New Electrics, New Laws, and Other Car News This Week

Automakers show off their latest in Frankfurt, and California lawmakers rewrite the rules of the road for Uber and Lyft.
PLANES AT SFO
A runway construction project at San Francisco International Airport has led to massive delays for travelers.PHOTOGRAPH: JEWEL SAMAD/GETTY IMAGES

Revolutions aren’t slow, and they don’t usually involve booths, swag, and lawmakers up late in Sacramento arguing policy. But we saw stages set for two huge shifts this week: One was in Frankfurt, where automakers gathered to show off their latest and greatest concept cars, a melange of hybrid and electric shinies. The other was in California’s capital, where legislators passed a bill that promises to rewrite portions of the state’s economy, and the way some of its marquee companies—Uber, Lyft, Postmates, Doordash—deal with their workers. Come back here often, because these are big stories that are just beginning.

Plus, we dug into why some runway construction brought San Francisco’s airport—and its fliers—to their knees, and cities’ latest thinking on building for a self-driving-car future. It’s been a week; let’s get you caught up.

Headlines

Stories you might have missed from WIRED this week

Spectacular Near-Splat of the Week

A UK board this week released details on an April event that could have gone very badly—though it fortunately did not. Two skydivers were traveling at 120 mph in free fall in the sky above an airfield in western England when they were almost hit by two US F-15 fighter jets out of a nearby air base. The UK authorities chalked the incident up to a series of miscommunications and labeled the incident as a “medium” miss.

Stat of the Week

48%
The share of all car trips in the most-trafficked US cities that are shorter than 3 miles, according to a report from the traffic analytics company Inrix. That, combined with warm climates and flat roads, make some American cities particularly well suited for scooter and bike trips: Honolulu, New Orleans, and Nashville.

Required Reading

News from elsewhere on the internet

In the Rearview

Essential stories from WIRED’s canon
Back in 2015, WIRED profiled the up-and-coming “demand economy” delivery startup DoorDash, and the business model now threatened by California’s new law: “building a vast service empire with a full-time staff that can easily be accommodated at an Il Fornaio dinner seating, and an army of contract workers that would barely squeeze into Levi’s Stadium.”


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