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The Federal Trade Commission's Office of Technology has issued a warning to automakers that sell connected cars. Companies that offer such products "do not have the free license to monetize people’s information beyond purposes needed to provide their requested product or service," it wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. Just because executives and investors want recurring revenue streams, that does not "outweigh the need for meaningful privacy safeguards," the FTC wrote.

Based on your feedback, connected cars might be one of the least-popular modern inventions among the Ars readership. And who can blame them? Last January, a security researcher revealed that a vehicle identification number was sufficient to access remote services for multiple different makes, and yet more had APIs that were easily hackable.

Later, in 2023, the Mozilla Foundation published an extensive report examining the various automakers' policies regarding the use of data from connected cars; the report concluded that "cars are the worst product category we have ever reviewed for privacy."

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Two weeks ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk enacted widespread layoffs throughout the company, including the 500-strong team responsible for the brand's Supercharger. Now, Tesla is looking to hire some of them back, Bloomberg reports, as Musk promises to spend $500 million expanding the network.

The Supercharger network is inarguably Tesla's crown jewel. The company recognized early on that, even though its owners slow-charged at home each night, knowing they had the ability to rapidly recharge on the road was critical in making an electric vehicle an acceptable alternative to existing vehicles.

Since then, it has built out more than 2,000 charging stations in the US alone, with more than 25,000 plugs. More than that, the chargers invariably work, something that is often not true for other charging networks.

Enlarge / New energy vehicles are being loaded into containers for export at Taicang Port and Taicang International Terminal in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China, on April 26, 2024. (credit: Photo by Costfoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

President Joe Biden is expected to levy new 100 percent tariffs targeted at specific Chinese industries, including electric vehicles, on Tuesday. The announcement follows growing calls from automakers, unions, and bipartisan efforts in Congress to address the problem of China unfairly subsidizing its own industries to undermine foreign competitors.

Why are Chinese EVs so cheap?

The Chinese government has been giving its green industries heavy direct subsidies for some time now, far in excess of those handed out by US or European governments. For EV makers like BYD, this has meant billions of dollars a year, in addition to the consumer-facing tax benefit for car buyers, similar to how EV sales are incentivized in the US.

Brands like BYD have concentrated on making their cars cheaper to build—only using one windshield wiper instead of two, for example—but also through vertical integration. Other than Tesla, automakers in the US, Europe, Japan, and Korea instead rely heavily on multiple tiers of suppliers, most of whom supply parts to more than one automaker.

Enlarge (credit: Graham Hughes/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The federal government is looking at a phantom braking problem that appears to be affecting the Fisker Ocean electric crossover. Earlier this week, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defects Investigation opened a safety probe into the electric vehicle—its fourth so far. Open investigations are also examining whether the doors can fail to open, in addition to problems with shifting into or out of park and issues with partial braking loss over low-grip surfaces.

The newest preliminary investigation was opened by NHTSA's ODI after the regulator received eight complaints of alleged inappropriate automatic emergency braking. AEB is one of the more effective new active driver safety systems. NHTSA added it to its list of recommended safety features almost a decade ago, and last month, it published industry standards that will make the feature mandatory on all new cars and trucks, although not until September 2029.

But not every AEB implementation is equal. Both Tesla's and Honda's systems have suffered from too many false positives, also known as phantom braking, triggering the feature inappropriately, sometimes resulting in that car being crashed into from behind.

Enlarge / America sends five times more freight by truck than rail, so it's important to start making those trucks more fuel efficient and safer. (credit: Volvo Trucks)

A while ago we checked out Super Truck II, a Department of Energy program that has been challenging the makers of Class 8 heavy trucks—the ones that haul up to 80,000 lbs (36.3 tonnes) of freight. Truck companies like Daimler Trucks North America and Volvo Trucks North America were challenged to build a big rig that used 50 percent less fuel than the machines on the road in 2017, and they stepped up.

It'll be a while before all of the efficiency improvements make their way onto production trucks, as that program has only just come to a close. But the truck makers are already starting to apply some of the lessons to production vehicles, like Volvo's new VNL, a Class 8 long-haul truck that's been purpose-built just for our market.

