What’s the best-selling motor vehicle of all time? Volkswagen built over 21 million Type 1 Beetles, while Toyota has moved over 50 million Corollas since its original launch. Neither of them holds a candle to the Honda Super Cub. As of 2017, Honda sold more than 100 million Super Cubs, and it was the motorcycle that got much of the world on wheels. The Super Cub was also a sensation here in America, but not anymore. According to a recent report, Honda quietly discontinued the Super Cub in America in 2024, and somehow, nobody noticed until now.

This story comes to us from our friends at RideApart, and honestly, it was shocking. I sometimes write about Honda motorcycles and sometimes visit Honda’s site to make sure I’m abreast of current models and pricing. I’ve lost count of how many times I went to the Honda Powersports website and remember seeing the Super Cub there throughout most of 2025. When did it disappear?

RideApart notes that Honda scrubbed the Super Cub from its site in 2025. Using the power of the Internet Archive, I can confirm that the Super Cub remained on American Honda’s website until at least December 8, 2025, then it disappeared. The model displayed through early December 2025 was the 2024 Super Cub.

Unfortunately, no mistake has been made. Honda’s American arm has decided to stop selling the Super Cub here. It just took until now for everyone to notice. This marks the end of an incredible journey. The Honda Super Cub was more than just a motorcycle. It was a movement. This was the motorcycle that got non-riders on two wheels and helped foster an image that not every biker is a belligerent man in leathers riding a loud Harley. For decades, the Super Cub was the motorcycle for everyone from all walks of life. Now, at least for Americans, it’s a motorcycle for nobody. Let’s look into what made the Super Cub an all-time sales hit around the world.

Born From Bicycles

Like so many household names today, Honda did not get its start in motor vehicles, but in bicycles. Soichiro Honda grew up helping his dad repair bicycles. His heart wasn’t only on two wheels, as Honda has a passion for cars and planes as well. As a teenager, Honda would learn how to tune cars and build his own racecars. In 1928, Honda opened a motorcycle and car repair shop. He would also become a known name in car racing in Tokyo. That was until a fateful race in 1936 when, at the newly constructed Tamagawa Speedway in Tokyo, his racecar rolled three times at 75 mph, throwing him from the wreck. After recovering from the crash, Honda decided to hang up his repair hat and get into parts manufacturing.

Honda’s first parts were piston rings, which, according to the book, Japan’s Motorcycle Wars: An Industry History by Jeffrey Alexander, were such a highly-sought commodity in late 1930s Japan that they were worth more than their equivalent weight in solid silver. Yet, Honda’s first piston rings had failure after failure. Eventually, Honda scored a deal to supply Toyota with piston rings, but only three of the 50 rings provided to Toyota met the required spec.

Honda, who had no formal training at the time, decided to attend an engineering school, visit some factories, and study Toyota’s quality control so he could better understand the science of casting.

Immediately following the events of World War II, Soichiro Honda found inspiration in the little engines that powered wireless radios during the war. Honda figured he could use a wireless radio engine to make his wife’s life easier. He mounted an engine on her bicycle, and it allowed her to ride to town much quicker than just riding on human power alone. Given that smashing success, Honda decided to make a whole business out of it.

At first, Honda’s new motor company was small, and featured 10 men working in a small building who mated 50cc Tohatsu two-stroke wireless radio engines into bicycles. When the team used up their supply of 500 engines, Honda designed his own engine, which resembled a chimney. Honda says its earliest engines were problematic. The engines were required to be warmed up before starting them; the oil didn’t lubricate very well, and riders had to kick up to 30 times before the engines would even fire.

You Meet The Nicest People On A Honda

One of my previous stories about Honda continues from there:

Honda’s first product was the Honda A-Type, launched in 1947, a year before Honda formally founded the Honda Motor Company, but a year after Honda started engineering. The A-Type was a die-cast two-stroke engine with rotary valves that delivered power to a bicycle’s wheels through a patented belt drive. Honda built its engines on assembly lines, and parts were designed so that anyone could put them together without manually filing and shaping the parts. In reality, Honda says, most of Honda’s early parts still needed manual finessing before they could fit together, but the concept was still sound and was refined as time went on.

