Tesla is suing California's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to reverse a ruling that prevented the automaker from using the terms "Autopilot" and "Full Self-Driving" to sell cars, CNBC reported. That follows a December ruling by a California administrative law judge that forced Tesla to clean up its marketing language or risk a suspension of its sales license. Last week, the DMV determined that Tesla had made the necessary changes, including changing the name to "Full Self-Driving (Supervised)," and that no suspension would occur.

However, if you had "Tesla is going to sue them back" in your office pool, you can go ahead and claim your prize. The company filed a complaint on February 13 alleging that the DMV "wrongfully and baselessly" called Tesla a false advertiser. Calling the order "factually wrong" and "unconstitutional," Tesla demanded that order be set aside.

The DMV had originally argued that Tesla's terms for its driver assistance program gave consumers the impression that its cars were safe to drive without a human at the wheel. However, Tesla said that the DMV never proved that buyers were confused and that it was "impossible" to buy a Tesla without seeing "clear and repeated statements" that its systems aren't fully autonomous. 

Tesla's appeal of the ruling isn't a shocker given that the company is essentially betting its future on autonomous vehicles. CEO Elon Musk has long promised buyers that its vehicles would eventually become fully autonomous and that you'd even be able to rent them out to provide robo-taxi services. "If you fast forward a year, maybe [15 months], we'll have over a million robo-taxis on the road," he wrongly predicted back in 2019.

Following a sales decline last year that was particularly steep in Europe, Tesla is banking on its Cybercab two-seater to boost its fortunes. The company has started limited testing of automated vehicles as part of its Robotaxi pilot in Austin, Texas. 

Last week, however, Tesla lost an appeal in a $243 million lawsuit verdict over a 2019 crash of a Model S — largely over its use of the terms "Autopilot" and "Full Self-Driving." Last month, the company canceled Autopilot, its basic of advanced driver assistance tier, on new Model 3 and Model Y vehicles and switched its FSD (Supervised) tier to subscription-only.  

Polestar is gearing up to launch three new models in the next two years, including a station wagon (estate or shooting brake) version of the Polestar 4 that harkens back to the company's Volvo roots. The Geely-owned Swedish company sold a record 61,000 EVs in 2025, but hopes that the new models will help it take an even bigger bite out of the market. "We want to get more volume out of a bigger cake," CEO Michael Lohscheller said. 

Polestar currently offers two models in the US, the Polestar 3 and Polestar 4, both SUVs. However, the new Polestar 4 will come in two variants, one a traditional SUV as before and the other a four-door wagon-type version that combines "the space of an estate and the versatility of an SUV," Loscheller said. "It's all the good things from the current car, but it's a bit more practical." This new model is due later this year and will be built in Busan, South Korea in order to avoid US tariffs on cars built in China. 

The automaker is also planning to release a new version of the Polestar 2 targeted at young buyers, though that one is unlikely to come to the US. It will be slightly longer for more passenger space and be produced in China like the current model 2. 

Polestar

Finally, the Polestar 7 will be a compact SUV in the same family as Volvo's EX60, set to arrive in Europe to address the fast-growing compact SUV segment. "We are convinced that we can offer customers a progressive performance-driven car for a very attractive price point, built in Europe," Lohscheller said. 

The new models are designed to help Polestar hit its goal of 60 percent of EV sales worldwide by "targeting the big profit pools of the BEV segment," Lohscheller stated. Following Polestar's withdrawal from the hyper-competitive Chinese market, Europe accounts for 78 percent of its sales and the US most of the rest — but the company hopes to boost its fortunes in the latter. "People forget that the U.S. is a big EV market, especially on the east and west coasts," the CEO added. "And it will stay a big market."

Ford may be discontinuing its F-150 Lightning pickup but it hasn’t given up on electric cars. CEO Jim Farley just teased the automaker’s electric pickup based on its new Universal Electric Vehicle platform that he called “one of the most audacious and important projects in Ford's history.”

The Universal EV platform will be used on a family of affordable EVs sold around the world, but will start with a mid-sized pickup for the US built in Louisville, Kentucky. It’s set to go on sale next year with a target price of $30,000.

Farley discussed some of the tech going into the pickup, particularly the aerodynamics, a key aspect if Ford is to compete with rivals. “The team is spending countless hours getting every last drop of aero efficiency on the mid-size electric pickup,” he noted. Farley also discussed the “simplified aluminum unicastings [that] condense over 146 parts into two” as a way to boost production efficiency.

Ford will invest $5 billion, including $2 billion at the Louisville factory on top of $3 billion already announced for its BlueOval battery plant. It will expand the Louisville facility by 52,000 square feet and "create or secure" nearly 4,000 direct jobs, the company said late last year.

Ford hasn't yet revealed the pickup’s name or shown a photo, but it’s supposed to have more interior room than a Toyota RAV4. Buyers will be able to lock bikes or surfboards into the pickup bed, mooting the need for roof or trailer hitch racks. It will have a low center of gravity from the battery, instant torque and a 0 to 60 mph time "as fast as a Mustang EcoBoost [around 4.5 seconds], with more downforce," Ford said.

Jim Farley famously imported a famously fast and high-tech Xiaomi SU7 EV from China and drove it daily, telling a podcaster he didn’t want to “give it up.” Hopefully, his experience will result in more tech-forward Ford EVs based on the Universal platform.