It's EV News briefly for Wednesday 14th of May. Everything EV in less than five minutes.

If you haven't got time for the full podcast, Patreon supporters get the shows ad free.

Be like them by clicking on a link in the show notes.

We'll start with news today of Audi adding a new base model to the ETRon GT lineup.

It doesn't get very base when it's 108,000 euros or 121,000 US equivalent.

This new ETRON GT is called the Quadro, and it's 30Ks or 66 pounds lighter than the other ones.

So you're saving some efficiency there.

The EV tax credit could be going away at the end of the year.

We're now seeing the legislation start to be formed in the US, which means it's got to go through the budget process,

and they'll strip away all of the things like the solar credits for homeowners, which is meant to

be around for the next 10 years, ouch, the federal tax credit and more. But remember the old

law of 200,000 vehicle limit to get that subsidy, which was around to 2009, I think, in the US. Well, that would still

remain in place. So in theory, the likes of the Rivians with the R2 coming out, the Slates,

with their truck coming out in 2026, could still get access to a tax credit until the end of

next calendar year. Slate, by the way, talking about their 100,000 reservations

for their customizable truck. They have raised $700 million through to funding rounds backed

by Bezos Expeditions, the investment fund of Jeff Bezos's personal investments. The NHTSA,

the safety regulator, has written to Tesla to ask for more information about their robotaxie,

which they're starting in June in Austin, in Texas, because Tesla have classified the sun

as adverse weather. And it's true. When the sun glares on Tesla cameras, the cars tend to do

weird things or have phantom braking or just bonkers stuff that wouldn't do with LiDAR.

And so the safety regulars later asking

...