EV sales rose globally by 21%, but declined 1% in North America this year, new data shows.
The US sales slump follows policy changes, tariffs, and the end of the $7,500 EV tax credit.
China leads with 11.6 million EVs sold.
The most valuable EV company in the world is based in the US, but Americans are buying fewer battery-powered vehicles.
EV sales in North America fell 1% this year compared to 2024, according to data from supply chain data firm Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. The dip comes as the US has faced a combination of policy changes, tariffs, and supply chain upheavals this year.
There were 1.7 million EVs sold in North America between January and November — far behind the 11.6 million sold in China and below the 3.8 million sold in Europe.
US automaker execs have been sounding the alarm bells on sales. In September, Ford CEO Jim Farley predicted that the EV market share in the US would nearly halve to around 5% in the near term.
Benchmark Mineral Intelligence cited the $7,500 EV tax credit ending in September as a reason for "subdued" sales in the US, along with the Trump administration relaxing rules for automakers designed to encourage the transition to EVs and hybrids.
Elon Musk's Tesla has had a rocky year in almost all of its biggest markets, but it weathered the October drop-off better than its rivals, according to separate data from Cox Automotive. The world's most valuable car company, however, is facing a race against time to avoid a second consecutive year of declining sales.
Other US EV makers have been hit by slowing demand, with GM and Rivian both announcing layoffs in recent months.
China's overall EV sales were up 19%. While BYD, the country's biggest EV maker, hit a rough patch in its home market amid rising competition from local startups, it set a record for EV exports in October.
Globally, EV sales were up 21% compared to last year, the Benchmark Mineral Intelligence data showed.
"Overall, EV demand remains resilient, supported by expanding model ranges and sustained policy incentives worldwide," said Charles Lester, data manager for Rho Motion, the Benchmark subsidiary behind the report.
Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and created a system seemingly designed to reward posters who excelled at rage bait.
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images
Tesla has introduced a wave of incentives to shift as many EVs as it can before the end of the year.
The incentives include free paint jobs and financing deals.
Elon Musk's automaker is racing to avoid another decline in annual sales after a difficult year.
Tesla is piling on incentives for buyers as it aims to end a rocky year on a high.
Elon Musk's automaker has introduced a smorgasbord of discounts and deals in the US, with Tesla facing a race against time to avoid a second consecutive year of declining sales.
Tesla is offering 0% APR financing for up to 72 months on select Model Y Standard purchases and is also advertising the option to lease a Model Y without a down payment on its website.
Buyers can also trade in a gas car to receive 2,000 miles of free supercharging, and Tesla is offering complimentary upgrades, including premium paint jobs, tow hitches, and 19-inch "Nova" wheels valued at up to $1,500 on select inventory vehicles.
Tesla often offers more incentives toward the end of the year. But this time, the company is racing to avoid another year of declining sales, following Tesla's first-ever year-over-year fall in sales in 2024.
Repeating that pattern would provide more evidence that Tesla's momentum is stalling after years of rapid growth.
In October last year, Musk predicted Tesla sales would grow 20-30% in 2025. Tesla needs to sell 555,000 EVs in the final three months of the year — more than it's ever sold in a quarter — just to match its sales figures from last year.
That's a tall order, with Tesla facing difficulties in all its main markets. The Cybertruck maker's sales have cratered in Europe amid backlash over Musk's politics. In China, Tesla has been squeezed by a wave of competition from local rivals.
Tesla also faces major headwinds in the US after the Trump administration scrapped the $7,500 tax credit for new EVs in September. Tesla's US sales fell 35% between September and October after the tax credit disappeared, according to data from Cox Automotive.
It comes as Musk has increasingly shifted Tesla's focus toward AI and robotics. The billionaire has described the steering wheel-less Cybercab and Tesla's Optimus robot as the future of the company, with both set to enter production next year.
Michael Novati got the nickname "coding machine" at Meta. He said the top tier engineers are off LinkedIn, but that doesn't mean engineers should delete their profiles and expect offers to roll in.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Michael Novati, a former Meta principal software engineer, said that the best engineers' names are "nowhere" online.
"The $100 million engineer is not on LinkedIn with a tagline that's like, #100millionengineer," Novati said on "A Life Engineered."
The strategy is intended for top-tier Big Tech engineers, Novati said, and not for everyday coders.
LinkedIn is full of corporate braggarts. But don't expect the best engineers to flaunt their success on the platform — or even have an account, according one former Meta employee.
Michael Novati spent almost eight years at Meta, back when it was still called Facebook and hadn't yet doubled down on AI. He reached the rank of principal software engineer and earned the nickname "coding machine."
On the "A Life Engineered" podcast, host Steve Huynh asked Novati about his claim that the top five engineers aren't on LinkedIn. Novati stood by it.
