Susan Carpenter is a senior features correspondent and car critic for the Los Angeles Times. In her 13 years as a staff writer, she has reported on everything from vegan fashion and lady truckers to the White Stripes and Sons of Anarchy. From 2006 to 2008, she was Throttle Jockey, testing and reviewing motorcycles for the Times’ Highway 1 section alongside Pulitzer Prize-winning car critic Dan Neil. From 2008 to 2010, she was the Realist Idealist, using her own home as a living lab to test sustainability trends like raising chickens and composting toilets. From 2010 to present, she has been test driving cars and writing about green technology.