Police across the US are cracking down on illegal use of out-of-class e-bikes or non-street-legal electric motorcycles used on public roads. It used to be that if you sped off on an illegal electric dirt bike or mini bike after a traffic stop in California, there was a good chance you’d get away. Most police departments don’t want to engage in high-speed chases over these types of violations, especially if the rider isn’t wearing a helmet or is weaving through dense traffic. And since these types of bikes almost never have license plates, merely outrunning or outmaneuvering a police cruiser through some bushes or over a sidewalk was usually enough to evade justice. But lately, a new kind of chase is happening – from above.
Several California police departments are now turning to small, simple-to-operate drones similar to consumer drones to track down illegal e-bike and electric dirt bike riders who flee traffic stops.
These drones, often built on platforms used by consumer drones but with upgraded camera equipment, are quiet, effective, and don’t put pedestrians or officers at risk like a high-speed pursuit.
And while the tech isn’t new, the way it’s being deployed marks a turning point in how cities are responding to the rise of unregistered, high-powered electric motorbikes and minibikes on public roads.
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Recently, the Irvine Police Department shared details on how they caught a minor who was illegally operating a Stark Varg electric dirt bike on public roads and then sped away from police attempting to conduct a traffic stop.
“A 16-year-old juvenile recklessly fled from officers during an attempted traffic stop on Jamboree, reaching high speeds. The rider ran multiple red lights, placing innocent lives in danger. Thankfully, with the assistance of our drone team, officers quickly located the teenager and safely took him into custody. He was later released to his parent. The juvenile was unlicensed, and the motorcycle was purchased by a parent who knowingly allowed their child to ride it. That parent was cited, and the motorcycle was impounded.”
Fortunately, the Irvine PD efficiently employed an entire flatbed rollback truck to tow the light electric dirt bike (Photo via IPD Facebook page)
In a similar case just a few weeks ago, the Desert Hot Springs Police Department used a similar drone setup to catch a juvenile illegally operating a non-street-legal minibike on public roads.
As the department shared in a social media post mocking the rider, “Officers attempted to stop a suspect illegally riding a mini bike on city streets. Instead of pulling over like a reasonable person, he chose to flee… on a mini bike. Little did he know, our drone team was already in the air and had front-row seats to this low-speed drama. They followed him as he weaved through traffic, blew through stop signs, and ultimately led us right back to his own front door.”
The DHSPD explained that after the drone watched from above and followed the rider home, police officers arrived and knocked on his front door, which he promptly answered. “He was arrested at his residence without incident,” the post continued. “The mini bike? Impounded. The escape attempt? Hilarious.”
Some police departments in California are still employing police helicopters as their go-to “eye in the sky” for tracking Sur-ron riders who try to run from police, but these light and inexpensive drones are proving to be a more cost-effective and efficient alternative.
The rise of unregistered and often illegally modified electric motorbikes that don’t fit inside existing three-class electric bicycle regulations – many of them closer to light motorcycles than bicycles – has created a real challenge for cities. Riders can disappear down alleyways, weave through traffic, or vanish into neighborhoods where a patrol car can’t follow.
But a few grand for a simple drone? That’s a safer, cheaper solution that can hover and follow quietly from above, sometimes all the way to a suspect’s front door.
This drone-based enforcement strategy raises some interesting questions – not just about surveillance, but about how cities will regulate a fast-evolving micromobility landscape. As out-of-class electric bikes and light electric dirt bikes blur legal categories and create enforcement gaps, tech like drones is stepping in to close them.
Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on your perspective. But one thing’s for sure: the days of just gunning it and getting away are coming to an end.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk threw shade at Waymo for having “rookie numbers” amid Tesla’s own disappointing autonomous-driving performance, raising the question: Is Elon Musk delusional or simply lying about Tesla’s Full Self-Driving?
Every year since 2018, Musk has alternately claimed that Tesla would solve self-driving “by the end of the year” or “next year.”
It never happened.
Tesla claimed a sort of victory this year with the launch of its “Robotaxi” service in Austin, Texas, but even that has been misleading since the service only operates a few vehicles in a geofenced area, something Musk has criticized Waymo for in the past, and unlike Waymo, Tesla has in-car supervisors with a finger on a killswitch to stop the vehicle in case of a potential accident.