It was only 11 years later that Honda would change the world. Honda and managing director Takeo Fujisawa traveled to Europe, where they found out that the small motorcycle culture was way different there than it was in Japan. They went back to Japan, convinced it was time for a revolutionary new way to travel. Honda’s new motorcycle would be neither a moped nor a scooter. It would also be designed to be inherently friendly and easy to ride. Further, this new bike was to be designed from the start to be for everyone, from the suited Japanese businessman to a woman in a clean dress. Oh, and the motorcycle couldn’t be complicated, so a traditional manual transmission was out, and the motorcycle had to be seriously rugged and powerful to survive Japan’s rough roads.

In 1958, Honda launched the Super Cub. The little motorcycle did everything Honda wanted and more. It was truly a motorcycle for the masses, no matter where in the world they lived. Perhaps even more brilliant than the Super Cub itself was its marketing. The Super Cub came to America in 1959. In a time when motorcycle riders were gaining a negative “biker gang” reputation, Honda proudly marketed the Super Cub as being the motorcycle for everyone. “You Meet The Nicest People On A Honda” remains one of the greatest marketing lines of all time.

Allegedly, that European tour involved visits to Kreidler and Lambretta dealerships. Honda concluded that the Euro bikes he saw didn’t really have a future. Sadly, Honda would be proven correct in one way or another, as so many European brands do not exist anymore.

Part of what made the original Super Cub such a winning vehicle was Soichiro Honda’s formula. According to Honda, he told company engineers to “create things that can fit in the hand” and “create things that are easy to operate.”

Specifically, Honda wanted a motorcycle that someone could ride while carrying an order of soba noodles in one hand. Honda’s engineers had to build something that they hadn’t ever seen before. Until then, Honda produced 50cc two-stroke Cub engines for bicycles that made only a single horsepower. Honda demanded that these new engines be both four-stroke and make four horses.

Overcoming Challenges

Engineers actually beat expectations, creating an OHC engine that pumped out 4.5 HP at 9,500 RPM. The motorcycle’s frame was given a step-through design so that anyone could ride it no matter what they were wearing, and the transmission was given an automatic centrifugal clutch so that the rider didn’t have to be concerned with operating the clutch themselves. Transmission designer Akira Akima explained further, from Honda:

“The development of the centrifugal clutch itself was not all that difficult. However, figuring out how to engage and disengage the clutch in synchronization with gear shift operation proved to be complicated. On top of that, because of the kick starter ratio, the clutch needed to disengage when stopped, but it also had to engage automatically when starting.”

Owing to a structure that at first glance seemingly had to meet conflicting requirements, the team found that they couldn’t come up with good ideas quickly. Even Soichiro seemed to be thinking about it constantly, and every morning he’d drop by the design room asking, “How’s it going?”

Akima — “One day as I was leaving I said, ‘If we used a screw, we could convert the rotation of the kick action to the axial direction, but I’m afraid we might run into trouble owing to co-rotation.’ After saying this, I gave it a bit more thought, ‘Since the clutch has a certain amount of drag, it might just cancel out the co-rotation,’ Just then the Old Man came running back in saying, ‘Since the clutch has resistance, I’m sure we can make it work! I told him that was just what I’d been thinking, and he retorted, ‘Sometimes we even think alike!’ and we shared a big laugh. Eventually, we applied this method to solving the problem, and I was finally freed from the pressure of his constant visits to our room every morning.”

The Super Cub presented further challenges that required creative solutions. For example, according to Honda, the Super Cub’s fork was created after an engineer watched Disney’s Bambi, and they saw Bambi running. The fork is supposed to resemble a running deer. Placing the engine in the middle of the frame reduced weight, improved balance, improved cooling, and allowed the wheels to be taller. Those wheels allowed the Super Cub to tackle rough terrain while looking friendly like a bicycle.

