Volkswagen has ended talks with Renault to launch an affordable EV, according to sources. However, a low-cost Volkswagen electric car is still in the plans.

A report from Germany’s Handelsblatt last December hinted at a partnership between Volkswagen and Renault to build an EV under 20,000 euros ($21,500).

The report noted that talks were still in a “very early stage,” but a Renault spokesperson explained that partnering would be necessary to stay competitive. “We are in different discussions, but nothing has been finalized,” the source said.

Renault announced plans to launch the Twingo e-Tech successor, the Legend, last November. The entry-level EV is expected to start at around 20,000 euros ($21,500).

Despite Renault confirming it was in “good discussions” with Volkswagen to build an affordable EV in February, it looks like the automakers may go their separate ways.

According to sources familiar with the matter, VW is walking away from the partnership. A new Reuters report claims Volkswagen has ended talks with Renault to build a low-cost electric version of its Twingo.

There’s a wonderful history of GC riders doing things GC riders shouldn’t do. Go back to the 2016 Tour de France, for example, where the tail end of an otherwise processional stage from Carcassonne to Montpelier saw the wind kick up. Echelons formed, collapsed, and formed again, and when things finally shook out it wasn’t a quartet of Classics bruisers off the front. It was Chris Froome in the yellow jersey, his elbows flapping in the breeze like any good adherent to the Jonathan Milan School of Aerodynamics. With him: a peak Peter Sagan, looking like it wasn’t even that hard, Sagan’s teammate Maciej Bodnar, who I think should have been gifted the victory (Froome prevented this), and Geraint Thomas, again wondering how on earth he got here.

First rest day of the Giro d'Italia, what's on your mind and what have you been watching? It doesn't have to be Giro-related, Itzulia Women and Tour de Hongrie just wrapped up too. Heck, if you want to talk gravel or MTB, that's cool, I hear Lucinda Brand is tearing it up on gravel, and the MTB World Cup is still going on in Brazil.

Description: Panel 1: A man sits inside a house at a table or desk, looking at his laptop screen while participating in a video conference call with 9 or more participants. There is a window in the background with the sun in the sky. The man holds up his hand and tells the other participants on the call, "Excuse me everyone, sorry to interrupt . . ." Panel 2: The man looks away from the laptop screen towards the open window and the sky outside. He tells the video conference participants "I have the sunshine on the other line." Panel 3: The man leaves his seat, apparently abruptly, as the chair is knocked over, while the screen is still on and shows the video call participants. The man walks towards an open door, where a backpack sits at the doorway. He looks outside as he says over his shoulder "I have to take this call." Panel 4: The man is wordlessly walking over a hill, with grasses and bushes in the foreground and trees in the background, wearing the backpack, following the sun and not looking back.

Comic by Jeremyville.

When Bloomberg reported that Spotify would be upping the cost of its premium subscription from $9.99 to $10.99, and including 15 hours of audiobooks per month in the U.S., the change sounded like a win for songwriters and publishers. Higher subscription prices typically equate to a bump in U.S. mechanical royalties — but not this time.

By adding audiobooks into Spotify’s premium tier, the streaming service now claims it qualifies to pay a discounted “bundle” rate to songwriters for premium streams, given Spotify now has to pay licensing for both books and music from the same price tag — which will only be a dollar higher than when music was the only premium offering. Additionally, Spotify will reclassify its duo and family subscription plans as bundles as well.

It was somewhere in the roundabouts on the outskirts of Lucca that despair began to take hold.

As the Giro d’Italia headed into the birthplace of Mario Cipollini, the race’s all-time leader in stage wins, a four-rider breakaway was up the road, and the sprinters’ teams had marshalled behind for the chase. But something was wrong. A manageable gap, some 45 seconds at the 10 km-to-go mark, wasn’t dropping.

Lidl-Trek threw its full might into the chase for stage 4 winner Jonathan Milan, driving a classic HTC-High Road style train, but as the kilometers ticked by, the gap stayed stubbornly in place. GPS-based time gaps can be of questionable accuracy, but whatever the actual number, the main problem for the chase was that number wasn’t changing.

Depleted or just discouraged, Milan’s teammates disappeared from the front, the Maglia Ciclamino swarmed by a hodgepodge of riders from Soudal-Quick Step, Visma-Lease a Bike, and other sprint hopefuls. No matter, the gap still didn’t budge much, and in the end the break held off the pack by a comfortable 11 seconds, denying the sprinters a crucial chance at a stage win.

There are lots of reasons to want to shut off your car’s data collection. The Mozilla Foundation has called modern cars “surveillance machines on wheels” and ranked them worse than any other product category last year, with all 25 car brands they reviewed failing to offer adequate privacy protections.

With sensors, microphones, and cameras, cars collect way more data than needed to operate the vehicle. They also share and sell that information to third parties, something many Americans don’t realize they’re opting into when they buy these cars. Companies are quick to flaunt their privacy policies, but those amount to pages upon pages of legalese that leave even professionals stumped about what exactly car companies collect and where that information might go.

