An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: When Romeo Chicco tried to get auto insurance in December, seven different companies rejected him. When he eventually obtained insurance, it was nearly double the rate he was previously paying. According to a federal complaint filed this week seeking class-action status, it was because his 2021 Cadillac XT6 had been spying on him. Modern cars have been called "smartphones with wheels," because they are connected to the internet and packed with sensors and cameras. According to the complaint, an agent at Liberty Mutual told Mr. Chicco that he had been rejected because of information in his "LexisNexis report." LexisNexis Risk Solutions, a data broker, has traditionally kept tabs for insurers on drivers' moving violations, prior insurance coverage and accidents.

When Mr. Chicco requested his LexisNexis file, it contained details about 258 trips he had taken in his Cadillac over the past six months. His file included the distance he had driven, when the trips started and ended, and an accounting of any speeding and hard braking or accelerating. The data had been provided by General Motors -- the manufacturer of his Cadillac. In a complaint against General Motors and LexisNexis Risk Solutions filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Mr. Chicco accused the companies of violation of privacy and consumer protection laws. The lawsuit follows a report by The New York Times that, unknown to consumers, automakers have been sharing information on their driving behavior with the insurance industry, resulting in increased insurance rates for some drivers.

The city council of Minneapolis on Thursday voted 10-3 to allow rideshare drivers to be paid the local minimum wage of $15.57 an hour, overriding the mayor's veto of the bill. As a result, Lyft and Uber said they will cease operations in the city. From a report: Lyft said in a statement the bill was "deeply flawed" and that the ordinance makes its "operations unsustainable." "We support a minimum earning standard for drivers, but it should be done in an honest way that keeps the service affordable for riders," said a Lyft spokesperson. Uber said in a statement obtained by CNN that it's "disappointed the council chose to ignore the data and kick Uber out of the Twin Cities, putting 10,000 people out of work and leaving many stranded."

The ordinance mandates rideshare drivers make at least $1.40 per mile and $0.51 per minute within Minneapolis. However, the analysis Frey referred to showed lower numbers -- $0.89 per mile and $0.49 per minute -- to make minimum wage. The mayor is imploring local politicians to come up with a solution before May 1. The rideshare services say that user prices would double if they stayed in the city.

India will lower import taxes on certain electric vehicles for companies committing to invest at least $500 million and setting up a local manufacturing facility within three years, a policy shift that could potentially bolster Tesla's plans to enter the South Asian market. From a report: Companies must invest a minimum of $500 million in the country and will have three years to establish local manufacturing for EVs with at least 25% of components sourced domestically, according to a government press release on Friday. Firms meeting these requirements will be allowed to import 8,000 EVs a year at a reduced import duty of 15% on cars costing $35,000 and above. India currently levies a tax of 70% to 100% on imported cars depending on their value.

The policy change is likely going to pave the way for Tesla to enter India, as the Elon Musk-led company has been in talks with the government to lower import duties on its electric cars for years. The move also aligns with India's goal to boost the adoption of EVs and reduce its dependence on oil imports, with the country setting a target of achieving 30% electric car sales by 2030.

The head of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) says investigators still do not know who worked on a Boeing 737 MAX 9 door plug involved in a Jan. 5 Alaska Airlines midair emergency and that video footage was overwritten. From a report: NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said in a letter to senators that investigators sought security camera footage when the door plug was opened and closed in September but were informed the material was overwritten. "The absence of those records will complicate the NTSB's investigation moving forward," Homendy said. "To date, we still do not know who performed the work to open, reinstall, and close the door plug on the accident aircraft."

The NTSB said previously four key bolts were missing from the door plug that blew out on the plane. Last week, Homendy said she spoke to Boeing CEO David Calhoun "and asked for the names of the people who performed the work. He stated he was unable to provide that information and maintained that Boeing has no records of the work being performed." Boeing said it "will continue supporting this investigation in the transparent and proactive fashion we have supported all regulatory inquiries into this accident. We have worked hard to honor the rules about the release of investigative information." A Boeing official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the planemaker standard practice is to overwrite security videos after 30 days.

