"Enshittification of car controls [is] rapidly accelerating," writes longtime Slashdot reader sinij, pointing to a new report from Car and Driver. From the report: Remember when iPhones used to come with free headphones and a phone charger (including the wall plug)? It didn't feel so much like Apple giving you free goodies as it did that the company was providing you with the relevant hardware to use the device. Apple stopped including headphones and charging blocks in 2020. Now, Hyundai is pulling some of its standard hardware from the box, at least for two models. Hyundai is charging customers extra for a driver's display in the new Elantra generation (more specifically, the Korea-market Avante), as well as the Ioniq 3, Motor1 reported. Both models feature Pleos Connect, Hyundai's new infotainment setup that pairs a center touchscreen with a slim 9.9-inch instrument cluster mounted above the dashboard -- except where it doesn't. In its domestic market, the instrument cluster screen is offered as a 350,000 won ($255) option for the base trim. Not the most expensive optional extra in the world, but still kind of a slap in the face for a feature traditionally viewed as standard fare. Things are more expensive for the electric Ioniq 3. In the EV's case, the base trim gives customers the full Tesla-screen experience, meaning if customers want the driver's display, they'll need to fork over the additional $5000 necessary to move up to the next-level trim. [...] Hyundai plans to have the setup equipped in 20 million cars globally by the end of the decade.

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BMW is about to release their most screen-dependent vehicles ever, reports Car and Driver: Step into the BMW iX3, and you'll notice something is missing: real buttons. The climate controls are fettered to the center screen, as is nearly every other feature, save for a handful located in the center console — at least the window switches are still on the doors... But don't blame a desire for larger profit margins; BMW's move away from physical switchgear and toward touchscreen dependence is the fault of younger buyers, according to one executive. In an interview with CarExpert, Vikram Pawah, the CEO of BMW Group Australia, said that young buyers prefer the newer controls... According to the executive, younger customers are less patient with their technology. "They want things done quickly, and they're multitasking," Pawah said. "And we have to keep that in mind. That's how customers are evolving. They are multitasking...." Tesla has always forced functions to its center screen; newer players such as Rivian do the same. And in recent years, established brands like Mazda and Mercedes-Benz have moved more and more functions to touchscreens. BMW's iX3 also includes a new safety feature — a side-radar that detects if a cyclist or vehicle is approaching, and delays the release of the electronic door lock "until the danger passes."

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The Washington Post shares this tip for car buyers. Electric vehicles "are not driving the recent growth in recalls warning that vehicles could erupt into flames at any time, even when parked and turned off." A Washington Post analysis of National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) recall notices found that conventional gas and diesel vehicles made up the vast majority of vehicles covered by the "park outside" label since 2021. Last week, The Post wrote about an alarming surge in these so-called "park outside" recalls... A total of an estimated 3.4 million vehicles currently have outstanding recalls of this kind, according to vehicle history provider CarFax. Safety experts say the surge in "park outside" recalls appears to be caused by other changes to modern gas and electric vehicles, such as the additional technology in everything from transmissions to seat warmers.... [It's a messy mix of things that "doesn't lend itself to simple description of what's happening," says Sean Kane, president of auto safety-analysis firm Safety Research and Strategies. "But it boils down to growing electronic systems and the number of components."] They're known as "key-off fires," said Frank Borris, a former NHTSA investigator who now works as a safety consultant. "The engine is off," he said, "but the circuits are still hot and they stay hot all the time." Earlier this year, Kia needed to recall 463,000 Tellurides because of the risk that the front power-seat switch could overheat and ignite the seat. That was the second time Kia had issued a recall for that one defect. The first recall, in 2024, didn't fully address the problem. More than 66,000 Ford Expeditions and Lincoln Navigators from the 2021 model year were recalled due to circuit boards in the battery junction box that could short out. At least 16 fires were blamed on the problem, which often ignited when the vehicles were parked and turned off. NHTSA has issued 93 "park outside" recalls since 2021, according to a Post analysis. Nearly half — 44 recalls — covered vehicles exclusively with conventional internal-combustion engines, while 38 recalls were just for EVs or hybrids. So the number of campaigns were nearly equally divided between gas and electric or hybrid vehicles. But gas vehicles pull away when comparing the size of the recalls. Gas-only campaigns covered a combined 4.6 million vehicles with "park outside" recalls over the past five years, compared to only about 662,000 vehicles that were EVs or hybrids... Other countries have provided limited looks at the EV fire issue, such as an United Kingdom government review of data from Norway finding that gas and diesel vehicles had a fire incidence rate that was four times higher than EVs from 2016 to 2021. Just in 2026, U.S. authorities have announced 17 new "park outside" recalls covering 1.7 million vehicles, according to the article.

