Cars

The Financial Times compared the electric automaker’s capital expenditure in the last six months of 2024 to its valuation of the assets that money was spent on, and discovered that $1.4 billion has “gone astray.”

The automaker’s bigger EX90 EV got CarKey last year, and now Volvo is adding it to the smaller EX30. Volvo’s software rollout on the EX90 has been buggy, with features like CarPlay arriving slowly and owners complaining that their digital keys don’t work.

Can you trick a Tesla’s camera-based Autopilot system, which has been linked to hundreds of crashes, using simulated rain, fog? Will it barrel through a wall covered in an image of the road beyond, like Looney Tunes’ Wile E. Coyote slamming into the Road Runner’s fake tunnels?

The electric crossover (based on last year’s concept) will be the first built on BMW’s Neue Klasse EV platform, which introduces an 800-volt architecture and new “Gen6” battery packs featuring higher density cylindrical cells for up to 30 percent better range. The iX3 will kick off new technologies that will be introduced in more than 40 models of various drivetrains by 2027. BMW Group also announced its first hydrogen car slated for 2028 at its annual press conference.

The Lanzador EV concept-based vehicle will also “allow for up to 2,000” horsepower according to Volkswagen Group and Porsche CEO Olliver Blume, who shared the details at an annual media conference. Future Audi, Porsche and Bentley vehicles will share this new platform, however, Blume teases that the Lamborghini will have “a very specific set-up.”

F1 has a new trailer out that makes it seem, you know, like a movie about dudes driving around in circles. The film centers on Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), a retired driver whose F1 team-owning friend Ruben (Javier Bardem) pulls him back onto the track to mentor up-and-coming racer Joshua “Noah” Pearce (Damson Idris). It hits theaters on June 27th before it winds up on Apple TV Plus at some point in the future.

Tesla has been promising more affordable models as the thing that will help pull it out of its current rut. But a new report out of China (by way of Electrek) suggests that they’re likely to be stripped down Model Ys. This follows reports that the company was testing sub-$35,000 Model 3s in Mexico with cheaper materials and fewer screens. Based on the 36kr report, the project is being spearheaded by Tesla’s Chinese engineers — which makes sense, because car companies in that country have really cracked the code on cheap EVs.

The big news in Rivian’s most recent software update was Enhanced Highway Assist for hands-free driving on compatible highways, but let’s take a moment to call out a very simple quality-of-life upgrade: you can now set the side mirrors to tilt down automatically when you go into reverse. (Lots of other cars have this feature, which makes parking a big vehicle like an R1S or R1T much easier.)

After filing for Chapter 11 in the US in November, Northvolt — which worked with Volkswagen, Volvo, Audi, Porsche, and BMW — has now filed for bankruptcy in Sweden. The company was founded by two ex-Tesla executives and was one of Europe’s leading efforts to rival US and Asian battery manufacturers before racking up billions in debt.

Donald Trump livestreamed a Tesla showcase in the White House driveway on Tuesday, apparently reading the notes of a Tesla sales pitch as he performed choosing one of its EVs to purchase from five delivered for the event.

Although there have been an increasing amount of protests against Tesla, “the Seattle Fire Department (SFD) has not yet said whether foul play was suspected as the cause of the fire, which is under investigation,” according to KOMO News.

Rest of World looks at a small-town political fight over whether a planned EV battery plant from Chinese company Gotion was a boon for employment, an environmental disaster-in-the-making, or a “Communist Trojan horse.”

Musk tweeted that in 2022, adding that it could “...cross rivers, lakes & even seas that aren’t too choppy.” Today Electrek highlights this incident that occurred Monday morning in Ventura, CA.

At least, that’s what this SEC filing says. He’s one of several insiders who’ve been selling lately, I notice; the chair of Tesla’s board, Elon Musk’s brother, and Tesla’s CFO all dumped tens of millions in shares last month, too. Tesla shares closed today at $222.15, down 41 percent this calendar year. They’re still up about 25 percent from this time last year. It remains unclear whether the continuing Tesla protests have rendered the brand toxic.

With Tesla shares crashing over 50 percent since December, some shareholders are left wondering how much longer they can hold out. Fortunately Reddit is a place where financial masochism thrives, and losses that cross into the six-figure territory are seen as a sign of fortitude. A post from a Tesla shareholder who lost “tens of thousands” of dollars and was looking for coping strategies yielded these absolutely master-class responses: