Tesla’s Model 3 has been Consumer Reports‘ top EV choice for the past two years, but the publication is ready to declare a new champion. CR has revealed that Ford’s Mustang Mach-E has ousted the Model 3 as its EV Top Pick. The Mustang crossover is not only “more practical,” according to editors, but has better first-year reliability and a “far easier” infotainment system that doesn’t require multiple steps for basic tasks. A better ride and reduced noise help, too.

Ford’s BlueCruise driver assist technology also gave the Mach-E an edge thanks to a more effective drive monitoring system that now counts toward vehicle scores. Tesla’s Autopilot was docked for functioning while drivers look away.

Consumer Reports still recommended the Model 3 thanks to its sports car-like performance, long range, charging network and technology. However, the outlet couldn’t recommend the Mach-E’s more direct rival, the Model Y, as an EV Top Pick. Tesla’s SUV-like ride has “much worse” reliability than average vehicles in the lineup, and is noticeably worse than the average-rated Model 3.

This isn’t going to please Tesla, which has had a less-than-amicable relationship with Consumer Reports over the years. The two have disputed test results, and CR has temporarily pulled recommendations for some models. However, it also reflects lingering concerns about Tesla’s reliability. The EV producer has issued a string of recalls in recent months, and owners have frequently reported build quality issues. This might not have cost Tesla the lead by itself, but it certainly didn’t help the company’s chances.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Engadget.

Ford teased the prospect of 3D-printing your own accessories when it unveiled the Maverick hybrid pickup truck, and it’s acting on that promise. According to 3D Printing Industry and Newsweek, the brand has released CAD files to help you 3D-print add-ons compatible with the Ford Integrated Tether System (FITS) slots behind the center console and under-seat storage bins. You can build a cupholder that fits your favorite drink, or a phone mount tailored to your latest handset.

You could say Ford is late. Enthusiasts have already designed FITS accessories in the months since the Maverick’s launch. You can even find unofficial FITS slots for the dashboard cubby and non-Ford vehicles. The official files should make it that much easier to create add-ons, though, and it won’t be surprising if there’s a surge in user-made designs.

Ford

The company is still happy to sell pre-made FITS accessories. As design manager Scott Anderson told Newsweek, however, the 3D printing support represents a “pretty big shift” in Ford’s attitude toward users. It’s an acknowledgment do-it-yourself accessory making is on the rise, and that customizing a vehicle can include more than just performance tuning or cosmetics. What Ford loses in accessory sales it might gain in loyal fans who buy the brand’s vehicles again.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Engadget.

The Polestar 5 will be cut from a different cloth than its predecessors when it launches at the end of 2024. Polestar announced on Tuesday that its upcoming electric performance sedan will ride atop an entirely new, lightweight bonded aluminum platform rather, than the welded design used by the 1 and 2.

Polestar

Because welding aluminum generally halves its yield strength, you end up having to use double the amount of material to achieve the same performance — which defeats the whole purpose of using the lightweight metal in the first place. Bonding aluminum parts together (ie affixing them with screws and adhesive), on the other hand, cuts down on the materials needed but at the cost of extended production times.

“The cycle time to cure the adhesive is comparatively long compared to a typical welding cell,” Steve Swift, director of vehicle engineering at Polestar, told Engadget via email, adding “the strategy to control build consistency is very different to conventional construction methods.”

In order to maintain the material advantages of using aluminum while minimizing the production penalties of bonding the pieces together, Polestar’s engineering team developed a faster manufacturing process that assembles the vehicle body and battery platform as one.

“We were able to bake in the structural stiffness targets we need to meet our dynamic performance aspirations at the beginning of the project,” Swifts said, explaining the benefits of a unibody construction process.

“As such, we will not have to make late modifications to the design to deliver on performance,” he conceded. “With a conventional strategy, if the platform and body performance contributions are discovered to be unbalanced, a compromise or modification becomes necessary.”

The design’s time-saving design has already born results, enabling the company to produce and deliver an early series of prototypes, just 18 months after the start of development. Swift expects the process to reduce “the timing for some of the production tooling required,” as well. What’s more, Polestar noted that the 5 “is being designed with torsional rigidity superior to that of a traditional two-seat sports or supercar” in Tuesday’s announcement and “is expected to weigh less than that of cars in smaller segments.” This should translate into increased range and improved handling, since there is less vehicle mass to move around.