Then there was the bodywork, from Honda:

While the gist of the design was thus being established, another part worthy of special mention—and one of the Super Cub’s most distinctive and eye-catching features—is the use of totally new polyethylene resin in the creation of its front fender and leg shields. This new material also made the bodywork remarkably light compared to FRP (fiber-reinforced plastic). Additionally, polyethylene’s more pliable properties made it almost unbreakable, while giving the body parts a remarkably warm texture.

Kimura — “Since the plastic parts had a softer quality, I changed the colors to create a combination that exuded both softness and brightness. I called these the colors of the sea and the sky, as they’re colors that are familiar to and popular with most Japanese. Since the Super Cub was designed to be a vehicle for the masses, I wanted to use familiar colors rather than fancy shades. As an accent, we made the seat a reddish purple color. In those days, the Old Man used to wear a red shirt and drive a red sports car, which gave me a hint. Then I recalled a scene I saw in the movie ‘Summertime’ starring Katharine Hepburn, in which a piece of Italian Venetian glass glistens with a purplish deep red hue in the light. This made me think that if the seat were a slightly bluish red, then it would perfectly complement the blue of the body.”

As for the polyethylene used to make the body parts, the specialty makers of the time had never processed such large molded parts. So in order to get Honda to outsource the production of the parts to them, they agreed to the condition that Honda would provide the molds. Could this have been because not only Honda itself but also the subcontractors were eager to create an innovative new motorcycle that the world had never seen before?

As a note regarding the color changes, Honda himself was reported to be colorblind.

A Worldwide Sensation

Honda’s team knew they captured lightning in a bottle when they looked at the final product. As Honda reports, managing director Takeo Fujisawa said that Honda could sell 30,000 units. Apparently, the development team thought that he meant 30,000 units a year. He’d clarify that he meant that they’d sell 30,000 units a month. That was shocking, as at the time, the cumulative total of sales of all motorcycle makers in Japan was 40,000 units a month.

Amazingly, the Super Cub is one of those examples where an ambitious production target might have been conservative. The Super Cub would dominate the sales charts. Some 564,000 units were sold by 1960, and sales hit the 5 million mark by 1966. It would go on to become not just the best-selling motorcycle in Japan, but by 2008, sales reached 60 million copies since production began in 1958. By 2017, sales surpassed the 100 million mark. The Super Cub even had an off-road variant in the form of the Trail and the hot Sports Cub.

The Super Cub was popular everywhere.

In the developing world, Super Cubs helped give people mobility. Here in America, the Super Cub and Honda’s iconic marketing helped shift the image of motorcycling. The Super Cub was the perfect two-wheeler for the counter-culture movement in America. In Vietnam, the U.S. military shipped over some 20,000 Super Cubs. Locals would love them so much that Honda managed to sell 750,000 units between 1967 and 1969. Super Cubs remain in use as everything from daily drivers and delivery vehicles to taxis and trucks. Super Cubs got their own variants in Taiwan and China, too. Super Cub culture remains strong in Southeast Asia today, and lots of Honda fans out there customize their Cubs.

The Super Cub Got An Upgrade…

America would eventually lose the Super Cub in 1974, and its descendant, the Passport, in 1983. Then, America wouldn’t see an official Super Cub release for decades. Sure, we were able to buy the Sym Symba and other licensed copies, but none straight from Honda itself. That changed in 2018 when Honda said that the Super Cub was on its way back to America for 2019.

The new Super Cub C125 looked vintage, but was a thoroughly modern build. The old Super Cubs had frames of pressed steel, but the new ones are tubular steel with plastic panels on top. It has a 124cc single-cylinder fuel-injected engine with 9.6 horsepower on tap, a semi-automatic centrifugal clutch, ABS, an LCD screen, and even a 220mm front disc brake. The new Super Cub is a thoroughly modern motorcycle that only looks old.

Honda kept the Super Cub accessible, too. It had a price of $3,600 at launch, was easy to ride, had a usable top speed of around 60 mph to 65 mph, and its 1-gallon tank was good for 100 miles.

