Alphabet-owned robotaxi company Waymo is limiting service due to Saturday’s scheduled nationwide “No Kings” protests against President Donald Trump and his policies.
Tesla has officially launched new versions of the Model S and the Model X in the US. As Electrek notes, however, the upgrades may not be quite as big or compelling as one could hope when the vehicles now cost $5,000 more. The automaker has posted a list of updates for the vehicles on X, including a new Frost Blue paint color option and a range of up to 410 miles for the Model S Long Range version, which is Tesla's longest range yet. Getting the Frost Blue paint will cost buyers $2,500 more, however, and the new range is only 5 miles longer than the previous versions.
The company said the vehicles are now quieter inside, thanks to a more effective Active Noise Cancellation feature, and that their interiors now come with dynamic ambient lighting with unique animations. They can run more smoothly due to their new bushings and suspension design, and their new wheel designs enable the longer range. In addition, the models now have a new front bumper camera for better visibility, as well as adaptive driving beams. Model S Plaid's new exterior styling was apparently optimized for high-speed stability. Meanwhile, Model X now has more space for third row passengers and cargo. Take note that the base vehicles come with 19-inch wheels, but customers can upgrade with 20-to-22-inch wheels for $4,500 more.
Tesla only sold approximately 50,000 Model S and X vehicles around the world last year, whereas it delivered over 1.7 million Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. Whether these changes can convince people to buy the Models S and X remains to be seen. The Model S will now cost customers at least $84,990, while the Model Y will set them back at least $89,990.
Model S & X are now even better – launching today in the US 🇺🇸
Highlights:
– Frost Blue paint color
– Up to 410 miles of range (Model S Long Range – our longest range Tesla yet)
– Even quieter inside: less wind + road noise & more effective Active Noise Cancellation
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/teslas-new-model-s-and-x-vehicles-are-now-available-in-the-us-133020684.html?src=rss
Air India Flight 171 crashed into a medical college in Ahmedabad.
Stringer/Anadolu via Getty Images
An Air India Boeing 787 crashed less than a minute after takeoff on Thursday.
The crash comes as both Boeing and Air India are trying to turn themselves around.
Attorneys and aviation experts said no conclusions could be drawn until the investigation ended.
Thursday's fatal crash of an Air India Boeing 787 shortly after takeoff comes as both the airline and Boeing try to revive their public images.
After 2024 became an annus horribilis for Boeing, 2025 is crucial for the planemaker to show it is successfully overhauling its processes.
CEO Kelly Ortberg, who took over last year and has made the turnaround the centerpiece of his leadership, has scrapped plans to travel to next week's Paris Air Show, CNBC and Bloomberg reported. The event is a crucial industry showcase. Neither Boeing nor Air India responded to requests for comment from Business Insider.
On Thursday, Ortberg shared the company's "deepest condolences" to everyone affected and said a team stood ready to support the investigation.
After visiting the crash site Friday morning, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson said in a video statement, "We know that the investigations will take time but we will be fully transparent and will support the process for as long as it takes."
"Air India will continue to do everything we can to care for those affected by this tragedy, and to uphold the trust placed in us," he added.
'The crash derails Boeing stock's positive momentum'
When an Alaska Airlines 737 Max lost a door plug during a January 2024 flight, regulators capped Boeing's production of the type. A seven-week strike then shut down key facilities, further hurting revenue.
Boeing ended 2024 as the Dow Jones' biggest loser, as its share price fell 31%. Investors had been reassured by Ortberg's work to turn the company around, and the stock had risen more than 20% in 2025 before the crash.
It dropped about 4% after Thursday's crash and fell more than 3% Friday morning.
Morgan Stanley analysts said Thursday that the crash "derails the positive momentum on Boeing's stock."
Jeff Windau, a senior industrials analyst for Edward Jones, said in a research note that he expects near-term volatility and raised the possibility of enhanced scrutiny on Boeing's processes.
"However, at this time, we do not feel there will be a long-term impact to production," he added.
Air India has been working to turn itself around
Following decades of state ownership and huge losses, Air India was acquired by the Tata Group in 2022. The airline has expanded with hundreds of additional flights, flying 60 million customers to 103 destinations through 2024.
The new owners invested billions, and the airline has ordered hundreds of planes to replace its aging fleet.
In a December interview with BI, Wilson compared his work revitalising Air India to "drinking from a firehose."
He added that he thought the turnaround was close to completion, but said there were supply-chain constraints. "Until we upgrade the aircraft, then people won't believe that the transformation has happened," Wilson said.
Alan Tan, an aviation law professor at the National University of Singapore, told BI that Air India in particular would have an immediate hit to customer perception.
"But as other leading airlines facing crises have shown, these are not insurmountable," he added. "Transparency and accountability in investigations, and consistent messaging to the public, will hopefully reduce the risks of a media spectacle."
A lengthy investigation
It will take a thorough and lengthy investigation before there are answers about what caused the crash.
