GMC Hummer EV owners will soon be able to raise their 9,000-pound vehicle nearly six additional inches in the air, all due to a simple software update. Over the new few weeks, GMC will be adding a new “Extract Mode” — which lets drivers elevate their vehicle to avert off-road obstacles — to all First Edition models of the all-electric pickup truck. Essentially, Extract Mode lets drivers elevate their vehicle so they can avert off-road obstacles. 

As fun as the feature sounds, drivers should take heed that the suspension mode can only be used at low speeds. Also, frequent use of the feature will result in your vehicle needing to cool off before being suspended again. In total, Extract Mode will allow for 15.9 inches of ground clearance for the vehicle, which will give it an edge over other off-road capable vehicles like the Rivian R1T, Ram TRX, F150 Raptor and Bronco Raptor. For a preview of Extract Mode in action, check out the video below.

Unfortunately, only a handful of GMC Hummer EV owners will be able to actually try out the feature. As Electreknotes, demand for the Hummer has far exceeded GMC’s expectations and the automaker is struggling to ramp up production. Only one Hummer EV was delivered last year, and the automaker has received over 65,000 reservations for its Hummer EV pickups and SUVs. If you’re in the market for a first edition pickup, you’re out of luck: reservations for the roughly $110,000 vehicle are full. And if you spring for a slightly cheaper model, you could be due for a two-year wait.

Formula E recently showed off its latest Gen3 car that it says is faster, more agile and "the world's most efficient" racing vehicle to date. Now, we're getting a first look at one on a track at England's Goodwood in the form of the Mahinda M9 Electro with Nick Heidfeld at the wheel. 

On its Twitter account, Goodwood said that Heidfeld was "not holding back" and it looked like the car made a clean lap other than a few minor lockups. On track, the Gen3 design certainly looks more subdued and less dramatic than the Gen2, but it's lighter (840kg compared to 920kg including driver) and quicker in every way.

The Gen3 model is very specifically designed for street circuit racing with high maneuverability and speeds up to 200 MPH. That's not quite as fast as the 220-230 MPH top speeds for F1 cars, but the Formula E vehicles do that with less than half the power. They're also highly efficient, with over double the regenerative braking capabilities of the Gen2 cars. Overall, they convert 90 percent of battery energy to mechanical power, compared to 52 percent for F1 cars. 

There are now 11 Gen3 teams confirmed with 22 cars, including DS Automobiles, Dragon/Penske, Envision, Mercedes-EQ, Avalanche Andretti, Jaguar, Maserati, NIO 333, Nissan and Porsche, along with Mahindra. The first season of Gen3 will kick off this winter with pre-season testing. 

Toyota's US launch of the unpronounceable bZ4X EV is off to a rough start with the automaker announcing on Thursday a broad recall of the vehicle barely two months after its debut, due to a potentially deadly situation that could lead to the vehicle's wheels separating while driving at speed.   

Some 2,700 of the electric crossovers are subject to the recall — 2,000 destined for the European market, 260 to the US, 110 to Japan and 20 to Canada. The company implores owners to park their vehicles immediately and not resume driving them until a more "permanent" solution can be devised.

"No one should drive these vehicles until the remedy is performed," Toyota said in the Thursday notice. "After low-mileage use, all of the hub bolts on the wheel can loosen to the point where the wheel can detach from the vehicle. If a wheel detaches from the vehicle while driving, it could result in a loss of vehicle control, increasing the risk of a crash. The cause of the issue and the driving patterns under which this issue could occur are still under investigation."

Subaru has issued a similar recall for about 2,600 Solterra EVs. These EVs are functionally identical to the bZ4X and are produced on the same lines at Toyota's Motomachi facility. There's no word yet on when Toyota engineers might have a solution for the issue.

The Polestar 5 is making its first public appearance at the 2022 Goodwood Festival of Speed in West Sussex, England. A prototype of the upcoming four-door electric GT sports car will drive up the Goodwood hill twice daily during the event that takes place starting today, July 23rd, until July 26th as part of the "First Glance" group of vehicles. Polestar's UK team developed a "unique bonded aluminum chassis" for the EV, which the company says is key to achieving "a driving experience that is as desirable as the design."

