Jeep just mushed together a 1970s Cherokee with a modern hybrid Wrangler

This isn’t an early April Fool’s gag. Jeep just unveiled a mashup of a 1978 Cherokee with a 2022 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon 4xe, a higher-end hybrid SUV, to create a Frankenstein vehicle that is heavy both on delicious retro looks and modern performance metrics. The 1978 Jeep Cherokee 4xe Concept vehicle is an old-school two-door affair with a modern Starburst yellow paint job that could actually be mistaken for a lovingly cared-for, decades-old vehicle.

Underneath the hood is where all of the modern technology resides. For the uninitiated, 4xe vehicles are 4x4 plug-in hybrid electric SUVs, so there are “two electric motors, a high-voltage battery pack and a high-tech 2.0-liter turbocharged I-4 engine,” as Jeep describes it. An eight-speed automatic transmission and custom 37-inch tires wrapped around 17-inch “slotted mag” style wheels round out the design. The interior is also a custom job, with low-back bucket seats trimmed in leather, a four-point safety cage instead of a rear bench seat and a rear cargo space complete with a full-size spare tire.

This is just one of many concept vehicles Jeep unveiled as part of its annual Easter Jeep Safari event held in Moab, UT, where the company likes to show off some wild prototypes. The other highlight is the fully-electric Magneto 3.0 Wrangler prototype, based on the two-door 2020 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. It features a custom-built electric motor that operates up to 6,000 rpm connected to a six-speed manual transmission. That’s right, this EV is a stick shift.

Jeep Wrangler Magneto 3.0 Concept car.
Jeep

Jeep has been messing with this Magneto EV concept for a few years, but this year’s version more than doubles the peak amps available in the propulsion system and offers a 20 percent increase in range. The motor delivers up to 900 pounds of torque and 650 horsepower.

These are concept/prototype vehicles, so you can’t walk into a local showroom and try one out, though you could see them in person if you are in Utah from April 1st to April 9th. Jeep has been making massive inroads lately in the hybrid and EV space, making good so far on its promise to release hybrid versions of each of its primary models by 2025.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/jeep-just-mushed-together-a-1970s-cherokee-with-a-modern-hybrid-wrangler-193056948.html?src=rss

ASUS’ high-fashion gaming tablet is a must-have for hot dog vendors everywhere

Have you ever wanted a gaming tablet that coordinates with street-style fashion? No? You're getting one anyway. Hypebeastreports that ASUS is teaming up with German label Acronym to release the special edition ROG Flow Z13-ACRNM RMT02 gaming tablet. The hybrid PC includes a chassis platform that both protects the machine and lets you attach slings that attach to Acronym jackets, like one that hangs the system off your chest. If you just have to play a game before you sit down, you can — although you will look like you should be selling hot dogs at a baseball game.

Other customizations include the usual abundance of branding on-screen and off. Even the detachable keyboard is themed around Acronym colors, although you might appreciate that touch when it highlights the WASD key combo used by so many first-person shooter games.

ASUS ROG Flow Z13-ACRNM tablet
Acronym/ASUS

Thankfully, there's some substance to back up the style. The Acronym ROG Flow Z13 runs on a Core i9, 32GB of RAM, GeForce RTX 40-series mobile graphics and a 1TB SSD. You'll still get a 13.4-inch display with a full DCI-P3 color range and a 165Hz refresh rate. We wouldn't expect great battery life given the mediocre runtime of past models, but that's not really the point — this is a gaming PC that just happens to be usable as a Surface-style tablet in a pinch.

This isn't the first collaboration between the brands. ASUS and Acronym previously released the ROG Zephyrus G14-ACRNM RMT01 laptop in 2020. This is a more elaborate project, however, and certainly the first where the computer and clothing are meant to work together.

ASUS ROG Flow Z13-ACRNM tablet
Acronym/ASUS

The ROG Flow Z13-ACRNM RMT02 should be available April 3rd for $2,500 through Amazon and ASUS. That's a lot to pay for a gaming tablet, especially when you can buy the regular Z13 for $1,750. With that said, it's not often you can buy any tablet PC that truly stands out. This is as much a conversation piece as it is a computer, especially if you're determined to wear it as a fashion accessory.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/asus-high-fashion-gaming-tablet-is-a-must-have-for-hot-dog-vendors-everywhere-145117128.html?src=rss

Polestar 3 first look: Possibly the best-looking EV for 2023

Polestar started out as a racing team that was then turned into a performance tuning division for Volvo before becoming its own brand in 2017.And after testing the waters with the Polestar 1 and Polestar 2, the company is poised to take another big step forward with the upcoming release of its first EV SUV: the Polestar 3. So when the car recently came to New York City for its North American debut, we couldn’t pass up the chance to check it out because it might just be the best-looking new SUV in 2023.

