Tesla has sold millions of cars to millions of people in the last few years. Now, with Elon Musk becoming more political than ever, a sizable number of those people want nothing to do with the brand or its CEO. With many owners looking to sell, Polestar saw an opportunity to win itself some new customers.
As covered by InsideEVs, the Swedish EV brand is offering big incentives on new Polestar 3 leases. On top of already-existing $15,000 incentives, those trading in a Tesla can score an extra $5,000 bonus. Stack those, and it adds up to $20,000 off a Polestar for dropping your Tesla.
Polestar isn’t being shy about this in the slightest. They’ve named it the “Tesla Conquest Offer,” and it has apparently proved remarkably popular.
According to Polestar’s US Head of Sales, Jordan Hofmann, the move was successful. “This week saw some of the highest order days for Polestar 3, and the response to our Tesla Conquest Offer has been incredible,” Hofmann posted on LinkedIn. “Manufactured in the USA, Polestar 3 is turning heads and drivers are making moves — it’s clear they like what we bring to the table.”
With the existing $15,000 incentive on the hood, a Polestar 3 lease starts at $599 a month with a $5,000 down payment. A further $5,000 Tesla Conquest credit will bring that down further, possibly well below the $500 a month level. Polestar’s standard lease term is 27 months including 10,000 miles a year.
Polestar initially offered the deal from February 21 to 28. However, this appears to have been extended to March 2. It’s unclear if Polestar will continue the deal further; The Autopian has contacted the automaker regarding this detail. To claim the credit, Polestar required a copy of US registration or insurance documents outlining one’s name, address, and the Tesla’s VIN to qualify for the credit. The Tesla can also be owned by someone else in your household. You don’t actually need to trade the Tesla in, as Tesla doesn’t allow other companies to buy out its leases. You’d have to handle that side of things directly with them instead.
In some cases, it’s referred to as the Polestar Conquest Bonus, which isn’t nearly as catty. Credit: Polestar
On top of existing owners looking to sell, Tesla has also faced a 50% drop in new sales in Europe in January. It comes in the wake of CEO Elon Musk being more and more vocal about political topics and now working hand-in-hand with president Trump. As covered by Newsweek, Musk’s powerful personal brand has turned Tesla vehicles into a political symbol, which some owners don’t necessarily wish to be aligned with.
The furor towards the brand has reached fever pitch in recent weeks. As reported by Reuters, Saturday saw nine arrested at a major protest at a New York Tesla showroom. Earlier in February, a carpark full of Teslas had their wheels stolen in Houston. These incidents are just the tip of the iceberg. It makes earlier bullying towards early Cybertruck owners look tame in comparison.
Polestar isn’t the only company taking shots at Tesla, either. Kia Norway took to Instagram to post a photo of an EV3 wearing a sticker that reads “I bought this after Elon went crazy.” It riffs on a popular sticker making the rounds with Tesla owners right now, that reads “I bought this before Elon went crazy.”
Supply and demand work in a straightforward manner in the automotive world. All the signs suggest that demand has cratered in some markets, which could see resale values tank for owners looking to dump their cars; selling depreciated cars directly could yield disappointing prices. Such conditions could make Polestar’s offer look more attractive to Tesla owners looking for the proverbial off-ramp.
A Texas health authority is warning against "measles parties" as the outbreak in West Texas grew to at least 146 cases, with 20 hospitalized and one unvaccinated school-age child dead. The outbreak continues to mainly be in unvaccinated children.
In a press briefing hosted by the city of Lubbock, Texas, on Friday, Ron Cook, chief health officer at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock, offered the stark warning for Texans in his opening statements.
"What I want you to hear is: It's not good to go have measles parties because what may happen is—we can't predict who's going to do poorly with measles, be hospitalized, potentially get pneumonia or encephalitis and or pass away from this," Cook said. "So that's a foolish idea to go have a measles party. The best thing to do is make sure that you're well-vaccinated."
Lubbock sits about 90 miles northwest of the outbreak's epicenter in Gaines County, which is one of the state's least vaccinated counties. It has recorded 98 of the outbreak's 146 cases. While Lubbock has only reported two of the 146 cases, patients from elsewhere have been treated in Lubbock. That includes the first two cases in the outbreak as well as the child who died of the infection earlier this week, who was not a resident of Lubbock.
It's unclear if any measles parties are occurring in Gaines or elsewhere; "It's mostly been... social media talk," Cook said in response to a follow-up question from Ars. He noted that measles parties and chickenpox parties were more common practices decades ago, before vaccines for both diseases were available. But he again warned about the dangers today. "Please don't do that. It's just foolishness; it's playing roulette," he said.
