Paris votes to triple SUV parking fees – and this includes electric ones
Parisians have voted to triple the parking costs for SUVs – including heavier electric ones and hybrids. This Sunday, the city held a referendum, with Parisians voting 56.6% in favor of increased parking fees.
While the narrow, traffic-clogged streets of Paris seem a better fit for the likes of the nimble Twingo, city officials say that the number of SUVs in the city has increased by 60% over the last four years. SUVs account for 15% of the 1.15 million private vehicles parked on Paris streets every night.
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo sees the move to curb SUVs in the city as “a form of social justice,” with road safety and air pollution the main targets of the vote. She said that the vote had one particular driver in mind: rich drivers of the heaviest, most expensive, and polluting cars on the street who, essentially, need to wake up and see how their choices affect the rest of the city – with the caveat that only out-of-towners will be affected by the price hike. Still, officials say that some 10% of the vehicles parked in Paris will see increased parking fees, which could bring in up to €35 million, reports Le Monde.
“Parisians have made a clear choice… other cities will follow,” Hidalgo added. Lyon, France’s third largest city and run by the Green Party, has devised its own progressive parking fee system designed to target SUVs, with Grenoble looking on. London Mayor Sadiq Khan has said that he too is paying attention to the Paris vote, The Guardian reports.
The new fees could come into force at the beginning of September, with on-street parking for an SUV raised to €18 (about $19) an hour in the center of Paris and €12 (about $13) in the rest of the city.
The price hikes applies to ICE or hybrid SUVs weighing more than 1.6 tonnes (about 3,500 pounds), and electric SUVs weighing more than 2 tonnes, or 4,000 pounds. Paris residents will not have to pay extra. People working in Paris, taxi drivers, tradespeople, health workers, and people with disabilities will all be exempt.
Last year, Paris held a similar referendum that voted to ban electric scooter rental services, the first and only European capital to do so. Of course, the turnout for the vote was only 103,000 people, or 7% of registered voters. The SUV referendum, which was held Sunday, February 4, garnered even fewer votes, with 78,121 people, or 5.7% of registered voters, Le Monde reports. Still, while not many people ventured out on to cast their vote, Le Parisien ran an Opionway poll this month that found 61% of city residents backed the plan to hike frees for SUVs.
The socialist mayor has put front and center a reduction in car usage while simultaneously boosting eco-friendly transport in the city. SUVs – which are taller, heavier, and deadlier and use more energy and resources than a typical sedan – account for almost half of all new passenger cars sold in Europe last year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association. A pedestrian is twice as likely to die in a collision with an SUV than a standard vehicle, Hidalgo stated.
She has made big moves in expanding bike lanes by reducing parking spaces. In the past few years since the coronavirus lockdowns, there has been a 71% rise in the use of bikes in the city. Of course, I wished I’d see more helmets on heads here – because even with more bike lanes, Paris traffic is intense, with bikes lane sometimes merging in and out of traffic lanes.
Regardless, Hidalgo is hoping automakers will get the message, that there is no place for huge, bulky, polluting SUVs in a city like Paris. “With this vote, we want to say stop,” she has said. “Stop the excesses of carmakers, who are pushing people to buy ever bigger, more expensive, more raw-material-intensive, more polluting vehicles.”
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Environment
Tesla (TSLA) releases Q3 2025 financial results: earnings decline despite record revenue
Tesla (TSLA) released its financial results and shareholders’ letter for the third quarter (Q4) 2025 after market close today.
We are updating this post with all the details from the financial results, shareholders’ letter, and the conference call later tonight. Refresh for the latest information.
Tesla Q3 2025 earnings expectations
As we reported in our Tesla Q3 2025 earnings preview yesterday, the Wall Street consensus for this quarter was $26.457 billion in revenue and earnings of $0.55 per share.
It would represent a record quarter in terms of revenue, thanks to record deliveries due to demand being pulled forward into Q3 in the US, amid the end of the federal tax credit for electric vehicles.
However, the expectations suggest that Tesla’s earnings are continuing to erode despite the positive temporary circumstances of the third quarter.
How did Tesla do compared to expectations?
Tesla Q3 2025 financial results
After the market closed today, Tesla released its financial results for the first quarter and confirmed that it delivered below expectations with earnings of $0.50 per share (non-GAAP), and it exceeded revenue expectations with $28,095 billion during the last quarter.
This is quite disappointing, considering Tesla’s operating income decreased by 40% year-over-year, despite achieving record revenue.
The difference is accounted for by a decrease in gross margin from 19.8% to 18%. In part due to Tesla losing some regulatory credits and lowering prices across most products.
Bulls also can’t explain this by Tesla investing in the future, as capex is significantly down year-over-year.
Nonetheless, the automaker added to its war chest, which now sits at $41.6 billion.