The Polestar 3 is built on the same platform as the Volvo EX90, but the company has made some significant changes that ensures there won’t be confusion between the two. Instead of three rows of seats, the Polestar 3 maxes out at two, with slightly less rear storage in favor of a more spacious cabin. So despite a relatively low roof line, the combination of a glass roof, a long wheelbase and rear seats that are reclined a bit more than usual gave me and my 6-foot frame a very relaxed seating position with tons of leg room. There were even a couple throw pillows in the back seat, which might be a bit unnecessary, but really adds to the premium loungey feel Polestar is going for.

Meanwhile, in front the Polestar 3 features a more enclosed cockpit-style layout, mixed with a bit of Scandinavian minimalism. There’s a big armrest and an extended console featuring a built-in wireless charger. As for infotainment, Polestar is continuing to use a system based on Android Automotive centered around a big 14.5-inch touchscreen with Google Maps as your default navigation system and a very familiar touch-based UI. Like in a lot of modern cars, pretty much everything from climate control to music is handled on the display, with the only physical controls being a big knob on the console for volume/play/pause along with some additional haptic touch points on the steering wheel.

On the outside, the Polestar sports a much more aggressive design than the EX90, thanks to dual wings (one on the hood and one above the rear window), a front splitter, big wheels (either 21 or 22 inches depending the spec) and a new two bladed-version of the company’s signature Thor’s Hammer headlights. I know not everyone will agree, but I think the Polestar 3 looks fantastic. It’s got just enough futuristic sci-fi design cues without going overboard like Tesla’s Cybertruck.

Powered by Android Automotive, the Polestar 3 has a very intuitive UI centered around a big 14.5-inch touchscreen.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

The Polestar has the tech to back up its sci-fi looks too. In addition to things like automatic lane keeping and blindspot detection, it features a bevy of monitoring components including 12 ultrasonic sensors, five exterior radars, five cameras, two driver monitoring sensors and even four interior radars spread throughout the car. The most important use of these new sensors is that alongside the EX90, the Polestar 3 will be one of the first cars to offer an onboard passenger detection system as standard.

This means in the event a child or a pet is left in the back seat (or the trunk), the car will warn the driver, prevent the car from being locked and will continue to maintain a safe climate unless a manual override is given. The goal is to prevent any occupants from overheating if left in the car, which is sadly a very preventable cause of death that’s occurred to more than 900 children in the U.S. since 1998.

Another interesting feature is the Polestar 3’s headlights which feature a 1.3-megapixel DLP sensor that allows the car to more easily focus and adjust its beams to suit the driving conditions. And while it wasn’t on the model we saw, Polestar says the 3 will also have an optional Pilot Pack that includes a LiDAR sensor from Luminar and an NVIDIA Drive Orin chip, which will support some level of autonomous or semi-autonomous driving capabilities.

Finally, as part of the company’s commitment to making a fully carbon-neutral car by 2030, the 3 also includes a number of sustainability features including paneling and pieces of trim made from flax fiber, “Microtech” upholstery made from a pine oil-based vinyl (instead of petroleum), and floor mats created from recycled PET bottles.

That said, possibly my favorite thing about the Polestar 3 is the way the carmaker has integrated the vehicle’s design, tech and sustainability into a single cohesive package. Little elements like labeling the size of the Polestar 3’s battery on the outside of the car, right next to its name, help add a sense of transparency to its construction. As a part-time design nerd, the little labels everywhere are like a typographer's dream. On top of that, Polestar is even using blockchain technology to trace the origins of the components that go into the car's battery, to make sure they are coming from conflict-free regions. And when you pair all this with a striking design, you get a really enchanting vision of where the EV market is heading.

However, I still have two main concerns about the Polestar 3: its pricing and its energy efficiency. With the standard dual-motor long-range model starting at $83,900 or $89,900 for the Performance Pack model, this clearly isn’t an EV for the masses. And with the number of luxury electric SUVs like the BMW iX and others hitting the roads, Polestar is wading into an increasingly competitive market.

