Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe says the money automakers charge for self-driving software won’t last, comparing autonomy to airbags: a paid option today, baked into the price of every car tomorrow.

The comments, made in a new interview with WIRED, amount to a quiet warning shot at Tesla, which just moved its “Full Self-Driving” package to a subscription-only model at $99 per month.

The US Department of Justice has asked a federal court to throw out a Clean Air Act lawsuit against Elon Musk’s xAI, arguing that the company’s unpermitted gas turbines near Memphis are a matter of “national, economic, and energy security.”

The move puts the Trump administration in court alongside Musk to defend dozens of methane-burning turbines that have been running without air permits in one of the most polluted regions of the country.

Lucid has registered the design of its upcoming Cosmos with the European Union Intellectual Property Office, giving us the clearest look yet at the sub-$50,000 crossover the automaker is betting its future on.

The filing, published last week, shows the production design of Lucid’s first mass-market EV from every angle, inside and out, months before its expected reveal this summer.

Tesla has installed a free car vacuum right next to the charging stalls at a Supercharger station in Germany — believed to be a first for the network.

The setup lets owners clean out their cars while they charge, turning otherwise idle minutes into something useful.

Rivian laid off hundreds of workers on Tuesday, or less than 2% of its workforce, just one week after it began deliveries of its all-important R2 SUV.

The electric automaker confirmed the cuts hit its service and customer teams, which include sales and marketing, as it tries to claw its way to a profit it has yet to ever post.

Tesla didn’t report a single at-fault “Robotaxi” crash in the latest NHTSA autonomous-vehicle data — its only fresh incident was a Model Y getting rear-ended while stopped, clearly the other driver’s fault.

That sounds like good news for Tesla’s safety record. But live fleet data points to the real reason the crashes have dried up: Tesla’s robotaxis are barely running, and the active fleet is shrinking a year into the program.

Drew Baglino spent nearly two decades building Tesla’s batteries, motors, and power electronics. Now the former Tesla SVP is quietly building the one home energy product Tesla talked up for years and never shipped: a residential heat pump.

His startup, Sadi Thermal Machines, is a direct bet on an idea Tesla floated openly in 2022 — before the company reoriented itself around humanoid robots and robotaxis.

Baidu’s Apollo Go has received a Level 4 autonomous driving permit in Switzerland for AmiGo, a robotaxi service it is running with Swiss Post’s PostBus, putting the Chinese tech giant ahead of Waymo and Tesla in deploying driverless vehicles into European public transport.

The Federal Roads Office (FEDRO) special permit covers an 80 km² service area across three eastern cantons, and Baidu says the project is on track to become the largest planned automated public transport operation of its kind in Europe.

A cottage industry has emerged on Chinese e-commerce platforms selling tiny plastic doll heads designed to trick Tesla’s cabin camera into thinking a driver is paying attention. The devices cost as little as $20 to $50.

The products — marketed as “travel companions” and “dashboard decorations” — represent the latest and most absurd escalation in the arms race between Tesla’s driver monitoring safeguards and people determined to defeat them. It’s also incredibly dangerous and irresponsible.

Tesla’s Cybercab EPA certification documents reveal the robotaxi’s full technical specs for the first time — including a 3,113-lb curb weight, a 219 HP motor, and a 48 kWh battery pack. The filing confirms several claims Tesla made about the vehicle while revealing some surprises.

The Certificate Summary Information (CSI) for EPA test group TTSLV00.0L1A, filed on May 21 and certified on May 26, provides the most detailed look yet at the engineering behind the most efficient EV ever produced.

Tesla presented self-published and inflated “Full Self-Driving” safety statistics directly to government regulators in Sweden and the Netherlands as it lobbied for European approval, according to correspondence obtained by Reuters through public records requests.

The data includes a claim that FSD could have “saved 32,000 lives” — a figure that independent researchers say is based on the absurd assumption that every vehicle in the U.S., including freight trucks and motorcycles, would be replaced by an FSD-enabled Tesla.

In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss our Rivian R2 first drive, BYD going nuts on flash charging, Donut Lab’s miracle battery being seemingly dead, and more.

Xiaomi has unveiled a home robotic arm charger that autonomously plugs and unplugs your EV — delivering on a concept that Tesla prototyped over a decade ago but never brought to market.

The compact device, only 152 mm wide, is designed to fit in tight home garage parking spaces and integrates into Xiaomi’s smart home ecosystem for smartphone control.

Waymo is launching its first-ever membership program, “Waymo Premier,” offering its most frequent riders priority pickups, 10% cashback, and early access to new cities for $29.99 per month.

The invite-only program marks a significant step in Waymo’s effort to build rider loyalty as it scales toward 1 million weekly rides and expands into 20+ cities.

Tesla is facing up to $14.5 billion in lawsuits related to its “Full Self-Driving” and Autopilot systems — and the company’s own marketing department keeps making the problem worse. In two official promotional videos published in the last three weeks, Tesla showed a driver making espresso while FSD drives and shared footage where FSD committed multiple traffic violations in Denmark.

The problem is obvious: Tesla’s entire legal defense in crash lawsuits rests on the argument that drivers are responsible for supervising FSD at all times. But Tesla’s own promotional content actively encourages the opposite behavior.

ArcBest (ARCB), the multibillion-dollar logistics company, is purchasing two Tesla Semi electric trucks for its ABF Freight fleet after a successful 2025 pilot program that averaged 1.55 kWh per mile over 4,494 miles.

The purchase marks a significant step beyond piloting and into actual fleet investment for the less-than-truckload (LTL) carrier, which is now expanding its electric Class 8 testing across a broader operating footprint.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) granted Xiaomi regulatory approval to produce extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs), clearing a key hurdle for the company’s expansion beyond battery-only EVs.

The approval paves the way for Xiaomi’s first range-extended model — a full-size SUV codenamed “Kunlun N3” that measures over 5.3 meters long and targets Li Auto’s dominant L9.

BYD is preparing to bring its megawatt “Flash Charging” network, which can add about 250 miles (400 km) of range in 5 minutes, to Canada – the first confirmed deployment in North America.

The plan was revealed through a new BYD job posting in Toronto for a manager tasked with executing “BYD’s flash charging network expansion strategy and business growth across Canada.”

BYD is building a charging network that makes Tesla’s Supercharger look slow — and it’s deploying it at a pace that could see it surpass Tesla’s global network within two to three years.

The Chinese automaker has already deployed over 5,700 Flash Charging stations in China in just a few months and just opened its first overseas stations in Europe. The chargers deliver up to 1,500 kW of power — three times what Tesla’s latest V4 Superchargers can do.

BYD is threatening to sue the US government after the Pentagon added the world’s largest EV maker to its list of “Chinese military companies” this week.

Stella Li, BYD’s executive vice-president, said the company will use every legal “weapon” at its disposal to fight the designation, which she called a false claim aimed at hobbling BYD because of its international success.