Why Burning Man may start banning electric bikes
Electric bikes have proven to be a massively popular form of transportation for millions of Americans, but their use at Burning Man may soon end.
Electric bike use has been on the rise in the US, and it seems no area has been left untouched. Even Burning Man’s Black Rock City (BRC), the temporary city formed each year in the desert around 120 miles (200 km) north of Reno, has seen a massive influx of e-bikes in the last few years.
The Burning Man event has always been a heavily cycle-friendly festival, but that has usually meant pedal bikes swarming around BRC. As electric bikes surged in popularity in 2021 and 2022, Burning Man’s share of e-bikes has grown quickly as well.
E-bikes are an effective way to get around the sprawling BRC, but many event goers have watched with dismay as their numbers grow. As explained by Charlie Dolman, director of event operations at Burning Man:
After the 2022 Black Rock City event, participants sent Burning Man Project an overwhelming volume of feedback about how their fellow Burners were operating e-bikes.
Most of the feedback was negative, usually relating to how fast e-bike riders were traveling. There’s a hard 5 mph (8 km/h) speed limit in BRC that applies to anything with wheels. Cars are banned outside of staff vehicles and other approved vehicles such as moving art installations and “mutant vehicles,” but bikes and scooters are limited to 5 mph speed limits. E-bike riders, it seems, have often disregarded those speed limits.
Currently, BRC only allows Class 1 e-bikes, which don’t have a throttle but can easily reach up to 20 mph (32 km/h) with pedal assist. However, Class 2 e-bikes with throttles and Class 3 e-bikes that can reach 28 mph (45 km/h) are frequently seen as well.
Burning Man officials, while not outrightly against e-bikes, haven’t been overtly supportive of their use due to the potential for high-speed abuse. They point out that not only is going faster than 5 mph not allowed, but it also causes riders to miss much of the beauty and uniqueness of BRC. As Dolman explained:
Black Rock City is best discovered at a pace that lets the best-kept secrets and unplanned surprises of the city (and there are oh-so-many!) reveal themselves. If you go too fast, you miss many of our ephemeral city’s hidden wonders and surprise encounters: whimsical treasures of the backstreets, understated art, spontaneous new friendships, popup events, and parties with secret entrances.
Many of the Burning Man attendees have complained about riders going too fast on e-bikes while under the influence of cognitively impairing substances, creating a dangerous situation to those around them. Dolman added that many e-bike riders as well as pedestrians and cyclists were injured at the 2022 event because of e-bike speeds.
Dolman explained that Burning Man officials don’t want to have to outright ban electric bikes or require a fee to register them at the gate, but that such actions may become necessary if e-bike riding behavior doesn’t improve at this year’s event.
A list of four rules for operating e-bikes at Burning Man was shared:
- Keep speeds at or below the 5 mph limit — everywhere!
- Watch out for pedestrians and other cyclists — everywhere!
- Remember to stop, get off, and explore — everywhere!
- Respect and listen to those who raise concerns — all the time!
And as much as Burning Man officials don’t want to hand out punishments, e-bike riders have been put on notice:
Be forewarned: if you don’t abide by these basic guidelines, you may be pulled over by law enforcement or Black Rock Rangers, and your e-bike may get impounded.
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A fully electric Japanese electric pickup truck? It’s not a Toyota or Honda, but Isuzu’s new electric pickup packs a punch. The D-MAX EV can tow over 7,770 lbs (3,500 kg), plow through nearly 24″ (600 mm) of water, and it even has a dedicated Terrain Mode for extreme off-roading. However, it comes at a cost.
Meet Isuzu’s first electric pickup: The D-MAX EV
After announcing that it had begun building left-hand drive D-MAX EV models at the end of April, Isuzu said that it would start shipping them to Europe in the third quarter.
By the end of the year, Isuzu will begin production of right-hand drive models for the UK. Sales will follow in early 2026.
Isuzu announced prices this week, boasting the D-MAX EV features the same “no compromise durability” of the current diesel version.
The D-MAX EV pickup features a full-time 4WD system, a towing capacity of up to 3.5 tons (7,700 lbs), and an added Terrain Mode, which Isuzu says is designed for “extreme off-road capability.” With 210 mm (8.3″) of ground clearance, Isuzu’s electric pickup can wade through up to 600 mm (24″) of water.
Powered by a 66.9 kWh battery, Isuzu’s electric pickup offers a WLTP range of 163 miles. With charging speeds of up to 50 kW, the D-MAX EV can recharge from 20% to 80% in about an hour.
The electric version is nearly identical to the current diesel-powered D-Max, both inside and out, but prices will be significantly higher.
| Isuzu D-Max EV specs and prices | |
| Drive System | Full-time 4×4 |
| Battery Type | Lithium-ion |
| Battery Capacity | 66.9 kWh |
| WLTP driving range | 163 miles |
| Max Output | 130 kW (174 hp) |
| Max Torque | 325 Nm |
| Max Speed | Over 130 km/h (+80 mph) |
| Max Payload | 1,000 kg (+2,200 lbs) |
| Max Towing Capacity | 3.5t (+7,700 lbs) |
| Ground Clearance | 210 mm |
| Wading Depth | 600 mm |
| Starting Price (*Ex. VAT) | £59,995 ($81,000) |
Isuzu’s electric pickup will be priced from £59,995 ($81,000), not including VAT. The double cab variant starts at £60,995 ($82,500). In comparison, the diesel model starts at £36,755 ($50,000).
