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Ferrari wanted to take on Chinese EVs with the Luce - then the backlash started

BBC News

The new Ferrari Luce, the brainchild of iPhone designer Sir Jony Ive, is unlike anything the Italian carmaker has ever created - so is the backlash it is facing. Its launch was such a big deal that Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Pope Leo were invited to view the luxury brand's first electric vehicle (EV). But internet critics, investors and even politicians have hit out at the Luce - which is Italian for light. The firm's shares fell 8% the day after the unveiling, as a host of memes mocked the $640,000 (£475,625) car, which is also its first five-seater. It comes as the global motor industry faces a number of major challenges, including fierce competition from Chinese carmakers.


Is the Ferrari Luce's Design Really That Bad? 3 Italian Auto Experts Weigh In

WIRED

Is the Ferrari Luce's Design Really That Bad? 3 Italian Auto Experts Weigh In The first electric Ferrari is already this year's most divisive car. We asked three Italian auto industry professionals to explain where the EV's design makes sense, and where it doesn't add up. The Ferrari Luce, the first electric vehicle in the brand's history, has generated heated discussion online, as comments and opinions about the design continue to bounce around the web. The Luce, an electric sedan with a $650,000 price tag that Ferrari presented with pomp and circumstance at the Quirinale in Rome on Monday, has paid dearly for its coming out from behind the curtain. Since Monday, the automaker has been suffering an avalanche of complaints and skepticism about the Luce.


Can Americans spell the National Spelling Bee's winning words?

BBC News

Can Americans spell the National Spelling Bee's winning words? The BBC challenged Americans to spell words used in the last three Scripps National Spelling Bee competitions. Shrey Parikh, a 14-year-old, won the competition this year after correctly spelling 32 words in a 90-second lighting round tiebreaker. He defeated 12-year-old Ishaan Gupta, who spelled 25 words correctly. Parikh won out against 247 spellers competing in the annual contest, aged between nine and 15, taking home a $52,000 (£39,000) cash prize.


24 Best Father's Day Gifts for Dads (2026)

WIRED

Dads are traditionally tough to shop for--let me help with these handpicked gift ideas for fathers with great taste. The only Father's Day gift I can recall my own dad getting was a plate of fried sardines. It was prepared by my mother, his ex-wife, who knew how gratefully he'd receive a dish he grew up with in the Italian neighborhood of a steel town dying with such theatrical flair that Bruce Springsteen named a song after it. We lived in a nearby city that had plenty of red-sauce restaurants, but they weren't serving tinned fish in those days. As my father had only the most limited of food preparation skills and didn't date the kind of women who could cook, this was the only way he'd ever taste that flavor again. As Father's Day gifts go, being united with a long-lost recipe from childhood is pretty good.


BYD debuts China's most advanced EV chip in smart-driving push

The Japan Times

BYD debuts China's most advanced EV chip in smart-driving push BYD on Thursday unveiled what it calls China's first automotive-grade 4-nanometer chip for self-driving cars. BYD, the world's largest electric vehicle maker, unveiled a series of technology advances, including what it calls China's first automotive-grade 4-nanometer chip for self-driving cars. The semiconductor breakthrough approaches the lead of Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies, which currently makes chips with a geometry of 7 nm but has pledged to debut 1.4 nm chips by 2031. It's designed to allow BYD's computer-assisted driving to stand out from a crowded Chinese EV market that includes rivals such as Xpeng and Xiaomi. Facing eight months in a row of falling sales and intense competition for more advanced charging and intelligent driving technologies, BYD is looking to spark more demand for its vehicles.


Kernel-based potential mean-field games with unbiased random Fourier $U$-statistics

arXiv.org Machine Learning

We study the subclass of potential mean-field games in which the running interaction cost and the terminal target cost are both expressed through reproducing-kernel maximum mean discrepancy (MMD) penalties, and develop a computational framework that exploits this kernel structure. Both costs are estimated from finite-sample empirical distributions using a random Fourier U-statistic representation that is unbiased and has linear cost in the batch size. The drift of the controlled diffusion is parametrized by a neural network and trained via stochastic gradient descent. For this subclass we prove a sample-level almost-sure convergence theorem and an explicit almost-sure rate of convergence, under coupled rate conditions on the penalty parameter, the random-feature count, the sample size, and the optimization tolerance. The framework includes the kernel-MMD-penalty Schrödinger bridge problem as the special case of a vanishing interaction cost. Numerical experiments illustrate the method on the Schrödinger bridge problem in dimensions up to one hundred, and on an electric vehicle charging coordination problem with per-vehicle physical heterogeneity, where an aggregate-demand congestion cost represents price-feedback competition at the population level and the terminal MMD penalty shapes the state-of-charge distribution at the deadline.


Ojai is Waymo's new driverless vehicle

Engadget

The pale blue vans have begun picking up passengers in California and Arizona. Waymo has begun offering rides in its brand-new Ojai robotaxi to passengers in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix. Trips will be free for a limited time. The Ojai is a big step for Waymo. This is the company's first purpose-built robotaxi.


Could the 7-Eleven breach affect you?

FOX News

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Cab-less electric trucks hit Ohio roads

FOX News

EASE Logistics and Einride are deploying cab-less electric autonomous trucks on public roads in Marysville, Ohio this summer to move freight between warehouse locations.


Here Comes Ojai, Waymo's New Chinese-Made Robotaxi

WIRED

The pale-blue Ojai vehicles will start picking up members of the public in California and Arizona today. Starting today, Alphabet self-driving vehicle developer Waymo will start picking up members of the public in its new Ojai vehicles (pronounced "oh hai")--pale blue boxy minivans studded with sensors and complete with steering wheels, even though they're designed to travel without drivers. For now, the rides in these new cars, which can be summoned through Waymo's app, will be free. It's been a long road for the vehicle, first announced by Waymo in 2021 and tested on public streets since 2024. It's also a weird time for Waymo: The self-driving-vehicle company, which is trying to expand quickly across the US and the world, shut down service in six US cities last week due to issues with how its vehicles react to flooding.