The sports car's new electric powertrain is still under development in Sweden, though, where Polestar's sibling company Volvo is also based. Polestar 5 will have a dual electric motor setup, with a rear electric motor that uses an 800-Volt architecture. In all, the complete dual motor powertrain is expected to deliver up to 884 horsepower (650 kW) and 663 lb-ft (900 Nm) of torque.

Jörg Brandscheid, Polestar's CTO and Head of R&D, says: 

"The new powertrain we are working on will set a new brand benchmark in our high-performing cars. Combining strong electric motor engineering ability with advances in light-weight platform technology is leading to truly stunning driver's cars."

Polestar 5 is the production version of a concept EV called Precept, which was introduced back in 2020. When the company announced that it was going to turn the concept into a real vehicle, it said it was going to manufacture the EV at a new carbon neutral facility in China. The new images of the Polestar 5 show that it still resembles the original concept, with its "shark-like" nose and geometric creasing, though the automaker could still make changes to its final version. If you want to see how Polestar created a real vehicle out of a concept, you can watch a short series about the process on YouTube. 

The company plans to launch Polestar 5 in 2024 after launching the Polestar 3 and Polestar 4 electric SUVs. With all these vehicles in its lineup, including the Polestar 2, the brand is bound to become a veritable Tesla rival. Speaking of Polestar 2, the automaker is also debuting a high-performance limited edition version of the EV at Goodwood Festival, where attendees will have the opportunity to book it for a test drive.

You might not have to buy a Lucid Air or Mercedes to listen to spatial audio in your car. Dolby and Swedish firm Dirac are collaborating to demo more immersive in-car audio technology. The partnership melds Dirac's optimization algorithms with Dolby Atmos support to deliver 3D sound as well as improve audio quality across the board. The combo can compensate for poor cabin acoustics (such as reflective surfaces and awkward speaker placement) while promising advanced sound staging normally reserved for home theaters.

The two companies are showcasing their teamwork in demo cars, but you may have to wait a while to hear it in a vehicle you can drive. The first car to take advantage of Dolby and Dirac tech is the Nio ET7. The electric sedan won't come to Europe until later this year, and the Chinese brand has yet to commit to a North American expansion.

Still, the efforts might go some way toward democratizing Atmos and quality car audio. You might not need to buy a luxury car (or a pricey option package) to listen to spatial sound or otherwise enjoy the quality you normally get at home. Audio performance could be a particularly strong selling point as self-driving cars rise to prominence. If your car is going to be a lounge on wheels, you'll probably want the speaker system to match.

After Sony and Honda announced plans to form a separate company for their joint electric vehicle partnership, they've now given it a name. Yes, the new business is called Sony Honda Mobility Inc. and will be established in Tokyo before the end of 2022, with EV sales set to start in 2025, Sony said in a press release.

Each company holds an equal 50 percent share, with Honda executive Yasuhide Mizuno appointed chairman and CEO, and Sony EVP Izumi Kawanishi president and COO. As Sony detailed previously, the partnership will utilize "Honda's cutting edge environmental and safety technologies, mobility development capabilities, vehicle body manufacturing technology, and after-sales service management experience." Meanwhile, Sony will contribute "imaging, sensing, telecommunication, network and entertainment technologies." 

Honda is far behind rivals in EV development, with its only electric car being the Honda E — but it's accelerated its plans of late. Earlier this year it unveiled a partnership with GM to co-develop a series of affordable EVs using a global architecture and GM's Ultium battery technology. The aim is to have Honda and Acura SUVs going on sale in North America by 2024. 

Honda also announced plans last year to shift its entire vehicle lineup to EVs and fuel-cell vehicles by 2040. As part of that, it's going to invest $40 billion and launch 30 new EVs by 2030. Sony, meanwhile has already showed not just one but two electric vehicles of its own design, the Vision-S EV and Vision-S 02 electric SUV. It's not clear how all Sony Honda Mobility fits into all these plans, but we should be learning more about it in the near future.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has released its first batch of data for semi-autonomous driving technology. As The New York Timesexplains, the agency linked 392 crashes to self-driving and driver assistance systems in the 10 months between July 1st, 2021 and May 15th, 2022. About 70 percent of those, 273, were Tesla vehicles using Autopilot or the Full Self-Driving beta. Honda cars were tied to 90 incidents, while Subaru models were involved in 10. Other makes, including Ford, GM, VW and Toyota, had five incidents or less.

