When it comes to off-roaders, Australia has more choice than most. We have the Nissan Patrol, the Jeep Wrangler, and both kinds of Toyota Land Cruiser, just for starters. The China-developed GWM Tank 300 is still seen as an oddball outsider, perhaps undeserving of a mention against such hallowed names. And yet, as I found out—China’s mud brawler is more than happy to go rugged against any of the the big guns.

The Tank 300 first showed up in China in 2020 under the Wey brand. Great Wall Motors then brought it down under in late 2022, and the plucky off-roader has expanded to many global markets since. At times, it’s criticized as a knock-off for certain design elements and a slight resemblance to the Ford Bronco, or seen as a cheap alternative to more established nameplates from other brands.

Yet, to truly understand the Tank 300, it needs to be evaluated on its own merits. Not for what people think it is, but for what it’s actually capable of. In the week I spent behind the wheel, I learned that’s actually rather a lot.

Built Body

The designers didn’t mess around when they set out the parameters for the Tank 300’s design. This was not going to be some cheap soft-roader with cushy suspension for the school run and a weedy front-biased all-wheel-drive system. Nope, the Tank 300 was built with an eye to tackling the rough stuff as a priority. It got a proper body-on-frame design with a longitudinal engine driving a proper four-wheel-drive system. The ethos? Mud first, motorway second. Simple as that.

GWM first hit the Australian market with the 2.0-liter gasoline hybrid, offering 241 hp from the engine and 105 horsepower from the electric motor. A petrol-only version came later, offering 217 hp and 280 pound-feet of torque. It was a longer wait for diesel fans, however, with the compression-ignition model only landing in 2025. It boasts a 2.4-liter turbodiesel engine good for 181 horsepower and 354 pound-feet of torque, paired with a nine-speed automatic and a dual-range transfer case.

It was the long-awaited diesel that I was lucky enough to drive Down Under. It’s a popular fuel for off-roaders in this land, particularly amongst the agricultural set. GWM’s Australian executives took great pride in pushing the Chinese automaker to pursue diesel power, which was not initially on the cards for the model.

The hope is that that the diesel powertrain will attract a broader customer base towards the GWM off-roader. Indeed, it seems only fitting, given the Tank’s positioning as a rugged vehicle for backwoods duties.

On The Road

The important thing about the Tank 300 is how it feels, and GWM gets it pretty much right from first impressions. It’s got the ride height and the sideboards, which instantly make it feel like it’s built for the the country. Chunkier tires would go further, but you’re already getting the right idea just from the look of this thing. Climb inside, and you’ve got a nice high seating position with a great view out of the boxy greenhouse. By your hand, a smattering of controls for all the off-road gubbins you might need on the trail. The Tank’s purpose is clear from the outset.

Start the engine, and that feeling continues. It’s not exactly the most refined engine, but few four-cylinder diesels are. It’s adequate on the road, delivering enough grunt to shove the 5000-pound around at an appreciable clip. GWM claims you’ll get up to 7.8 L/100 km (30 mpg) combined, which is pretty decent fuel economy, albeit a ways away from the 9.0 L/100 km (26 mpg) I achieved. Meanwhile, off-road, it’s got that really pleasant low-down torque to muscle along as needed.

So far, so good—the diesel does the job, right? Well… there’s just one thing. It’s lacking in responsiveness. Perhaps its the automatic start stop, perhaps its the calibration of the accelerator… but multiple times, this thing felt flat-footed. At one point, I was trying to merge on to a highway and it took a full second for the drivetrain to respond after I leaned into the pedal. I nearly missed a traffic light! It’s only an occasional problem during slow-speed driving, but it’s a frustrating one when it does happen.

As for the interior, it’s quite a nice place to be. The idea of the “cheap Chinese car” continues to maintain a hold on Australian consumers, though it becomes less relevant as time goes on. Step into the Tank 300, and “cheap” isn’t the first thing that springs to mind.

[Ed Note: That interior look really familiar.

