Two state legislators in New Jersey are proposing a bill that would ban car companies from "[offering consumers] a subscription service for any motor vehicle feature" that "utilizes components and hardware already installed on the motor vehicle at the time of purchase." The Drive reports: The bill has one stipulation, however. The subscription would only be unlawful if there was no "ongoing expense to the dealer, manufacturer, or any third-party service provider." In other words, if an automaker or other associated party can prove that it costs money to maintain the feature and/or service in question, then it'd be legally allowed. This would include services like OnStar and such.

The way "ongoing expense" is interpreted is going to be key here, assuming the bill makes it into law. This, obviously, is not guaranteed. In theory, a car company could claim that over-the-air updates and their associated data costs constitute an ongoing expense. That means anything to do with connected features could theoretically be charged for. Since a car needs an internet connection in order to purchase subscriptions, well, that might make this particular piece of legislation worthless. On the other hand, if the core value of the subscription is derived from the pre-installed hardware as opposed to the data connection itself, then there is probably a case to be made.

Besides heated seats, the bill also mentions "driver assistance." That could be a problem for systems like Tesla's autopilot or General Motors' Super Cruise, both of which are going to a subscription model. Both of these systems cost money to maintain, though, especially Super Cruise. The system requires enabled highways to be scanned with Lidar. Tesla's AutoPilot and "Full Self-Driving" are also actively updated and maintained, which costs money. If automakers don't comply, they risk "civil penalties of up to $20,000 per violation," notes the report.

BMW says it will make batteries for its electric vehicles at a factory in South Carolina in the latest move by a major automaker to localize EV production in the United States. The Verge reports: The German company plans to invest $1.7 billion in the US, including $1 billion for EV production at BMW's Spartanburg plant and $700 million for a new battery-assembly facility in nearby Woodruff. By 2030, BMW says it will have at least six electric models in production in the US. Establishing a US-based EV plant will allow BMW's upcoming line of plug-in vehicles to qualify for the federal EV tax credit.

BMW said it is partnering with Envision AESC on its plans for a dedicated battery plant in South Carolina. The Japan-based energy company will produce round lithium-ion battery cells specifically designed for BMW's next-gen EV platform. When it's completed, the battery factory will have an annual capacity of 30 gigawatt-hours (GWh). BMW has also announced plans to build EV production facilities in Europe and China to meet demand. The company currently has several electric models for sale, including the i4 sedan and iX SUV.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Flights into the Dallas area are being forced to take older, cumbersome routes and a runway at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport was temporarily closed after aviation authorities said GPS signals there aren't reliable. The Federal Aviation Administration said in an emailed statement Tuesday it's investigating the possible jamming of the global-positioning system that aircraft increasingly use to guide them on more efficient routes and to runways. So far, the agency has found "no evidence of intentional interference," it said. American Airlines, the primary carrier at DFW, said the GPS issue is not affecting its operations. Southwest Airlines, which flies from nearby Love Field, said it also isn't experiencing any disruptions. The FAA reopened the closed runway earlier on Tuesday.

The GPS problem -- despite the lack of impact -- highlights the risk of widespread reliance on the weak GPS radio signals from space used for everything from timing stock trades to guiding jetliners. The FAA occasionally warns pilots in advance of military testing that may degrade the GPS signals and pilots sometimes report short-lived problems, but the interference in Dallas is atypical, said Dan Streufert, founder of the flight-tracking website ADSBexchange.com. "In the US, it's very unusual to see this without a prior notice," Streufert said in an interview. ADSBExchange.com monitors aircraft data streams that indicate the accuracy of the GPS signals they are receiving and the website began seeing problems around Dallas on Monday, he said. The military has told the FAA it isn't conducting any operations that would interfere with GPS in that area, said a person familiar with the situation who wasn't authorized to speak publicly about it. The primary way FAA's air-traffic system tracks planes is based on GPS, but older radars and radio-direction beacons have remained in place as backups.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: Bernard Arnault, the CEO of luxury brand LVMH -- known for expensive labels like Louis Vuitton -- is the world's second-richest man according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index. He currently clocks in at a net worth of $133 billion, beating out Amazon founder Jeff Bezos' paltry $130 billion. He's also been harangued on Twitter for his consistent use of private jets. French accounts that use planes' transponder signals and publicly accessible information have tracked Arnault's and other rich folks' use of private jets to reveal just how much wasteful flying time is used by the world's wealthiest.