"When I was at Facebook, the top engineers were like, 'If you had a LinkedIn account, people would be wondering if you're job hunting,'" he said.
Novati said these engineers don't need to publicly job hunt because of tech's extensive recruiting arm, which he called the "secrets of the industry."
"There are very senior, very highly paid recruiters that work at the top companies who have very strong long-term social relationships with a lot of top engineers," he said.
How do these engineers and recruiters meet? Novati gave the example of an engineer who spends a week doing campus recruiting at Stanford, bonding with the company's recruiter in the process.
He referred to these as the "secret backroom dealings of Silicon Valley."
"These engineers' names are nowhere, but they are the ones that are the most desirable by these recruiters," he said. "The $100 million engineer is not on LinkedIn with a tagline that's like, #100millionengineer."
Tech recruiting has long been a large, lucrative industry. Big Tech companies both employ in-house recruiters and outside agencies to stay close to key talent.
Meanwhile, talent is becoming increasingly competitive, particularly in the field of AI. Meta shelled out large contracts for its Superintelligence Labs, poaching engineers from its competitors.
Sometimes CEOs even get involved. Mark Zuckerberg reportedly made a list of the top AI talent to poach. OpenAI's chief research officer said that Zuckerberg hand-delivered soup to an employee he was trying to recruit.
One AI worker told Business Insider they got a personal call from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, pitching them to join the company. They accepted.
Being offline may not be the golden key to tech recruiting, though. These top-tier engineers are a "specific case," Novati said on the podcast.
"It doesn't mean that your strategy should be: delete LinkedIn and all the offers will come," he said.
It's a rarified class, Novati said, but one that stays away from all semblances of personal branding.
"I don't know any of those top engineers, who get special equity grants and special dinners with Bezos or whatever stuff like that, who have big personal brands," he said.
An AI agent hacked Stanford's network for 16 hours and outperformed human pros, all while costing far less than their six-figure pay.
Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images
An AI agent hacked Stanford's computer science networks for 16 hours in a new study.
The AI agent outperformed nine out of 10 human participants, said the study by Stanford researchers.
It also cost a fraction of the six-figure salary for a "professional penetration tester."
For 16 hours, an AI agent crawled Stanford's public and private computer science networks, digging up security flaws across thousands of devices.
By the end of the test, it had outperformed professional human hackers — and at a fraction of the cost.
A study published Wednesday by Stanford researchers found that their AI agent, ARTERMIS, placed second in an experiment with 10 selected cybersecurity professionals. The researchers said the agent could uncover weaknesses that humans missed and investigate several vulnerabilities at once.
Running ARTEMIS costs about $18 an hour, far below the average salary of about $125,000 a year for a "professional penetration tester," the study said. A more advanced version of the agent costs $59 an hour and still comes in cheaper than hiring a top human expert.
The study was led by three Stanford researchers — Justin Lin, Eliot Jones, and Donovan Jasper — whose work focuses on AI agents, cybersecurity, and machine-learning safety. The team created ARTEMIS after finding that existing AI tools struggled with long, complex security tasks.
The researchers gave ARTEMIS access to the university's network, consisting of about 8,000 devices, including servers, computers, and smart devices. Human testers were asked to put in at least 10 hours of work while ARTEMIS ran 16 hours across two workdays. The comparison with human testers was limited to the AI's first 10 hours.
The study also tested existing agents, which lagged behind most human participants, while ARTEMIS performed "comparable to the strongest participants," the researchers said.
Within the 10-hour window, the agent discovered "nine valid vulnerabilities with an 82% valid submission rate," outperforming nine of 10 human participants, the study said.
Some of the flaws had gone unnoticed by humans, including a weakness on an older server that testers could not access because their browsers refused to load it. ARTEMIS bypassed the issue and broke in using a command-line request.
The AI worked in a way humans could not, the researchers said. Whenever ARTEMIS spotted something "noteworthy" in a scan, it spun up additional "sub-agents" to investigate in the background, allowing it to examine multiple targets simultaneously. Human testers had to do this work one step at a time.
But the AI isn't flawless. ARTEMIS struggled with tasks that required clicking through graphical screens, causing it to overlook a critical vulnerability. It is also more prone to false alarms, mistaking harmless network messages for signs of a successful break-in.
"Because ARTEMIS parses code-like input and output well, it performs better when graphical user interfaces are unavailable," the researchers said.
AI is making hacking easier
Advances in AI have lowered the barrier to hacking and disinformation operations, allowing malicious actors to enhance their attacks.
In September, a North Korean hacking group used ChatGPT to generate fake military IDs for phishing emails. A report from Anthropic in August found that North Korean operatives used its Claude model to obtain fraudulent remote jobs at US Fortune 500 tech companies — a tactic that gave them insider access to corporate systems.
The same report also said a Chinese threat actor used Claude to run cyberattacks on Vietnamese telecom, agricultural, and government systems.