The new Super Cub got positive reviews. Some folks, myself included, feel like the Super Cub brings you back to a purer kind of motorcycling. It doesn’t have a million horsepower, isn’t trying to wheelie at every given moment, and doesn’t require a ton of skill. A Super Cub is all about the fun of motorcycling.

…Then Left America

Weirdly, Honda hasn’t really released sales data after 2017. So, we know that the Super Cub surpassed 100 million in sales, but we don’t know by how much. We also do not know how many were sold in America. What we do know is that Honda silently discontinued the Super Cub in America after 2024. The Super Cub page was never updated for the 2025 model year. Then, as I noted earlier, the page was taken down entirely in December 2025.

Thankfully, the Super Cub appears to be alive and well elsewhere. Europe’s and Thailand’s models of the Super Cub just got new colors for 2026. Honda killed the Super Cub 50 in 2024, but keeps smaller Cubs around in the form of the Super Cub 110cc Lite and its variants.

It’s unclear why Honda pulled the Super Cub out of the American market. The small motorcycle is one category that has seen healthy sales in recent times, bolstered by affordable options from Royal Enfield, CFMoto, and Honda’s MiniMotos. Even Triumph got into the small-displacement game because that’s what younger riders are buying nowadays.

I don’t want to get into speculation, but Honda’s MiniMoto lineup had a lot of tiny bikes that had the same engines and fulfilled different, but similar roles. There was the Grom, the Monkey, the Dax 125, the Super Cub C125, and the Trail125. Then there was the super beginner-friendly Navi and four different scooters. Perhaps Honda learned that it’s possible for there to be too much of a good thing. Tariffs may also play a role. I reached out to Honda to see if I could get some clarity.

The good news is that it doesn’t appear that cheap motorcycles are going anywhere. CFMoto and Royal Enfield are still coming out with affordable models, and Honda still has the whole lineup listed above, minus the Super Cub.

There’s also a non-zero chance that the Super Cub is gone forever. Here’s what Janaki from RideApart reported:

However, I reached out to American Honda to ask if it was truly gone for our market. I was told that yes, MY2024 was the final year for it here. However, Honda cautions that it may not be gone for good, but “any potential return of the Super Cub would depend on ongoing product planning and market considerations.” There is no confirmation that this will change any time soon; however, we shouldn’t rule out the possibility completely.

I think the saddest part about this is that Honda officially stopped selling the Super Cub in America more than a year ago, but it never bothered to tell anyone. Then again, it took until February 2026 for this news to drop. I planned on buying a new C125 this year. Looks like I won’t be able to do that unless I find new old stock.

So, the Super Cub C125 is gone in America. It’s a depressing end, but this wasn’t even the first time Honda pulled the plug in America. No matter what happens, the Super Cub’s impact on motorcycling and the world will probably be eternal. For many, the Super Cub will always be more than just a tiny motorcycle. They offered mobility, fun, and a shining example that motorcycling didn’t have to be grumpy, loud, and mean.

Top photo: Honda

The post Honda Has Quietly Stopped Selling The Most Produced Motor Vehicle Of All Time To Americans appeared first on The Autopian.

I was just out in Los Angeles for one of our periodic Autopian Leadership Synods and ayahuasca-fueled vision quests that eventually form the basis for our future business plans. While there, we had use of a Polestar 4 press car – you know, the one without the rear window, which is what everyone has been clamoring for, as I’m sure you know. But it’s not that absence of a rear window that I think is the most unsettling and disturbing detail of this car: it’s something smaller and more insidious, and something that I feel is remarkably well-suited to showcase what feels like a pervasive madness of modern automotive design.

It’s just a little detail, but I think its very existence is something we should really be looking at and thinking about, critically. Because the very existence of this feature – and I’m hesitant to really call it a “feature” – implies a way of thinking about modern cars that I feel is fundamentally flawed and deeply annoying, and is a way of thinking that contributes to the modern problems of cars being too expensive to buy, repair, and maintain. Also, it’s just kind of stupid.