[Ed note: That’s the current Jeep Wrangler cabin above. Quite similar! -DT]

It’s by no means a luxury vehicle, but the switchgear and touch surfaces all feel pleasant enough for the price bracket. You also get niceties like heated and ventilated seats in the higher trims, a heated steering wheel, and an excellent high-resolution 360-degree parking camera. The only thing it’s really missing is the quirky massage seats of the GWM Ora GT. Regarding the infotainment, GWM hasn’t quite mastered the software world yet. Its UI is a little clunky compared to some of the latest efforts from legacy automakers, but everything is functional and fit for purpose. Plus, you get wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, so you’re spending very little time in the GWM software anyway.

There are a few irritants, though. Mostly the indicators, which GWM can never quite get right. It’s very easy to flick them on by accident, and very frustrating to try and cancel them. In the first few days, I ended up flicking back and forth multiple times until I could shut them off. The alarm is also ready to go off at the drop of a hat. I often sit in my car with the engine off when I’m out and about… and that’s a recipe for trouble here. Multiple times, the Tank’s alarm started screaming its head off, even though I had the keys literally in my hand in the driver’s seat. The only surefire fix I found was leaving the car “on” but with the engine off. Frustrating, but workable.

Ultimately, the day-to-day on road experience is perfectly fine for this category of vehicle. It handles well enough, soaks up most of the bumps, and the ride height is great for getting over the endless speedbumps of inner city areas. It’s not as smooth or comfortable as your average commuter car, but that’s the tradeoff you make when you go for a chunky off-roader. If anything, it’s refreshing that GWM didn’t try and hedge between building a lush SUV and a go-anywhere four-wheel-drive. That’s more the goal of the larger Tank 500; the 300 is more focused in its goals.

On The Beat-Up Paths

What you’re really wondering, though, is how the Tank 300 handles the rough and tumble. In a word, it’s great—but that shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s got all the basic ingredients of a solid off-roader—a torquey engine, a dual-range transfer case, and a chassis with the legs to get over the chunky stuff.

The critical numbers are good—the Tank 300 has approach, departure, and breakover angles of 33, 34, and 23.1 degrees. That trounces the Land Cruiser 300 Series (31, 25, 22), and even bests the older, more rugged 80 Series (33, 23, 23). It’s not quite up there with the Jeep Wrangler (44, 37, 27.8), but it’s plenty good enough to handle a lot of off-road trails out there. You’re also blessed with 8.8 inches of ground clearance and a wading depth of 27.6 inches.

Overall, it feels steady and competent on the trail. The engine and driveline provides good drive and traction, and the earlier-mentioned throttle response issues never reared their head during my dirt play sessions. The available front and rear diff locks are great to have, too, particularly if you regularly find yourself tackling slipperier stuff.

A nice inclusion is the “Conqueror perspective” mode, which is a cute title for the off-road camera system. It’s useful for getting a view of roughly what the front tires are doing while you’re sitting in the driver’s seat. It beats having to get out of the vehicle to inspect an obstacle, particularly when you’re on a steep slope or muddy area.

Of course, as a press car, I couldn’t put the Tank 300 through any real strenuous challenges, lest I bin it in a river and get yelled at by the GWM people. But that’s okay—you needn’t take my word for the Tank 300’s prowess. Just take a look at it tackling the fearsome Beer O’Clock Hill in Australia below, as David Tracy discussed last year.  Fair note, this is a petrol-engined model, but it goes to show the basic competence of the Tank 300 design.

A Great Value, But Not Much Of A Reputation

The GWM Tank 300 is not a flawless vehicle. The diesel engine is not particularly nice around town, and I doubt you’d ever hit the company’s claimed fuel economy in regular driving. It also has those terrible GWM indicators that are supremely difficult to cancel until you really get the hang of things. Meanwhile, if you care about brand cachet, it has none. GWM has been in Australia for a while, but it’s yet to build up much of a positive reputation.

But the Tank 300 does a lot well—and I’ve avoided mentioning the best part until now. Yes, it’s a capable off-roader, and yes, it’s got a solid interior and lots of creature comforts. But what really makes this a potential segment champion is the price. This thing starts at just $46,990 AUD (~$29,900 USD) for the cheapest petrol model; you only need tack on another $1000 if you want the diesel. Meanwhile, if you want the nicer Ultra trim with front and rear lockers? It starts at just $51,990 AUD ($33,100 USD).