Waymo will begin offering a robotaxi service to the public in Los Angeles this week and in Austin by the end of the year, the company's co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said Wednesday at SXSW. From a report: The Alphabet company has been testing and validating its driverless vehicles across about 43 square miles around downtown, Barton Hills, Riverside, East Austin and Hyde Park neighborhoods. The announcement comes about a week after Waymo started letting its autonomous vehicles traverse Austin without a safety operator behind the wheel, a critical step before the company opens the program up to the public.

Opening up a robotaxi service means the public will be able to hail a ride in a driverless car via the Waymo One app. Importantly, Waymo will be able to charge for those rides. Austin will become the fourth city where Waymo operates a commercial driverless service. Waymo also operates a robotaxi service in Phoenix, San Francisco and soon Los Angeles.

After 10 years and billions of dollars spent in development, Apple abruptly canceled its ambitious car project known as "Titan," shifting its focus and resources on the company's artificial intelligence division. In a recent Q&A on Monday, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman (paywalled) shared some new insights about the project and how involved the Apple Silicon team was before it was shut down. According to Gurman, Apple was planning to power the "AI brain" of the car with a custom Apple Silicon chip that would have the equivalent power of four M2 Ultra chips (the most powerful Apple has to date) combined. 9to5Mac reports: A single M2 Ultra chip consists of 134 billion transistors and features a 24-core CPU, a GPU with up to 76 cores, and a dedicated 32-core Neural Engine. M2 Ultra powers the current generation of Mac Studio and Mac Pro. Interestingly, Gurman says that the development of this new chip for the car was "nearly finished" before the project was discontinued. As some of the engineers working on the car project were reassigned to other teams at Apple, the company could reuse the engineering of this new chip for future projects.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from GeekWire: Chalk up another milestone for Stratolaunch, the air-launch venture created by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen: The company's mammoth airplane deployed a winged test vehicle for its first rocket-powered flight. Stratolaunch's single-use TA-1 test vehicle blazed a trail for future reusable hypersonic test vehicles that are expected to help the U.S. military catch up on one of the frontiers of aerial combat. TA-1 went supersonic, according to Zachary Krevor, Stratolaunch's president and CEO -- but based on his comments, it may not have quite hit the hypersonic standard of five times the speed of sound. "While I can't share the specific altitude and speed TA-1 reached due to proprietary agreements with our customers, we are pleased to share that in addition to meeting all primary and customer objectives of the flight, we reached high supersonic speeds approaching Mach 5 and collected a great amount of data at an incredible value to our customers," Krevor said in a news release.

Today's test flight took place in the skies above California's Mojave Air and Space Port, where Stratolaunch keeps its twin-fuselage Roc airplane. Roc is the world's biggest operational aircraft, with a wingspan of 385 feet. It's designed to serve as a flying launch pad for rocket-powered vehicles like the TA-1 and its successors. The air-launch concept makes it possible for launch missions to be flown from any airport with a runway that's big enough to accommodate Roc. It's similar to the concept that was used back in 2004 to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight with financial backing from Paul Allen. [...] This flight was the 14th test mission for Roc, coming after an unpowered separation test of its TA-0 vehicle and two captive-carry test flights for TA-1. Today's test also marked the first in-flight use of Ursa Major's Hadley rocket engine. The primary test objectives included a safe release of TA-1, engine ignition, acceleration, sustained climb in altitude and a controlled splashdown into the Pacific.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Kenn Dahl says he has always been a careful driver. The owner of a software company near Seattle, he drives a leased Chevrolet Bolt. He's never been responsible for an accident. So Mr. Dahl, 65, was surprised in 2022 when the cost of his car insurance jumped by 21 percent. Quotes from other insurance companies were also high. One insurance agent told him his LexisNexis report was a factor. LexisNexis is a New York-based global data broker with a "Risk Solutions" division that caters to the auto insurance industry and has traditionally kept tabs on car accidents and tickets. Upon Mr. Dahl's request, LexisNexis sent him a 258-page "consumer disclosure report," which it must provide per the Fair Credit Reporting Act. What it contained stunned him: more than 130 pages detailing each time he or his wife had driven the Bolt over the previous six months. It included the dates of 640 trips, their start and end times, the distance driven and an accounting of any speeding, hard braking or sharp accelerations. The only thing it didn't have is where they had driven the car. On a Thursday morning in June for example, the car had been driven 7.33 miles in 18 minutes; there had been two rapid accelerations and two incidents of hard braking.

