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The speed photo law in Virginia states that a speed photo ticket can only be issued for going at least 10 mph over the speed limit. And the fine cannot exceed $100. This means that all of the cameras are set for 10 over and a civil fine of $100. The tickets are not counted against your driving record and are not sent to your insurance company. Once we get the cameras in a lot of locations people can blow through them at ANY speed and only be fined $100 with nothing counting against their driving records or insurance.
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Was Climate Change the Greatest Financial Scandal in History?
From The Epoch Times
Environmental scholar Bjorn Lomborg recently calculated that across the globe, governments have spent at least $16 trillion feeding the climate change industrial complex.
And for what?
Arguably, not a single life has been or will be saved by this shameful and colossal misallocation of human resources. The war on safe and abundant fossil fuels has cost countless lives in poor countries and made those countries poorer by blocking affordable energy.
Since the global warming crusade started some 30 years ago, the temperature of the planet has not been altered by one-tenth of a degree—as even the alarmists will admit.
In other words, $16 trillion has been spent—a lot of people got very, very rich off the government largesse—but there is not a penny of measurable payoff.
But it’s much worse than that. In economics there is a concept called opportunity cost: What could we have done with $16 trillion to make the world better off?
What if the $16 trillion had been spent on clean water for poor countries? Preventing avoidable deaths from diseases like malaria? Building schools in African villages to end illiteracy? Bringing reliable and affordable electric power to the more than 1 billion people who still lack access? Curing cancer?
Many millions of lives could have been saved.
We could have lifted millions more out of poverty. The benefits of speeding up the race for the cure for cancer could have added tens of millions of additional years of life at an economic value in the tens of trillions of dollars.
Instead, we effectively poured $16 trillion down the drain. For this reason, it is important that we identify the green “climate change” derangement syndrome as perhaps the most inhumane political movement in history.
The one sliver of good news is that it appears the climate change neuroses have finally started to subside. We’ve reached peak global warming craziness in the U.S., for sure, and even Europe seems to have turned its back on its economically masochistic net zero fossil fuels obsession.
Donald Trump is wisely and rapidly dismantling the climate change industrial complex. Of all his pro-growth economic policies, there may be none with a higher longtime payoff than his recent order to repeal the mother of all costly regulations: the anti-fossil fuels “endangerment rule” taxing carbon dioxide emissions. The cost of that regulation had been estimated to exceed $1 trillion over time.
We can’t recapture the $16 trillion wasted on a false crisis. Sunk costs are, alas, sunk. But we can stop the madness of actually believing that politicians who can’t even pay off the balance on their credit cards can somehow change the world’s temperature.
EPA Rescinds Obama-Era Finding That Served as Basis for Climate Regulation
From The Epoch Times
The Trump administration eliminated a 2009 finding that six greenhouse gases are a danger to public health.
President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin on Feb. 12 announced the elimination of a 2009 finding that served as the basis of U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
“Effective immediately, we are repealing the ridiculous endangerment finding and terminating all additional green emissions standards imposed unnecessarily on vehicle models and engines between 2012 and 2027 and beyond,” Trump said during an event at the White House.
“These crippling restrictions were a major factor in driving up car prices to unprecedented levels, and the car that you were getting was not nearly as good.”
Leaders rescinded the agency’s “endangerment finding” from 2009, established under the Obama administration, which declared that six gases—carbon dioxide, hydrofluorocarbons, methane, nitrous oxide, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride—pose a danger to public health.
The EPA’s 2009 ruling concluded that the gases endangered current and future public health and contributed to climate change. Subsequent regulations based on the finding include vehicle emissions standards, the Clean Power Plan, and other limits on methane, oil, and gas.
“This determination had no basis in fact, none whatsoever, and it had no basis in law,” Trump said, emphasizing the role fossil fuels play in energy production worldwide.
“Yet this radical rule became the legal foundation for the green new scam ... which the Obama and Biden administrations used to destroy countless jobs.”
Officials adopted the regulation following a 2007 Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA, which held that greenhouse gases constitute air pollution and directed the EPA to assess their potential effects on public health.
Trump called it “a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices.”
Vehicle costs increased by approximately 22 percent under the Biden administration “without achieving any meaningful impact on the environment but making the car worse,” Trump said.
Administration officials labeled the policy decision as historic.
“This will be the largest deregulatory action in American history, and it will save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during a briefing on Feb. 10.
Savings are expected to come from lower automobile costs, she said, with reductions averaging about $2,400 per vehicle.
Trump said the change will benefit consumers by improving the quality of vehicles produced in the country by eliminating the federal government’s pressure on manufacturers to implement climate-related features.
“You’re going to get a better car; a car that starts easier, a car that works better, for far less money,” he said.
Removing the endangerment rule is a central component of Trump’s deregulation strategy, which also seeks to mitigate the economic impact of the Clean Air Act’s greenhouse gas standards.
The president tackled the issue on his first day back in office, signing an executive order titled “Unleashing American Energy” and directing Zeldin to review the ruling.
Zeldin said the endangerment finding was “referred to by some as the holy grail of federal regulatory overreach.”
Officials prioritized dismantling climate change-related guidelines they said were limiting business opportunities and raising consumer prices.
“Alongside President Trump, we are living up to our promises to unleash American energy, lower costs for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, and work hand-in-hand with our state partners to advance our shared mission,” Zeldin said in a March 2025 statement.
Trump rolled back dozens of energy and climate-related regulations in his first term.
“The carbon footprint is a hoax made up by people with evil intentions, and they’re heading down a path of total destruction,” he told the U.N. General Assembly in September 2025.
“The entire globalist concept of asking successful industrialized nations to inflict pain on themselves and radically disrupt their entire societies must be rejected completely and totally, and it must be immediate.”
Long a champion of domestic energy production, Trump campaigned on a “drill, baby, drill” agenda, promising to lower inflation by reducing the cost of gasoline and other fuels.
Critics of the rule change argued that Americans will pay a toll for the loss of regulations.
“This action will only lead to more of this pollution, and that will lead to higher costs and real harms for American families,” Fred Krupp, president of the New York City-based Environmental Defense Fund, said in a statement.
“The evidence, and the lived experiences of so many Americans, tell us that our health will suffer.”
Jewels Found On Ebay
Here are a couple of hot finds from Ebay Motors.
eBay item number: 336430181540
C $12,500.00or Best Offer
Approximately US $9,142.44
eBay description: Embrace the nostalgic allure with the iconic 1989 Honda CRX, a coupe that blends classic styling with efficient performance. Its striking blue exterior encapsulates the essence of this collector's item, while the gasoline engine promises a smooth ride. With a minimalist approach to its interior, this CRX focuses on the pure driving experience, making it a perfect addition to any enthusiast's garage. First registered in February 2026, this Honda CRX boasts a low mileage of just 1000 kilometers, ensuring it's ready to make new memories on the road. The CRX model is celebrated for its sleek design and reliable build, making it a sought-after piece for collectors and aficionados alike.I got Turbo Engine with everything for this car Included with price, I have every single part you may need I don't have the time for a project than can be remarkable.
Honda CRX's are collectible but I think you should look for one that is in better condition and perhaps not sitting on a U-haul trailer. This one's in Canada so it has to come through customs. It only has 1000 kilometers on the clock or in American that is only 621 miles (sure!). But as the seller states it "focuses on the pure driving experience" and "a perfect addition to any enthusiast's garage" plus it was first registered in 2026 despite being a 1989. Buy it and you too can "make new memories on the road".
Next up is a "project".
eBay item number: 227217492550
$3,500.00or Best Offer
eBay description: I have 2 1972 chevy chevells's the blue one has a bent frame but is all there minimal rust 350/350 mortor and trans 12 bolt rear end I have a clean title.
The second chevelle is a good Donner car straight frame disc breaks the shell is it good condition some rust the car does not have vin plates or body tags. has all seats in it 12 bold rear end. Should be able to make one complete car out of both.
$3500 or make an offer
Look a "one of a kind custom" by crash. And it comes with a Donner car! The Donnor has no vin plates or body tags - what does that mean? If you can make one car out of these two then you are no longer a mechanic - you are a miracle worker.
eBay item number: 177833307574
$6,500.00 or Best Offer
eBay description: 1964 Alfa Romeo Guilia Spider
VIN: AR378811
Engine: 4-cylinder
Transmission: 4-spd Manual
Exterior Color: Red
Interior Color: White
Restoration project Alfa Romeo. Comes with an extra pair of Doors, NOS Rocker Panels, Passenger side front nose repair panel, driveshaft, Door Pulls, Jack, Hand-crank, 2 extra wheels. Clear Title and ready to restore!
If you like them red and rusty this might be for you. Check out the expert bodywork on the passenger side rear quarter. AI says: The average value of a 1964 Alfa Romeo Giulia Spider is approximately $50,978, with the highest sale recorded at $143,000 and the lowest at $10,250. Values can vary based on the car's condition and specific model features. I believe a restoration shop would price this resto at more than what it could be sold for if restored.
This Canadian-Made Muscle Car Was Crowned North American Car of the Year
From Hemmings
The automotive world has a new champion, and it’s a powerhouse built in the heart of Canada. The 2026 Dodge Charger, a quintessential modern muscle car manufactured at the Stellantis Canada Windsor Assembly Plant in Ontario, was officially named the 2026 North American Car of the Year.