It’s worth putting those numbers up against the other off-roaders on sale in the Australian market. These days, a 70-series Toyota Land Cruiser will set you back a monstrous $80,000 AUD (~$50,900 USD) for the basic WorkMate trim. You can’t even get near a full-fat 300 Series for less than $105,000 AUD ($66,837 USD). Even the humble Jeep Wrangler comes at a pretty penny these days—kicking off at $75,950 AUD ($48,345 USD) Down Under.

Australians have suffered these high prices for a long time. There simply isn’t a lot of competition in the pure off-roader segment, and it shows. Toyota knows what you want, and they’re happy to squeeze you for the privilege of driving home in a capital-LC Land Cruiser. Meanwhile, Nissan’s pricing isn’t far behind, and Jeep is happy pricing the Wrangler like an exclusive lifestyle vehicle. You could consider the Suzuki Jimny, but it’s remarkably hard to actually lay your hands on one.

If you want a cheap and capable off-roader for a budget price, it’s hard to look past the GWM offering. There just isn’t much else out there in the same price range. The Tank 300 offers everything you want—body on frame construction, proper four-wheel-drive, low range, and front and rear lockers—all for well under $60,000 AUD.

It’s for this reason alone that I’d probably consider buying the Tank over most of the competition. You could buy two for the price of a single 300 Series Land Cruiser, and you’d probably take delivery a lot quicker, too. You could trash one up and down your farm for a whole year, sink it in a bog, and then start driving the second one after that—and you’d still come out ahead of most 300 Series buyers. It’s also a lot more interesting to look at. I’m not just talking about the general design, either—GWM offers more interesting colors than the current Toyota lookbook, which pretty much ends at silver and white.

There’s one thing that holds me back on the Tank, though, and it’s a difficult one. A new vehicle is always a big investment, and you want something stout and reliable for your money. That goes double for off-roaders—you’re relying on them to get you to far-flung nowheres and all the way back to civilization. The problem that GWM has is a lack of reputation. These vehicles just haven’t been around long enough to rack up hundreds of thousands of miles and impress us all with their longevity.

They could be pretty solid, but we just don’t know yet. It’s sometimes hard to read through the lines when it comes to bluster online. A lot of people will talk a lot of crap about Chinese cars, but how much of it is rooted in reality? It’s hard to say, but a question mark still hangs over these vehicles for a lot of consumers. Time is the only thing that can change that. Given the pricing, GWM’s likely got a pretty good shot at winning people over.

Ultimately, though, the Tank 300 tells me GWM is doing something right. It’s figured out how to build a capable four-wheel-drive and sell it at a very tasty price. It’s not a bad looker, to boot. Now that it’s available as a diesel, too, it should continue to win fans in Australia and across the world. We’re still near the beginning of the Tank story, and I’ll be very interested to see where it goes from here.

Image credits: Lewin Day

The post I Drove China’s Diesel ‘Tank 300’ Off-Roader. Here’s Why I’d Buy It Over a Land Cruiser Any Day Of The Week appeared first on The Autopian.

A young man with no government experience who has yet to even complete his undergraduate degree is working for Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and has been tasked with using artificial intelligence to rewrite the agency’s rules and regulations.

Christopher Sweet was introduced to HUD employees as being originally from San Francisco and, most recently, a third-year student at the University of Chicago, where he was studying economics and data science, in an email sent to staffers earlier this month.

“I'd like to share with you that Chris Sweet has joined the HUD DOGE team with the title of special assistant, although a better title might be ‘Al computer programming quant analyst,’” Scott Langmack, a DOGE staffer and chief operating officer of an AI real estate company, wrote in an email widely shared within the agency and reviewed by WIRED. “With family roots from Brazil, Chris speaks Portuguese fluently. Please join me in welcoming Chris to HUD!”

Sweet’s primary role appears to be leading an effort to leverage artificial intelligence to review HUD’s regulations, compare them to the laws on which they are based, and identify areas where rules can be relaxed or removed altogether. (He has also been given read access to HUD's data repository on public housing, known as the Public and Indian Housing Information Center, and its enterprise income verification systems, according to sources within the agency.)

Plans for the industrial-scale deregulation of the US government were laid out in detail in the Project 2025 policy document that the Trump administration has effectively used as a playbook during its first 100 days in power. The document, written by a who’s who of far-right figures, many of whom now hold positions of power within the administration, pushes for deregulation in areas like the environment, food and drug enforcement, and diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.