Though the technique cannot be retroactively applied to production of the Polestar 2, its success with the Polestar 5 could potentially lead to its implementation in future projects as well. “While nothing is in R&D just yet,” Swift said, “we have been dreaming of the possibilities it offers.”

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Engadget.

A California civil rights agency has filed a lawsuit against Tesla for alleged racial discrimination and harassment at its Fremont factory, according to The Wall Street Journal. “After receiving hundreds of complaints from workers, DFEH found evidence that Tesla’s Fremont factory is a racially segregated workplace,” said California Department of Fair Employment and Housing director Kevin Kish in a statement.

The DFEH said Black employees were frequently exposed to racial slurs and graffiti, with one worker saying they heard such slurs 50 to 100 times per day. “Black workers are subjected to racial slurs and discriminated against in job assignments, discipline, pay, and promotion creating a hostile work environment,” said Kish.

Last October, Tesla was ordered to pay $137 million in damages to a former Black worker who accused the company of turning a blind eye to discrimination and racial abuse in 2015 and 2016. Tesla disagreed with the verdict, with a spokesperson saying the company was “not perfect” at that time but has “come a long way” since then. Tesla recently moved its corporate headquarters to Texas from California, but has also said it would expand its manufacturing activities by 50 percent in California.

Tesla has previously tussled with the state of California over COVID-19 related plant closures, and isn’t the only high-profile company in the DFEH’s crosshairs. The agency recently sued Activision Blizzard for alleged harassment and discrimination against female employees.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Engadget.

Tesla has received a subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission in November 2021, according to Reuters and CNBC. The automaker has revealed the information in a financial filing, noting that the agency, in particular, is seeking information on its “governance processes around compliance with the SEC settlement, as amended.” November’s subpoena was issued shortly after company chief Elon Musk asked his followers on Twitter if he should sell 10 percent of his stake in Tesla. The automaker’s shares slid sharply following that tweet.

Tesla has been at odds with the SEC for years, starting in 2018 when the agency sued the Elon Musk for tweeting that the company is going private. The agency said that Musk tweeting that Tesla had already secured funding to take the company private constitutes fraud for being a “false and misleading” statement.”

When Tesla settled with the SEC that year, Musk had to agree to have his social network posts containing material information pre-approved by a legal team. Shortly after that, though, he tweeted out previously undisclosed production numbers for 2019 without getting that information reviewed first. The SEC sought to hold him in contempt of their 2018 agreement, and they had to make amendments so that Musk knows exactly what he can and can’t tweet out.

The Tesla chief is known for being a frequent Twitter user. In between memes and random tweets, he uses the platform to share updates and new announcements about his companies, including Tesla and SpaceX. A group of Tesla investors filed a lawsuit in 2019 in an attempt to stop his “unchecked” use of the platform. And just last year, another investor sued Musk and the company, accusing them of violating the SEC agreement. The plaintiff argued that Musk keeps tweeting out “erratic” and unapproved posts, including one in May 2020 wherein he said that Tesla’s share price was “too high imo.” Musk took several breaks from Twitter over the years, and once even claimed that he deleted his account, but he’s still very much active on the platform at the moment.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Engadget.

As the automotive industry inches slowly ahead on the road to self-driving vehicles, we’re seeing the emergence of startups aiming to fill in some of the technical gaps in autonomous systems as they exist today. In the latest development, Annotell, a startup out of Sweden that makes software to assess the performance of autonomous systems’ perception capabilities, and how to improve that, is today announcing that it has raised $24 million to expand its business.

Daniel Langkilde, the co-founder and CEO of Annotell, likens what the company does to “a vision exam for cars, for them to get their drivers license, just like you might take a test to determine if you are fit for driving,” he said in an interview. “Annotell’s platform helps you understand the system’s performance and raise it. We guide our customers on how to improve it.” That is to say, Annotell’s products encompass analytics that test and measure the quality of a company’s data, and “ground-truth” production to improve those data sets.

The aim, he added, is not perfection but predictability, just as important for the semi-autonomous platforms (eg, advanced driver assistance systems) that exist already today as for the fully-autonomous cars that many are hoping to build for the future. “The system may not always be right, but you need to know what it can or can’t do, in order to use the system safely.”