The new generation of Dodge muscle is produced at the Stellantis Canada Windsor Assembly Plant, showcasing the world-class expertise of Canadian automotive workers. This prestigious award, announced on January 14, 2026, at the Detroit Auto Show, highlights a massive victory for Canadian manufacturing and cements the Charger’s legacy as a performance leader in a transitioning market.
A Canadian Win: From Windsor Assembly to Top Honors
The 2026 Dodge Charger beat out stiff competition to secure the top spot, defeating the Japanese-constructed Honda Prelude and the Mexican-constructed Nissan Sentra.
The North American Car of the Year (NACTOY) award is not decided lightly. A panel of 50 respected automotive journalists from Canada and the United States voted to determine the winner based on innovation, design, safety, handling, and value. The award comes shortly after high-profile discussions regarding tariffs and the future of North American automotive production, making the Canadian win even more significant.
2026 Dodge Charger: Redefining American Muscle
The 2026 Charger isn’t just a nostalgic throwback; it’s a future-forward machine that blends traditional performance with modern technology. Acknowledging the demands of enthusiasts, Stellantis announced the return of the legendary Hemi V-8 power, including the 370-horsepower 5.7-liter, the 485-horsepower 6.4-liter Scat Pack, and the massive 717-horsepower 6.2-liter Hellcat.
Dodge is leaning heavily into performance by offering internal combustion engine (ICE) options alongside their electric models. The “SIXPACK” Charger features a high-output, twin-turbocharged inline-six-cylinder engine capable of producing 550 horsepower, offering 0-60 mph acceleration in less than four seconds.
In addition to gas models, the new generation features the 2026 Dodge Charger Daytona EV, which is also produced in Windsor. This electric variant proves that the muscle car segment can transition to electric without losing its soul.
Why the 2026 Charger Won “Car of the Year”
The NACTOY jury selected the Charger for several key reasons, recognizing its ability to merge the iconic muscle car feel with cutting-edge, 2026-spec engineering:
Versatility: By offering both efficient, high-performance six-cylinder engines and electric powertrains, Dodge has created a car for all types of performance fans.
Design Evolution: The new generation has a modern, aggressive, yet retro-inspired look, including a hatchback configuration for practicality.
Performance Leadership: With up to 670 horsepower in the Daytona Scat Pack, the Charger continues to challenge for the title of fastest muscle car.
The victory of the 2026 Dodge Charger is a testament to the skill and dedication of the Canadian workforce at the Windsor Assembly Plant. As the industry moves toward a blend of electric and high-performance, the Canadian-made Charger proves it can lead the pack.
Ford Just Pulled the Plug on the All-Electric F-150 Lightning
From Robb Report
The pickup will live on as a hybrid with a gas-powered range extender.
Ford has decided the F-150 Lightning has run out of juice.
The Detroit giant has revealed that the rumors are true and that it is ending production of its all-electric truck, according to the Associated Press. The company will still make a pickup with an electric motor, but it will be joined by a gas-powered range extender going forward, making the vehicle a hybrid.
The automaker announced on Monday that production of the F-150 Lightning came to an end when it finished building its final 2025 examples this month. In doing so, the company has admitted defeat on a vehicle that it touted as one of the most important in its history when it debuted in 2021.
The move represents a drastic pivot in the manufacturer’s multi-billion-dollar electrification strategy. No model was more vital to the company’s embrace of EVs than the F-150 Lightning, which was an all-electric of the company’s perennially best-selling truck. But, despite launching with a relatively accessible $40,000 starting price, the pickup was never able to sway the Blue Oval faithful. The AP reports that the company has lost $13 billion on its all-electric lineup, which also includes the Mustang Mach-E, since 2023, and that those vehicles are a big part of the reason why it is expected to lose $19.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025.
“This is a customer-driven shift to create a stronger, more resilient, and more profitable Ford,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a statement.
Lack of consumer demand isn’t the all that doomed the all-electric F-150 Lightning. EV policy has also changed dramatically in the U.S. since the pickup went on sale in 2022. The current Trump administration has moved to eliminate incentives and requirements meant to make battery-powered vehicles more appealing to consumers, including the $7,500 tax credit.
Production of the all-electric F-150 Lightning may have come to an end, but the automaker has confirmed that the truck will live on—with some changes. Its next generation will feature a gas engine that functions as a generator. The plug-in hybrid will have a combined range of 700 miles, but, Car and Driver reports, it will still be able to drive on electric power alone nine days out of ten.
The Briefs
Chinese Electric vehicle (EVs) producers, despite Beijing’s emphasis, are having a hard time finding buyers. Dealers report having to cut prices drastically to make sales, sometimes even below costs. AVIC Lantian’s large Shanghai car dealer reports 2025 profits down 50 percent from the year before.
Florida has transitioned all driver’s license knowledge and skills tests to English-only, a change Gov. Ron DeSantis had advocated as a necessary safety measure.
A York County judge on Friday sentenced a Smithfield man to 27 years behind bars for a DUI crash in Yorktown that killed the driver’s best friend and a pregnant woman last April.
Hunter Nelson Arnold, now 23, was driving 84 mph on Water Street — a 35 mph zone — in his 2016 Dodge Challenger at the time of the fatal wreck.
His blood alcohol content was 0.154%, nearly twice the legal limit.
Witnesses told deputies the speeding Challenger swerved out of control before hitting a 2015 Honda Fit just after 8:15 p.m. near the Colonial Parkway entrance.
Ferrari has been taking its time rolling out the release of its first all-electric model. We know from previous releases that the first electric prancing horse will be a four-door four-seater making more than 1000 horsepower and will hit 60 mph in less than 2.5 seconds thanks to four electric motors. We also know that it will have a battery pack rated at 122 kWh (gross) and be capable of 330 miles of range by European rating methods. The vehicle is named Luce.
Ford Motor reported its first quarterly miss since 2024 and its largest quarterly earnings miss in four years.
The earnings miss was largely due to unexpected tariff costs of roughly $900 million related to credits for auto parts not taking effect as early as expected, the company said.
On a business unit level, the automaker’s traditional and fleet operations are expected to offset an expected $4 billion to $4.5 billion in losses this year for its “Model e” electric vehicle unit.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Feb. 11 directing the U.S. military to purchase its power from coal-fired electricity plants.
“We’re going to be buying a lot of coal through the military now, and it’s going to be less expensive and actually much more effective than what we have been using for many, many years,” Trump said during an event in the White House.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright are instructed to approve long-term agreements to purchase power for the Department of War and other government facilities deemed “mission-critical.”
Coal-fired power is prioritized to “enhance grid reliability and blackout prevention, on-site fuel security, and mission assurance for defense and intelligence capabilities,” according to a statement from the White House.
An unnamed Passaic County, New Jersey, man who got a ticket on Jan. 28 called the police department on Jan. 29 to complain about it, NJ.com reported. Because of the disturbing comments the 38-year-old made on that call, East Rutherford police went to his location for a welfare check. The man was sitting in his car and saw officers approaching; "the driver accelerated at a high rate of speed illegally, passing several vehicles, putting the motoring public at risk," police said. Police declined to chase him, and shortly afterward, the suspect "made several phone calls to the East Rutherford Police Department, bragging about being able to elude the officers," Capt. Jeff Yannacone said. The next day, the man was arrested at his home and charged with third-degree eluding police, along with many traffic citations.
A Maryland man said a $10 lottery voucher and a well-timed traffic light led to his winning $100,000 from a scratch-off ticket.
The Montgomery County man told Maryland Lottery officials he was weighing whether to stop for a ticket while he waited at a traffic light on his way from work.
"I wasn't going to stop, but when the light was green, I turned. I guess it was the winning stop," the player recalled.
He pulled into the 7-Eleven on 7th Street in Laurel and spent his $10 lottery voucher on a 50X the Cash ticket, a newly-released scratch-off game.
The man said he initially had some trouble understanding the ticket.
"I never saw a multiplier before," he said, "I thought maybe I'd won $500."
A more thorough examination revealed the ticket was actually a $100,000 winner.
The winner said much of the prize money will go toward regular household expenses, but some will be put toward something fun.
"We're going to take a vacation somewhere nice," he said. "Somewhere it's not snowing!"
A cow seen wandering through roads and parking lots in Florida was roped and wrangled by a cowboy on horseback.
Photos and videos posted to social media showed the cow wandering through streets and parking lots near the Publix on Taylor Road in Port Orange on Thursday.
A WESH-TV news helicopter captured video of the moment a cowboy on horseback was able to rope the cow with help from a man on foot and several police officers.
The cow was safely loaded into a trailer.
A fire-juggling unicyclist rolled into a busy Colorado intersection and turned rush hour into a flaming street show that police say broke the law.
Commerce City officers fielded a wave of calls after drivers spotted a man riding a unicycle while tossing burning torches near U.S. 85 and 60th Avenue.
Police released drone images that captured the performer weaving through the median and crosswalk as cars waited at a red light. Flames flickered close to passing vehicles while the rider balanced in traffic.
The department admitted the scene caught them off guard. “This post was certainly not on our Bingo card, yet here we are,” the agency wrote on social media. “The intersection of U.S.-85 and 60th isn’t exactly the Las Vegas Strip… or is it?”
Dispatchers received repeated reports from motorists who described the act as both entertaining and alarming. Officers launched a drone to document what unfolded in the roadway.
The video showed the man pedaling through the median while juggling fire in the center of an active intersection. Drivers sat at the light as the impromptu performance played out feet away.
