Ford is cutting the price of the 2026 F-150 Lightning by up to $4,000, as confirmed by the automaker to CarsDirect. The price cuts vary by trim, however, and will only apply to more expensive packages for the electric pickup truck. This comes as the $7,500 EV tax credit expired at the end of September.

The 2026 model has a starting price of $63,345 for the STX trim, which is the same price as the previous year's entry-level XLT. The STX replaces the XLT and delivers 536 horsepower, up from the XLT's 452, and 290 miles of range, up from 240.

The Flash edition will receive the full $4,000 price cut, giving it a new price of $65,995. The Lariat, originally priced at $76,995, will get just a $2,000 haircut and will sell for $74,995. The Platinum edition will be priced at $84,995 and will not cost less.

This summer, Ford announced that it would release an affordable midsize all-electric pickup with a starting price of around $30,000 in 2027. The truck would be built on the company's upcoming Ford Universal EV Platform that will be shared by a new family of products. These models would use Ford's upcoming prismatic LFP batteries.

As EV-related tax incentives continue to expire, manufacturers will need to reach into their own pockets to deliver value to consumers. This week Tesla announced the Model 3 and Model Y 'Standard' editions, which give up some luxury touches in exchange for price, with both starting at under $40,000. Inflation has also played a large role in car pricing over the last five years, as $40,000 has roughly the same purchasing power as $32,000 in 2020.

Ford recently walked back a program that would have enabled dealers to offer a $7,500 tax credit on EV leases even after the expiration of federal subsidies on September 30, as first reported by Reuters. The plan involved having the company’s lending arm purchase new EVs out of the brand’s dealers’ inventory, after which Ford would apply for the tax credit on the vehicles. That credit would then have been considered in the EV lease terms for customers, passing on the savings.

GM was set to have a similar program before canceling it earlier this week. According to Reuters sources, GM killed the program after Republican Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio raised concerns about it. It is unclear why Ford followed suit.

Update 11:23 EST: Added more context.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/ford-is-cutting-the-price-of-the-2026-f-150-lightning-by-up-to-4000-144241504.html?src=rss

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China's antitrust regulator has opened an investigation into Qualcomm's acquisition of Israeli connected-vehicle chip company Autotalks. The State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) alleges that Qualcomm is suspected of violating China's anti-monopoly laws by not disclosing certain details of the deal.

Qualcomm had initially agreed to acquire the fabless chip company in 2023 to expand its Snapdragon portfolio into more automotive applications. Autotalks creates chips, sensors and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication tech centered in part on safety for vehicles. It has been a few months since the acquisition was finalized, with the new probe coming amid trade negotiations between the United States and China.

The deal was previously investigated by both the US Federal Trade Commission and the UK's Competition and Markets Authority, with Qualcomm temporarily abandoning the acquisition in early 2024. The exact process of how the deal was reopened is not clear, as the acquisition was only announced once it had been finalized and received regulatory approval

Last month, SAMR said that NVIDIA's $6.9 billion acquisition of Mellanox also ran afoul of national regulations. The regulators also said the deal violated conditional terms outlined by regulators on initial approval. The Financial Times reported that China's regulators held on to that decision for months, purportedly to gain leverage in trade discussions with the US.

The bulk of these investigations have come while the US and China are engaged in negotiations around a TikTok deal, tariffs, trade and more. Today China drastically expanded its export controls for rare earth minerals, targeting defense and semiconductor companies outside the country.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/chinese-regulators-are-investigating-qualcomms-acquisition-of-autotalks-121540269.html?src=rss

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The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened a probe into 2.88 million Tesla electric vehicles currently equipped with the company's "Full Self-Driving" (FSD) system. As first reported by Reuters, the NHTSA has received more than 50 reports of traffic-safety violations as well as numerous crashes.

The agency, which oversees the nation’s motor vehicle safety standards, said that Tesla's FSD software has "induced vehicle behavior that violated traffic safety laws," with vehicles reportedly running red lights and driving against the flow of traffic.

Among the reports the agency has received, six of them allege that a Tesla vehicle with FSD engaged "approached an intersection with a red traffic signal, continued to travel into the intersection against the red light and was subsequently involved in a crash with other motor vehicles in the intersection." The probe will begin as a preliminary evaluation, after which the NHTSA could issue a recall if it believes the vehicles pose a great enough risk to public safety.

The agency has conducted numerous investigations into the EV maker this year alone. At the start of the year, it opened an investigation into Tesla's Smart Summon and Actual Smart Summon features, which allow owners to remotely retrieve their vehicles from a parking spot. Just a few weeks ago, it announced an investigation into the 2021 Model Y over its door handles and whether they risk trapping passengers inside the vehicle. This is also not the first time the agency has looked into the safety of Tesla's driver assist features.

Tesla releases its own vehicle safety reports highlighting that accidents per million miles driven are far less common when its FSD technology is engaged than when it is not. However, the company has also fought to have more specific crash data involving FSD kept from public release, citing confidentiality.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/transportation/evs/nhtsa-launches-probe-into-teslas-full-self-driving-tech-141102274.html?src=rss

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Both the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Bank of England are warning of an AI bubble that could burst sooner than later, citing soaring valuations and stock prices. Speaking at the Milken Institute in Washington DC, Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the IMF, said that "uncertainty is the new normal and it is here to stay" and that we should all "buckle up." In discussing financial conditions, she said that "fired up by optimism about the productivity-enhancing potential of AI, global equity prices are surging."

The Bank of England, for its part, has said that "the risk of a sharp market correction has increased," and that "equity market valuations appear stretched, particularly for technology companies focused on artificial intelligence (AI)." It also notes the increasingly common concern that AI might not deliver all that it has promised. A record of a recent Financial Policy Committee meeting at the Bank of England reads, "downside factors included disappointing AI capability/adoption progress or increased competition, which could drive a re-evaluation of currently high expected future earnings."

The AI craze has been in full swing since the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT in 2022 and its explosive growth since then. The chatbot kicked off a flurry of investment, such as Microsoft's multibillion-dollar deal in 2023. And, of course, the biggest tech companies followed OpenAI’s lead with products like Google’s Gemini, Microsoft Copilot and Apple Intelligence.

Since then, the ChatGPT maker has inked hundreds of billions of dollars in purchasing and investment agreements with the likes of AMD and NVIDIA in the race for AI dominance. Competitors like Anthropic, whose CEO thinks AI will replace half of all white-collar jobs within five years, have found the backing of other tech giants like Google and Amazon.

Integrations for AI tools continue to grow, and the proliferation of the technology keeps entering new spaces, like music. There's no telling how everything will play out, but in the meantime AI can help us shop for shoes by looking at our feet.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/leading-financial-institutions-are-worried-about-a-looming-ai-bubble-130827642.html?src=rss

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