One area Sweet is focusing on is regulation related to the Office of Public and Indian Housing (PIH), according to sources who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the press.

Sweet—who two sources have been told is the lead on the AI deregulation project for the entire administration—has produced an Excel spreadsheet with around a thousand rows containing areas of policy where the AI tool has flagged that HUD may have “overreached” and suggesting replacement language.

Staffers from PIH are, specifically, asked to review the AI’s recommendations and justify their objections to those they don’t agree with. “It all sounds crazy—having AI recommend revisions to regulations,” one HUD source says. “But I appreciated how much they’re using real people to confirm and make changes.”

Once the PIH team completes the review, their recommendations will be submitted to the Office of the General Counsel for approval.

One HUD source says they were told that the AI model being used for this project is “being refined by our work to be used across the government.” To do this, the source says they were told in a meeting attended by Sweet and Jacob Altik, another known DOGE member who has worked as an attorney at Weil, Gotshal & Manges, that the model will crawl through the Code of Federal Regulations (eCFR).

Another source told WIRED that Sweet has also been using the tool at other parts of HUD. WIRED reviewed a copy of the output of the AI’s review of one HUD department, which features columns displaying text that the AI model found to be needing an adjustment while also including suggestions from the AI for alterations to be made, essentially proposing rewrites. The spreadsheet details how many words can be eliminated from individual regulations and gives a percentage figure indicating how noncompliant the regulations are. It isn’t clear how these percentages are calculated.

Sweet did not respond to requests for comment regarding his work. In response to a request to clarify Sweet’s role at HUD, a spokesperson for the agency said they do not comment on individual personnel. The University of Chicago confirmed to WIRED that Sweet is “on leave from the undergraduate college.”

It’s unclear how Sweet was recruited to DOGE, but a public GitHub account indicates that he was working on this issue even before he joined Musk’s demolition crew.

The “CLSweet” GitHub account, which WIRED has linked to Sweet, created an application that tracks and analyzes federal government regulations “showing how regulatory burden is distributed across government agencies.” The application was last updated in March 2025, weeks before Sweet joined HUD.

One HUD source who heard about Sweet’s possible role in revising the agency’s regulations said the effort was redundant, since the agency was already “put through a multi-year multi-stakeholder meatgrinder before any rule was ever created” under the Administrative Procedure Act. (This law dictates how agencies are allowed to establish regulations and allows for judicial oversight over everything an agency does.)

Another HUD source said Sweet’s title seemed to make little sense. “A programmer and a quantitative data analyst are two very different things,” they noted.

Sweet has virtually no online footprint. One of the only references to him online is a short biography on the website of East Edge Securities, an investment firm Sweet founded in 2023 with two other students from the University of Chicago.

The biography is short on details but claims that Sweet has worked in the past with several private equity firms, including Pertento Partners, which is based in London, and Tenzing Global Investors, based in San Francisco. He is also listed as a board member of Paragon Global Investments, which is a student-run hedge fund.

The biography also mentions that Sweet “will be joining Nexus Point Capital as a private equity summer analyst.” The company has headquarters in Hong Kong and Shanghai and describes itself as “an Asian private equity fund with a strategic focus on control opportunities in the Greater China market.”

East Edge Securities, Pertento Partners, Tenzing Global Investors, Paragon Global Investments, and Nexus Point Capital did not respond to requests for comment.

The only other online account associated with Sweet appears to be a Substack account using the same username as the GitHub account. That account has not posted any content and follows mostly finance and market-related newsletters. It also follows Bari Weiss’ The Free Press and the newsletter of Marc Andreessen, the Silicon Valley billionaire investor and group chat enthusiast who said he spent a lot of time advising Trump and his team after the election.

DOGE representatives have been at HUD since February, when WIRED reported that two of those staffers were given application-level access to some of the most critical and sensitive systems inside the agency.

Earlier this month, US representative Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, said DOGE had “infiltrated our nation’s housing agencies, stealing funding Congress provided to communities, illegally terminating staff, including in your districts, and accessing confidential data about people living in assisted housing, including sexual assault survivors.”