According to the report, the trip details had been provided by General Motors -- the manufacturer of the Chevy Bolt. LexisNexis analyzed that driving data to create a risk score "for insurers to use as one factor of many to create more personalized insurance coverage," according to a LexisNexis spokesman, Dean Carney. Eight insurance companies had requested information about Mr. Dahl from LexisNexis over the previous month. "It felt like a betrayal," Mr. Dahl said. "They're taking information that I didn't realize was going to be shared and screwing with our insurance." In recent years, insurance companies have offered incentives to people who install dongles in their cars or download smartphone apps that monitor their driving, including how much they drive, how fast they take corners, how hard they hit the brakes and whether they speed. But "drivers are historically reluctant to participate in these programs," as Ford Motor put it in apatent application (PDF) that describes what is happening instead: Car companies are collecting information directly from internet-connected vehicles for use by the insurance industry.

Sometimes this is happening with a driver's awareness and consent. Car companies have established relationships with insurance companies, so that if drivers want to sign up for what's called usage-based insurance -- where rates are set based on monitoring of their driving habits -- it's easy to collect that data wirelessly from their cars. But in other instances, something much sneakier has happened. Modern cars are internet-enabled, allowing access to services like navigation, roadside assistance and car apps that drivers can connect to their vehicles to locate them or unlock them remotely. In recent years, automakers, including G.M., Honda, Kia and Hyundai, have started offering optional features in their connected-car apps that rate people's driving. Some drivers may not realize that, if they turn on these features, the car companies then give information about how they drive to data brokers like LexisNexis. Automakers and data brokers that have partnered to collect detailed driving data from millions of Americans say they have drivers' permission to do so. But the existence of these partnerships is nearly invisible to drivers, whose consent is obtained in fine print and murky privacy policies that few read. Especially troubling is that some drivers with vehicles made by G.M. say they were tracked even when they did not turn on the feature -- called OnStar Smart Driver -- and that their insurance rates went up as a result.

Automakers, including G.M., Honda, Kia, and Hyundai, have been collecting detailed driving data from millions of Americans through internet-enabled connected-car apps. The data, which includes information on speed, hard braking, and rapid accelerations, is shared with data brokers like LexisNexis. These brokers then provide the information to insurance companies, which use it to personalize coverage and set rates, The New York Times reported Monday. While automakers and data brokers claim to have drivers' consent, the partnerships are often obscured in fine print and unclear privacy policies. The practice raises concerns about privacy and transparency, as some drivers may be unaware that their driving habits are being tracked and shared with third parties.

Dozens of people have been injured by what officials described as a "strong movement" on a Chilean flight from Australia to New Zealand. From a report: In a statement on Monday, Chilean LATAM Airlines blamed the injuries on "a technical event during the flight which caused a strong movement." It is just the latest in a series of safety-related incidents to feature a Boeing plane. Passengers were met by paramedics when the LATAM Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner touched down in Auckland. It was not immediately clear what caused the incident.

About 50 people were treated at the scene, mostly for mild injuries. Twelve were taken to hospital, an ambulance spokesperson said, with one believed to be in serious condition. It is been a turbulent week for Boeing, with the US plane maker suffering a series of safety-related issues. Further reading: Justice Department Opens Criminal Investigation Into Boeing's Window Blowout Incident.

America's Department of Justice "has launched a criminal investigation into the Boeing jetliner blowout that left a gaping hole on an Alaska Airlines plane," reports the Associated Press, citing a report from the Wall Street Journal.