"We are seeing many, many attacks," Yuval Fernbach, the chief technology officer of machine learning operations at software supply chain company JFrog, told Business Insider in a report published in April. He added that hackers have been using AI models to extract data, shut systems down, or manipulate a website or tools.
A British Airways flight to Mexico returned to London on Wednesday.
It turned around over the Atlantic Ocean, five hours into the journey.
Passengers were on the plane for nine hours before landing back at Heathrow Airport.
British Airways passengers spent more than nine hours on a transatlantic flight that ended up back where it started.
Wednesday's Flight 243 took off from London Heathrow Airport at 1:22 p.m. and was supposed to land in Mexico City around 11 hours later.
However, five hours into the journey, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner turned around over the Atlantic Ocean.
It had already passed Greenland and was only about 150 miles off the coast of Canada's Nunavut territory, according to data from Flightradar24.
The plane then headed back across the ocean, arriving in London just after 10 p.m.
The airline said in a statement that the diversion was due to an unspecified technical issue.
"The flight landed safely and customers disembarked normally following reports of a technical issue with the aircraft. We've apologised to our customers for the delay, and our teams are working to get their journeys back on track," the statement said.
It can be frustrating for passengers when they're diverted to their origin — a so-called flight to nowhere — but often it's the best course of action.
Returning to Heathrow, BA's main hub, makes it easier for the airline to rebook passengers on alternative flights and fix any problems with the aircraft.
Diverting elsewhere might have also left the plane and crew out of place, disrupting the airline's schedule. Plus, a stopover in Canada or the US may have caused the crew to reach their maximum working hours.
When BA Flight 243 turned around, its closest airport was Iqaluit in northern Canada, less than 300 miles away.
Some flights have diverted to this remote town in the past, but it can ultimately be more disruptive.
The pilots declared an emergency, and a different plane was rerouted to rescue the passengers. It was originally scheduled for another flight, so that had to be canceled. Passengers were then taken to New York, where they were rebooked onto other flights to reach their intended destination of Seattle.
Ultimately, it depends on how urgent the diversion is, since safety is the top concern.
However, if possible, returning to the flight's origin can be the simplest option for both passengers and the airline.
Leslie Snipes secured approval from her manager to work remotely after struggling with her LA commute.
She said she made the case for why working from home would benefit her personally and professionally.
Working remotely has been a game changer for her, even though she misses some parts of office life.
This 'as-told-to' essay is based on a conversation with Leslie Snipes, a 34-year-old director of marketing at a Los Angeles-based creative agency who lives in Reseda, California. Her words been edited for length and clarity.
When I started my director of marketing job in January 2024, the expectation was that I'd work from the office at least once a week. But because I was in a director-level role, I felt a bit more obligated to show face.
For the first few months, I made the 30-mile, 60- to 90-minute commute to our Los Angeles office a couple of days a week. Over time, the commute began to take a toll on me. I was wasting hours a day sitting in LA traffic.
In April 2024, after weighing my options, I decided to speak with my manager and ask if I could work mostly from home — coming into the office only as needed, along with any travel obligations. My request was approved in less than a day.
How I made the case for work-from-home flexibility
I started the conversation with my manager by being transparent about my commute and the challenges it was creating for me. I would often arrive home feeling mentally drained, frustrated, or short-tempered after commuting, which affected my energy and overall well-being in the evenings. Additionally, the wear and tear on my car, along with the gas costs, were becoming outrageously expensive.
I also shared that I believed I'd be a better worker without the strain of the commute, because I could spend more time actually working rather than sitting in traffic. Most of the company's clients were based on the East Coast — rather than LA — so most of my work could be done remotely from my computer and through Zoom calls.
I emphasized my performance
From a team camaraderie perspective, some of our strongest bonding happened during travel and off-site projects, rather than in the office, so I noted that working remotely wouldn't take away from that sense of connection.
Overall, I emphasized that working from home would allow me to deliver my best work without compromising collaboration or team culture — and I think that approach was effective.
After speaking with my manager and another manager, they were very understanding and accommodating. Since my role involves some travel, the managers said they considered that to be a form of in-office time, as I'm still interacting with colleagues in person.
More than anything, they recognized that work-from-home flexibility would help me perform at a higher level — and they trusted me to deliver on that.
WFH has been a game changer — I'm glad I asked for it
The biggest perk of my work-from-home flexibility is that I feel much more efficient with my time — both personally and professionally. It gives me greater autonomy over my schedule, which helps me manage my workload more effectively and leaves me more energized and present when meeting with the team.
I'm also a bit of an introvert, and I find it harder to focus when I'm surrounded by a lot of people. I tend to get more distracted in the office than when I'm working alone. Now, instead of showing up to be "a body in the room," I can focus my energy on strategy, creative work, and client engagement.