Hands-on phots from the Polestar 3's North American debut in New York City.
Photo by Sam Rutherford/Engadget

On top of that, despite costing $30,000 more than a Tesla Model Y and having a big 111 kWh battery (versus just 75kWh for the Tesla), the Polestar 3 is currently only expected to get around 300 miles of range compared to 330 for the Model Y. And it’s a similar situation for the Polestar’s 250 kW DC charging, which isn’t quite as fast as what you’d get from a similar but less expensive rival like the Hyundai Ioniq 5. Granted, the Polestar has yet to receive its final official range figures from the EPA, but just going by the numbers we have so far, its battery and charging tech aren't quite as impressive as you might expect. Still, the Polestar 3 looks great and hopefully we'll know more later this year when the car goes on sale for real sometime in Q4.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/polestar-3-first-look-possibly-the-best-looking-ev-for-2023-133508992.html?src=rss

‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ season 2 premieres June 15th

You now know when you can continue following the adventures of Captain Christopher Pike. Paramount+ has revealed that the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will premiere June 15th, with new episodes appearing each Thursday. While the streaming service isn't saying much about the plot apart from a Star Trek: Lower Decks crossover, it's promising a 10-episode run and has already renewed the show for a third season.

Animation fans in the US, meanwhile, can expect Lower Decks season four in August and a fifth season in the pipeline. The new episodes have the crew of the USS Ceritos dodging "malevolent computers," getting trapped in caves and running into aliens from across the galaxy.

The second season of kids' animated series Star Trek: Prodigy is now slated to debut this winter. The fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discovery was already poised to arrive in early 2024.

The two confirmed renewals aren't surprising. While Paramount+ is now popular for more than Star Trek, the sci-fi franchise remain one of the service's main attractions. Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks in particular have enjoyed a strong reception. With Picard winding down this April, the remaining productions will have to carry extra weight.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-season-2-premieres-june-15th-210101079.html?src=rss

‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ season 2 premieres June 15th

You now know when you can continue following the adventures of Captain Christopher Pike. Paramount+ has revealed that the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds will premiere June 15th, with new episodes appearing each Thursday. While the streaming service isn't saying much about the plot apart from a Star Trek: Lower Decks crossover, it's promising a 10-episode run and has already renewed the show for a third season.

Animation fans in the US, meanwhile, can expect Lower Decks season four in August and a fifth season in the pipeline. The new episodes have the crew of the USS Ceritos dodging "malevolent computers," getting trapped in caves and running into aliens from across the galaxy.

The second season of kids' animated series Star Trek: Prodigy is now slated to debut this winter. The fifth and final season of Star Trek: Discovery was already poised to arrive in early 2024.

The two confirmed renewals aren't surprising. While Paramount+ is now popular for more than Star Trek, the sci-fi franchise remain one of the service's main attractions. Strange New Worlds and Lower Decks in particular have enjoyed a strong reception. With Picard winding down this April, the remaining productions will have to carry extra weight.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-season-2-premieres-june-15th-210101079.html?src=rss

Amazon will give you a $50 gift card when you buy a year of Microsoft 365 Family

If you've been waiting to purchase Microsoft 365 Family, now might be the right time. Amazon is offering a 12-month subscription for $100, down from $150 — plus a $50 Amazon gift card. Basically, you save $50 and get another $50 in spending money, not so bad. 

Your purchase includes all the usual Microsoft programs — Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook etc. — and 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage for easy sharing of photos and files across your devices.

Microsoft 365 is available to download immediately for up to six family members on PCs or Macs. The Amazon gift card, on the other hand, will arrive in the mail. It has no expiration date so as long as you don't lose the little card somewhere, you can hold onto it for a while. 

If you choose to buy the family package, do yourself a favor and set a calendar reminder for just under a year from now. The subscription will auto-renew annually and there's nothing worse than finding out through a credit card statement. If you love it, great. If not, you'll have the option to cancel. 

This deal isn't completely new as Amazon offered the same one-day discount at the end of January. If you regretted skipping it then, here's your chance. But, you have to think fast, this deal is literally here today, gone tomorrow. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-will-give-you-a-50-gift-card-when-you-buy-a-year-of-microsoft-365-family-091100773.html?src=rss

Amazon will give you a $50 gift card when you buy a year of Microsoft 365 Family

If you've been waiting to purchase Microsoft 365 Family, now might be the right time. Amazon is offering a 12-month subscription for $100, down from $150 — plus a $50 Amazon gift card. Basically, you save $50 and get another $50 in spending money, not so bad. 