So what can they collect?

“Pretty much everything,” said Misha Rykov, a research associate at the Mozilla Foundation, who worked on the car-privacy report. “Sex-life data, biometric data, demographic, race, sexual orientation, gender — everything.” . . .

Video of finish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF1X7wH4WdQ

Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) sealed a dominant overall win at the Vuelta Femenina with a comprehensive victory on the final mountain stage to the summit of the Valdesquí ski resort.

The race leader attacked with 6.5km to go and immediately put all of her rivals in difficulty before soloing clear to take her second stage win of the race, with both coming at summit finishes.

The Dutch rider held her lead all the way to the finish to win alone and seal the first Grand Tour of the 2024 season.

Évita Muzic (FDJ-SUEZ) finished second on the stage, 29 seconds down, with Riejanne Markus (Team Visma-Lease a Bike) crossing the line four seconds later.

Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek) came into the stage sitting second overall but was dropped as soon as Vollering put the hammer down. The Italian was put into the red and despite battling back through the final stages of the race she was unable to hang onto second overall, slipping to third at two minutes back, with Markus' consistency rewarded with second overall at 1:49.

The final climb to the ski resort was an epic battle between the best GC riders in the world with FDJ-SUEZ gunning for another stage win in the race and a possible podium spot for Muzic. Grace Brown was pivotal in the French squad's tactics as she set a furious pace on both of the day's climbs and she whittled down the front group to just a dozen or so riders.

However when Vollering accelerated Muzic and Markus were the only riders able to truly follow and they too were distanced due to the relentless pace of the SD Worx-Protime rider.

“It’s really nice, the team did a really good job the whole day. I was a bit nervous, because this last climb, I thought it wasn’t so super hard. It’s difficult because of the headwind and it’s not super steep," Vollering said at the finish.

"There was one part where we turned a bit and went in the back so there I thought I need to attack, and I need to make sure I have a gap so the rest will have a headwind to chase me back. I could extend my gap and stay out so I’m really happy to win this stage. It’s really nice to finish it off like this. We did a really good tour here, some podiums and two stage wins, so I think we can be very proud of ourselves."

Each moment the team has left Vollering to fend for herself could be written off in isolation, but as they continue to mount up, scrutiny of the team’s treatment towards the Tour winner will only get louder, and each moment will be picked apart.

Perhaps everything will become clear soon, and the situation during stage six was just miscommunication, but if it smells like a duck and walks like a duck … All we can hope is that Vollering’s contract negotiations are sorted soon and the Dutch national champion can focus on her job, but by golly, the SD Worx-Protime team bus can’t be a fun place to hang out at the moment.

Demi Vollering set a blistering pace up the only categorized climb of the day during Stage 6 of La Vuelta España Femenina, but it wasn’t enough to shake FDJ-Suez’s Évita Muzic who came around the SD Worx-Protime rider to win the stage. Yara Kasteijn (Fenix-Deceuninck) finished third 15 seconds behind.

Vollering extended her lead on Lidl-Trek’s Elisa Longo Borghini in the overall classification to 56 seconds, and Riejanne Markus (Visma-Lease a Bike) was able to gain a few seconds on Longo Borghini and hold third overall, 1:14 behind Vollering.

Defending Tour de France Femmes Avec Zwift champion Demi Vollering has reached a different sort of milestone in her career, announcing that she has become a Nike athlete.

The global super brand has a limited history in the professional cycling, most famously backing Lance Armstrong during his career, and more recently having a contract with Mark Cavendish.

Now Vollering is amongst its ranks, a big step forward for women’s cycling.

“I am proud and grateful to have signed a partnership with Nike,” Vollering wrote on social media. “With Nike’s support, I will pursue the dreams and goals I have set for the coming years.

Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) won stage 5 of the Vuelta Femenina, in the first of three summit finishes of the stage race. Vollering battled with Yara Kastelijn (Credishop-Fristads) and Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek) in the final steep climb, but broke away with around 1,000 meters to go. Vollering was all alone at the line, 28 seconds ahead of Kastelijn and Longo Borghini. This was Vollering’s first win of 2024 and she has taken over the lead of the GC.

“The Boss” Marianne Vos did it again for her 252nd road victory on stage 3 of La Vuelta Femenina.

The ageless Dutch slayer uncorked a huge sprint that left rivals way back in her fumes Tuesday after her Visma-Lease a Bike teammates went deep all day long to set up their all-conquering captain.

Charlotte Kool (DSM-Firmenich-PostNL) and Canadian speedster Olivia Baril (Movistar) finished in second and third respectively, several lengths back on Vos and her huge muscling sprint.

“Of course I’m very happy and satisfied,” Vos said at the finish.

“Yesterday we worked hard and tried hard, but we had some bad luck in the final,” she said. “Today we went all in. All the girls worked really hard for this, of course it’s really nice to finish it off. I’m very happy with this win.”