Out of the 98 crashes with injury reports, 11 resulted in serious injuries. Five of the Tesla incidents were fatal. The 130 total crashes for self-driving systems included 108 with other cars and 11 with "vulnerable" road users like cyclists and pedestrians.

The findings are a response to a Standing General Order requiring that car manufacturers and operators report crashes to the NHTSA when Level 2 or higher autonomy is active at the time of the incident. The transportation agency hopes the info will support a "more data-driven approach" to safely rolling out self-driving tech, including regulation and education.

As administration head Steven Cliff told the press, the data doesn't offer any conclusions by itself. There are roughly 830,000 Autopilot-equipped Tesla vehicles in the US, for instance — they may dominate incident reports simply because they're some of the most common semi-autonomous cars. Ford, GM and others have equivalents, but they're frequently optional (Autopilot is standard on Teslas) and simply rarer on the road.

The statistics nonetheless draw attention to multiple investigations into crashes like these, including from the National Transportation Safety Board. One Tesla driver in California is also facing felony charges from state prosecutors over a deadly 2019 incident. While companies like Tesla have long argued that their driver assists are safer than exclusively human control, the NHTSA, NTSB and other bodies clearly want a better understanding of real-world safety issues before they embrace autonomous driving in earnest.

Ford has announced a recall for 48,924 Mustang Mach-E EVs and asked dealers to pause deliveries of the vehicle. The company said there's a possibility of the high-voltage battery connectors overheating, which could prevent the vehicle from starting or cause it to lose propulsion power while on the road.

According to Automotive News, Ford claims it should be able to fix the issue with an over-the-air software update, which will be rolled out next month. Alternatively, owners can take their Mach-E to a Ford or Lincoln dealer and have the update installed there. Affected vehicles were built between May 27th, 2020, and May 24th, 2022 at Ford's factory in Cuautitlán, Mexico.

There's no open National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation into the problem, Ford says, which means this is a voluntary recall. Still, it's not a great look for the company.

The UK government has ended its plug-in car grant program effective immediately, it announced. The scheme first launched in 2011 with grants up to £5,000 ($6,089) or 25 percent of the cost of the car, but were gradually reduced to £1,500 ($1,827) where they sat until today. The grant ends on future sales, but will still be honored for any buyers that already applied for it. 

The program had achieved its goal of kickstarting the UK's electric revolution, the Department for Transport (DfT) said in a press release. It noted that sales of EVs increased from less than 1,000 in 2011 to nearly 100,000 in the first five months of this year alone. It added that EVs now offer "significant savings" over ICE vehicles due to the high cost of gasoline and diesel, and that owners can still get tax and other incentives. 

"The government has always been clear the plug-in car grant was temporary and previously confirmed funding until 2022-23," the government said. "Successive reductions in the size of the grant, and the number of models it covers, have had little effect on rapidly accelerating sales or on the continuously growing range of models being manufactured."

The DfT now plans to focus on charging stations, but didn't say if it planned to boost the £1.6 billion budget it had already set aside. It also pledged £300 million ($365 million) toward incentives on plug-in taxis, motorcycles, vans, trucks and wheelchair-accessible vehicles.

The UK promised to eliminate ICE vehicles by 2040 as part of its Road to Zero strategy designed to cut harmful emissions. However, some EU countries like Sweden or Ireland have more ambitious plans to hit that goal by 2030 and even earlier. 

After the maximum rebate was cut from £2,500 to £1,500 just six months ago and restricted to eligible EVs to models under £32,000, the plug-in car grant program appeared to be on life support. Critics decried the reduction at the time and are likely to be scathing toward the grant's complete elimination. Potential EV buyers motivated by record gasoline prices are also likely to be unhappy about the decision.

