Andrew J. Hawkins

A bipartisan bill that was just introduced in the House would levy an annual fee of $130 on everyone who owns an electric vehicle. The reasoning is that EV owners need to help pay for road and infrastructure improvements, since they don’t pay the gas tax that funds the Highway Trust Fund. But EV advocates are miffed that they’re being asked to pay almost twice what the average car owner pays each year in gas taxes, especially at a time when high gas prices are leading some consumers to give EVs a new look.

Business Insider thinks so, pointing to some recent evidence like Uber’s CTO tweeting about a “scary Waymo moment” and an Uber white paper that emphasizes a hybrid model of human- and robot-powered rides over an AV only model. Driverless Digest’s Harry Campbell is also predicting that Waymo and Uber’s partnership may be running out of steam.

We asked the company to clarify what’s going on here. Maybe there’s an explanation, but I know a lot of people wouldn’t put it past Amazon to pull a stunt like this.

That means we won’t get an all-electric Mazda until 2029 at the earliest. The Japanese automaker also plans on slashing its investment in EVs to ¥1.2 trillion ($7.52 billion) through 2030, down from an earlier budget of ¥2.0 trillion ($12.53 billion), the CEO told Automotive News. I guess it could have been worse; Mazda could have gone full Honda and cancelled everything.

Yes. Yes you can.

According to documents filed with NHTSA, defective software was triggering a system reset that would result in temporarily blank screens. (If you’ve seen Mercedes’ massive screens, you’ll know that’s a lot of blank real estate.) Drivers could lose access to their driving information, which could cause a crash. The recall affects 144,000 vehicles built between 2024-2026, including the AMG GT, C-class, E-class, SL-class, CLE-class, and GLC-class.