Overnight race-leader Blanka Vas (SD Worx-Protime) narrowly hung on to her maillot rojo after the stage Tuesday.

She is now just one second ahead of Vos on GC when accounting for Vos’ winner’s time bonuses and the couple seconds the young Hungarian nipped at the day’s intermediate sprint.

Crashes due to wet roads impacted a potential bunch sprint into Moncófar on stage 2 of la Vuelta Femenina, but EF Education-Cannondale kept their cool with Alison Jackson sprinting to take the stage ahead of Blanka Vas (SD Worx-Protime) and Karlijn Swinkels (UAE Team ADQ).

With the bonus seconds both at the finish and intermediate sprints, Vas moved into the race lead, eight seconds ahead of Jackson, with Lidl-Trek’s Elisa Longo Borghini third overall, nine seconds back.

For the last two years, a small "skunkworks" at the Ford Motor Company has been working on a low-cost electric vehicle platform, according to Ford CEO Jim Farley. Farley revealed the existence of this new platform during the automaker's quarterly financial results call with investors on Tuesday evening. The company is rethinking its electrification strategy, having now faced up to the reality that the current crop of EVs are too expensive for mass-market adoption to take off.

Ford was early to market with its Mustang Mach-E crossover, itself the product of a skunkworks-style development process: an internal group called Team Edison, formed to add some excitement to what was originally going to be a more boring compliance car. The team also took the bold step of making a fully electric version of the country's bestselling vehicle, the F-150 pickup truck.

Demand for the electric F-150 Lightning appeared strong, but a series of price hikes has resulted in really expensive trucks languishing on dealer forecourts and Ford cutting production shifts to reduce output. The Mustang Mach-E is still selling, although with barely any growth year on year.

Ford also split its EV activities into a separate division, called Model e, which exposes just how much money this is all costing—a loss of $4.7 billion. That's quite a lot more than the $3 billion it thought Model e would lose in 2023.

Farley said the company will develop smaller and cheaper EVs, although he did not announce any specific new models by name. "All of our EV teams are ruthlessly focused on cost and efficiency in our EV products because the ultimate competition is going to be the affordable Tesla and the Chinese OEMs," he said.

"We made a bet in silence two years ago," Farley said of Ford's newest skunkworks. "They've developed a flexible platform that will not only deploy to several types of vehicles but will be a large install base for software and services," he told investors.

Ford may scale back some of its battery factory ambitions, too. "One of the things we’re taking advantage of in taking some timing delays is rationalizing the level and timing of our battery capacity to match demand and actually reassessing the vertical integration that we’re relying on, and betting on new chemistries and capacities," Farley said.

In 2023, Ford announced and then canceled a $3.5 billion plant to manufacture lithium iron phosphate battery packs in Michigan. But there are also three lithium-ion factories in the works in Kentucky and Tennessee.

Ford no longer expects Model e to be profitable by 2026, but Ford CFO John Lawler said that Model e would need to stop losing money "sooner or later."

"EVs are here to stay, customer adoption is growing, and their long-term upside is central to Ford+," said Lawler. "The customer insights we’re getting by being an early mover in electric pickups, SUVs, and commercial vehicles are invaluable—especially as we're developing next-generation EVs that are going to surprise customers and be profitable within a year of launch."

We know that airlines overbook their seats, then count on no-shows and rebookings to make the system work. This helps ensure that each flight will be as full as possible, but it also leads to situations where passengers must be paid to take a different flight. What if the airlines are doing the same thing with overhead bins and “allowing” more carry-on luggage than a plane can even hold? What if they’re overbooking those compartments in the hopes or expectation that some passengers won’t bother with a Rollaboard and will simply check their bags instead?

If that’s the case, then the aisle pandemonium can’t be chalked up to passengers’ misbehavior or to honest confusion at the gate. No, it would mean that all this hassle is a natural outcome of the airlines’ cabin-stowage arbitrage. It would indicate inconvenience by design.

New York could start charging drivers $15 to enter Manhattan as soon as mid-June, a lawyer for the state’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority told a judge at a hearing on New Jersey’s lawsuit to block the plan.

The MTA may decide on the final tolling structure by the end of March, attorney Mark Chertok told Judge Leo Gordon during a status conference Tuesday in Newark. That would lead to several further steps in the approval process. The toll, to be imposed on motorists driving into Manhattan’s central business district, would be the first of its kind in the US.

Simon Yates (Jayco AlUla) put his team back on track to win the final stage and the overall at the AlUla Tour in Saudi Arabia.

The British rider needed the vital bonus seconds on the line that came with victory on stage 5 to edge out main GC threats William Junior Lecerf (Soudal Quick-Step) and Finn Fisher-Black (UAE Team Emirates).

The three riders finished in that order after a closely-fought sprint and kept the same placings on the GC podium, with Yates finishing ahead of Lecerf by three seconds and Fisher-Black on the same time.

The win for Yates ended a tough period for the team after a string of bad luck and crashes had taken out several of the squad’s riders in several races in Australia, Saudi Arabia and Europe.