the world’s already inflated energy prices. Worse still, nearby trade routes are now claimed to be under hostile occupation.
It’s been alleged that the pipeline strikes were carried out by drones originating from Iraq. The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately condemned attacks on its East-West Pipeline in the Riyadh and Madinah regions, requesting that Iraq take the necessary actio

The General's Cadillac Division built Coupes de Ville for the 1949 through 1993 model years, after which the De Ville name became sedan-only until the end came in 2005. Today's Junkyard Find, spotted last year in a Denver-area yard, is one of the last two-door De Villes ever built.I just wrote about a junked 1971 Coupe de Ville for the publication that stole our beloved Sajeev Mehta from here, which means endless promotional materials from the De Ville's glory days (highlighting affluent middle-

The pitch for electric cars always leaned oncosts. No fuel taxes, no trips to the pump, cheaper miles. Britain took that pitch, wrote it into policy, and championed the switch to battery power. Now the treasury has noticed the obvious problem: every electric car on the road is a customer who no longer pays fuel duty, and fuel duty is a very large number.The response is a new mileage-based charge on electric and plug-in vehicles. For the average British battery-electric driver it works out to ro

For the better part of a decade, Chrysler has been a brand kept on life support, its lineup shriveled down to the Pacifica minivan. There was serious talk of killing it off entirely or converting it into some vague "mobility business." Now Stellantis has a different idea: turn Chrysler into the cheap option. Back in May, Stellantis laid out plans for its brands during a financial markets presentation and confirmed three new Chrysler crossovers to join the Pacifica. Those are now known as the Ar

When the Taurus sedan and wagon launched in 1986, the space-themed event included an upscale sibling that arrived as Mercury’s flagship offering. More aerodynamic looking and with nicer trim, the Sable was intended to appeal to a slightly more daring customer with its design. Let’s take a little diversion into Sable styling. Like the LTD at Ford, the Sable was a replacement for the near-identical Marquis, a name donated by the Panther-based sedan and wagon as they became Grand Marqui

The claim comes from Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, who used an X post on Wednesday to float a rumor with no named sources behind it: that President Donald Trump is preparing to open the American market to Chinese cars as part of a broader deal. "We hear rumors that Trump is planning to allow Chinese cars to be sold in the U.S., as part of a larger deal he's putting together," Slotkin wrote on X. "That would be a strategic mistake."
That's the entire evidentiary basis. No White House confirma

The ongoing feud between the Department of Transportation and Ford Motor Co. about the automaker’s involvement with Chinese battery makers seems like, well, a pissing contest to distract consumers from high car prices, high gas prices, and other issues. That said, there are legitimate concerns about China gaining access to, well, America. However, if the U.S. is the free market economy many — not all — claim to be, then the doors should be open, right? Also, if you’ve se

Hey everyone! Just a heads-up that this video was originally filmed in Czech and dubbed into English using AI. It might not be 100% perfect, but we didn't want the language barrier to stop us from sharing Filip's pivot from diesel to EV. Enjoy the ride!  Filip used to call electric vehicles "Electric junk." So what changed his mind? In this episode of VWIDTalk, we sit down with Filip to discuss his complete 180 from a loyal diesel driver to a proud Škoda Enyaq owner. 
We cover

Volvo will be dropping the all-electric EX40 from its North American lineup next year, despite it and the rest of the 40-Series models being on the cusp of a global refresh. This decision comes after the automaker eliminated the similar EC40, opted against bringing the smaller EX30 EV to our market, and revised its own electrification targets. It would seem that EVs have not worked well for the brand. However, that is contingent largely upon where they’re being sold and how those sales are