In September, the Twitter account laviodebernard (Bernard's Plane) wrote that Arnault's plane had been de-registered in France. The account wrote "The LVMH private jet has not been registered in France since September 1, 2022. Still no word from Bernard Arnault or LVMH on the subject of private jets. So Bernard, are we hiding?" Apparently, that's just what Arnault has been doing. On the LVMH-owned podcast released Monday, Arnault admitted that the LVMH group "had a plane, and we sold it." He added: "The result now is that no one can see where I go because I rent planes when I use private planes."

Antoine Arnault, the second scion of the world's second richest man, a LVMH board member and director of communications for Louis Vuitton, also said during the podcast that other people knowing where their company jet is could give competitors an edge. He also told French news channel 5's a Vous last week "This plane is a work tool." As translated by Bloomberg, the younger Arnault added that the company sold the plane over the summer.

Apple AirTags "are allowed on Lufthansa flights," Lufthansa announced this week — the opposite of their position last Sunday, remembers SFGate: The airline insisted the tech was "dangerous" and referred to International Civil Aviation Organization guidelines (set by the United Nations's specialized agency that recommends air transport policy) stipulating that baggage trackers are subject to the dangerous goods regulations. ["Furthermore, due to their transmission function, the trackers must be deactivated during the flight if they are in checked baggage," Lufthansa added on Twitter, "and cannot be used as a result"]
Ars Technica reports on the public relations debacle that then ensued: Outcry, close reading of the relevant sections (part 2, section C) of ICAO guidelines, and accusations of ulterior motives immediately followed. AppleInsider noted that the regulations are meant for lithium-ion batteries that could be accidentally activated; AirTag batteries are not lithium-ion, are encased, and are commonly used in watches, which have not been banned by any airline. The site also spoke with "multiple international aviation experts" who saw no such ban in ICAO regulations. One expert told the site the ban was "a way to stop Lufthansa from being embarrassed by lost luggage...."

Numerous people pointed out that Lufthansa, in its online World Shop, sells Apple AirTags. One Ars staffer noted that Lufthansa had previously dabbled in selling a smart luggage tag, one that specifically used RFID and BLE to program an e-ink display with flight information. On Tuesday, Apple told numerous publications that it, too, disagreed with Lufthansa's interpretation. It went unsaid but was strongly implied that a company that is often the world's largest by revenue would take something like air travel regulations into consideration when designing portable find-your-object devices....

Representatives from the Federal Aviation Administration and Transportation Security Administration said early this week that Bluetooth-based trackers were allowed in checked luggage. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency said its regulations could "not in itself ban or allow" trackers, but airlines could determine their own guidelines.

On Wednesday, Lufthansa walked back the policy under the cover of "The German Aviation Authorities (Luftfahrtbundesamt)," which the airline said in a tweet "shared our risk assessment, that tracking devices with very low battery and transmission power in checked luggage do not pose a safety risk." This would seem to imply either that Lufthansa was acting on that authority's ruling without having previously mentioned it, or that Lufthansa had acted on its own and has now found an outside actor to approve their undoing.

"Sony and Honda have officially launched their joint mobility venture that aims to start delivering premium electric vehicles with automated driving capabilities in the United States in the spring of 2026, followed by Japan in the second half of 2026," reports TechCrunch. Details are scarce but the partnership appears to produce what the companies promise to be a wildly smart vehicle that's heavily focused on keeping its passengers entertained. Slashdot reader SouthSeb shares the news with us, writing: Since cars are expected to fully drive themselves in a near future, how to maintain their occupants entertained seems to be the next big question. It makes one wonder if cars are going to radically change and become more and more like living rooms or office spaces on wheels. "The new EV, which will be initially manufactured at Honda's North America factory, will be developed with Level 3 automated driving capabilities under limited conditions, and with Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems that can handle situations as complex as urban driving," reports TechCrunch. "Sony will provide the sensors and tech for the autonomous capabilities, as well as all of the other software, from cloud-based services to entertainment, that drivers will hopefully be able to enjoy all the better for not having to actually drive the car all the time. The companies didn't share too much about what the infotainment system would look like, but they did say the metaverse would be involved."

