The Google spinoff is expanding its testing of fully autonomous vehicles further down the San Francisco Peninsula as it looks to grow its robotaxi service area. Waymo has for years tested its vehicles around its offices in Mountain View, as well as downtown SF, and now its looking to combine it all into one big map. Only employees will be riding in the vehicles for now, with access to non-employee passengers at a future date.
InsideEVs Editor-in-Chief (and former Verge contributor) Patrick George spoke to two recently laid off employees from Tesla’s Supercharger team about what’s going to happen to the company’s once-vaunted EV charging network now that it’s been gutted. They’re worried that broken chargers will take longer to fix, as the employees that are left race to respond to outages. In short, it’s going to short circuit.
Chevy dealers are already catching flack from customers for GM’s decision to remove popular phone-mirroring services Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from their lineup of EVs. Maybe it would have gone down better if their native infotainment software didn’t immediately shit the bed, resulting in a stop-sale order for the Chevy Blazer EV? Just sayin.
The Treasury Department is set to announce later this week the final set of rules around critical minerals in EV batteries, that will likely target “foreign entities of concerns” — which is government jargon for China. The rules won’t kick in until 2025, at which point the list of EVs eligible for the $7,500 credit is likely to shrink even more.
The battery-powered mid-sized SUV will be officially unveiled at an event in New York City on May 30th. It’s a curious move for the off-road focused brand — NYC doesn’t exactly scream “rear locking differentials” — but Jeep says it will show off new features like “all-terrain management, advanced Jeep brand-focused technology and impressive performance credentials.”
I suppose Manhattan’s many prodigious potholes could count as going off-road.
A bill in Congress that would require automakers to keep AM radio in their vehicles now has 60 co-sponsors in the Senate and 246 in the House — a filibuster proof majority that could signal its on its way to becoming law. The legislation was introduced in response to an increasing number of vehicles (EVs in particular) coming out without AM radio. But EV lobbyists say the bill is unnecessary.