We will be posting our follow-up posts here about the earnings and conference call to expand on the most important points (refresh the page to see the most recent posts):
Here’s Tesla’s Q3 2025 shareholder presentation in full:
Here’s Tesla’s conference call for the Q3 2025 results:
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Jeep and Ram’s parent company, Stellantis, is pushing back two more electric vehicles that were due out next year. The delay is the latest in a series of delays or plans to cancel what were considered key EVs.
Stellantis delays Alfa Romeo Giulia and Stelvio EVs
Add it to the growing list of electric vehicles that have recently been delayed or cancelled altogether. The current gas-powered Alfa Romeo Giulia and Stelvio will live on for at least another year in the US.
Initial plans called for both to arrive as next-gen variants in 2026, offered exclusively with electric powertrains. Stellantis is now delaying the EV versions for another year and will continue selling the current models until Alfa Romeo is ready to adopt the STLA Large platform.
Stellantis CEO Santo Ficili announced the news during a presentation for the updated Tonale SUV, according to a report from Motor1.
The Giulia and Stelvio have been on sale in the US for a decade now and are still based on the same Giorgio platform they arrived with.
Stellantis is delaying the EV variants to give Alfa Romeo more time to fit the next-gen Giulia and Stelvio on the STLA Large platform with gas engines. Although it’s not confirmed, the replacements will likely use the same twin-turbo inline-six “Hurricane” as the Dodge Charger Sixpack.
The announcement follows Stellantis’ decision to cancel Ram’s first electric pickup, the Ram 1500 REV. Instead, Ram will focus on the range-extended version.
Stellantis also cut the base R/T trim from the Dodge Charger EV lineup and reportedly shelved plans for a range-topping SRT Banshee model.
Ram and Jeep plan to bring back the HEMI engine for the Ram 1500 and Wrangler Rubicon 392, while the 2026 Dodge Durango will be exclusively available with a HEMI.
While Stellantis is shifting plans, at least one EV is still on track. Jeep’s CEO Bob Broderdorf confirmed the Recon EV, its “Wrangler-inspired” electric off-roader, will debut soon with sales starting next Spring.
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Tesla has released its latest Autopilot safety report, and the limitations are still presented misleadingly; however, one clear thing is that the data is worsening.
Tesla notoriously doesn’t release any relevant data to prove the safety of its ADAS systems: Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised).
The only thing the automaker releases is its quarterly “Autopilot safety reports”, which consist of Tesla releasing the miles driven between crashes for Tesla vehicles with Autopilot features turned on, and comparing that with the miles driven by vehicles with Autopilot technology with the features not turned on, as well as the US average mileage between crashes.
There are three major problems with these reports:
- Methodology is self‑reported. Tesla counts only crashes that trigger an airbag or restraint; minor bumps are excluded, and raw crash counts or VMT are not disclosed.
- Road type bias. Autopilot is mainly used on limited‑access highways—already the safest roads—while the federal baseline blends all road classes. Meaning there are more crashes per mile on city streets than highways.
- Driver mix & fleet age. Tesla drivers skew newer‑vehicle, higher‑income, and tech‑enthusiast; these demographics typically crash less.
With all these flaws in Tesla’s quarterly Autopilot safety reports, the primary value lies in comparing the miles between crashes with Autopilot features turned on over time.
As we previously reported, even this remains problematic, as Tesla stopped reporting the data for over a year. When it resumed reporting last year, it edited the previously released data.
However, there are reasons to believe Tesla’s data now, as it doesn’t look good for the company.
Here’s Tesla’s latest report for Q3 2025:
In the 3rd quarter, we recorded one crash for every 6.36 million miles driven in which drivers were using Autopilot technology. For drivers who were not using Autopilot technology, we recorded one crash for every 993,000 miles driven. By comparison, the most recent data available from NHTSA and FHWA (from 2023) shows that in the United States there was an automobile crash approximately every 702,000 miles.
It’s now the third quarter in a row where Tesla had a year-over-year decline in mileage between crashes:
The data deteriorated enough that Tesla had to give up its misleading claim that “Autopilot is safer than human by 10x” and now says “9x” instead:
The comment is still misleading for the previously mentioned reasons and should be labeled as “Autopilot + human driver” as it requires driver attention at all times.
There’s no way to know how many accidents human drivers prevented during Autopilot mileage.
Electrek’s Take
Again, I have to emphasize that this report only has value when you compare the Autopilot mileage against itself over time.
It’s also important to compare the same periods year-over-year as accidents are more common during the winter due to people driving more often after dark and in more difficult conditions.
Therefore, the only important thing that this report highlights is that Autopilot is getting worse.
Shouldn’t that be worrying? Shouldn’t Tesla address that instead of falsely claiming it means Autopilot is 10x, 9x safer than humans?
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