It’s that time of year again—temperatures are dropping, leaves are changing color, and Microsoft is gradually rolling out another major yearly update to Windows 11.

The Windows 11 25H2 update is relatively minor compared to last year’s 24H2 update (the “25” here is a reference to the year the update was released, while the “H2” denotes that it was released in the second half of the year, a vestigial suffix from when Microsoft would release two major Windows updates per year). The 24H2 update came with some major under-the-hood overhauls of core Windows components and significant performance improvements for the Arm version; 25H2 is largely 24H2, but with a rolled-over version number to keep it in line with Microsoft’s timeline for security updates and tech support.

But Microsoft’s continuous update cadence for Windows 11 means that even the 24H2 version as it currently exists isn’t the same one Microsoft released a year ago.

To keep things current, we’ve combed through our Windows cleanup guide, updating it for the current build of Windows 11 25H2 (26200.7019) to help anyone who needs a fresh Windows install or who is finally updating from Windows 10 now that Microsoft is winding down support for it. We’ll outline dozens of individual steps you can take to clean up a “clean install” of Windows 11, which has taken an especially user-hostile attitude toward advertising and forcing the use of other Microsoft products.

As before, this is not a guide about creating an extremely stripped-down, telemetry-free version of Windows; we stick to the things that Microsoft officially supports turning off and removing. There are plenty of experimental hacks and scripts that take it a few steps farther, and/or automate some of the steps we outline here—NTDev’s Tiny11 project is one—but removing built-in Windows components can cause unexpected compatibility and security problems, and Tiny11 has historically had issues with basic table-stakes stuff like “installing security updates.”

These guides capture moments in time, and regular monthly Windows patches, app updates downloaded through the Microsoft Store, and other factors all can and will cause small variations from our directions. You may also see apps or drivers specific to your PC’s manufacturer. This guide also doesn’t cover the additional bloatware that may come out of the box with a new PC, starting instead with a freshly installed copy of Windows from a USB drive.

Starting with Setup: Avoiding Microsoft account sign-in

The most contentious part of Windows 11’s setup process relative to earlier Windows versions is that it mandates a Microsoft account sign-in, with none of the readily apparent “limited account” fallbacks that existed in Windows 10. As of Windows 11 22H2, that’s true of both the Home and Pro editions.

There are two reasons I can think of not to sign in with a Microsoft account. The first is that you want nothing to do with a Microsoft account, thank you very much. Signing in makes Windows bombard you with more Microsoft 365, OneDrive, and Game Pass subscription upsells since all you need to do is add them to an account that already exists, and Windows setup will offer subscriptions to each if you sign in first.

The second—which describes my situation—is that you do use a Microsoft account because it offers some handy benefits like automated encryption of your local drive (having those encryption keys tied to my account has saved me a couple of times) or syncing of browser info and some preferences. But you don’t want to sign in at setup, either because you don’t want to be bothered with the extra upsells or you prefer your user folder to be located at “C:\Users\Andrew” rather than “C:\Users\.”

Regardless of your reasoning, if you don’t want to bother with sign-in at setup, you have a few different options:

Use the command line

During Windows 11 Setup, after selecting a language and keyboard layout but before connecting to a network, hit Shift+F10 to open the command prompt (depending on your keyboard, you may also need to hit the Fn key before pressing F10). Type OOBE\BYPASSNRO, hit Enter, and wait for the PC to reboot.

When it comes back, click “I don’t have Internet” on the network setup screen, and you’ll have recovered the option to use “limited setup” (aka a local account) again, like older versions of Windows 10 and 11 offered.

This option has been removed from some Windows 11 testing builds, but it still works as of this writing in 25H2. We may see this option removed in a future update to Windows.

For Windows 11 Pro

For Windows 11 Pro users, there’s a command-line-free workaround you can take advantage of.

Proceed through the Windows 11 setup as you normally would, including connecting to a network and allowing the system to check for updates. Eventually, you’ll be asked whether you’re setting your PC up for personal use or for “work or school.”

Select the “work or school” option, then “sign-in options,” at which point you’ll finally be given a button that says “domain join instead.” Click this to indicate you’re planning to join the PC to a corporate domain (even though you aren’t), and you’ll see the normal workflow for creating a “limited” local account.

The downside is that you’re starting your relationship with your new Windows install by lying to it. But hey, if you’re using the AI features, your computer is probably going to lie to you, too. It all balances out.

Using the Rufus tool

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The Rufus tool can streamline a few of the more popular tweaks and workarounds for Windows 11 install media. Rufus is a venerable open source app for creating bootable USB media for both Windows and Linux. If you find yourself doing a lot of Windows 11 installs and don’t want to deal with Microsoft accounts, Rufus lets you tweak the install media itself so that the “limited setup” options always appear, no matter which edition of Windows you’re using.

To start, grab Rufus and then a fresh Windows 11 ISO file from Microsoft. You’ll also want an 8GB or larger USB drive; I’d recommend a 16GB or larger drive that supports USB 3.0 speeds, both to make things go a little faster and to leave yourself extra room for drivers, app installers, and anything else you might want to set a new PC up for the first time. (I also like this SanDisk drive that has a USB-C connector on one end and a USB-A connector on the other to ensure compatibility with all kinds of PCs.)

Fire up Rufus, select your USB drive and the Windows ISO, and hit Start to copy over all of the Windows files. After you hit Start, you’ll be asked if you want to disable some system requirements checks, remove the Microsoft account requirement, or turn off all the data collection settings that Windows asks you about the first time you set it up. What you do here is up to you; I usually turn off the sign-in requirement, but disabling the Secure Boot and TPM checks doesn’t stop those features from working once Windows is installed and running.

The rest of Windows 11 setup

The main thing I do here, other than declining any and all Microsoft 365 or Game Pass offers, is turn all the toggles on the privacy settings screen to “no.” This covers location services, the Find My Device feature, and four toggles that collectively send a small pile of usage and browsing data to Microsoft that it uses “to enhance your Microsoft experiences.” Pro tip: Use the Tab key and spacebar to quickly toggle these without clicking or scrolling.