Now, Musk called Waymo’s 2,500 fully autonomous vehicles currently in operation “rookie numbers”:
To put the comment in perspective, Tesla is believed to have about ~30 “Robotaxis” in its Austin fleet. In addition, Tesla claims to be operating “robotaxis” in the Bay Area with just over 100 cars, but it is officially considered a ride-hailing service because drivers are in the driver’s seat, and Tesla hasn’t even applied for an autonomous driving permit in California.
Tesla has also been pushing increasingly more misleading claims about its “Full Self-Driving” system being safer than humans.”
In the last few weeks, Tesla has repeatedly shared this misleading data as “proof” that its system is safer than humans:
This dataset is based on Tesla’s quarterly “Autopilot safety” report, which is known to be misleading.
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 the new chart on the right above, Tesla appears to have separated Autopilot and FSD mileage, which gives us a little more data, but it still has all the same problems listed above, except the road-type bias is less pronounced, since FSD is also used on city streets.
However, many FSD drivers choose not to engage FSD in potentially dangerous or more difficult situations, especially in inclement weather, which contributes to many crashes – crashes that are counted in the human driver data Tesla is comparing itself against.
Lastly, it is unfair to say that the data proves FSD is safer than human drivers, as even with the flawed data, Tesla should claim that FSD with human supervision is safer than human drivers. It’s not FSD versus humans, it’s FSD plus humans versus humans.
It leads us to this.
With Tesla and Musk being undoubtedly wrong and misleading about the performance and the very nature of its current autonomous driving offering, I wanted to know your opinion about the situation through this poll:
Electrek’s Take
Personally, I think it’s a little of both.
I think he sometimes really believes Tesla is on the verge of solving autonomy, but at the same time, he is perfectly willing to cross the line and mislead people into thinking Tesla is further ahead than it actually is.
For example, I believe I can explain this comment about Waymo having “rookie numbers” despite the Alphabet company having about 10x more “robotaxis” than Tesla – even with Tesla’s very loose definition of a robotaxi.
Based on job listings across the US and his recent ridiculous comment that Tesla will magically cover half of the US population with robotaxis by the end of the year, I think Tesla is hiring thousands of drivers. Soon, it will put them in Model Ys with ‘Robotaxi’ stickers on them and have them drive on FSD and give rides in the Robotaxi app in several US cities.
Musk will claim that Tesla’s Robotaxi is now bigger than Waymo, even though it will basically be the equivalent of Uber drivers in Tesla cars with FSD, which is already the case. Just this week, I took an Uber from the Montreal airport, and it was in a Model Y with FSD. Has Tesla launched ‘Robotaxi’ in Montreal?
It’s either that or he counts consumer vehicles with FSD, which is even dumber.
In short, he is delusional, and when he realizes that he was wrong, he is willing to lie to cover things up.
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Solar and wind are growing fast enough to meet all new electricity demand worldwide for the first three quarters of 2025, according to new data from energy think tank Ember. The group now expects fossil power to stay flat for the full year, marking the first time since the pandemic that fossil generation won’t increase.
Solar and wind aren’t just expanding; they’re outpacing global electricity demand itself. Solar generation jumped 498 TWh (+31%) compared to the same period last year, already topping all the solar power produced in 2024. Wind added another 137 TWh (+7.6%). Together, they supplied 635 TWh of new clean electricity, beating out the 603 TWh rise in global demand (+2.7%).
That lifted solar and wind to 17.6% of global electricity in the first three quarters of the year, up from 15.2% year-over-year. That brought the total share of renewables in global electricity – solar, wind, hydro, bioenergy, and geothermal – to 43%. Fossil fuels slid to 57.1%, down from 58.7%.
Renewables are beating coal
For the first time in 2025, renewables collectively generated more electricity than coal. And fossil generation as a whole has stalled. Fossil output slipped slightly by 0.1% (-17 TWh) through the end of Q3. Ember expects no fossil-fuel growth for the full year, driven by clean power growth outpacing demand.