It’s this:

See that? It’s that little button there that you use to close the charging port. There’s a motor behind there, and that motor moves the door closed – you know, like what you could do with your hand without even thinking about it, like you’ve been doing to little refueling flaps (gasoline or electrons or hydrogen or whatever, it doesn’t matter) for decades.

The button is very counterintuitive; every single fiber of your soul wants to just close the damn flap with your hand like you’ve been closing doors and cabinets and mailboxes and whatever since you were a toddler, but if you try you can feel the hidden motor connected to that hinge resist and suggest, via subtle tactile cues, that you’ll probably cause hundreds of dollars of damage or more were you to absent-mindedly force it.

Can you picture how maddening this is? It drives me clamshit. Here’s some video evidence of the madness-driving:

 

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Now, having to open the charging port from the inside isn’t great, but there are plenty of cars that have you open the fuel door with some little button or lever, so I can’t really fault the Polestar 4 for that. And besides, it looks like it can be opened manually from the outside, according to the manual:

I mean, they say it’s only for emergencies and you shouldn’t do it regularly, and they mention “prying” which hardly seems ideal. That said, there’s another part of the manual that says you can open it manually, and it’s a little less dire-sounding:

Despite this, though, the preferred way is indeed opening from the center screen’s menu:

I think you can open it from the phone app, too? All of this feels like needless complexity, especially considering that on other Polestar cars, like the Polestar 2, all you have to do is tap the charge door to open it and close it with your hand, you know, like every other freaking car on Earth:

What was wrong with this? Aesthetically, it looks no different from the outside of the car; there are no aerodynamic disadvantages; it accomplishes the same function as the powered door, and does it without the extra complexity of a motor and specialized software. It was fine. Not a problem at all.

I suppose the only advantage the powered door offers is that it can close itself, if you forget and leave it open (which is hardly an Earth-shattering problem), as described in the manual:

So, okay, it can automatically do something that you could have also done essentially automatically. How is any of this worth it? I can’t think of anything I need a car to do for me less than closing a tiny door. But look at all the complexity and complication that gets introduced for this nearly meaningless feature! I mean, look at how many more pages of owner’s manual is taken up just describing how this feature is to be properly interacted with (especially compared to the half-page the Polestar 2 needs to explain how to open and close its charge port), and then there’s the fact that there’s a motor in there and associated wiring and gearing and linkages and the software needed to control it and sense when it’s open or shut and on and on and all for what? So you don’t have to move your hand three inches?

The mentality that led to anyone thinking this is a good idea is deeply and profoundly misguided. Modern cars are so wildly expensive precisely because of this sort of thinking, this concept that every interaction with the car needs to be motorized or interact with the car’s software and screens or be remotely actuated in some inane way – it’s absurd. This way of thinking burdens cars with needless hardware and software and complexity, and the end result is an experience that’s just more annoying than the old manual ways.

Look at the issues with powered door handles, for example: there’s a reason China is banning them. They add complexity and don’t work reliably in emergency situations, and all for what? So rubes can be dazzled when the handle slowly slides out from the car? It’s ridiculous. Door handles were a solved problem, and these new powered solutions only made them worse.

The same goes for this charge port flap. No one was asking for a fucking button to close the door. No one’s experience with this car is improved thanks to the addition of this button or any of the associated rules and systems that the charge flap now demands.

Am I being a luddite? I don’t think so. I like seeing new tech applied to cars, but only if it actually, you know, makes owning and using that car better. And so much of what is being put into new cars is not making them better. Touchscreen-controlled air vents and gloveboxes are idiotic, for example. None of this crap is making cars better, just more complex and expensive. And if you think all this electrical bullshit isn’t going to be a problem as the car ages, then I envy your ability to happily delude yourself.

It’s up to us to speak out and push back when we see this sort of bad design happening. When carmakers seem to be going down a poorly chosen path, we need to make it clear that there are plenty of potential car buyers who don’t want this. I suspect most people are absolutely capable of slapping a charge door shut, and are just fine with that. If there’s something I’m missing here, some glorious joy that comes from pushing a stupid button to get a motor to close a door I could have more easily just shut with my hand, I’m listening.