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Waymo plans to launch its robotaxi service in Munich by the end of 2027, marking the Google-owned company's first expansion into the European Union. "It already operates in 11 cities in the United States and has applied for a license in the United Kingdom to launch its robotaxis in London this year," notes Reuters. From the report: The Google subsidiary will start rolling out vehicles in the German city this year, which will be manually driven while the company "starts with high-definition mapping of local street networks" and testing with safety drivers, Waymo said in a statement. "Bavaria is determined to live up to its pioneering role and be an international leader in autonomous driving," Florian Herrmann, the head of the Bavarian state chancellery, said in the statement. "Now we need to move quickly from testing to real-world deployment." [...] German authorities gave autonomous vehicles the green light in 2021 to operate in the country in approved geographical areas. Other countries are looking at following suit, though the EU's broader autonomous driving rules are set by the U.N.

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RAMageddon could soon push car prices higher as modern vehicles rely on ever more RAM and powerful centralized computers to run everything from infotainment to driver-assistance systems. Analysts cited by The Atlantic estimate the shortage could add a few percentage points to vehicle prices, which might not sound like much, but could potentially translate to around $2,000 on a $50,000 vehicle. The broader shift toward software-heavy vehicles could also make used cars even less affordable. An anonymous reader quotes an excerpt from the report: Just like laptops, cars depend on microprocessors and RAM, or random-access memory, to run all of their computations. "There's just a baseline level of tech, and thus a baseline level of cost, required of every vehicle," Karl Brauer, the executive analyst at iSeeCars, an automotive-research platform, told me. Technology is a major reason the average price of a new car in the U.S. has reached some $50,000, and that was before RAM became one of the most prized commodities in the world. AI companies are snatching up as much memory as possible for their data centers, causing a RAM shortage that has significantly raised the prices of phones, laptops, and just about any consumer-electronic device. Cars are next. [...] Over the next year, the memory shortage -- sometimes known as RAMageddon -- will likely raise vehicle prices by a few percentage points, on average, [said Sam Abuelsamid, an analyst at Telemetry and a former automotive engineer]. The relative amount would be smaller than the shocking double-digit jumps for gaming consoles and MacBooks but in some ways more significant: A 4 percent price hike for cars amounts to some $2,000 on average. Cars with those centralized computers will be affected the most, but no vehicle will be spared. "Even if you don't need the high-end chips, you're going to pay more even for the low-end chips just because of the supply constraint," Abuelsamid said. On a recent earnings call, Ford's chief financial officer said that the company had paid $1 billion in higher materials costs due to the memory shortage and inflation. GM and Volkswagen, too, have noted rising chip costs to investors. (Ford and GM did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Volkswagen told me that the company has "recognized an increased demand for memory chips, primarily driven by growing requirements in other industries," and that in recent years, Volkswagen has taken measures to "mitigate supply risks.") RAMageddon is poised to last for several years, but the consequences for car buyers may be permanent. Consider what happened during the pandemic, when supply-chain disruptions and rising demand for electronics produced a major chip shortage. Nearly every major car company had to slash production because they simply couldn't procure enough chips, and shifted their focus to selling higher-end and higher-profit vehicles. Potential customers already willing to spend six figures on a car are much less likely to care about a 5 or 10 percent price hike, [said Ivan Drury, the director of insights at Edmunds]. Even now, car companies are continuing to focus on selling more profitable models. Since the pandemic, the average price of a new vehicle has jumped $11,000. The AI-fueled chip crisis could play out more severely. The average price of a new car could, before long, jump to $60,000 and beyond. These rising costs are making cars even more similar to computers and all of the software they run: Perhaps in an effort to mitigate higher prices, some automakers are also introducing in-car advertisements and putting certain features, such as heated seats, behind a paywall. As cars have morphed into computers, the inevitable next step is for automakers to behave like modern tech companies.

