Andrew J. Hawkins

Rad Power Bikes says that starting July 1st, prices on some of its models will increase $100-$200 due to the recent expiration of the tariff exemption for Chinese-made e-bike batteries. In a letter to customers, Rad Power CEO Phil Molyneux said the company was committed to affordability and would continue to offer free shipping in the US and free two-year warranties on every e-bike purchase. Still, this is just the first indication of what is likely to become an industry-wide problem soon enough.

Last month, we reported that Tesla had purchased $2 million worth of lidar sensors from Luminar, a surprising deal given Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s very public disparagements of autonomous vehicle companies that partly rely on the laser sensor. This week, a reader sent us this photo of a Tesla Model Y with Luminar’s Hydra sensors mounted on the roof. The back of the vehicle says “Engineering Vehicle,” which could mean the company is using lidar to validate its self-driving software (although Musk has claimed that wasn’t necessary “anymore”).

The Italian sports car company is ditching in-car navigation for some of its models, acknowledging that it can never produce a map as good as your smartphone. The new Purosangue and 12Cilindri will be the first Ferraris without a built-in navigation system. The company’s head of product marketing told The Drive that it knows its customers prefer phone-mirroring, like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Besides, who’s even using their Ferrari as a daily driver?

Despite numerous setbacks, autonomous vehicle startups are somehow still able to get rich investors to open their wallets to them. Just today, Waabi, the driverless truck startup founded by former chief scientist at Uber’s Advanced Technology Group Raquel Urtasun, announced its Series B funding round, led by Uber and Khosla Ventures, of $200 million. The money will go toward the launch of the company’s “fully driverless, generative AI-powered autonomous trucks” by 2025. Big bucks and an elusive deadline to launch the new tech? What is this, 2017?

The legislation would have given large cities the power to tax or even restrict autonomous vehicle deployment. But after lawmakers proposed stripping local control provisions, the bill’s sponsor decided to put it on ice. AV lobbyists opposed the bill, calling it a “backdoor ban.” But supporters said cities should have more say over whether to allow driverless cars on their streets.

Tesla recently filed a $1 billion lawsuit against a former supplier, Matthews International, alleging trade secret theft of its EV battery technology. Matthews has been supplying Tesla with machinery since 2019, and the company says it has been been swiping trade secrets related to dry electrode battery manufacturing. Tesla got those secrets by acquiring a company called Maxwell Technologies back in 2018.

Stellantis has been teasing a more affordable electric Jeep, and now we know what it will be called when it arrives in 2027: Renegade. The gas-version of the subcompact SUV typically starts at $29,445, so it will take some work for Stellantis to bring that price down to $25,000 — especially given how expensive some EV batteries still are.