This story originally appeared at WIRED.com

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For nearly as long as cars have existed, drivers all around the world have been enamored by the promises of cheap, hyper-efficient transportation. I mean, who doesn’t want to drive as far as possible for pennies on the dollar? In the 1970s and 1980s, some of the thriftiest cars in America were tiny fiberglass cuties promising around 100 mpg and pure driving fun. This is the 1986 D & A Vehicles Minikin, and it promised drivers pure driving fun to families, additional mobility to RV owners, and 75 mpg to delivery drivers. With perhaps as few as 16 made, you might not see another for a while.

This car has popped up for sale in the Obscure Cars For Sale group on Facebook. I totally recommend visiting this group because you might just find a car that you never even knew existed. You might not have seen this car before, but I bet you’ve seen or even own the car that this car is associated with.

The Minikin was pitched as a sort of great vehicle to buy if you were looking for a fun second car. D & A Vehicles was ambitious in the vehicle’s marketing, saying that it hugged the road and made “driving great again.” So, what’s the deal with this little guy? Some of you might even wonder why it looks somewhat familiar. Well, that’s because this car is technically related to another cutie.

Born From A Familiar Name

The Minikin was the work of D & A Vehicles, Inc. of St. Cloud, Minnesota. According to St. Cloud local paper, the Chronicle, D & A Vehicles was founded by Don Schirmers and Allen Tank in 1982. The pair had acquired the rights to the H-M-Vehicles Freeway and began a three-year development period, turning the thrifty trike into a two-seat convertible.

We’re pretty huge fans of the High Mileage Vehicles Freeway (yes, that’s what the “H-M” means) around here and know that at least one reader owns one. Here’s some history from my old H-M-Vehicles Freeway piece:

In 1979, Apple Valley, Minnesota resident Dave Edmonson believed that he found the solution to America’s fuel woes, reported Minnesota newspaper Sun This Week. His HMV FreeWay didn’t just advertise 100 mpg, but guaranteed it so long as you kept the vehicle in operating order and drove it just 40 mph. Backing up Edmonson was his research. In 1970, he was studying mechanical engineering at the University of Minnesota when he began looking into economical vehicles for a course. And Edmonson, like the fellow that built that 75 mpg Geo Metro, felt that taking the family car to work was wasteful. From the Sun This Week:

“I thought it would make a lot of sense for people driving to work or when they don’t need a big car to be driving something smaller and more economical,” said Edmonson, a father of six and grandfather of 19. “I did studies on how much power it took to move a small vehicle down the road and what kind of mileage you could expect. I began building a prototype in 1974 and finished it in 1976. That’s when I tried to start getting the business going.”

And what you got with this trike is, well, not much. The body consists of two pieces of fiberglass molded in color. The body is draped over a steel tube frame with a perimeter frame that includes the vehicle’s crash structure. And yes, that small strip of black is the vehicle’s steel bumper. The Burnsville Historical Society shows us what that structure looks like.

Aside from the featherweight bodywork, another key to the frugality was the 345cc Tecumseh single-cylinder engine. H-M-V promised 100 mpg from the 12 HP mill so long as you kept it around 40 mph. If you had a need for speed, there was a hotter 453cc model that made 16 HP and still clocked in around 80 mpg. That one was also said to have a top speed of 65 mph.

Reader Mike Harrell owns a Freeway and apparently gets nothing near the advertised fuel economy:

I own an HMV Freeway with the smaller engine but I’ve got to say that even at a steady 40 mph I’ve never seen anything approaching 100 mpg. About half that, or slightly less, is more realistic.

I do, in fact, drive it on the freeway. It will cruise at 60 mph or so on level ground, although ascending even modest hills will slow things down considerably. My longest trip so far has been about 300 miles; on the one occasion I took it farther from home I towed it.

The Freeway was sold for $3,400 ($15,919 today) and H-M-Vehicles managed to produce about 700 examples before going under in 1982.

The Big Minikin

That brings us to the Minikin. Don Shirmers and Allen Tank used to be employees of H-M-Vehicles and felt that the Freeway’s design could have been improved. Buying the design was their chance to make things right in their eye.