"It's replacing the previous generation that had been around for several decades," explained Keith Brandis, VP of systems and solutions at VTNA. That was based on a global cab concept and design, where this was a completely new clean sheet for North America."

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Tesla | Airplane!)

There's more bad news for Tesla. On Monday, we learned that CEO Elon Musk is continuing to slash his way through the company payroll as Tesla went through a fourth round of layoffs in four weeks. Yesterday, we discovered exactly what questions the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration wants answered about the safety of Tesla's Autopilot driver assist. And today, it emerged that the US Department of Justice is investigating whether or not Tesla committed securities or wire fraud by making misleading statements about Autopilot and its so-called "Full Self-Driving" (FSD) option.

Reuters reported that three people familiar with the matter told it about the investigation. One of the sources also told Reuters that the Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating Tesla's claims about its driver assists.

Not the first time

This isn't the first time Tesla has been accused of securities fraud. In 2018, Musk agreed to a settlement with the SEC over his infamous "funding secured" tweet that sent the company's share price skyrocketing despite the fact that there was never actually a possibility that he would take the company private. As a result, Musk was required to step down as chairman, and both Musk and Tesla were ordered to pay $20 million in penalties, to be distributed to investors who lost money after being misled by Musk.

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The federal government has given Tesla quite the homework assignment. The electric automaker has until July 1 to reply to a massive data request from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is investigating the efficacy of Tesla's massive Autopilot recall, following at least 20 crashes post-recall.

Tesla decided to recall more than 2 million cars in the US—almost every vehicle it has ever sold here—in December 2023, following an engineering analysis by NHTSA that found the automaker's Autopilot driver assistance feature had inadequate driver monitoring and that Autopilot was too easily misused.

Last month, we discovered that NHTSA is not happy with the Autopilot recall. Now, the agency has made public the letter it sent Tesla this week, demanding a whole lot of answers by July 1.

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On Sunday night, even more Tesla workers learned they were no longer employed by the company as it engaged in yet another round of layoffs. Multiple former employees posted on LinkedIn and other sites to relay the news that they were no longer with the company.

"Well, tonight I have learned that my nearly 8 year journey leading and designing Service products at Tesla has come to an end," wrote one former employee.

"For the past Month, most Tesla Employees have had the ritual of keeping a close eye on one's personal email on Sundays and to check it before heading into work on Monday, as layoffs have been increasing. I was spared last October when we had layoffs and also for the last 3 weeks of layoffs. However, I too received the dreaded 'Tesla Employment Update' email today," wrote another.

Enlarge / When you're a legendary F1 designer like Adrian Newey, it's easy to persuade the team to let you have a go in one of your own creations. (credit: Andrew Hone/Getty Images for Red Bull)

In Formula 1, the car isn't quite everything, but ultimately, how well the team's designers did their job creating a racing car is a more important factor in a team's success on track than how good their drivers are. It's not that F1 drivers don't matter, but even the best driver on the grid will struggle to earn points if they're not in a competitive car.

One designer has been responsible for creating competitive cars more than any other, penning 12 championship-winning cars in 32 years. His name is Adrian Newey, and this week, we discovered he's looking for a new job.

As in other sports, F1's "silly season" is what they call that time period when contracts are up and people are switching to new teams; it's named as such because it's what happens when there's no real news to report but you need a story anyway.

Enlarge / Its unlikely the next electric Jaguar will look much like these extreme coupés, designed by the brand for Gran Turismo. (credit: Jaguar)

MONACO—It may be hard to remember, but not too long ago, Jaguar made a very nice electric vehicle. The I-Pace arrived in 2018, and it was the only EV other than the bare-bones Chevy Bolt that could compete with a Tesla on range. It was great to drive, too. An electric replacement for the XJ sedan was meant to be next until it was canceled months before production was supposed to begin.

"I'd seen the car, it was a beautiful car, but when I look at the designs that we have now, when I look at the technology that we'll bring in the vehicle, it's night-and-day different," said Rawdon Glover, managing director of Jaguar. "I think that previous car would have been sort of a segue into something else, where we're doing a step change."

