Transpo

According to 9 to 5 Mac, the company said during WWDC that it would soon support digital car keys from 13 additional vehicle brands, including Audi, Cadillac, Chevy, Hyundai, Kia, GMC, Volvo, Rivian, and others. That brings the total number of brands supported to 33. The keys are added to the Wallet app, and can be used to lock, unlock, and start the vehicle using technology like NFC, UWB, or BLE — depending on which are supported by the vehicle.

Uber and one of the ridehail company’s many robotaxi partners, Wayve, announced today that they will begin testing Level 4 autonomous vehicles in London on public roads as soon as 2026. The timing coincides with the UK Secretary of State for Transport’s announcement of “an accelerated framework for self-driving commercial pilots, following the Automated Vehicles Act becoming law last month. Trials have been underway for a while, but always with a safety driver in the front seat. Now the companies can remove the driver from the vehicle, but in doing so they will accept full liability if the vehicle crashes.

At least five of Alphabet’s autonomous cars have been set on fire, according to the New York Times, as protesters rage against the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration. “We will not be serving any rides in the protest area until it is deemed safe,” a Waymo spokesperson said.

An update on how the extremely public political breakup is going today, as protestors face off with federal immigration agents in Los Angeles.

It’s the closest we’re likely to get to a global release for Xiaomi’s souped up EV, which last year set a record lap time for a four-door car at the Nürburgring, albeit using a stripped-out prototype to do so. There’s no release date just yet for the car’s addition to Gran Turismo 7 though.

JW Zhang, founder of US-based Aventon, now has control over UK-based Gocycle — the financially troubled maker of premium, fast-folding electric bikes. “Aventon is going to help Gocycle unleash its true potential and bring more exciting products to people in the future,” said an unidentified Aventon spokesperson speaking to Cycling Electric.

Did something happen today?

The ship, operated by UK-based Zodiac Maritime, was abandoned off the coast of Alaska after sailors were unable to contain the blaze. According to The Register, the ship was loaded with around 3,000 vehicles, 800 of which were EVs. Nearly two dozen sailors were rescued by the US Coast Guard. I’m reminded the last time this exact thing happened in 2022.

Yesterday I wrote about Elon Musk’s fall from power. Today he is beefing with the president on X, instead of picking up his phone to make a call. Hm!

That’s the assessment from US Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who just released a 300-page report (PDF) detailing key findings, including “missed deadlines, budget shortfalls, and overrepresentation of projected ridership.” Duffy is ordering the agency in charge of the project to respond in 37 days, or risk contract terminations. And he frames the demand as being “good stewards” of US tax dollars — even as Trump’s “big beautiful bill” is projected to grow the federal deficit to $2.4 trillion. Of course, Trump has been angling to kneecap California’s high-speed rail project for years now.

It will also be able to add 250 kilometers (155 miles) of charge in just 15 minutes of DC fast-charging, according to a new video from the Japanese automaker. Nissan already revealed that the new Leaf will come with a native NACS charging port, enabling it to charge at Tesla Superchargers. The addition of Plug and Charge appears to fit in with the narrative that Nissan aims to address charging headaches with the new Leaf.

The Blue Oval aims to tackle America’s mountain with a new Mustang Mach-E derived demonstrator with French racing impresario Romain Dumas behind the wheel. This is the third consecutive year that Ford is competing with an electric demonstrator at Pikes Peak, following the SuperVan 4.2 and F-150 Lightning SuperTruck.

Elon Musk says the company has been testing self-driving Model Y cars around Austin without anyone in the driver’s seat for the “past several days.” That’s good news for the company’s fledgling robotaxi business, which may launch as soon as June 12th. Though as Electrek points out, a few weeks of driverless testing is a far cry from the six months Waymo worked through before its Austin launch this year.

The original deal between Amazon and Stellantis, first announced in 2022, was to create a “digital cockpit” for “millions” of Jeep, Dodge, and Ram vehicles — similar to how Google has developed operating systems for a handful of key automakers. But after three years, the two companies are now “winding down” that aspect of their partnership, Reuters says. (The e-commerce company also said it would purchase electric Ram ProMaster delivery vans; no word on whether that deal went through.) And it’s not looking good for a future Amazon in-car experience, as Reuters notes that most of the company’s Digital Cabin staffers have resigned or left the company.

The Alphabet-owned company is planning to set its vehicles loose in Houston, Orlando, and San Antonio as part of its 2025 “road trip.” The vehicles will be manually driven, and the testing operations are not necessarily a precursor to the launch of a commercial robotaxi service — nor is Waymo precluded from launching a service, either. The company sees it as an opportunity to see how well its self-driving system adapts to new locales with varying weather conditions and regional driving habits. Waymo previously said it was testing its vehicles in Las Vegas, Miami, and Japan.

Well, as Jalopnik points out while referring its readers to the below video of a Volvo EX90’s Lidar scanner wrecking a camera sensor on the iPhone 16 Pro Max filming it, doing so can be “the technological equivalent of staring directly into the sun.”