"As part of the new investigation, the Justice Department has interviewed pilots and flight attendants on the flight..." the Journal reports. "Investigators have taken steps to begin notifying Alaska passengers on board during the Jan. 5 accident that they are potential crime victims in the case, according to a document viewed by The Wall Street Journal." The probe would inform the Justice Department's review of whether Boeing complied with an earlier settlement that resolved a federal investigation following two fatal 737 MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019. Investigations don't always result in formal charges of wrongdoing.

Separately, investigators with the Transportation Department's Inspector General's office in recent weeks have been seeking to interview Federal Aviation Administration officials in the Seattle area who oversee Boeing's manufacturing...

If the Justice Department finds that Boeing violated the terms of the 2021 settlement, the company could face prosecution on the original count of defrauding the U.S. Alternatively, the government could seek to extend the probationary, three-year agreement that requires Boeing to update the Justice Department on its compliance improvements.
In a related development, Boeing "has acknowledged in a letter to Congress that it cannot find records for work done on the door panel of the Alaska Airlines plane," reports the Associated Press: "We have looked extensively and have not found any such documentation," Ziad Ojakli, Boeing executive vice president and chief government lobbyist, wrote to Sen. Maria Cantwell on Friday. The company said its "working hypothesis" was that the records about the panel's removal and reinstallation on the 737 MAX final assembly line in Renton, Washington, were never created, even though Boeing's systems required it.
Not having the documents "raises concerns about quality assurance, quality management safety management systems within Boeing," said the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board earlier this week.

"This is a serious, potentially illegal, lapse in standard aviation manufacturing quality processes," reports the Seattle Times.

Meanwhile, America's National Transportation Safety Board is also investigating a United Airlines Boeing 737-8 flight "that last month experienced 'stuck' rudder pedals," reports Axios, "after touching down in Newark, per a preliminary report released Thursday." The captain reported that during the landing rollout, which is after touchdown but before the plane slows to taxi speed, the pedals did not respond to foot pressure and remained stuck. "The captain used the nosewheel steering tiller to keep the airplane near the runway centerline while slowing to a safe taxi speed before exiting the runway onto a high-speed turn-off," the report states.

Shortly after, the rudder pedals began to operate normally, the captain said. There were no injures and the airplane was removed from service for maintenance and troubleshooting. An inspection found no obvious malfunctions, said the National Transportation Safety Board. After removing the rudder system components, United conducted a second flight test and found the rudder controls operated normally, per the report. "With coordination with United, the issue was successfully resolved with the replacement of three parts and the airplane returned to service last month," Boeing said in a statement, adding that this is the only report of such an issue that they've received for the 737 MAX fleet.

The investigation is ongoing.

"Shares of Rivian Automotive surged 13% on Thursday," reports CNBC, "as the EV maker unveiled three new vehicles and announced more than $2 billion in savings related to pausing construction on a plant in Georgia."

CNBC notes that Rivian's current vehicles "start at roughly $70,000 and can top $100,000," so the new cheaper R2 midsize SUV (starting at $45,000) could be more appealing.

"Especially if it qualifies for the $7,500 EV tax credit," adds the Verge: "Seven percent of new vehicle sales are electric," [Rivian founder and CEO RJ] Scaringe notes.... "The reality is that Tesla continues to be wildly successful, and we want to pull from that 93 percent that haven't made the jump to pure EV, because the form factor didn't fit their lifestyle."
The article adds that Rivian "will use Tesla's NACS connectors for its future vehicles starting in 2025, which will allow Rivian owners to use the company's Supercharger Network. Both the R2 and R3 will have the NACS ports built natively into the vehicle..."

"I would say with absolute and complete certainty that the entire world is going to convert to electric vehicles," Scaringe tells The Verge. "I've never been more bullish on electrification. I've never been more bullish on Rivian."

