Transpo

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.

The FIA’s “nimble” cars will be shorter and lighter, and a new hybrid setup increases battery power from 120kw to 350kw with “manual override” for boosted overtaking. There’s active aero now in the front and back, but DRS is gone.

That’s all great, but I’m still looking through articles and podcasts to find one saying how this adds up to a Lewis Hamilton championship with Ferrari.

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.

SpaceX isn’t the only one busy today, as the finally-launched Starliner is closing in on the International Space Station. Astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams have already performed “about two hours of free-flight demonstrations,” and more are planned, despite additional helium leaks detected by flight controllers overnight.

The autonomous docking procedure is scheduled for 12:15PM ET.

Announced in May, Uber Caregiver will help caregivers more easily arrange transportation and deliveries starting this summer. What I think is really useful, though, is that Uber’s partnering with health insurers so you could use healthcare benefits to pay for rides to medical appointments and more.

The waitlist is free to join, so why not?

The robotaxi company now covers 315 square miles in Metro Phoenix, making it “the largest autonomous ride-hail territory in the United States” — a totally real and not-at-all-made-up superlative. Even so, the incremental growth shows that Waymo is getting more confident in its driverless capabilities. But some argue the real confidence is when it can start adding multiple new cities in a year. And Waymo still feels like it’s not quite there yet.

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?

Under a new state bill, cities could limit the number of autonomous vehicles on their roads, and set maximum fares that companies could charge. The bill, which passed the State Senate and is now being considered by the Assembly, is in response to a number of incidents in which robotaxis blocked emergency vehicles or caused traffic jams. Lawmakers say they want to regulate robotaxis the same way they do human-driven for-hire vehicles.

The GM-owned robotaxi company is manually testing its cars in the Texas capitol, as it continues to slowly work its way back to some semblance of a commercial service. Cruise is also operating some of its vehicles in autonomous mode in Phoenix. The company suspended its robotaxi service last year after one of its vehicle struck and drug a pedestrian for over 20 feet in San Francisco.

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!

NASA, Boeing, and the United Launch Alliance had hoped for a shorter delay, but NASA says the ULA is taking more time to troubleshoot an issue with ground launch systems that halted the mission less than four minutes from liftoff.

The next launch window begins on June 5th.

With just 3 minutes and 50 seconds to go, one of three redundant ground computers involved in the launch was slow to respond, triggering a hold and the call to abort liftoff, United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno said during a press conference today.

The next target for launch is 12:03PM ET tomorrow.

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).