Of these, I can imagine enabling Find My Device if you’re worried about theft or location services if you want Windows and apps to be able to access your location. But I tend not to send any extra telemetry or browsing data other than the basics (the only exception being on machines I enroll in the Windows Insider Preview program for testing, since Microsoft requires you to send more detailed usage data from those machines to help it test its beta software). If you want to change any of these settings after setup, they’re all in the Settings app under Privacy & Security.

If you have signed in with a Microsoft account during setup, you can expect to see several additional setup screens that aren’t offered when you’re signing in with a local account, including attempts to sell Microsoft 365, OneDrive, and Xbox Game Pass subscriptions. Accept or decline these offers as desired.

Cleaning up Windows 11

Reboot once this is done, and you’ll be at the Windows desktop. Start by installing any drivers you need, plus Windows updates.

When you first connect to the Internet, Windows may or may not decide to automatically pull down a few extraneous third-party apps and app shortcuts, things like Spotify or Grammarly—this has happened to me consistently in most Windows 11 installs I’ve done over the years, though it hasn’t generally happened on the 24H2 and 25H2 PCs I’ve set up.

Open the Start menu and right-click each of the apps you don’t want to remove the icons for and/or uninstall. Some of these third-party apps are just stubs that won’t actually be installed to your computer until you try to run them, so removing them directly from the Start menu will get rid of them entirely.

Right-clicking and uninstalling the unwanted apps that are pinned to the Start menu is the fastest (and, for some, the only) way to get rid of them.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

The other apps and services included in a fresh Windows install generally at least have the excuse of being first-party software, though their usefulness will be highly user-specific: Xbox, the new Outlook app, Clipchamp, and LinkedIn are the ones that stand out, plus the ad-driven free-to-play version of the Solitaire suite that replaced the simple built-in version during the Windows 8 era.

Rather than tell you what I remove, I’ll tell you everything that can be removed from the Installed Apps section of the Settings app (also quickly accessible by right-clicking the Start button in the taskbar). You can make your own decisions here; I generally leave the in-box versions of classic Windows apps like Sound Recorder and Calculator while removing things I don’t use, like To Do or Clipchamp.

This list should be current for a fresh, fully updated install of Windows 11 25H2, at least in the US, but it doesn’t include any apps that might be specific to your hardware, like audio or GPU settings apps. Some individual apps may or may not appear as part of your Windows install.

• Calculator
• Camera
• Clock (may also appear as Windows Clock)
• Copilot
• Family
• Feedback Hub
• Game Assist
• Media Player
• Microsoft 365 Copilot
• Microsoft Clipchamp
• Microsoft OneDrive: Removing this, if you don’t use it, should also get rid of notifications about OneDrive and turning on Windows Backup.
• Microsoft Teams
• Microsoft To Do
• News
• Notepad
• Outlook for Windows
• Paint
• Photos
• Power Automate
• Quick Assist
• Remote Desktop Connection
• Snipping Tool
• Solitaire & Casual Games
• Sound Recorder
• Sticky Notes
• Terminal
• Weather
• Web Media Extensions
• Xbox
• Xbox Live

In Windows 11 23H2, Microsoft moved almost all of Windows’ non-removable apps to a System Components section, where they can be configured but not removed; this is where things like Phone Link, the Microsoft Store, Dev Home, and the Game Bar have ended up. The exception is Edge and its associated updater and WebView components; these are not removable, but they aren’t listed as “system components” for some reason, either.

Start, Search, Taskbar, and lock screen decluttering

Microsoft has been on a yearslong crusade against unused space in the Start menu and taskbar, which means there’s plenty here to turn off.

• Right-click an empty space on the desktop, click Personalize, and click any of the other built-in Windows themes to turn off the Windows Spotlight dynamic wallpapers and the “Learn about this picture” icon.
• Right-click the Taskbar and click Taskbar settings. I usually disable the Widgets board; you can leave this if you want to keep the little local weather icon in the lower-left corner of your screen, but this space is also sometimes used to present junky news articles from the Microsoft Start service.
  • If you want to keep Widgets enabled but clean it up a bit, open the Widgets menu, click the Settings gear in the top-right corner, scroll to “Show or hide feeds,” and turn the feed off. This will keep the weather, local sports scores, stocks, and a few other widgets, but it will get rid of the spammy news articles.
• Also in the Taskbar settings, I usually change the Search field to “search icon only” to get rid of the picture in the search field and reduce the amount of space it takes up. Toggle the different settings until you find one you like.

• Open Settings > Privacy & Security > Recommendations & offers and disable “Personalized offers,” “Improve Start and search results,” “Show notifications in Settings,” “Recommendations and offers in Settings,” and “Advertising ID” (some of these may already be turned off). These settings mostly either send data to Microsoft or clutter up the Settings app with various recommendations and ads.
• Open Settings > Privacy & Security > Diagnostics & feedback, scroll down to “Feedback frequency,” and select “Never” to turn off all notifications requesting feedback about various Windows features.
• Open Settings > Privacy & Security, click Search and disable “Show search highlights.” This cleans up the Search menu quite a bit, focusing it on searches you’ve done yourself and locally installed apps.

• Open Settings > Personalization > Lock screen. Under “Personalize your lock screen,” switch from “Windows spotlight” to either Picture or Slideshow to use local images for your lock screen, and then uncheck the “get fun facts, tips, tricks, and more” box that appears. This will hide the other text boxes and clickable elements that Windows automatically adds to the lock screen in Spotlight mode. Under “Lock screen status,” select “none” to hide the weather widget and other stocks and news widgets from your lock screen.
• If you own a newer Windows PC with a dedicated Copilot key, you can navigate to Settings > Personalization > Text input and scroll down to remap the key. Unfortunately, its usefulness is still limited—you can reassign it to the Search function or to the built-in Microsoft 365 app, but by default, Windows doesn’t give you the option to reassign it to open any old app.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

By default, the Start menu will occasionally make “helpful” suggestions about third-party Microsoft Store apps to grab. These can and should be turned off.

• Open Settings > Personalization > Start. Turn off “Show recommendations for tips, shortcuts, new apps, and more.” This will disable a feature where Microsoft Store apps you haven’t installed can show up in Recommendations along with your other files. You can also decide whether you want to be able to see more pinned apps or more recent/recommended apps and files on the Start menu, depending on what you find more useful.
• On the same page, disable “show account-related notifications” to reduce the number of reminders and upsell notifications you see related to your Microsoft account.