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Amazon says its Prime Air drone delivery service will expand sixfold to nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of 2026, including metro areas around Chicago, Syracuse, Cleveland, Atlanta, and Boise. According to Amazon Prime Air vice president David Carbon, the service has already delivered "hundreds of thousands of packages to customers" this year, typically within about an hour. The Verge reports: These will join 11 locations across the US where Amazon already offers drone deliveries, with each Prime Air site serving an area of approximately 175 square miles. The service aims to quickly deliver packages of up to 5 pounds or less [...]. Amazon reiterated its drone safety features alongside these expansion plans, including Prime Air's "industry-leading Detect-and-Avoid system." That's likely an attempt to minimize any concerns raised by the communities where the service is expanding, given these drones have already been scrutinized for crashing into cranes, internet cables, gardens, and an apartment building.

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Heart Aerospace's X1, billed as the world's largest battery-electric aircraft, completed a 27-minute maiden flight in New York using more than 1 MW of power and only about $5 worth of electricity. The 106-foot-wingspan demonstrator is a precursor to the company's 30-seat hybrid-electric ES-30 regional airliner, targeted for service in 2031. Interesting Engineering reports: Developed by Heart Aerospace, the X1 demonstrator lifted off from Plattsburgh International Airport in New York on Wednesday, August 12. The piloted aircraft remained in the skies for about 27 minutes and made it to a 1,100-foot altitude above ground level (AGL). According to the Swedish aerospace company, the aircraft has a wingspan of 106 feet (32 meters). It's additionally 76 feet (23 meters) long and has a takeoff weight exceeding 25,000 lbs (11,340 kilograms). "With the first flight of X1, Heart Aerospace has demonstrated electric flight at the scale of a commercial airliner," said Anders Forslund, Heart Aerospace founder and CEO. "Electric commercial aircraft have the potential to fundamentally reshape airline economics and, ultimately, lower the cost ofÂair travelÂfor passengers." "This is at the heart of our vision for abundant air travel, with electrification enabling more affordable, frequent, and cleaner air service to and from airports closer to home." You can watch the first flight on YouTube.

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An anonymous reader shares a report from The Conversation, written by Hatim Sharif, a civil and environmental engineer who has "spent more than two decades staring at maps" and spatial data. Sharif finds one connection especially fascinating: the link between spatial reasoning and why taxi drivers seem to have lower rates of Alzheimer's. From the report: Taxi and ambulance drivers are less likely than workers in almost any other job to die of Alzheimer's disease. That was the surprising result of a 2024 study examining the death certificates of nearly 9 million people in the U.S. [...] Of the 9 million death certificates from January 2020 to December 2022 that researchers examined, taxi and ambulance drivers had the lowest risk of dying from Alzheimer's disease out of 443 occupations. After adjusting for age, sex, race, ethnicity and education, roughly 1 in 100 taxi and ambulance drivers died of Alzheimer's, compared with 1 in 60 people overall. This pattern did not extend to other driving jobs. The researchers concluded that the key to reducing the risk of Alzheimer's was not driving itself but continuous real-time navigation: the constant work of locating yourself in space, tracking a destination and updating a mental map as conditions change. Drivers whose jobs relied on fixed or predetermined routes, like bus drivers and aircraft pilots, didn't seem to experience a similar advantage. Researchers believe the association between navigation-heavy work and lower Alzheimer's risk centers on the hippocampus, a part of the brain that governs memory and spatial navigation. It's one of the first brain regions that Alzheimer's damages: Problems with spatial navigation and orientation are among the earliest signs of the disease, sometimes surfacing before obvious memory loss. In one landmark 2000 study, neuroscientists compared the brains of licensed London taxi drivers with those of people who did not drive cabs. Their findings provided the first evidence via structural imaging that regions of the adult brain can measurably change under sustained navigational demand. To earn a license, London cabbies must memorize more than 25,000 streets within a 6-mile radius of Charing Cross, a challenge known as "The Knowledge" that takes three to four years. The researchers found that London taxi drivers had measurably more gray matter in the posterior hippocampus, a brain area tied to storing large-scale spatial maps. That volume tracked with experience: The longer someone had driven, the larger that part of the brain. The change was built through practice, not inherited. While people who are good at navigation might gravitate to this kind of job, the job itself does have an impact on the brain. Together, these two studies make a coherent case: Work that intensively exercises the hippocampus may reshape it, and that reshaping may protect against one of the most feared diseases of aging.

