On the occasion of the extensive “Sandboxxer” update, I finally took the time to take a closer look at Underdogs. The VR title from One Hamsa transports me to a dark future where only one human city still exists: New Brakka. To get in there, I have to prove myself in illegal mech fights and earn the respect of the street.

In Underdogs, I slip into the role of one of the two brothers who have to flee their homeland. My younger brother King always stands by my side with advice and support. At least when he's not busy hacking my enemies to pieces while I smash opponents in my multi-ton mech named Rilla. The relationship between the brothers is one of the core elements of the story and contributes a lot to the dense atmosphere of the game.

My conclusion on Underdogs is completely positive. The game is a successful mix of sweat-inducing action, roguelike-typical progress and a lot of style. If you've always wanted to take a seat in a mech yourself and really dish it out, there's no way around Underdogs.

With the “Sandboxxer” update, the title has what it takes to be one of the best VR games of the year. The sheer endless possibilities to create your own content and share it with friends promise long-lasting fun. In addition, the new achievements and the open battle mode provide additional motivation. Creative minds and action fans can access it without hesitation — Underdogs is simply a lot of fun and, not the least thanks to the big update, has a lot to offer. Brattas and Sistas, grab your mech and dive into the fray!

Any of our readers who have been following my reports know that Latin America’s EV sales are rising. In some countries, they may not be growing as fast as we would wish; in others, they’re faster than we ever expected; but the trend remains clear regardless.

Latin America’s* market amounts to some 5 million vehicles a year, 70% of which corresponds to only two countries (Brazil and Mexico), with another 20% belonging to four countries (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Peru). The remaining 10% is left to another dozen countries or so. (*Minus the Caribbean, which isn’t a big market in any case.)

The region is also known for being highly protectionist, with tariffs to promote local industry, be it by pressure from the US (as is the case of Mexico) or because of a regional interest (as is the case in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru). This means that local production is imperative if the EV revolution is to succeed. So, how are things going on that front?

It should come as no surprise that the two largest markets, and two largest producers, are also the two pioneers in EV production in Latin America: Mexico and Brazil. Together, these two countries account for at least five plants already producing EVs, and at least six coming up with production planned prior to 2027.

Ember Souls takes you into a fantastic world full of adventure and danger. As the last immortal, you must face an ultimate battle against the mysterious Shadow Sultan in this VR hack-and-slash game. This involves not only sword fights, but also parkour, climbing and tricky environmental puzzles. Find out how the demo of the title inspired by Prince of Persia and Assassin's Creed plays in this article.

A magnificent palace full of mystery My adventure begins on a boat, slowly drifting towards an island. Even from a distance, I can see magnificent buildings with golden domes that remind me of the architecture in Prince of Persia and immediately catch my attention. I disembark at a jetty, grab a sword and make my way to an imposing palace.

Standing in front of a closed gate, a shimmering blue bird invites me to pet it. In a brief conversation, it tells me how to get over the walls and into the palace. On my way there, I smash barrels and vases and find a useful sign — an incentive to explore my surroundings further.

I’m a big survival game fan. I love punching trees or picking up rocks and sticks to make tools. However, these games often discount the greatest tools humans were ever gifted with: your own two hands. Fortunately, Bootstrap Island makes full use of them.

At Gamescom, I played the latest version of this early access SteamVR game from Maru VR Productions. The studio recently added a simple building mechanic, though you can only make fences and gates right now. There are plans to expand this mechanic while adding features like food spoilage, boots, and new bosses this fall.

Like many survival games, I find myself stranded on a desert island. I love pirates, so I like to think I'm one who got blasted overboard during a ship capture gone awry. Unlike most survival games, rather than gathering resources to build tools, I can use my hands to do everything I want.

If I need to drink, I can smash a coconut against a boulder and rip its rind off if I need to drink. Then I'll bash it into the boulder again to split the coconut in two, drinking the sweet water within by holding it up to my face. I could also poke holes in the top with a knife I found in a locked chest. This method stopped any water from spilling out when it cracked open. I could also eat the flesh, piece-by-piece with my hands, by holding it up to my gob.