Until then, Polestar, knock it off, already.

Top graphic image: Jason Torchinsky

The post This Miserable ‘Feature’ Of The Polestar 4 Feels Like A Symbol For What Is Wrong With Modern Cars appeared first on The Autopian.

A Best Buy employee in Florida was charged with fraud after allegedly using his manager's code to heavily discount nearly 150 items that he and his accomplices purchased and pawned.

It seems that the manager first started growing suspicious about "strange sales numbers" in December 2024, an ABC News affiliate in West Palm Beach reported. Private investigators traced the weird sales back to a 36-year-old employee, Matthew Lettera, who allegedly conducted 97 discounted purchases for himself and 52 additional transactions for others. Some MacBooks were discounted as much as 99 percent, a local CW affiliate reported. In total, Best Buy lost more than $118,000 from the scheme.

According to a LinkedIn profile that matches Lettera's information, he started working at Best Buy in January 2020 after pivoting from career training as a chef.

An arrest affidavit from the Palm Beach Police Department reviewed by a local CBS News affiliate alleged that Lettera's scheme did not start until March 2024, about four years into his Best Buy career as an "experience manager." A switch seemingly flipped, as Lettera allegedly  conducted dozens of heavily discounted transactions that went unnoticed for months, seemingly growing bolder and eventually recruiting coworkers to join the scheme.

He apparently didn't expect the Best Buy managers to detect the losses or seek to retrieve pawned merchandise, but that was a miscalculation. Lettera was arrested after police tracked down some of the discounted MacBook laptops at local pawn shops. Cooperating with police, the pawn shops provided sales records allegedly showing that Lettera sold the steeply discounted products and profited from exploiting Best Buy's discount system.

Best Buy worker linked to shoplifting ring

In 2023, a few months before Lettera's alleged fraud scheme started, the National Retail Foundation warned  that monitoring employee theft had become a bigger priority for retailers. In times of inflation, retail theft typically increases, and their survey found that a record level of talent turnover was stressing out retail employees and making it easier for those with malicious intent to get away with fraud.

For Best Buy, threats of losses from stressed-out employees seemingly remain, as inflation pressures persist. Last month, an employee at a Best Buy in Georgia assisted a shoplifting ring in stealing more than $40,000 in merchandise, a local CBS News affiliate reported.

Surveillance footage showed that 20-year-old Dorian Allen allowed shoplifters to simply leave the store without paying for more than 140 items, a police report alleged. Among merchandise stolen were "dozens of PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series S consoles, AirPods, Meta Quest VR headsets, Beats wireless headphones, a PC, a Segway, wireless controllers, and more," CBS News reported.

Charged with theft, Allen claimed he was being blackmailed by a hacker group who threatened to expose nude photos he shared on Instagram if he didn't cooperate. Allegedly under duress, Allen memorized descriptions of the shoplifters so that he could allow them to take items without paying. He also allegedly helped thieves load items into their vehicles.

Managers called in police after Allen allegedly spent weeks assisting the shoplifters without detection.

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On Friday afternoon, Ars Technica published an article containing fabricated quotations generated by an AI tool and attributed to a source who did not say them. That is a serious failure of our standards. Direct quotations must always reflect what a source actually said.

That this happened at Ars is especially distressing. We have covered the risks of overreliance on AI tools for years, and our written policy reflects those concerns. In this case, fabricated quotations were published in a manner inconsistent with that policy. We have reviewed recent work and have not identified additional issues. At this time, this appears to be an isolated incident.

Ars Technica does not permit the publication of AI-generated material unless it is clearly labeled and presented for demonstration purposes. That rule is not optional, and it was not followed here.

We regret this failure and apologize to our readers. We have also apologized to Mr. Scott Shambaugh, who was falsely quoted.

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Amazon and Flock Safety have ended a partnership that would've given law enforcement access to a vast web of Ring cameras.

The decision came after Amazon faced substantial backlash for airing a Super Bowl ad that was meant to be warm and fuzzy, but instead came across as disturbing and dystopian.

