Best Power Banks Best Smart Rings Routers vs. Modems Choose the Right Laptop Smart Sprinklers Deals Delivered The company is mapping Alexandria and, soon, Arlington--right across from the power center of Washington, DC. Self-driving cars aren't yet permitted to operate in Virginia. But Alphabet-owned Waymo began transporting its cars to the state last week, a Waymo representative told Virginia officials, to map Arlington and Alexandria, in the northern part of the state. For most autonomous vehicle companies, mapping, or the creation of sensor-aided and ultra-precise digital representations of streets and the features around them, is the first step required to launch a local robotaxi service. Drivers will operate the mapping vehicles for now, Waymo says.

This article was featured in the One Story to Read Today newsletter. Before DOGE, there was Twitter. In 2023, Elon Musk seemed too distracted by his latest venture to run the world's most valuable car company. Tesla was faltering as he focused on remaking (and renaming) the social-media network. So at Tesla's investor-day event in Austin that March, Musk responded with a rare show of force.

It's a rare thing to shoot yourself in the foot and win a marathon. For years, Elon Musk has managed to do something like that with Tesla, achieving monumental success in spite of a series of self-inflicted disasters. There was the time he heavily promoted the company's automated factory, only to later admit that its "crazy, complex network of conveyor belts" had thrown production of the Model 3 off track; and the time a tweet led him to be sued for fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission; and the time he said that the Tesla team had "dug our own grave" with the massively delayed and overhyped Cybertruck. Tesla is nonetheless the most valuable car company in the world by a wide margin. Yesterday evening, Tesla reported first-quarter earnings for 2025, and they were abysmal: Profits dropped 71 percent from the same time last year.

Donald Trump may be pleased enough with Elon Musk, but even as the Tesla CEO is exercising his newfound power to essentially undo whole functions of the federal government, he still has to reassure his investors. Lately, Musk has delivered for them in one way: The value of the company's shares has skyrocketed since Trump was reelected to the presidency of the United States. But Musk had much to answer for on his recent fourth-quarter earnings call--not least that in 2024, Tesla's car sales had sunk for the first time in a decade. Profits were down sharply too. Usually, when this happens at a car company, the CEO issues a mea culpa, vows to cut costs, and hypes vehicles coming to market soon.

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. There are myriad reasons to loathe Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, who has become a top ally of Donald Trump. OG haters have long accused Musk of endangering road users by exaggerating the capabilities of Tesla's navigation assistance systems, misleadingly named Autopilot and Full-Self Driving. The ranks of the angry have steadily grown, fueled by Musk's habit of amplifying trans-bashing and antisemitism as well as his demolition of Twitter. Now, as Musk cozies up to extremists across Europe, wields the Department of Government Efficiency as a wrecking ball against the federal government, and generally acts as an unelected leader, the furor is reaching a fever pitch.

Elon Musk has long railed against the U.S. government, saying a crushing number of federal investigations and safety programs have stymied Tesla, his electric car company, and its efforts to create fleets of robotaxis and other self-driving automobiles. Now, Musk's close relationship with President Donald Trump means many of those federal headaches could vanish within weeks or months. On the potential chopping block: crash investigations into Tesla's partially automated vehicles; a Justice Department criminal probe examining whether Musk and Tesla have overstated their cars' self-driving capabilities; and a government mandate to report crash data on vehicles using technology like Tesla's Autopilot. The consequences of such actions could prove dire, say safety advocates who credit the federal investigations and recalls with saving lives. "Musk wants to run the Department of Transportation," said Missy Cummings, a former senior safety adviser at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. "I've lost count of the number of investigations that are underway with Tesla.

As Elon Musk has embraced Donald Trump and various far-right conspiracy theories, he has left behind an aghast cohort of Tesla owners who suddenly feel embarrassed by their own cars. Many of them are now publicly displaying their dismay at Musk on their vehicles. Sales of anti-Musk stickers have boomed since the world's richest man declared his support for Trump and helped propel him to victory in the US presidential election, as owners of Teslas, the car brand headed by Musk, try to distance themselves from the South African-born multibillionaire. The day after the election was the biggest day ever," said Matt Hiller, a Hawaii-based aquarium worker who sells a range of stickers online that denounce Musk. "People saw a billionaire supervillain buy his way into the administration and it rubbed them the wrong way." Hiller started the sticker range last year after deciding against buying a Tesla due to Musk's "amplifying of horrible people and silencing of others" on X, formerly Twitter, another of his companies. Several hundred stickers a day are now being sold, primarily to Tesla owners, Hiller said, bearing texts such as "Anti Elon Tesla Club" or "I Bought This Before Elon Went Crazy", or a picture of Musk in clown makeup with the words "Space Clown". "People keep telling me that they feel they can drive their Teslas again with these stickers," said Hiller, who has had to set aside part of his house to accommodate the growing operation. Hiller devises slogans such as "Elon Ate My Cat", a reference to a debunked falsehood about migrants eating pets in Ohio, that are then sold on Etsy and Amazon. It's a relief really to see they are awake," he said of the surging demand.

You more than likely know Xiaomi, so-called Apple of China, as a maker of smartphones that offer a decent alternative to Samsung. You might also know about its smartwatches, robotic vacuums and electric scooters. Good, if often unoriginal design, sold at a competitive price. But did you know it also sells cars? Xiaomi Auto leapt into the packed EV market only in March 2024, yet already has a hit on its hands with the SU7.

On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported on Elon Musk's increasingly close relationship with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, which has flourished to the point that the two "talk on the phone several times a month." The conversation subjects tend to cover Trump's attempt to regain White House control and the potential opportunities for Musk and his companies, like Tesla and SpaceX, under another potential Trump administration. Musk rejected the report's central conceit--that Trump had discussed an advisory role for him should the former president be reelected--but he certainly keeps behaving like a typical Trump supplicant. Just look at his X posts following Trump's 34-count conviction in the New York hush money trial, in which he refers to the process as "troubling," endorses a Sequoia Capital partner's 300,000 donation to Trump's campaign, proclaims that "great damage was done today to the public's faith in the American legal system," and reply-guys a couple of characteristically lame Babylon Bee headlines. President Joe Biden's reelection campaign has responded with a scoff, declaring that, "Despite what Donald Trump thinks, America is not for sale to billionaires, oil and gas executives, or even Elon Musk."

Apple has long been a company shrouded in mystery--and perhaps its most mysterious recent project of all has been the Apple Car. For a decade, reports have continually emerged about the company building an electric, autonomous car as smart and beautiful as an iPhone. The company never confirmed the project's existence, even as it hired executives from Lamborghini and BMW. MotorTrend created a speculative Apple Car in 2016, treating it like an object of science fiction, then another in 2022. But as of this afternoon, that dream appears dead.