"[Sony Honda Mobility] aims to evolve mobility space into entertainment and emotional space, by seamlessly integrating real and virtual worlds, and exploring new entertainment possibilities through digital innovations such as the metaverse," according to SHM.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: California's roads just got a little smarter with the passage of a bill that paves the way for the sale of digital license plates across the state. The technology allows for emergency messaging like marking the car stolen or indicating an Amber Alert, and can be personalized through an app with touts like "Go Warriors" or "Go Lakers" to cheer on the local sports teams. The pesky task of car registration also will become easier with DMV auto-renewals, eliminating the need for registration cards and stickers. California-based startup Reviver is the only company offering digital license plates right now, and they're expensive, costing up to $1,100 for four years for a hard-wired version. (The cost for a traditional license plate, registration card and sticker totals $69, according to state's DMV.) A battery-powered version is available for an about $20 per month subscription, or $215 a year, for four years. Privacy advocates have concerns that the devices could be hacked and tracked. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has also been "fighting for years to restrict police from using automated license plate readers to surveil neighborhoods for location data that can detect travel patterns of targeted vehicles," reports Bloomberg.

Despite this, Reviver has continued to expand to Arizona and Michigan, where digital license plates are already approved.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Axios: TikTok is planning to build its own product fulfillment centers in the U.S., creating an e-commerce supply chain system that could directly challenge Amazon, as indicated by more than a dozen new job openings posted in the past two weeks to LinkedIn. The move signifies TikTok's commitment to e-commerce as its next major revenue stream, following the explosive growth of its ads business. "By providing warehousing, delivery, and customer service returns, our mission is to help sellers improve their operational capability and efficiency, provide buyers a satisfying shopping experience and ensure fast and sustainable growth of TikTok Shop," the company wrote in one job listing.

According to the job postings, TikTok is looking to build an "international e-commerce fulfillment system" that will include international warehousing, customs clearings and supply chain systems that support domestic e-commerce efforts in the U.S. and cross-border e-commerce efforts. The systems will eventually perform parcel consolidation, along with transporting goods from one stage to the next and managing free returns. One position, a logistics solutions manager for a global fulfillment center, is looking for a Seattle-based employee to plan and design fulfillment centers and e-commerce logistics solutions that include the transportation of goods, order prediction and inventory management.

Another Seattle-based role calls for the creation of a new fulfillment service center "from scratch." The center, the posting says, "is a global team responsible for developing and growing our logistics solution" and will include product fulfillment by TikTok Shop to its sellers by "providing warehousing, delivery, and customer service returns." While that role explicitly calls for the development of fulfillment services for TikTok's e-commerce logistics in the U.S., other roles reference a team that is responsible for a global logistics and warehousing network. For now, it does not appear that TikTok plans to build out its own transportation unit like Amazon. The job postings imply that TikTok would work with vendors to handle shipping, parcel consolidation and transportation. One job description for a fulfillment logistics manager implies that, like Amazon, TikTok is looking to develop a free return program.

UPDATE: Lufthansa has since reversed their position, and now says Apple AirTags "are allowed on Lufthansa flights, according to SFGate. But only after their earlier remarks stirred up a lot of consternation.

Slashdot's original story appears below:


Citing rules issued by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), German airliner Lufthansa says it is banning activated Apple AirTags from luggage "as they are classified as dangerous and need to be turned off." Slashdot reader AmiMoJo first shared the news with us. The New York Times reports: Lufthansa, a German airline, set off confusion recently after telling passengers that they could not use trackers like Apple AirTags in checked baggage because of international guidelines for personal electronic devices. Apple rejected that interpretation on Tuesday, saying its trackers comply with all regulations. It does not appear that any other airlines are requiring passengers to turn off the trackers, which have become popular as a way to find lost baggage.

Lufthansa found itself in the middle of the issue when reports surfaced in the German news media that the devices were prohibited. Though Lufthansa said it has no desire to prohibit the devices that it deemed safe, the airline seems to have stepped in a mess based on the reading of obscure international guidelines and regulations, with no clear consensus on what is and is not allowed in Europe.

