Cars

The Tesla CEO appears heading to victory in today’s shareholder vote over his enormous pay package. Musk posted two graphs on X last night which showed both proposals — the one of his compensation, and the other on reincorporating Tesla in Texas — ahead by wide margins. But the results aren’t final yet, and things could still go pear-shaped. After all, this is Tesla we’re talking about. Tune in at 3:30 pm CT if you want to watch Musk dive into a pile of cash, Scrooge McDuck-style.

Porsche EV and PHEV owners can soon use the My Porsche app to pay and charge at ChargePoint stations in North America. Unfortunately, it’s not a plug and charge system, but soon the Porsche Charging Service will include “more than 100,000” stations when the collaboration goes live in Q4 2024 — after the launch of the new 2025 Porsche Taycan and Macan Electric SUV.

The Verge alum Sean O’Kane crunched the LinkedIn data to conclude that Ford’s secretive EV skunkworks has grown to over 300 employees, with 50 coming from Rivian alone. Ford has also poached workers from Tesla, Lucid, Canoo, F1, and Apple’s recently disbanded car project. The group, led ex-Tesla engineer Alan Clarke, is tasked with designing a lineup of low-cost EVs for the Blue Oval.

There have been so many mattress options from enterprising third-party companies for years, ever since camping in a Tesla (and other EVs) became a thing. Now, Tesla is making its own form-fitted $225 mattress that includes foam padding, a 12V pump, and a carry bag. It’s potentially a more elegant solution than the Cybertruck Basecamp option.

Tesla says it “deployed two Optimus bots performing tasks in the factory autonomously.” It’s just a single bullet in a very long post on X that Elon made somebody write to justify voting for his $56 billion payday.

That autonomy could mean anything, of course, but this video from May includes a possible scenario.

Apple is holding a WWDC session today, where it will feature more information on the deeply integrated next-gen CarPlay it announced in 2022. Here we can catch a glimpse of how different automakers could adopt varied styles for their cars. No automaker other than Aston Martin and Porsche seems to have signed up so far.

Last year, General Motors agreed to cover its electric vehicle battery manufacturing under the United Auto Workers’ master agreement as a precursor to settling the historic 45-day union strike. And today, the UAW announced that it has a tentative agreement with Ultium Cells, the joint venture between GM and LG Energy Solutions. UAW President Shawn Fain, who has expressed concern about how the EV transition will affect workers, said Ultium Cell employees “showed the world what it means to win a just transition.”

Take this guy, for example. He’s laying it on thick, celebrating Tesla’s Full Self-Driving as more capable than Waymo’s autonomous vehicles without all the sensors and precision mapping. Just nothing but pure, unencumbered fandom. And the car still tries to kill him.

The part where he goes “Fuck” after grabbing the wheel — and then still manages to praise the car as “pretty good” was my favorite.

That’s on top of San Francisco, Las Vegas, Seattle, and Zoox’s original Foster City test. Note, though:

We won’t be deploying our purpose-built robotaxi or offering public rides in Austin or Miami just yet. Our target cities for our first commercial markets remain Las Vegas and San Francisco. But we’re exploring several cities for future commercial offerings after our initial launch.

InsideEVs has a good breakdown of how much each version of Rivian’s newly announced second-generation R1T and R1S vehicles is going to cost. Tellingly, the company has yet to put a price to its monster quad-motor trim, with 1,025 hp, 1,190 lb-ft of torque, and a 0-60mph time of under 2.5 seconds. I suppose the company wants to let the specs breath before clubbing you over the head with the amount.

Ford CEO Jim Farley touted a recent milestone: 200 million miles traveled for customers using the automaker’s hands-free driver assist system, BlueCruise. That’s enough for a roundtrip from the Earth to the Sun. Meanwhile, Tesla said its customers using Full Self-Driving have gone over 1 billion miles — or enough for a trip to Saturn. Who will be the first to reach Pluto?

The driving mode lowers the ride height while also making the tires “slant slightly inward at the top,” MotorTrend discovered. This is putting too much weight on the inward part of the tires, causing them to wear down far too quickly. One owner had to replace his after just 6,000 miles!

Out here in the Texas 'burbs, we're under an extreme heat advisory, and more likely to see an electric Hummer than a Microlino.

All the more reason to read this Ars Technica piece on the history of the microcar and imagine pulling up to a café in a Citroën Ami, sharing a parking space with a Canta and a Twizy, somewhere a little cooler — in several senses.

I’ve always wanted a Volkswagen camper van, and Thomas Ricker’s Verge review of the custom eVentje ID Buzz only reinforces that.

Check out his video below for a condensed version of his impressions (and a glimpse of what I can only assume is a very good dog).