The Most-Read WIRED Transportation Stories of 2018

This year, our readers remained obsessed with self-driving and electric cars—and one of the most famous men making them.

Without a doubt, the most enthralling transportation story in 2018 was the turbulent journey of Elon Musk. It was a tough year for the Tesla CEO. (This isn't just some half-cocked observation from the media: Musk admitted as much himself in an emotional interview with The New York Times. "This past year has been the most difficult and painful year of my career,” Musk told the paper. “It was excruciating.”) Ambitious production goals for the Model 3. Trouble with the SEC. Twitter feuds and something to do with Azealia Banks. Despite all this, Tesla's sales and production are on the upswing. It was, actually, a pretty darn good year for the young automaker. So maybe Musk can kick back and relax for a bit, even lay off Twitter. Or, you know, make some fart jokes.

  • Elon Musk Life in Tesla Production Hell
    Illustration: MIKE MCQUADE
    01

    Dr. Elon & Mr. Musk: Life Inside Tesla’s Production Hell

  • Joe Pugliese
    02

    385 Feet of Crazy: The Most Audacious Flying Machine Ever

    Here's how alt-aviation wizard Burt Rutan and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen set out to build a dual-fuselage beast that could haul rockets to the edge of space.

  • Bobby Yip/Reuters
    03

    Elon Musk Is Broken, and We Have Broken Him

    The CEO's increasingly erratic behavior is putting Tesla at risk. And there's blame to go around.

  • Norwegian
    04

    Riding a Wild Wind, Transatlantic Jets Fly Faster Than Ever

    A 200-mph jet stream has sent several Norwegian Air jets to nearly 800 mph and helped break a (subsonic) speed record.

  • Tesla
    05

    Why Tesla's Autopilot Can't See a Stopped Firetruck

    Semiautonomous driving systems are designed to ignore unmoving obstacles because otherwise, they couldn't work at all.

  • David Maialetti
    06

    How Southwest Flight 1380's Pilots Landed With a Blown Engine

    One person died on the flight from New York to Dallas after an engine failed and blew a hole in the cabin at 32,500 feet.

  • Informatie Vlaanderen/Ghent University
    07

    Laser-Shooting Planes Uncover the Horror and Humanity of World War I

    Instead of digging into Belgium's Ypres Salient, archaeologists used lidar laser scanners to map the war zone and turn up some remarkable finds.

  • Getty Images
    08

    Airlines Won’t Dare Use the Fastest Way to Board Planes

    United's latest experiment with the boarding procedure could make things better—but it's no revolution.

  • Andrei Stanescu/Alamy
    09

    Why People Keep Rear-Ending Self-Driving Cars

    Human drivers (and one cyclist) have rear-ended self-driving cars 28 times this year in California—accounting for nearly two-thirds of robocar crashes.

  • Arterra/Getty Images
    10

    Much of the US Electric Grid Could Go the Way of the Landline phones

    As renewable energy picks up and electricity demand drops, it's getting more expensive for a large part of the grid to produce electricity, and that's a problem for everyone.

Andrea Valdez is the editor of WIRED.com. Before arriving at WIRED in 2017, she worked at Texas Monthly for 10 years, first as a fact checker, then as a columnist, and, ultimately, as the editor of texasmonthly.com. She is the author of How to Be a Texan: The Manual. Valdez ... Read more
Editor of Wired.com
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