Transportation

Jaguar Land Rover caught a lot of flack for its new design language, including the polarizingly pastel Type 00 concept. And while most of the rage was pure culture war nonsense, the British automaker is still struggling with the fallout from a recent cyberattack that took down its manufacturing plant. Now JLR has reportedly canned its head of design Gerry McGovern. Not only that, but according to Autocar India, McGovern had to be escorted from the building. Ouch.

Starting today, Walmart will begin offering delivery via drone at six stores in the Atlanta area, allowing customers to receive groceries, household items, and over-the-counter medicine in “as fast as 30 minutes.” Wing already partners with Walmart in Dallas-Fort Worth, and plans on expanding drone deliveries to Charlotte, Houston, Orlando, and Tampa.

Waymo is going to start manually testing its vehicles in four new US cities: Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. Waymo plans to start by deploying manually driven vehicles, then fully autonomous ones, followed by select passenger trips, and finally, a public robotaxi service. (The company is already is driving autonomously with a safety driver in Philly.) Waymo has signaled it hopes to launch in over 20 cities in the coming years. Of course, not every city is welcoming the robotaxis with open arms.

Uber customers can now be matched with a robotaxi operated by Avride in a small, 9-square mile section of Dallas. The vehicles, Hyundai Ioniq 5s, still have safety drivers for now as part of a phased introduction, with fully driverless operations coming later. The fleet will also be small at first, but will grow to “hundreds” over time, the company says. This is Uber’s latest robotaxi deployment in the US, following the partnership with Waymo in Austin and Atlanta.

President Trump is expected to announce a major rollback of Biden-era standards on Wednesday for 2022-2031 model-year vehicles, Reuters reports. Since stepping into office, his administration has worked to dismantle efficiency regulations meant to cut down pollution and save consumers money.

I’ve said this before, but as Waymo continues to scale and grow, we’re going to see more of this kind of stuff. Last month, it was a beloved neighborhood cat who was killed after running underneath a Waymo in San Francisco. This week, one of its robotaxis wandered into the middle of a police arrest in LA. Waymo confirms its car briefly intruded on a police standoff while ferrying a passenger, but that it cleared the scene in 15 seconds.

One of the busiest travel weekends of the year doesn’t seem like an ideal time to update more than half of the world’s over 11,000 A320s. Still, a potential issue involving solar flares was serious enough that the company pushed the software update Friday. American Airlines said that 340 of its planes required the update, which it expected to take about two hours each. According to Reuters:

Last month Musk promised there would be “500 or more” of the (supervised) Robotaxis in Texas by the end of the year. Today he told an X user the fleet should “roughly double next month.” But given best estimates put the current number of cars around 30, double that is... nowhere near 500.

The workers, part of Project Sandbox, were one month into an expected three month stint, Business Insider reports. Around a dozen people were involved, though it’s not clear how many were cut.

October sales are down 48.5 percent across Europe compared to 2024, according to data released by the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association on Tuesday. For the year, Tesla’s sales are down about 30 percent in the region, while industrywide EV sales jumped 26 percent. While the company’s car business struggled, Elon Musk was focused on robots and winning shareholder approval for his newly minted $1 trillion pay package.

All cars are currently required to have automatic emergency braking by 2027. But that mandate could get tossed under a new plan by Senate Republicans to eliminate certain safety rules, in the interest of making cars more affordable. Also under scrutiny are alarms warning if there’s a child left in the rear seat. Weirdly they’re not targeting expensive creature comforts, like heated steering wheels and wireless charging. Just the safety ones.

Stranger Things, a show that ostensibly is riff on the “kids on bikes” adventures from the 1980s, recently held a promotional event where fans rode bikes along a car-free street to celebrate the final season. But no “kids on bikes” event would be complete without Coach Balto, the founder of Bike Bus World, who also helped inspire my own bike bus journey. I’m excited to see him continuing the spread the word about street safety and childhood independence in the Upside Down.

This Associated Press report explains that after getting authorization for a domestic license plate reader in 2017, the readers “have become a major — and in some places permanent — fixture of the border region.”

A woman died and her husband was seriously injured after first responders struggled to retrieve them from a burning Model 3, according to a new lawsuit filed against the company. The crash took place January 2023 in Washington state and is the latest to allege that Tesla’s door handle design is trapping people inside their vehicles.

The Gravity Touring, with 337 miles of range and a native NACS charging port for Tesla Supercharger access, will start at $79,900 (excluding destination fees). That puts Lucid’s SUV in direct competition with a host of luxury EVs, including the Rivian R1S, BMW iX, Polestar 3, and Tesla Model X.

Earlier this week, Waymo announced that it would soon be operating fully driverless vehicles in five new cities: Miami, Dallas, San Antonio, Houston, and Orlando. Today, they’re adding three new cities to the mix: Minneapolis, Tampa, and New Orleans. The company plans to start by deploying manually driven vehicles, then fully autonomous ones, followed by select passenger trips, and finally, a public robotaxi service. The vehicles will be Waymo’s fifth-generation Jaguar SUVs, with the option to add sixth-gen Zeekr and Hyundai vehicles in the future if the company deems fit.

The company has announced a UK trial with autonomous delivery company Starship, starting in Sheffield and Leeds. It’s Uber’s first delivery bot trial in Europe, after tests in various US cities.

The company was awarded a ridehailing permit by the state’s Department of Transportation, which clears the way for Tesla to launch a robotaxi service — potentially without safety drivers. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said he wants to launch in 8-10 new markets before the end of 2025.

It’s without a head chef, as Eric Greenspan cuts ties after his 15 minutes of fame (infamy?) to open Jewish deli Mish.

The parent company of Jeep, Dodge, and Ram was one of the last to say it would adopt the North American Charging Standard, or NACS, for its EVs. So as such, its one of the last to finally flip the switch and allow its EV owners to charge at Tesla Supercharger stations.

The Alphabet-owned robotaxi company announced plans to start operating fully autonomous vehicles in five new cities: Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando. Only employees and “friends and family” will be able to take trips initially, but Waymo expects to let public customers use its robotaxis sometime in 2026. Add these to the cities the growing list of markets where Waymo says it expects to launch, including San Diego, Boston, New York City, Washington, DC, Denver, Detroit, Seattle, London, and Tokyo.

The air taxi company will start licensing its electric vertical and takeoff technology to third parties, starting with Palmer Luckey’s Anduril Industries. Archer already has an exclusive deal to jointly develop next-gen military aircraft with Anduril. Now its deepening those ties by supplying its electric powertrain and other tech to the defense contractor’s Omen drone program.

When the company introduced the TM-B e-bike in October, it said the Launch edition and Performance models would cost $4,500. We knew there would be a cheaper base model, but the price wasn’t announced at the time. Now we know it’ll be $3,500, but will only have 5x power assist and a 60-mile range.

Tesla might be about to give in and adopt Apple’s CarPlay system in its cars. It’s a welcome change, but somehow I suspect this commenter isn’t the only one holding out on a Model Y purchase for slightly different reasons.