More from CNBC: The announcements come at a crucial time for Rivian as it attempts to expand its customer base amid slower-than-expected EV sales in the U.S. after automakers flooded the first-adopter market with pricey all-electric vehicles in recent years. Rivian's sales pace has slowed in recent quarters, and the company widely disappointed investors last month by missing quarterly estimates and forecasting slightly lower production this year compared to 2023 due to plant downtime. The Amazon-backed company has been burning through cash to improve current EV production and narrow losses...

It will be capable of more than 300 miles of all-electric range on a single charge and 0-60 mph time in under3 seconds, the company said.
"Its battery will be capable of charging from 10 to 80 percent in under 30 minutes," notes Car and Driver.

UPDATE: The Verge reports that less than 24 hours after launching the R2, Rivian has already received more than 68,000 reservations.

It will go into production in the first half of 2026.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Week Magazine: The advancement of new technologies appears to have given rise to a new problem across the United States: a crippling power shortage on the horizon. The advent of these technologies, such as eco-friendly factories and data centers, has renewed concerns that America could run out of electrical power. These worries also come at a time when the United States' aging power grid is in desperate need of repair. Heavily publicized incidents such as the 2021 Texas power outage, which was partially blamed on crypto-farming, exposed how vulnerable the nation's power supply is, especially during emergencies. There have also been warnings from tech moguls such as Elon Musk, who has stated that the United States is primed to run out of electricity and transformers for artificial intelligence in 2025. But the push to extend the life of the nation's power grid, while also maintaining eco-friendly sustainability, begs the question: Is the United States really at risk of going dark?

The emergence of new technologies means demand is soaring for power across the country; in Georgia, "demand for industrial power is surging to record highs, with the projection of electricity use for the next decade now 17 times what it was only recently," Evan Halper said for The Washington Post. Northern Virginia "needs the equivalent of several large nuclear power plants to serve all [its] new data centers," Halper said, while Texas faces a similar problem. This demand is resulting in a "scramble to try to squeeze more juice out of an aging power grid." At the same time, companies are "pushing commercial customers to go to extraordinary lengths to lock down energy sources, such as building their own power plants," Halper said. Much of this relates to the "rapid innovation in artificial intelligence, which is driving the construction of large warehouses of computing infrastructure," Halper said. This infrastructure requires significantly more power than traditional data centers, with the aforementioned crypto farms also sucking up massive amounts of power.

Climate change is also hurting sustainability efforts. A recent report from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation estimated that more than 300 million people in the U.S. and Canada could face power shortages in 2024. It also found that electricity demand is rising faster now than at any time in the past five years. This is partially because the "push for the electrification of heating and transportation systems -- including electric cars -- is also creating new winter peaks in electricity demand," Jeremy Hsu said for New Scientist. One of the main issues with these sustainability efforts is the push to move away from fossil fuels toward renewable power. Natural gas is often seen as a bridge between fossils and renewables, but this has also had unintended consequences for the power grid. The system delivering natural gas "doesn't have to meet the same reliability standards as the electric grid, and in many cases, there's no real way to guarantee that fuel is available for the gas plants in the winter," Thomas Rutigliano of the Natural Resources Defense Council said to New Scientist. As a result, the "North American electricity supply has become practically inseparable from the natural gas supply chain," John Moura of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation said to New Scientist. As such, a "reliable electricity supply that lowers the risk of power outages depends on implementing reliability standards for the natural gas industry moving forward," but this may be easier said than done.

Waymo announced that it will begin shuttling employees around 43 square miles of Austin, Texas, including the Barton Hills, Riverside, East Austin and Hyde Park neighborhoods, as well as downtown Austin. As TechCrunch notes, it's "a crucial step before the company opens the program up to the public." From the report: The step forward comes just a few days after Waymo won the ability to start charging for rides in expanded territory across both Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area. Waymo didn't offer a timeline for when it plans to start offering autonomous rides to the citizens of Austin. When it does, it will become the fourth city where the company's robotaxis are officially in operation, following LA, SF and Phoenix.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Hagerty: Euro NCAP, the automotive safety industry body for Europe, is introducing new guidance for 2026 which means that five important tasks in every car will have to be performed by actual buttons instead of by accessing a screen. Indicators, hazard warning lights, windscreen wipers, horn, and SOS features will have to be controlled by proper switches in order for cars to be granted Euro NCAP's coveted five star safety rating.