The Series A round is being co-led by Metaplanet — the Estonian VC headed by the co-founder of Skype Jaan Tallinn that most recently also invested in Starship Technologies and was an early backer of Google-acquired DeepMind — and NordicNinja — a Japanese-backed deep tech investor. Previous backers Ernström & Co and Sessan AB also participated. Gothenburg-based Annotell has now raised $31 million, and it’s not disclosing valuation, but for some context, its customers include both a number of the world’s biggest carmakers, their main suppliers, and the big pure-play self-driving car companies.

The gap in the market that Annotell is looking to fill is a pretty critical one: autonomous systems are built on huge troves of driving data and machine learning used to process that information to “teach” those platforms the basics of driving.

Using computer vision, those systems in turn can recognize red lights, or a stopping car, or when to make a turn, and so on. The problem is that these systems’ responses are based on the data that they have been fed. Autonomous systems typically can’t “reason” and make the leap to decide how to respond to an unknown variable, such as those that a vehicle will inevitably encounter in the real world.

“Machine learning is bad at processing rare but important things,” Langkilde said.

Langkilde who co-founded Annotell with Oscar Petersson — both are physicists who specialize in deep learning — said he encountered that problem when he previously worked at a different company, the threat intelligence startup Recorded Future, where he was tasked with gathering intelligence data to feed and teach the platform to better identify threats. Malicious hackers are precisely focused on finding gaps to create vulnerabilities, and that effectively upended a lot of the work his team would do to identify patterns to mitigate future attacks.

“It highlighted the limitations to me of brute force machine learning when you are doing mission-critical work,” he said.

Autonomous driving systems face much of the same issue, but it’s even more critical to get right, not least because there are lives at stake if something goes wrong. This also brings in more levels of safety and control that companies need to pass through to bring their products to market, and get consumers to trust and subsequently buy and use them.

“For people to trust machine learning and AI we have to take safety very seriously,” he said. “There is a a huge difference between making the wrong recommendation on a film service and running a stop sign or running into someone. We also take that seriously. That’s why we wanted to focus on the problem.” The extra layers of safety regulation, meanwhile, also point to specific use cases and market opportunities for Annotell: it’s not just about improving systems for its customers, but creating a body of data that agencies and regulators can also rely on to give a particular product the clearance to be used.

Annotell’s approach to complementing what machine learning can teach systems is as progressive as autonomous systems are today: in part it tests and formalizes the limitations of systems that by their nature are not designed to be fully autonomous (these are the systems we have today to assist, not replace, drivers). Over time, he said, fully autonomous might also incorporate other kinds of AI approaches, such the Bayesian Networks that are used to build causal inference algorithms. (A causal AI startup we covered last week was more dramatic, claiming that causal AI was the only hope for self-driving to become a reality, although even then it’s a big leap and will take a lot of time to come to fruition.)

For now, though, startup is focusing its tech on safety of systems with any degree of autonomy already built in, a massive opportunity.

“Ensuring safety is the main constraint when it comes to commercial deployment of autonomous vehicles, and Annotell has made great progress in a short period of time,” said Jaan Tallinn of Metaplanet, in a statement. “We’re impressed by their software as well as the team that built it and we’re thrilled to be with them on this journey.”

Tesla is issuing an over-the-air update to recall a “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) beta feature that allowed cars to roll through stop signs, ABC News has reported. The function first appeared in FSD 10.3 with the addition of the so-called Assertive profile. It allows vehicles to illegally roll through stop signs at 4-way intersection at speeds of up to 5.6 MPH, according to ABC.

Tesla reportedly agreed to the recall after two meetings with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) officials. It affects nearly 54,000 vehicles including 2016-2022 Model S and X EVs, 2017-2022 Model 3s and 2020-2022 Model Ys. “Failing to stop at a stop sign can increase the risk of a crash,” the NHTSA wrote in the recall report. Tesla said it doesn’t know of any injuries or crashes caused by the feature, however.

Tesla previously reverted its FSD 10.3 software due to “some issues” including a regression with left turns, phantom forward-collision warnings and auto-steering bugs. The company was also forced to recall 300,000 cars in China due to Autopilot issues, while issuing recalls elsewhere for camera and trunk defects, separating suspensions and other issues.

As we’ve previously mentioned, the name “Full Self-Driving” is misleading because that term generally refers to true Level 4 self-driving, while Tesla’s system simply offers Level 2 advanced driver assistance. An OTA release to disable rolling stops is expected to be sent out by early February.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Engadget.

