Business
The Rise of the High-Range, Less Expensive E.V.
It’s a weird moment for electric vehicles in the United States. Sales have fallen since the Trump administration ended the $7,500 tax credit, and car manufacturers are canceling models. And while it’s likely that the recent surge in gas prices will push more people to E.V.s, it probably won’t happen fast.
But if there’s a bright spot in the E.V. market, it’s the budget, high-range car — a corner of the market that’s growing in number of models and, in some cases, even in sales.
E.V.s under $40,000 can now go as far as the most expensive models of a decade ago.
Range anxiety has long been a sticking point for potential E.V. owners, especially in winter. Most people don’t need to drive far every day, but they want to know they can make the occasional big trip.
For a long time, price and range were highly correlated: More expensive models went much farther on one charge. That’s not the case anymore. Some expensive cars have estimated ranges above 400 miles — notably some Lucid and Rivian models — but others offer less range than cars $50,000 cheaper.
Range and price aren’t everyone’s top criteria — there are charging speeds, horsepower, reliability, aesthetics, size and more to consider. But if your primary concern is just how far the car can get you on a single charge without breaking the bank, consider this unusual but useful metric: miles of range per dollar spent.
At a starting price of $32,000, the 2026 Nissan Leaf gets nearly 10 miles of total range for every $1,000 of sticker price, with Chevrolet’s $37,000 Equinox EV close behind. The most expensive E.V.s score much worse on this metric — three miles per $1,000 or fewer — but they’re luxury cars.
(Note that price and range vary even for a single model, depending on the trim; we looked at the cheapest price and longest range for each car and picked the one with the highest ratio of miles to dollars.)
Just five years ago, the best cars in this metric couldn’t top six miles per $1,000. (After adjusting for inflation.)
A big part of that trajectory is battery technology: Prices for lithium-ion batteries, the primary type used for E.V.s, have fallen to around $100 per kilowatt-hour in 2025, from $1,000 in the early 2010s, according to BloombergNEF. Battery density has gone up too.
As battery costs fell and manufacturers built more E.V.s, ranges rose and prices fell. Tesla’s cheapest Model 3 climbed to a range of 321 miles this year, up from 220 when it was launched in the late 2010s, while its inflation-adjusted price decreased.
Or consider the Leaf, which debuted 15 years ago.
By 2016, the cheapest Leaf had 84 miles of range and cost around $30,000, the equivalent of $40,000 today.
Nissan’s $32,000 2026 Leaf has a range of more than 300 miles.
Some automakers have released entirely new models under $40,000 in recent years, including the Chevrolet Equinox and the Subaru Uncharted. And the end of the tax credit led others to drop prices on existing cars: Tesla introduced a trimmed-down, significantly cheaper Model 3, and Hyundai slashed its Ioniq 5 prices by roughly the same amount as the credit.
Altogether, the cheaper end of the market has boomed, and the average price of a new E.V. has fallen. (Used E.V. prices fell, too, and sales climbed.)
There’s still a lot of bad E.V. news among automakers, who have canceled models and pulled back on battery manufacturing. New E.V. sales dropped 27 percent from early 2025 to early 2026. But models that offered a high-range, lower-price trim seemed to weather the downturn better — some of them even picked up in sales, while others held relatively steady despite the end of the tax credit.
New E.V.s still can’t beat new gas cars on sticker price and range. A standard Toyota Corolla can go more than 400 miles on a tank of gas, and costs around $25,000.
Still, the costs of driving a gas car add up: If gas prices settled back to $3.50 per gallon, that relatively efficient Corolla would cost more than $1,100 for the average driver each year, and about the same in maintenance. Over a decade, that would total nearly $50,000. (Car purchase included.)
The $32,000 Leaf would cost around $600 each year to drive, at average U.S. electricity prices, and about the same in maintenance, according to federal estimates. It would add up to $45,000 over the decade.
Business
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman apologizes for not alerting police about Canada shooting suspect
OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman apologized to a Canadian community for failing to alert police about a mass shooter’s conversations with its chatbot.
Authorities said Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, killed eight people including schoolchildren in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, before taking her own life in February.
“I am deeply sorry that we did not alert law enforcement to the account that was banned in June,” Altman said in a letter Thursday. “While I know words can never be enough, I believe an apology is necessary to recognize the harm and irreversible loss your community has suffered.”
On Friday, British Columbia Premier David Eby posted the letter on social media.
The letter came after the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported this year that Van Rootselaar conversed with ChatGPT about gun violence, prompting OpenAI employees to debate whether to alert Canadian law enforcement.
OpenAI banned the user’s account but decided to not notify the police after looking at whether the activity would be considered an imminent and serious risk of physical harm to others.