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Longtime Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shares a report from Electrek: Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov laid out the clearest technical case yet for why cameras alone can't take a self-driving system to full autonomy, arguing that "weak sensing" hits a safety ceiling long before it reaches superhuman performance. [...] Dolgov made the comments in a talk at Y Combinator's Startup School, walking through the lessons Waymo has learned building its driver over close to two decades. He put the sensor question on the table plainly: "there's been a long-standing debate about what kind of sensors do you actually need for autonomous driving." His answer draws the line that camera-only advocates tend to skip right past. "Humans of course can drive with just eyes, so there's that proof of existence," he said. "If the goal were to just approximately match human performance or to build an assist product, that's a very reasonable way to go." Then the catch. If you're targeting full autonomy and strongly superhuman performance, he said, "you find that weak sensing just leads to a safety curve that flattens out way too early." Dolgov said that cameras, lidar, and radar are complementary rather than redundant: "These different sensing modalities, they're not backups to each other," and combining them produces a view "vastly superior to what you get with any one sensor." He said multiple sensor types also protect against physical failures, such as a leaf or branch blocking a camera, while helping Waymo climb the "exponential ladder of nines" required for fully driverless safety. Dolgov warned that camera-only systems may improve quickly before plateauing "way before the performance that is required by your product." He also pushed back on the cost argument against lidar, calling it "a number that has a fairly short shelf life" as hardware costs continue to fall.

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To design invisible drones, researchers have tried camouflage, transparent materials and light-bending optical systems. But engineers at Northwestern University used "motion blur," which an announcement from the school notes is the effect that makes fast-spinning fans seem to disappear. "The drone spins up to 25 times per second, which is too fast for the human eye to see clearly. While it isn't completely invisible, it morphs into a ghostly smudge that seamlessly blends into the background... " To design the drone, the Northwestern team first used a computational model to generate roughly 20,000 drone configurations capable of stable flight. Then, they used artificial intelligence (AI) and optimization algorithms to repeatedly rearrange the drones' major components, including a motor, propeller, circuit board, counterweight and batteries. After sifting through many different configurations, the algorithms determined the ideal placement of the drone's components to minimize its visibility from virtually every viewing angle while allowing for stable flight. After selecting promising candidates, the engineers simulated each drone spinning in flight and overlaid those images a hundred real-world backgrounds. Then, they used a perception model that approximates human vision to determine how noticeable each design appeared. Designs that blended into their surroundings received lower visibility scores. The team selected the 500 lowest-scoring designs and applied the optimization algorithm, which repeatedly adjusted the positions of components to further minimize those scores. "The design process was fully automated," [said Northwestern's associate CS professor Michael Rubenstein, who led the work]. "Then, when we were confident that a drone met all our criteria, we built it." They've named the drone "Phantom Twist"," and plan to design future iterations with more transparent materials or quieter propulsion to make it even less noticeable. The Northwestern team presented the work on July 16 at Robotics: Science and Systems 2026 in Sydney, Australia... Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot for sharing the news.

