Month: December 2022

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images)

Elon Musk said he's taking legal action against the creator of a Twitter bot that tracked his private jet, and he has changed Twitter's rules to ban sharing of live locations in most scenarios.

Musk has completely reversed his pledge since November 6, when he wrote that his "commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk." As reported yesterday, the Musk-led Twitter suspended the ElonJet account that used publicly available data to track Musk's plane and suspended the personal account of ElonJet creator Jack Sweeney.

The Twitter suspensions—which also affected other plane-tracking accounts run by Sweeney—occurred one day after Musk said a car carrying his son X AE A-XII was followed by a stalker. Revealing his plan to sue Sweeney, Musk wrote on Wednesday night:

Enlarge / The Mercedes-AMG EQS combines bar-of-soap aerodynamics with menacing matte paint and more power than a mid-'90s F1 car. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

DENVER—Looking back five years, I'm not sure anyone would have quite predicted where the electric vehicle market was headed. Cars like the Chevrolet Bolt, Nissan Leaf, and Tesla Model 3 appeared to point toward mass-market EVs becoming more and more common. Instead, EVs have gone further upmarket, with sales prices pushed higher and higher by a combination of supply shortages, massive batteries, and a frothy market of collectors fighting automotive FOMO.

It's not really that surprising, given that profit margins for big luxury cars are much larger than for small, mass-market ones. Which is why everything looks so expensive, as both startups and established automakers bring their first EVs to market. Like the Mercedes-Benz EQS for example, which is a highly aerodynamic electric alternative to the S-Class sedan that impressed us when we tested one earlier this year. Now we've tried a more extreme version of that car—the $147,500 Mercedes-AMG EQS sedan.

Like other car companies, Mercedes is in the process of figuring out what electrification means for all its various divisions, and that includes AMG. Originally an aftermarket tuning company, Mercedes-AMG GmbH has been entirely owned by the Germany automaker since 2005 but still continues to work its tuning magic on mercs, including some technology transfer from its all-conquering Formula 1 program.