NASCAR lost its most polarising, most prolific and arguably greatest active driver on Thursday afternoon. Kyle Busch was 41 years old.

The Busch family, Richard Childress Racing and NASCAR issued a joint statement confirming his death after a sudden hospitalisation with what the family described only as a severe illness. No cause of death has been given. The announcement came on Thursday 21 May, three days before Busch was scheduled to compete in the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Earlier that morning his family had asked for privacy as he underwent treatment. By the afternoon, he was gone.

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The numbers he leaves behind are staggering. Two NASCAR Cup Series championships, in 2015 and 2019. 63 Cup victories, ninth on the win list of all time. 102 wins in what is now called the O'Reilly Auto Parts Series, a record. 69 wins in the Craftsman Truck Series, also a record. No driver in the history of NASCAR's three national series has won more races. That record is his and it will take something extraordinary to move it.

Busch was born in Las Vegas in 1985, the younger brother of Kurt Busch, who is a NASCAR Hall of Famer. He made his Cup debut at 18 and was immediately fast and immediately controversial. The criticism followed him everywhere and rarely slowed him down. He was booed at tracks for years and he drove better for it. His move from Joe Gibbs Racing to Richard Childress Racing ahead of the 2023 season was the most discussed driver deal in NASCAR for a decade, and he responded by continuing to win. He was in his 22nd season as a full time Cup competitor when he died.

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He is survived by his wife Samantha and their children Brexton and Lennix. He also operated Kyle Busch Motorsports in the Truck Series, where he invested years in developing younger drivers coming through the ranks.

His brother Kurt said this week that Kyle had been his hero and his rival and his best friend, and that there were no words.

In 2023, after winning a race late in the season, Busch stood at the window of his car and spoke to the crowd. He had been asked before that race about the difficulty of knowing when to let go.

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He did not know then that the line would carry the weight it now carries. But it does.

Sources

• NASCAR.com — Kyle Busch, two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion, dies at age 41
• NPR — NASCAR champ Kyle Busch dies after hospitalization for severe illness
• NBC News — Kyle Busch, 2-time NASCAR champion, dies at 41 after illness
• KTVB — What happened to Kyle Busch? What we know about legendary NASCAR driver's sudden death

Two carmakers battered by American tariffs have agreed to work together on products for that market. The announcement tells you almost nothing about what that actually means.

Stellantis and Jaguar Land Rover announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding on 20 May, describing it as an agreement to explore collaboration on product and technology development in the United States. The MOU carries no binding obligations. No specific products have been named. No timelines have been given. The press release from Stellantis, issued from Auburn Hills, Michigan, contains the phrase "create synergies" twice and the phrase "create value" once, and explains nothing about what either company intends to build.

What the announcement does tell you, if you read around the corporate vocabulary, is that both companies have a serious problem with American tariffs and are looking for a structural solution.

JLR manufactures nothing in the United States. Every vehicle it sells there arrives from a factory in the UK, Slovakia or India and crosses the US border as a foreign import. In the past year alone, JLR absorbed £410 million in additional tariff costs. The company raised prices and added surcharges to deliveries, but there is a ceiling to how much of that burden you can pass to a customer buying a £100,000 Range Rover before they start looking at a Cadillac Escalade instead. Building or assembling vehicles in the US, or partnering with someone who already does, is the obvious way out.

Stellantis has its own difficulties. The company posted a net loss in 2024, its first in years. Incoming CEO Antonio Filosa, who replaced Carlos Tavares following his abrupt departure, has signalled a return to a strategy centred on product rather than cost reduction. The company has manufacturing capacity in the US and a roster of brands — Jeep, Ram, Dodge — that operate in precisely the segment where JLR's Range Rover and Defender compete.

The speculation about what any eventual product collaboration might look like has started quickly. Autocar noted the obvious overlap between Jeep's ambitions in the luxury terrain vehicle space and JLR's platform and engineering expertise, running the headline "Jeep Defender inbound?" on its coverage. That is speculation at this stage. What is less speculative is that Stellantis brands have historically struggled to own the premium end of the serious SUV market in the way that Land Rover has, and that JLR desperately needs a manufacturing foothold in North America.

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The announcement also landed on the same day Stellantis confirmed a separate deal with Chinese manufacturer Dongfeng, creating a new European joint venture to distribute and sell Dongfeng's Voyah premium electric brand through Stellantis retail and aftersales networks. Two significant partnership announcements in a single day, on the eve of a Stellantis investor presentation, suggests the company is moving quickly to demonstrate that Filosa's turnaround strategy has substance behind it.

JLR CEO PB Balaji was measured in his statement:

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Filosa matched the tone:

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Both quotes are textbook MOU language. Neither company is saying what it is building, where it will be built, or when. That information will come, or it will not, depending on whether the exploratory MOU leads anywhere binding. MOUs of this kind frequently produce nothing at all.

What makes this one worth watching is that both companies have the same urgent problem at the same time, and the obvious solution involves what the other company has. That is a better foundation for a deal than most.

Sources

• Stellantis press release — Stellantis and JLR to Explore Collaboration Synergies for Product Development in the U.S. (primary source)
• Stellantis.com — Full press release
• Autocar — Jeep Defender inbound? Stellantis has partnered with JLR to develop new cars for the US
• Motor1 — Stellantis And Jaguar Land Rover Team Up For US Development
• The Truth About Cars — Stellantis and Jaguar Land Rover Ink Deal to Work Together in U.S.
• Car Dealer Magazine — JLR teams up with Stellantis as carmakers agree new product development deal

Every diesel truck, ship, generator and agricultural machine on the planet runs on an idea that came from a man who disappeared without trace on the night of 29 September 1913. The official verdict is suicide. The evidence for that is genuinely persuasive. So is the evidence against it.

Rudolf Diesel was born in Paris in 1858 to German parents, grew up in poverty after his family fled the Franco-Prussian war, and educated himself into one of the most consequential engineers of the industrial age. His compression ignition engine, patented in 1893, was not simply a better machine. It was a fundamentally different one. By eliminating the spark ignition and fuel mixing problems that plagued petrol engines of the era, Diesel produced a motor of exceptional efficiency and extraordinary commercial potential. He also designed it to run on virtually anything: crude oil, vegetable oil, peanut oil, coal dust. At a 1900 world exhibition in Paris, he demonstrated his engine running on peanut oil. He spoke openly of a future in which farmers could fuel their own machinery from their own crops, free from dependence on the oil industry.

That last part got him enemies.

By 1913 the engine that bore his name was powering ships, factories and the first generation of German submarines. Diesel himself was nearly bankrupt. He had been a brilliant inventor and a catastrophic investor, repeatedly losing fortunes in ventures that had nothing to do with engineering. His health had been deteriorating for years, with accounts of severe headaches, vision problems and periods of mental collapse. On the morning of 28 September 1913 he left his Munich home carrying a small bag. He told his wife Martha not to open it until the following week.

That evening he boarded the steamship Dresden at Antwerp, bound for Harwich. He was travelling to London to attend the founding of a new diesel engine plant and to meet with representatives of the British Royal Navy about fitting his engine to their submarines. He dined with two travelling companions, retired to his cabin at around 10pm and was never seen alive again. When a colleague knocked the next morning there was no answer. The cabin was empty. The bed had not been slept in. His nightshirt was laid out ready to wear. In his diary, the entry for 29 September had a small cross drawn next to it.

When Martha opened the bag she found 200,000 German marks in cash, worth around $1.2 million today. With it were financial documents showing their bank accounts were empty. The money in the bag was what remained.

On 10 October a Dutch vessel recovered a badly decomposed body from the North Sea. The sailors removed the items from the man's pockets: an identity card, a wallet, a pocketknife and an eyeglass case. They returned the body to the water. The personal effects were later identified as Rudolf Diesel's.

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The suicide argument rests on the financial collapse, the deteriorating health, the money bag prepared in advance, the diary cross and the simple fact that a man standing at a ship's railing in darkness is very easy to lose. His biographers have largely accepted it.

The murder arguments are more numerous and harder to dismiss entirely.

The first points to Kaiser Wilhelm II. Diesel had refused to grant the German military exclusive rights to his invention. He was now on his way to England to help the British Navy improve its submarine programme, travelling on the eve of a war that was thirteen months away. German intelligence services were active. Newspapers within days of the disappearance ran headlines reading "Inventor Thrown Into the Sea to Stop Sale of Patents to British Government." The kaiser reportedly expressed no sorrow at the news.