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Electric vehicles have historically been "notorious" for losing their resale value, reports CNBC. But this year prices for used EVs in the U.S. "are up 5.1% from January to June 2026, according to a Recurrent analysis published this month." The trend continued into the second half of the year: Prices are up 7% year to date through mid-July, it said. Recurrent compared EVs according to the same make and model year across 108 combinations and weighted price growth according to inventory volume. "Used EVs are appreciating, which almost never happens," according to an e-mailed Recurrent statement about the analysis. Other auto analysts found a similar trend... Price growth for used EVs has been broad-based, said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, the director of industry insights at Cox Automotive, a market research firm. Twenty-one of the 25 used EV models with the highest sales volume increased in price between January and June this year, she said... [T]he price growth for used EVs this year has been all the more surprising because it has happened despite a high supply of used EVs hitting the market — which, all else being equal, would generally cause prices to fall, experts said... There are several factors juicing consumer demand for used EVs, experts said. Among them are high gasoline prices due to the Iran war, which have pushed more consumers to consider fuel-efficient options, experts said... Overall affordability is another big factor, against a backdrop of inflation that has remained above policymakers' target of 2% for five or so years, auto experts said. The dynamic has pushed more consumers toward the used car market more broadly. Two interesting statistics from the article: "Used EV sales were up 20% in June versus a year earlier, while sales of new EVs were down about 28%, according to Cox Automotive data." New EVs accounted for 5.4% of total new-vehicle sales in June, while the market share for used EVs was just 2.4%, according to Cox Automotive data.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Amazon's Zoox unit has won U.S. approval for limited commercial deployment of its novel steering-wheel-free robotaxis, a first for the autonomous ride industry, the U.S. auto safety agency said on Thursday. Zoox said that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's decision gives the company federal approval to begin charging for rides, and that it will soon begin charging for service, first in Las Vegas, with additional markets to follow as it completes various state requirements. [...] NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison told Reuters that Zoox had received clearance to commercially deploy up to 2,500 vehicles in each of the next two years. Zoox currently carries passengers in parts of Las Vegas and San Francisco as part of testing. The exemption would allow Zoox to charge them fees, subject to state and local approvals. The agency said it determined the vehicle is as safe as an equivalent vehicle meeting federal motor vehicle safety standards that are being waived. Zoox cannot sell any of the vehicles to the public. "We can say pretty clearly that the systems in place on the Zoox exceed the equivalent performance requirements of a compliant vehicle," Morrison said in an interview. "But we still want to make sure that the automated driving system will operate appropriately." As part of the exemption, NHTSA is placing additional reporting requirements on Zoox for issues such as crashes or stopping inappropriately on roads, and the regulatory agency will adjust the conditions based on how the vehicles behave. "We have the ability to pull the exemption if we see major safety issues," Morrison said. All remote operators must be located in the United States, NHTSA said, and Zoox must publish maps of areas indicating where the vehicles are operating. Morrison said NHTSA expects to develop the first federal safety standards for automated driving systems by the end of the Trump administration. It is also proposing to overhaul some existing rules written with human drivers in mind such as requiring brake pedals and rear-view mirrors.

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Qantas completed a record-breaking 24-hour, 24-minute test flight from Melbourne to Toulouse on Tuesday. "The specially adapted A350-1000ULR airliner is due to debut with the Australian carrier's nonstop Sydney-London route from 2027," reports The Guardian. From the report: Tuesday's flight is thought to be the longest ever by a commercial plane, beating the previous record of 22 hours and 42 minutes set by a Boeing 777-200LR in 2005 between Hong Kong and London via the Pacific in 2005. Flight-tracking provider Flightradar24 said the trip was the second-most-tracked flight ever on its channels -- behind a 2022 flight carrying Queen Elizabeth II's coffin -- with more than 3.6 million people following its progress northwards via Canada. Qantas has ordered 12 modified A350-1000ULR aircraft, designed to connect Australia's east coast with London and New York in about 20 hours.