The EV pickup will launch in extended and double cab variants with two premium trims: the eDL40 and V-Cross. Pre-sales will begin later this year with the first UK arrivals scheduled for February 2026. Customer deliveries are set to follow in March.
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In this photo illustration, Claude AI logo is seen on a smartphone and Anthropic logo on a pc screen. (Photo Illustration by Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
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OpenAI and Anthropic continue to lead a fundraising bonanza in artificial intelligence, raising historic rounds and stratospheric valuations.
But when it comes to finding AI exits for venture firms, the market looks a lot different.
AI startups raised $104.3 billion in the U.S. in the first half of this year, nearly matching the $104.4 billion total for 2024, according to PitchBook. Almost two-thirds of all U.S. venture funding went to AI, up from 49% last year, PitchBook said.
The biggest deals follow a familiar theme. OpenAI raised a record $40 billion in March in a round led by SoftBank. Meta poured $14.3 billion into Scale AI in June as part of a way to hire away CEO Alexandr Wang and a few other top staffers. OpenAI rival Anthropic raised $3.5 billion, while Safe Superintelligence, a nascent startup started by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, raised $2 billion.
While Meta’s massive investment into Scale AI amounted to a lucrative exit of sorts for early investors, the overarching trend has been a lot more money going in than coming out.
In the first half, there were 281 VC-backed exits totaling $36 billion, according to PitchBook. That includes the roughly $700 million acquisition of EvolutionIQ, an AI platform for disability and injury claims management, by CCC Intelligent Solutions, and the public listing of Slide Insurance, which builds AI-powered insurance offerings for homeowners. Slide is valued at about $2.3 billion.
“The dominant exit trend right now is frequent but lower-value acquisitions and fewer IPOs with significantly higher value,” said Dimitri Zabelin, PitchBook’s senior research analyst for AI and cybersecurity.
CoreWeave’s IPO, which took place at the very end of the first quarter, was the exception on the infrastructure side. The stock shot up 340% in the second quarter, and the company is now valued at over $63 billion.
Zabelin said the pattern of more investments in applications with smaller deals has been in place for the past year.
“Vertical solutions tend to plug more easily into existing enterprise gaps,” Zabelin said.
The acquisitions wave is being driven, in part, by what Zabelin calls bolt-on deals where larger companies buy smaller startups to enhance their own future valuations, hoping to enhance their value ahead of a future sale or IPO.
“That also has to do with the current liquidity conditions in the macro environment,” Zabelin said.
Outside of AI, activity is slow. U.S. fintech funding dropped 42% in the first half of the year to $10.5 billion, according to Tracxn. Cloud software and crypto have also seen sharp pullbacks.
Zabelin said IPO activity could pick up if economic conditions improve and if interest rates come down. Investors clearly want opportunities to back promising AI companies, he said.
“The appetite for AI, specifically vertical applications, will continue to remain robust,” Zabelin said.
— CNBC’s Kevin Schmidt contributed to this report.
Tesla (TSLA) sales are down 21% in California, the largest EV market in the US, and this decline is dragging the entire EV market down.
California accounts for roughly a third of EV sales in the US, making it the most significant electric vehicle market in America.
Tesla has dominated the EV market in California, but its market share has been in clear decline since 2024.
Today, the California New Car Dealers Association (CNCDA) released its Q2 2025 report and confirmed that Tesla’s sales fell 21% during the quarter.
Tesla delivered 41,138 electric vehicles in California in Q2 2025 – down from 52,000 units during the same period last year.
It has now been 7 quarters in a row of year-over-year decline and 4 quarters in a row of quarter-to-quarter decline:
CNCDA said that Tesla’s performance is pulling the entire EV market down in California:
Seven appears unlucky for Tesla, as this is the most recent number of quarterly registration declines reported in the state. The electric-only automaker experienced an 18.3 percent drop in registrations compared to the first half of 2024. The direct-to-consumer automaker lacks a robust dealership network for sales support, which may have contributed to a 2.7 point decline in its market share year-to-date, with Q2 alone seeing a 2.9 point decrease. This decline pulled down the overall Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) share in the state, which fell to 18.2 percent this quarter and 19.5 percent year-to-date, down from 22.0 percent in 2024.
Wherever Tesla is underperforming, CEO Elon Musk likes to claim that it’s the whole market that is underperforming, but he can’t claim that in California, as most other brands are seeing significant growth in California year-to-date:
This includes luxury brands such as BMW, Mercedes, Cadillac, Genesis, and Acura, which directly compete with Tesla.
Tesla’s troubles in California might be only starting as the automaker is currently in court in California fighting the state’s DMV, which is suing the company for false advertising of its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features.
The state is even suing to suspend Tesla’s dealer license in California, which would force the automaker to stop selling cars in the biggest EV market in the US.
Electrek’s Take
For Tesla’s sales report in Q2 to make sense, Tesla needed to increase quarter-to-quarter deliveries in the US.
We still don’t have the data on that yet, but we do for its biggest market in the US: California.
In California, Tesla delivered approximately 1,000 fewer vehicles in Q2 compared to Q1, despite the availability of the new Model Y.
Every hard data that we get about Tesla’s sales and demand is terrible lately and the CEO’s answer to this clear trend is that “it doesn’t matter because autonomy is around the corner.”
Considering he has been wrong about Tesla solving autonomy for the last decade, and Tesla has launched a “Robotaxi” service with a safety supervisor in the car, à la Waymo circa 2020, it’s hard to take him seriously.
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