The second points to the oil industry. Diesel's engine threatened the monopoly of oil as a transport fuel. A machine that ran on peanut oil was a direct threat to John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil empire. The front pages also ran headlines about Diesel being "Murdered by Agents from Big Oil Trusts." This was not a fringe theory. It ran in major newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic.

The third is the Canada theory, which sits at the more colourful end of the spectrum: that Diesel faked his death, pocketed the 200,000 marks and lived out his days quietly in North America, free of debt and enemies alike. There is no evidence for this. There is also no evidence against it, which is precisely the point.

Douglas Brunt's 2023 book, "The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel," which became a New York Times bestseller, reopened the case with fresh research. Brunt places Diesel at the intersection of four figures who shaped the coming war: Rockefeller, Kaiser Wilhelm, Winston Churchill and Diesel himself. His conclusion is that the suicide verdict is too convenient for too many powerful interests.

The honest answer is that nobody knows. A man stepped onto a ship and did not step off it. The engine he invented is still running, a hundred and twelve years later, in every corner of the world. The question of who decided that was enough of him remains open.

Sources

• History.com — Inventor Rudolf Diesel mysteriously vanishes, September 29, 1913
• TIME Magazine — The Mystery of the Diesel Engine's Disappearing Inventor
• This Day in Automotive History — September 29, 1913: Inventor of the Diesel engine mysteriously disappears from ship
• Jalopnik — Rudolf Diesel, Inventor Of The Diesel Engine, Mysteriously Vanished In 1913
• CarBuzz — The Curious Case of Rudolf Diesel's Death
• Yachts International — The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel
• Douglas Brunt — The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I (Simon & Schuster, 2023)

A routine maintenance visit for the Formula 1-derived hypercar cost more than most people's annual salary.

A Mercedes-AMG One owner recently discovered what it truly costs to maintain a Formula 1 car disguised as a street legal hypercar. After driving just 115 miles, their routine service bill came to $44,100, setting what may be the most expensive oil change in automotive history at $383 per mile driven.

The eye-watering service cost reflects the reality of owning one of the 275 Mercedes-AMG One hypercars ever built. With a $2.72 million base price, the car uses a 1.6-liter V6 hybrid powertrain lifted directly from Lewis Hamilton's championship-winning Formula 1 cars, complete with the maintenance requirements that come with such technology.

The AMG One's 1,063 horsepower comes from combining its F1-derived internal combustion engine with four electric motors, but this cutting-edge setup demands Formula 1-specification lubricants and fluids that cost exponentially more than conventional automotive products. The engine oil alone requires specialized synthetic compounds designed for the extreme temperatures and pressures of Grand Prix racing.

Mercedes-AMG's official guidance suggests owners budget $50,000 to $75,000 annually for routine maintenance, regardless of mileage. The service intervals mirror F1 requirements rather than typical road car schedules. Engine oil changes are required every 6,000 miles or 12 months, transmission service every 15,000 miles, and the battery cooling system needs specialized attention every 24 months.

Beyond the mechanical components, even consumables carry hypercar premiums. A set of Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 R tires costs approximately $8,000, while comprehensive insurance coverage runs $25,000 to $40,000 annually. First-year depreciation typically hits 15 to 20 percent of the purchase price, meaning owners lose around $400,000 in value within months of delivery.

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The $44,100 service bill breaks down the true cost of translating F1 technology to public roads. Every component from the turbocharger to the MGU-K energy recovery system requires specialist knowledge and tools found only at authorized AMG facilities. The technicians themselves need training comparable to Formula 1 mechanics, commanding premium labor rates that reflect their specialized expertise.

This maintenance reality has created an unexpected secondary market dynamic. Some AMG One owners are choosing to treat their cars as static investments rather than driving experiences, keeping mileage minimal to avoid the astronomical running costs. Others are discovering that the $2.72 million purchase price was merely the entry fee to a far more expensive ownership experience.

The service costs also highlight the growing divide between traditional supercars and modern hypercars. While a Ferrari or Lamborghini might cost $5,000 to $10,000 for major service work, the AMG One's F1 heritage pushes maintenance into entirely different financial territory. The technology that enables 217 mph top speeds and sub-seven-minute Nürburgring lap times comes with a price that makes the original sticker shock seem modest.

For context, the $44,100 service bill after 115 miles means this single maintenance visit cost more than the median annual household income in most countries. The owner essentially paid the equivalent of a luxury sedan's purchase price to change fluids in a car they had barely driven. Such figures make the AMG One's ownership proposition clear: this is transportation for those who measure wealth in hundreds of millions, not mere millions.

Sources: Mercedes-AMG official documentation, automotive industry maintenance cost analyses from various publications including Road & Track and Car and Driver coverage of hypercar ownership costs.

Troy, New York is a city of around 51,000 people on the Hudson River. It is now also a case study in what happens when a police department installs a surveillance network without asking anyone.

The Troy Police Department began a pilot programme of Flock Safety automated licence plate reader cameras in 2021, later expanding to 26 devices across the city. Flock cameras go well beyond reading plates. Depending on the model, they can identify a vehicle's make, model, colour, bodywork damage, roof racks, window stickers and miscellaneous contents. They feed into a national database operated by Flock Safety, a company whose technology is now deployed in more than 4,000 communities across the United States. The Troy police department did not inform the city council it was doing any of this. Residents found out through their own observation and organised protests at City Hall in March 2026.

The political situation made things combustible. Troy has a Republican mayor, Carmella Mantello, and a city council composed entirely of Democrats, led by President Sue Steele. On 19 March, the council held a public forum at which more than two dozen residents spoke in opposition. The council tabled a resolution to extend the Flock contract, citing unresolved questions about privacy, data handling, and the legality of the original procurement. Under Troy's city charter, council approval is required for expenditures over $35,000. The Flock contract costs $156,000 across two years. The council's position was that no valid contract existed because the council had never authorised one.

Troy's deputy police chief, Steven Barker, told reporters the department had followed standard procurement procedure. He said the cameras are used in almost every investigation the detective bureau pursues and had contributed to solving two homicides. Data collected is deleted after 30 days, and the department had already paused its participation in Flock's national database following the public outcry in March.

Mayor Mantello's response to the council's move to withhold payment was to declare a public safety emergency on 1 April, using powers under the city charter that allow a mayor to summon and employ additional resources for protective measures during an emergency. The council's position was that no emergency conditions existed and that the declaration was a violation of the charter in its own right.

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The council sued Mantello over the declaration. Mantello maintained that the council was holding public safety hostage.

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As of 20 May 2026, a partial compromise has emerged. Troy has implemented a set of guardrails around the cameras including an annual audit of data collected by Flock, restrictions on data sharing to within agencies on a case by case basis, and the introduction of Local Law 3, an ordinance brought by Councilmember Nancy McKee that codifies several of the new policies. Council President Steele described the compromise as a step toward addressing privacy and safety concerns while the broader dispute continues.

The broader dispute continues because the underlying questions have not been resolved. Flock Safety's cameras are deployed in thousands of American cities, and the pattern in Troy — installation without public consultation, contract renewal without council authorisation, executive override when the legislature objects — is not unique to Troy. The cameras have been used elsewhere for immigration enforcement, for tracking individuals making medical appointments across state lines, and for building movement profiles on people who have committed no crime. In Troy, a man was tracked 526 times without any record of why.

Surveillance infrastructure rarely gets dismantled once it is in place. The compromise reached in Troy this week is guardrails on a system that exists because nobody asked the public whether they wanted it.

For more on how automated surveillance is reshaping enforcement and civil liberties, see GaukMotorBuzz's ongoing coverage at gaukmotorbuzz.com/drivers-revenge.