Lufthansa said on Sunday on Twitter that the trackers must be deactivated in checked baggage on its flights, citing the International Civil Aviation Organization's guidelines for dangerous goods as well as the trackers' "transmission function." Shutting off the trackers renders them useless. The airline has not issued a specific policy prohibiting baggage trackers. Rather, it says it is at the mercy of the rules. On Tuesday, the airline said it was "in close contact with the respective institutions to find a solution as quickly as possible." It also indicated its own examination saw no danger from their use. "The Lufthansa Group has conducted its own risk assessment with the result that tracking devices with very low battery and transmission power in checked luggage do not pose a safety risk," said Martin Leutke, a Lufthansa spokesman. "We have never issued a ban on devices like that. It is on the authorities to adapt regulations that right now limit the use of these devices for airline passengers in checked luggage."

In its statement, Apple said that AirTags are "compliant with international airline travel safety regulations for carry-on and checked baggage."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Drivers using advanced driver assistance systems like Tesla Autopilot or General Motors Super Cruise often treat their vehicles as fully self-driving despite warnings, a new study has found. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), an industry funded group that prods automakers to make safer vehicles, said on Tuesday a survey found regular users of Super Cruise, Nissan/Infiniti ProPILOT Assist and Tesla Autopilot "said they were more likely to perform non-driving-related activities like eating or texting while using their partial automation systems than while driving unassisted."

The IIHS study of 600 active users found 53% of Super Cruise, 42% of Autopilot and 12% of ProPILOT Assist owners "said that they were comfortable treating their vehicles as fully self-driving." About 40% of users of Autopilot and Super Cruise -- two systems with lockout features for failing to pay attention -- reported systems had at some point switched off while they were driving and would not reactivate. "The big-picture message here is that the early adopters of these systems still have a poor understanding of the technology's limits," said IIHS President David Harkey.

Amazon said on Monday it will invest more than 1 billion euros ($974.8 million) over the next five years in electric vans, trucks and low-emission package hubs across Europe, accelerating its drive to achieve net-zero carbon. From a report: The retailer said the investment was also aimed at spurring innovation across the transportation industry and encouraging more public charging infrastructure for electric vehicles (EVs). The U.S. online retailer said the investment would help its electric van fleet in Europe more than triple from 3,000 vehicles to more than 10,000 by 2025. The company did not say what percentage of its European last-mile delivery fleet is electric today, but said those 3,000 zero-emission vans delivered over 100 million packages in 2021. Amazon said it also hopes to purchase more than 1,500 electric heavy goods vehicles - used for "middle-mile" shipments to package hubs - in the coming years.

After almost a decade of talks, the nations of the world have committed to drastically lower emissions of planet-warming gases from the world's airplanes by 2050, a milestone in efforts to ease the climate effects of a fast-growing sector. From a report: The target to reach "net zero" emissions -- a point in which air travel is no longer pumping any additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere -- would require the aviation industry to significantly step up its climate efforts. Previously, companies had relied on offsetting aviation's emissions growth through tree-planting programs or through yet-to-be-proven technology to pull carbon dioxide out of the air.

But to reach net zero, companies and governments would need to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in increasingly efficient planes and cleaner fuels to sharply reduce emissions from air travel itself. And even those investments are unlikely to be enough, compelling countries and companies to adopt policies to curb flying itself, by scrapping fuel subsidies or halting airport expansion plans, for example, or ending frequent flier programs. That puts the onus on the world's richest countries, which account for the bulk of global air travel. The richest 20 percent of people worldwide take 80 percent of the flights, according to estimates by the International Council on Clean Transportation, a nonprofit think tank. The top 2 percent of frequent fliers take about 40 percent of the flights.

Emissions from global commercial aviation made up about 3 percent of global emissions in 2019, and had surged more than 30 percent over the previous decade before the coronavirus pandemic hit and traffic slumped. But air travel has come back with a vengeance, making action to address rising emissions imperative. The aviation industry has been slow to address its emissions, which aren't covered by the Paris accord, the 2015 agreement among the nations of the world to fight climate change. Instead, a United Nations-like body called the International Civil Aviation Organization has overseen the climate talks. Those talks quickly became a microcosm of the politics involved in global climate negotiations, with less wealthy nations arguing that they should not face the same restrictions as richer nations.