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Ford will become the first automaker to embed Apple Maps directly into its vehicles, starting with an all-electric midsize pickup built on its new Universal Electric Vehicle platform. "The pickup -- with Ford testing preproduction models on roads now -- is expected to start at $30,000 when it comes to market in 2027," reports the Detroit Free Press. "Ford has said several other EVs off that platform will follow, including a small all-electric SUV." From the report: Ford CEO Jim Farley said the new EVs will redefine advanced technology as simple, useful, and at a price point that is attainable for most people. "We're proud to embed Apple Maps' navigation and mapping technology directly into our Universal Electric Vehicle Platform, giving customers the ultimate navigation experience alongside our Ford app, a full suite of software, and next-generation BlueCruise, all enabled by a new zonal architecture," Farley said in a statement. "Apple Maps has delivered a world-class product, and we're honored to be among the first to embed it directly into a vehicle, helping define intuitive, capable driving." In a joint statement, Apple and Ford said the integration will deliver a "beautiful and easy-to-use navigation experience powered by Apple Maps directly to the vehicle's displays. Road-level Maps information will also enable Ford's Latitude AI team to build a seamless hands-free driving experience." Ford said it will use that road information to develop its next-generation BlueCruise hands-free highway driving capability. Also, by leveraging Apple's new MapKit for Automotive SDK, Ford's UEV Platform will offer drivers turn-by-turn directions using natural language, real-time traffic information, intuitive search and routing options for the best route. The system will give drivers EV routing functionality to help drivers with the warming and cooling process of the vehicle's battery before driving or fast-charging.

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"General Motors has been pulling a Tim Cook and boosting its software and subscription business," reports Business Insider. During the automaker's Tuesday earnings call, executives said they're increasingly leaning on software subscriptions like OnStar and Super Cruise to generate high-margin recurring revenue long after customers buy their vehicles. GM says OnStar brought in about $800 million in the second quarter, while Super Cruise revenue grew about 70% year over year. From the report: GM says its software business keeps roughly 70 cents of every dollar it brings in. That's a rare level of profitability in the auto industry, as many car sales generate just four to 10 cents per sales dollar. [...] GM expects to add about 1 million OnStar subscribers this year, bringing the total close to 13 million. Super Cruise, GM's hands-free, eyes-on driving system, is growing even faster. GM added about 70,000 subscribers during the quarter and expects to end the year with more than 850,000. Revenue from the service increased about 70% from a year earlier. And a lot of drivers are sticking around after the free period ends. GM said between 30% and 40% of eligible owners continue paying after their included three-year Super Cruise subscription expires. [..] "We do think we have tremendous levers, multiple levers of growth," Barra said on the call. "We definitely think there's a lot of opportunity at GM to grow, improve margins, and become less cyclical." "Software and services are becoming increasingly important to how customers experience GM vehicles and how we deliver value beyond the initial purchase," a spokesperson previously told Business Insider. "As vehicles become more software-defined, we can introduce new digital experiences through updates and optional services rather than hardware changes."

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Tesla says it is launching its Robotaxi service in Orlando and Tampa, though it has not shared fleet sizes or whether customers can immediately hail rides. The Verge notes the announcement lands on Tesla earnings day and comes as the company's robotaxi rollout remains far smaller than Elon Musk previously projected, with tracker data showing only a small number of unsupervised vehicles operating in existing cities. From the report: [B]ack in May, Tesla had five unsupervised robotaxis in Dallas, six in Houston, and 29 in Austin. As of today, there are only 17 unsupervised vehicles in Austin, four in Dallas, and zero in Houston, according to the Robotaxi Tracker. By comparison, Waymo is estimated to have over 3,500 fully driverless vehicles in operation across over 10 cities. Like Waymo, Tesla typically introduces robotaxis to a new city with a safety driver behind the wheel. Unlike Waymo, sometimes Tesla moves that person over to the passenger seat with access to a kill switch should anything go wrong. The company has been inconsistent in how it rolls out its robotaxis to new markets. The numbers go up and down, with zero explanation from the company as to why. [...] By adding new cities, Tesla is clearly trying to sell investors on the idea that its robotaxi project is growing. But the fluctuating fleet size, inconsistency in supervised vs unsupervised vehicles, and long wait times tell a very different story.