Back then, Schirmers said that the average American car commuted less than 12 miles on each trip and most of the time, those vehicles had one occupant or maybe two. So, the Minikin was designed to have two seats next to each other. However, a funny quirk about the Minikin is that its steering wheel is in the center. After all, as Schirmers said, most cars have just one occupant in them. Presumably, that means if you’re driving with a passenger, you have to drive with your arms at an angle. Schirmers says he also wanted to keep as much weight in the center as possible because, after all, you’re driving a trike weighing just 950 pounds.

The Minikin sports the hotter 16 HP engine from the Freeway, plus an AM/FM radio, a vinyl convertible top, and a defroster. A heater, a spare tire, a towing kit, and a backpack kit were among the few options. The Chronicle continued by describing the Minikin as surpassing the safety of a motorcycle with its safety glass, steel frame, and rollbar.

One of the biggest selling points of the Minikin was its simplicity. It has a clutch and belt like a go-kart, a gravity-fed fuel system, a carburetor. D & A Vehicles advertised the easy maintenance of the drivetrain and the fact that parts and service were plentiful since the car pretty much used a ride-on lawnmower engine.

D & A Vehicles was ambitious in its marketing. The companies claimed three market possibilities. The first was the island runabout rental market. D & A expected Minikins to be a far more popular and even more profitable alternative to scooter and bicycle rentals. D & A Vehicles even expected to rename the Minikin to the Island Pop’r for the rental version.

The second target market included condo dwellers, RV owners, and the islanders themselves. The RV idea was simple enough. D & A said you would hitch the Minikin up to the back of your RV and tow it to your destination. Then, you had a car to drive around in once you got there. This wasn’t a new concept. So many experimental vehicles had been built around being a sub-1,000-pound escape pod to tow behind an RV. Many RV owners today buy an old Smart Fortwo if they just want a tiny car to tow with their RV.

Anyway, D & A Vehicles also started asking islanders and condo owners and both apparently said that the vehicle looked like a ton of fun, so the vehicle was marketed toward them, too.

Finally, the last market for the Minikin was pizza delivery. D & A Vehicles planned a van version, and the idea was that a pizza delivery driver would enjoy getting 75 mpg as they delivered hot pies. D & A also figured that business owners would love the ease of maintenance, tiny size, and “under $4,500” ($13,640 today) purchase price.

D & A Vehicles trademarked the Minikin name in 1983 and began advertising that year. By 1985, Schirmers indicated that 8 examples had been completed. He expected that over 150 vehicles would be built in 1986. But that didn’t happen. It’s believed that D & A Vehicles managed to sell only 16 examples. That’s despite marketing going into the early 1990s.

Sadly, I’ve found no official explanation for why barely over a dozen of these were sold, but I’m not all that surprised. A Yugo was only $3,990 ($12,094 today) back then. A Nissan Sentra was $5,499 ($16,668 today), and a Pontiac 1000 was $5,735 ($17,384 today). Of course, used cars were cheaper than that.

This Minikin

The 1986 Minikin for sale in Cary, Illinois, is said to be number four of the alleged total 16. There isn’t much of a description that comes with the car, other than the fact that it runs and drives and that it’s registered as a motorcycle. The photos that come with the vehicle show that it appears to be in pretty good shape!

It’s gloriously simple. I love the off-the-shelf speedometer, which reads all of 2,931 miles. The carpet is sort of just there, there’s basically no weatherstripping, and there’s even just a single wiper. I could have sworn I’ve also seen that steering wheel on a go-kart.

It’s all delightful and fun. The seller wants $10,000 for the Minikin, and yeah, that’s a lot of dough. But I think the price might be worth it for someone. I could totally see this thing showing up on an Aging Wheels video one day. Hey Robert Dunn, are you reading this? Amusingly, I live maybe 10 minutes from this car, but $10,000 is way too much for me. But maybe I’ll ask the seller if I can take it for a spin.

I love the 1980s era of weird cars like these. The people behind cars like the Freeway and the Minikin had huge ideas, even if their budgets and manufacturing only somewhat lived up to the promises. Yet, they still made at least a few cars and people do love them. It’s hard not to root for an underdog like this, and I hope this Minikin finds a good home.

The post This Adorable 75 MPG, 16 HP Trike Promised To Be The Perfect Fun Second Car appeared first on The Autopian.

Tribal wildfire programs are underfunded and overburdened.