Officers acknowledged the skill but drew a firm line on safety. “Our drone caught his act, which was both quite good and quite illegal,” the department posted, pointing to trespassing in the median and blocking the crosswalk.
Police noted they conduct routine enforcement at that intersection to prevent pedestrians from interfering with traffic. They stressed that this case stood apart from the norm.
Florida authorities arrested a 51-year-old Polk County man after he stole a golf cart and left a friend behind with a shattered hip.
Key West police responded around 7:45 a.m. Saturday to a 911 call about an injured man lying in the outbound lane of North Roosevelt Boulevard. A witness moved the victim to the sidewalk after he and another man failed to help.
The victim told officers he rode in the back of the cart when his friend, later identified as Vincent Franklin Fortin of Winter Haven, made “an abrupt U-turn.” The sharp maneuver threw him onto the pavement.
He “was experiencing extreme pain in his hip and could not move his leg” and required emergency surgery at Lower Keys Medical Center for a broken hip.
Police did not find the cart or driver at the crash scene. Another man present told officers he recognized Fortin “from (a) previous incarceration.”
Roughly 15 minutes later, a 62-year-old woman on Duval Street reported her EZ-GO golf cart missing. Security footage showed a man driving away with it around 5 a.m.
An officer later spotted Fortin running a red light on the stolen cart in the Lower Duval area. Police pulled him over and arrested him on charges of grand theft and leaving the scene of a crash causing serious bodily injury.
Records show he also faces a charge of operating a vehicle without a valid license. Jail records list Fortin in the Key West facility on a $41,000 bond.
Kansas City police attempted to stop a group of ATV riders and motorcyclists committing traffic violations on April 12, 2025. An officer tried to remove Kendall Coleman from his ATV and place him in custody. Police reported that Coleman reversed, causing the officer to fall. They stated he then lifted the ATV into a wheelie, struck the officer with the front tires, and drove over him with all four tires before fleeing.
Investigators traced Coleman through license plate readers after court documents revealed he called his father, Marc Coleman, and told him he needed to leave town. Authorities tracked Marc Coleman’s vehicle west on Interstate 70 into Colorado Springs.
Officials said prepaid phones appeared after Kendall Coleman’s phone was disconnected, and surveillance footage tied him to the ATV. An anonymous Crime Stoppers tip led officers to arrest him on April 23.
The injured officer suffered head injuries but has since made a full recovery.
Kendall Coleman, 28, pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and aggravated fleeing as part of a plea deal. Prosecutors dropped an armed criminal action charge, and earlier records show he had faced first-degree assault.
Shock rippled through St. Louis after authorities tied 36-year-old Brittany Rivoire to the killing of William Palmer, a father of three shot after agreeing to drive her toward a warming shelter early Sunday morning. Investigators contend Palmer encountered the woman while traveling with a friend, and tension inside the vehicle escalated so sharply that the companion exited before violence erupted.
Court filings describe a chilling sequence where the driver suffered a gunshot wound to the head, leaving him dead as the suspect allegedly seized control of the vehicle and sped away.
Prosecutors have stacked charges against Rivoire that include first-degree murder, armed criminal action, unlawful firearm possession, and first-degree motor vehicle tampering. Booking records confirm she remains jailed without bond while the accusations wind through the legal system.
Police paperwork outlines a brief escape that unfolded after the shooting, noting the vehicle was driven several blocks and then deserted.
Authorities further allege she quickly secured another ride from an unsuspecting motorist before officers tracked her down and placed her under arrest.
1953 Mochet CM-125Y Panel
A delivery driver was attacked outside a suburban Philadelphia pharmacy and robbed of $16,000 worth of high-demand weight loss drugs after three suspects allegedly traveled from New York to pull off the crime. Police in Bensalem Township say the suspects targeted a delivery outside Smart Choice Pharmacy, where the driver was unloading two boxes containing Ozempic, Mounjaro, and Trulicity. Officers described the crime as a strong-arm robbery that escalated quickly, leaving the victim assaulted and the suspects fleeing with the drugs. Investigators say the robbery unfolded in plain view, with the suspects confronting the driver as the delivery was underway. Authorities say force was used to take the boxes before the group rushed back to a gold-colored Toyota waiting nearby. As the suspects sped off, the situation nearly turned more dangerous. Police say the getaway vehicle almost struck a witness who was attempting to record the robbery on a phone, adding another layer of risk to an already volatile scene. Patrol officers received a 911 call moments later that included a description of the suspects’ vehicle. Police say units quickly located the gold Toyota in the area and moved in, bringing the incident to a close within a short time. Three suspects were taken into custody and later identified by Bensalem Police as Joshua Dupree, 41, of Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, Jahnoi Dawkins, 21, of Albany, New York, and a 17-year-old male from New York City. Authorities say the victim positively identified all three as being involved in the robbery.
The oldest surviving American car model nameplate still in use today celebrates its 90th birthday in 2026, according to parent General Motors. This honor goes to the Chevrolet Suburban, which has been hauling people and their cargo for a period going on nine full decades. It is also the only vehicle to have received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, in recognition of its appearance in over 1,750 feature films.
Forty-one DUI arrests made by a single Tennessee Highway Patrol trooper in Bedford County have been dismissed by prosecutors, an investigative report shows, with more than half involving drivers later found to be sober.
The dismissals stem from arrests made between 2021 and 2024 by former Trooper Asa Pearl, according to records obtained by WSMV4.
Of those 41 cases, a Bedford County District Attorney’s office spreadsheet shows that 22 incidents involving drivers who either had no drugs or alcohol in their system or whose blood alcohol was within legal limits at the time of testing, the local news outlet found. One of those drivers, Ron LaFlamme, said he was pulled over and asked to perform a sobriety test despite having neither alcohol nor drugs in his system.
“I was surprised when he started asking me to do a sobriety test,” LaFlamme told WSMV4 in an interview that aired Tuesday. “It was wrongful arrest.”
The remaining 19 dismissals were attributed to procedural issues, including the arresting trooper’s unavailability for court or inability to recall specifics of the stop, officials said.
Attorney David McKenzie, representing LaFlamme, told the outlet that word of the dismissals spread among local defense attorneys and raised concerns about enforcement practices.
Ford Motor is developing all-electric vehicles with high-voltage batteries similar to those used in Tesla Cybertrucks; the technology is expected to lower the cost of Ford's EVs, with a $30K pickup truck slated for release next year.
More than 550 commercial driving schools in the U.S. that train truckers and bus drivers must close after investigators found they employed unqualified instructors, failed to adequately test students and had other safety issues, the federal Transportation Department announced Wednesday.
The move marks the Transportation Department’s latest effort to improve safety in the trucking industry. And unlike its previous actions last fall to decertify up to 7,500 schools that included many defunct operations, this latest step is focused on what it deemed were active schools with significant shortcomings that inspectors identified in 1,426 site visits.
The department has been aggressively going after states that handed out commercial driver’s licenses to immigrants who shouldn’t have qualified for them ever since a fatal crash in August. A truck driver that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says was not authorized to be in the U.S. made an illegal U-turn and caused a crash in Florida that killed three people. Other fatal crashes since then, including one in Indiana earlier this month that killed four, have only added to the concerns.
Edouard Benedictus invented safety glass (the type of glass used in windshields) in the early 1900s. The French chemist in 1903, accidentally dropped a glass jar that did not shatter because it had previously contained a type of plastic.
New York drops plans to legalize robotaxis beyond New York City following safety concerns and pushback from taxi and rideshare drivers; the decision is a setback for Alphabet's Waymo, which had its sights set on a statewide expansion.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is revamping the Biden administration’s Clean School Bus (CSB) program, which focused on installing electric buses at U.S. schools, the agency said in a statement released on Feb. 19. The overhauled program will focus on providing school districts with “increased choice and affordable options” for school buses.
In 2021, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act directed the EPA to create the CSB program and provide $5 billion over fiscal years 2022–2026 to replace existing school buses with zero-emission school buses. The Biden administration distributed about $2.7 billion in these funds, 90 percent of which was to fund electric school buses. The rest went toward propane-fueled vehicles.
“There are multiple well-documented examples of one particular bus manufacturer failing to deliver buses altogether despite preemptively receiving tens of millions of tax dollars from the CSB program,” the EPA said.
The EPA cited the case of Lion Electric, a Canadian electric vehicle company that was granted $159 million to build 435 battery-powered buses between October 2022 and May 2024.
However, Lion Electric filed for bankruptcy in December 2024. In August 2025, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the company still hadn’t delivered school buses to 55 districts, worth approximately $95 million.
General Motors is recalling more than 43,000 Chevrolet, GMC and Cadillac SUVs due to a transmission issue that could potentially increase the risk of a crash.
The recall affects 17,178 Chevrolet Tahoes, 7,616 Chevrolet Suburbans, 7,820 GMC Yukons, 5,270 GMC Yukon XLs, 3,609 Cadillac Escalades and 2,239 Cadillac Escalade ESVs, all from model year 2022.
All models under the recall are equipped with a 10-speed transmission with an electronic transmission range select system, GM said. In rare cases, the rear wheels may experience a brief lockup or may remain locked, increasing the risk of a crash, the report said.
Dodge Charger 500 vs the Beach Bunnies
Repair Mistakes & Blunders
From Rock Auto
I was rushing through an oil and filter change on my 2014 Chrysler Town & Country. My wife and I were about to head out for a weekend getaway, and I figured I had just enough time to knock it out. This was my fifth Chrysler minivan and my third 3.6L engine—so naturally, I was confident. Too confident.
