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Hillary Clinton takes to campaign trail in a van called Scooby

It still seems way too early to even starting thinking about the 2016 presidential election, but candidates are already throwing their hats in the ring. Among the officially announced hopefuls so far is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. To kick off her run for office, she recently embarked on a long-distance road trip from her home in New York to the campaign battleground of Iowa. Rather than a limo, she was driven there in a conversion van (pictured above) that Clinton named Scooby after Hanna-Barbera's famous, mystery-solving dog. According to Yahoo Autos, the vehicle itself is a Chevrolet Express that has been customized by the Explorer Van Company, and Time says that it's also armored. Clinton isn't behind the wheel, though. All those years in public office mean that the Secret Service does the driving. Of course, the vehicle in Scooby Doo was named the Mystery Machine, and Scooby was mostly brown, not black. To explain the somewhat odd naming, Clinton traveled around in a brown van during her 2000 Senate campaign in New York, and it earned the nickname Scooby, according to Time. Apparently, the moniker has stuck for her latest ride. If the start of the Clinton campaign seems early, she isn't the first White House hopeful to arrive in Iowa this year. A bunch of possible Republican candidates already met at summits in the state at least twice to gain favor ahead of the caucus there. No word on what they were driving...

2022 Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra now cost more, again

GM Authority put Chevrolet and GMC pickup truck prices under the microscope, spying the same macroscopic issues none of us can avoid seeing: Price increases. The 2022 Chevy Silverado 1500 and 2022 GMC Sierra 1500 have been hit with their third price increases this year. The Heavy Duty versions of those same trucks have been given their fourth price increases this year. Starting with the light-duty options, they've been rung up for another $900 across the board, which breaks down to $800 added to the MSRP and $100 added to the destination charge. The mandatory cost for shipping a truck from the factory to the dealer is now $1,795. That destination fee is now more than 5% of the purchase price of the least expensive 2022 Silverado, the Regular Cab Work Truck trim with a Standard Bed and 2.7-liter turbocharged four-cylinder retailing for $36,395 after destination. And that price is $3,200 more than the initial list price from last December. At the other end, the Silverado ZR2 is up $3,400. Average that out, and the Silverado's MSRP has gone up by nearly $700 every month since initial pricing came out. On the GMC side, the bidding starts at $37,195 for the Regular Cab Pro trim with a Standard Bed, a $4,700 increase over pricing announced last October.  Stepping up a tow rating or two, the Silverado HD is now $1,100 more expensive — $1,000 tacked onto the MSRP, the destination charge plumped another $100 to $1,795. The Silvy 2500 HD now starts at $41,295. The Sierra HD turns the screw a few more degrees, going up by $2,100 after the $100 increase for destination. The low bar for the Sierra 2500 HD is $41,995, a $4,100 rise over the price when it hit dealer lots last summer. Whew. Anyone know where the exit is for this "new normal?" Related video:

BMW, Hyundai score big in JD Power's first Tech Experience Index

While automakers are quick to brag about winning a JD Power Initial Quality Study award, the reality, as we've pointed out before, is that these ratings are somewhat misleading, since IQS doesn't necessarily distinguish genuine quality issues. JD Power's new Tech Experience Index aims to solve that problem. The new metric takes the same 90-day approach as IQS but focuses exclusively on technology – collision protection, comfort and convenience, driving assistance, entertainment and connectivity, navigation, and smartphone mirroring. It splits the industry up into just seven segments, based loosely on size, which is why the Chevrolet Camaro is in the same division (mid-size) as Kia Sorento and the Mercedes-Benz GLE-Class is in the same segment as the Hyundai Genesis (mid-size premium). It makes for some screwy bedfellows, to be sure. Still, splitting tech experience away from initial quality should allow customers to make more informed and intelligent decisions when buying new vehicles. In the inaugural study, respondents listed BMW and Hyundai as the big winners, with two segment awards – the 2 Series for small premium and the 4 Series for compact premium, and the Genesis for mid-size premium and Tucson for small segment. The Chevrolet Camaro (midsize), Kia Forte (compact), and Nissan Maxima (large) scored individual wins. Ford also had a surprising hit with the Lincoln MKC, which ranked third in the compact premium segment behind the 4 Series and Lexus IS. This is a coup for the Blue Oval, whose woeful MyFord Touch systems made the brand a victim of the IQS' flaws in the early 2010s. But Ford and other automakers might not want to celebrate just yet. According to JD Power, there's still a lot of room for improvement – navigation systems were the lowest-rated piece of tech in the study. Instead, customers repeatedly saluted collision-avoidance and safety systems, giving the category the best marks of the study and listing blind-spot monitoring and backup cameras as two must-have features – 96 percent of respondents said they wanted those two systems in their next vehicle. But this isn't really a surprise. Implementation of safety systems from brand to brand is similar, and they don't require any input from users, unlike navigation and infotainment systems which are frustratingly deep.