Credit: Andrew Cunningham

• Open Settings > System > Notifications, scroll down, and expand the additional settings section. Uncheck all three boxes here, which should get rid of all the “finish setting up your PC” prompts, among other things.
• Also feel free to disable notifications from any specific apps you don’t want to hear from.

In-app AI features

Microsoft has steadily been adding image and text generation capabilities to some of the bedrock in-box Windows apps, from Paint and Photos to Notepad.

Exactly which AI features you’re offered will depend on whether you’ve signed in with a Microsoft account or not or whether you’re using a Copilot+ PC with access to more AI features that are executed locally on your PC rather than in the cloud (more on those in a minute).

But the short version is that it’s usually not possible to turn off or remove these AI features without uninstalling the entire app. Apps like Notepad and Edge do have toggles for shutting off Copilot and other related features, but no such toggles exist in Paint, for example.

Even if you can find some Registry key or another backdoor way to shut these things off, there’s no guarantee the settings will stick as these apps are updated; it’s probably easier to just try to ignore any AI features within these apps that you don’t plan to use.

Removing Recall, and other extra steps for Copilot+ PCs

So far, everything we’ve covered has been applicable to any PC that can run Windows 11. But new PCs with the Copilot+ branding—anything with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X chip in it or things with certain Intel Core Ultra or AMD Ryzen AI CPUs—get extra features that other Windows 11 PCs don’t have. Given that these are their own unique subclass of PCs, it’s worth exploring what’s included and what can be turned off.

Removing Recall will be possible, though it’s done through a relatively obscure legacy UI rather than the Settings app. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

One Copilot+ feature that can be fully removed, in part because of the backlash it initially caused, is the data-scraping Recall feature. Recall won’t be enabled on your Copilot+ system unless you’re signed in with a Microsoft account and you explicitly opt in. But if fully removing the feature gives you extra peace of mind, then by all means, remove it.

• If you just want to make sure Recall isn’t active, navigate to Settings > Privacy & security > Recall & snapshots. This is where you adjust Recall’s settings and verify whether it’s turned on or off.
• To fully remove Recall, open Settings > System > Optional Features, scroll down to the bottom of this screen, and click More Windows features. This will open the old “Turn Windows features on or off” Control Panel applet used to turn on or remove some legacy or power-user-centric components, like old versions of the .NET Framework or Hyper-V. It’s arranged alphabetically.
• In Settings > Privacy & security > Click to Do, you’ll also find a toggle to disable Click to Do, a Copilot+ feature that takes a screenshot of your desktop and tries to make recommendations or suggest actions you might perform (copying and pasting text or an image, for example).

Apps like Paint or Photos may also prompt you to install an extension for AI-powered image generation from the Microsoft Store. This extension—which weighs in at well over a gigabyte as of this writing—is not installed by default. If you have installed it, you can remove it by opening Settings > Apps > Installed apps and removing “ImageCreationHostApp.”

Bonus: Cleaning up Microsoft Edge

I use Edge out of pragmatism rather than love—”the speed, compatibility, and extensions ecosystem of Chrome, backed by the resources of a large company that isn’t Google” is still a decent pitch. But Edge has become steadily less appealing as Microsoft has begun pushing its own services more aggressively and stuffing the browser with AI features. In a vacuum, Firefox aligns better with what I want from a browser, but it just doesn’t respond well to my normal tab-monster habits despite several earnest attempts to switch—things bog down and RAM runs out. I’ve also had mixed experience with the less-prominent Chromium clones, like Opera, Vivaldi, and Brave. So Edge it is, at least for now.

The main problem with Edge on a new install of Windows is that even more than Windows, it exists in a universe where no one would ever want to switch search engines or shut off any of Microsoft’s “value-added features” except by accident. Case in point: Signing in with a Microsoft account will happily sync your bookmarks, extensions, and many kinds of personal data. But many settings for search engine changes or for opting out of Microsoft services do not sync between systems and require a fresh setup each time.

Below are the Edge settings I change to maximize the browser’s usefulness (and usable screen space) while minimizing annoying distractions; it involves turning off most of the stuff Microsoft has added to the Chromium version of Edge since it entered public preview many years ago. Here’s a list of things to tweak, whether you sign in with a Microsoft account or not.

• On the Start page when you first open the browser, hit the Settings gear in the upper-right corner. Turn off “Quick links” (or if you leave them on, turn off “Show sponsored links”) and then turn off “show content.” Whether you leave the custom background or the weather widget is up to you.
• Click the “your privacy choices” link at the bottom of the menu and turn off the “share my data with third parties for personalized ads” toggle.

• In the Edge UI, click the ellipsis icon near the upper-right corner of the screen and click Settings.
• Click Profiles in the left Settings sidebar. Click Microsoft Rewards, and then turn it off.
• Click Privacy, Search, & Services in the Settings sidebar.
  • In Tracking prevention, I set tracking prevention to “strict,” though if you use some other kind of content blocker, this may be redundant; it can also occasionally prompt “it looks like you’re using an ad-blocker” pop-up from sites even if you aren’t.
  • In Privacy, if they’re enabled, disable the toggles under “Optional diagnostic data,” “Help improve Microsoft products,” and “Allow Microsoft to save your browsing activity.”
  • In Search and connected experiences, disable the “Suggest similar sites when a website can’t be found,” “Save time and money with Shopping in Microsoft Edge,” and “Organize your tabs” toggles.
    • If you want to switch from Bing, click “Address bar and search” and switch to your preferred engine, whether that’s Google, DuckDuckGo, or something else. Then click “Search suggestions and filters” and disable “Show me search and site suggestions using my typed characters.”

These settings retain basic spellcheck without any of the AI-related additions. Credit: Andrew Cunningham

• Click Appearance in the left-hand Settings sidebar, and scroll down to Copilot and sidebar
  • Turn the sidebar off, and turn off the “Personalize my top sites in customize sidebar” and “Allow sidebar apps to show notifications” toggles.
  • Click Copilot under App specific settings. Turn off “Show Copilot button on the toolbar.” Then, back in the Copilot and sidebar settings, turn off the “Show sidebar button” toggle that has just appeared.
• Click Languages in the left-hand navigation. Disable “Use Copilot for writing on the web.” Turn off “use text prediction” if you want to prevent things you type from being sent to Microsoft, and switch the spellchecker from Microsoft Editor to Basic. (I don’t actually mind Microsoft Editor, but it’s worth remembering if you’re trying to minimize the amount of data Edge sends back to the company.)

