The secret hero of Battlefield 6's next update is a jeep that doesn't suck

One of the great injustices of Battlefield 6 is that the basic transport jeep is a useless piece of garbage. With four seats, one turret gunner, and absolutely zero protection from bullets or mines, taking a ride in Battlefield 6's sole transport car is like announcing to the entire server that five free kills are vroomin' their way soon.

In well over 60 hours of Battlefield 6, I've had just a handful of excursions in the The Light Ground Transport (or LGT) that didn't leave me riddled with bullets or suddenly exploded. It is so bad at its one job—safely transporting—that it's not unusual to watch your team ignore a fleet of free jeeps and choose to hoof it across the map instead.

The LGT is a failure. The Traverser Mark 2, a new armored transport truck arriving in Battlefield 6 Season 1, is its redemption. I took the Traverser for a handful of test drives during a preview session on the upcoming maps Eastwood and Blackwell Fields, and much like the maps themselves, I came away unable to imagine Battlefield 6 without it.

The Traverser is the LGT's bigger, stronger, and meaner sibling. It seats just four total, so one less than the LGT, but it's also packing three times the firepower and armor. It's classified as a transport, but driving the hulky thing around, you realize it has more in common with a tank.

The Traverser blueprint is such:

1. Driver seat
2. Top machinegun nest: Remote-controlled, so your body is protected
3. Left window gunner: Another gunner seat that can only look left, protected
4. Right window gunner: And yet another gunner that looks right, protected

And those machineguns rip. The 360-degree top gun is equivalent to the guns found atop the IFV and main battle tanks, so you don't want to chance crossing the street when it's locked in on your location.

Those side gunners are a godsend too, not just because they give idle passengers something to do, but because the number one cause of premature vehicle demise is a sneaky engineer exploiting a driver's limited field of view. The Traverser has no blind spots.

It does have armor. It's not tank beefy, but as you can see in the clip below, it can withstand RPGs and a strafing run from an attack chopper without much concern. As if DICE believed the Traverser was missing a cherry on top, it also has a self-repair ability by default. This is Battlefield 6's first proper APC (armored personnel carrier), and I love it.

Now, an important question: How will DICE handle the rollout of the Traverser? Surely it'll be featured on the two new maps, but will it also go back and add the APC to maps floundering in paper jeep hell? I hope to see it everywhere, but perhaps deployed sparingly. I think many will underestimate how much its presence will shake up a map's dynamic: transports that are actually good mean teams will instantly become capable of craftier flanks.

We'll know sooner than later: The Traverser arrives in the first wave of Battlefield 6 Season 1 kicking off on October 28.