Cook, along with Lubbock's director of public health, Katherine Wells, said they see no end in sight for the outbreak, which now spans nine counties in Texas, many of which have low vaccination rates. "This outbreak is going to continue to grow," Wells said, declining to forecast how high the final case count could go after a reporter raised the possibility of several hundred.
So far, 116 of the 146 cases are under the age of 18, with 46 being between the ages of 0 and 4. Only five of the 146 were vaccinated with at least one dose of the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine.
Messaging
On a more positive note, Wells reported that the outbreak has seemed to sway some vaccine-hesitant parents to get their children vaccinated. Just yesterday in Lubbock, over 50 children came into the city's clinic for measles vaccines. Eleven of those children had vaccine exemptions, meaning their parents had previously gone through the state process to exempt their child from having to receive routine childhood vaccines to attend school. "Which is a really good sign; that means our message is getting out there," Wells said.
So far in the outbreak, which erupted in late January, messaging about the disease and the importance of vaccination has exclusively come from state and local authorities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only released a brief statement late Thursday, which was not sent through the agency's press distribution list. It did, however, note that "vaccination remains the best defense against measles infection."
During a cabinet meeting Wednesday, US Health Secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded to a question about the outbreak, offering a variety of inaccurate information. Kennedy downplayed the outbreak, falsely claiming that "it's not unusual." But, this is an unusual year for measles in the US. As epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina noted on Bluesky, the number of US measles cases this year has already surpassed the total case counts from eight of the previous 15 years. And it is only February.
Kennedy also said there had been two deaths—fortunately, only one child has died. He further claimed that measles patients were being hospitalized "mainly for quarantine," which is false and a misuse of the word quarantine. A quarantine refers to separating people who have been exposed to an illness to see if they become sick. For people who are known to be sick, the term is "isolation."
In the press briefing Friday, Cook refuted Kennedy's suggestion that infected people were being hospitalized largely for isolation purposes. He described measles patients being hospitalized with severe symptoms. "Most of them are either severely dehydrated from just the infection itself, and/or lots of low oxygen levels—hypoxia. And that's from the inflammation in the lungs," Cook said. In some patients, their oxygen is so low they need supplemental oxygen or intubation and ventilator support, which can lead to antibiotic use to ward off secondary bacterial infections, he explained.
While the end of the outbreak remains uncertain, so does the beginning. Rumors are reportedly circulating in Texas that the measles virus was brought into the area by an undocumented immigrant. Wells shot down that rumor, indicating that there is no evidence to support it and that most measles outbreaks in the US begin with an unvaccinated citizen traveling abroad and bringing the virus home with them.
We’ve become used to the slow addition of Nintendo classics to the Nintendo Switch Online service since it launched in 2018, but some subscribers will apparently lose access to an old-school game on March 28.
Nintendo shared on Feb. 27 that Super Famicom game Super Formation Soccer — known as Super Soccer in the west — will be delisted from Nintendo Switch Online in Japan next month. And while no reason was given, the announcement did make a point to mention Super Formation Soccer’s status as a third-party property. As such, it’s possible Nintendo’s license to the game simply expired.
『スーパーファミコン Nintendo Switch Online』の収録タイトル『スーパーフォーメーションサッカー』（スパイクチュンソフト）は、2025年3月28日（金）午前10時に配信を終了させていただきます。 配信終了後は、『スーパーファミコン Nintendo Switch…
We’ve reached out to Nintendo for more information but did not hear back immediately.
Super Formation Soccer was first released on Super Famicom in 1991 by Clock Tower developer Human Entertainment, and was one of several properties acquired by Spike Chunsoft that same year when Human attempted to restructure its debt. Human would eventually file for bankruptcy and dissolve in 2000.
It’s currently unclear if Super Soccer will also be removed from the Nintendo Switch Online’s Super Nintendo library in North America and Europe or if other third-party games like Ninja Gaiden, River City Ransom, and Ghosts ‘n Goblins might eventually share the same fate.
As a general rule, most segments of cars have grown significantly since the 1980s, when North American downsizing measures came to fruition. A new midsized Honda Accord is very nearly the same length as a full-sized W126 Mercedes-Benz S-Class from the mid 1980s, for example. That explains why the new Accord feels so capacious, then.