And a step change is what Jaguar Land Rover CEO (and Glover's boss) Thierry Bolloré wants for Jaguar: for it to move upmarket, the way Range Rover has. Tearing up the electric XJ was a bold step—it meant the only new electric Jaguars to debut from 2021 until 2025 would be the brand's Formula E race cars.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images | Beata Zawrzel)

No car company in recent years has been able to generate more news headlines than Tesla. Its original founders were among the very first to realize that lithium-ion laptop cells were just about good enough to power a car, assuming you put enough of them in a pack, and with critical funding from current CEO Elon Musk, the company was able to kick-start an electric vehicle revolution. But those headlines of late have been painting a picture of a company in chaos. Sales are down, the cars are barely profitable, and now the CEO is culling vast swaths of the company. Just what is going on?

Tesla had some good times

Always erratic, Musk's leadership has nevertheless seen the company sell electric cars in volume, profitably. What's more, Musk has at times been able to inspire faith in and devotion to his company's products in a way that makes the late Steve Jobs look like a neophyte—after the Model 3 debuted in 2016, 450,000 people gave $1,000 deposits to Tesla for a product that wouldn't go into production for at least 18 months.

Of course, that example also illustrates a long-running concern with the company and Musk's investment-attracting pitches: overhyping and underdelivering. By 2018, more than one in five reservation holders wanted a refund after cheaper models were delayed and delayed.

Enlarge / When fitted with the optional carbon-fiber appearance pack, the ZDX manages to give off station wagon vibes. But others thought it looked a bit like a hearse. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

MONTECITO, Calif.—Acura's first fully electric SUV has just gone on sale. The luxury automaker wants all its vehicles to be zero-emissions by 2040, and parent company Honda is investing billions of dollars in electric vehicle manufacturing in North America to help that happen. But its homegrown EVs aren't quite ready yet, and in the meantime, Acura has resorted to a bit of platform-sharing to fill the gap. Scratch under the skin of the 2024 Acura ZDX Type-S and it's pure General Motors, using the same Ultium platform as the Cadillac Lyriq. But the polish is all Acura, including the software.

The ZDX range starts at $64,500 for the single-motor, rear-wheel drive A-Spec model, which is similar in specs to the Cadillac Lyriq we drove a couple of years ago. But Acura brought the $73,500 2024 ZDX Type-S to the first drive. This is the top-spec model, with a 499 hp (372 kW), 544 lb-ft (738 Nm) twin-motor, all-wheel drive powertrain, air suspension, and rather large Brembo brakes.

It’s no lightweight

Those last two features are highly welcome, because they help control the ZDX Type-S's considerable mass—its curb weight is a hefty 6,052 lbs (2,745 kg). Air springs are fast becoming the default choice for premium EVs, and it's quite remarkable how quickly they can react to weight transfer. But the steering lacks feel and makes up for it with weight, and maneuvers like avoiding road debris on the highway will give you a definite reminder that you're driving nearly 3 tons of vehicle. You do get a smooth ride thanks to those air springs, though.

Enlarge / Congress provides government support for other industries, so why not AM radio? (credit: Getty Images)

A controversial bill that would require all new cars to be fitted with AM radios looks set to become a law in the near future. Yesterday, Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass) revealed that the "AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act" now has the support of 60 US Senators, as well as 246 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, making its passage an almost sure thing. Should that happen, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would be required to ensure that all new cars sold in the US had AM radios at no extra cost.

"Democrats and Republicans are tuning in to the millions of listeners, thousands of broadcasters, and countless emergency management officials who depend on AM radio in their vehicles. AM radio is a lifeline for people in every corner of the United States to get news, sports, and local updates in times of emergencies. Our commonsense bill makes sure this fundamental, essential tool doesn’t get lost on the dial. With a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate, Congress should quickly take it up and pass it," said Sen. Markey and his co-sponsor Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).

About 82 million people still listen to AM radio, according to the National Association of Broadcasters, which as you can imagine was rather pleased with the congressional support for its industry.