Working from home has also reduced my stress, since I'm no longer spending hours in traffic just trying to get to work on time.
There are some things I miss about working in the office
Despite these benefits, I sometimes miss grabbing lunch and coffee with coworkers and talking about non-work-related things. When I'm working from home, I mostly interact on an as-needed basis, and there's less spontaneity with coworkers outside work.
I typically make the commute to the office once or twice a month to connect in person with my colleagues, in addition to whenever circumstances warrant it.
Overall, the shift has been a game changer for me — and it's a setup I wouldn't have if I hadn't asked.
Dominick DiBartolomeo, the owner of the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills, says going viral on social media has helped reinvigorate his business.
Courtesy of Dominick DiBartolomeo
Dominick DiBartolomeo said TikTok virality drew in waves of younger customers to his cheese store.
The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills has repeatedly pivoted due to the pandemic and tariff uncertainty.
Appealing to younger customers has helped reinvigorate the store, which has been open since 1967.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Dominick DiBartolomeo, owner of the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills. It has been edited for length and clarity.
When I bought the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills, my goal was to honor its legacy while making it feel fresh and relevant.
The shop has been around since 1967 and already had decades of goodwill, but I wanted to create something familiar and new, so we added sandwiches, salads, cheese boards, and wines by the glass.
I didn't expect the flood of teenagers.
My daughter is 16, and I like to say her generation arrived armed with Instagram. They started filming everything — and some of those videos went viral.
Suddenly, we had crowds of teens lining up for a place that had historically catered to adults, chefs, and longtime Beverly Hills locals. It completely changed the energy of the shop.
This year has been one of our toughest
People know our products are premium, but they don't see how volatile the economics have become.
We import directly from Europe, mainly Italy. At the beginning of the year, tariffs were 10%, and we absorbed as much of that as we could. However, the Euro then jumped from around $1.04 to about $1.17 or $1.18 — a 13% swing. As a result, the same products suddenly cost 23% more before they even reach our shores.
Then there are the Chinese tariffs, which people rarely think about, but almost all takeout packaging comes from China. Between packaging tariffs and ingredient tariffs, some costs have risen 50%, 60%, and even 70%. When that happens across your entire supply chain, the math stops making sense.
We tried everything before raising prices, from asking suppliers to share some of the tariff load to switching products, and eventually accepting lower margins. However, at a certain point, you can't absorb the costs.
Our sales are up this year, but our margins are down because our costs are so much higher. That's the reality for a lot of small specialty food businesses right now.
Our customers are still buying, but the middle is getting squeezed. The under-$25 customer remains rock solid, and diners spending $100 or more are also doing fine. It's the middle that's struggling, and that's where a lot of restaurants and gifting budgets live.
The next generation is extending the life cycle of my business
When we moved into our new location a couple of years back, I knew I had to take care of the older clientele who built this brand — but I also believed that if the shop didn't evolve, it would die.
Adding sandwiches and salads wasn't just about giving people something to eat while they browsed. It was a way to create a full experience. While customers wait for their sandwiches, they can try different cheeses in line. The whole place feels alive.
Then the influencers started showing up.
I didn't know who most of them were — I had to ask my daughter who people were after they left — but our Instagram following grew from 6,000 to around 280,000 in about a year and a half.
People now walk in and say, "I came here because you showed up on my feed." We even had a couple from Australia tell us this was their first stop off the plane for their honeymoon because we popped up on their TikTok feed.
The most exciting part is that the virality around the sandwiches has turned into virality around the cheese, too. Because of the way our line bends through the store, people waiting for sandwiches are sampling cheeses the whole time — and they film that. Now, young customers come in for a buzzy sandwich, discover a type of cheese they've never tried, and suddenly they're coming back for parties, holidays, or simply because they want something special.
We even launched a merch line because we noticed how many younger customers wanted something to take home. Seeing a longtime customer who's been coming in for 40 or 50 years standing next to a teenager in a Cheese Store hoodie is one of the coolest things I've ever experienced. It feels like we've made cheese buying cool again.
The Cheese Store of Beverly Hills serves more than 500 different cheeses, many of which were imported from Italy.
Courtesy of Dominick DiBartolomeo
What's happened is that this new generation has completely renewed the life cycle of the business. At the same time, our longtime loyal customers remain the backbone of who we are. Now the two groups stand shoulder to shoulder in the shop. It's a full-circle moment — we've managed to grow without losing our core.
I met my wife at the Cheese Store, where I was working while I couldn't afford a phone and was taking the bus to work. She supported me through everything — from raising money to buying the business and surviving the pandemic. Now we have 40 to 50 employees. All of their families rely on us.
That responsibility changes you. So does the joy of seeing the store full, watching our products show up in incredible restaurants, and witnessing teens discover a 57-year-old Beverly Hills cheese shop on social media.