Opening the locked chest involves finding a rock to whack it open. Seeing the sparks flying off the metal gave me an idea. I gathered the spent coconut rind and placed some nearby sticks and planks on top of it, then got the rock in one hand, locked chest in another, and created sparks until I had a roaring bonfire going. That’s the beauty of creating intuitive systems like this.

Spin Rhythm XD, Thumper, Pistol Whip, Ragnarock, & Synth Riders. Rhythm and dance games are perfect for VR, offering a truly immersive experience—enjoy great games while supporting Direct Relief!

Over the past couple of months, we've explored some of the most compelling, imaginative, and breathtaking worlds VRChat has to offer, and today we're highlighting the worlds that stood out and left a lasting impression on us.

These picks are our top choices as of the publish date, but we're always eager to hear about more extraordinary worlds and will plan to update this list in the future. If you're a world creator with major updates to an existing world, or you know of any amazing destinations that we should check out next, drop us a line at [email protected].

Of the worlds we've visited from our existing community recommendations, here's our list of the best worlds to explore, not ranked in any particular order.

In a bit of a leak, we’ve caught word that Hyundai and IVECO Group are aiming to feature a “revolutionary electric commercial vehicle” at the coming IAA 2024 show in Hannover, Germany.

We don’t have details yet, but we’ve got these summary points:

Hyundai Motor Company leverages its global eLCV platform for IVECO-badged ‘eMoovy’ debut in Europe
Hyundai’s advanced EV technology includes proven PE system for ultra-fast charging and smart battery management
Hyundai’s eLCV platform features a low-floor access for increased cargo capacity and improved operator mobility
Hyundai and IVECO partnership aims to accelerate eco-friendly commercial vehicle transition and expand sustainable mobility future across Europe

In March, Hyundai and IVECO noted that they’d be partnering up for commercial vehicle development. They noted that they’d be working on “electric heavy-duty truck solutions, including both battery electric trucks and fuel cell electric trucks,” together. These are targeted for the European market, where regulations on trucking are strengthening.

We’ll have to wait a week or so to find out what this new “revolutionary electric commercial vehicle” is. Stay tuned.

Tesla’s rollout of Full Self-Driving v12.5 has failed so far, and owners want to know what happens next?

In 2016, Elon Musk announced that all future Tesla vehicles would come equipped with the necessary hardware for self-driving capabilities, even specifying “level 5 self-driving,” which implies the ability to operate autonomously under any conditions. However, shortly after, Musk acknowledged that Tesla might require more onboard computing power than initially thought, leading to the introduction of Hardware 3 (HW3).

Musk assured that HW3 would enable full self-driving (FSD) capabilities, promising retrofits for earlier models that had purchased the FSD package. Following this, Tesla introduced Hardware 4 (HW4), a more advanced onboard computer system, but did not offer retrofits for older models with HW3, maintaining that HW3 was sufficient for achieving self-driving through software updates.

Initially, Musk claimed that FSD improvements would first be optimized for HW3, suggesting that HW4 might lag behind by at least six months. However, Tesla reversed this approach with the release of FSD version 12.5, which was first deployed to HW4 vehicles. Musk explained that optimizing the software for the less powerful HW3 would take additional time, hinting at the limitations of HW3 in handling the latest software advancements towards unsupervised self-driving, a capability Tesla promised to HW3 owners since 2016.

This rewrite aims to streamline the narrative, focusing on the evolution of Tesla’s self-driving hardware and software, and the strategic shifts in deployment and optimization of FSD capabilities between HW3 and HW4.

Musk said that it would take ten days to adapt v12.5 to HW3.

In late August, about two weeks after Musk’s “10 days” had passed, we reported that Tesla started to push v12.5 to HW3 vehicles.

Not only was the update to HW3 late, but Tesla also confirmed that it was running a smaller model than on HW4.

