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Lucid Motors is downsizing, again. The electric vehicle maker is laying off 18% of its staff just a few months after a 12% reduction in force in February, according to Electrek. The company also eliminated a second production shift at its factory in Casa Grande, Arizona. EV sales plummeted in the U.S. after the federal EV tax credit expired in September. While many automakers are canceling new electric vehicle lines in the U.S., Lucid hasn’t axed any plans yet, and will be releasing its first lower-cost EV, the Lucid Cosmos SUV, later this year with a price tag under $50,000. It’s also preparing to launch a robotaxi service later this year in partnership with Uber and the autonomous driving technology company Nuro. According to Lucid’s new CEO, Silvio Napoli, the staff cuts will help “simplify the company, sharpen execution, and position Lucid to become more competitive over time.”
A Lucid robotaxi with Nuro technology.Courtesy of Lucid Motors
Trump’s environmental deregulation crusade continues. The Interior Department proposed several changes to the rules governing oil and gas leasing on federal lands Monday that would limit public input and cut costs for companies. Under existing rules, which were updated during the Biden administration, companies must maintain a minimum bond of $500,000 for each state where they hold leases to cover the cost of capping oil and gas wells when they are done drilling. Trump’s proposal would reduce the requirement to $25,000, shifting the financial risk of remediation to state taxpayers. The new rules would also shorten public participation periods from 90 days to 10, and get rid of a requirement that companies include plans to minimize methane emissions when they apply for drilling permits.
Red states are going after California, this time for its nation-leading plastic regulations. In 2022, the Golden State passed a law setting plastic waste reduction targets and requiring companies to cover the cost of recycling of their own products. The state aims to cut single-use plastic packaging on products by 25% by 2032. Now, 17 attorneys general from red states have teamed up with the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, a trade group, to sue California, arguing that the rules represent an “unprecedented overreach” that will increase the cost of goods throughout the country.
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In the first case of its kind, 10 Australians are suing the government for violating their human rights by failing to limit fossil fuel production. The claimants, each of whom has been personally affected by climate change-fueled extreme weather, brought the case to the United Nations’ Human Rights Committee on Monday. Some of them have lost their homes to wildfires and floods, while others have experienced health impacts from heat waves. The case follows a 2025 ruling by the International Court of Justice that all governments have an obligation to protect people from climate change, citing support for fossil fuel production and consumption as a potential violation of this obligation. While that ruling didn’t have any enforcement power, it teed up the potential for country-level claims like this one in Australia. The country is the second largest exporter of coal in the world and the third largest exporter of liquified natural gas.
The rumors were true. The Trump administration has appointed Travis Kavulla, a former utility regulator and power company executive, to lead the Bonneville Power Administration, a federal agency that sells electricity from the government’s hydroelectric dams in the Pacific Northwest. Kavulla arrives as the agency prepares for a controversial exit from California’s real-time electricity trading market to join a new day-ahead market overseen by the Southwest Power Pool, a regional transmission organization. Environmental groups are urging Kavulla reconsider the decision, arguing that it risks raising energy costs for Northwest ratepayers.
The climate change research and news site Carbon Brief debuted Project Cosmos on Monday, the world’s largest database of research on the warming planet. It includes more than 1.8 million publications and “captures the vast body of human knowledge about climate change that has accumulated over more than a century of academic study.” The architects created a stunning “star” map that visualizes the collection by clustering of fields of study, such as medicine, chemistry, or agriculture. They also identified the 500 most-cited studies and scientists, with French carbon cycle modeler Philippe Ciais earning the top spot.
