When Toyota rolled out its first hybrid system in the 1997 Prius, the idea was straightforward. Let a gas engine and an electric motor trade off propulsion duties, so the car could ultimately go farther on less fuel. Almost three decades later, Toyota has stretched that same idea in two different directions inside a single car.

When the Kia Telluride launched for 2020, it became an instant hit for a number of reasons, but one seems to really stand out. Buyers got a three-row SUV that looked upscale and felt luxurious without the higher sticker price. Kia actually skipped the 2026 model year for the Telluride, jumping into a full redesign for 2027, which included the addition of a hybrid powertrain.

Search for "2027 Lexus RX" right now, and you'll find spy photos of a camouflaged prototype near the Nurburgring, reports of a mid-cycle refresh coming later this year, and plenty of guessing about a three-row RX L. What you won't find is anything from Lexus itself. The automaker's newsroom page for 2027 models lists one vehicle so far, the electric TZ. The RX isn't on it. Or at least not yet.

When you buy a used vehicle, you inherit the maintenance history, the previous owner's infotainment settings and radio presets, and maybe a coffee stain on the seat. Not counting aftermarket accessories, when we buy a pre-owned vehicle, we get the features that were originally equipped on that vehicle from the factory. Nothing significant about the feature set of that pre-owned vehicle is different, for better or worse.

NISMO has spent four decades building faster versions of Nissan sports cars. The badge first appeared on a road-going Skyline GT-R in 1987, then later found its way onto the 370Z, the Frontier, and today's Z.

People sometimes joke that the Lexus ES is just a Toyota Camry in a nicer suit. That joke has always been an oversimplification, but the 2026 redesign makes it harder to dismiss. For example, both cars dropped their gas-only engines in the same redesign cycle. Every 2026 Camry is now a hybrid. The 2026 Lexus ES is hybrid-only as well, though this year Lexus also introduced a fully electric ES version.

The unibody platform of the original 2006 Honda Ridgeline stood in stark contrast to the standard truck recipe when it was revealed at the 2005 North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Although models like the Ford Maverick and Hyundai Santa Cruz have since come along with their own unibody designs, the Ridgeline has remained perhaps the most notable outlier in the truck segment for two decades and counting.

Honda built the Ridgeline to compete in the same segment as the Toyota Tacoma and Chevrolet Colorado, but with a different approach. When the truck launched for the 2006 model year, Honda skipped the body-on-frame design that defined the segment and used a unibody platform shared with the Pilot instead.

The Toyota Prius arrived in the United States in 2000 amid the SUV boom with the sole purpose of squeezing as many miles as possible out of a gallon of gas. Before the Prius, a “hybrid car” was not something American consumers had seen, let alone driven.