Sometimes the crowd isn’t so wise.

When Ferrari revealed the Luce — its first EV — to the public in May, the internet reacted. And not in a positive way.

Critics compared the wedge-shaped Luce with a Nissan Leaf and said Chinese EVs would outperform it while undercutting it on price. Even former Ferrari chair Luca Cordero di Montezemolo was among the haters. Ferrari’s stock dropped 8% the day after the reveal. Their conclusion: the Luce would be a dud.

It turns out, the armchair auto executives were wrong about the five-seater that was largely designed by Jony Ive and his firm, LoveFrom.

Ferrari hit this year’s sales target for the Luce in just two months, according to a report by the Financial Times. The automaker was hoping to sell just under 500 of the €555,000 EVs ($630,000), and based on previous reports, it sounds like at least 20% will make their way to China. That’s not surprising, given that the Luce seems tailor-made for the Chinese market, which favors fast, sleek four-door EVs.

TechCrunch has reached out to Ferrari to confirm the figures, and we’ll update this article if we receive a reply.

Much of the internet’s hate was directed at the Luce’s styling, which hewed to some Ferrari norms while throwing others out the window. Appearance is subjective, and I’ve seen enough cars in my day to know that some designs don’t translate well on screen. Maybe seeing one in person tipped buyers into placing an order.

What’s more, Ferrari has an enthusiastic and price-insensitive customer base. The company sold more than 13,000 cars last year, which is a lot for an automaker that specializes in six-figure vehicles. Ferrari buyers tend to own several models, so it’s also not difficult to imagine 500 of them wanting a practical vehicle that’s also a Ferrari.

Is the Luce worth the price of admission? Early reviews suggest that it drives like a Ferrari should. Plus, it has the prancing horse on the hood. That appears to be all Ferrari needs to succeed.

Waymo is slowly adding freeway routes back to its service area more than two months after the company stopped driving these high-speed roads over how its rovotaxis behaved near construction zones.

Waymo announced Wednesday in a post on X that it would gradually add freeway routes, starting with Phoenix — the company’s first driverless ride-hailing market. More cities, including Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, would follow in the coming days, a Waymo spokesperson told TechCrunch.

In an emailed statement, Waymo said it was “resuming freeway operations across its entire service area, including areas with construction, after implementing software updates designed to improve performance around freeway construction zones.”

Those software updates improved performance around construction zones through enhanced scene recognition and routing, according to the company.

The freeway pause — and its restart — comes amid increased scrutiny into Waymo and other robotaxi operators, particularly over how these self-driving vehicles behave in certain high-traffic situations and around emergency responders. Earlier this week, Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-Calif.) proposed a bill that would direct federal regulators to establish minimum national safety standards for autonomous vehicle operators following a number of incidents in which autonomous vehicles blocked ambulances and fire trucks, drove into active crime scenes, and failed to recognize safety signals such as traffic cones and flares.

Waymo started offering robotaxi rides that used freeways across San Francisco, Phoenix, and Los Angeles in November 2025, a critical expansion for the company as it sought to attract riders with shorter commute times and faster access to airports. It would later add freeway routes in Miami.

The expansion proved to be popular, and when it suddenly disappeared in May, riders took to social media to ask why. At the time, Waymo told TechCrunch it wanted to improve the performance of its robotaxis in construction zones, noting that it was in the process of integrating “recent technical learnings into our software and expect to resume these routes soon.”

Weeks later, Waymo voluntarily recalled its fleet of nearly 4,000 robotaxis after identifying at least 13 instances of its robotaxis driving into highway sections that were closed for construction, according to a filing submitted in June with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. A Waymo spokesperson said there were no injuries or collisions reported in connection with these events. However, after reviewing the incidents, the company said it decided to temporarily restrict freeway operations.

This was Waymo’s sixth recall of its robotaxis. Previous recalls included software fixes after its robotaxis drove into flooded roads and behaved illegally around school buses.

The Trump administration is banning the import of new foreign-made humanoid robots, robot dogs, and power inverters, citing an “unacceptable” threat to national security. The move largely affects imports from China, which currently has the vast majority of the global market share. 

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission announced the ban on Tuesday, saying that devices made overseas could be remotely controlled or used for surveillance by foreign governments, or otherwise used in cyberattacks.

The FCC said that exceptions would be granted if the government finds that a device does not pose a risk to U.S. national security.

The U.S. government has long accused China of hacking into U.S. businesses to steal data, and preparing to launch future cyberattacks for its own military gains, such as an anticipated invasion of Taiwan. But the U.S. has also long warned that the risk of Chinese ownership alone could allow Beijing to force a company to spy on Americans or remotely tamper with their products. The U.S. government has similar legal powers.

Humanoid robots, the class of robots that move similarly to humans, are far from mainstream and are still in early development. There have been around 15,000 humanoid robots shipped worldwide in 2025, with each of China’s two largest robot makers accounting for the majority of those shipments.

Power inverters are far more commonly used in U.S. households that connect solar and other renewable energy systems to the wider power grid. Existing devices in homes and installations are unaffected by the ban, the FCC said.

The ban is the latest in a series of actions taken by the U.S. government against China in recent years, including a U.S. government ban on TikTok that forced it into the hands of U.S. investors, plus bans on a broad swath of foreign-made consumer routers, and Chinese surveillance equipment makers Hikvision and Dahua, which have been linked to human rights abuses.

Beijing rebuffed the FCC’s ban, with a Foreign Ministry spokesperson quoted by the Associated Press as saying that China will use “all measures necessary” to protect China’s businesses. 

Chinese Premier Xi Jinping is expected to meet President Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. during a planned state visit in September.