Windows-as-a-nuisance

The most time-consuming part of installing a fresh, direct-from-Microsoft copy of Windows XP or Windows 7 was usually reinstalling all the apps you wanted to run on your PC, from your preferred browser to Office, Adobe Reader, Photoshop, and the VLC player. You still need to do all of that in a new Windows 11 installation. But now more than ever, most people will want to go through the OS and turn off a bunch of stuff to make the day-to-day experience of using the operating system less annoying.

That’s more relevant now that Microsoft has formally ended support for Windows 10. Yes, Windows 10 users can get an extra year of security updates relatively easily, but many who have been putting off the Windows 11 upgrade will be taking the plunge this year.

The settings changes we’ve recommended here may not fix everything, but they can at least give you some peace, shoving Microsoft into the background and allowing you to do what you want with your PC without as much hassle. Ideally, Microsoft would insist on respectful, user-friendly defaults itself. But until that happens, these changes are the best you can do.

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When did cheap become a dirty word? Why is the association with not wanting or being able to spend a lot shame rather than freedom? There used to be this concept called cheap-and-cheerful, where you weren’t punished at every turn for buying the inexpensive car, the store-brand food, or the white-labelled but funkily-painted white goods. While cheap Western EVs aren’t exactly a new concept, France is about to make them particularly adorable and endearing to own. Extremely official-looking photos of the new Renault Twingo have surfaced online, and while there are a few changes from the concept car, fans of the iconic city car likely won’t be disappointed.

What sort of changes, you ask? For one, the semicircular door handles are just gone, replaced with more standard pull-out handles. It’s a missed opportunity for a bit of charm, but if they’re parts bin handles, the commitment to keeping costs low isn’t going unnoticed. Secondly, the chunky wheel arch trims are gone, replaced with more slender units. Thirdly, there’s been some general production car-ization. The front bumper now sports a real intake for heat exchangers, the side mirrors are larger than on the concept, and you see parking sensors and retroreflectors appear to suit consumer taste and regulation. However, other than those touches, the new Twingo looks pretty much like the concept car we saw just two short years ago.

This means it has the same friendly ’90s-nostalgic face, the same triple hood vents, the same black band around the rear window. Even the lighting’s surprisingly close to what we saw on the show car. On face value, it seems that Renault hasn’t cocked this one up, but did you really expect anything different? The reborn Renault 5 is a masterclass in affordable style and the new Renault 4 manages to be chic and feel well-built without breaking the bank. Sure, the targeted sub-€20,000 price tag means the production Twingo needed some small sacrifices, but on first glance, it hits the visual spot, especially in sunflower yellow.

There’s good news on the inside too, where a big slab of body-color plastic dresses up the dashboard without splurging too much. Molding the Twingo wordmark into the plastic is a great way to break up the surface for essentially free, and joy of joys, there’s proper switchgear. Three knobs for your climate control, a giant hazard warning lamp switch that looks like a boiled sweet, real buttons on the steering wheel, and on the left edge of the dashboard. If Renault can spend the money on physical controls on such an inexpensive car, there’s no excuse for cheap and nasty capacitive touch controls in luxury products, full-stop.

It also doesn’t seem like Renault’s skimped on storage in the new Twingo. There’s a small tray in a half-console sprouting from the dashboard and a far larger one that sits beneath the infotainment screen and the body-color trim panel. Perfect for phones, parking slips, errant lemon sherbets, that sort of stuff. Speaking of infotainment, it’s not a huge surprise to see the family interface here, along with a digital instrument cluster. Welcome to the electric age. I am a bit curious as to what the red thing in the floor console is, but I suppose all will be revealed in due time.

There’s still a lot we don’t know about the new Twingo, like what sort of battery pack powers it and what the charging specs are like, but it seems like Renault’s done something impressive here. Not only has it done a reasonably convincing job of molding the pinch-me-cute looks of the original model around a modern form factor, it’s created a cheap electric car that’s actually cheerful. It won’t be long until Renault tells everyone more about its new electric baby, and when that happens, we’ll be here to relay all the details.

Top graphic image: Renault

The post This Is The New Renault Twingo Before You’re Supposed To See It appeared first on The Autopian.

Recalls are often just a normal part of car ownership, but some cars see recalls more frequently than others. Earlier on Friday, the Jeep world got hit with recall 68C. What’s recall 68C? It affects a number of 2020 to 2025 Wrangler 4xe plug-in hybrids and 2022 to 2026 model year Grand Cherokee 4xe plug-in hybrids, and regards unexpected combustion. As the internal communication reveals:

Some of the above vehicles may have been built with a high voltage (HV) battery manufactured with cells which may be susceptible to separator damage. Separator damage, combined with other complex interactions within the cells, may lead to a vehicle fire. A vehicle fire can result in increased risk of occupant injury and injury to persons outside the vehicle.

Well, that’s not good. A separator sits inside a battery between the anode and the cathode, ensuring the two materials don’t contact each other. If it fails, the result would be an internal short circuit, which could lead to thermal runaway. Not every use of the word “thermal” describes a fire, but in this case? Yeah, fire. Although a recall report hasn’t hit the NHTSA website yet, recall 68C has appeared on the Transport Canada website which describes…huh, you aren’t going to believe this.

On certain vehicles, the recall repairs completed by an FCA dealer during recall 95B (Transport Canada recall no. 2024-566) may not be effective. As a result, another repair is required.

On certain vehicles, there could be a problem inside the high-voltage battery that can cause a fire, even while parked with the ignition off.

Yeah, it turns out this is sort of a recall of a recall. The last round of fixes in 2024 didn’t all work and didn’t apply to every affected vehicle, which is especially concerning when one potential result of this problem is a vehicle bursting into flames unattended. But it gets wilder: That recall from last year is also a fix for another recall, as the recall report for last year’s recall states:

• On June 25, 2024, the FCA US LLC (“FCA US”) Technical Safety and Regulatory Compliance (“TSRC”) organization opened an investigation after receiving two reports of fires originating from the high voltage (“HV”) battery in Jeep Wrangler plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (“PHEVs”) outside the scope of FCA US Recall ID B9A (NHTSA ID 23V-787) (“B9A”).

