Aarian Marshall
Aarian Marshall examines how cars, software, and policy collide, tracking the ways transportation technology reshapes daily life and urban systems. She is a staff writer at WIRED covering transportation systems and cities, a beat that stretches from the auto industry to broader mobility systems. Before joining WIRED, she reported on cities and urban policy for The Atlantic's CityLab. She describes her work informally as focusing on “things with wheels,” signaling a persistent interest in vehicles from everyday cars to experimental robotaxis.
Electric vehicles, incentives, and price shocks
Marshall covers the business and policy forces shaping electric vehicles, fuel prices, and car-buying decisions. In an article on the future of electric vehicles under a Trump presidency, she assesses how a change in political leadership could alter the trajectory of electric-vehicle adoption in the United States. In a televised segment on Labor Day car deals, she explains how uncertainty around tariffs and electric-vehicle tax credits leaves buyers and dealerships in limbo even as discounts proliferate. Her reporting on why an open Strait of Hormuz will not fix gas prices overnight uses a geopolitical flashpoint to explain why shifts in oil flows do not immediately translate into relief at the pump. Across these stories, she blends policy detail with consumer impact, drawing a direct line from high-level decisions on tariffs, elections, or shipping lanes to prices on dealership lots and at gas stations.
Autonomous vehicles and robotaxis on city streets
Marshall devotes significant attention to autonomous vehicles and robotaxis, chronicling how self-driving fleets move from pilot projects toward everyday presence on city streets. In coverage of robotaxis, she reports on the companies racing to deploy driverless cars and on how quickly these services are spreading in dense urban environments. On a technology podcast, she discusses the “increasingly near future of autonomous vehicles,” translating technical advances into concrete scenarios for everyday travel.
Her social video appearances for WIRED highlight the visual reality of streets shared by human drivers, pedestrians, and experimental robotaxis, underlining how quickly cities are being asked to absorb new forms of mobility.
Cars as software and the risks of digital vehicles
A recurring thread in Marshall’s coverage is the transformation of cars into software-defined machines, with all the fragility and complexity that implies.
In a story framed as “Cars Are Just Software Now,” she reports on how the growing volume of technology in vehicles is undermining the traditional auto shop and reshaping repair work. She extends that focus to failures, joining a podcast episode titled “a software update bricked my car” to explain what went wrong for Fisker Ocean owners and why many remain attached to a malfunctioning vehicle. Across these pieces, she reports out the promises and risks of connected cars, foregrounding how over-the-air updates, buggy code, and opaque systems affect drivers long after they leave the showroom.
Transportation systems, cities, and automation
Marshall’s beat is defined not just by individual vehicles but by the transportation systems and cities that surround them. Her author bio emphasizes this systems perspective, reflecting earlier work for a cities-focused outlet that steeped her in the mechanics of urban policy and infrastructure.
That background surfaces in how she situates stories about electric vehicles, autonomous cars, and traffic technology within broader networks of streets, transit, and logistics. She also branches into adjacent technologies such as household robots, including an immersive feature described on her social feed in which she spends a week with a camera strapped to her forehead to train robots how to do chores, extending her interest in automation beyond the roadway.
Across print features, podcasts, and broadcast segments, she works as an explainer of complex mobility technologies, returning to the question of how new systems will change the way people move through and experience their communities.
4 more automobile journalists.
Abby Smith
Abby Smith’s most distinctive work combines motorsports coverage with live digital and radio reporting. She is Digital Director at KRDO13 and covers the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, including race updates, weather shifts, breaking developments and ways to follow the action. Her beat also includes automotive news, crime, public safety, politics, city government and community life. Notable work includes coverage of homicide arrests, a major drug bust, a presidential address about the war with Iran, a family’s effort to bring Stephen Hubbard home, a state governor candidate and a city security ordinance. She also reports on fitness, school spirit and station staff. Smith writes in a concise, factual style shaped by investigative documentary experience. She turns live events, official announcements and daily developments into clear coverage across digital and radio platforms.
Adele Peters
Adele Peters covers climate solutions and other structural problems as design and policy questions, focusing on what can work in practice. She is a senior writer at Fast Company, where she reports on energy, transportation, housing, materials, agriculture, corporate sustainability, and social impact. Her stories examine climate technologies, grid resilience, electric vehicles, renewable energy, modular construction, homelessness, affordable housing, compostable materials, regenerative agriculture, and ecosystem restoration. She looks at whether projects can scale, their real-world constraints, and their measurable effects. She interviews political and philanthropic leaders, startup founders, and climate tech entrepreneurs, anchoring stories in what is being built and tested. She has written more than 3,000 stories and contributed to Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century and State of Housing Design 2023.
Adrian Leung
Adrian Leung writes engineering-led coverage of Chinese electric vehicles and performance cars for CarNewsChina. He focuses on new energy vehicles, battery systems, powertrains, electric platforms, high-end domestic brands, and track-ready models, and he explains technical details in plain language for non-specialist readers. His reporting treats new models as hardware and systems stories, with precise figures on range, battery capacity, chassis layout, motor outputs, weight, and acceleration. He also covers the Chinese auto industry’s finances and technology roadmap, including sector profits, vehicle volumes, and solid-state battery timelines. His background in Electrical and Computer Engineering shows in the way he writes about vehicle electronics and battery management.
Al Pefley
Al Pefley is a television news reporter for CBS12 News whose work centers on how laws, law enforcement and local decisions shape everyday life for drivers and other residents. He reports in a general assignment role but returns often to transportation, public safety and pocketbook issues, treating driving as a point where policy, disability and policing intersect. His coverage includes driver-focused laws, fuel and tax policy, crime, policing and internal affairs findings, with a consistent focus on accountability and concrete consequences for people’s wallets, safety and trust in institutions. He explains county gas tax debates, campaign positions on teacher pay, property crime and retail theft in short, clear segments. Pefley works primarily on the scene, using live or recorded field reporting and interview-driven pieces to show what happened, why it matters and what comes next.