Melissa Krull
Melissa Krull reports on how transportation, tourism and local infrastructure intersect with everyday life, with a focus on how costs, access and policy decisions affect people and businesses. She covers stories that connect fuel prices, road travel and community services to broader economic and quality-of-life questions, rather than treating automobile topics as purely technical or consumer-focused.
Transportation costs and tourism impact
Krull regularly examines how fuel prices and travel costs shape tourism and leisure activity, using on-the-ground reporting to capture the perspective of travelers and local businesses. In her coverage of whether fuel prices are impacting tourism, she explores how gasoline costs factor into family trip planning, regional visitor numbers and the health of local attractions and hospitality businesses. She tends to frame automobile-related issues through their downstream effects on tourism-dependent communities, highlighting both economic pressures and the resilience strategies people adopt.
Workforce and service access around mobility
Beyond travel and tourism, Krull reports on how transportation realities affect access to essential services, with recurring attention to workforce gaps and rural or regional mobility. Recent work includes coverage of bus driver shortages at New York school districts, where she focuses on how staffing shortfalls translate into route changes, longer rides for students and operational strain for districts. She also reports on expansions in rural healthcare networks, tying in transportation distance and road travel as practical barriers or enablers of care. Across these stories, automobile use, road conditions and travel time are treated as core elements of whether services actually reach the people they are intended to serve.
Community infrastructure and local policy decisions
Krull’s reporting frequently situates transportation and automobile use within broader community infrastructure and policy debates. Her work on local rezoning decisions shows how changes to land use and development rules can alter traffic patterns, accessibility and the character of neighborhoods. She covers municipal and regional decision-making through the lived impact on residents, asking what new development means for congestion, parking, pedestrian safety and the way people move through their communities. This emphasis on local policy connects her automobile coverage to zoning, planning and public investment rather than isolating it as a consumer beat.
Human-centered, field-driven reporting
Across assignments, Krull works as a multimedia reporter who spends time in the field with the people affected by transportation and infrastructure issues. Her stories are built around direct interviews with drivers, business owners, parents, patients and local officials, supported by clear descriptions of the settings where they live and work. She balances individual anecdotes with concise explanations of the relevant systems—tourism economies, school transportation networks, healthcare service regions—so that automobile topics are always anchored in a wider context. The through-line in her work is a practical, human-centered lens on how travel by car, bus or other road transport shapes access, opportunity and daily routines.
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.
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.
Aliza Savira
Aliza Savira focuses on the hidden financial costs of owning modern cars, especially how insurance can undermine expected savings. She writes about automobiles for MSN, looking at new technology and electric vehicles through everyday ownership rather than showroom appeal. Her work highlights the gap between promises of cheaper running costs and the full financial picture of owning a vehicle. In electric vehicle coverage, she treats insurance premiums as a key ownership problem that can erode long-term value. She stays close to practical questions drivers face, such as which recurring costs matter most after purchase. She reports on how insurance structures and premium levels interact with new automotive technology. Her beat is consumer-focused automobile reporting, with a clear, utilitarian lens on ownership experience, recurring expenses, and risk, rather than lifestyle or performance.