The Renault Nissan Mitsubishi Alliance has announced plans to spend $25.8 billion (€23 billion) with the aim of having 35 EVs by 2030. As part of that, the group will develop five new platforms shared across brands with 80 percent common usage as part of a “smart differentiation” strategy. Nissan teased one of the first cars based on one those platforms, an all-electric compact that will be sold in Europe to replace the automaker’s popular Micra.

The Alliance is focusing on pure EVs and “intelligent & connected mobility.” It aims to increase commonality between vehicles with a “smart differentiation” system that allows pooling for platforms, production plants, powertrains and vehicle segments. “For example, the common platform for the C and D segment will carry five models from three brands of the Alliance (Nissan Qashqai and X-Trail, Mitsubishi Outlander, Renault Austral and an upcoming seven-seater SUV),” Renault Group said in the press release.

To that end, it unveiled five separate platforms, including the affordable CMF-AEV that’s the base for Renault’s budget Dacia Spring model, the mini vehicle KEI-EV platform for ultra-compact EVs and the LCV for commercial vehicles like the Renault Kangoo and Nissan Town Star. Another is CMF-EV, currently used by the Alliance for crossovers like the Nissan Ariya and Renault Megane E-Tech.

Finally, the CMF-BEV platform will be used for compact EVs but reduce costs by 33 percent and consumption by 10 percent compared to the current Renault Zoe. It’ll be the base for 250,000 vehicles per year under the Renault, Nissan and Alpine brands, including the Renault R5 and Nissan’s upcoming EV to replace the Micra.

Nissan teased that vehicle in a separate press release, showing it off in a shadowy photo and brief video (above). While it has no name, price or launch date, it’ll be built at the Renault ElectriCity center in Northern France. “This all-new model will be designed by Nissan and engineered and manufactured by Renault using our new common platform, maximizing the use of our Alliance assets while maintaining its Nissan-ness,” said Nissan CEO Ashwani Gupta. “This is a great example of the Alliance”s ‘smart differentiation” approach.”

Renault Group said it would use a common battery strategy as well, aiming for 220 GWh of production capacity by 2030. It plans to reduce battery costs by 50 percent in 2026 and 65 percent by 2028. It’s aiming to develop all-solid-state batteries (ASSB) by 2028, with Nissan in charge of that project “based on its deep expertise and unique experience as a pioneer in battery technology.”

The Alliance also said it aimed to have 25 million vehicles connected to its cloud system by 2026 that would allow for Tesla-like OTA (over the air) updates. “The Alliance will also be the first global, mass-market OEM to introduce the Google ecosystem in its cars,” Renault Group said.

The news follows Renault’s announcement that it would electrify two thirds of its cars by 2025, with about 90 percent EVs in its lineup by 2030. Renault and Nissan ruled out a closer partnership last year, with Renault saying the companies “don’t need a merger to be efficient.” With the new platforms and cooperation announcement, it appears that the common platforms with “smart differentiation” will be key to that.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Engadget.

The pandemic spurred a boom in electric bikes and other alternative urban transportation modes as city dwellers looked for less-crowded ways to get around their streets quickly and easily without resorting to cars. Now, one of the companies that benefitted from that trend is announcing a big round of funding to expand its business. Cowboy, a Brussels-based startup that makes e-bikes and an accompanying app to manage various services related to them, has raised $80 million in a Series C round of funding.

Exor, HCVC and Siam Capital co-led the investment, with Tiger Global, Index Ventures, Eothen, Isomer Opportunities Fund, Future Positive Capital and Triple Point Capital also participating. Cowboy — which has raised $120 million to date — is not disclosing its valuation, nor any sales numbers, but it says that it’s on track to reach 100,000 riders by 2023.

Adrien Roose, the CEO and co-founder of Cowboy, said he was inspired to build the startup based on three different experiences. His previous company, food delivery startup Take Eat Easy (which eventually shut down), relied a lot on bike riders for deliveries; these were primarily carried out on conventional push bikes, which meant a certain, accepted lag worked into the startup’s logistics network. Separately, Roose visited his grandfather and saw that he was using an electric bike to get around. As a cyclist himself, Roose viewed e-bikes as just that: practical-but-ugly vehicles for older people who couldn’t drive and didn’t have the strength for conventional bikes. His a-ha moment was when he realised that those e-bikes could have helped his bike delivery network work faster, while also contributing to a better environment in the city overall, compared to the motorbikes or cars that were otherwise used for delivery.

