The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Driverless cars and planes are no longer the stuff of the future. In the city of San Francisco alone, two taxi companies have collectively logged 8 million miles of autonomous driving through August 2023. And more than 850,000 autonomous aerial …
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Ford CEO Jim Farley hopped on Elon Musk’s X today to make an announcement relevant to Elon Musk’s Tesla: Ford will be giving away adapters so that its electric vehicles can easily charge on Tesla’s charging network. “We want to make charging more convenient for our Ford EV owners,” Farley …
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A law firm hired by the General Motors’ self-driving subsidiary Cruise to investigate the company’s response to a gruesome San Francisco crash last year found that the company failed to fully disclose disturbing details to regulators, the tech company said today in a blog post. The incident in October led …
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A cheaper model of Tesla electric vehicle is coming late next year, CEO Elon Musk told investors today. If it launches on Musk’s ambitious timeline, it might arrive in time to help Tesla parry the growing might of Chinese EV makers. The “next generation” compact vehicle Musk mentioned could represent …
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Perhaps you’ve heard: In many places, it’s really very cold out. Deep freezes hit wide bands of the US this week; snow and freezing rain have swept across northern Europe. This is all less than ideal for electric vehicles, which historically have not loved the cold. A handful of Chicago …
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A Tesla Model Y owner got fed up with the company not offering solar panels for its cars, so he built one himself. Reddit user somid3 shared his project, dubbed Beta One, last week (via Electrek). It’s a deployable solar roof that weighs less than 165 lbs and can retract …
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As Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 neared 16,000 feet, a boom thundered through the plane as a chunk of the plane’s bodywork was ripped away. The rush of air as the cabin depressurized pulled mobile phones out of hands—an iPhone was found intact on the ground below—and a teenager sitting close …
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As the number of electric vehicles on American roads grows, so too does the affliction of range anxiety. Drivers of conventional cars enjoy the support of a massive, well-established network of fuel stations. EV owners depend on chargers that are much sparser, especially in so-called “charging deserts”—often lower-income areas—where places …
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To adapt an old Oscar Wilde quote: To lose one aircraft may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness. So what to make of a third Boeing 737 Max suffering a major issue in recent years? Flying at 16,000 feet shortly after taking off in Oregon …
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While this CES has been a more subdued affair in the on-road electric vehicle space—with Ford, General Motors, Toyota, and Stellantis all not exhibiting at the show—2024 seems to be a year of companies once again trying their darnedest to make flying cars happen. Electric vertical takeoff and landing craft, …
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