Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Fisker can't have customers finance their own recall repairs

Monday, October 7, 2024

Welcome to TC PM! Today we've got a lot of news out of electric vehicle land: the latest on Fisker; Lucid Motors' Q3 results; and a departure at Tesla. We've also got an update on a macOS bug and a sizable climate startup raise. Vroom vroom.

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Fisker

🫣 Daily Fisker update: The blows keep coming to EV startup Fisker. The U.S. Department of Justice said that Fisker's plan to have its customers finance their own recall repairs is illegal. Read more

🚙 In more positive transportation news: EV company Lucid Motors announced that it has delivered more EVs in the first three quarters of 2024 than in all of 2023. While it's not hitting the delivery goals it initially set, the company has seen an increase in deliveries each quarter. Read more

👋 A timely departure? Ahead of Tesla's robotaxi reveal on Thursday, Tesla's head of vehicle programs and new product integrations, Daniel Ho, has not only left the company but has also joined rival Waymo as a programs director. Read more

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Elon Musk biography by Walter Isaacson

🚕 Speaking of: Here's the lowdown on what to expect from Tesla's robotaxi event and how to watch. Read more

💵 Money for metal discovery: KoBold Metals is on a tear. Earlier this year the mineral discovery company found a large high-grade copper deposit. Now it raised nearly $500 million in a funding round. Read more

💦 Outages expected: American Water, a U.S. public utility that serves 14 million people, confirmed on Monday that it was hit by a cyberattack. While the water treatment services themselves are unaffected, billing could be. Read more

🪲 Bug fixed: Last month, Apple released macOS Sequoia, which unintentionally broke the functionality of numerous cybersecurity applications. The company said its latest upgrade should have fixed the issue. Read more

⚖️ More trouble for EV makers: India's consumer rights protection agency, the Central Consumer Protection Authority, sent a show-cause letter to EV company Ola Electric alleging misleading advertisements and unfair trade practices. Read more

☎️ Maybe it's time for an upgrade: News broke over the weekend that China-backed hackers were able to compromise the wiretap systems of several U.S. telecoms and internet providers. Some technologists are blaming a 30-year-old U.S. law for the vulnerability. Read more

Around the web

🐇 Rabbit update: Rabbit, the maker of the r1 AI device, just released the LAM Playground, a barebones version of its large action model that many disappointed r1 reviewers were questioning. Rabbit CEO Jesse Lyu sat down with The Verge to discuss. Read more

🦎 Geico sets the story straight: Rumors starting swirling on X over the weekend that auto insurance behemoth Geico was no longer planning to offer insurance to Tesla Cybertruck owners. While that would have been a questionable move, it's not true. Read more