Sources

• WAMC (Northeast Public Radio) — Troy mayor declares public safety emergency amid Flock camera debate
• WAMC — Troy officials move toward Flock cameras compromise
• Spectrum News 1 — Troy mayor declares safety emergency to keep licence plate readers operational
• CBS6 Albany — Troy mayor declares public safety emergency to keep Flock cameras operational
• The Mirror US — State of Emergency declared in NY town after police install dozens of AI cameras without permission
• Washington Post — City's AI licence plate cameras led to an uproar and a state of emergency (paywalled; facts independently verified via WAMC and Spectrum News)
• Jalopnik background — Flock Safety shady business practices
• Jalopnik — Police sued for tracking man 526 times

The original DeLorean was built in Belfast, powered by a French engine, designed by an Italian and funded by the British government. The one doing donuts in front of Samson and Goliath last week runs a Chevrolet V8 and belongs to a French drift driver from Lyon. The DeLorean has always been an unlikely coalition.

Alexandre Claudin is a Monster Energy athlete and competitive drifter, previously seen on Netflix's Hyperdrive series. His DeLorean build started life as a standard DMC-12 and has been substantially reworked around a Chevrolet LS V8 installed in the nose in place of the original PRV V6 that sat behind the rear axle in production cars, shared with the Peugeot 604, the Volvo 262C and several other forgettable saloons of the era. The conversion relocates the engine to the nose, rewrites the weight distribution entirely, and makes it properly capable of sustained oversteer rather than merely threatening it.

Earlier this month Claudin brought the car to Belfast for a tour of the city where the DMC-12 was born. The route took in City Hall, the Titanic Museum, and a mural in the city depicting the DeLorean in full Back to the Future specification with flux capacitor attached. The headline stop was in front of the Harland & Wolff dock cranes, Samson and Goliath, where Claudin put the car through its paces and left tyre marks on the ground in view of the most photographed skyline in Northern Ireland.

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The choice of backdrop is not accidental. The Titanic was built in that shipyard. It was the most ambitious industrial project Belfast had ever attempted and it ended at the bottom of the North Atlantic. The DeLorean factory opened in Dunmurry in West Belfast in 1978 on the strength of a deal John Z. DeLorean brokered with the British government, promising thousands of jobs in a city grinding through the worst years of the Troubles. The factory had separate entry gates for Catholic and Protestant workers. It produced around 9,000 cars between 1981 and 1982 before the company collapsed, DeLorean himself was arrested on cocaine trafficking charges, and the whole enterprise was declared a failure.

The film franchise that followed is the reason that failure became a cultural institution. Back to the Future made the DMC-12 the most recognisable car of its generation to people who had never sat in one, because the stainless steel body, the doors that open upward, and the general impression of something that looked like it arrived from somewhere else in time all translated perfectly to the screen. Belfast held onto that. The car is in the Ulster Transport Museum. There is a DeLorean Eurofest scheduled for June at the Stormont buildings and the old factory test track. The city claimed the car long after the company was done with it.

Claudin's V8 version is not a restoration. It is something more honest than that. The original was underpowered, unreliable, and overpriced for what it delivered dynamically. Nobody is pretending otherwise. Dropping a Chevrolet LS into the nose and pointing it at a set of cones is what you do when you want to find out what the shape was always capable of, stripped of the compromises that sank it.

Two of Belfast's most famous exports ended in disaster. One is at the bottom of the ocean. The other is doing donuts outside the cranes that built the ship.

Sources

• CarThrottle — Check Out this Drift-Spec DeLorean Ripping Around its Hometown (sole available source; used per house rules)
• Alexandre Claudin — YouTube channel
• DeLorean Eurofest 2026 — deloreanrevival.com
• Ulster Transport Museum — ireland.com listing
• Ireland Before You Die — The DeLorean Factory, Belfast

Here is what AMG engineers apparently spent years perfecting for the most powerful car the company has ever built: a playlist.

The new Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupe was unveiled on 19 May. It is genuinely extraordinary hardware. Three YASA axial flux motors, two on the rear axle and one on the front, produce 1,153 horsepower in GT 63 specification. The AMG.EA dedicated electric platform can apparently accommodate over 1,300 horsepower when someone decides to turn it all the way up. It does zero to sixty in around two seconds. It charges at 600kW. By any rational measure of what a performance machine is supposed to do, this thing does it.

And then they piped a fake V8 through the speakers and hoped nobody would notice.

AMG calls the system AMGFORCE S+. It uses over 1,600 individual audio samples, recombined in real time based on throttle inputs, speed and driving behaviour. It simulates a gearbox with nine ratios that does not exist, with paddle shifters on the wheel that generate fake upshifts, fake rev drops, fake burble on overrun. The seat motors vibrate to simulate drivetrain shudder. There is a fake tachometer on the dashboard with a fake 7,000rpm redline. The sound system activates when you plug in the charger. It makes a noise when you unlock the car. They got the sound right down to mimicking the AMG GT R's V8 bogging down and running out of revs, because apparently the aspiration here was to accurately reproduce the limitations of a combustion engine in a machine that has none.

This is not a criticism of electric vehicles. The AMG GT is extraordinarily fast. The problem is that Mercedes knows it has removed something that mattered and its solution was to build an elaborate machine for pretending it is still there.

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The soul of a performance car is not a noise. It is the relationship between what is happening mechanically and what you feel and hear as a result. A V8 sounds the way it does because eight pistons are actually firing, fuel is actually burning, valves are actually opening and closing and all of that mechanical event is escaping through an exhaust system as organised chaos. It is not decorative. It is the car telling you what it is doing. Synthetic audio is the car telling you a story about something that is not happening.

Electrek's reviewer, who was given an early test ride, called it the best fake V8 sound in the industry. That is probably true. It is also a sentence that would have sounded absurd to anyone who bought an AMG in 2005.

Other manufacturers have tried versions of this. Dodge built the Fratzonic chambered exhaust for the Charger Daytona, a physical resonator that generates actual sound pressure rather than simply broadcasting recorded noise, which at least has the virtue of being real. Hyundai's Ioniq 5 N projects sound outward as well as inward. Those are engineering responses to the same problem. What AMG has done is different in kind. It is a simulation of a previous product, down to the fake mechanical imperfections, running on top of a genuinely new one. Mercedes CEO Ola Källenius, who used to work at AMG, called it proof that AMG moves the bar rather than just meets it. The bar being referred to appears to be the fidelity of the illusion.

The GT 55 arrives at US dealers later this year with 805 horsepower. The GT 63 at 1,153 horsepower follows in early 2027. Pricing will be six figures, in line with the previous generation. You will be able to adjust how fake it sounds from the drive mode selector.

The car will be fast. It will be exciting. It will be technically impressive in ways that matter.

It will also be lying to you, constantly, about what it is. And the saddest part is that nobody at Affalterbach thinks that is a problem. They think it is a feature.

Sources

• Electrek — Mercedes unveils AMG GT EV: 1,153hp, 0-60 in 2s, 11-min charge, fake V8 noise
• Carscoops — The 1,153 HP AMG GT's Fake V8 Has To Be Heard To Be Believed
• Jalopnik — The New Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupe's Synthesized V8 Sounds Might Be The Best EV 'Engine' Noises Yet
• Wheelfront — AMG Goes Electric: 1,153 HP and a Fake V8
• Autoblog — Mercedes-AMG's Electric Super Sedan Has a Fake V8 Sound and Over 1,300 HP
• ArenaEV — Mercedes-AMG GT swaps V8 for high-tech sound and power

When stealing cars leads to stealing chart toppers, prison sentences get complicated.

Car theft is supposed to be straightforward. Break in, hotwire, drive away. But sometimes criminals stumble into crimes they never planned, and the consequences can be more severe than the original offense. The intersection of automotive crime and intellectual property theft has produced some of the strangest criminal cases on record.

Federal prosecutors secured prison sentences totaling over a decade for a cyber theft ring that targeted major record labels. Keondre Dukes received 18 months behind bars, while his accomplices Travis Scott (not the rapper) and Andre Yearwood got longer sentences. Their crime? Stealing 134 unreleased tracks from Roc Nation, Atlantic Records, and other major labels through sophisticated email phishing schemes.

The stolen music catalog was worth over $15 million according to FBI case files. Artists affected included Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake, and dozens of other A-list performers. The perpetrators used the stolen tracks to build their own music careers, selling beats and unreleased material to unsuspecting buyers.

But automotive crime produces its own brand of bizarre secondary offenses. Take Anthony Laguerre, who stole an ambulance in Boston. His joyride lasted two hours before he crashed the emergency vehicle. The Boston Globe reported he received a two-year sentence, not just for theft, but for endangering public safety by removing a critical emergency resource from service.

