Stephanie Coombes
Stephanie Coombes is a motoring journalist who focuses on how modern cars, safety standards and car culture intersect for everyday drivers. She writes about new models, electric vehicles and the rules and insurance settings that shape how people use and think about their cars. Her work joins clear testing impressions with close attention to safety details and the broader industry behind the vehicles on the road.
New car reviews: utes, SUVs and small EVs
Coombes covers new cars across utes, SUVs and compact electric vehicles, with a strong emphasis on how they drive and what they offer in real-world use. Her review of the 2026 Volkswagen Amarok W600 looks at performance, capability and the specific features that distinguish that variant in a crowded dual-cab market.
She has profiled affordable SUVs such as Chery’s Tiggo 4, framing them around value, equipment and the compromises that come with being one of the cheapest options available. Her reporting on the Hyundai Inster as a Car of the Year finalist captures her test-drive perspective in plain language, describing the vehicle as a “cheeky little go-kart” and setting out why it stands out among small EVs.
Across these pieces she writes directly about driving experience, practicality and specification, rather than lifestyle framing or brand marketing.
Safety and standards in the EV era
Safety and compliance inside the powertrain transition to electric vehicles is a recurring thread in Coombes’s coverage.
In motoring news she has reported on ANCAP concerns around KGM Musso EV utes sold without the advertised airbags, pressing into the gap between promotional claims and the actual safety equipment delivered to buyers. She has also covered incidents where electric vehicles have caught fire or exploded while charging at public stations, using video and technical detail to show what happened at the charger and what investigators found.
Her work in this area focuses on the systems around the car as much as the vehicle itself, including standards, enforcement and the consequences when safety promises are not met.
Insurance, technology and the business of driving
Coombes follows how insurers and regulators respond to new vehicle technology, particularly driver-assistance and autonomous features. In coverage of Zurich’s decision to offer cheaper insurance to Tesla owners who use Full Self-Driving, she explains how usage data, risk assessment and incentives are being linked to advanced driver-assistance modes. Her reporting sets those developments inside the wider motoring industry, looking at how insurers, manufacturers and drivers each stand to gain or lose as connected vehicle data and automation become part of everyday driving.
This strand of her work brings the financial and policy dimensions of motoring into the same frame as the hardware and software inside the cars themselves.
Audio-first storytelling and car culture
Before focusing on motoring journalism, Coombes spent more than a decade working across radio, podcasting and print for a range of media organisations. She is a freelance writer and podcast consultant, and has edited automotive-focused publications while also writing a regular newsletter dedicated to cars and audio storytelling. Her audio work includes guest hosting automotive shows and discussing new models such as the Kia Tasman, where her on-air persona is framed as a motoring journalist and committed “car nut.” That background informs her written work, which often carries the rhythm and clarity of broadcast scripting and keeps the focus on how cars are experienced, talked about and loved by enthusiasts.
Away from the desk she spends significant time around live motoring events, including dragstrips and track days, and she drives a historic car, deepening her connection to both contemporary and classic car culture.
Across reviews, news and audio, Coombes’s reporting is defined by close engagement with the machines themselves and the systems that surround them. She consistently centres clear explanations of what has changed in a vehicle or policy, why that change matters and how it affects drivers and passengers.
Her work is grounded in automotive detail but written in plain, accessible prose that reflects a long career in both journalism and audio storytelling.
4 more automobile journalists.
Aditya Nadkarni
Aditya Nadkarni turns new model launches and first drive reviews into clear, buyer-facing information, with a strong focus on detail and incremental updates. He is principal correspondent at CarWale, where he covers passenger vehicles with an emphasis on launch news, facelifts and road-test impressions for mainstream and premium cars. His core news work tracks new introductions and lifecycle updates, explaining what changes, when the car goes on sale, and how each variant is configured. He writes “variants explained” pieces and structured first drive reviews that link driving impressions to a model’s place in the market and its recent update or launch. His reporting is factual, methodical and model-specific, avoiding broad commentary and treating even minor tweaks and new features as news. His bylines also appear at Mobility Outlook and CarTrade, with the same detail-first style.
Alexis Hooi
Alexis Hooi reports on how China’s partnerships in electric vehicles, green technology, tourism and agriculture reshape markets and communities, with a focus on Australia and the wider Asia-Pacific. He writes for China Daily, drawing on experience as a national news page editor, columnist and long-form reporter, and earlier work in other media and organizations. His beat covers Chinese EVs in Australia, green transition projects, innovation hubs, wine, geothermal energy and agricultural cooperation, treating each sector as a lens on China–Oceania economic ties and sustainable growth. He follows concrete outcomes like shifts in car choices, visitor numbers, exports and investment, and reports through project-focused stories and personality-driven features. He also covers culture and identity, diaspora roots, tourism flows, animal attractions and commentary on perception and language, grounding China–Australia relations in everyday experiences.
Antonina Joson
Antonina Joson covers how Southeast Asia’s car markets and fleet decisions respond to new technologies, environmental pressures, and policy shifts. She writes for AfMA, focusing on the automobile sector and its implications for fleets and mobility services, and works as a communications officer with a background in writing, digital marketing, and content creation. Her reporting tracks month‑to‑month changes in car sales in Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore, linking sales data, segment performance, and national policy to corporate strategy. She reports on electric vehicles as strategic assets tied to air quality, energy policy, and industrial ambitions, and follows regional moves such as XPENG’s entry into Indonesia and calls for Toyota to shift production. She also covers safety campaigns, mobility platforms, online marketplaces, book recommendations for fleet professionals, and contributes to FleetDrive advertising and content planning, bringing a commercial, cross‑industry perspective to fleet‑focused coverage.
Aranya Mondal
Aranya Mondal is a business and technical writer who edits and writes analytical coverage of the global aluminium industry for AL Circle, with a through-line of connecting trade patterns and supply risks to aluminium competitiveness. She focuses on aluminium trade flows, bauxite diplomacy, tariffs, scrap imports and strategic materials adjacent to aluminium such as gallium. Her beat spans scrap, recycling and the shift from linear to circular aluminium markets, alumina and aluminium production trends, regional vulnerabilities and project developments, as well as automotive and mobility uses of aluminium including product launches like the Anytec A28-T boat. She works mainly on long-form explainers and recurring formats such as weekly sustainability recaps, using clear language, trade data and value-chain context to unpack production, policy and energy trends for an industry audience.