Month: March 2023

Enlarge / The Meta Quest Pro.

When we reviewed the Meta Quest Pro headset less than five months ago, we balked at the device's $1,500 price point, which represented a whopping 275 percent price premium over the Quest 2 (with much less than a 275 percent increase in quality). Meta is already taking steps to scale back that massive asking price, though; as of Sunday, the headset is now available for $1,000 in the US and Canada (a similar price drop will take place March 15 in other Quest Pro countries).

The price drop puts the Quest Pro in line with other high-end headsets, including the untethered $1,100 HTC Vive XR Elite and the $1,000 Valve Index (which requires tethering to a gaming PC). That said, for practically the same money, you can get a $550 PSVR2 and the $500 PlayStation 5 to tether it to. And the Quest Pro is still 150 percent more expensive than the cheapest Quest 2, which supports almost all the same software and delivers a sufficient VR experience for most users.

Speaking of the Quest 2, Meta has also announced a 14 percent price drop for the 256GB version of that headset, from $500 to $430. That price drop brings that expanded-storage option almost all the way back to the $400 that Meta was charging for it before last year's unprecedented price increase.

Enlarge (credit: Anadolu via Getty Images)

It has been more than a decade since Jeff Bezos excitedly sketched out his vision for Alexa on a whiteboard at Amazon’s headquarters. His voice assistant would help do all manner of tasks, such as shop online, control gadgets, or even read kids a bedtime story.

But the Amazon founder’s grand vision of a new computing platform controlled by voice has fallen short. As hype in the tech world turns feverishly to generative AI as the “next big thing,” the moment has caused many to ask hard questions of the previous “next big thing”—the much-lauded voice assistants from Amazon, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and others.

A “grow grow grow” culture described by one former Amazon Alexa marketing executive has now shifted to a more intense focus on how the device can help the e-commerce giant make money.

(credit: Tesla)

Tesla is cutting prices for the second time in less than eight weeks. Reuters noticed that the automaker has dropped the prices of its more expensive, aging Model S sedan and Model X SUV yet again.

While these cars were revolutionary at launch in 2012 and 2015, they now face stiff competition from much newer vehicles from the likes of Rivian, Lucid, Mercedes, Porsche, and BMW. As a result, Model S and Model X sales combined represented only 5 percent of Tesla's global sales in 2022.

In 2022, a dual-motor all-wheel-drive Tesla Model S went for $104,990. In January, Tesla chopped about 10 percent off the price, dropping it to $94,990. Today, it's another $5,000 cheaper at $89,990.

Mistorqued bolts may need to be fixed in some Model Y second rows. (credit: Tesla)

Rivian was not the only electric vehicle startup to feature in my weekly recall email from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration this morning. Both Electra Mecchanica and Lordstown are recalling a small number of EVs, but, more significantly, Tesla has issued yet another recall, and this time there's no software patch that can remedy the problem; affected cars have to actually be physically inspected.

Tesla is recalling 3,470 Model Y crossovers built between May 2022 and February 2023 in order to check that the bolts that secure the frame of the second-row seats are properly torqued. Those that aren't could potentially increase the risk of injury to occupants of the second row during a crash.

For owners worried their cars may be affected, Tesla says that a "second-row seat back frame that has this condition may not fold properly or may be loose and rattle during normal vehicle operation."

Enlarge / The recall affects both the Rivian R1S (pictured) and the R1T pickup truck. (credit: Jonathan Gitlin)

Rivian is in the process of recalling nearly 13,000 R1T trucks and R1S SUVs due to a potential seatbelt problem. It believes that in some vehicles, a sensor within the seatbelt system is missized or "dimensionally out of tolerance," and that could prevent the automatic locking retractor from working properly. That in turn could lead the front passenger airbag to believe the seat was unoccupied during a crash, resulting in it failing to trigger.

Last July, Rivian and its supplier were investigating a vehicle that was displaying a message that the front passenger airbag was off despite having a passenger in that seat. Rivian and its supplier, Autoliv, worked on the problem until January, collecting more potentially suspect parts from other Rivian EVs. In February the startup determined that vehicles with the suspect parts would not be compliant with federal safety regulations and initiated the recall.

Unlike many problems we see on new EVs, this one is not the sort that can just be fixed with a software patch. Although Rivian thinks that only 1 percent of the 12,716 affected cars actually have a defective part, it will inspect and, if necessary, replace the passenger seatbelt components in those affected vehicles.