Tesla Troubles, Helmet Laws And Worst Deals On New Cars In This Week's News Roundup

After just a couple of months and a few thousand miles of ownership, Tik Tok user @captian.ad’s Tesla Cybertruck was effectively a several-thousand-pound paperweight for several hours. After taking his truck to the beach and stopping off at a car wash to clean it up, he parked the truck in his garage, where it decided to just stop working for a while. The screen, which runs all functions of the truck, went black, and wouldn’t respond at all, even after performing the factory prescribed reboot procedure. Not great. - Bradley Brownell Read More

Rivian R1T and R1S trucks were allowed access to the previously Tesla-only Supercharger network in mid-March, as Tesla has been slowly allowing more electric vehicles to charge on its North American Charging Standard plugs with an adapter. A new Rivian owner was given something of a chilly reception when stopping for a top up at a California Tesla station while on a road trip. An “older gentleman” in a Model Y pulled up and went full Karen mode on the Rivian driver, going so far as calling the police on them for, um, trespassing, I guess? - Bradley Brownell Read More

Thankfully, the new car market is no longer anything like it was at the height of the pandemic. Dealers actually have inventory again, and there are deals to be had. Unfortunately, that’s not true for every single new car. While you can expect to get a few thousand dollars off on a Mercedes-Benz C-Class or an Alfa Romeo Stelvio, some cars are still selling for more than MSRP. - Collin Woodard Read More

Riding a motorcycle is about as much fun as you can legally have as an adult, but there’s no getting around the fact that they’re incredibly dangerous. Even if you do everything correctly, you can still end up in the hospital courtesy of other drivers. Outcomes are much better if you’re wearing a helmet when you crash, which is why most states require them. Back in 2020, though, Missouri did the opposite and repealed its helmet law. And what do you know, motorcycle deaths skyrocketed. - Collin Woodard Read More

Housing is tight across the country, but it seems to feel tightest in Southern California. Between low supply and rents that stubbornly won’t come down, residents — like myself — are being squeezed on both sides by the issues. Some are taking things into their own hands and literally making their own dwellings near places designed for cars. - Lawrence Hodge Read More

Charging in the U.S. sucks. It’s getting better thanks to some massive new investments, but it’s still incredibly common to show up at a charge site and find the only available charger is broken. The Tesla Supercharger network is currently the best in the business, which helps explain why every automaker decided to switch to NACS, but even then, the rollout has been slow. Rivian’s solution? Simply gather data on all the chargers around the country and grade them so drivers have a better idea of where the broken ones are. - Collin Woodard Read More

Last we heard from former North Carolina representative Madison Cawthorn, he had just been caught driving on a revoked license for a second time. He’d been pulled over three times in five months. The credibly accused sex pest who also had a habit of trying to take guns through airport security apparently hasn’t gotten any better at driving since he lost his primary and was voted out of office, though, as it appears he recently rear-ended a Florida highway patrol car, sending one officer to the hospital. - Collin Woodard Read More

Tesla may have told its staff it was laying off over 10 percent of its workforce over the weekend, but apparently, not everyone got the memo. Some workers didn’t realize they were laid off until they showed up at the automaker’s facilities and found their key cards didn’t work anymore. - Andy Kalmowitz Read More

Tesla owners are understandably peeved about the newest update (version 12.3.4) to the so-called Full Self Driving suite of driver assist features. It would seem that Tesla’s camera-only driving system is having a hard time figuring out curbs. As InsideEVs pointed out, some owners are taking to social media to voice their displeasure that their cars are driving into curbs and costing them thousands of dollars in repairs to the wheels and new tires. Curbing a wheel is embarrassing and annoying, but doing it at speed is potentially quite dangerous. - Bradley Brownell Read More

Alfa Romeo’s diminutive carbon-tub two-seater 4C was a delightfully quirky little Italian sports car. It wasn’t perfect, but it was weird and wonderful in a spicy and rowdy way that wasn’t really appreciated in its time. The 4C died off in 2020, but four years later the brand basically built on a foundation of spicy and weird, Abarth, is bringing it back for one last ramble. With all-new carbon bodywork, the 4C will be reborn as the Abarth Classiche 1300 OT, a throwback to the Group 4 sports cars campaigned by Abarth between 1965 and 1968. - Bradley Brownell Read More