• From April 2024 through July 2024, FCA US received additional reports of fires originating from the HV battery in certain Jeep Wrangler PHEVs and certain Jeep Grand Cherokee PHEVs. FCA US has conducted further analysis of the battery packs from some of these vehicles with Samsung SDI in an effort to determine root cause.

• From June 2024 to July 2024, FCA US received three reports of fires originating in the HV battery in Jeep Wrangler PHEVs which received the B9A remedy software. FCA US has determined the B9A remedy is ineffective at detecting certain abnormalities within the HV battery that may lead to a fire.

Alright, so here’s what happened: Stellantis discovered that some Jeep Wrangler 4xe and Grand Cherokee 4xe plug-in hybrids were catching fire, so it started remedying the problem by updating the battery monitoring system. That update didn’t work as expected, so it decided to update the battery management systems again, “followed by a HV battery replacement if needed.” However, that now doesn’t seem to have worked as expected either, so Jeep is working on another fix.

So, what are you supposed to do if you own an affected 2020 to 2025 Wrangler 4xe or 2023 to 2025 Grand Cherokee 4xe? Well, in the words of the manufacturer, “To reduce the safety risk, FCA advises not to charge your vehicle, and to park it outdoors and away from other vehicles or structures until the recall repairs have been completed.”

Coming on the back of an over-the-air update that reportedly bricked several Wrangler 4xe plug-in hybrids, this latest recall isn’t the sort of thing that inspires confidence, and it’s something that Jeep needs to get right. While NHTSA hasn’t published a full defect report for this latest recall, the last one revealed that multiple reports of fires came in the roughly six months after the initial B9A recall was launched. Needless to say, we’ll be keeping our eye on the situation as it evolves. Given the precedent, this isn’t the end of this story.

Top graphic image: Jeep

The post Jeep Just Recalled A Recall Of Another Recall Because Its Plug-In Hybrids Keep Catching Fire appeared first on The Autopian.

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Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Friday said the state needs to slash spending on Medicaid to prevent the low-income health insurance program from forcing ongoing cuts to virtually every other service the state provides.

Over the last decade Medicaid spending has risen at a rate of 8.8% a year — about double what the state government is allowed to spend under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, according to the governor’s office. As a result, the rest of the state government has steadily shrunk to make room for the rapid growth in health care spending.

If the state doesn’t change course, Polis said, “the increases in Medicaid costs would crowd out essentially everything the state does. We would largely just fund schools and Medicaid — no money for roads, no money for public safety, no money for housing.”

Under the state constitution, the TABOR cap limits public spending to the combined rate of population growth and consumer inflation — averaging about 4.4% since 2015, Polis said. But critics of TABOR have long argued the formula used to calculate the spending cap is a poor match for public agencies, which spend money on things like health care and road construction, the costs of which have long risen faster than other consumer goods.

Polis’ remarks came during a Friday afternoon news conference where he released his budget proposal for the 2026-27 fiscal year, which starts July 1. The governor’s annual spending recommendations are just that — a series of requests to the Joint Budget Committee, which ultimately writes the budget each year, subject to approval by the rest of the General Assembly.

The legislature is expected to face another tight budget year. Lawmakers almost certainly won’t be able to maintain the current levels of government programs and services.

In September, nonpartisan fiscal analysts told the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee that providing the same level of government programs and services next fiscal year is predicted to cost $850 million more than the legislature will have available to spend.

The governor’s plan calls for increasing Medicaid spending next fiscal year by nearly $300 million. That’s less than half of the $631 million increase in projected costs if the state kept its Medicaid offerings the same. About 1.2 million Coloradans are covered by the program, which is funded by a mix of federal and state dollars.

The governor’s office said the savings could come in part from codifying an executive order Polis issued Friday cutting $12 million to $15 million in Medicaid spending this fiscal year, including by capping some reimbursement rates for providers and limiting how much recipients can receive in dental benefits. 

Other Medicaid cost-saving proposals from the governor’s office include limiting home caregiver hours and changing how much is paid to people who supervise people with autism. 

“No one loses their coverage,” the governor said of his plan, though he conceded that his proposal would reduce the benefits Medicaid recipients receive. “There’s two levers on Medicaid. One is how many people you cover and two is what you cover. There have been a number of benefits that have been added in recent years and some of those aren’t sustainable over time.”

Polis pointed specifically to dental benefits under Medicaid. It used to be capped at $1,500 annually. Then the state did away with the cap. Now, Polis wants a cap reinstated, but at $3,000.

In the long term, Polis wants to tie increases in Medicaid spending to the TABOR formula that determines how much government spending can grow by year over year.

“That plan doesn’t have to be accepted by the Joint Budget Committee of the legislature,” Polis said. “But it’s an important exercise to show what sustainability in Medicaid looks like.”

Polis’ plan is unlikely to sit well with legislative Democrats, who control both chambers. Top leaders, including JBC Chair Jeff Bridges and House Speaker Julie McCluskie, have called for changes to the TABOR cap itself. But advocates for amending the constitution are still searching for a proposal that can both win approval from the electorate and pass legal muster.

The governor this year has already slashed some Medicaid spending to balance the budget after congressional Republicans’ federal tax and spending measure, called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, blew a roughly $750 million hole in state finances.

In recent years, lawmakers have debated at length how to reduce spending on health care. But efforts to do so have consistently run into the same problem: Health care costs don’t go away if the state stops funding them. They simply get shifted to someone else — either patients or safety net health care providers that are already facing financial problems at today’s spending levels.

Some have already been forced to close in recent years due to rising uncompensated care. And health care administrators expect things to get worse under recent federal changes to Medicaid reimbursements.

The Daily Sun-Up podcast | More episodes

Education

Aside from Medicaid, education makes up the largest share of the state’s budget.

Polis has called for limiting tuition increases to 2.6% for in-state students and 3% for those from other states. But funding for higher education has long been a point of tension between Polis and university officials, who have said the governor’s proposals in years past didn’t provide enough money to meet his tuition targets.