The post How the feds abandoned reservations to burn  appeared first on High Country News.

Two months ago, I launched Hyperspace, a Mac app for reclaiming disk space without removing files. The feature set of version 1.0 was intentionally very conservative. As I wrote in my launch post, Hyperspace modifies files that it did not create and does not own. This is an inherently risky proposition.

The first release of Hyperspace mitigated these risks, in part, by entirely avoiding certain files and file system locations. I knew lifting these limitations would be a common request from potential customers. My plan was to launch 1.0 with the safest possible feature set, then slowly expand the app’s capabilities until all these intentional 1.0 limitations were gone.

With the release of Hyperspace 1.3 earlier this week, I have accomplished that goal. Here’s the timeline for overcoming the three major 1.0 feature limitations:

• 1.0: February 24, 2025 - Launch
• 1.1: March 14, 2025 - Packages
• 1.2: April 3, 2025 - Cloud storage
• 1.3: April 28, 2025 - Libraries

Here’s an explanation of those limitations, why they existed, and what it took to overcome them.

Packages

A “package” is a directory that is presented to the user as a file. For example, an .rtfd document (a “Rich Text Document With Attachments”) created by TextEdit is actually a directory that contains an .rtf file plus any attachments (e.g., images included in the document). The Finder displays and handles this .rtfd directory as if it were a single file.

For a package to work, all its contents must be intact. Hyperspace works hard to handle and recover from all sorts of errors, but in the rare case that manual intervention is required, asking the user to fix a problem within a package is undesirable. Since packages appear as single files, most people are not accustomed to cracking them open and poking around in their guts.

This may all seem esoteric, but there are some kinds of packages that are widely used and often contain vast amounts of data. Let’s start with the big one: Apple Photos libraries are packages. So are iMovie libraries, some Logic projects, and so on. These packages are all ideal targets for Hyperspace in terms of potential space savings. But they also often contain some of people’s most precious data.

For the most part, files within packages don’t need to be treated any differently than “normal” files. The delay in lifting this limitation was to allow the app to mature a bit first. Though I had a very large set of beta testers, there’s nothing like real customer usage to find bugs and edge cases. After five 1.0.x releases, I finally felt confident enough in Hyperspace’s basic functionality to allow access to packages.

I did so cautiously, however, by adding settings to enable package access, but leaving them turned off by default. I also provided separate settings for scanning inside packages and reclaiming files within packages. Enabling scanning but not reclamation within packages allows files within packages to be used as “source files”, which are never modified.

Finally, macOS requires special permissions for accessing Photos libraries, so there’s a separate setting for that as well.

Oh, and there’s one more common package type that Hyperspace still ignores: applications (i.e., .app packages). The contents of app packages are subject to Apple’s code signing system and are very sensitive to changes. I still might tackle apps someday, but it hasn’t been a common customer request.

Cloud Storage

Any file under the control of Apple’s “file provider” system is considered to be backed by cloud storage. In the past, iCloud Drive was the only example. Today, third-party services also use Apple’s file provider system. Examples include Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive, and some versions of Dropbox.

There’s always the potential for competition between Hyperspace and other processes when accessing a given file. But in the case of cloud storage, we know there’s some other process that has its eye on every cloud-backed file. Hyperspace must tread lightly. Also, files backed by cloud storage might not actually be fully downloaded to the local disk. And even if they are, they might not be up-to-date.

Unlike files within packages, files backed by cloud storage are not just like other files. They require special treatment using different APIs. After nailing down “normal” file handling, including files within packages, I was ready to tackle cloud storage.

In the end, there were no major problems. Apple’s APIs for wrangling cloud-backed files mostly seem to work, with only a few oddities. And if Hyperspace can’t get an affirmative assurance from those APIs that a file is a valid candidate for reclamation, it will err on the side of caution and skip the file instead.

Libraries

In the early years of Mac OS X, there were tragicomic tales of users finding a folder named “Library” in their home directory and deciding they didn’t need it or its contents, then moving them to the Trash. Today, macOS hides that folder by default—for good reason. Its contents are essential for the correct functionality of your Mac! The same goes for the “Library” directory at the top level of the boot volume.