Oil drained. Filter out. I leaned in to wipe some spilled oil from the back of the housing…and instantly took a geyser of oil straight to the face.
Turns out the key fob—with remote start—was in my pocket. When I leaned into the engine bay, I pressed the button. As always, the engine fired right up.
Fortunately, I had already drained the oil pan, so there was only the undrained oil in the pump and galleries. Following a significant amount of sputtering and spitting, I managed to stop the engine and attempted to regain my dignity.
Lesson learned: roll the window down and leave the blasted key in the car.
And yes—the weekend getaway went great.
Greg in Pennsylvania
When It Comes to Climate and Energy, Let’s Retire the Politics of Fear
From Real Clear Wire
In the latest example of the scare tactics favored by climate change alarmists, it was announced last month that 2025 “was the third-warmest in modern history, according to Copernicus, the European Union’s climate change monitoring service,” as reported by NBC News.
The story added, “The conclusion came as no surprise: The past 11 years have been the 11 warmest on record, according to Copernicus data. In 2025, the average global temperature was about 1.47 degrees Celsius (2.65 Fahrenheit) higher than from 1850 to 1900 — the period scientists use as a reference point, since it precedes the industrial era in which massive amounts of carbon pollution have been pumped into the atmosphere.”
As usual, our most affordable and reliable fuel sources were blamed.
“The primary reason for these record temperatures is the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, dominated by the burning of fossil fuels,” according to Samantha Burgess, the “strategic lead on climate” for the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, which operates Copernicus, according to the report.
Sometimes it feels like the climate change crusaders are oblivious to everything going on around them. For decades, they’ve been resorting to the same tired strategies to convince us that doom and gloom are just around the corner if we don’t change our ways. What they ignore is that their tactics aren’t working – more people than ever are tuning them out.
Americans in particular have grown wise to the predictions that don’t come true and the demands that don’t make sense. In fact, so badly has science become blatantly politicized that the number of people who have a great amount of trust in science keeps shrinking.
That fact was backed up by a recent Pew Research Center report that found that “Americans’ confidence in scientists remains lower than it was prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.” To many of us, it is now obvious that the inconsistent guidance on Covid and many pandemic edicts that were later found to be ineffective and even misleading demonstrated that science was not above being overtly politicized.
While the Pew study noted a Democrat-Republican disparagement regarding trust in science (Democrats trust it more, Republicans less), only 28 percent of all U.S. adults said they have “a great deal” of confidence in scientists “to act in the public’s best interest.”
I recently noted the welcome admission by manmade climate change believer Noah Kauffman, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, who, writing for The Atlantic, said flatly that “the full effects of climate change are unknowable, and a more constructive public discussion about climate policy will require getting more comfortable with that.” Whether in regard to vaccines, dietary guidelines or climate change, in recent years science has too often found itself at the center of partisan political debates and lost the trust of many Americans by appearing to support certain causes over others based on ideology rather than pure scientific data.
But we can’t afford to let that happen when it comes to making energy decisions. Why? Because no one can deny that affordable energy is the key to economic prosperity for American households and businesses.
When energy costs are low, manufacturers can produce goods at a lower cost, resulting in more competitive products domestically and internationally.
When fuel is affordable – whether diesel, gasoline or jet fuel – all modes of transportation, including airlines, trucking and shipping companies, can charge less, resulting in savings for all consumers.
Heating, cooling and transportation costs represent the most significant share of most families’ budgets. When energy costs are reasonable, household spending on other goods and services increases, not only helping individual families but contributing to overall economic growth.
In addition to everything else, there is real damage caused by manipulating science in a way that puts climate over people. It puts people in danger and keeps them in poverty – and ultimately only a privileged few will benefit.
Consider the billions the Biden Administration doled out to political cronies on its way out the door in the name of the climate cause. Consider also the Obama Administration giving a half billion dollars to Solyndra, the solar panel company accused of engaging in “a pattern of false and misleading assertions,” only to see it go bust – all at the expense of hardworking, taxpaying Americans.
That’s why it’s important to remove the manipulation of the energy sector from the politicization that has infiltrated the scientific community. Americans should not be pawns in the effort to frighten our people or our government into abandoning our most reliable, affordable and increasingly clean energy sources.
There’s a better way. By passing the Affordable, Reliable, Clean Energy Act (ARC-ES), Congress can codify into law the guarantee that Americans will always have access to low-cost energy, regardless of the effort of progressive political groups to weaponize science in order to funnel tax dollars to prop up “alternatives.”
Anyone can manipulate data to come up with horrifying “what if” scenarios designed to frighten or intimidate people into making their preferred choices. That’s not how to make public policy. We need to pass ARC-ES to move past the days when the science that fewer people trust is manipulated to justify changes in energy policy that few people want. When it comes to science, let’s trade the politics of panic for the integrity of facts.
America fell out of love with the sedan. Detroit wants to bring it back.
From: MSN via The Wall Street Journal
From tail-finned land yachts of the 1960s to hulking family haulers in the 1980s and then the 1990s bestseller Ford Taurus, driving for Americans meant driving a sedan.
Then SUVs and trucks won over drivers’ hearts and garages. Ford axed its sedan lineup in 2018. Chrysler-parent Stellantis essentially scrubbed its showrooms of passenger cars. The last General Motors mass-market sedan rolled off the line at its Kansas City, Kan., plant in November 2024—a cherry red Chevy Malibu.
But today drivers want lower prices and the automakers are considering the once-unthinkable: bringing back sedans.
“I would kill to have a hybrid-electric sedan,” General Motors President Mark Reuss said during a recent company town hall. “We’re working on how to do that.”
Across town, executives at Ford are studying if a new assembly line set to go up in Kentucky next year could build not just small electric pickups, but sedans as well. Dealers for years have peppered the automaker with pleas to bring back the Fusion sedan, which the company stopped making five years ago.
“The sedan market is very vibrant,” Ford CEO Jim Farley remarked to reporters on the sidelines of the Detroit auto show last month. “It’s not that there isn’t a market there. It’s just we couldn’t find a way to compete and be profitable.”
Stellantis, too, wants another go. Chrysler is working on a small car that would cost less than $30,000—one that will “be beautiful and fun to drive and aspirational,” Chrysler CEO Chris Feuell said at an event last year.
Cars face a national affordability crisis. Simply put, they’re getting too expensive for many people. The average price of a new vehicle now tops $50,000. Some of that increase is due to new tariffs and rising manufacturing costs. Also to blame are carmakers’ lineups of bigger, pricier vehicles filled with high-end features.
The conundrum is that carmakers get far better profit margins on more expensive trucks and SUVs—and sedans are a shrinking piece of the market. Passenger cars, which commanded half of new-vehicle sales 15 years ago, accounted for only 18% of the U.S. market in 2025, according to Motor Intelligence data. Sales of small and midsize cars fell 9% last year from the year before.
“They should’ve kept at least one around,” says Ivan Drury, an analyst at Edmunds, the online car-shopping authority. “You don’t need a full sedan lineup but you do need a jack of all trades.”
For automakers, a lower-priced sedan can also be an entry point for consumers who later trade up to pricier models. “Because it’s bloody obvious what happens when you remove a vehicle from the lineup, people stop coming back to your brand altogether,” Drury says.
In exiting sedans, Detroit effectively admitted defeat in a decadeslong struggle to keep pace with foreign rivals like Toyota, Hyundai and Honda for entry-level car shoppers. Only GM has succeeded in keeping some of that market with a lineup of compact SUVs. Ford is trying lower-end versions of its pricier vehicles.
A U-turn on sedans would be a reversal of uncharacteristic speed even for Detroit’s notoriously fickle industry. These, however, are unusual times. After prepping for an electric-vehicle revolution, one by one, GM, Ford and Stellantis have dialed back EV production and canceled plans for future models.
The U.S. electric-vehicle market, which had already started to slow, collapsed last year after Congress and the Trump administration eliminated clean-air mandates and federal incentives. Combined, the three automakers have taken a hit of more than $50 billion to cover the cost of the EV reversal.
Of the five cheapest vehicles on sale in the U.S. this year, only one—GM’s Chevrolet Trax—was from an American automaker, according to Edmunds. The Trax, a pint-size SUV made in South Korea, proved exceedingly popular: GM sold 200,000 last year. GM has one other small SUV with a starting price below $25,000; Ford and Stellantis have none.
All other budget vehicles—whether sedans or compact SUVs—were made by Kia, Hyundai, Toyota and Volkswagen.
Sedans like the Chevrolet Impala, Ford Fairlane and Chrysler New Yorker filled American roads from the 1950s to the 1970s—but they weren’t known for their fuel efficiency.
The oil crisis in the 1970s and the arrival of Japanese-owned factories on U.S. soil were big blows to Detroit. Honda started making the Accord sedan in Ohio in the early 1980s, followed a few years later by Toyota’s Corolla and Camry. The Accord became the bestselling U.S. car in 1989.
Detroit fought back. Ford poured big money into developing its aerodynamic Taurus sedan, hoping to fend off the famously reliable Accord at a time when quality problems plagued Detroit.
“Prepare to be impressed,” was the tagline Ford used in a 1992 TV ad comparing the Taurus to its Japanese rival. That year, the Taurus overtook the Accord as the nation’s bestselling car.
By the mid-’90s, however, SUVs took off with Americans who preferred the higher ride height and roomy cargo space. The pace of defection stunned auto executives, who scrambled to remake their lineups.