It's one of the largest airlines in the world. But now Futurism reports that United Airlines "is projecting it could have electric powered commercial flights by the tail end of this decade, potentially laying the groundwork for a much more environmentally friendly future for air travel." "Initially we want to fly on routes that are 200 miles or less," Mike Leskinen, president of United Airlines Ventures, told CNBC [at CNBC's ESG Impact Virtual Conference on Thursday]. "But as that energy density increases, that same aircraft will have a range of 250 miles, 300 miles, which is going to give us a lot more utility here connecting our hubs."

In other words, the battery-powered planes will get a chance to prove themselves in regional, short-haul flights, according to Leskinen.

United set their plans in motion last year, purchasing 100 battery-powered planes that can seat 19 passengers from the Swedish startup Heart Aerospace. Its founder Anders Forslund, who also attended the conference, said that the planes will be able to recharge in "under half an hour," which is about on par with industry standards. The airplane won't be taking off any time soon, however, as it still requires certification, but Forslund predicts they'll get approval by 2028.

For the long-haul flights, United has already announced plans to use sustainable fuel in its efforts to be carbon neutral by 2050.

In 2008 California's voters approved the first bonds for a $33 billion San Francisco-to-Los Angeles bullet train.

14 years later, the New York Times is now calling the project "a case study in how ambitious public works projects can become perilously encumbered by political compromise, unrealistic cost estimates, flawed engineering and a determination to persist on projects that have become... too big to fail...." Political compromises, the records show, produced difficult and costly routes through the state's farm belt. They routed the train across a geologically complex mountain pass in the Bay Area. And they dictated that construction would begin in the center of the state, in the agricultural heartland, not at either of the urban ends where tens of millions of potential riders live. The pros and cons of these routing choices have been debated for years. Only now, though, is it becoming apparent how costly the political choices have been. Collectively, they turned a project that might have been built more quickly and cheaply into a behemoth so expensive that, without a major new source of funding, there is little chance it can ever reach its original goal of connecting California's two biggest metropolitan areas in two hours and 40 minutes....

Fourteen years later, construction is now underway on part of a 171-mile "starter" line connecting a few cities in the middle of California, which has been promised for 2030. But few expect it to make that goal. Meanwhile, costs have continued to escalate. When the California High-Speed Rail Authority issued its new 2022 draft business plan in February, it estimated an ultimate cost as high as $105 billion. Less than three months later, the "final plan" raised the estimate to $113 billion. The rail authority said it has accelerated the pace of construction on the starter system, but at the current spending rate of $1.8 million a day, according to projections widely used by engineers and project managers, the train could not be completed in this century....

As of now, there is no identified source of funding for the $100 billion it will take to extend the rail project from the Central Valley to its original goals, Los Angeles and San Francisco, in part because lawmakers, no longer convinced of the bullet train's viability, have pushed to divert additional funding to regional rail projects....

The Times's review, though, revealed that political deals created serious obstacles in the project from the beginning. Speaking candidly on the subject for the first time, some of the high-speed rail authority's past leaders say the project may never work.

Tesla's long-delayed semi-truck has started production, and the company will begin making deliveries as soon as December 1st, Elon Musk has announced on Twitter. Engadget reports: The first batch of Semis will be delivered to Pepsi, which ordered 100 vehicles from the company back in December 2017. As TechCrunch notes, other big companies had also ordered trucks from the automaker, including Walmart and UPS. And in May this year, the automaker opened reservations to more customers for a deposit of $20,000. A Semi costs between $150,000 and $180,000, depending on the range, and it could go as far as 500 miles on a single charge. The Tesla Semi was unveiled back in 2017, with production expected to start by 2019. "While that obviously didn't happen, Musk told employees in an email back in early 2020 that the vehicle was already in limited production and that it was 'time to go all out and bring the Tesla Semi to volume production,'" notes Engadget.

Deliveries were delayed yet again to 2021 and then to 2022 due to the global supply chain shortages affecting the tech and auto industries.