Florida delivered perhaps the most ironic car theft case in recent memory. A man stole a car specifically to drive to court for his driver's license suspension hearing. Police arrested him in the courthouse parking lot. The original suspension was for six months. His new charges extended his legal troubles by several years.

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These cases highlight how modern crime rarely stays in neat categories. A simple car break-in might yield a laptop containing trade secrets. A stolen phone could contain insider information worth millions. The digital age has made every vehicle a potential treasure trove of valuable data.

Music industry security has tightened considerably since the breaches. Record labels now treat unreleased tracks like state secrets, with multiple layers of digital protection and severe legal consequences for theft. The days of finding demo tapes in glove compartments might be over, but criminals continue finding creative ways to turn automotive crime into something much more serious.

Car thieves today face prosecution not just for the vehicle itself, but for everything inside it. A stolen laptop might contain corporate secrets. A taken tablet could hold personal information worth more than the car. The criminal justice system has adapted to recognize that modern theft often involves multiple types of property, each carrying its own penalties.

The music theft ring members learned this lesson the hard way. What started as digital trickery ended with federal prison time and restitution payments that will follow them for years. Their sentences reflected not just the theft itself, but the broader impact on an entire industry's security practices.

For car owners, these cases serve as reminders that vehicles have become mobile data centers. The information stored in phones, laptops, and even car infotainment systems can be worth more than the vehicle itself. Criminals know this, and prosecutors are ready to charge accordingly when digital assets disappear along with the car.

The next time someone breaks into your car, they might walk away with more than they bargained for. And if that something happens to be worth millions, their original misdemeanor just became a federal case.

Tesla's Wade Mode pressurises the battery pack, raises the suspension, and lets a Cybertruck ford shallow freshwater obstacles up to around 32 inches deep. It does not make a 6,600-pound stainless steel vehicle float.

On the evening of Monday 18 May, Grapevine Police and the Grapevine Fire Department were called to Katie's Woods Park Boat Ramp at Grapevine Lake, Texas, where a Tesla Cybertruck was sitting in the water near the shoreline. The driver, identified by CBS Texas as Jimmy Jack McDaniel, told officers he had driven the truck into the lake deliberately, intending to use Wade Mode. The truck became disabled, took on water, and McDaniel and his passenger abandoned it. The Fire Department's Water Rescue Team spent several hours recovering the vehicle, hoisting it out by crane after dark.

McDaniel was arrested and charged with operating a vehicle in a closed section of a park or lake, having no valid boat registration, and multiple water safety equipment violations. As of Tuesday he remained in Grapevine Jail. The Grapevine Police Department added a note to its statement for anyone who might be considering a similar experiment:

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The context here matters. Elon Musk has been telling Cybertruck buyers since 2022 that the vehicle would eventually be capable of crossing rivers, lakes, and seas. He posted on X that it would be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat. Tesla's own vice president of vehicle engineering, Lars Moravy, appeared on Jay Leno's Garage and floated the idea that with an outboard motor plugged into the truck's outlet, you could theoretically go boating. None of that is in the owner's manual. What is in the owner's manual is a maximum wade depth of around 32 inches from the bottom of the tyre, designed for crossing a shallow creek or flooded track section, not navigating a lake.

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Tesla's warranty reflects the manual, not Musk's posts. Water damage is not covered. This is not the first time the gap between those two positions has ended badly for a Cybertruck owner. Last year a driver in Truckee, California activated Wade Mode and got stuck, requiring California Highway Patrol assistance. The CHP's response became something of a motto for the situation: Wade Mode is not Submarine Mode. A Cybertruck in Slovakia went into a lake the same way and with the same result. The pattern is consistent enough that it now has a body of incident reports behind it.

The charges McDaniel faces include the boat registration violation, which may be the most efficient summary of what went wrong. If you drive a vehicle into a navigable lake in Texas without registering it as a watercraft, Texas law is not interested in your explanation about what the CEO said on the internet.

The truck weighed more than three tons before it took on water. It was never going anywhere but down.

Sources

• Grapevine Police Department — Official statement via Twitter/X
• CBS Texas — Driver intentionally drove Cybertruck into North Texas lake to use vehicle's "Wade Mode", police say
• WFAA — Driver jailed after driving Tesla Cybertruck into Grapevine Lake
• Electrek — Tesla Cybertruck owner believed Elon Musk when he said it could cross a lake — now he's in jail
• Carscoops — A Cybertruck Owner Just Turned Wade Mode Into Get Arrested Mode In Texas

On the afternoon of Friday 15 May 2026, Bluebird K7 rose onto the plane on Coniston Water. The last person to do that was Donald Campbell, on the morning of 4 January 1967, seconds before the boat became airborne, broke apart, and killed him.

59 years is a long time to wait for a moment.

The return was the centrepiece of the Bluebird K7 Festival, which ran from 11 to 17 May at The Boating Centre on the Cumbrian lake. The Lake District National Park Authority granted a rare speed exemption to lift Coniston's usual 10mph limit, clearing the way for K7 to run legally for the first time on home water since that January morning. The festival also fell in the 70th anniversary year of Campbell's first water speed record on the lake, set on 19 September 1956. Four of his seven records were set at Coniston.

The man at the controls was Dave Warby, an Australian water speed challenger and son of Ken Warby, who set the outright world water speed record of 317.59mph at Blowering Dam in 1978. That record has never been broken. Ken died in February 2023. Dave is currently developing Spirit of Australia II with the aim of surpassing his father's mark. The symmetry of asking him to pilot K7 was not lost on anyone. Bluebird K7 was the direct inspiration for Ken Warby's record attempt. The two families have been intertwined since Campbell's chief engineer Leo Villa corresponded with Ken during the original Spirit of Australia build. On stepping into the cockpit, Dave Warby said he had felt both Donald Campbell and his father alongside him.

The week did not unfold smoothly. K7 was not lowered into the water until four hours after the advertised start on the opening day, drawing frustration from the thousands who had gathered on the shoreline, some of whom had waited decades for the sight. Early runs were slow familiarisation passes. Then the boat's new Orpheus 101 engine, a recent replacement, revealed a problem with its fuel control limiters. Engineers worked through Wednesday night. On Thursday, K7 made a single slow run before being pulled from the water for further work.

Friday afternoon settled it. Dave Warby took the controls at 16:00 BST. K7 came off the plane, reached a reported 100 mph, and Warby backed off for further checks. It was not the 150 mph the festival had been promoting. It did not matter.

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Campbell's daughter Gina was on the shoreline through much of the week. She had described her father as someone who would have been delighted at the speed exemption approval that made the festival possible. Her father's mascot, the teddy bear Mr Whoppit, was back in position in the cockpit for the return. It was in the cockpit during the 1967 crash. It was found floating on the surface after Campbell died.

Campbell's nephew Don Wales watched K7 touch the water on the opening day:

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K7 had been raised from the lake bed in 2001, along with Campbell's remains, and rebuilt over six years by a volunteer team on Tyneside. It ran for the first time since 1967 in 2018, at Loch Fad on the Isle of Bute. A protracted ownership dispute followed, settled out of court in 2024, with the boat returned to the Ruskin Museum at Coniston and housed in a dedicated hangar. The festival was the museum's first opportunity to run K7 on the water it was built to conquer.

Ruskin Museum chairman Jeff Carroll said after the opening day that the team hoped to inspire a new generation of engineers, and to remind local schoolchildren that a place like Coniston could be the site of significant world history.

In the 1960s, Campbell spent weeks waiting at Coniston for calm water, with mechanical problems arriving whenever conditions finally did. Crowds came anyway. Some things do not change.

The faster runs are still to come. That story is not finished yet.

Sources

• Ruskin Museum — Pilots announced for the return of Donald Campbell's Bluebird K7 to Coniston Water in 2026
• Powerboat News — Bluebird K7 Returns to Coniston Water for First Time Since 1967
• Powerboat News — Bluebird K7 Planes on Coniston Water for First Time Since 1967
• Powerboat News — Bluebird K7: Organisers Defend Day One at Coniston
• Powerboat News — Bluebird K7 Festival 2026: Coniston Water Guide
• Octane Magazine — Donald Campbell's Bluebird K7 hydroplane cleared for 2026 Coniston Water return
• Magneto Magazine — Bluebird K7 hydroplane tipped for historic Coniston Water run in May 2026
• Official festival site — Bluebird K7 The Festival

Craft beer has quietly made the maths of drink driving much harder to get right. Most drivers have not caught up.