However, not every segment of car has seemingly grown to what used to be the next size class up. On Monday, Autopian Discord member Fuhrman16 pointed out something interesting. It turns out that the current Mazda MX-5 isn’t far off from the length and height of British roadsters sold some 60 years ago, and the MGB is a prime example.
We’re leaning on a fun little website called Carsized for this, which lets you virtually line up two cars in a row and compare their actual sizes. While the photos don’t exactly convey scale perfectly, the dimensions are pretty accurate. It turns out that a fourth-generation Mazda MX-5 is 1.15 inches longer and a quarter-inch taller than a chrome-bumper MGB, a seriously impressive feat considering the MG didn’t have crumple zones.
Screenshot: Carsized
So far so tiny, but things change a bit when you move around to the front and compare widths. The ND MX-5 is more than eight inches wider than an MGB. If we’re comparing it to old-school icons, the MX-5 is less than an inch narrower than a C3 Corvette, a sports car which wasn’t exactly small in the late-’60s. To an extent, this is the price of side impact protection, but there’s just something right about a wider track.
Screenshot: Carsized
When you think about what you’re getting for the extra width, roughly eight inches doesn’t sound so bad either. A boatload more power, two more forward gears, side airbags, modern door impact beams, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, a cabin air filter, substantially wider tires, and telescopic front dampers instead of lever units are all some serious upgrades.
Weight’s kept nicely under control too, with a 2025 MX-5 spinning the needle on the scale to 2,372 pounds. For context, a 1962 MGB has a curb weight of 2,030 pounds, and a roughly 342-pound penalty for modern performance and amenities doesn’t sound like a terrible hardship.
Screenshot: Carsized
I have to say, well done Mazda for not just keeping size relatively in check compared to earlier MX-5s, but also keeping it within the sightlines of the model’s spiritual predecessors. By not giving into pressure to build something bigger, the MX-5’s kept its appeal. No wonder it’s the only affordable roadster left.
The tools of the trade of a car journalist usually aren’t that exciting. You’ll find that many of us carry around flagship phones and Apple MacBooks. Those journalists who are really into photography might also carry camera gear. At least Jason gets heavily into retro computing. Otherwise, it’s a real snoozefest and I’ve decided to do something about it in the most silly way possible. I just turned a gigantic radio control Chrysler PT Cruiser into an octa-core article creation machine and I’m stoked. Here’s how you can do it, too.
It’s no secret that I am a fan of the Chrysler PT Cruiser. I’ve gone up to bat for unloved cars for years because I love the maligned and hated vehicles out there. This was even before I began this career in writing about cars. Well over a decade ago, I was in the tech field and my job was keeping three dozen workstations alive in a call center. A co-worker noticed my love for cars and one day she hauled in a gargantuan Chrysler PT Cruiser and plopped it onto my desk as a present.
Sometimes, journalists exaggerate when they use terms like “huge” or “massive,” but it absolutely applies here. This radio control PT Cruiser from New Bright comes in at a staggering 1/6 scale – it’s over two feet long! (26.5 inches, to be exact).
Here’s the PT Cruiser parked next to a 1/24 scale Ford Mustang and a 1/64 Chevrolet Corvette. I also added a jug of Rotella T4 for scale. Ignore the dust.Ed note: Merc really lucked out! A loose 1/6 scale PT Cruiser can fetch $80 or more on eBay, and a boxed example will set you back over $200 on eBay. Image: Worthpoint
What did I do with such a girthy piece of hardware? Nothing. The PT Cruiser spent the rest of my IT career being a desk ornament. It was basically my calling card. You knew which workstation was mine because a big PT Cruiser took up a quarter of the desk.
Part of the reason I kept the Biggie PT around was my fascination with its level of detail. In the early 2000s, New Bright made a bunch of these 1/6 scale cars from the Cadillac Escalade to the Volkswagen New Beetle. All of them have an impressive amount of accuracy for what’s ostensibly children’s toys. Take a look at my PT Cruiser here:
These cars weren’t exactly Minichamps or Autoart models here, but they were large enough to park one of those models inside of them! The RC part of the PT Cruiser was also nice. Big RC cars like these are super easy to control and I love the simulated engine noises it makes, too.
Sadly, the PT Cruiser has been living in a closet since late 2020. Working from home meant that I just no longer had a big enough desk. Over time, I’ve also just forgotten that it even exists. That changed a couple of weekends ago when I cleaned out the closet, rediscovering the chunk of scale DaimlerChrysler car.