One piece of news from Tesla's AI Day presentation on Friday that was overshadowed by the company's humanoid "Optimus" robot and Dojo supercomputer was the improvements to Tesla's Full Self Driving software. According to Autopilot director Ashok Elluswamy, "there are now 160,000 customers running the beta software, compared to 2,000 from this time last year," reports The Verge. From the report: In total, Tesla says there have been 35 software releases of FSD. In a Q&A at the end of the presentation, Musk made another prediction -- he's made a few before -- that the technology would be ready for a worldwide rollout by the end of this year but acknowledged the regulatory and testing hurdles that remained before that happens. Afterward, Tesla's tech lead for Autopilot motion planning, Paril Jain, showed how FSD has improved in specific interactions and can make "human-like" decisions. For example, when a Tesla makes a left turn into an intersection, it can choose a trajectory that doesn't make close calls with obstacles like people crossing the street.

It's known that every Tesla can provide datasets to build the models that FSD uses, and according to Tesla's engineering manager Phil Duan, now Tesla will start building and processing detailed 3D structures from that data. They said the cars are also improving decision-making in different environmental situations, like night, fog, and rain. Tesla trains the company's AI software on its supercomputer, then feeds the results to customers' vehicles via over-the-air software updates. To do this, it processes video feeds from Tesla's fleet of over 1 million camera-equipped vehicles on the road today and has a simulator built in Unreal Engine that is used to improve Autopilot.

During Toyota's annual dealer meeting in Las Vegas last week, which was called "Playing to Win," CEO Akio Toyoda explained why the company isn't all-in on electric vehicles. CNBC reports: Toyoda last week simply stated what he would like his legacy to be: "I love cars." Despite criticism from some investors and environmental groups, Toyoda this past week doubled down on his strategy to continue investing in a range of electrified vehicles as opposed to competitors such as Volkswagen and General Motors, which have said they are going all-in on all-electric vehicles. The plans could arguably cement Toyoda's "I love cars" legacy or tarnish it, depending on how quickly drivers adopt electric vehicles. "For me, playing to win also means doing things differently. Doing things that others may question, but that we believe will put us in the winner's circle the longest," he said [...]. Toyoda, who described Toyota as a large department store, said the company's goal "remains the same, pleasing the widest possible range of customers with the widest possible range of powertrains." Those powertrains will include hybrids and plug-in hybrids like the Prius, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles like the Mirai and 15 all-electric battery models by 2025.

Toyoda reiterated that he does not believe all-electric vehicles will be adopted as quickly as policy regulators and competitors think, due to a variety of reasons. He cited lack of infrastructure, pricing and how customers' choices vary region to region as examples of possible roadblocks. He believes it will be "difficult" to fulfill recent regulations that call for banning traditional vehicles with internal combustion engines by 2035, like California and New York have said they will adopt. "Just like the free autonomous cars that we are all supposed to be driving by now, EVs are just going to take longer to become mainstream than media would like us to believe," Toyoda said in a recording of the remarks to dealers shown to reporters. "In the meantime, you have many options for customers." Toyoda also believes there will be "tremendous shortages" of lithium and battery grade nickel in the next five to 10 years, leading to production and supply chain problems.

Toyota's goal is carbon neutrality by 2050, and not just through all-electric vehicles. Some have questioned the environmental impact of EVs when factoring in raw material mining and overall vehicle production. Since the Prius launched in 1997, Toyota says it has sold more than 20 million electrified vehicles worldwide. The company says those sales have avoided 160 million tons of CO2 emissions, which is the equivalent to the impact of 5.5 million all-electric battery vehicles. "Toyota can produce eight 40-mile plug-in hybrids for every one 320-mile battery electric vehicle and save up to eight times the carbon emitted into the atmosphere," according to prepared remarks for Toyoda provided to media. Toyoda also said the company has no plans to overhaul its franchised dealership network as it invests in electrified vehicles, like some competitors have announced.

"I know you are anxious about the future. I know you are worried about how this business will change. While I can't predict the future, I can promise you this: You, me, us, this business, this franchised model is not going anywhere. It's staying just as it is," he told dealers to resounding applause.

