Kristen Lee
Kristen Lee blends enthusiast depth with practical clarity, using her role as a senior features editor at MotorTrend to turn complex car lineups into straightforward guidance for everyday buyers and committed car fans alike. Her work sits at the intersection of detailed product knowledge and approachable storytelling, whether she is breaking down trims on a new family SUV or shaping longer-form features and video pieces about how cars fit into people’s lives.
Trim guides and buying advice
At MotorTrend, Lee’s byline anchors consumer-facing service journalism that helps readers choose between specific versions of a vehicle rather than just the model in general. In her 2026 Toyota Grand Highlander trim guide, she focuses on the gas-only lineup and walks through what comes standard at each trim level before weighing which grade represents the smartest choice for buyers who do not want the hybrid powertrain. The piece is structured as buying advice rather than a broad review, concentrating on equipment, value, and real-world use cases, which reflects her larger approach: she writes for readers making an actual purchase decision, not just browsing enthusiast coverage. The headline’s explicit promise to identify “Which Gas-Powered Grade Is Best?” signals how she often frames stories around answering a concrete question and delivering a clear recommendation.
Senior features editing and cross-outlet experience
Lee serves as a senior features editor at MotorTrend, where she combines editing responsibilities with hands-on reporting and reviewing.
Her official bio notes that she has built her career entirely in automotive media, with prior roles at Road & Track, Jalopnik, Business Insider, and The Drive before joining MotorTrend. That path gives her experience across enthusiast titles, digital-native outlets, and broader newsrooms, and it informs a style that mixes the rigor of road-test coverage with the accessibility expected by mainstream readers.
In the features editor role she is responsible not just for her own copy but also for shaping story angles, packaging, and the balance between deep-dive technical detail and plain-language explanation. The result is coverage that stays grounded in real specifications and engineering while remaining readable to people who do not identify as hardcore gearheads.
Enthusiast perspective and on-camera work
Across interviews and public profiles, Lee describes herself as a lifelong car enthusiast whose professional focus is entirely on car journalism, and that background comes through in how she frames vehicles and features. She writes from the point of view of someone who genuinely enjoys cars but keeps the emphasis on usability, packaging, and whether a vehicle earns its price rather than on specs for their own sake.
In addition to writing and editing, she takes on video roles for MotorTrend, appearing on-camera to review cars and participate in discussion formats that extend her work beyond text. She also features as a guest voice on automotive podcasts and has appeared on shows such as Jay Leno’s Garage and other television segments, which reinforces her position as a commentator as well as a bylined reviewer.
Across formats, she keeps the tone direct and explanatory, prioritising clear takeaways about what a car is like to live with.
Focus and fit for stories
Lee’s work is most tightly focused on new-vehicle coverage, especially where there are multiple trims, powertrain choices, or equipment packages that can confuse shoppers. She gravitates toward stories that ask which version of a given model is the right one to buy, and then answers that question by detailing standard features, option step-ups, and the trade-offs involved.
Her features editor remit and long track record in car-focused outlets mean she is comfortable moving between short, serviceable guides and more expansive pieces that explore the culture and industry around cars, but the common thread is a clear, structured explanation of why a given vehicle configuration makes sense for specific kinds of drivers. That mix of enthusiast understanding and buyer-oriented service sets her apart from more generic news or product-announcement coverage on the automotive beat.
4 more automobile journalists.
Aarian Marshall
Aarian Marshall is a staff writer at WIRED who stands out for covering how cars, software, and policy collide. She writes on transportation systems and cities, from the auto industry to broader mobility systems. Before WIRED, she reported on cities and urban policy for The Atlantic’s CityLab. Her beat runs from electric vehicles, fuel prices, tariffs, and car-buying decisions to autonomous vehicles, robotaxis, and software-defined cars. She reports with a systems view, linking policy shifts, technical failures, and urban life to what happens on streets, in repair shops, and at the pump.
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.