This year, higher education institutions are especially vulnerable, in the wake of deep federal funding cuts and plummeting enrollment from international students.

For K-12, Polis proposes implementing 30% of Colorado’s new school finance formula, the rollout of which has been slowed down amid the state’s budget woes.

Other balancing proposals

Overall, Polis’ proposal calls for general fund spending to increase 2.3% to $18.6 billion, up from $18.2 billion in the current budget year.

Polis’ proposal would keep the state’s rainy day fund at 13% of what it spends on general expenses — down from the 15% lawmakers have sought to keep in reserve in recent years.

And, the governor is once again asking the legislature to privatize Pinnacol Assurance, the state-affiliated workers’ compensation insurer. Past estimates have suggested the sale of the insurer to private ownership could generate nearly $700 million for the state, which Polis wants to use to cover the cost of Colorado’s $200 million senior homestead property tax break next year. He suggests spending the rest on public building maintenance and to shore up other gaps in the budget or build up the reserve.

Lawmakers across multiple administrations have balked at the idea, arguing that it would leave Colorado without an insurer of last resort. Critics say it could lead to businesses being denied coverage. Supporters of the move say it would make Pinnacol more competitive in the modern insurance market. Under its current structure, it is prohibited from insuring out-of-state employees.

Do you own a lawnmower? A moped, or scooter, or motorcycle? A gas can you just like to keep topped off? A really huge lighter? A Citroën 2CV, which has a tiny 5.5-gallon gas tank? If so, then you have likely bought gasoline in quantities less than four gallons at a time. Did you know the government doesn’t want you to do that? In fact, you may have seen a sticker on a gas pump that says just that: there’s a minimum requirement to buy at least four gallons of gasoline or risk violating federal law. What’s going on here? Can this really be true? Well, it sort of is and it isn’t. Rather, it’s true, but only for one very specific context.

I suppose it’s worth mentioning that this has been a thing for well over a decade. I’ve only encountered it very recently, and in some informal asking around, I found that an awful lot of people weren’t aware of this four gallon minimum thing, so I figured it’s worth looking into. It’s kind of convoluted, so let’s see if we can explain what is actually going on here. It’s also worth noting that while this sounds like some draconian/kafkaesque bureaucratic nonsense, the whole idea of the minimum four gallon purchase rule was actually put in place to help protect everyday people and their gas-powered stuff.

First, let’s look at one of these stickers, which you can clearly see in this Reddit post:

Gas station in Ohio, 4 gal minimum “law”
byu/Bored_Amalgamation inOhio

Okay, so what is going on here, exactly? Why the hell would the federal government care if you bought less than four gallons of gasoline? To understand that, we need to look into the specifics here. The “federal law” is referring to an EPA regulation, and those four gallons are only referring to fuel dispensed from gas pumps that dispense both E15 (gasoline with 15% ethanol mixed in) and E10 (10% ethanol gasoline).

Ethanol has been used as an additive to gasoline for decades, as it is an octane booster, burns more cleanly, and is a renewable fuel, which can be made from crops like corn. It’s also less energy dense than gasoline, and higher concentrations of ethanol can cause corrosion and damage to fuel systems, especially in cars made before around 2001 or so. Ethanol-blended gasoline you may find at a gas station comes in two main forms, E10 and E15 mentioned above.

Since most gas stations do not feel like spending the considerable time and money to install entirely separate pumps for E10 and E15, they will usually use mixed-grade pumps that can dispense E10, E15, and other fuels like E85 FlexFuel. The EPA calls these “blender pumps,” but not in the sense that they could make, say, a smoothie, but because they, duh, blend fuels. The issue here is that equipment with small gasoline motors, like lawnmowers and mopeds and some motorcycles could be damaged by being filled with E15 fuel.

So here’s the problem: if a blender pump just dispensed a lot of E15 into a car, there’s still about a quart to a third of a gallon of E15 in the pump’s hose. That means if someone comes along and wants to buy just one gallon of E10 for their gas-powered roller skates or leaf blower, that one gallon will actually be 33% E15, because of the fuel in the hose, and that much E15 could damage a machine not made to run it.

Here’s how the EPA themselves describes the issue:

On February 7, 2013, EPA approved an alternate blender pump configuration, submitted by RFA, for general use by retail stations that wish to dispense E15 and E10 from a blender pump with a common hose and nozzle. Blender pumps, or multiple-grade dispensers, are fuel dispensers that dispense multiple gasoline-ethanol blended fuels (e.g. E10, E15, and E85) typically through a common hose and nozzle. When two different gasoline-ethanol blended fuels are dispensed from the same hose and nozzle, residual fuel from a prior fueling of E15 may be commingled with a subsequent fueling of E10, resulting in the inadvertent misfueling of vehicles not covered by the E15 partial waivers with fuels containing greater than 10 vol% ethanol.

To mitigate this, the four-gallon minimum rule was decided. That way, whatever fuel was left in the hose would be satisfactorily diluted by the greater volume of the actually chosen fuel. As the EPA explains:

In an effort to address this potential misfueling issue, EPA approved an industry-submitted configuration that requires a minimum purchase of four gallons of fuel from blender pumps that dispense both E10 and E15 from the same hose and nozzle. Such an approach would prevent misfueling by diluting any residual E15 left in the hose from the previous sale of E15. However, groups representing motorcycle owners and lawn mower manufacturers objected to this configuration because their products have gas tanks that are normally two gallons or smaller. In response to these concerns, RFA developed and proposed a third configuration for EPA approval that retail stations may use as an alternative to the currently approved configurations.

At the end of that quote, you see the EPA referring to a “third configuration” to appease “motorcycle owners and lawn mower manufacturers” which is that gas stations must also have a pump that does not dispense fuels with more than 10% ethanol, and must have signage, described here:

“These retail stations must also prominently affix labels to their blender pumps which say “Passenger Vehicles Only. Use in Other Vehicles, Engines and Equipment May Violate Federal Law.” Passenger vehicles in this context do not include nonroad vehicles, engines, and equipment (e.g. marine engines, motorcycles, ATVs, lawnmowers, etc.). Retails stations must also post additional signage informing consumers of the availability and location of the dedicated E10 (or lower) fuel pump.”