After years of lobbying the state to increase regulations on autonomous vehicles, San Francisco officials are taking their case to the feds. San Francisco Examiner reports: The directors of The City's two main transportation agencies outlined their concerns about Cruise's driverless cars in a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration regarding Cruise's application to deploy a custom-built autonomous vehicle. In it, San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Authority Director Jeffrey Tumlin and San Francisco County Transportation Authority Director Tilly Chang provide a comprehensive overview of disruptive and unsafe incidents that they say Cruise cars precipitated. The letter, sent on Sept. 21, comes as Cruise's driverless cars continue to stop in the middle of San Francisco's streets for extended periods of time, often in groups, blocking traffic until they can be remotely restarted or manually retrieved by Cruise staff. Over the past week, there were at least four such incidents, including one that delayed a couple of KRON4 reporters.

The City's letter to NHTSA provides specific data on these incidents. Between May 29 and Sept. 5 of this year, 28 incidents of stopped Cruise cars blocking traffic were reported to 911. The City identified an additional 20 such incidents reported on social media over that time period, which does not include the events of the past week. The City estimates that these figures represent "a fraction of actual travel lane road failures," since most of these events take place late at night, when Cruise offers its driverless ride-hailing service, and when few other people are on the streets. In light of these concerns, The City requests several new regulations on autonomous vehicles from NHTSA.

San Francisco's letter is in response to a petition by General Motors, Cruise's parent company, to manufacture and commercially deploy a custom-built autonomous vehicle called the Cruise Origin. It would be roughly the size of an SUV, but with no obvious front and back and no driver's seat or steering wheel. In their letter on behalf of the entire city government, Tumlin and Chang stress that they "neither support nor oppose the Petition, but document safety hazards and street capacity issues raised by the operation of the Cruise AV on San Francisco streets." They go on to call for several specific regulations they would like to see imposed on Cruise and Ford's Argo AI, another company seeking to build and deploy a fully autonomous vehicle. Those recommendations include stringent data reporting requirements and incident reports, limiting the geographic area and the number of vehicles that can be deployed in San Francisco, and enabling first responders to manually turn off the vehicles. "Safety is the guiding principle of everything we do," Cruise said in a statement regarding these incidents. "That means if our cars encounter a situation where they aren't able to safely proceed they turn on their hazard lights and we either get them operating again or pick them up as quickly as possible. This could be because of a mechanical issue like a flat tire, a road condition, or a technical problem. We're working to minimize how often this happens, and apologize to any other impacted drivers."

All new vehicles purchased in New York will need to be zero-emission models beginning in 2035, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) announced on Thursday. From a report: "We're really putting our foot down on the accelerator and revving up our efforts to make sure we have this transition -- not someday in the future, but on a specific date, a specific year -- by the year 2035," Hochul said at a press conference in White Plains, N.Y. After careening into the Chester-Maple Parking Lot in a white Chevy Bolt, Hochul announced a series of new electric vehicle (EV) initiatives for the state, beginning with the zero-emission requirement for 2035. To reach this target, she said that 35 percent of new cars will need to be zero-emission by 2026 and 68 percent by 2030.

All new school buses purchased will have to be zero-emission by 2027, with the entire fleet meeting these standards by 2035, according to the governor. "We actually have benchmarks to achieve, to show we're on the path to get there," Hochul said, stressing that the changes would not occur suddenly. New York is following in the footsteps of California in mandating zero-emissions vehicles by the year 2035. "We had to wait for California to take a step because there's some federal requirements that California had to go first -- that's the only time we're letting them go first," the governor said.

A prototype all-electric passenger plane took off for the first time yesterday in a test flight that marks a significant milestone for carbon pollution-free aviation. The Verge reports: The nine-passenger commuter aircraft called Alice took off at 7:10AM yesterday from Washington state's Grant County International Airport. Alice is ahead of much of the pack when it comes to all-electric aircraft under development. It could become the "first all-new, all-electric commercial airplane" if the Federal Aviation Administration certifies it to carry passengers, The Seattle Times reports.

Alice's maker, Washington state-based company Eviation, is targeting commuter and cargo flights between 150 and 250 miles. That's like flying from New York City to Boston or from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Yesterday's test flight lasted just eight minutes, though, with the aircraft reaching an altitude of 3,500 feet. The purpose of the flight was to gather data to improve the design of the plane, which still has a long way to go before it can take off with passengers on board. Alice will eventually come in three configurations: a nine-passenger commuter plane, a six-passenger luxury plane, and an e-cargo version. The limited size has to do with battery capacity.