“It took me a while to understand that e-bikes could become popular not just with the elderly,” he said. “Electrifying the bike has made cycling more accessible to everyone.”

Roose and his co-founders Karim Slaoui (Cowboy’s VP of hardware) and Tanguy Goretti (Cowboy’s CTO) set out to design a bike that would appeal to a different kind of consumer, a younger urban dweller. Cowboy designs its bikes from the ground up — a marked difference, Roose said, from many others on the market that might design the frame but then buy in components from third parties. Cowboy bikes are known for their sleek, brushed-metal lines and relatively light weight (a Cowboy bike weighs around 19kg, comparable to its close rival Van Moof); their discreet battery positioning (it’s a long tube that in turn locks into the back of the seat tube); and 70km battery life.

Cowboy today has two models of its gear-free electric bikes for sale, the C3 and C4 (retailing for £2,490; or just under $3,000).

Alongside the bikes, Cowboy has developed an app that you use with the bike that provides a range of free bike-related services, such as route planning, bike tracking, diagnostics, and the ability to track your own progress and compare it against other Cowboy riders in your city.

The plan is to use the funds to invest in three areas.

First, Cowboy wants to continue developing the tech on the bikes themselves. One area where Cowboy’s CEO and co-founder Adrien Roose said he’d like to see some movement is for the price for these bikes to come down over time.

“This has been on my mind since the day we started because we want to accelerate the transition to cycling and if you go into thousands of dollars for a bike, it starts to become one of the most expensive purchases a customer might make.” Originally, he said, the aim was to sell the bikes for less than €1,000, although the complexities of designing them from the ground up has meant that that the prices have ratcheted up to be significantly more than that. Now, as the company scales, it has a chance to use that to ease the price down over time.

Second, Cowboy plans to add more services and functionality to its app, which is shaping up to be a separate revenue stream for the company with the recent addition of paid services such as insurance, crash recovery and “Cowboy Care,” a bike repair and maintenance service that is currently available in 22 cities. It’s also dabbling in a circular economy model, where Cowboy owners can sell used Cowboy bikes on the startup’s platform.

And third, Cowboy wants to hire more talent to execute on the first two points, and to expand across more markets. The company expanded into the U.S. in 2021, and while Europe accounts for the majority of Cowboy’s business today, North America is growing fast, so that will likely be one focus for hiring and business expansion.

“While global efforts in combating climate change have led to increasing support for the decarbonization of urban mobility, the need for more sustainable modes of transportation has never been more apparent, especially among this era of conscious consumers. By marrying best-in-class hardware, software and subscription services to deliver an elevated experience, Cowboy is uniquely positioned to emerge as a leader in making electric bikes not only accessible but also aspirational. We could not be more thrilled to partner with them as they continue to bring their mission to market,” says Sita Chantramonklasri from Siam Capital, in a statement.

Cowboy quotes estimates that project sales of $50 billion for e-bikes in the next six years, but that will include a wide plethora of brands and business models. Indeed, Cowboy is competing in the market not just against other modes of transport and other e-bike makers: there’s also been a massive profusion of electric bike rental platforms from the likes of Uber and others. This becomes a compelling way for more casual consumers to use e-bikes without making the significant investment into buying one.

Roose says that he sees shared ownership and on-demand players as a boost to Cowboy’s business.

“I’m deeply convinced that bike sharing platforms have greatly helped us educate the market on what an e-bike is, to understand the value it can bring you,” he said. “Also frankly we don’t compete directly. I use my bike but I also rent by the minute for short trips on the go. It’s a very different use case.”

Transporation startup Boom is one step closer to bringing back supersonic passenger flight. On Wednesday, the company announced plans to build a manufacturing facility at Piedmont Triad International Airport in North Carolina. Once complete, “The Overture Superfactory” will employ approximately 1,750 workers by 2030 and produce the company’s upcoming Overture supersonic jet, which Boom hopes will start flying passengers in 2029. Construction on the facility is expected to start later this year, with production to follow in 2024. The first jet will roll out in 2025 and then fly in 2026.

The 400,000 square foot facility will eventually produce aircraft for carriers like Japan Airlines and United Airlines. In 2021, the latter announced it would purchase 15 Overture jets once the plane met its safety and operating requirements. The agreement includes an option for United to buy an additional 35 aircraft, for a total of 50 jets.