Technology companies have faced more scrutiny in the wake of mass shootings over how criminals use their tools to plan attacks or broadcast killings. But the rise of artificial intelligence chatbots that quickly answer questions and generate content also means that people are spilling their darkest thoughts online. AI companies are now reckoning with debates about balancing public safety and privacy while also grappling with new lawsuits and investigations.
In March, the family of a Tumbler Ridge shooting victim, who was hospitalized, sued OpenAI, alleging that the company knew the shooter was planning a mass attack but failed to alert law enforcement.
In a post Friday on X, Eby called the apology “necessary, and yet grossly insufficient for the devastation done to the families of Tumbler Ridge.”
In the letter, Altman said he spoke to Tumbler Ridge Mayor Darryl Krakowka and Eby about the shooting and they agreed on a public apology. Altman said he was committed to finding ways to prevent such tragedies.
“Going forward, our focus will continue to be on working with all levels of government to help ensure something like this never happens again,” Altman said in the letter.
OpenAI is also grappling with backlash over whether it is doing enough to protect public safety in the United States.
Last week, Florida’s attorney general launched a criminal investigation into ChatGPT and OpenAI to determine whether the San Francisco AI company “bears criminal responsibility” for the chatbot’s actions in a Florida State University shooting last year that left two people dead. Prosecutors had been reviewing conversations between the suspect, Phoenix Ikner, and ChatGPT.
Business
The War in Iran Has Upended the Global Economy. The U.S. Has Been Mostly Spared.
The fallout from two months of war in Iran is shuttering textile mills in India and Bangladesh, grounding airplanes in Ireland, Poland and Germany, and prompting energy rationing in Vietnam, South Korea and Thailand. The only country, it seems, that has been relatively spared from the economic chaos is the one that started the war: the United States.
While warning signs of a recession are flashing across countries in Asia and Europe, the United States is likely to outperform most of the world’s advanced economies. Growth is steady and unemployment low. “It’s still hard to bet against the U.S. economy,” the Royal Bank of Canada said last week.
The United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s richest countries, with sovereign wealth funds that total more than $2 trillion, has asked the United States for a financial lifeline in the wake of missile-damaged gas fields and a halt to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.
In just eight weeks — less time than it takes to age a traditional English fruitcake — the global economic outlook has been knocked sideways.
The worst economic pain will be felt in poor countries, where consumers cannot afford higher energy prices, and governments cannot afford to provide aid to offset the costs. And as financing tightens, the cost of desperately needed borrowing for these countries increases.
Soaring prices now for fuel and fertilizer mean higher prices for food later in the year. In Africa, “food insecurity looms large,” the International Monetary Fund said last week. In the Asia-Pacific region, millions of people are at risk of falling into poverty because of the conflict, the United Nations Development Program warned.
Already, many countries in Asia are grappling with fuel shortages, which will grow only worse as the war drags on, said Raghuram Rajan, an economist at the University of Chicago and a former governor of the Reserve Bank of India.
“The shortages will start hitting more and more,” said Mr. Rajan, who formerly served in a top role at the International Monetary Fund. In many countries, the real consequences are only just beginning to be felt.
Energy inventories are running out, and some shipments have stopped. “The water’s on the boil, the frog is in the water and the temperature’s rising,” Mr. Rajan said. “And now, increasingly, you’re going to see industry shut down.”
Steel plants in India and automakers in Japan have cut production because of higher energy prices and concerns about reduced demand. Toy factories in China, already suffering from U.S. tariffs, are contending with discontent from thousands of workers angry about losing their jobs.
One morning last week, in Firozabad, a city in northern India, workers were idly milling at an open-air labor market. “Because of the war, work has dwindled,” said Muhammad Waseem, a plasterer. He was haggling with a potential employer who wanted to pay him 500 rupees ($5.30) for a construction job, significantly less than what he usually earns.
Aas Muhammad, 25, a laborer who loads bricks and cement onto trucks, had walked five miles to the market from his home. He was willing to take the 500 rupees, but even that wouldn’t go far. A kilogram of cooking gas that would normally cost 80 rupees now costs 200.
Millions of other Indian workers who usually live and work in the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, and collectively send billions of dollars in remittances home every year, are stranded abroad without work.
Shortages of other commodities that ordinarily travel through the Strait of Hormuz, like helium, aluminum and naphtha, are affecting the supplies of a dizzying array of other goods, from condoms to microchips.
Of course, the U.S. economy isn’t entirely insulated from the shock. Gas prices have jumped more than $1 a gallon since the war began, a tax on American consumers that has hit lower-income households especially hard.
On Wall Street, banks have marked their growth forecasts down and their inflation forecasts up since the war began and have all but given up on the possibility of further interest rate cuts before the fall at the earliest.