New research by temporary insurance provider Tempcover has found that 55 per cent of UK motorists have no idea how strong a modern IPA can be, or what that means for their ability to drive legally afterwards. It is a knowledge gap with consequences that go well beyond a breathalyser conversation on the roadside.

IPA has become the most popular beer style in the UK, the first choice for 52 per cent of drinkers according to Tempcover's data. But the range of what falls under that label is enormous. A traditional English IPA can sit anywhere between 3.7 and 7.0 per cent ABV. An American Double IPA pushes that to between 7.5 and 9.5 per cent. That is not a minor variation. A pint of 4.0 per cent lager contains around 2.3 units of alcohol. A pint of 7.0 per cent IPA comes in at close to four units. The legal limit in England, Wales and Northern Ireland is 80 milligrams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. One strong IPA, depending on body weight, metabolism and what you have eaten, can put a driver over it.

Tempcover's head of marketing put the problem in direct terms:

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The timing matters. England and Wales are currently operating under the highest drink drive threshold in Europe, a limit that has not been revised since it was set in the 1960s. That is about to change. The UK government's Road Safety Strategy, published in January 2026, has launched a formal consultation on lowering the limit to 50 milligrams per 100 millilitres of blood, matching Scotland and bringing England and Wales in line with most of Europe. At that threshold, even a single pint of standard strength beer could push a lighter person over. A strong IPA would not be a borderline case. It would be over before the glass was empty.

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The RAC's own data, based on a Freedom of Information request to the DVLA, shows 220,638 motorists currently hold drink driving endorsements on their licences. A conviction stays on the record for 11 years, can double or triple insurance premiums, and some standard insurers will refuse cover altogether. The government's Road Safety Strategy consultation also includes a proposal for an effectively zero limit of 20 milligrams for new and young drivers, effectively making any alcohol before driving off the table entirely.

The beer market has changed enormously in a decade. The ABV range available on tap at any given pub is wider than most drivers appreciate. The session IPA at 4.2 per cent and the hazy double at 8.5 per cent can look identical in the glass. Asking the bar staff what is in it before you drive home is no longer overcautious. Under the proposed new limits, it is essential.

The only number that actually matters is zero.

Sources

• Motoring Research — One pint of IPA could put motorists over drink-drive limit
• Tempcover research (via Motoring Research, as above)
• RAC — Drink driving in the UK
• UK Government Road Safety Strategy consultation — Proposed changes to penalties for motoring offences
• Carwow — Mandatory eye tests to new drink-drive limits: what the UK's road safety shake-up means for you
• Stance Auto — UK Drink Drive Limit 2026: One Drink Could Soon Be Enough to Lose Your Licence

Nobody went into this war with their eyes shut.

On February 28, the United States and Israel struck Iran. Within days, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. Brent crude surged past $100 a barrel. Gasoline prices in the United States climbed by more than $1 a gallon in a single month. As of the middle of May, the average American is paying $4.51 for a regular gallon of unleaded. A new analysis from Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs puts the additional fuel bill for American consumers since the war began at more than $40 billion, over $300 per household, and the meter is still running.

That is not a side effect. That is a foreseeable consequence of a decision that was made anyway.

The Strait of Hormuz is the most critical single chokepoint in global energy supply. Around 20 per cent of the world's seaborne oil and a substantial volume of liquefied natural gas pass through it. Military strategists, energy economists, and intelligence agencies all knew exactly what a war with Iran would do to that waterway. Iran's response was not a surprise. It was the obvious move, anticipated for years in planning documents, think tank papers and congressional briefings. The decision to strike Iran was made with that consequence fully visible on the table.

So who benefits?

The six largest Western oil companies, Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Exxon and TotalEnergies are on course to collectively pocket $94 billion in profit in 2026, according to an Oxfam International analysis. That is an increase of nearly $37 million a day compared to their 2025 earnings. BP called its first quarter 2026 performance "exceptional." Global oil prices have soared more than 50 per cent since the conflict began. Governments that levy fuel taxes calculated as a percentage of the pump price collect more revenue the higher the price climbs, without changing a single line of tax code. And anyone who placed the right trades in energy futures in the weeks before February 28 has had a very good spring.

None of this is unique to this war. We watched the same pattern in 2022 with Russia and Ukraine. We watched it with Covid, where the disruption of supply chains and the pricing power handed to certain industries translated into wealth transfers of a scale that still have not been fully reckoned with. The mechanism is consistent: a crisis arrives, ordinary people absorb the cost, a concentrated group of players absorbs the gain.

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The Brown University researchers who produced the $40 billion figure put it plainly: energy price shocks of this kind function as a broad, unacknowledged tax on households. The difference between an acknowledged tax and an unacknowledged one is that the acknowledged kind comes with a vote. Nobody asked American drivers whether they would like to contribute $300 to cover the fuel cost implications of a military operation conducted in their name.

Asked last week whether the financial strain on American households was influencing his approach to negotiations with Iran, President Trump answered: "Not even a little bit."

There is an argument, a real one that the Strait disruption reflects genuine supply reduction and that higher prices are an inevitable market response. The IEA has called this the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. The closure is real. The reduced tanker traffic is real. Producers in the Gulf have curtailed output because they have run out of storage. These are not manufactured numbers.

But the scale of corporate profit accumulation during a period of civilian pain is also real. Oxfam's figures show those six companies earning close to $3,000 a second. At the same time, BP has cut investment in renewable energy. Shell has watered down its 2030 climate targets. Exxon has reduced planned spending on cleaner energy projects. Crisis, it turns out, is not universally bad for business.

The $40 billion figure will keep climbing through the summer driving season. Analysts at OilPrice.com already have the running total closer to $45 billion. Prices could reach $5 a gallon if the Strait remains effectively blocked through the northern summer. Spirit Airlines has ceased operations, citing fuel costs. Jet fuel is up 95 per cent since the war began. The cost of groceries, freight and consumer goods is following energy prices upward through every supply chain they touch.

Wars have always been expensive for the people who don't start them. What has changed is how precisely we can now measure who ends up with the bill ... and who ends up with the money.

Sources

• Brown University Watson Institute — The U.S. Energy Cost of the Iran War
• Brown University Costs of War PDF — Research Brief: The U.S. Energy Cost of the Iran War, May 18, 2026
• Oxfam International analysis via Fortune — Activists call out soaring oil and gas profits as energy companies cash in on the Iran war
• Oxfam / CNN — Giant fossil fuel companies made about $12,000 in the time it took you to read this headline
• ABC News — Are oil companies profiting from the Iran war? Experts explain
• Al Jazeera — US faces rising costs with Iran war driving energy prices, inflation higher
• Al Jazeera — Why the oil and gas price shock from the Iran war won't just fade away
• Brookings Institution — Another oil crisis is here. How will American drivers respond?
• OilPrice.com — Higher Oil Prices Have Cost U.S. Consumers $45 Billion Since Iran War Began
• Wikipedia — 2026 Iran war fuel crisis
• Common Dreams — Trump's Iran War Has Already Cost Americans Over $40 Billion Extra on Gas and Diesel

University research shows machine learning can extend battery life by 22.3% without slowing down charging times.

Your electric car's most expensive component just got a reprieve. Researchers at the University of Warwick have developed artificial intelligence software that can extend EV battery life by nearly a quarter, potentially saving owners thousands in replacement costs while actually speeding up charging.

The breakthrough comes from WMG (Warwick Manufacturing Group), where Dr. Truong Quang Dinh and his team put lithium-ion battery cells through more than 1,700 charging cycles under conditions ranging from Arctic cold to desert heat. Published in Nature Communications, their findings show the AI system doesn't just preserve battery health but actively improves charging performance by 30%.

The technology works by monitoring three critical factors in real time: battery temperature, voltage, and current draw. Unlike conventional charging systems that follow preset patterns regardless of battery condition, this machine learning algorithm adapts its approach based on each individual battery's degradation fingerprint. A five year old battery with 200,000 miles gets treated differently than a showroom fresh pack.

Professor James Marco, who directs WMG's Energy Innovation Centre, explains the system uses reinforcement learning to make split second charging decisions. The AI essentially learns what each battery needs by watching how it responds to different charging profiles, then optimizes future sessions accordingly.