I feel like the EPA could have handled this better if the sign on the blended E15 pumps said something like “Passenger Vehicles Only. Using less than 4 gallons in Other Vehicles, Engines and Equipment May Cause Damage” instead of leaping right to that “May Violate Federal Law” business, which just makes everything more confusing and causes articles like this one to be written.

Really, all of this is just to protect people from screwing up their lawnmowers, but of course it sounds far worse than that. And, back in 2012 when this mandate arrived, politicians wasted no time in making it seem like a colossal violation of the rights of Americans to have full tanks of gas. This is a quote from Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R) from Wisconsin:

The latest mandate handed down from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is so ridiculous, even I was shocked. The EPA has now mandated how much gasoline you must buy at certain gas stations. Say hello to the Obama Administration’s four gallon minimum.

Yeah, thanks a lot, Obama.

[Ed Note: The bigger question is how concerning a bit of E15 is mixed in with E10. It’s a 5% delta in ethanol concentration; if done only a few times, how harmful can this really be? -DT].

Of course, that statement isn’t remotely true. There’s never been a mandate that everyone has to buy at least four gallons of gas. The mandate is that for blended pumps that can dispense both E10 and E15, you should buy at least four gallons to ensure that you are getting the amount of ethanol that you actually want, so you don’t trash your stuff. You can buy gas by the ounce if you want from other, non blender pumps as much as you want. This is one of those cases where the government is actually trying to be helpful, but a strange lack of understanding how human beings seem to understand things has meant that this law — again, designed to help you not destroy your lawnmower — comes across as an obtuse bit of needless government overreach.

It’s not. It’s actually a decent idea. Pay attention to it, and you won’t kill your mower.

The post Why The Government Doesn’t Want You To Buy Less Than 4 Gallons Of Gasoline appeared first on The Autopian.

Can you think of any products for sale today that are fundamentally less advanced than some that were made fifty years ago? It’s not common, but motorhomes are a shining example.

In 1973, General Motors introduced a new-from-the-ground-up camper with front-wheel drive, air suspension, and a low-profile aerodynamic body. Giving the largest, richest auto maker in the world at the time a clean sheet of paper to make the ultimate camper in the space age of the sixties meant that you’d get something very hard to replicate, even decades later. General Motors came up with a no-holds-barred futuristic machine that makes today’s RV products of the cottage industry who builds them seem hopelessly outdated.

Now, don’t go immediately faulting the RV makers. There’s no way that small, low-volume manufacturers can accomplish what the largest automobile companies in the world with almost endless technical resources could do. However, if any of the Big Three or other major automaker decides to get back into the motorhome game, it’s fun to imagine the possibilities.

Our Mercedes Streeter presented this scenario a few weeks back as an Autopian Asks. We had a lot of interesting answers from commenters like Honda, Toyota, or even Tesla, but the one that Mercedes herself presented about a Stellantis solution seemed comical yet appealing. I can see a way to rather easily make her request a reality with a little help from another highly advanced design from the same early-seventies pre-gas crunch heyday of motorhomes. This one was just as radical looking as the famous GM camper, and it’s highly worth revisiting and cleaning up some details that had people calling it “ugly”.

Did I mention that it’s going to be extremely fast?

Get Your Motorhome Running, Head Out On The Highway

I’m not sure about your neighborhood, but in mine, it seems like every corner now features some kind of retirement center. With the population getting older, people in their later years often want to downsize to free up money and time that they no longer want to spend on lawn crews or snow plowing. Plus, a lot of these Boomers want to spend much of their year now living out the Easy Rider fantasy of hitting the open road for long stretches of time.

Naturally, these seventy-somethings are for the most part not going to get on custom Harleys and ride for months straight across the country. No, they’ll want a camper for the job, even if they don’t use the area behind the seats for more than the bathroom and making coffee. However, I think a lot of them are going to be a bit shocked by the motorhomes available. They’ll need to adjust their expectations to understand that these things simply don’t provide a driving experience akin to a car or even a large pickup truck. Also, as Mercedes Streeter has pointed out, in many cases the engineering, assembly quality, and materials fall below what they’d expect to see on a passenger car from a major OEM product.

Plus, the vast majority of these things are just fiberglass boxes with slightly radiused edges decorated with the most lurid Mike-Tyson-face-tattoo graphics imaginable. You can see how these fresh retirees who are new to motorhomes might balk at spending six figures on something that doesn’t seem as well-designed or built as their granddaughter’s used Corolla.

With the recreational vehicle market supposedly growing, it would seem like a great opportunity for a Big Three maker to get back in the game with an OEM-level product. Or, at the very least, they could partner with an existing RV manufacturer to provide them with some components and know-how that’s a cut above the mainstream. Mercedes Streeter had the idea of getting Stellantis into the mix with some stunning mechanical components, and I’d like to resurrect and rehabilitate an underappreciated motorhome. The one I have in mind wasn’t from a major manufacturer but was the vision of a designer who had helped to create some of the Big Three’s greatest American car styling icons ever. Yes, we’re going to dredge up the Rectrans Discoverer.

Spock, My Shuttlecraft! My (Shatner Pause) Shuttlecraft!

When seasoned veterans of large car companies go off on their own, the results of their efforts are often otherworldly. Former GM executive John DeLorean’s gullwinged stainless steel sports car is proof of that. It was the same case with the man who had hired DeLorean at Pontiac: “Bunkie” Knudsen. Knudsen had left GM to become President of Ford; after getting fired by Henry Ford II, Bunkie decided to go after the growing RV market with a unique product that would be head and shoulders above the typical offerings (he was possibly aware of the upcoming GMC Motorhome).

Knudsen knew just who to hire to design this next generation camper: Larry Shinoda. Shinoda had been involved with high-profile projects under the legendary Bill Mitchell, including the Mako Shark I and II, which became the C2 and C3 Corvettes, respectively. Shinoda followed Knudsen to Ford, where he worked on the Mustang Boss 302. Together, the two had a goal in mind, as described by Mercedes Streeter in her excellent post on the Rectrans:

Rectrans Inc. was founded in 1970 by Knudsen and featured Shinoda as its designer. As reported by eBay Motors back in 2017, the two had one goal: Build a motorhome to score just 10 mpg.