The ad begins with a young girl surprised to receive a puppy as a gift. It then warns that 10 million dogs go missing annually. Showing a series of lost dog posters, the ad introduces a new "Search Party" feature for Ring cameras that promises to revolutionize how neighbors come together to locate missing pets.

At that point, the ad takes a "creepy" turn, Sen. Ed Markey (D.-Mass.) told Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in a letter urging changes to enhance privacy at the company.

Illustrating how a single Ring post could use AI to instantly activate searchlights across an entire neighborhood, the ad shocked critics like Markey, who warned that the same technology could easily be used to "surveil and identify humans."

Markey suggested that in blasting out this one frame of the ad to Super Bowl viewers, Amazon "inadvertently revealed the serious privacy and civil liberties risks attendant to these types of Artificial Intelligence-enabled image recognition technologies."

In his letter, Markey also shared new insights from his prior correspondence with Amazon that he said exposed a wide range of privacy concerns. Ring cameras can "collect biometric information on anyone in their video range," he said, "without the individual’s consent and often without their knowledge." Among privacy risks, Markey warned that Ring owners can retain swaths of biometric data, including face scans, indefinitely. And anyone wanting face scans removed from Ring cameras has no easy solution and is forced to go door to door to request deletions, Markey said.

On social media, other critics decried Amazon's ad as "awfully dystopian," declaring it was "disgusting to use dogs to normalize taking away our freedom to walk around in public spaces." Some feared the technology would be more likely to benefit police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers than families looking for lost dogs.

Amazon's partnership with Flock, announced last October as coming soon, only inflamed those fears. So did the company's recent rollout of a feature using facial recognition technology called "Familiar Faces"—which Markey considers so invasive, he has demanded that the feature be paused.

"What this ad doesn’t show: Ring also rolled out facial recognition for humans," Markey posted on X. "I wrote to them months ago about this. Their answer? They won’t ask for your consent. This definitely isn’t about dogs—it’s about mass surveillance."

Amazon's ad ended with Harry Nilsson wailing "Without You," as the young girl reunites with her lost dog. A final message confirms that Ring's Search Party helps locate "more than a dog a day," and Amazon clearly hoped this emotional use case would help increase sales.

Instead, the ad created a PR disaster. Protesting the Flock partnership and railing against the ad, Ring customers posted videos where they destroyed Ring cameras or vowed to never purchase them. Others posted on Reddit, sharing tips on how to get refunds for Ring cameras. Ring spokesperson Yassi Yarger told The Verge that Amazon is not exploring any other similar integrations in the aftermath of the deal ending.

But while Ring may have hurt its brand, WebProNews, which reports on business strategy in the tech industry, suggested that "the fallout may prove more consequential for Flock Safety than for Ring." For Flock, the Ring partnership represented a meaningful expansion of their business and "data collection capabilities," WebProNews reported. And because this all happened around one of the most-watched TV events of the year, other tech companies may be more hesitant to partner with Flock after Amazon dropped the integration and privacy advocates witnessed the seeming power of their collective outrage.

Ring's statement rings hollow, critics say

After the backlash, Ring and Flock issued statements confirming the partnership would not proceed as planned.

Both statements verified that the integration never launched and that no Ring customers' videos were ever sent to Flock.

Ring did not credit users' privacy concerns for its change of heart. Instead, they claimed that a joint decision was made "following a comprehensive review" where Ring "determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated."

Separately, Flock said that "we believe this decision allows both companies to best serve their respective customers and communities."

The only hint that Ring gave users that their concerns had been heard came in the last line of its blog, which said, "We’ll continue to carefully evaluate future partnerships to ensure they align with our standards for customer trust, safety, and privacy."

Sharing his views on X and Bluesky, John Scott-Railton, a senior cybersecurity researcher at the Citizen Lab, joined critics calling Ring's statement insufficient. He posted an image of the ad frame that Markey found creepy next to a statement from Ring, writing, "On the left? A picture of mass surveillance from #Ring's ad. On the right? A ring [spokesperson] saying that they are not doing mass surveillance. The company cannot have it both ways."