"We need to move the market even faster... which means we should be doubling down on incentives," an industry rep told Autocar late last year. "Other global markets are already doing so whereas we are cutting, expecting the industry to subsidize the transition, and putting up prices for customers. UK drivers risk being left behind on the transition to zero-emission motoring."

Despite what Dunkin’ Donuts would have you believe, America runs on gasoline. We are a nation of drivers with a transit infrastructure geared overwhelmingly towards automobile travel (with fewer than one percent of those on US roads today being of the electric variety). We’re awash in cars (276 million were registered in the US as of 2020) with around 14 million new light duty trucks and passenger vehicles being sold annually, and nearly three times that amount (~40 million) in used cars.

Those figures slumped noticeably during the COVID lockdowns in 2020 and 2021, but now that travel restrictions have eased and life returns to a semblance of the old “normal,” demand for vehicles has spiked dramatically since the industry’s massive nosedive in April 2020. Combine that with low supplies of new vehicles due to the ongoing global processor chip shortage, and compounded by rising interest rates brought on by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the price for used vehicles has skyrocketed.

For used cars up to ten years old, the average price in March stood at $33,653, 40 percent higher than the year before. Newer used cars, those 1 to 3 years old, the average price was $41,000, up 37 percent year-over-year. “With nearly empty new car lots across the country, dealers have been holding prices of newer used cars high,” CoPilot CEO and founder Pat Ryan, told CNBC in April.

People are looking longer for used cars — around 171 days on average, up from 89 before the lockdowns, according to car shopping site, CoPilot — and paying top dollar for what they find. It’s not quite as bad as the new vehicle market where paying over MSRP has become the rule, rather than the exception. Prices for used vehicles have declined slightly in recent months, down 6.4 percent from January, but remain well above the pre-pandemic average.

“It’s potentially becoming a bit deflationary in that regard,” Jonathan Smoke, chief economist at Cox Automotive told CNBC in May, though he doubts it will immediately lead to a strong price correction. “This is not a commodity market that people are speculating, and used vehicles are assets that actually provide utility to folks.”

“We had an unusual circumstance over the last two years that stimulated demand, and we have limited supply,” he said.

Between the stiff competition, a short supply of available autos and a rapidly evolving market that takes place as much online as it does dealer lots, today’s car buyer faces some daunting prospects in their pursuit of a freshly used car. But there are still plenty of deals to be found, you just need to know where and how to look. But first, you need to decide what you’re looking for and how much you’re willing to spend for it.

What kind of car you need depends on what you plan to do with it. If you’re being unfairly forced back to the office and are looking for a daily commuter, you’re obviously going to want to look more towards smaller hatchbacks and sedans rather than commercial duty pickups — the reverse being true if you own a landscaping business. If you’ve got “$7-a-gallon-doesn’t-phase-me” money, maybe you’re better served commuting in an SUV instead. I don’t know, you do you.

Point is, you want to start with a nebulous idea of what you’ll generally use the vehicle for, then drill down through body type, drivetrain and engine types, into specific makes and models, options and model years until you’ve gotten a solid idea of what you want in a car and which cars will provide that (an excel sheet with all of this information — make, model, years to avoid or specifically look for, average price used, etc — can help you organize the process.) Then you get to take a looooong look at your bank balance and adjust your expectations accordingly.

While you’re doing your initial research, make sure to familiarize yourself with your local consumer protection laws, such as California’s Lemon Law. Doing so will help you spot any seller shenanigans before money changes hands.

Cox Automotive

As you can see in the chart above from the March 2022 Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index report, which follows the wholesale price of used vehicle sales, valuations have risen rapidly over the past two years. Before you start actively looking at vehicle listings, take a look around reputable car valuation sites like Kelley Blue Book, Edmunds, Consumer Reports or JD Power’s NADA guide to get a sense of what the vehicles on your list will likely set you back. Similarly, CarFax can provide vehicle history reports indicating a vehicle’s mileage, whether it’s been in any severe accidents, its previous owner and whether it was used in a fleet like a rental car or taxi.