“SUV just became the default body style,” said automotive consultant Adam Bernard, who led competitor intelligence for General Motors from 2007 to 2024.
The proliferation of SUVs included smaller and more efficient styles in the late 1990s and early 2000s, such as the Toyota RAV4, Honda CR-V and Ford Escape. Ford axed its sedan lineup in 2018, the same year GM said it would kill the Chevy Impala and Cruze. Chrysler ditched its 300 sedan in 2023 after 68 years.
Foreign automakers pulled back from sedans as well, killing dozens of models in the past decade, such as the Toyota Avalon and Nissan Maxima.
Filling some of the sedan void is a new wave of entry-level vehicles that, like GM’s Trax, are built on the frame of a compact car but feature the higher ride and a truncated liftgate. Others include the Buick Envista, Nissan Kicks and Honda HR-V.
‘Gateway product’
The lack of lower-priced cars presents a challenge for Matt Bowers, owner of a New Orleans-based dealership group that sells Fords, Chevys and Chryslers, among other brands.
“There were a lot of people that bought Ford Focuses and Escorts that ended up buying Explorers and Expeditions and F-Series trucks later,” he said. “It was an entryway, a gateway product to the brand.”
Ford CEO Farley told employees at a town hall this week that Ford has a string of affordable vehicles planned for the U.S., and that the company plans to step up its focus on that end of the market. A sedan could be in the cards, he said, if Ford can figure out a way to make it profitably.
Ford’s least expensive offering is the compact Maverick pickup. It’s manufactured in Mexico and has a starting price just under $30,000. Sales of the truck grew 18% last year, as did lower-priced versions of other models.
Ford is working to overhaul its manufacturing system and, by next year, start up a new type of factory line that churns out $30,000 electric trucks. The goal is to be able to compete against Chinese EV-makers once they are able to sell vehicles in the U.S.
Ford executives are studying whether a sedan might make sense on that line. They’re also looking at whether it’s possible to develop either a hybrid or all-electric sedan that is both affordable and appealing enough to make money. If the answer is no, Ford will continue to sit out the sedan game.
“Affordable versions of our vehicles are really hot-selling. Customers are telling us: Please offer more,” Farley said.
As it weighs a sedan, GM is eyeing carbuyers who can perhaps afford an SUV but prefer a car. Executives believe U.S. consumers continue to move toward SUVs and pickups. High-end sedans like the company’s Cadillac CT5, which starts around $50,000, are an exception, a GM spokesman said.
Reuss, in speaking to employees, lamented the failure of the company’s last attempt at a hybrid sedan: a Malibu that GM discontinued in 2019. “The timing wasn’t quite right,” he said.
He said GM serves the lower end of the car market—even without mainstay sedans. Last year GM sold nearly 700,000 vehicles whose sticker prices start under $30,000—all compact SUVs like the Trax, he said.
Feuell, the Chrysler CEO, said the company must prioritize affordability. A price tag nearing $50,000 “doesn’t work for most consumers,” she said. The company is working on a compact car it could sell for less than $30,000 to meet that need, she said.
Cost conundrum
It is really hard to make money on sedans.
Even after they moved some manufacturing to countries with lower labor costs—Mexico, South Korea—in recent decades, GM, Ford and Chrysler struggled to compete with their Asian rivals.
Even Toyota considers the U.S. sedan business bruising. Toyota executives, in a recent call with reporters, discussed the travails of trying to turn a profit on cars, especially small ones, in the U.S. It’s a growing concern as tariffs eat into profits.
“We make money on the Corolla—just not a lot,” said David Christ, Toyota’s North American sales chief.
Toyota has been happy to scoop up sedan-loving customers, Christ said, noting its share of the U.S. sedan market has grown to 22% from 12% since GM, Ford and Chrysler left the market. And people who buy a sedan on a budget may return later to the same showroom for a higher-price offering.
Adam Lee is chairman of Maine-based Lee Auto Malls, with seven dealerships. He’s frustrated he has little to offer more budget-minded customers.
“If somebody could build an affordable sedan, it would sell,” said Lee, who, along with a cousin and a friend, took over the business that his father and grandfather had run since the 1930s. “We have made these cars so expensive that nobody can afford them.”
Japanese and Korean automakers were more adept than Detroit at leveraging their bigger, global scale to remain competitive in sedans during the mass migration to SUVs, said Bernard, the consultant. “They can make a sedan and sell versions of it all over the world.”
The sedan buyers who remain are committed.
At a Ford dealership in Canton, Ohio, lube tech Brandon Burgardt perks up when he sees a Ford Fusion coming through for an oil change. He’s hanging on to his own Fusion as long as he can, since Ford doesn’t offer a new one anymore.
“Every Fusion owner I have talked to said Ford needs to come back out with a sedan and they really want the Fusion back,” he said. “I believe you have to listen to the customers.”
Mandatory driver impairment sensors clear a funding hurdle, but are they ready?
From MSN
A federal law requiring impairment-detection devices inside all new cars survived a recent push to strip its funding but remains stalled by questions about whether the technology is ready.
Rana Abbas Taylor lost her sister, brother-in-law, nephew and two nieces when a driver with a blood-alcohol level almost four times the legal limit slammed into their car in January 2019 as the Michigan family drove through Lexington, Kentucky, on the way home from a Florida vacation.
The tragedy turned Abbas Taylor into an outspoken advocate for stopping the more than 10,000 alcohol-related deaths each year on U.S. roads. Lawmakers attached the Honoring Abbas Family Legacy to Terminate Drunk Driving Act to the $1 trillion infrastructure law that then-President Joe Biden signed in 2021.
The measure, often referred to as the Halt Drunk Driving Act, anticipated that as early as this year, auto companies would be required to roll out technology to “passively” detect when drivers are drunk or impaired and prevent their cars from operating. Regulators can choose from a range of options, including air monitors that sample the car's interior for traces of alcohol, fingertip readers that measure a driver's blood-alcohol level, or scanners that detect signs of impairment in eye or head movements.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving called it the most important piece of legislation in the organization's 45-year history. Still, implementation has been bogged down by regulatory delays, without any clear signals that final approval is near.
“The way we measure time is not by days or months or years. It’s by number of lives lost,” Abbas Taylor said in an interview with The Associated Press. “So when we hear manufacturers say, ‘We need more time,’ or ‘The tech is not ready,’ or ‘We’re not there yet,' all we hear is, ‘More people need to die before we’re willing to fix this.’”
The ‘kill switch’ debate
A Republican-led effort to remove the Halt Act's funding was defeated in the U.S. House last month by a 268-164 vote. Another bill to repeal it entirely awaits a committee vote.
Most of the opposition has stemmed from suggestions that the law would require manufacturers to equip cars with a “kill switch". That would essentially allow them to “be controlled by the government,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis posted on the social platform X, drawing comparisons to George Orwell's dystopian novel “1984.”
The alcohol industry has fiercely defended the law against such arguments. Chris Swonger, president and CEO of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, said it specifically requires the technology to be passive, similar to other current safety mandates such as seat belts and air bags.
“There is no switch, there’s no government control, there is no sharing of data," he said. “That’s just an unfortunate scare tactic.”
But Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who authored the defunding effort, said even the dashboard acting on its own could serve as “your judge, your jury, and your executioner." He cited the example of a mother who swerves in a snowstorm to avoid hitting a neighbor's pet, only for her car to deactivate itself because it determines she's impaired.
The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade association for U.S. automakers, made a similar case to regulators in 2024, arguing that much more research was needed before mandating the technology.
“Even if 1 in 10,000 trips were expected to experience a false positive, this could result in thousands of unimpaired drivers encountering problems that prevent them from driving each day,” the Alliance wrote.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which is establishing the rules to implement the Halt Act, told the AP in an email that it's still “assessing developing technologies for potential deployment” and expects to report back to Congress soon. Even supporters predict the agency will push the decision at least into 2027, and auto companies still would have another two to three years to install it.
Vouching for the tech's reliability
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research arm funded by auto insurers, recently announced that impairment detection and other technology aimed at curbing risky driving behavior would soon be included as criteria for a vehicle to earn one of its top safety awards.
Many states already have laws requiring breath-activated ignition interlock systems to be installed on the cars of DUI offenders. The system ultimately chosen under the Halt Act is intended to detect impairment beyond just drunk driving.
“We’re still sort of pushing back against this narrative that the technology doesn’t exist,” said Stephanie Manning, chief government affairs officer at MADD. “We’ve seen many different types of technology that can solve drunk driving. We just haven’t seen it deployed and implemented the way that we would like.”
To accelerate the timeline, one bill advancing in Congress would offer a $45 million prize to whoever can produce and deploy the first consumer-ready piece of technology. Abbas Taylor, whose family members were killed in the Kentucky crash, said efforts like that give her hope.
“When you've lost everything, there is nothing that will stop you from fighting for what is right,” she said. “But we see the writing on the wall, and we know it’s only a matter of time before this happens.”
Automakers Pump Brakes on EV Investment as Federal Subsidies Stop
From The Epoch Times
‘EVs will only grow very slowly from here on out due to a saturated market and lack of consumer demand,’ an energy analyst said.
A few years ago, U.S. auto executives were hailing their conversion to electric cars and market analysts were predicting exponential growth in electric vehicle sales amid the inevitable extinction of the gas-powered engine.
Executives from General Motors (GM), Ford, Volkswagen, Mercedes, and Volvo pledged that their fleets would be 100 percent electric within a decade.