Attorneys who have battled Boeing in the courts were among the people BI spoke to who were hesitant to draw any conclusions.
"The fact that this tragedy involves a Boeing aircraft does not necessarily mean that there's something wrong with the actual aircraft — as distinguished from issues surrounding maintenance, or even products that are not Boeing's, such as the engines," said Robert Clifford, lead counsel for the families of victims of the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash, in which a 737 Max crashed shortly after takeoff, killing more than 150 people.
He added that a quick and efficient investigation is necessary to "help calm the public."
Thursday's incident was the first fatal crash and total hull loss of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, one of the most advanced passenger jets, which entered service in 2011.
The model has faced some criticism from whistleblowers. Last year, Sam Salehpour, a quality engineer at Boeing, told NBC he observed "shortcuts to reduce bottlenecks" in manufacturing 787s. Boeing responded that it was "fully confident in the 787 Dreamliner."
On Thursday, Salehpour's attorneys urged the Federal Aviation Administration to release a report investigating his claims.
Richard Aboulafia, managing director at Aerodynamic Advisory, told BI, "It's a terrible tragedy, but I just don't see how this impacts anything [for Boeing]."
"Unless it's the unlikely event that they do find a design or manufacturing flaw, but after all these years, both for this type of aircraft and this particular aircraft, that's not normal," he added.
Neither the US federal government nor the City of Austin will say how teleoperations, self-driving’s critical safety feature, will be used in the service launching in Austin in just a matter of days.
On Wednesday, acting FAA Administrator Chris Rocheleau told the House Appropriations Committee that the Federal Aviation Administration plans to replace its aging air traffic control systems, which still rely on floppy disks and Windows 95 computers, Tom's Hardware reports. The agency has issued a Request For Information to gather proposals from companies willing to tackle the massive infrastructure overhaul.
"The whole idea is to replace the system. No more floppy disks or paper strips," Rocheleau said during the committee hearing. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called the project "the most important infrastructure project that we've had in this country for decades," describing it as a bipartisan priority.
Most air traffic control towers and facilities across the US currently operate with technology that seems frozen in the 20th century, although that isn't necessarily a bad thing—when it works. Some controllers currently use paper strips to track aircraft movements and transfer data between systems using floppy disks, while their computers run Microsoft's Windows 95 operating system, which launched in 1995.
Multiple Waymo vehicles were set on fire in Los Angeles amid protests against President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.
David Pashaee / Middle East Images via AFP
Five Waymo vehicles were set on fire during protests in LA about Trump's immigration crackdown.
The company suspended service in downtown LA, a spokesperson confirmed to BI.
Waymo doesn't think the vehicles were intentionally targeted and is working with the LAPD.
Waymo suspended robotaxi service in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday after five vehicles were set on fire during protests against President Donald Trump's immigration raids in the city.
Photos show Waymo cars covered in anti-ICE graffiti burning in the street, engulfed in smoke.
A spokesperson for Waymo confirmed to Business Insider that five vehicles had been vandalized during the protests. The company temporarily suspended service in downtown LA and doesn't think its vehicles were intentionally targeted, the spokesperson said. Waymo is working with the Los Angeles Police Department, they added.
The protests were largely peaceful, but some violence broke out over the weekend.
Mario Tama/Getty Images
The remains of a Waymo vehicle were left on the street.
FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images
On Sunday night, the LAPD said on X that "burning lithium-ion batteries release toxic gases." Electric vehicles often use lithium-ion batteries.
The spokesperson told BI that Waymo, which Alphabet owns, operates more than 300 vehicles in LA and is continuing operations in other parts of the city.
The company said five vehicles were set ablaze.
RINGO CHIU / AFP
It's not the first time that Waymo vehicles have been targeted in California. Last year, a crowd in San Francisco set one of the robotaxis on fire during Lunar New Year celebrations amid a wave of distrust about driverless vehicles.
The protests broke out on Friday after an immigration raid in the city. Over the weekend, Trump bypassed California Gov. Gavin Newsom's authority and ordered 2,000 National Guard members to the LA area. Despite the dramatic images, the protests have largely been peaceful, according to multiplereports.
Beyond the jokes about its new shuttle service are serious questions about what it will mean for struggling transit systems, air quality, and congestion.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Federal Aviation Administration to lift the 52-year ban on supersonic flight over U.S. soil.
Milan Kovac, head of Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot program, is leaving the company to spend more time with family, and he said that his support for Musk and Tesla is "ironclad."
Tesla has asked a judge to block a request for the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to disclose certain data related to crashes involving vehicles that have self-driving features, as Reuters reports. The company claimed in a filing the information is confidential, and that releasing it publicly would give competitors the ability to analyze the effectiveness of each version of the self-driving tech and potentially figure out the number of crashes that are linked to various systems.