Boom claims Overture will revolutionize commercial aviation. It envisions the Mach 1.7 jet flying from San Francisco to Toyko in approximately six hours. On a modern jet plane, you can expect a flight like that to take about 11 hours. What’s more, Bloom claims Overture will be “net-zero carbon” aircraft thanks to its ability to fly on 100 percent sustainable aviation fuels.

The news is another major win for the state of North Carolina. At the end of December, Toyota announced it would build a $1.29 billion battery plant on the Greensboro-Randolph Megasite, a tract of land located in Randolph County. Once complete sometime in 2025, the facility will consist of four production lines capable of producing batteries for approximately 200,000 vehicles per year.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Engadget.

Kia’s EV6, which shares a platform, battery, motors and more with Hyundai’s Ioniq 5, will start at $42,115 including the $1,215 destination charge, the company announced. That sum will get you the base “Light” rear-wheel drive (RWD) model with a 167-horsepower motor and 58-kWh battery pack delivering a 232-mile EPA range. The model is eligible for a full $7,500 federal tax credit, which would reduce the price down to $34,615.

That’s $1,190 more than the Ioniq 5, if you’re keeping score at home. While the two vehicles share the same platform and offer similar performance, the Ioniq 5 has a more edgy, angular design, while the EV6 offers a more classic, rounded look.

Kia

Kia’s higher-end EV6 models jump considerably in price. The “Wind” RWD EV6 with the 77.4-kWH battery pack and 225-horsepower motor starts at $48,215, offering an EPA range of 310 miles. Meanwhile, the GT-Line RWD comes with more luxurious options but the same drivetrain and starts at $52,415. Both the Wind and GT-Line models can be updated to all-wheel-drive (AWD) starting at $52,115 and $57,115, respectively. EPA range drops to 274 miles for both models, again eligible for $7,500 federal tax credits.

By comparison, Ford’s Mustang Mach-E starts at $44,995, while the Tesla Model 3 has a $46,490 MSRP and the Volkswagen ID.4 is $39,995, all before any incentives.

In our road test with the Ioniq 5, we found that Hyundai had produced a retro-futuristic winner that offers cutting-edge tech and is a pleasure to drive. The EV6 will hopefully live up to that same standard — the first models are expected to arrive at dealers in the coming weeks.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on Engadget.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has filed suit to block the pending deal defense and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin has on the table to acquire Aerojet Rocketdyne. The proposed deal has a total value of $4.4 billion, made up of cash and debt, but the U.S. trade regulation agency argues that the combination of the two companies would provide Lockheed Martin with leverage it could use “to harm rival defense contractors and further consolidate multiple markets critical to national security and defense.”

Aerojet Rocketdyne supplies key systems, including rocket and missile engines, to a number of major defense contractors, and it’s one of very few with the expertise and scale to act as a subcontractor specifically in the area of propulsion system components aimed at missile and hypersonic cruise missile production (the other is Northrop Grumman). The FTC complaint also points out that Aerojet is “the only proven U.S. supplier” of control systems for another crucial area of defense: vehicles designed to intercept and kill enemy missiles.

Not only is the FTC concerned that Lockheed picking up Aerojet could reduce competition in the supply chain for crucial defense components, but it also raises the possibility that the supplier would have access to information that, following closure of the deal, Lockheed may have reason to make unfair use of.

Per the FTC’s release:

As a subcontractor, Aerojet also has had access to prime contractors’ sensitive information about technological advancements, cost, schedule, and business strategies. The complaint alleges that post-acquisition, Lockheed would have an incentive to exploit its access to its rivals’ proprietary information to gain an advantage in competitions against them.

While we’ve seen the current FTC demonstrate more appetite than the incarnation under the last administration to step in with large pending tech deals, this seems like a special case, which is more about the U.S. being concerned about a merger here negatively impacting its ability to build the most effective approach to defense possible.

Aerojet Rocketdyne is also a key supplier in the space industry, providing rocket engines for the ULA’s large launch vehicles, as well as NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS). Recently, they’ve faced more competition in that industry from Blue Origin, while other companies like SpaceX handle their own propulsion system design and supply.

Overall, this shouldn’t spark any concern among startups working in the space and worried it might dampen M&A activity; it’s an absurdly large deal for a company with a very specific role in the defense industry, and unlikely to have broader implications among smaller players.