The implications hit hardest in the wallet. Most EV batteries retain about 80% of their original capacity after eight to ten years of use. When replacement time comes, owners face bills between $5,000 and $15,000 depending on their vehicle. A 22.3% extension in battery life could push that replacement decision well into the second decade of ownership.

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The Warwick team tested their algorithm across temperature extremes from minus 10 to 45 degrees Celsius, conditions that typically accelerate battery degradation. Even under these harsh scenarios, the AI maintained its performance advantage. The system proved particularly effective at managing the lithium plating that occurs during fast charging, a major contributor to capacity loss.

Unlike hardware solutions that require new charging infrastructure, this breakthrough arrives as software. Existing charging networks could theoretically implement the technology through firmware updates, making it accessible to millions of current EV owners rather than just future buyers.

The research addresses the automotive industry's dirty secret about EV adoption. Range anxiety gets the headlines, but battery replacement costs represent the real long term barrier for mainstream buyers. A Toyota Prius battery replacement runs about $4,000. Tesla Model S owners face bills approaching $20,000 when their packs fail outside warranty.

Dr. Dinh's team isn't the first to apply AI to battery management, but their approach differs by focusing on charging optimization rather than just monitoring. Previous systems could tell you when your battery was degrading but couldn't do much about it. This algorithm actively intervenes to slow that degradation while maintaining charging speed.

The technology faces the usual path from laboratory to driveway. Automakers and charging network operators would need to integrate the software into their systems. Regulatory approval processes vary by market. The question becomes whether the industry moves fast enough to help current EV owners or whether the benefits remain locked to future vehicle generations.

For EV owners sweating their next battery health report, this research offers genuine hope. The difference between replacing a battery at year eight versus year eleven could determine whether electric vehicles become genuinely affordable transportation or remain expensive toys for early adopters willing to absorb the depreciation hit.

Sources: Nature Communications journal, University of Warwick WMG research division, The Drive

The dashcam footage lasts about two minutes. It ends with a toddler climbing out of an inverted car and trotting toward a state trooper.

On the afternoon of May 2, Arkansas State Police Trooper Teddy Henderson clocked a red Dodge Charger doing 80 mph in a 55 mph zone on State Highway 118 near the small town of Joiner in Mississippi County. He activated his lights. The driver, Thalia Jones, aged 23, hit the accelerator instead.

What followed was a pursuit through rural roads that ended when the trooper executed a Tactical Vehicle Intervention, placing his front bumper against the centre of the Charger's rear bumper and accelerating to the right. Jones lost control. The car ran over a sign and a mailbox, slid across the roadway and flipped onto its roof in a field.

The trooper held the overturned vehicle at gunpoint and waited for backup. Then a voice came from inside the wreck.

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A door opened. A boy of three climbed out and ran toward the officer.

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Jones crawled out shortly after. Both were medically cleared at the scene. The boy was released to another adult. When Jones explained to the trooper that she ran because she didn't have a licence, he did not take it well.

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Jones was arrested and charged with speeding, reckless driving, driving with a suspended licence, child endangerment in the first degree, and unauthorised use of another person's vehicle to commit a crime. That last charge arose because the Charger belonged to her boyfriend, not her. Arkansas State Police also notified the state's Child Abuse Hotline following the incident. The criminal charges will not be the end of it.

The dashcam footage went viral almost immediately after Arkansas State Police released it. It is not hard to see why. The sequence of a child emerging from a car resting on its roof, walking unharmed toward a trooper with weapon drawn, is the kind of image that cuts through a news cycle. The trooper's voice, calm and quiet when he speaks to the boy, then barely contained fury when he turns to the mother, does a lot of the editorial work on its own.

A suspended licence. An 80 mph sprint. A child in the back seat with no say in any of it.

Sources

• Arkansas State Police incident report via KARK — 3-year-old walks away from rollover crash during Arkansas State Police pursuit
• KATV (ABC Arkansas) — VIDEO: Toddler walks away from rollover crash; mom arrested
• TMZ — Watch Arkansas Mom's Wild Police Chase With Child Inside, on Dashcam Video
• NBC DFW — 'Stupidest thing I've ever seen': Video shows toddler escaping overturned car following mom's police chase
• Fox Carolina / KXII — Video shows toddler emerging from overturned car after trooper pursuit crash

For years, police could arrest you for stealing a car but had to hand back the gadget you used to do it. That loophole is closed.

The Crime and Policing Act 2026 received Royal Assent on 29 April, and among its 70-plus measures is a provision that directly targets the electronics driving the modern car theft epidemic. It is now a criminal offence in England and Wales to make, possess, import, adapt, supply or offer to supply any electronic device that could be used to steal a vehicle or its contents. Conviction carries an unlimited fine, up to five years in prison, or both.

The devices in question are the small, often disguised gadgets that have made keyless car theft devastatingly efficient. Signal relay, repeater and amplifier devices pick up the radio signal from a key fob inside a home, boost it across the gap to the car outside, and trick the vehicle into believing the owner is standing right there with the key. The car unlocks. It starts. The thieves are gone in under a minute without breaking a window or touching a door. Signal jammers serve a parallel purpose, blocking fob signals to prevent the car from locking properly and masking the location of a vehicle tracker after the car has been driven away.

The Metropolitan Police have estimated that electronic devices are involved in more than 60 per cent of car thefts in London. Nationally, tens of thousands of keyless vehicles are taken this way every year.

Until now, the possession of these devices was technically legal. Police could only act once a theft had occurred and could prove the items had been used. Organised gangs exploited that gap with ease. The new law shifts the burden. Under the Act, police can seize devices where the carrier cannot demonstrate a legitimate purpose, without needing to tie them to a completed crime. For equipment with essentially no lawful civilian application, that is a meaningful change.

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The legislation also hands police a new power to enter premises without a warrant where stolen goods, including vehicles and phones, have been tracked by GPS. Previously, recovering a tracked stolen car required time to obtain a warrant. The new provisions require only that an officer has reasonable belief the goods are on the premises and that a senior officer has authorised entry.

Thatcham Research, which has spent more than three decades working alongside government, insurers and manufacturers on vehicle security, welcomed the Act but urged caution about treating it as a complete solution.

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Thatcham's chief research and operations officer Richard Billyeald added that the casual theft and joyriding of the 1980s and 1990s has all but disappeared, with manufacturers having made vehicles far harder for amateurs to steal. The problem now is a different animal entirely: heavily resourced, internationally connected organised criminal networks who combine specialist electronics with sophisticated logistics to move stolen vehicles and parts across borders.

The RAC noted that a quarter of UK drivers have suffered some form of vehicle crime, and supported the new powers. JLR, one of the most targeted manufacturers, has already invested £10 million in preventative technology and confirmed that relay attack resilience was built into its new generation Range Rover and Range Rover Sport, with security updates rolled out free to owners of 2018 onwards models.

The devices are often disguised as bluetooth speakers or children's toys to evade detection. The new law does not require prosecutors to prove the item was ever used. Being found in possession of one without a credible legitimate purpose is now enough.

The law is long overdue. Whether enforcement matches the legislation is another question entirely.

Sources

• UK Government — Crime and Policing Act 2026
• UK Government — Biggest shake up in decades to tackle local crime
• UK Parliament — Crime and Policing Bill receives Royal Assent
• Thatcham Research — Crime and Policing Act 2026 strengthens UK vehicle security
• Fleet World — New UK law combats vehicle theft
• What Car? — Keyless car theft devices banned in new law
• Regit — Why keyless car theft just got harder in the UK

The Department of Justice has subpoenaed Apple, Google, Amazon and Walmart for the personal data of at least 100,000 people who downloaded or bought a car tuning app. You don't have to have done anything wrong to be on that list.

The target is EZ Lynk, a Cayman Islands company that makes the Auto Agent app and a matching dongle that plugs into a vehicle's OBD-II port. The DOJ first sued EZ Lynk back in 2021, accusing the company of manufacturing and selling defeat devices designed to strip emissions controls from diesel vehicles in violation of the Clean Air Act. EZ Lynk denies that characterisation, saying its products serve legitimate purposes including performance monitoring, software updates, and standard diagnostics.