Hyperspace avoided Library folders for so long because their contents are so important, and because those contents are updated with surprising frequency. As with packages, it was important for me to have confidence in the basic functionality of Hyperspace before I declared open season on Library folders.

This capability was added last because the other two were more highly requested. As usual, Library access is enabled with a setting, which is off by default. Due to the high potential for contention (running apps are constantly fiddling with their files within the Library folder), this is probably the riskiest of the three major features, which is another reason I saved it for last. I might not have added it at all, if not for the fact that Library folders are a surprisingly rich source for space savings.

The Future

There’s more to come, including user interface improvements and an attempt to overcome some of the limitations of sandboxing, potentially allowing Hyperspace to reclaim space across more than one user account. (That last one is a bit of a “stretch goal”, but I’ve done it before.)

If you want to know more about how Hyperspace works, please read the extensive documentation. If you're interested in beta testing future versions of Hyperspace, email me.

In some ways, Hyperspace version 1.3 is what I originally envisioned when I started the project. But software development is never a straight line. It’s a forest. And like a forest it’s easy to lose your way. Launching with a more limited version 1.0 led to some angry reviews and low ratings in the Mac App Store, but it made the app safer from day one, and ultimately better for every user, now and in the future.

Ethanol’s an interesting fuel. Blended with gasoline, it can offer big octane and serious knock resistance, but it can also wreak havoc on incompatible fuel systems. While a 10 percent blend has been fairly normal at the pumps for decades now, E15 looks like it’s sticking around, and while it might be tempting to save a little bit on fuel, there are some reasons why it isn’t ubiquitous yet.

This cheaper blend with an extra slug of distilled corn juice has already been around for a while, but it’s historically been isolated to use in cold seasons, when smog is less of an issue. Over the past few years, a number of emergency orders have extended the sale of E15 through the summer months, and it looks like that’s continuing for 2025. However, just because it’s available doesn’t mean you should just put it in your car.

The EPA claims that cars made after 2001 will happily accommodate E15, but that’s not exactly accurate. While E85-capable vehicles can safely handle E15 since 15 percent ethanol by volume is far less than 85 percent ethanol by volume, there are lots of vehicles made after 2001 that aren’t designed for E15. For instance, BMWs only approves a maximum of 10 percent ethanol content in its vehicles, as does Mazda, as does Mercedes-Benz on all models not approved for E85. Volvo only approves a maximum of 10 percent ethanol content across its lineup, as does Mitsubishi.

Some other manufacturers like Nissan are more selective when it comes to E15 approval. The current Frontier, Rogue, Z, Pathfinder, and Altima can take E15, but the Sentra, Kicks, and almost all outgoing models like the previous-generation Armada aren’t rated to handle it.

So what happens if you run a car not rated for E15 on this particular blend of gasoline? Well, ethanol is hygroscopic, meaning it pulls in moisture. If not kept tightly sealed, the ethanol in blended gasoline can attract water and separate from the gasoline, potentially leading to fuel system damage. Thankfully, modern fuel systems are generally sealed pretty well, but water contamination isn’t the only way higher ethanol concentrations can affect fuel systems.

For instance, ethanol and oxygen can form acetic acid, the active ingredient in vinegar. Anyone who’s let old parts sit in a vinegar bath overnight will tell you it does a modest job of removing light rust and tarnishing, but similar acidity could also affect the integrity of fuel system components over the long run. It’s also worth noting that rubber fuel system components are rated for a certain level of ethanol, and lines and seals compatible with E10 might not be compatible with E15, leading to premature degradation.

Another thing to note about E15 is energy density. According to the Department of Energy, pure ethanol is roughly 30 percent less energy-dense than gasoline, so going up from E10 to E15 will likely result in a marginal decline in fuel economy. It will likely only be a few percentage points, but if the price of E15 in your area is only a touch cheaper than E10, you might not actually save any money.

Yes, E15 will likely be cheaper than more common blends of up to 10 percent ethanol, but it’s a good idea to check your owner’s manual to see if your car can run it before selecting it at the fuel pump. One mistaken tank probably won’t do any damage, but prolonged use in a fuel system not designed for it could result in unexpected wear. Also, reduced energy density means E15 might not work out cheaper on a cost-per-mile basis.

Top graphic images: stock.adobe.com; Nissan

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