This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for June 24, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. Just over a year after initially revealing the Blank Slate electric pickup, the Michigan-based startup has officially announced the pricing and opened the order books. When it was announced, Slate targeted a starting price under $20,000 based on the availability of a $7,500 federal tax credit. Unfortunately, not long after the announcement, t

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for June 19, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. Over the last 30 years, there has been some innovation in the used vehicle retail sector, mostly having to do with achieving scale to give customers more choice and after-sales support while improving profitability. The two biggest companies in this space were CarMax and AutoNation, both of which opened national chains of used vehicle supers

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for June 22, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. Getting around New York City by car has always been challenging. With a population density of 29,300 people per square mile and a lot of relatively narrow streets, the combination of delivery vehicles, refuse trucks and emergency vehicles, and personal vehicles creates a lot of congestion. Following the addition of ride-hailing to the city's

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for June 18, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. Ford's BlueOval Battery Park in Marshall, Michigan, has been one of its most controversial factories in decades. The factory was originally planned to be built in Virginia, but the governor of that state pushed back because Ford was licensing production technology from China's CATL. After Ford announced it would instead put the plant in the r

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for June 17, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. At the recent Stellantis investor day, the automaker announced that it would partner with Wayve to deploy next-generation hands-free driving assist starting in 2028. Wayve also announced a partnership with Uber in 2025 that would bring Level 4 robotaxis to London and numerous other cities around the world, beginning with pilots in 2026. Now

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for June 16, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. For the Detroit-based automakers, full-size pickup trucks are crucial, since they sell in large numbers and are their most profitable products. Thus, it's important when they introduce a new generation of those products. Today, Chevrolet has taken the wraps off its 2027 Silverado 1500 light-duty trucks. GM spent billions on the development of

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for June 15, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. The current generation top class of endurance racing prototypes are known as Hypercars in the World Endurance Championship and GTP in the North American IMSA series. Within these classes, cars are allowed to be built to two distinct sets of technical regulations that are then subjected to a balance of performance system that tries to ensure t

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for June 12, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. This week I've been participating in an event called Operation Frodo. Frodo started in December 2022 when my friend Nik Miles lost his beagle, and he and his husband set out to bring another home to Portland from a rescue group in Omaha. They ended up bringing back four beagles, Frodo and Gala, who became part of their family and two others t

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for June 5, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. It's been nearly a decade since Elon Musk declared that all Tesla vehicles coming from the factory had the hardware to be fully Level 5 autonomous with just software updates. I've always known that to be a lie since L5 requires the vehicle to be able to drive itself in all conditions, and Tesla vehicles lacked the systems to keep all the senso

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for June 3, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. Chinese automaker BYD recently held an Intelligence Strategy Launch event where it made a number of interesting announcements related to its driver assist systems, including its intention to cover damage from crashes when using its Gods-Eye driver assist. The Gods-Eye system is offered in three tiers of capability across BYD's various models a

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for June 2, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. Twenty-twenty-six marks the 15th anniversary of the establishment of Toyota's Collaborative Safety Research Center (CSRC). This program was launched in 2011 to enable Toyota to partner with universities on transportation safety-related projects that are designed to be shared with the industry. The outcome of all the research is published and m

This is the Telemetry Transportation Daily for June 1, 2026, and I'm Sam Abuelsamid, Vice President of Market Research for Telemetry. This October will mark a full decade since Tesla began offering customers the opportunity to pay for "full self-driving" capability. At launch, the capability was priced at $5,000 on top of the required $3,000 enhanced autopilot capability. Over time, the price rose as high as $12,000 before dropping back down, although as of earlier this year