Four years later, the case is still grinding through the courts and the government wants witnesses. Federal prosecutors issued subpoenas to Apple and Google in March and April 2026, demanding names, addresses, phone numbers and account data for everyone who downloaded the Auto Agent app. Amazon and Walmart received separate requests for the names and addresses of customers who bought the physical hardware. The total number of people caught in that net is at least 100,000, and could run considerably higher.

The DOJ's argument is that anyone who handed over personal information to EZ Lynk and clicked through its terms and conditions no longer holds "a cognizable privacy interest as to that information." In plain English: you agreed to it, so you can't complain now.

EZ Lynk's lawyers are pushing back hard. In a joint court filing earlier this month, they called the requests a serious overstep.

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Privacy advocates at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Electronic Privacy Information Center have raised concerns that innocent users who downloaded the app purely for legitimate diagnostics could find themselves swept up in a federal investigation through no fault of their own. Apple and Google are reportedly preparing to contest the subpoenas in court.

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EZ Lynk also revealed in its court filing that this is not the first time the government has come after its customers. The company says that back in 2019, the government requested a backdoor into the EZ Lynk system itself. That request went nowhere.

There is no question that some EZ Lynk users have deployed the hardware to delete diesel particulate filters and exhaust gas recirculation systems and then reflash the engine control unit to cover the changes. Evidence of that is spread across forums and social media. But the app has a large legitimate user base too, and the DOJ's sweep does not distinguish between the two.

The case has implications that reach well beyond one tuning company. If the government can use civil litigation discovery to compel Apple and Google to unmask over 100,000 app store customers at once, the app you downloaded last week could become a federal paper trail whenever prosecutors decide they need one.

Sources

• Gizmodo — DOJ Is Asking Apple and Google to Hand Over Data on 100,000 Users of a Car App
• The Drive — DOJ Orders Apple, Google to Hand Over OBDII App User Data in Emissions Probe
• ppc.land — DOJ demands Apple, Google and Amazon unmask 100,000+ car app users
• Inc. — Amazon, Apple, and Google Subpoenaed in DOJ Case About Car Emissions
• DOJ original suit (2021) — Manhattan U.S. Attorney Sues EZ Lynk

This millennium has produced two genuinely confronting automotive launches. One was the Cybertruck. The other, from a company that used to make the most beautiful cars on earth, is somehow worse.

I live on a farm. We are actually looking at getting a few pigs. And I say this with genuine affection for the animal: the moment I saw the Type 01 in its Miami Pink debut colours, I knew exactly what I was looking at. Round snout up front. Wide, soft haunches. A fat round rear end that just sort of... sits there. A complexion that Jaguar's own people called Miami Pink, though the brass tones that inspired it apparently age into a colour that brass takes on when it oxidises. Sure. Whatever they want to call it. I know what I see.

From this point forward, I will be calling the Jaguar Type 01 by its proper name. The Pig.

And before anyone writes in: I love pigs. Smart animals. Curious. Expressive. None of that makes The Pig a good Jaguar.

Let me be clear about something. The Cybertruck was a shock, yes. A stainless steel wedge that looked like it had been designed by someone who had only ever seen a truck described in a text file. But Tesla was never a company with a design legacy to betray. Elon turned up with something mad and angular and nobody was surprised because Tesla had never given anyone reason to expect otherwise.

Jaguar is the company that made the E-Type. Enzo Ferrari stood at the Geneva Motor Show in 1961 and said, out loud, that a British car was the most beautiful in the world. That car wore a Jaguar badge. The Museum of Modern Art in New York put one in its permanent collection. Not as a vehicle. As a work of art.

The same company has now revealed a production car with a glassless rear end, a blunt upright snout, a body that squats wide and low like something that would be comfortable in mud, and a flagship colour called Miami Pink. Jaguar describes its design philosophy as "Exuberant Modernism." I would describe the result as a pig in a very expensive trench coat.

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Now. In fairness, Jaguar has stumbled before. The X-Type was a Ford Mondeo wearing a cravat. TIME Magazine put it on its list of the 50 worst cars ever made. The S-Type wore its retro styling like a costume that never quite fit. These were bad years, built under Ford ownership, and they embarrassed the badge. But even at the worst of it, you could still see a design team trying to be Jaguar.

The Pig is not trying to be Jaguar. Managing Director Rawdon Glover has said plainly that the powertrain is "about 13th on the list" for the buyers they are targeting. Jaguar has acknowledged it expects to lose 85 percent of its existing customer base in this transition. That is not a rebrand. That is a company walking out on itself and leaving a note on the kitchen table.

The numbers are real enough. Over 1,000 horsepower from three motors. A 120 kWh battery on 850V architecture. More than 400 miles of claimed range. Prices starting somewhere north of £100,000 and heading toward £150,000. It will be built in the UK, revealed in full later in 2026, and deliveries will start in 2027. Prototypes were trotting around Monaco this week for the Formula E round, wearing camouflage that, if anything, made the shape look more appealing than it will at full reveal.

Some reviewers who have ridden in prototypes describe a car that feels genuinely fast and capable. I believe them. The Pig may well drive beautifully.

It is still The Pig.

So, readers, I hope you'll join me. When someone mentions the Jaguar Type 01, you know what to call it. There is a long and noble tradition in motoring of giving cars the names they actually deserve. The Jaguar E-Type was called the E-Type. This one has earned something more descriptive.

The Pig it is.

Sources:

• Jaguar Media — Type 01 Name Announcement
• Jaguar Media — Type 00 Unveil, Miami Art Week
• Motor1 — Jaguar's New EV Finally Has A Name: Type 01
• Dezeen — Exclusive photos, Jaguar Type 00 at Miami Art Week
• Autoblog — Jaguar Type 01 Is the Official Name of the Car That Will Lead Jaguar's Reboot
• TIME Magazine — 2001 Jaguar X-Type, The 50 Worst Cars of All Time

The short answer is yes, sometimes. The longer answer depends entirely on where in the engine you are planning to put one.

If you have ever gone looking for a gasket on a discontinued model or an obscure import and come up empty, the idea of simply printing a replacement is appealing. A 3D printer, a roll of the right filament, and a CAD file of the original part sounds like it should solve the problem. In some situations, it does. In others, it will make the situation considerably worse.

The material that makes 3D printed gaskets viable for automotive use is TPU, thermoplastic polyurethane. It is a flexible elastomer that can be melted and extruded through a standard FDM printer, which natural rubber cannot. TPU is resistant to abrasion, oil and petrol exposure, and weather, and it compresses and rebounds in a way that allows it to form a genuine seal against a mating surface. It is not rubber, but it behaves like rubber in many conditions that matter.

The conditions that matter are temperature and pressure. TPU has limits on both, and those limits determine which gaskets are candidates for printing and which are not.

A valve cover gasket sits above the engine, contains oil splash at relatively low pressure, and operates in temperatures that rarely exceed 120 degrees Celsius during normal running. A water pump gasket deals with coolant at modest pressure and similar temperatures. An oil pan gasket is exposed to hot oil but again at low pressure. These are reasonable candidates. Plenty of mechanics and restorers have printed TPU replacements for exactly these applications and reported good results, particularly for older vehicles where factory gaskets are simply no longer available.

A head gasket is not a candidate. It sits between the block and the head, seals combustion gases at pressures that can exceed 100 bar during firing, and faces temperatures well above what TPU can sustain without deforming. The same logic applies to exhaust manifold gaskets, which operate in direct proximity to exhaust gas temperatures that would destroy any thermoplastic filament currently available for desktop printers. Printing either of those and expecting them to hold is optimistic to the point of being dangerous.

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There is a secondary consideration beyond the material itself, which is the surface finish that FDM printing produces. Standard FDM printers lay filament in layers, and that layered surface is inherently rougher than a moulded rubber gasket. On a lightly loaded, smooth mating surface, that roughness may not matter much. On a precision machined surface under high clamping force, the layered texture of a printed gasket can create leak paths. Industrial printers using SLS (selective laser sintering) processes produce a smoother, more consistent surface and are used commercially to produce TPU seals for pump and automotive applications, but that process is well beyond what most people have at home.

