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Best and worst car brands of 2022 according to Consumer Reports

It's that time again, Consumer Reports this morning lifting the curtain on its 2022 Annual Car Brand rankings and its 10 Top Picks in the car, crossover, and truck category. Drumroll, please: This year, Subaru climbs two spots to claim the winner's circle, having come third the last two years. Last year, Mazda climbed three spots from 2020 to take the crown. This year, Mazda slipped to second, BMW taking the last spot on the podium, also a one-spot drop from 2021. Six automakers in the top 10 hailed from Japan, which is one more than last year, and five luxury makers occupied the top 10, which is two more than last year. And South Korean representation didn't crack the top this year, after Hyundai managed tenth last year. The seven makes after BMW are: Honda, Lexus, Audi, Porsche, Mini, Toyota, and Infiniti.  The magazine and testing concern says its Brand Report Card "[reveals] which automakers are producing the most well-performing, safe, and reliable vehicles based on CR’s independent testing and member surveys," and that "Brands that rise to the top tend to have the most consistent performance across their model lineups." The domestics also took steps back among the 32 OEMs ranked on the 2022 card. Chrysler and Buick were the domestic carmakers who made last year's top 10 in eighth and ninth, respectively. This year, Buick dropped to eleventh, Chrysler to thirteenth. Dodge went from fourteenth to sixteenth. CR continues to ding Tesla's yoke steerer, the not-exactly-natural handhold responsible for the electric carmaker going from sixteenth last year to twenty-third this year.

2018 Hyundai Kona Iron Man Edition is way more subtle than the Ant-Man Veloster

Update: A representative from Hyundai has told us that the Iron Man Edition Kona will only be offered with the 1.6-liter turbocharged engine, but can be had with either front- or all-wheel drive. The text has been updated to reflect this. Following Hyundai's collaboration on developing a frankly garish Veloster for Ant-Man and The Wasp, the company is teaming up with Marvel once again to launch a special edition of the 2018 Hyundai Kona compact crossover SUV. This one is themed after superhero Iron Man, and unlike the Veloster, this car is actually available to purchase. It's a little odd to see a car that's not an Audi used to go with Iron Man, but Hyundai has done a lot to get the Kona Iron Man-ready. The upper daytime running lights have been adjusted in design and color to more closely match the glowing eyes of Iron Man's mask. The hood has also been redesigned with an insert that looks like a heat extractor vent, but is just a red plastic piece. The whole car is painted matte black with a metallic red roof and matching accents all over the exterior. The roof gets a giant Iron Man mask decal, too. On the sides there are badges of his mask on the fenders and on the wheel center caps. The rear doors get Stark Industries logo decals. The inside hasn't been left out either. It appears to be the interior found on the lime green Limited and above trim levels, but instead of lime accents, there are even more red ones. Tony Stark's (Iron Man's not-so-secret identity) signature is found on the dashboard. The gauges have custom graphics themed around Iron Man, including a custom design for the heads-up display. On a side note, the Hyundai Kona Iron Man Edition is not the first superhero-themed car available to the public, nor is it the first Iron Man car. Jeep previously had a special edition Renegade for the Batman vs. Superman movie. And while it wasn't the Iron Man superhero, Isuzu had a special edition Vehicross for the Iron Man Triathlon event. The Hyundai Kona Iron Man Edition goes on sale in the first quarter of 2019, and it will be a limited-production vehicle. Pricing hasn't been announced yet, but a Hyundai representative told us what will power it. It won't get the the entry-level Kona's a naturally aspirated 2.0-liter four-cylinder making 147 horsepower, but rather the turbocharged 1.6-liter four-cylinder making 175 horsepower. It will also be available in either front- or all-wheel-drive versions.

Solid-state batteries: Why Toyota's plans could be a game-changer for EVs

Word out of Japan today is that Toyota is working on launching a new solid-state battery for electric vehicles that will put it solidly in the EV game by 2022. Which leads to a simple question: What is a solid-state battery, and why does it matter? Back in February, John Goodenough observed, "Cost, safety, energy density, rates of charge and discharge and cycle life are critical for battery-driven cars to be more widely adopted." And risking a bad pun on his surname, he seemed to be implying that all of those characteristics weren't currently good enough in autos using lithium-ion batteries. This comment is relevant because Goodenough, professor at the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin - it so happens, he turns 95 today - is the co-inventor of the lithium-ion battery, the type of battery that is pretty much the mainstay of current electric vehicles. And he and a research fellow at U of T were announcing they'd developed a solid-state battery, one that has improved energy density (which means a car so equipped can drive further) and can be recharged more quickly and more often (a.k.a., "long cycle life") than a lithium-ion battery. (Did you ever notice that with time your iPhone keeps less of a charge than it did back when it was shiny and new? That's because it has a limited cycle life. Which is one thing when you're talking about a phone. And something else entirely when it involves a whole car.) What's more, there is reduced mass for a solid-state battery. And there isn't the same safety concern that exists with li-ion batteries vis-a- vis conflagration (which is why at airplane boarding gates they say they'll check your carryon as long as you remove all lithium-ion batteries). Lithium-ion batteries may be far more advanced than the lead-acid batteries that are under the hood of essentially every car that wasn't built in Fremont, Calif., but as is the case with those heavy black rectangles, li-ion batteries contain a liquid. In the lithium-ion battery, the liquid, the electrolyte, moves the lithium ions from the negative to the positive side (anode to cathode) of the battery. In a solid-state design, there is no liquid sloshing around, which also means that there's no liquid that would freeze at low operating temperatures. What Toyota is using for its solid-state battery is still unknown, as is the case for the solid-state batteries that Hyundai is reportedly working on for its EVs.