Next year is slated to be a big one for electric RV startup Lightship.

2025 was the year it launched production of its flagship trailer, a spaceship-like vehicle outfitted with solar arrays to enable off-grid adventures. 2026 is the year of ramping up production—no easy feat for a product with thousands of parts that hasn’t reached economies of scale, and with the complexities of establishing a supply base from scratch.

“The idea behind our products and the ownership and user experience that we want to build around is that it should basically be what RVing was always meant to be, which is freedom off-grid in beautiful places and the ability to take your comfort with you on the road, wherever you go,” Ben Parker, Lightship’s co-founder and chief product officer, told Tech Brew.

Hitting the road: Parker and fellow Tesla alum Toby Kraus founded Lightship in 2020.

“I had a pet project while still at Tesla to try to electrify all the food trucks in the Bay Area, because I couldn’t stand yelling over a gas generator every day to put in my lunch order,” Parker said. “That snowballed into, let’s build a ground-up, fully electric RV company.”

Keep reading here.—JG

EV sales are in free fall, and they’re dragging the rest of the new-vehicle market down with them.

As numerous automakers reported monthly results for November this week, industry analysts pointed to nagging affordability challenges and the decline in EV sales following the expiration of federal tax credits to explain why new-vehicle sales fell by as much as 8% from November 2024.

“November’s results reflect another notable—yet anticipated—decline in the new-vehicle sales pace, driven largely by the pull-ahead of EV purchases prior to the expiration of federal EV tax credits on Sept. 30,” Thomas King, JD Power’s president of OEM solutions, said in a statement.

“That expiration prompted many shoppers to accelerate buying decisions, resulting in a surge in EV sales that temporarily inflated the overall industry sales pace,” he added. “Now, two months after the credit expired, the industry continues to feel the effect of those accelerated purchases.”

Keep reading here.—JG

The US electrical grid—which is really just a patchwork of interconnected regional grids—has a lot of vulnerabilities: It’s struggling to satisfy rising energy demand, is prone to outages, and at times gets overloaded by excess renewable energy. And on top of all that, local, state, and federal power authorities are constantly fighting off cyber threats to the grid’s stability.

A House Committee on Energy and Commerce hearing this week discussed what Congress can do to combat grid hacking from foreign adversaries that aim ever-evolving threats at the US electric supply. Hearing witnesses and Democratic representatives positioned renewables, batteries, and virtual power plants as secret weapons against hacking threats, as they can incorporate cybersecurity software.

“Our grid was established with a few large-scale fossil-based energy generators pushing out energy to customers,” Representative Kathy Castor (D-FL) said during the hearing. “We can replace our outdated energy systems with software-enabled clean energy technologies, modern tools that allow the grid to recover more readily when harmed by a hurricane or a hacker.”

It’s the grid’s “aging infrastructure” that makes it so vulnerable to cyberattacks, according to hearing witness Harry Krejsa, the director of studies at Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Strategy & Technology. In his testimony, he urged Congress to embrace “modernization from top to bottom” when it comes to grid infrastructure.

Keep reading here.—TC

As AI grows smarter, data protection grows trickier. Discover how leaders are redefining “safe AI” with strategies that keep sensitive information under wraps while staying competitive. Tune in for this free virtual event on December 11.

That’s a wrap: It’s the first week of December, so all our apps—including YouTube and Spotify—are serving up stats on what our media consumption really says about us. (Unless, of course, your child routinely bogarts your Spotify, in which case everything was skewed by KPop Demon Hunters.)

Don’t drive my car: Self-driving cars have been on the horizon for what seems like decades, and robotaxi startups are making gains. But a fully autonomous vehicle in your garage might be a tougher sell. The Verge’s Andrew J. Hawkins ticks off reasons why we may opt to remain behind the wheel, from practical matters like routine sensor cleanings all the way down to safety and aesthetics.

More focus, less fluff. CollabWORK filters out the noise and delivers jobs that actually match what Tech Brew readers are looking for. Click here to see the full board of curated roles.

• AVP, Data Product at Banc of California
• Product Manager at Micron Technology, Inc.
• Senior Software Engineer at Acuity Brands
• Principal NPI Product Lead at Micron Technology, Inc.
• Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) Senior Software Engineer at Axiom Space

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s weekly news quiz has been compared to getting a company-wide shout-out from your boss. It’s that satisfying.