"The overuse of touchscreens is an industry-wide problem, with almost every vehicle-maker moving key controls onto central touchscreens, obliging drivers to take their eyes off the road and raising the risk of distraction crashes," explained Matthew Avery, director of strategic development at Euro NCAP. "New Euro NCAP tests due in 2026 will encourage manufacturers to use separate, physical controls for basic functions in an intuitive manner, limiting eyes-off-road time and therefore promoting safer driving." Although it won't be mandatory to comply with Euro NCAP's new rules, car makers that don't will lose valuable points in their safety ratings.

A homeless man "was taken into custody on suspicion of grand theft auto," reports the Los Angeles Times, "after police said he tried to steal a Waymo self-driving car in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday night." The man entered and tried to operate a Waymo vehicle that had stopped to let out a passenger at the corner of 1st and Main at 10:30 p.m., Los Angeles Police Department detective Meghan Aguilar said. After the man, whom a Waymo spokesman described as an "unauthorized pedestrian," entered the vehicle, the company's Rider Support team instructed him to exit the car. When he did not, the company contacted the police, "who were then able to remove and arrest" the man, said Chris Bonelli, a Waymo spokesman...

No injuries were reported by the rider, and there was no damage to the vehicle, Bonelli said. The car was stationary during the entire incident because an unauthorized person was identified by the company to be in the vehicle, according to Waymo.

The Washington Post shares some surprising news from the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, a 44-year-old nonprofit which works on government energy policies and produces its own research and analysis.

The group "has rated the pollution from vehicles for decades," according to the article — but "says the winning car this year is the Toyota Prius Prime SE, a plug-in hybrid that can go 44 miles on electricity before switching to hybrid." "It's the shape of the body, the technology within it, and the overall weight," said Peter Huether, senior research associate for transportation at ACEEE. "And all different types of Priuses are very efficient...." [T]he Prius Prime also won out in 2020 and 2022. But with more and more electric vehicles on the market, the staying power of the plug-in hybrid is surprising.

The analysis shows that simply running on electricity is not enough to guarantee that a car is "green" — its weight, battery size and overall efficiency matter, too. While a gigantic electric truck weighing thousands of pounds might be better than a gas truck of the same size, both will be outmatched by a smaller, efficient gas vehicle. And the more huge vehicles there are on the road, the harder it will be for the United States to meet its goal of zeroing out emissions by 2050.

The GreenerCars report analyzes 1,200 cars available in 2024, assessing both the carbon dioxide emissions of the vehicle while it's on the road and the emissions of manufacturing the car and battery. It also assesses the impact of pollutants beyond carbon dioxide, including nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and particulate matter — all of which can harm human health. The Toyota Prius Prime received a score of 71, followed by several all-electric cars such as the Nissan Leaf and Mini Cooper SE with scores in the high 60s. The Toyota RAV4 Prime, a plug-in hybrid SUV with 42 miles in range, got a score of 64. One gas hybrid, the Hyundai Elantra Blue, made the list as well — thanks to an efficient design and good mileage.

At the bottom of the list were large gas-guzzling trucks such as the Ford F-150 Raptor R, with scores in the 20s. So was one electric car: the Hummer EV, which weighs 9,000 pounds and scored a 29... The Prius Prime outranked its competitors, Huether said, because of its small battery — which lowers the emissions and pollution associated with manufacturing — and its high efficiency. The vehicle's battery is less than one-tenth the size of the battery on the monstrous Hummer EV.

Taiwan doesn't have parking meters, writes long-time Slashdot reader Badlands, "but rather roving armies of maids on electric scooters that cruise their area with their smartphone and take a pic of your license plate and timestamp it, leaving a receipt under your windshield wipers."