But, the reality has been quite different.
After President Donald Trump ended the $7,500 electric vehicle (EV) tax credit in September 2025, the sales growth of electric cars in America went into reverse, falling to 234,000 units in the fourth quarter of last year, down by 46 percent compared to the prior quarter, according to data from Cox Automotive.
The market share of EVs tumbled from 10.5 percent of all new cars sold in America in the third quarter of 2025 to 5.8 percent in the fourth quarter, according to Kelley Blue Book data.
“EVs will only grow very slowly from here on out due to a saturated market and lack of consumer demand,” energy analyst Robert Bryce told The Epoch Times.
Billions in EV Losses
American and European car manufacturers that had bet heavily on the EV transition are now licking their wounds.
Ford, GM, Mercedes-Benz, and Volkswagen collectively lost $114 billion on EV ventures between 2022 and 2025, according to a recent op-ed by Bryce. Adding a $26 billion write down on its EV line announced by Stellantis (formerly Chrysler) on Feb. 6, that total climbs to $140 billion.
In December 2025, Ford announced that it was canceling its flagship electric truck, the F-150 Lightning. Having lost $13 billion on its EV line since 2023, Ford announced a $19.5 billion write-down from EVs in the fourth quarter of 2025.
“The operating reality has changed, and we are redeploying capital into higher-return growth opportunities: Ford Pro, our market-leading trucks and vans, hybrids and high-margin opportunities like our new battery energy storage business,” Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a statement.
In January, GM announced a $6 billion write-down in its EV line, following its decision in October 2025 to take a $1.6 billion loss to scale back its EV investments. GM canceled contracts with electric vehicle battery suppliers, while Stellantis announced it would cut its entire plug-in EV lineup for 2026, though it still planned to introduce new long-range EV models that use gasoline to charge the car’s battery.
Tesla, once the leading EV producer, recently reported falling sales and profits, and CEO Elon Musk spoke of shifting the company’s focus toward robotics as Chinese manufacturer BYD overtook it in global sales of units sold.
Far from the inevitable demise of the internal combustion engine, other global auto companies’ ventures into electric vehicles now appear to be costly, highly dependent on government support, and vulnerable to fierce competition from China.
“The electric vehicle market in the United States was primarily created by government mandates and government subsidies,” Paul Mueller, economist with the American Institute for Economic Research, told The Epoch Times.
“Even Tesla would not have made it without significant government subsidies—over $3 billion—and regulatory credits bought from Tesla by other car producers—over $13 billion.”
Due to federal emissions regulations, which were tightened under the Biden administration, gas-powered vehicle producers who focused on the most profitable models such as trucks and SUVs, were compelled to buy emissions credits from EV manufacturers to offset their failure to meet fleet-wide Corporate Average Fuel Economy requirements. This additional multi-billion-dollar subsidy was also curtailed by the Trump administration.
Subsidies Drive Sales
While global EV sales have remained robust, increasing by 20 percent in 2025, the majority of those sales occurred in China, according to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, an EV research group. In other global markets, by contrast, demand for EVs was uneven, growing where subsidies and regulations incentivized buyers, falling where they did not.
Europe’s EV market, where buyer incentives remain in place, grew by 33 percent in 2025.
In the United States, by contrast, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed in July 2025, eliminated the $7,500 tax credit on new EVs, as well as the $4,000 credit for used models. In the absence of these incentives, Benchmark predicts that the U.S. market for electric cars and trucks will contract by up to one-third in 2026.
EVs have been attractive for affluent consumers who have shorter commutes and can charge them in their garages.
However, as a mainstream product, EVs have been hindered by high sticker prices, range anxiety, long charging times, diminished performance in cold weather, and—as evidenced from power outages during recent snowstorms—an occasional inability to use them during crises.
Another concern for buyers is that EVs don’t hold their value well, according to iSeeCars, an automotive research company.
EVs lose 58.8 percent of their value in the first five years after purchase, compared with the industry average for all vehicles of 45.6 percent, the report states. Trucks and hybrids fared the best, both losing about 40 percent of their value over five years.
Part of this is likely due to a comparatively poor service record for EVs, despite the fact that they were marketed as requiring less maintenance than gas-powered cars. A December 2025 report by Consumer Reports stated that EVs have about 80 percent more service problems on average than gas-powered cars.
On the other hand, hybrids, which combine a gas engine and electric battery, have 15 percent fewer problems on average than gas-only cars. Hybrids have been in production longer than EVs, and this likely has improved the reliability of more recent hybrid models and provides hope that EVs will likewise become more reliable in time.
China Advantage
Critics of Western automakers’ retreat from EV production say they are surrendering a critical advantage to China. In response, EV critics argue that Western carmakers could bankrupt themselves by betting too heavily on electrics for two reasons.
The first is that abandoning gas-powered vehicles means giving up much of the engineering expertise and brand reputation that carmakers have developed over decades. Second, China’s stranglehold on the raw materials for batteries, and its lower production costs, means China will likely retain a substantial competitive advantage in the EV market.
China’s price advantage is due to a number of factors, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
“Over 70 [percent] of all EV batteries ever manufactured were produced in China, creating extensive manufacturing know-how,” the IEA states. “This has supported the rise of giant manufacturers such as CATL and BYD, which have centralized expertise in the battery sector and driven innovation.”
Chinese control of raw materials and supply chains has often limited Western carmakers’ role to little more than downstream assembly.
In addition, the report states, “Fierce domestic competition has shaped the Chinese battery market, which is home to almost 100 producers. To maintain or gain market share, these firms have been cutting their profit margins to sell batteries at lower prices.”
BYD has displaced Tesla in 2025 as the world’s largest seller by volume, and in some markets, BYD’s EVs sell for 30 percent less than other global brands, and have longer ranges and offer higher-quality interiors. Chinese automakers have already captured a 10 percent market share in Europe.
Rethinking Regulations
Despite this, regulations in Europe, and in many Democratic-led U.S. states, have attempted to force carmakers to abandon gas-powered cars and trucks. The EU has banned the sale of new cars and trucks that run on gasoline or diesel fuel, starting in 2035.
U.S. states that have banned or have plans to ban the sale of gas-powered cars and trucks by 2035 include California, Washington, Oregon, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Delaware, and Maryland.
However, these plans may not survive, particularly if automakers are unwilling to produce enough EVs to satisfy the compulsory demand for them. Already, fearing the loss of an auto industry that represents 7 percent of Europe’s GDP and employs 13 million workers, the EU has been rethinking its looming bans on gas-powered cars.
In December 2025, the EU reduced its zero-emission requirement for new cars from 100 percent to 90 percent. The European carmakers association, ACEA, had argued that the 100 percent goal is unrealistic given the relatively weak demand for electric cars.
The good old days of prune parties
EPA Eliminates Credits for Auto Start-Stop Feature in Cars
From The Epoch Times
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ended a greenhouse gas credit program that incentivized auto manufacturers to include automatic start-stop systems in vehicles, the agency said in a Feb. 12 statement.
“EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin eliminated the off-cycle credit that was used to implement the almost universally hated start-stop feature in American vehicles,” said the statement. The off-cycle credit was created by the Obama administration in 2012, allowing automakers to claim greenhouse gas (GHG) credits by adding features such as a start-stop system.
Start-stop systems automatically shut down the vehicle’s engine during periods of idleness, such as waiting at red lights. Due to the credit program, start-stop systems became a standard feature in vehicles.
However, “this feature has proven to be nothing more than a regulatory loophole that allowed automakers to claim GHG credits without delivering real-world emission reductions or benefits to human health,” according to the agency.
EPA said this technology has led to frustration among drivers, and since almost 60 percent of new cars come with start-stop systems, consumers have limited choice to avoid this feature.
With the off-cycle credits now eliminated, auto manufacturers will be incentivized to listen to what Americans “actually want in their cars,” the agency said.
The decision to eliminate the credit is a result of Zeldin signing a final rule on Thursday that ended the Obama-era 2009 Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding.
Endangerment Finding
The Endangerment Finding regulated greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles and provided the legal foundation for many climate regulations.
The EPA stated that climate rules impose major costs on the traditional manufacturing sector and limit people’s choices when it comes to having affordable car options. The agency sent a proposal to reconsider the Endangerment Finding to the Office of Management and Budget last month.
“Not only do many people find start-stop annoying, but it kills the battery of your car without any significant benefit to the environment,” Zeldin said.
“Automakers should not be forced to adopt or rewarded for technologies that are merely a climate participation trophy with no measurable pollution reductions,” he added, highlighting broader consumer choice expected from the policy change.
According to the EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding, greenhouse gases threaten public health and the welfare of the American people.
GHGs can lead to “hotter, longer heat waves that threaten the health of the sick, poor or elderly; increases in ground-level ozone pollution linked to asthma and other respiratory illnesses; as well as other threats to the health and welfare of Americans,” EPA said then.
Environmental group Sierra Club criticized the EPA’s decision to end the Endangerment Finding in a Feb. 12 statement, calling it a “brazen assault” on the health and welfare of Americans.
“Removing EPA’s authority to limit deadly greenhouse gas emissions is as shortsighted as it is reckless,“ Sierra Club executive director Loren Blackford said. ”Communities will suffer as extreme weather continues to threaten us all, costs will continue to rise, and we will saddle future generations with a world that grows increasingly unlivable and endangers the life we know.”
Lowering Car Prices
President Donald Trump said on Thursday that the repeal of the Endangerment Finding was “crippling restrictions” that were a major factor in driving up car prices.
This was a “disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry,” Trump said. The repeal also terminates all additional greenhouse standards imposed as a result on vehicle models and engines between 2012 and 2027, and beyond.
During a Feb. 10 press briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that “this will be the largest deregulatory action in American history, and it will save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations.”
According to Leavitt, the savings are expected to come in the form of lower automobile costs, with reductions averaging roughly $2,400 per vehicle.
In a Feb. 12 statement, the Specialty Equipment Market Association applauded the repeal.
The update unleashes “innovation in a significant segment of the automotive aftermarket industry that is entirely dependent on ICE technology,” the group said, referring to internal combustion engines.
“That segment, which has a $100 billion annual economic impact and employs more than 330,000 Americans, is now free to rely on free-market solutions to our emissions challenges.”
Why do cats’ eyes glow in the dark? And What Does This Have To Do With Cars?
From Popular Science
One foggy night in 1933, a businessman named Percy Shaw was driving home from the pub in Yorkshire, England. The road was twisty and hard to see. Suddenly, two bright dots flashed back at him from the roadside. Percy slammed on the brakes.
The glowing dots belonged to a cat—and they probably saved his life. If he’d kept driving, he could have gone straight off the road.
That’s when Percy got his eureka moment. What if roads could “shine back” at drivers the same way cats’ eyes do? Within a year, he had invented Catseye® reflectors—those studs you still see embedded in roads today. They bounce your own headlights back at you, helping you see where you’re going in the dark.
But why do cats’ eyes glow like that?
Ancient Egyptians believed that a cat’s eyes held the sun after sunset, giving them their shiny nighttime look. The real reason was discovered less than a hundred years ago, in 1929, and it was even later that scientists understood how this feature affects vision.
Why cats’ eyes glow in the dark
All eyes—including yours—have a retina. The retina is a thin layer at the back of your eye that absorbs light and turns it into signals your brain can understand. Think of it like a transparent, light-catching screen.
Behind a cat’s retina is a mirror-like layer called the tapetum lucidum. Humans don’t have this. When light enters a human eye and isn’t absorbed by the retina, it’s not used.
But in a cat’s eye, light that passes through the retina without being absorbed hits the tapetum lucidum, which reflects it back through the retina. This gives the retina a second chance to capture the light. The glow you see in cats’ eyes at night is actually light bouncing off the tapetum lucidum.
Inbuilt night-vision goggles
Thanks to this feature, cats have significantly better light sensitivity than humans, meaning that their eyes can pick up even the smallest amount of light. They can see in light so dim it looks pitch-black to us—a very useful ability for animals that do a lot of their hunting at night.
Cats aren’t the only animals with a tapetum lucidum. Cows, sheep, goats, and horses have it, possibly for spotting predators in dim light. Fish, dolphins, and whales rely on it to see in dark, murky water.
On the other hand, squirrels, pigs, and most primates—including humans—don’t have it because they’re active during the day and don’t need night vision.
(Interestingly, most dogs have a tapetum lucidum, but it is sometimes missing in dogs with blue eyes and small domesticated breeds.)
New technology inspired by cats’ eyes
Just like Percy Shaw did in the 1930s, modern-day scientists are borrowing ideas from cats’ eyes.
Dr. Young Min Song, a professor of electrical engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, recently designed a camera inspired by feline eyes.
“Cats’ eyes have long fascinated me,” Song tells Popular Science, “particularly their ability to see clearly across extremely wide lighting conditions—from bright daylight to near darkness.”
It was the tapetum lucidum that initially gave Song the idea of designing a camera with a reflective layer to improve photos and videos taken in low-light conditions. This is “a beautifully simple yet powerful strategy for enhancing light sensitivity without additional energy consumption,” he says.
As Song expected, the camera showed enhanced sensitivity in low-light conditions thanks to the artificial reflector inspired by the tapetum lucidum.
Then he decided to add another feature: a slit-shaped opening that mimics a cat’s vertically-elongated pupil.
Why cats have slit-shaped eyes
In bright daylight, cats’ pupils squeeze down into thin vertical slits to block out extra light and protect the sensitive retina. The vertical shape also sharpens the outlines of objects, helping cats judge distance with incredible accuracy—an essential skill when stalking and ambushing prey.
While Song expected the reflective layer inspired by cats’ tapetum lucidum to help the camera in low light conditions, he was astonished by how applying a cat’s slit-shaped eyes also helped the camera.
“What surprised us most, however, was how effectively the vertical-pupil–inspired aperture helped break camouflage in complex scenes,” he says. In other words, it was great at spotting objects that would normally blend into the background when viewed through traditional cameras.
Song believes cats’ eyes may inspire more innovation.
“Beyond cameras, similar principles could be applied to robotic vision, autonomous systems, and even wearable or surveillance devices that must operate reliably in both bright and dim environments.”
Percy Shaw’s road studs have helped save countless lives. Who knows what future cat-inspired technology might do?
10 Nightmare First Dates That Ended In Chaos, Courtrooms And Headlines
From Bored Panda
A Tinder Date That Ended With A Woman Stuck In A Window After Throwing Her Own Waste
In September 2017, a first Tinder date between University of Bristol student Liam Smith and an unnamed amateur gymnast took a turn so bizarre it made national headlines.
The pair had what Smith described as a “really nice evening.” They went to dinner at a chicken restaurant, had a few beers, and returned to his shared student house for wine and a film.
At one point during the evening, the woman went to use the bathroom. Moments later, she came back with what Smith described as a “panicked look in her eye.”
The toilet wouldn’t flush.
According to both Smith and the woman, she panicked. Believing she could not leave the evidence behind, she threw her feces out of the bathroom window.
There was just one problem.
The window opened into a narrow gap separated by another non-opening double-glazed window. The waste did not land in the garden as she’d hoped, it instead became wedged between the panes.
Determined to retrieve it, the woman climbed head-first into the window gap. She slipped too far.
“My hips were wedged in the window, [so] I was upside down inside the window,” she later wrote. “I was suspended upside down for probably half an hour.”
Smith then called Avon Fire and Rescue Service, who had to destroy the bathroom window to free his date.
Smith then set up a crowdfunding campaign seeking £200 to cover the repair. The story went viral, and its absurdity helped it raise more than £2,500 in donations.
The pair agreed to donate the surplus to two charities: one supporting firefighters and another building and maintaining flushing toilets in developing countries.
A First Date That Turned Into A High-Speed Police Horror
On April 9, 2025, 27-year-old Courtney Redfern, a mother of two from Newcastle, went on what was supposed to be an ordinary first date with 20-year-old fitness coach Mazyar Azarbonyad.
By the end of the night, seven police officers had been rushed to hospital.
Azarbonyad was dropping Redfern off at her home when police attempted to stop his BMW M5. Instead of pulling over, he accelerated. According to reports, Redfern pleaded with him to stop but he refused.
What followed was a high-speed pursuit through Gateshead and onto the A1 toward Newcastle. Officers deployed a helicopter. Four police vehicles boxed the BMW in.
The situation then escalated when an unmarked police car, reportedly unaware the vehicles had come to a stop, slammed into the scene at around 80mph. Multiple officers were injured in the resulting collision described by witnesses as “carnage.”
Miraculously, Redfern and Azarbonyad escaped without major physical injuries.
But the consequences were immediate. Redfern was arrested alongside her date on suspicion of aiding and abetting dangerous driving.
At Newcastle Crown Court, Azarbonyad nervously laughed when asked if he was still in contact with Redfern. It is believed she decided not to see him again.
The hearing also revealed he had previously accrued eight penalty points in September 2023 for driving without a license or insurance, though he claims he had no knowledge of that conviction.
A Tinder Date That Turned Into A Violent Carjacking
On November 20, 2022, a man arrived at the Topgolf parking lot in Miami Gardens expecting a Tinder date with Alexis Raianna Cardenas, a 22-year-old woman with addresses in Wisconsin and Port St. Lucie, Florida.
Within minutes, police say, it became a setup.
After briefly talking in the lot, Cardenas instructed the victim to move the car to a nearby apartment complex. While seated in the passenger seat, the man later told police he noticed her texting.
At one point, he stepped out to urinate in nearby bushes.
When he returned, two men dressed in black ambushed him at gunpoint. He was forced to the ground and ordered to unlock his phone. Police say Cardenas moved to the back seat as the armed men got into the vehicle.
The victim told investigators he saw her smirking at him as they drove away in his Volkswagen Jetta.
The date had been a coordinated armed carjacking.
But the story did not end there.
On December 5, 2022, a Miami-Dade Police Department robbery detective spotted the stolen Jetta near Northwest 186th Street and 67th Avenue. According to police, the driver, 20-year-old Gabriel Gongora, opened fire on the detective, later identified as Ricaurte Lugo.
A bullet fragment struck Lugo in the face.
Gongora fled to his home in Miramar before being arrested and charged with attempted homicide.
Cardenas was arrested days later in St. Lucie County and charged with armed carjacking and conspiracy to commit armed carjacking. She was held without bond.
This Woman Tried To Get Her First Date Arrested Over A Crime He Never Committed
On June 16, 2023, 18-year-old Sumaya Thomas of North Liberty, Iowa, arranged to meet a man she had matched with on a dating app approximately one week earlier.
The man arrived at her home expecting a first date. Instead, police showed up.
According to an affidavit, Thomas called officers moments after the man arrived, claiming he was an ab*sive ex-boyfriend who had known her for two years. She told police he was threatening to “hit, punch, kick and stab her,” and falsely claimed she was pregnant with his child.
When officers detained the man, he insisted they had only recently met online. He provided messages between the two showing they had matched on a dating app days earlier.
“The conversation showed he was being honest and he really did just meet this female,” the affidavit stated.
Investigators later discovered she had deleted messages from her phone. She eventually admitted she fabricated the entire story because she “got cold feet on meeting him.”
The report added that she “didn’t think officers would help so she made up this call and the events that she described.”
The unnamed man was detained for more than an hour before officers determined the claims were false.
Thomas was arrested and charged with two counts of False Report of Indictable Offense to a Public Entity and one count of False Report on a 911 call, all misdemeanors.
The case resurfaced months later for a different reason.
By 2024, Thomas, then 19 and living in Dixon, Illinois, was arrested in Linn County, Iowa, on unrelated charges. Prosecutors alleged she stole more than $6,000 from two dependent adults while working as a caretaker for Limitless Potential, a nonprofit providing supported living services to individuals with intellectual disabilities.
According to the complaint, between March 3 and March 25, she used the victims’ debit cards without permission, stealing $5,834 from one and $878.27 from another.
A warrant was issued April 15, and she was later arrested and held in Linn County Jail on a $15,000 bond.
A First Date In The Middle Of A Hurricane That Went Nowhere
On September 1, 2021, as Hurricane Ida pummeled New York City with record-breaking rainfall, 22-year-old Cassidy Dangler made a decision many viewers later questioned.
She refused to cancel her first date.
That night, flash flooding submerged subway platforms across Manhattan. Viral videos showed water cascading down stairwells and filling train cars. Emergency warnings blanketed the city.
Dangler filmed herself boarding the subway in Upper Manhattan anyway.
After navigating waterlogged stations, she exited the train and walked ten blocks through rain-swept streets to meet her date at a rock-climbing gym that, remarkably, remained open.
The date lasted about an hour and did not lead to a second meeting.
“He made me pay for myself, when I trekked here in a hurricane,” Dangler said afterward.
When she returned home, she said she had to empty water from her boots. Asked whether there would be another date, she responded, “Certainly not. Certainly not with him.”
The clip circulated widely online, and the reaction was largely critical of Dangler’s decision.
Many viewers questioned why she would go on a first date during a dangerous storm.
“Who even goes on a date during a dangerous hurricane?” one commenter wrote.
Others accused her of chasing attention.
“This clearly wasn’t just about the date. She did this so she could go viral online, and it worked!” one user said. “She just wants her 15 minutes of fame.”
Some supported the date’s decision to split the bill.
“It’s literally the first date… Obviously you should pay for yourself,” one person wrote. “So glad he made her pay for herself.”
He Asked Her To Enter His Vehicle So He Could Give Her Flowers, Then Tried To Abduct Her
On June 2, 2010, a first date in Mountain View, California, ended with a kidnapping arrest after a woman said she was not allowed to leave her date’s vehicle.
According to Mountain View police, a 31-year-old woman from Sunnyvale told officers she had been persuaded to enter a van parked on the 200 block of Castro Street so her date could give her flowers.
Once she was seated in the passenger seat, the man began driving.
Police said the woman told them he refused to let her out of the vehicle. As the van slowed near White Oak Lane and Lawrence Expressway in Santa Clara, she opened the passenger door and fled.
She ran to a nearby 7-Eleven and called 911 at approximately 1:40 am.
Santa Clara police located the van and detained Charles Robinson, 24, of Redwood City, until Mountain View officers arrived. He was arrested and charged with kidnapping.
“No one has the right to deny another person the freedom to leave a social situation,” one person wrote. “This woman is a victim here.”
“A gentleman should present the flowers to the lady, not ask her to come and fetch them from his van,” another said. “That should have been a clue right there that this guy was up to something or, at the very least, not worthy of her time.”
This Date Ended With A Man Extorted, Kidnapped, Robbed, And Forced To Pose Bare
On December 10, 2022, a 30-year-old man in Pierce County, Washington, called 911 after a dating app meetup escalated into what authorities described as a robbery, kidnapping and extortion attempt.
According to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, the man arranged to meet a woman through Plenty of Fish and went to an apartment complex in Parkland.
Inside the apartment, investigators said another man appeared, ordered him to remove his clothes, and demanded his money, keys and cellphone. A woman took photos of the victim to use in an extortion scheme.
Deputies said the pair forced him to unlock his phone and attempted to transfer $6,000 to themselves, but the transaction was blocked as fraudulent. Before releasing him, they threatened to send the photos to his contacts if he reported what happened.
The following day, deputies returned to the same apartment on a domestic violence call and identified one of the individuals as 22-year-old Jahmichael Anthony Jeter III. Authorities said that during his arrest, Jeter attempted to reach for a firearm and later damaged a patrol vehicle while trying to escape.
Prosecutors charged Jeter with first-degree robbery, first-degree kidnapping, first-degree extortion, first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm and first-degree malicious mischief. He was booked into the Pierce County Jail on $125,000 bail.
Deputies also arrested 19-year-old Hydea Marie Tharpe, who was charged with first-degree robbery, first-degree kidnapping and first-degree extortion. Her bail was set at $50,000.
She Went On A First Date, And Ended Up Being Involved In A Bank Robbery
On December 5, 2016, a Massachusetts woman picked up a man she had met on a dating app for their first in-person date.
By the end of the afternoon, she was sitting in a car outside a bank while he ran out with a firearm and stolen cash.
According to the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office, the woman drove from Chepachet, Rhode Island, toward North Attleboro, Massachusetts, after picking up Christopher Castillo from his parents’ home. The two had never met in person before that day.
As they approached a Bristol County Savings Bank branch, Castillo asked her to pull over. He exited the vehicle and went inside while she waited in the Nissan Maxima.
Inside the bank, prosecutors said Castillo showed a teller a firearm and demanded $1,000, saying he was “really hurting.” The employee handed over the cash.
Minutes later, he ran back to the car wearing sunglasses and a hat, holding the cash and the firearm.
“F**king go,” he told her, according to her statement to police.
She began driving but pulled over once she saw North Attleboro police cruisers with flashing lights behind them. She exited the vehicle and walked away.
Castillo remained inside the car. Police removed him after he struggled with officers and spit at them. Authorities recovered a .44 caliber weapon, later identified as an antique belonging to Castillo’s stepfather, along with the $1,000 taken from the bank.
Castillo later pleaded guilty to armed robbery and three counts of battery on a police officer. He was sentenced to three years in state prison for the robbery and an additional two years in the Bristol County House of Corrections.
The woman was not charged.
She Threatened Her Date With Homicide If He Ever Left Her
In 2017, Jacqueline Ades, then 31, met a man through an online dating website in Arizona. They went on one date.
According to court documents cited by ABC 15, the contact did not stop there.
Police say Ades sent the man approximately 65,000 text messages over several months, sometimes as many as 500 in a single day. The messages allegedly included threats and disturbing statements.
One reportedly read, “Don’t ever try to leave me … I’ll k**l you … I don't wanna be a m**derer.” Others, according to the station, referenced wearing his body parts and bathing in his blood.
The Paradise Valley Police Department said it received four separate calls between July 2017 and early 2018 regarding Ades showing up at the man’s home or business.
The situation escalated in April 2018.
The man, who was out of the country at the time, contacted police after seeing on surveillance video that Ades had entered his home. When officers arrived, they found her inside the residence taking a bath.
A butcher knife was reportedly discovered in the front seat of her vehicle.
She was arrested and charged with felony trespass. After being released, police said she continued sending messages that “indicated that harm may come” to the man.
On May 4, officers again responded to a call about her at a local business owned by the same man. Police said she was acting irrationally and claiming to be his wife.
She was taken into custody on May 8, 2018, and charged with felony stalking, threatening and intimidating, and misdemeanor harassment. She was also booked on a failure-to-appear warrant related to the earlier trespassing charge.
A Date With A Man So “Egomaniacal” She Considered Stop Dating Altogether
In 2023, 25-year-old Caitlin, a New York City resident, shared what she described as the “worst date” she had ever experienced in a TikTok video that quickly surpassed 400,000 views.
According to her account, she met a 43-year-old man at a bar in the West Village. Although she said she was not usually interested in older men, she agreed to a date after he appeared “cool, nice and well dressed.”
The following week, she met him at another West Village bar.
When she arrived, she said he was seated at a table with six of his male friends. Shortly after, two interns from his company joined them. She said she immediately felt uncomfortable.
Eventually, he asked for a separate table for the two of them.
During their conversation, she said he asked her age and reacted with relief when she told him she was 25. According to her retelling, he claimed that women in their early 20s “can’t keep up with him intellectually” and that he felt “too bad” for women in their 30s because they were “so desperate.”
She also said he repeatedly talked about himself and showed her photos of himself with celebrities.
At the end of the dinner, she declined his suggestion to continue the night elsewhere. She alleged that he told her he would not order her an Uber home unless she agreed to keep the date going.
Although she said she could easily arrange her own ride, she continued to another bar with him before ultimately leaving. While waiting for transportation, she said she overheard one of his friends ask him whether he had “got rid of that girl yet.”
Afterward, she posted a video describing the experience as the worst first date of her life and said it made her reconsider dating altogether.
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