Ring's statements so far do not "acknowledge the real issue," Scott-Railton said, which is privacy risks. For Ring, it seemed like a missed opportunity to discuss or introduce privacy features to reassure concerned users, he suggested, noting the backlash showed "Americans want more control of their privacy right now" and "are savvy enough to see through sappy dog pics."

"Stop trying to build a surveillance dystopia consumers didn't ask for" and "focus on shipping good, private products," Scott-Railton said.

He also suggested that lawmakers should take note of the grassroots support that could possibly help pass laws to push back on mass surveillance. That could help block not just a potential future partnership with Flock, but possibly also stop Ring from becoming the next Flock.

"Ring communications not acknowledging the lesson they just got publicly taught is a bad sign that they hope this goes away," Scott-Railton said.

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Okay, this is another one of those full disclosure, inside information-type of Cold Starts that in some ways feels more something that starts like a poorly-considered journal entry and then gets clumsily hammered into some sort of car-related content. Earlier tonight – or I guess last night as it’s almost 3 am – I was at Toyota’s EV Highlander reveal event, which, to be honest, kind of puzzled me because I’d already seen the car and published a story and video about it right when the event started, because that’s when the embargo was up.

So, I guess they must have livestreamed the reveal? And that’s why it was a “reveal?” Because it wasn’t a reveal to most of the people in that room, so there must have been someone this was a reveal for. Whatever, it’s fine, and they had Woodford Reserve at the bar, which I do not turn down.

All of this is to say that when I came back to my room, I made the rookie mistake of thinking oh, I can lie down for a moment and not fall asleep and do Cold Start before the morning! Easy! Of course, that’s not what happened. When I woke up, it was already well into the next day, and thanks to the fact that I’m on West Coast time, I couldn’t just wait for the morning to do Cold Start. So here we are.

I also thought I knew what I wanted to write about for Cold Start, because I saw a YouTube ad for that new Sony-Honda joint venture car, Afeela. There was one element in it I thought would be worthy of scrutinizing, a way that both Sony and Honda portrayed themselves via objects, but once the ad was gone I could not find it, anywhere. How the hell does one find an ad they were shown on YouTube before it escapes into the aether? I guess maybe this is retribution for all the times I’ve clicked ‘skip’ without watching anything. Well played, ads.

Anyway, while I was searching for the ad I actually wanted, I came across this ad:

What the hell is going on in this ad? Am I supposed to understand why the dude is crying? He’s just sitting there in his (presumably) Level 2 assisted-driving car, softly sobbing? And then the car asks if he wants to drive because “the road is clearing up ahead?” Why would it do that? You would think an automated driving system would keep driving until, you know, you asked it to stop, right? Why is the road being clear a reason to ask if you want to drive?

I mean, sure that section of road looks fun, buy couldn’t Weepy there have just taken over if he felt like it? Was he crying because taking over meant having to use that stupid yoke instead of a steering wheel? Didn’t we bury yokes like almost four years ago? Who was wanting this to come back?

Anyway, I was frustrated by not being able to find the ad I was looking for and then this crying fella just made it all worse. So, to get past that and pad this out a little more, I found a brochure for a 1956 Bedford truck chassis-cab that I thought would be fun to see what it would be like if Bedford decided to get into the family car business without having to design and develop a new platform, and just use this existing truck chassis and cab:

I’ve drawn things like this before, and, you know what? I’ll probably do it again. Because it makes me happy. This would have been the equivalent of an SUV in the ’50s: a truck-based family car with capabilities that will like go entirely unused.

This would be quite a roomy vehicle to be in, especially on the vertical axis, which is sort of unusual for passenger cars. You’d have great legroom in the rear, and even with the stubby tail, a good amount of cargo room, accessible via a combination upward-opening hatch and fold-down tailgate.

I bet it would handle like crap, though, and have a pretty bumpy ride. Still, it’d probably be great for towing!

Okay, good, I’ve just about forgotten about the crying dude and the ad I can’t find. I’m going to sleep.

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