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China and India are partly driving that shift. In China, fossil generation fell 52 TWh (-1.1%) as clean energy met all new demand, resulting from a structural change in its power system. India saw fossil generation drop 34 TWh (-3.3%), thanks to record solar and wind growth and milder weather.
Solar is leading the charge
Solar is doing the heavy lifting. It’s now the single biggest driver of change in the global power sector, with growth more than three times larger than any other electricity source in the first three quarters of the year.
“Record solar power growth and stagnating fossil fuels in 2025 show how clean power has become the driving force in the power sector,” said Nicolas Fulghum, senior data analyst at Ember. “Historically a growth segment, fossil power now appears to be entering a period of stagnation and managed decline. China, the largest source of fossil growth, has turned a corner, signaling that reliance on fossil fuels to meet growing power demand is no longer required.”
Electricity demand rose 2.7% in the first three quarters of 2025, far slower than the 4.9% jump seen last year when extreme heatwaves pushed up cooling demand in China, India, and the US. This year’s milder weather helped take some pressure off the grid, making it easier for clean energy to close the gap.
A turning point for the global power system
For the first time outside of major crises such as the pandemic or the global financial crash, clean energy growth has not only kept up with demand but surpassed it. The next big question: can solar, wind, and the rest of the clean power sector keep up this pace consistently? If they can, 2025 may be remembered as the year global fossil generation plateaued.
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Genesis is taking luxury to the next level with its new flagship SUV. The GV90 is shaping up to be the brand’s most lavish vehicle yet, offering ultra-premium features like coach doors.
Genesis GV90 caught with coach doors in real life
After unveiling the Neolun Concept at the New York Auto Show last March, Genesis said it was a preview of its first full-size SUV.
The “ultra-luxe, state-of-the-art SUV,” as Genesis describes it, will be the brand’s largest and most luxurious vehicle yet, slotted above the GV80.
It wasn’t the stunning design or the over-the-top interior that caught most people’s attention, but the B-pillarless coach doors.
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Although we were worried that some of the ultra-premium features, like the coach doors, wouldn’t make it to the production model, new spy photos reveal otherwise.
A GV90 prototype was spotted out in public with the coach doors wide open, giving us our closest look at the setup. The new spy photos, courtesy of SH Proshots (via TheKoreanCarBlog), show the hinged door system in action and offer a glimpse of the interior.
Earlier this year, Hyundai Motor filed several patent applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, detailing new door latching devices.
Two patents, titled “Cinching Device For Door Latches in Vehicle” and “Door Latch Device for Vehicles,” offer a better idea of how the Genesis GV90’s coach doors will work.
Genesis has previously said that B-pillarless coach doors are now a reality in production vehicles. It looks like the GV90 will be the first to debut it.
Yes, the Genesis GV90 will be available with coach doors, but it likely won’t be standard on all trims. It could be a premium feature reserved for higher-priced variants. The GV90 has been spotted out in public several times now with a traditional door design. We’ve also caught a glimpse of other premium features it will offer, like adaptive air suspension.
The Genesis Neolun electric SUV concept (Source: Genesis)
Genesis has yet to reveal prices or final specs. We could see the GV90 debut by the end of the year, with sales expected to start in mid-2026.
One thing is for sure: The Genesis GV90 won’t be cheap. It’s expected to start around $100,000, but higher trims could cost upwards of $120,000.
Genesis Neolun electric SUV concept interior (Source: Hyundai Motor)
Earlier this week, a production version of the GV90 was caught for the first time driving in South Korea. It was still covered in camouflage, but from what’s shown, it looks nearly identical to the Neolun concept.
Reports suggest the flagship SUV could debut on Hyundai’s new eM platform. Hyundai claims the platform will deliver a 50% improvement in driving range per charge compared to its current EVs. It’s also expected to offer Level 3 autonomous driving and other advanced driver assist capabilities.
The flagship electric SUV will serve as a tech beacon, showcasing Hyundai’s latest tech and software. It’s expected to feature a massive 24″ curved infotainment as part of a digital cockpit design.
Genesis is also launching its first hybrid, the GV80, next year, and an extended-range electric vehicle (EREV) in late 2026 or early 2027. The luxury brand will also introduce a new off-road SUV as it expands into new segments.
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