Andrew J. Hawkins

It’s the company’s first earnings report since Donald Trump’s inauguration and Elon Musk’s elevation as cost-cutter in chief for the new administration. So even though we’re probably all sick of Musk and his various antics, it’s probably worth tuning into the webcast at 5:30PM ET to hear Musk respond to questions about AI, China, robotaxis, and the likely elimination of federal EV incentives. And I’m sure we’ll hear a lot of concerns about how the world’s richest man chooses to split his time.

Sean Duffy, fresh off his confirmation as Donald Trump’s secretary of transportation, signed a memorandum to “start the process of resetting Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, which will ultimately lower the price of a car for American consumers and eliminate the electric vehicle mandate,” his office said in a statement. There is no EV mandate, of course, and rolling back federal fuel economy rules will ultimately increase oil consumption and release more carbon dioxide into the environment during a global climate crisis. But at least we’ll get cheap cars! (We won’t.)

It’s a big move for the robotaxi company, especially if they want to cut down on trip times amid competition with Uber and other human-powered services. The company said that a 17 mile trip from Santa Monica Pier to the Broad museum utilizing Interstate 10 would be 50 percent faster than local roads. Waymo has been slowly expanding its geofence to include more freeways, most notably in Phoenix.

This time it occurred during an “illegal” street takeover near the Beverly Center in LA. Video from Fox 11 shows a crowd of people basically dismantling the driverless car piece by piece, and then using the broken pieces to smash the windows. This is going to happen more frequently as these cars spread to more cities, but obviously you are taking a huge risk when vandalizing a car that it literally covered in cameras.