Don't go writing the obituary for the U.S. electric vehicle just yet. After sales tanked following the cancellation of tax credits last year, they've been growing for the last three consecutive quarters, according to a new report from Cox Automotive. EVs captured 6.1% of the U.S. market, their best showing since the third quarter of 2025. The data shows that the EV market is 'finding its footing again,' Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of industry insights at Cox Automotive, said in an analysis that accompanied the new report. EV prices have become more competitive, and high gas prices have sparked renewed consumer interest, she added. Toyota, Rivian, and Subaru led the pack. Sales of the Toyota bZ and Lexus RZ about doubled following a refresh that hit dealerships late last year. The updated models adopted Tesla-style charging ports and received larger batteries, more powerful motors, and faster charging times. The recovery in the U.S. mimics what occurred in Germany after the government stopped incentives for EV purchases in November 2023, a year earlier than expected. The following month, sales fell by more than half. But after hitting that low, the market steadily recovered. German EV sales in August, the most recent month for which data is available, were the second highest on record....

While Rivian didn't break out how many of those were R2 SUVs, this was the first full quarter of sales of the new vehicle after it launched in June. The company said Friday that it will release its full third-quarter financial results on October 29. Rivian has big plans for the R2, which currently starts at just under $60,000. The company is betting that it will sell between 20,000 to 25,000 R2 vehicles by the end of the year, which would make it one of the fastest-selling EVs in U.S. history ' second only to Tesla's Model Y. Rivian also plans to make cheaper models available that will cost as low as around $45,000. If Rivian hits those numbers, the company believes it can sell between 65,000 and 70,000 vehicles this year, including its R1 lineup of vehicles and its commercial electric van. That would be its best sales year ever, as the company has spent the last few years stuck at around the 50,000-vehicles-sold mark. Rivian is currently building the R2 at its factory in Normal, Illinois, where it recently expanded the production space to accommodate the new SUV. But Rivian is also building a brand new factory outside Atlanta, Georgia, where it expects to be able to build as many as 300,000 vehicles per year in the near future, with the option to expand that capacity down the road....

It was the second strong quarter in a row for Tesla after a somewhat rough start to the year. The sales figure easily beat out consensus estimates from Wall Street and topped even the most optimistic view for the company, which made its 10 millionth vehicle earlier this year. The company said Friday morning that it built 464,391 vehicles in the quarter and delivered more than 486,532. That's an increase of roughly 6,000 vehicle deliveries compared to the second quarter. But sales were still down from the same period last year, when Tesla delivered 497,000 vehicles. That quarter ' Tesla's best ever ' was helped by a rush of U.S. buyers who were looking to take advantage of an expiring federal tax credit. That drop has been the result of a number of factors. Tesla has not released any new consumer models in years ' with the exception of the Cybertruck, which has been a commercial flop. Potential buyers have also balked because of Elon Musk's personal support of Donald Trump's presidential campaign and his role overseeing the Department of Government Efficiency, which laid off thousands of workers and canceled international aid funding....

A new AI model called Koa is one of the biggest announcements from Salesforce this week at its giant Dreamforce tech conference. Koa is the company's first reasoning model, built on Nvidia's open-weight Nemotron model. The two companies worked together to post-train Koa to excel at sales, marketing, and customer-support-related tasks. Koa is a shining example of how the enterprise world's needs for AI are diverging from what the frontier labs are offering. Proprietary AI labs would rather have enterprises uploading files, code, prompts, and feedback directly into their models and agents, and spending millions to do so. Koa will be provided as an alternative to the other models Salesforce offers in its Agentforce platform, where its customers build agents to handle rote tasks like answering customer service questions or scheduling appointments. 'We've built many small task-specific language models, which are part of Agentforce's portfolio,' Jayesh Govindarajan, EVP of Salesforce AI, told TechCrunch. 'But reasoning has always been something that we've relied on the frontier model providers for. Until now.'...