For the DIY mechanic, the practical rule is straightforward. If the original gasket was made of rubber and the application involves modest temperature, modest pressure, and oil or coolant rather than combustion gas, a TPU print is worth attempting. Print slowly, around 10 to 20 millimetres per second, use a direct drive extruder if available, and test fit before installation. If the original gasket was a multi layer steel type, graphite composite, or any kind of fire ring, do not print a replacement. Source a correct part, wait for one, or fabricate one from sheet gasket material using the old gasket as a template.

3D printing is a genuine tool for keeping old cars on the road when factory parts are gone. It is not a universal substitute for knowing what a gasket is actually doing.

Sources:

• Jalopnik — Can You 3D Print Gaskets That Actually Work?
• 3D Print Utopia — Can You Make 3D Printed Gaskets?
• Hackaday — Gaskets, Can They Be 3D Printed?
• RapidMade — Custom 3D Printed Rubber and Elastomer Parts
• PROTIQ — 3D Printed Seals

The company that makes diggers is back on the salt flats. This time it is burning hydrogen.

Twenty years ago, a Staffordshire construction equipment manufacturer did something nobody expected. JCB built a land speed car, took it to the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, and set a diesel land speed record of 350.092mph that has never been beaten. The driver was RAF Wing Commander Andy Green, the only person in history to break the sound barrier on land, having piloted the jet powered Thrust SSC to 763.035mph in 1997. Now JCB is going back, Green is going back, and this time the fuel is hydrogen.

The car is called the Hydromax. It is 32 feet long and was built over five years at a cost of £100 million, developed with Prodrive, the Oxfordshire engineering firm behind some of the most capable rally and motorsport machinery on earth. Two hydrogen combustion engines sit at its core, each producing around 800hp in record trim, combining for a total output of 1,579bhp. Those engines are mechanically close to units that now power production JCB diggers, with chief engineer Lee Harper telling Autocar the internals are "very similar." The same engines produce around 80bhp each in standard form. Getting from 80 to 800 is a matter of getting fuel and air to mix properly at extreme pressure, according to Harper, and the Hydromax achieves that with bespoke intercoolers, radiators and racing specification turbochargers.

Power goes to all four wheels through a twin transmission and clutch system. The body has been refined for aerodynamic stability at speeds the previous car was not designed to exceed. Every suspension component, traction control setting and camera placement has been stress and simulation tested before a wheel turns on salt.

The record the Hydromax is primarily chasing is its own predecessor's. Lord Bamford, JCB's chairman, has stated the aim plainly: beat 350mph. Beyond that sits the existing hydrogen land speed record of 302.877mph, set by the Buckeye Bullet 2 fuel cell vehicle in 2009, and the hydrogen combustion record of 185.5mph set by BMW's H2R prototype in 2004. The Hydromax is not competing in the fuel cell category. It burns hydrogen in a combustion chamber, which is a different and more directly relevant technology for the construction industry JCB serves.

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UK testing begins next month. The team then heads to Bonneville Speedweek, running from 1 to 7 August, where competitors from around the world gather to chase records on the salt. Official FIA record runs will follow immediately after. The available track at Bonneville is now nine miles long, two miles shorter than in 2006. JCB says the Hydromax's superior power to weight ratio over the Dieselmax will compensate.

Green, who will be 64 when the car makes its attempt, said:

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Lord Bamford put the broader point this way:

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JCB has been running hydrogen diggers on commercial construction sites since 2025, making it the first company to deploy hydrogen combustion machinery outside a test environment anywhere in the world. The Hydromax is not separate from that programme. It is the sharp end of it.

A digger maker going 350mph on a salt flat to prove a point about heavy equipment emissions is, objectively, one of the better things happening in the automotive world right now.

Sources:

• Autocar — JCB targets new speed record with 32 foot-long, 1579bhp Hydromax
• JCB official — Introducing the JCB Hydromax
• Auto Express — Insane JCB Hydromax targets 350mph
• Top Gear — JCB is back with the Hydromax: can it hit 400mph?

A generation of mechanics learned their trade with instruments that would mystify today's technicians.

Walk into any modern auto shop and you'll find diagnostic computers worth more than entire tool collections from decades past. But buried in the back corners of old garages, wrapped in oil-stained cloth and gathering dust, lie the instruments that once defined automotive mastery. These aren't just tools. They're archaeological evidence of an era when fixing cars required intimate knowledge of mechanical systems that no longer exist.

The carburetor synchronization tool might be the most foreign concept to contemporary mechanics. Before fuel injection conquered the automotive world, performance engines often ran multiple carburettors that had to work in perfect harmony. Motorcycle mechanics and sports car specialists wielded these devices like tuning forks, using mercury columns or vacuum gauges to ensure each carburetor delivered precisely the same fuel mixture. The tool itself resembled a medical instrument more than automotive equipment, with delicate glass tubes and rubber hoses connecting to individual carburetor throats.

Even more specialized were float level gauges, precision instruments that measured carburetor float height to within thousandths of an inch. Set the float too high and the engine would flood. Too low and it would starve for fuel. The gauge required removing the carburetor top and carefully positioning a graduated rod against the float mechanism. Modern mechanics dealing with electronic fuel injection have never encountered anything remotely similar.

Ignition timing in the points and condenser era demanded its own arsenal of now obsolete tools. The dwell meter measured the electrical angle during which ignition points remained closed, typically reading 28 to 32 degrees for V8 engines. Point gap feeler gauges, razor thin metal strips usually set to 0.016 inches for most American cars, determined the physical separation between contact points. Get either measurement wrong and the engine would misfire, backfire, or refuse to start entirely.

The timing light with advance capability represents perhaps the most sophisticated of these vanished instruments. Unlike basic strobe timing lights, these units could display not just initial timing but the complete advance curve as engine RPM increased. Mechanics could verify that centrifugal weights and vacuum diaphragms were functioning correctly, adjustments that modern computer controlled ignition systems handle automatically.

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Before 12 volt electrical systems became standard in the late 1950s, mechanics carried 6 volt test lights and specialized equipment for the lower voltage systems. Battery maintenance involved hydrometers, glass tubes with weighted floats that tested the specific gravity of battery acid to determine charge levels. These instruments required handling corrosive electrolyte that could blind or burn, a far cry from today's sealed maintenance free batteries.

Valve adjustment demanded its own category of tools when solid lifter engines ruled the roads. Mechanics used feeler gauges and specialized wrenches to set valve lash, typically to specifications like 0.012 inches intake and 0.018 inches exhaust for small block Chevrolet engines. Miss these adjustments and valves would burn or the engine would develop a distinctive ticking noise that marked sloppy workmanship.

Cooling system diagnosis required radiator pressure testers, hand pump devices that could pressurize the entire cooling system to locate leaks. Antifreeze protection levels were measured with hydrometers calibrated to show freeze protection temperatures. Thermostat testing involved specialized containers with built in thermometers where mechanics could verify that thermostats opened at their rated temperatures, usually 160 to 195 degrees Fahrenheit depending on the application.

The brake system tools of yesteryear would seem particularly archaic to modern technicians accustomed to disc brakes and ABS systems. Brake shoe arc grinders contoured replacement linings to match drum curvature exactly. Wheel cylinder hones, essentially flexible shaft mounted stones, restored cylinder bore surfaces that had developed ridges from corrosion or wear. Brake drum micrometers measured internal drum diameter to determine if drums could be safely turned on a lathe or needed replacement.

These tools didn't disappear because they were inadequate. They vanished because the automotive systems they served evolved beyond recognition. Fuel injection eliminated carburettors. Electronic ignition made points and condensers obsolete. Hydraulic valve lifters ended the need for valve adjustments. Sealed cooling systems reduced maintenance requirements.

Yet something was lost in this technological progression. The old tools demanded understanding of underlying mechanical principles. A mechanic who could properly synchronize multiple carburettors understood fuel metering in ways that scanning trouble codes cannot teach. The intimate knowledge required to set ignition timing by ear and feel created craftsmen who could diagnose problems that sophisticated computers might miss.

Today's automotive technicians are undoubtedly more efficient and their diagnostic capabilities far exceed what any timing light or dwell meter could provide. But those oil stained tool rolls gathering dust in forgotten corners of old garages tell the story of an era when fixing cars was as much art as science, and when mechanical sympathy meant the difference between a running engine and an expensive pile of metal.

Research sources: Classic automotive repair manuals, vintage tool catalogs, and technical documentation from the Society of Automotive Engineers archives.