Coincidentally, I’ve also been getting back into building custom computers. I used to build computers and make computer-inspired jewelry for fun, but then my car collection got too huge and all of my time went to keeping cars alive. Now I have the time to get back into my old hobbies. This made a lightbulb pop on above my head. What if I combined my love for cars and my old love for computers?
A few weeks ago I got back into my computer hobby by building an Asrock Deskmini X300 barebone computer with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600GT and some sweet RGB. It’s surprisingly quick and super tiny!
With that computer itch really blowing up into my old obsession, I got the urge to build another PC. Now I could have just shoved the Deskmini’s board into the back of the PT Cruiser, but that would have been too easy. The Deskmini’s special micro motherboard also doesn’t allow for graphics expansion. I wanted the PT Cruiser to be as close to a normal computer as possible.
To achieve this, I broke out the measuring tape, where I figured out that the PT Cruiser’s trunk is just large enough to fit a Mini-ITX motherboard with a few millimeters to spare.
Perfect! I’ve been using a Mini-ITX build as my work computer for the past few years or so. Check out the computer I was using for work until last week. It has an anodized aluminum case, a Ryzen 5 4500, and a GTX 1650. It wouldn’t be as great as a gaming rig, but it punches out articles without breaking a sweat.
I swear my favorite color isn’t red, I just end up with red things:
For the PT Cruiser build, which I’ve named the PC Cruiser, I decided to get the most horsepower I could for the least money. But I also wanted to leave the PT Cruiser unmodified. I don’t really want it to be obvious that there’s a computer inside.
That part was easy. I separated the chassis from the body and then removed the rear bench seat. This gives enough space for a Mini-ITX board and a small form factor power supply.
Next came choosing the computer. I really wanted to drop a Ryzen build into the PC Cruiser, but I couldn’t find a cheap one for sale. What I did find was an Antec ISK110 Vesa-U3 mini PC build. This is an old case that came out in 2012, but it had something I really liked. Antec fitted the case with a super tiny 90-watt to 150-watt power supply with passive cooling. That micro PSU would fit into the space where the PC Cruiser’s rear bench used to exist and I wouldn’t even have to cut a hole in the bottom for a fan. Perfect!
The computer also came equipped with a motherboard, an Intel Core I5-9400 six-core CPU, and 16GB of RAM. The whole package was just $108, which I couldn’t pass up.
Upon getting the computer, I first disassembled the entire build, being sure to take the case’s PSU, ports, and switches along for the ride. Then, I tested the naked computer to make sure it worked fine. The little computer was happy! Next, I decided to get a little silly. Antec says its power supply can handle a 65-watt CPU while the motherboard said it supported Intel 9th generation chips, so I decided to get the best 65-watt CPU I could get on a budget.
That chip turned out to be a Core I7-9700, an octa-core processor with a base clock of 3 GHz and an advertised rating of 65 watts. This will be overkill for just writing articles. It was only $90!
Unfortunately, the CPU failed my initial testing. The CPU has a feature that allows it to temporarily boost up to 4.6 GHz. That’s sweet, except for the fact that when it’s doing that it’s consuming more than 65 watts of power. If it stays at 4.6 GHz for too long, the PSU shuts itself off for protection. Oh and the used I7 I bought didn’t come with a cooler, so I’ve temporarily slapped the I5’s cooler on it and it’s not really good enough for the job. At 4.6 GHz the CPU was at 89 degrees Celsius.
So, I turned off the turbo boost. Since then it’s been staying right at 65 watts, barely above ambient temperature, and the PSU is nice and happy.
Installing the completed computer into the PC Cruiser was hilariously easy. I shoved it through the tailgate at an angle, then I plopped it down on the trunk floor. Then I tucked the PSU into the space where the rear bench was.
For ventilation, I’m just leaving the doors and tailgate open. All of the cables also exit out of the open tailgate. When I’m done working for the day, I just close the doors and tailgate. It just works so perfectly as a computer it’s almost as if New Bright made this RC car for this purpose.
What’s next for the PC Cruiser? I’m not even close to being done yet. First, I want to add some RGB strips to brighten up the interior a bit. Then I have a silly plan for the CPU’s cooler.
Cooler Master
A month ago, Cooler Master announced its new V-Series air coolers. The headlining feature of these coolers, aside from thick heat pipes, is their car engine-like appearance. Weirdly, this isn’t the first time Cooler Master has tried to get car people into computers by using an automotive-inspired design. The last time was roughly a decade ago. This time the coolers actually look like engine blocks, which is so cool.