But now one city will try "smart parking" services — which will also help drivers find vacant parking spots, according to Taiwan News: The service will utilize 3,471 geomagnetic sensors installed along 122 stretches of roadway in Banqiao, Yonghe, Zhonghe and Xindian Districts, according to a press release. The sensors will be linked to a publicly available online database to indicate where open parking spaces are available.

The "New Taipei Street Parking Inquiry Service" will be accessible through a main website run by the Department of Transportation. The service is also linked to two smartphone applications... Payments can be made automatically by linking one's app profile to their smartphone's telecommunications provider... For drivers that use spaces without linking their phone and vehicle to the smart network, cameras located along the street where the sensors are installed will allow the city to identify and bill drivers via mail, based on their vehicle's registration information.

America's Federal Aviation administration "will require a fix for a new 737 MAX design problem discovered by Boeing that, although it's a remote possibility, could theoretically disable the jet's engine anti-ice system," reports the Seattle Times: A different flaw in the MAX's engine anti-ice system design drew scrutiny in January and forced the company to drop a request for an exemption from key safety regulations. And now, it's not just the MAX with an engine anti-ice system problem. Airlines have reported a separate issue with a similar system on Boeing's 787 Dreamliner that has caused what the FAA calls "relatively minor" damage to the engine inlets on some two dozen of these widebody jets in service.

Though the FAA considers neither problem to be an immediate risk to flight safety, in February it issued separate notices of two proposed airworthiness directives to require the fix for the engine anti-ice system on the MAX and to lay out inspection and repair procedures for that system on the 787, pending a redesign that provides a permanent fix... When there is an immediate safety risk, the FAA issues a more urgent emergency directive that must be acted upon before further flight. Jets are grounded until it's dealt with. That's not the case with these two proposed airworthiness directives. Indicating that the risk is considered slight, both of the proposed directives will be open for public comments until April. Only after that will action be mandated...

On the MAX, the proposed FAA directive states that Boeing identified a potential single point of failure when it reviewed the internal design of the unit that provides a backup power supply to aircraft systems if the primary electrical system fails. Such a failure could potentially result in the loss of the anti-ice systems on both engines, with no indication or warning that would alert the pilots, the FAA directive states... In November 2022, Boeing sent a service bulletin alerting airlines and describing the required fix, which the FAA will now mandate...

Unlike this MAX issue, the fault discovered on the 787 Dreamliner has resulted in actual damage to engines on passenger aircraft. The FAA airworthiness directive on the 787 states that "damage was found during overhaul on multiple inlets around the Engine Anti-Ice duct within the inlet aft compartment." Rather than a production issue, it was a matter of the seals being insufficiently durable. Even when the plane was flying in dry air and the anti-ice system was not switched on, the seal degradation led to hot air leaking into the inlet compartment, "exposing inlet components to high temperatures," the FAA states. Boeing said this resulted in "thermal damage and discoloration to a limited area of the surrounding composite and metallic structure inside the inlet...." The FAA's proposed airworthiness directive warns that heat damage to the inlet structure could lead to "reduced structural strength and departure of the inlet from the airplane."

"Departure of the inlet" is a bland way of describing the front of the pod around the engine fan detaching, potentially striking the jet's wing, tail or fuselage. Such disintegration could result in "subsequent loss of continued safe flight and landing or injury to occupants," the airworthiness directive states...
"A separate question is how this flaw with the 787 anti-ice duct seals and the single point of failure in the backup power supply on the MAX slipped through the FAA's original certification of these aircraft."

Business Insider also reports that Boeing "is holding off on a planned expansion of production for its 737 Max planes after an Alaska Airlines flight lost a chunk of the plane while airborne in January."

The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) approved Alphabet's Waymo robotaxi service to operate in Los Angeles and some cities near San Francisco. Reuters reports: Waymo, which already operates in San Francisco and Phoenix, applied on Jan 19 to expand its driverless services, saying it would work with policymakers, first responders and community organizations. Last month, the CPUC suspended the application "for further staff review." "Waymo may begin fared driverless passenger service operations in the specified areas of Los Angeles and the San Francisco Peninsula, effective today," the regulator said on a notice posted to its website Friday.