The Washington Post last year filed a lawsuit against the NHTSA last year to obtain access to more details about crashes that happened while driver-assistance systems, such as Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD), were engaged. The agency has said the data being requested is exempt from public records laws. The Post contended that while the NHTSA does publish information regarding crashes, it "withholds critical details about the technologies in use and the circumstances and locations of the crashes.”
Tesla has argued that the company and the NHTSA should be able to keep certain information related to crashes private. This includes details about driver behavior and road conditions, as well as specific versions of driver-assistance tech that may have been in use.
However, the Post's lawyers claimed that information about the versions of hardware and software that may have been in use at the time of crashes isn't confidential information, since drivers can access that through their vehicle dashboards. Tesla argued in its filing this week that, "Even where Tesla’s individual vehicle owners might know certain information about their own vehicles, such as the version of the ADAS software installed, where a safety incident occurred, the conditions of the road during the accident, and what they were doing leading up to the accident, this information is shared with Tesla with the expectation that it will be kept private."
According to Electrek, Tesla takes advantage of NHTSA loopholes to have most data relating to crashes involving its vehicles redacted. The company contends that its "self-driving" tech doesn't make its cars autonomous and that drivers are required to actively supervise its use. In other news, Tesla expects to start deploying its first Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, this month.
Until late May, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was the de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency. That initiative is said to have cut about 10 percent of the NHTSA's staff at the beginning of this year — including about half of a small team that oversees the safety of autonomous vehicles.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/tesla-is-trying-to-stop-certain-self-driving-crash-data-becoming-public-150946549.html?src=rss
Volvo has introduced a new seatbelt technology that can customize the protection it provides in real time. The "multi-adaptive safety belt" system, as the automaker is calling it, uses data input from both interior and exterior sensors to change protection settings based on various factors. It can take a person's height, weight, body shape and seating position into account, as well as the direction and speed of the vehicle. The system can communicate all those information to the seatbelt "in the blink of an eye" so that it can optimize protection for the passenger.
If the passenger is on the larger side, for instance, they will receive a higher belt load setting to reduce the risk of a head injury in the event of a serious crash. For milder crashes, someone with a smaller frame will receive a lower belt load setting to prevent rib injuries. Volvo didn't specifically say if the system also takes the position of a seatbelt on women into account, since it doesn't always fit right over a woman's chest. However, the automaker explained that the system expands the number of load-limiting profiles to 11. Load limiters control how much force a seatbelt applies on the body during a crash. Typically, seatbelts only have three load-limiting profiles, but Volvo expanding them to 11 means the system can better optimize the protection a passenger gets.
Volvo used information from five decades of safety research and from a database of over 80,000 people involved in real-life accidents to design the new safety belt. The system was also created to incorporate improvements rolled out via over the-air software updates, which the company expects to release as it gets more data and insights.
"The world first multi-adaptive safety belt is another milestone for automotive safety and a great example of how we leverage real-time data with the ambition to help save millions of more lives," said Åsa Haglund, head of Volvo Cars Safety Centre. "This marks a major upgrade to the modern three-point safety belt, a Volvo invention introduced in 1959, estimated to have saved over a million lives."
Volvo engineer Nils Bohlin designed the modern three-point seatbelt and made its patent available for use by other automakers. The company didn't say whether it'll be as generous with the multi-adaptive safety belt, but the new system will debut in the all-electric Volvo EX60 midsize SUV sometime next year.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/volvo-is-introducing-the-first-multi-adaptive-seatbelt-technology-on-the-ex60-ev-070017403.html?src=rss
We’re down to the final two days before TechCrunch Sessions: AI unites the broader AI community at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall on Thursday, June 5! Expect a packed agenda with top speakers, expert panels, top-tier networking, and Side Events from our partners. One of our speakers is Andrei Papancea, CEO and co-founder of NLX, who […]
Passengers were already in for some disruption as it departed around an hour later than scheduled, per data from Flightradar24.
Things went smoothly until an hour and a half into the journey, when the Airbus A340 started to turn around.
The plane had not long started flying over the Atlantic Ocean before deciding to head back.
It appeared to be going toward Switzerland, then turned toward Spain, before returning to its original path.
After three hours in the air, the A340 was back in Swiss airspace. However, it then had to circle around Zurich a few times before it could land.
An airline spokesperson told Business Insider that the plane returned due to "an irregularity with an engine."
The four-engined plane involved in the incident, HB-JMH, is 21 years old.
"As a precautionary measure, the crew decided to return to the home airport in Zurich, where we have the best maintenance facilities," they added.
This is often the case in so-called flights to nowhere, where returning to a hub airport also makes it easier to re-route passengers. Those on the Swiss flight were rebooked on the fastest possible alternatives.
"We regret the inconvenience caused to our passengers," the airline spokesperson said.
Similar incidents have seen flights as long as 10 hours before returning to their original take-off point.
After poaching some of the best Western auto talent, China’s car industry is about to dominate globally with charging rates, ranges, luxury design, technology, and sheer volumes.
Login