Beginning sometime next month, Cooler Master is going to sell these in V4 to V10 configurations and I plan to get the V8 model. When it’s installed into the back of the PC Cruiser it’ll look like the car has twin engines. It’ll have the little fake four-cylinder up front and a “V8” in the rear.
When the car is all closed up you can’t even tell the computer is in there. Another cool part is that since I didn’t break any of the car’s functions, it still works as an RC car, too!
I’ve also left room for expansion. The PC Cruiser has room for a proper small-form power supply (because who knows how long the baby PSU will last). If I go that route, I should be able to slide a dedicated graphics card in there, which will be hilarious. One day I could also just go all out and build a high-end PC in the PC Cruiser. However, I already have a dedicated gaming computer, so I won’t need to go that far.
For now, I’m just enjoying what has been the most fun I’ve ever had building a computer. Now, I finally have a computer befitting my job title and it just so happens to be a car I like, too. Dare I say? The PC Cruiser might be the best use of a PT Cruiser you’ll see for a long while. I can’t wait until I get the PC Cruiser to its final form and get it complete with RGB, underglow, and that engine-like cooler. Oh yeah, the 2000s are so back!
Sergey Brin co-founded Google in the 1990s along with Larry Page, but both stepped away from the day to day at Google in 2019. However, the AI boom tempted Brin to return to the office, and he thinks everyone should follow his example. In a new internal memo, Brin has advised employees to be in the office every weekday so Google can win the AI race.
Just returning to the office isn't enough for the Google co-founder. According to the memo seen by The New York Times, Brin says Googlers should try to work 60 hours per week to support the company's AI efforts. That works out to 12 hours per day, Monday through Friday, which Brin calls the "sweet spot of productivity." This is not a new opinion for Brin.
Brin, like many in Silicon Valley, is seemingly committed to the dogma that the current trajectory of generative AI will lead to the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Such a thinking machine would be head and shoulders above current AI models, which can only do a good impression of thinking. An AGI would understand concepts and think more like a human being, which some would argue makes it a conscious entity.
To hear Brin tell it, Google is in the best position to make this AI computing breakthrough. He cites the company's strong workforce of programmers and data scientists as the key, but he also believes the team must strive for greater efficiency by using Google's own Gemini AI tools as much as possible. Oh, and don't work from home.
Brin and Page handed the reins to current CEO Sundar Pichai in 2015, so his pronouncement doesn't necessarily signal a change to the company's current in-office policy. Google still operates on a hybrid model, with workers expected to be in the office three days per week. But as a founder, Brin's voice carries weight. We reached out to Google to ask if the company intends to reassess its policies, but a Google rep says there are no planned changes to the return-to-office mandate.
Onward to the thinking machines
Google constructed the foundation upon which all of today's generative AI bots were built, but it didn't realize that until OpenAI started adding bricks. Google's seminal 2017 research paper, titled Attention Is All You Need, laid out the transformer architecture that still powers large language models. In a mere 10 pages, Google changed the nature of computing, but it was caught flatfooted when OpenAI and Microsoft teamed up to roll out AI-powered tools to the masses. Google's hurried launch of the Bard AI in early 2023 was a mess, and it has been playing catch-up ever since.
Following the Bard fiasco, Google has developed a single-minded obsession with adding generative AI to all its products, even if profitability remains elusive in the AI industry. OpenAI has used Microsoft Azure infrastructure for most of its computing needs, enjoying generous discounts in exchange for lending its technology to Copilot and Bing. Even with that benefit, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has admitted the company still loses money on its most expensive $200-per-month Pro subscription.
Google AI has come a long way since Bard couldn't get basic Webb details straight (it wasn't the first to photograph an exoplanet).
Credit:
Google
Google, meanwhile, has spent at a feverish pace to build out AI data centers to train and run Gemini models. It doesn't have a lavishly expensive subscription tier like OpenAI, though. Most Gemini models are available for free, but even the more computationally intensive ones, like Gemini Pro Deep Research, are available for just $20 per month. Google is apparently willing to lose money on AI to secure market share.
No one knows if piling up more and more GPUs to run ever-larger models will lead to AGI. However, Brin is not alone in thinking such an advance is within reach. Altman has also claimed OpenAI could be just a few years away from true artificial intelligence. Google's official blog posts have mentioned AGI as a goal on several occasions, as well. Even if AGI isn't attainable in the near future, business leaders have other reasons to want employees in the office—it's a win-win for Google.
Log in
reply
Google AI has come a long way since Bard couldn't get basic Webb details straight (it wasn't the first to photograph an exoplanet).
Credit:
Google