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"If tired or wasted passengers fall asleep in a traditional taxi or rideshare, the driver can shout or shake them awake," reports Bloomberg. "Not so in a robotaxi..." Ditto Kasendar remembers soft music drifting from the robotaxi's speakers as he rode home late at night from a friend's birthday party in 2025. The next moment, Los Angeles firefighters were opening the door and asking if he was OK. His six-minute trip had ended nearly an hour before. A remote Waymo assistant, dialling in through the car's speakers, repeatedly tried to rouse him and finally called 911 when he wouldn't stir... Kasendar's robocab nap was, unfortunately, not an isolated incident. As companies like Alphabet and Tesla bring self-driving taxis to more cities, the messier aspects of serving unpredictable humans are becoming harder to ignore. Passengers are falling asleep, spilling drinks, dropping food, vomiting, experiencing medical emergencies and, in at least two instances, giving birth in the cars. They stumble out of the vehicles and forget to close the doors, forcing the operators to pay nearby gig workers to do it. These seemingly minor nuisances are becoming a drain on municipal resources and complicating the roll-out of robotaxi service. So many robotaxi customers have nodded off in the midst of a ride that Austin police and firefighters even have a name for the incidents: "sleepers". The Texas capital recorded 99 such calls in Waymo's first nine months of service there, said Roger Patterson, a commander with Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services... Remote assistants monitoring the cars try talking through the speakers and checking on passengers with interior cameras. But if they get no response, company protocols often require them to call 911. And first responders have to assume the worst. Austin dispatchers treat an incident as a potential heart attack if the remote assistant can't tell whether the passenger is breathing, Patterson said. In the end, only about 3% of such calls require transporting the passenger to a hospital, he said. But the incidents tie up personnel who might be needed elsewhere.

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Solar car maker Aptera has "officially announced a repair network partnership which will give owners of its upcoming solar electric car access to thousands of repair shops nationwide," reports Electrek: We recently got a chance to drive the Aptera solar EV and tour the company's factory, and came away both impressed at the progress that has been made, but cognizant of the long road ahead for the company. One question that often gets raised in reference to EV startups is how owners get service on their vehicles, especially those from a small company... So to waylay those fears, Aptera announced a partnership today that unlocks access to 4,300 service shops across the US, through a company called RepairPal. Aptera had been working on this partnership when we saw them at our factory tour, but today they're ready to officially announce it. RepairPal doesn't own its own shops, but instead certifies local shops to work on particular models of car... All shops will get access to Aptera-specific service procedures.

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Solar car maker Aptera has "officially announced a repair network partnership which will give owners of its upcoming solar electric car access to thousands of repair shops nationwide," reports Electrek: We recently got a chance to drive the Aptera solar EV and tour the company's factory, and came away both impressed at the progress that has been made, but cognizant of the long road ahead for the company. One question that often gets raised in reference to EV startups is how owners get service on their vehicles, especially those from a small company... So to waylay those fears, Aptera announced a partnership today that unlocks access to 4,300 service shops across the US, through a company called RepairPal. Aptera had been working on this partnership when we saw them at our factory tour, but today they're ready to officially announce it. RepairPal doesn't own its own shops, but instead certifies local shops to work on particular models of car... All shops will get access to Aptera-specific service procedures.

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CNBC reports: The automotive industry's increasing use of over-the-air technology to update vehicle systems makes it more susceptible to cyberattacks, analysts say, urging more intervention in the sector... Its use represents "a unique national security concern," Gabriel Lim, senior analyst at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told CNBC. "Aside from data privacy concerns, the potential of a foreign actor sabotaging the controls of a moving vehicle is a possibility that countries like Norway, Denmark, and Britain have expressed concerns about," Lim added. In May, the American Enterprise Institute warned that safeguarding the automotive sector was crucial to limit foreign governments' espionage capabilities. "To protect against foreign espionage threats, the US should consider additional security reviews, implement restrictions on certain foreign-made hardware and software in vehicles, and mandate increased data-collection disclosures," the report said. The concerns come as real-life tests reveal vulnerabilities. Late last year, Norwegian bus company Ruter conducted tests on two buses and found that one had potential risks linked to OTA technology. "There is access to the control system for battery and power supply via mobile network through a Romanian SIM card. In theory, therefore, this bus can be stopped or rendered inoperable by the manufacturer," the company said. The investigation by Ruter then sparked the U.K. and Denmark to conduct their own investigations... While these investigations were conducted on buses made by Chinese firm Yutong, [Siraj Ahmed Shaikh, systems security professor at the UK's Swansea University] said the issue goes beyond one manufacturer or country, as the technology becomes more pervasive. "Other sectors adopting OTA include other transport modes [such as] maritime and rail, aerospace (particularly drones), industrial machinery and robotics," he said.

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