Cars

The Newark, Calif.-based automaker reported a brisk uptick in deliveries for the first quarter of 2025. Lucid sold 3,109 vehicles, a 44 percent increase year over year. The company said it produced 2,212 vehicles, plus “over 600 additional vehicles in transit to Saudi Arabia for final assembly.” (Lucid is majority owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.) Tesla’s loss appears to be Lucid’s gain. Last month, the company’s CEO said “over 50 percent” of its orders were from former Tesla owners.

Reports of Elon Musk’s impending departure from the White House could not have been better timed for Tesla’s stock prices, which had started plummeting after its dismal Q1 report was released this morning. Within hours of the news breaking, the price not only recovered but surged an extra 5 percent. (As always when it comes to Musk’s relationship with the Trump administration, let’s see how long that surge lasts.)

CBS News put together charts that track the price of commonly imported goods, like avocados, lumber, and cars. Economists warn that Trump’s taxes on imports will drive up costs for consumers.

That’s Tesla bull Dan Ives from Wedbush reacting to this morning’s first quarter production and delivery report, in which the company clocked a 13 percent decrease in sales year over year. Ives, who strongly believes in Elon Musk’s vision of AI, robotics, and self-driving cars, is nonetheless adamant that the billionaire CEO needs to take the proverbial bull by the horns. He writes:

Rivian just released a miserable production and delivery report for the first quarter of 2025. The company produced 14,611 vehicles, but only sold 8,640 of them, a 36 percent drop year over year.

A Senate bill requiring all new cars to have AM radio now has over 60 cosponsors, meaning it can overcome a filibuster, Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said today. It’s a response to new electric vehicles increasingly lacking the first-generation radio broadcast technology.

Ex-Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson has his old title back, replacing Jim Rowan who held the job for three years after Samuelsson stepped down in 2022. As he assumes/resumes his role, Samuelsson will face new challenges, including President Donald Trump’s threat to slap 25 percent tariffs on all cars not made in the US. Volvo already moved production of some of its vehicles, including the all-electric EX30, to Europe from China to avoid EU tariffs — and may ultimately do the same for the US.

The three-row Cadillac Vistiq SUV was scheduled to arrive in “spring” as a 2026 model, which usually means late June, but they’re already popping up for sale — here’s a dramatic TikTok from a dealer in Indiana. It’s expensive, with a starting price of $77,395, but it’s in the same zone as similar Rivian R1S and Kia EV9 trims, and you get the feeling Cadillac is pushing these out to capitalize on the wave of Tesla trade-ins and general anxiety about the $7500 EV tax credit going away.

Pleos Connect is the name of Hyundai Motor Group’s next-gen vehicle software interface based on Google’s Android Automotive OS, launching in Q2 2026. Today, the automaker kicked off a new annual conference to accelerate the development of Pleos and its “Cloud Mobility” software ecosystem, where “all forms of mobility are connected through software on the cloud,” including urban infrastructure.

Is Tesla really cooked? Watch as The Verge transportation editor, Andrew Hawkins, walks us through how Elon Musk’s unprecedented takeover of the federal government has transformed public opinion of his car company into something increasingly toxic instead of futuristic, with some owners suddenly selling their cars even at a loss.

An arrest has been made in connection with a recent incident where someone wearing all black threw Molotov cocktails at vehicles and spray painted “resist” on the doors of a Tesla collision center in Las Vegas.

The company’s sales in January and February are down nearly 43 percent year over year, according to new registration data from the EU. Meanwhile, overall electric vehicle registrations are up 28 percent across the continent, as EVs capture 15.2 percent of total EU market share. People still really like EVs, just not the one associated with Elon Musk.

The Chinese automaker reports 777 billion yuan ($107 billion) revenue for 2024, comfortably topping Tesla’s $97.7 billion over the same period. The two companies shipped similar numbers of EVs last year, but add in BYD’s hybrids and it delivered more than double the vehicles Tesla did.

The South Korean conglomerate’s US investment includes a new $5.8 billion steel plant in Louisiana, which is set to create 1,400 jobs and supply Hyundai’s auto plants in Alabama and Georgia. The company also plans to invest $6 billion to expand partnerships with AI, autonomous driving, robotics, and air mobility companies in the US.

Tesla news lately includes a leader with a second or maybe seventh job in politics, protests, vandalism, a White House lawn advertisement, record high trade-in numbers, and a Cybertruck recall to fix glued-on trim pieces that can’t stay attached.

One of Tesla’s usually favorable Wall Street analysts, Dan Ives from Wedbush, published a note pleading with CEO Elon Musk to spend less time at DOGE. “Tesla and Musk are facing a defining chapter in their future and how Musk handles this next few months will be pivotal to the long term growth trajectory of Tesla in our view,” Ives wrote. Another thing Ives says Musk needs to do is prepare lower-cost vehicles for 2025.