“When dealing with a reputable dealer, you can ask for those kinds of reports,” Todd Ingersoll, CEO and President of Ingersoll Automotive, a GM dealership group out of Danbury, CT, told Engadget. “Another good indicator is what kind of work has the dealership done to the vehicle. So you can and should ask for the repair order of what was done to the car. If it's a reputable store, and they've done great work to get the car up to snuff for sale, they want to put that on display.”

While competition for used cars is currently fierce, prospective buyers have more ways than ever to search for their next vehicle. We’re no longer limited to the selection of whatever the local dealerships and used lots have available. The traditional car buying experience is not going away.

“Most consumers, when they're buying a very expensive item, they want to see it, they want to put their hands on it, want to drive it,” Ingersoll said, but it has been augmented in recent years by the rise of online listing aggregators like CarGurus, Shift, Autotrader, Vroom, and Carvana as well as hybrid companies like CarMax, which operates both an online showroom and a network of physical car lots throughout the country.

Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images

The modern car buying process has become a mixture of in-person and online channels, CarMax EVP of Strategy, Marketing and Product, Jim Lyski, told Engadget. Customers are going to “want to do some things in the store, and a retailer can provide a way to allow them to personalize their journey where they can leverage any channel that they want, and those channels are tied together in a really seamless way.”

We can already see evidence of this in the new car market, where online sales made up 30 percent of the total in 2020, up from 2 percent the year before, Alan Haig, president of automotive retail consultant group Haig Partners, told ABC News in 2021. What’s more, a Cox Automotive study from the same period found that customer satisfaction had reached record highs in 2020, with the overall process being more efficient with less time spent in physical dealerships.

Aggregators like Cavana and Vroom pull the vehicle listings of local dealer inventories and assemble them in a centralized, searchable database so you’ll be able to see what’s available both locally and in the wider region. There are going to be a lot more used cars for sale in San Francisco, CA than there will be in Sonora, CA — and there’ll be even more in the Los Angeles metroplex — so if you can’t find what you’re looking for locally, you’re going to need to expand your search area and be prepared to go to where the cars are. These sites are built to do just that. They’re also typically outfitted with handy loan and down payment calculators as well as quotes for the car you already own. You’ll want to check these listings regularly and be ready to make an offer quickly when you find what you’re looking for because the good deals on these sites go fast.

Brian Snyder / reuters

But even those don’t list every vehicle for sale in the area. Public boards like Craigslist or NextDoor are a treasure trove of highly affordable used cars that you won’t find on the larger aggregators. Of course, these are going to be private transactions so you’ll want to take the standard precautions. Meet in a public area, insist on a presale mechanic’s inspection, don’t with a big wad of cash and bring your most imposing friend along for “moral” support because seriously, this is Craigslist.

Speak to your family, friends and co-workers as well, as word of mouth is still a great way to find a used car and evaluate a dealership. “We always say the second, third and 12th cars are sold through the service department,” Ingersoll said. “How you take care of people long term, that determines how many people they refer to you.”

So, once you’ve found the car of your dreams, realized you can’t afford it, lowered your expectations and purchased something more sensible, now comes the paperwork! Depending on what state you live in you’ll have to do more than transfer title. In California for example, the DMV is going to want the bill of sale, vehicle registration, vehicle title and application and a smog certificate. You’ll also have to include the various fees like $15 for title transfer, $58 for the registration, $6 to the air quality management district and another $23 for the California Highway Patrol fee. Check with your state DMV to get a complete list of government fees and instructions for paying them online.

Lucy Nicholson / reuters

Dealership fees are another matter. In California, at least, rolling a dealership’s advertising costs into the price of a vehicle is illegal. If you’re buying a car from a dealership, be sure to ask for a comprehensive list of their fees and set about chipping off every extraneous one you can get the salesperson to accept.

So now comes the fun part wherein this reporter, one in desperate need of a car and no patience to wait for the next Maverick model year, puts his money where his keyboard is and attempts to follow his own advice in purchasing a car online. Will he find the 4Runner of his dreams? Will he get ripped off because Craisglist? Stay tuned to Engadget and find out later this summer!