Your purchase includes all the usual Microsoft programs — Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook etc. — and 1 TB of OneDrive cloud storage for easy sharing of photos and files across your devices.

Microsoft 365 is available to download immediately for up to six family members on PCs or Macs. The Amazon gift card, on the other hand, will arrive in the mail. It has no expiration date so as long as you don't lose the little card somewhere, you can hold onto it for a while. 

If you choose to buy the family package, do yourself a favor and set a calendar reminder for just under a year from now. The subscription will auto-renew annually and there's nothing worse than finding out through a credit card statement. If you love it, great. If not, you'll have the option to cancel. 

This deal isn't completely new as Amazon offered the same one-day discount at the end of January. If you regretted skipping it then, here's your chance. But, you have to think fast, this deal is literally here today, gone tomorrow. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-will-give-you-a-50-gift-card-when-you-buy-a-year-of-microsoft-365-family-091100773.html?src=rss

‘Star Trek: Picard’ thinks the kids aren’t alright

The following article discusses Star Trek: Picard, Season Three, Episode Six, “The Bounty.”

When the Original Series cast made their swansong, they left Star Trek in the rudest health it had ever been in. The Next Generation had reached its creative peak, Deep Space Nine was a year away from starting, and the movie series was making good money. The Undiscovered Country gave fans one last adventure with Kirk and co. that gently highlighted why it was time to move on. By comparison, Nemesis’ soft box office meant there would be no grand finale for the TNG crew. DS9 and Voyager were done, and it wouldn’t be long before pre-Kirk prequel-series Enterprise would leave our screens. There was quite literally nobody to pick up from where Picard and co. left off as “current day” Trek went into enforced stasis. Now, it feels like 2002 all over again, with the only “current” Trek series, Discovery, canceled and the only other live-action Trek show yet again being a pre-Kirk era prequel. They say that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.

This sense of unease about the future permeates “The Bounty,” as Star Trek: Picard hints that the next (next) generation aren’t up to scratch. Picard, Riker and LaForge are all fathers struggling to deal with the gifts and curses they handed down to their children. The show keeps implying that there’s less hope in these kids because they’ve spent so long in their parents’ shadow. Sidney LaForge isn’t speaking to her father, who grouses to Picard how hard it was to raise her. The show has already hamfistedly tried to cover Riker’s grief over Thaddeus, while Picard has given his son a terminal case of Irumodic Syndrome. When Jack gets the idea of stealing the Bounty’s cloaking device, he and Sydney can’t get it working without Geordi’s resentful help. Come on kids, get out of the way while dad, once again, picks up your mess and fixes the things you can’t cope with. The subtext is one of disappointment, of darn kids with their avocado lattes and oat milk toast who can’t do anything as well as their baby boomer forebears.

It’s an interesting perspective from a franchise that has always worried about its own coolness, fretting that it’s too thoughtful, too middle-aged. Chekov joined The Original Series cast because producers wanted to woo a younger crowd with a Davy Jones-type mop-topped pretty boy. This anxiety is most visible in the Next Generation movies, which are constantly battling each other in attitudes around age, aging and relevance. Generations leaves Picard at peace with his own age, but everything that follows repudiates that position, mostly as Patrick Stewart’s behind the scenes power grew, so did his desire to remake the character in his own image. The vest-clad man of action in First Contact, the romantic lead of Insurrection and the off-roading petrolhead in Nemesis all stem from this desire. Rather than a desire to become the wise, elder statesman of the Star Trek universe, Picard raged against the dying of his own light. And rather than lay the table for his successors, he judged them all and found them unworthy.

