Apple Maps was a joke magnet when it first launched, but it's now good enough that one of the world's largest automakers will depend on it. Ford has revealed that Apple Maps will underpin navigation in EVs based on the company's new Universal Electic Vehicle (UEV) platform, including the highly touted $30,000 electric pickup truck.
When XPENG invited me to Munich for the global debut of the L03, I expected to see another electric SUV launch. Instead, I found myself looking at a company trying to redefine what a car can be, with AI-powered vehicles, robots, robotaxis, and flying machines all part of the same plan.
The last year has been a roller-coaster for those competing in the world of electric vehicles. From tariffs to the removal of the federal tax incentive for EVs, demand for electric vehicles has slowed down drastically. For those that invested the most, like Honda, this turbulence has been quite costly. Now it has officially claimed another victim.
We’ll start this week off by giving our congratulations to Skyroot Aerospace of India for successfully launching the country’s first privately developed orbital rocket yesterday. The company’s Vikram-1 booster stands 24 m (79 ft) tall and uses a somewhat unusual four-stage arrangement, with the first three stages using solid propellant and the final liquid-fueled stage being responsible for putting the payload into a precise orbit. With this successful launch, India becomes only the third country in the world with a private company capable of performing orbital launches.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have SpaceX’s prototype Starship, which elected not to leave Earth during a last-second (literally) launch termination on Thursday. Aborted launches are, of course, nothing new in the world of rocketry, especially when dealing with an in-development vehicle that has 33 engines that need to fire up at the same moment before it can leave the pad. But this dramatic abort was unique as it was the first time lift-off of the massive 124.4 meter (408 ft) rocket had been called off when the engines were already running.
Onboard systems took advantage of the very narrow window between the time the Raptor engines are switched on and the rocket actually leaves the launchpad to decide that it was not a good day to visit space after all. Word from SpaceX is that two of the Raptor engines on the first stage will be replaced and that they should be ready to make another launch attempt sometime this upcoming week.
While getting rockets off the ground is never easy, one thing that seems to have no trouble going up is the price of gasoline. Even still, Americans seem largely uninterested in electric vehicles, or at the very least, the slate of EVs that are currently available to them — especially now that the $7,500 federal tax credit has ended. Yesterday, TechCrunch ran an article about all the EVs that have exited the US market over the last year due to stagnant sales or import difficulties, and it’s quite a list.
Some of the vehicles, like the Sony-branded Afeela, aren’t exactly surprising. But major players like Honda, Volkswagen, Nissan, and Hyundai also decided not to bring the 2026 models of various EVs in their lineup to the US. Polestar has been forced out of the market entirely due to new import restrictions on Chinese tech. Even Tesla is paring down their offerings by discontinuing their Model X and S vehicles.
Speaking of struggling sales, earlier this week, Amateur Photographer detailed a fairly dire situation over at GoPro. The company, once the undisputed market leader in rugged action cameras, looks like it might fold before the end of the year if they can’t bolster their cash reserves. GoPro’s legendary status for reliability in the most extreme of conditions is still intact, with NASA trusting the company’s cameras to return external views of the Orion capsule during its historic trip around the Moon on Artemis II. But for more mundane pursuits, consumers are increasingly reaching for cheaper alternatives.
One more piece of bad news while we’re at it: OnePlus took to their community forums on Thursday to announce they’ll no longer be selling new phones in Europe and North America. Anyone who owns a OnePlus phone in these territories will still get software support and updates through the originally marketed end date, and the warranty on the hardware itself will still be honored. But after that, they’ll have to find a new company to do business with. While the company wasn’t exactly a household name, they did offer some compelling hardware, and it’s always a shame to see fewer options on the market.
In hopes it will lighten the mood a bit, we’ll leave you with this exhaustive look at the computers featured in 1993’s Jurassic Park, put together by Fabien Sanglard. It covers everything from laptops, which appeared in the background of shots, to the bank of glorious Thinking Machines CM-5 with their iconic arrays of twinkling red LEDs in the park’s control room. There’s even a section that dives into the software side of things, detailing the real-world applications as well as the more fanciful creations. As Fabien notes, the original Jurassic Park novel featured some surprisingly detailed descriptions of the computer tech used at the park, as author Michael Crichton was himself an accomplished programmer.
See something interesting that you think would be a good fit for our weekly Links column? Drop us a line; we’d love to hear about it.
Even the sportiest of EVs have struggled to really garner the praise of driving enthusiasts. Creating an electric car that feels fun to drive has proven to be one of the biggest challenges that modern automakers have had to face. One slightly surprising brand has, however, seemingly cracked the code. The Ioniq 5 N is undoubtedly one of the most entertaining cars on the market, electric or not.
iOS 27 beta code hints that Lucid and Xiaomi vehicles could gain Apple Car Key support, though compatible models and launch timing remain unconfirmed.
The post Apple Wallet Car Key Support Could Expand to Lucid, Xiaomi Vehicles appeared first on TechRepublic.
iOS 27 beta code hints that Lucid and Xiaomi vehicles could gain Apple Car Key support, though compatible models and launch timing remain unconfirmed.
The post Apple Wallet Car Key Support Could Expand to Lucid, Xiaomi Vehicles appeared first on TechRepublic.
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