On top of all that, now three weeks later, Tesla has yet to push v12.5 to the vast majority of FSD vehicles with HW3. Tesla appears to only have pushed v12.5.1.5 to some Tesla HW3 owners and it is now moving HW4 cars to v12.5.2.

GM and EVgo are collaborating to build “flagship” EV charging stations at urban sites with a total of 400 EV charging stalls.

The flagship stations are cobranded by GM Energy, the automaker’s battery and charging division, and EVgo. The stations will be located in Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New York, and Texas at places with shopping, food, coffee shops, and other amenities.

Each station will include 20 fast charging stalls with units supporting up to 350kW speeds, pull-through stations, security cameras, and gas station-style canopies with ample lighting. The first locations featuring EVgo’s latest easy-deploying and modular prefabricated charging stations will open in 2025.

Two of the world's largest automakers are becoming closer friends, we learned this morning. Hyundai Motor Group and General Motors, which together sold 13.5 million cars last year, have decided to try and collaborate in a range of areas in the coming years, including vehicle design, technology development, and even supply chain sourcing.

GM is one of the world's oldest and most established automakers and has a long legacy of clever engineering solutions, albeit one often hamstrung by corporate decision-making.

Meanwhile, GM was just a year from its 60th birthday when HMG got going, and while the Korean automaker was not taken particularly seriously in the US as a budget brand at launch, over the last 15 years its products have been class-leading, especially its electric vehicles.

With the agreement signed, the two companies say they will immediately start looking for opportunities to work together, including jointly developing and producing new passenger and commercial vehicles, new internal combustion engines, and also new electric powertrains, whether those be battery- or hydrogen-powered.

The Postal Service’s new delivery vehicles aren’t going to win a beauty contest. They’re tall and ungainly. The windshields are vast. Their hoods resemble a duck bill. Their bumpers are enormous.

“You can tell that (the designers) didn’t have appearance in mind,” postal worker Avis Stonum said.

Odd appearance aside, the first handful of Next Generation Delivery Vehicles that rolled onto postal routes in August in Athens are getting rave reviews from letter carriers accustomed to cantankerous older vehicles that lack modern safety features and are prone to breaking down — and even catching fire.

Within a few years of the initial rollout, the fleet will have expanded to 60,000, most of them electric models, serving as the Postal Service’s primary delivery truck from Maine to Hawaii.

Once fully deployed, they’ll represent one of the most visible signs of the agency’s 10-year, $40 billion transformation led by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who’s also renovating aging facilities, overhauling the processing and transportation network, and instituting other changes.

EV sales continue to rise, but the last year of headlines falsely stating otherwise would leave you thinking they haven’t. After about full year of these lies, it would be nice for journalists to stop pushing this false narrative that they could find the truth behind by simply looking up a single number for once.

Here’s what’s actually happening: Over the course of the last year or so, sales of battery electric vehicles, while continuing to grow, have posted lower year-over-year percentage growth rates than they had in previous years.

This alone is not particularly remarkable – it is inevitable that any growing product or category will show slower percentage growth rates as sales rise, particularly one that has been growing at such a fast rate for so long.

In some recent years, we’ve even seen year-over-year doublings in EV market share (though one of those was 2020->2021, which was anomalous). To expect improvement at that level perpetually would be close to impossible – after 3 years of doubling market share from 2023’s 18% number, EVs would account for more than 100% of the global automotive market, which cannot happen.

Instead of the perpetual 50% CAGR that had been optimistically expected, we are seeing growth rates this year of ~10% in advanced economies, and higher in economies with lower EV penetration (+40% in “rest of world” beyond US/EU/China). Notably, this ~10% growth rate is higher than the above Norway example, which nobody would consider a “slump” at 94% market share.

It’s also clear that EV sales growth rates are being held back in the short term by Tesla, which has heretofore been the global leader in EV sales. Tesla actually has seen a year-over-year reduction in sales in recent quarters – likely at least partially due to chaotic leadership at the wayward EV leader – as buyers have been drawn to other brands, while most of which have seen significant increases in EV sales.