This mistrust of youth goes hand-in-hand with a fetishization of the past that goes beyond nostalgia and into paraphilia. “The Bounty” has not one, but two trips to space museums so that the fans can gawk at objects of desire, stripped of their context, there for nothing but fan service. Riker, Worf and Raffi beam onto Daystrom Station, home of Starfleet’s “most off the books tech, experimental weapons, alien contraband,” which when you think about it is really daft. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think the US Navy stores secret chemical weapons at MIT, which is, or was, the best point of comparison for a civilian robotics research institute. Along the corridor, there’s the Genesis Device! (Why? The only one in existence was blown up when the Reliant combusted and turned into the Genesis Planet, and if the Marcuses had spares why did Khan only take one?) A Tribble! And James Kirk’s Corpse!... Wait, that seems weird, why do that? That seems weirdly perverse, why would you store a decorated officer’s dead body in a site for military weapons when there’s nothing special about his physiology in this timeline? Oh, that’s why, because our heroes don’t get to gracefully die in Star Trek any more, they just become objects of fetishization.

We get a brief cameo from Daniel Davis’ Moriarty as part of Daystrom’s not-quite security system before we hit the big reveal of the episode: Data!. Or, something else, a Soong-type android with the brains of Soong, Lore, B-4 and Data all mashed up in one body. (Why B-4 and Lore? Why would you put the unworkable prototype and the psychotic brains in there with the two functional ones? Because we’ll need an inevitable betrayal two or three episodes down the line, not because it makes sense.) And then we’re off to the fleet museum for a brief interlude of spaceship porn and, wouldn’t you know, the ships deemed worthy of preserving are almost all hero vessels from the Star Trek franchise. I mean, look, I’m a starship porn type of guy, and any loving shot of Andrew Probert and Richard Taylor’s Enterprise model will always have my heart soaring. But it just feels all so soulless, like the characters in Star Trek are now behaving like Star Trek fans.

The conclusion of the episode reveals the changelings stole Picard’s corpse from Daystrom Station for reasons as-yet unknown. Meanwhile, Riker has been captured by Vadic and taken to the Shrike, where he’s shown that the baddies have also captured Deanna. But not before the 70-year-old Riker is given a dose of good old 24-style face punching, to match the rest of the series’ Bush-era politics.

The biggest problem with this sort of all-the-characters-grew-up-watching-Star Trek nostalgia, of course, is that it collapses the size of your narrative universe. Star Trek is big and broad enough to sustain a massive trans-media ecosystem covering every corner of its fictional universe. But Star Trek: Picard makes out that Starfleet is made up of five ships not called Enterprise, none of which are worth remarking upon. The notion that the Enterprise is just one of hundreds, or thousands, of starships having wild and crazy adventures on the frontiers of space is beyond comprehension. In a way, I’m glad nobody in TV-land is familiar with Star Trek: New Frontier, lest it turned out that someone at Daystrom has collected Mackenzie Calhoun’s eyeballs on a shelf for the lolz.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/star-trek-picard-3-6-the-bounty-review-130030243.html?src=rss

Amazon’s Echo Show 8 drops back to $75

Amazon's Echo Show 8 is our pick for the best smart display for Alexa users, and it's now on sale for $75 at various retailers. While we've seen this deal before, it's still about $20 below the 8-inch display's typical street price and $55 off Amazon's list price. For reference, the device's all-time low is $70.

We gave the Echo Show 8 a review score of 87 when it launched a couple of years ago, and we currently recommend it in our guides to the best smart displays and best smart home devices. It generally offers the best blend of price and performance within Amazon's smart display lineup; the Echo Show 5 is a bit too small for general-purpose use, while the Echo Show 10 and its rotating display are much pricier and bulkier. The 8-inch, 1,280 x 800 resolution display here, on the other hand, is sizable enough to make video calls and photo viewing comfortable but not so large that it'll look out of place in a kitchen or bedroom. Its built-in speakers are capable of filling a room, and the whole thing is powerful enough to pull up the weather, control your smart home gear, stream video and do other Alexa tasks without much sluggishness. And while no smart speaker or display is really ideal for those protective of their privacy, the Echo Show 8 has a physical camera shutter and mic mute button for when it's not in use.

Like all Echo devices, the Echo Show 8 will work best if you've already invested in other gadgets that work with Alexa. If you're not in that ecosystem but still want a smart display, the 7-inch Google Nest Hub might be a better buy in this price range, as it integrates better with common Google services like Gmail, Google Calendar and YouTube. (The latter only works through a web browser on the Echo Show.) It lacks a camera for video calls, though that might be a good thing for the more privacy-conscious. Nevertheless, if you'd prefer an Alexa-based smart display, this is a decent deal.

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This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/amazon-echo-show-8-drops-back-to-75-144524742.html?src=rss