Now, this doesn’t sound like much of a challenge. (However) the Rectrans Discoverer was a larger motorhome featuring a chunky V8 engine and built in the 1970s. With that in mind, 10 mpg might be a big ask. Old gas-powered large motorhomes are notorious for single-digit fuel economy.

To achieve this goal, it’s reported that the Rectrans Discoverer 25 was subject to wind tunnel testing, which resulted in the Star Trek shuttlecraft shape that you see here. The typical motorhome of the day was basically a rectangular box on wheels. And remember, this predates the GMC Motorhome by a couple of years.

The Rectrans Discoverer 25 rides on a Dodge M-300 chassis, which found itself under other motorhomes of the day. Power comes from a 413-cubic-inch Chrysler RB big-block V8. In this application, it’s making 265 HP. It’s unclear if the reported goal of 10 mpg was ever met. I found a few brochures for the Discoverer 25 and none of them even mention fuel economy numbers.

Interestingly enough, the wheelbase of that Rectrans 25 is almost identical to the current RAM pickup; a testimony to how large vehicles have become today. Does that mean that we could find the old fiberglass molds for the old Rectrans, or just digitize a decrepit for-sale example, and recreate the thing on top of a modern RAM chassis? I’m not sure what’s possible, but that’s exactly what we’re going to propose for our Hellcat-powered motorhome, the Hell Rec’R. Let’s begin..

Now The Name, That’s Ugly

Interestingly, the styling of the Rectrans has been frequently criticized by viewers who say “it’s so ugly it’s beautiful” and other such hackneyed quips. I don’t understand the dislike, but I do think the detailing on the thing is a bit horrific and negatively affects the shape.

First, the recognizable Dodge grille and what I can assume is a windshield from the same vehicle moved several feet apart make the front end appear to be a full-sized van that went all Stay-Puft marshmallow on us. Combined with the tiny-looking wheels, you get a cartoonishly bloated appearance. Also, the triangular flat glass panels on the upswept area behind the driving compartment look rather clunky and are almost certainly a victim of this small company’s inability to make a vast curved window for the space. Some minor tweaks will go a long way to fixing this.

I’ve modified the nose to be smoother and incorporate a Charger-style grille with an LED ring sunken into the front. The chrome bumper is gone, replaced by body colored fascia with brake vents and a splitter. Yes, it’s a Mopar, so you know we’ll have to keep the yellow splitter guards in place long after the thing leaves the dealer lot. Flared round wheel openings improve the appearance as well, but the biggest improvement to me is from painting the roof black from the windshield all the way over those disjointed triangular windows. This visually cleans up that space quite nicely and lets you experience Shinoda’s design without being distracted by all of those triangles.

How about an open-topped motorhome? Why not offer removable T-tops over the driver and front passenger; you could easily lift these up and stow them inside behind the dinette in the motorhome?

Here’s an animation of the original Rectrans and the Hell Rec’R.

In the back, you can see how the original Rectrans has a sunken area to visually lighten up the mass and round off-the-shelf double-shot round taillights (a little bit of Corvette there, Larry?).

Our Hell Rec’R would paint that area a darker color to further break up the mass and add in wide taillights similar to a Charger. The chrome bumper is gone, replaced by the rolled body-colored pan.

The animation shows the differences:

Well, we’ve made the body changes, but how are we going to make this thing actually move? Well, as advanced as the GMC Motorhome was our reborn Rectrans will stay relatively conventional with the RAM frame and mechanicals. Of course, those mechanicals underpin a nice-driving pickup truck with four-wheel disc brakes and up-to-date suspension technology that the original Rectrans couldn’t dream of. I’m seeing complete pickup frames with essentially everything except the body shipped to a manufacturer in Elkhart, Indiana where a fiberglass monocoque with any needed aluminum reinforcements and steel frame extensions would be added on. Stellantis could provide the electronics, instruments, and wiring to basically make this a factory-sanctioned and even factory-warrantied project that just happens to be assembled in an off-site location by seasoned motorcoach makers. Actually, this whole thing seems remarkably and frighteningly producible.

I would imagine that we could make RAM Hell Rec’Rs in far less boisterous versions as well. A less-powerful Hemi V8 or better yet a Cummins turbo diesel combined with less aggressive tires and suspension might yield the more luxury-oriented RAM Home Rec’R:

Stellantis and whatever northern Indiana RV specialist would have you covered, regardless of your tastes, or lack thereof. If the journey is just as important as the destination, then either of these revived Rectrans products would be for you.

Yes, We’d Have Red LED Lighting Everywhere

Looking at the original floorplan of the Rectrans, we’d replicate much of it for the Hell Rec’R inside with a luxurious cabin designed basically for a traveling couple, though it could easily convert to something that would sleep a total of four people if you convert the dinette.

Mercedes Streeter requested that the interior of this Hellcat-powered camper be in tones of black and grey with prominent Hellcat logos on things like the bedspread, the walls, and countertops. That sounded like something that went well beyond the limits of good taste and common sense so I have no problem doing it.

Those Rectrans windows really lightened up the interior; if you ever needed a reason to believe that Larry Shinoda was a designer on par with more well-known names, this spacious-looking interior shell is more proof. Here’s a fun feature of the Hell Rec’R: those removable T-tops could come off at the campsite, and a screen net might stretch over the opening to keep out the ‘skeeters to give you a bug-free conversation “porch.” Note the dash taken straight out of a new RAM pickup and seats from a Hellcat Charger or Challenger.

Home Is Where The Hellcat Is

Some would say that the greatest injustice done to legendary designer Larry Shinoda was when Chrysler stole his concept of the Jeep ZJ without crediting him (they eventually settled out of court). To me, I think the worst crime is the lack of respect for his Rectrans design. I really wanted to rehabilitate the look of this misunderstood motorhome that gets far too much hate and not nearly enough of the recognition that it deserves, and glad that I got the chance here.

I tend to ignore the wisdom of people who own nearly two dozen vehicles they don’t even drive with much regularity, but with this Hellcat motorhome, I think Mercedes Streeter was on point. Or maybe I’m just getting caught up in the distorted vision of reality that affects most of the staff. Either way, I think that the Hell Rec’R is something that needs to exist right now. Am I wrong?

The post This Hellcat-Powered Rectrans Motorhome Is A Wonderful, Terrible Concept That Must Be Made Real appeared first on The Autopian.