Compared with the rest of the world, though, the impact on the domestic economy has been muted. Consumer spending remains strong, layoffs remain low and forecasters still expect solid growth this year.
Economists say it would take a much more significant spike in oil prices, perhaps as high as $150 a barrel, for them to begin worrying seriously about the possibility of a recession in the United States.
That is not the case elsewhere, where the dreaded combination of slower growth and higher inflation is already raising alarms about stagflation.
Around the world, scarcity and high prices are setting off a worrying cycle of reduced economic activity: High prices lower the demand for fuel, and the lower demand, in turn, shrinks production, employment and spending.
The German airline Lufthansa canceled 20,000 flights scheduled for this summer. As jet fuel prices have doubled, all 20 of the world’s top air carriers have cut at least some flights, according to Freightos, a digital shipping marketplace. Fewer flights cut sharply into tourism and business travel, reducing spending at hotels, restaurants and retailers.
For the United States, the biggest advantage is that, unlike most of its global peers, it produces more oil and gas than it consumes. That doesn’t mean it is unaffected by what happens in global energy markets, but it helps dampen the impact.
The U.S. economy is also heavily based on services and depends relatively little on the energy-intensive manufacturing industries that have been hit hardest by the spike in oil prices. And it went into the war with a stronger economy than many other countries, giving it more of a buffer against a slowdown.
“We’re not feeling the same pain the rest of the world is,” said Jason Bordoff, the founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.
“In a shock this large, the physical shortages are showing up in Asia, and they’re trickling through to Europe,” he added. “We’re the last to feel the effects.”
The toll on the U.S. economy will grow if the war drags on. Higher fuel prices will further raise the cost of shipping, and that could drive up prices for other consumer goods.
“We don’t know how long this shock will last, and I think if it persists we’ll probably be having a very different conversation six months from now,” said Ben Harris, a Brookings Institution economist who served as chief economist at the Treasury Department under the Biden administration.
Even if the war were to end tomorrow, most energy executives and political analysts doubt that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a critically important shipping lane for oil and gas, will ever return to the way it was before. The war has demonstrated how easily free passage can be stopped, raising risks and costs.
The shortfall caused by the halt in oil and gas production and the missile damage inflicted on infrastructure also mean that oil prices are likely to remain elevated or rise over the next four years, according to High Frequency Economics, a research consulting firm.
“We are more resilient to energy shocks, but I don’t think that’s going to last,” said Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Many countries, including allies, had already been re-evaluating their relationship because of President Trump’s punitive trade policies and erratic behavior, including his demands to take over Greenland.
Now American pre-eminence has been undercut by Mr. Trump’s decision to start a war with Iran that has had severe economic consequences for much of the world, Mr. Posen said.
“As a snapshot at the moment, the U.S. is less directly troubled,” Mr. Posen added. “I wouldn’t make too much of that.”
Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Beijing, and Alex Travelli from Firozabad, India.
Business
In a first, animated movies receive film tax credits in California
Walt Disney Co.’s “Phineas and Ferb,” “The Simpsons Movie 2” and an untitled DreamWorks movie are the first animated feature films to receive a California tax credit under the state’s updated incentive program.
The movies are among the 38 projects chosen in the latest round of the production incentive program, the California Film Commission said Thursday.
In total, the productions are expected to employ more than 5,300 cast and crew members, more than 20,800 background actors and generate nearly $800 million in economic activity throughout the state.
Together, the projects will involve 1,019 shoot days, with more than 45% happening outside of the Southern California region.
“We’re seeing the real-world economic impact of this program reach communities across the entire state,” Colleen Bell, director of the California Film Commission, said in a statement. “That’s what this program is about: creating good-paying jobs and supporting local businesses, while bolstering California’s creative economy in regions across the state.”
In addition to Disney Entertainment Television’s “Phineas and Ferb,” which received $3.5 million in credits, and Disney-owned 20th Century Studios’ “The Simpsons Movie 2,” which was awarded $21.9 million, other awardees include Netflix’s upcoming reboot of “13 Going on 30” ($10.9 million), a film from Laverne Cox called “Black is Blue” ($1.3 million) and the Will Ferrell-produced “Self Help” ($2.6 million).
An untitled Paramount crime thriller received the highest amount — $25.9 million — while DreamWorks’ untitled animated film received $24.7 million in credit allocation.
DreamWorks Animation Chief Operating Officer Randy Lake said the tax incentive would have a “massive impact” on the film’s budget and allow the studio to hire more local talent.
Animated movies and shows became eligible for California’s film and TV tax incentive after the state bolstered its program last year. In recent years, other countries such as Ireland and Canada have added special tax incentives targeting animated projects, luring productions out of the U.S.
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