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Feds deny Polestar authorization to sell cars in US from model year 2027

The electric car brand Polestar's days in the US are seriously numbered. Today, the company revealed that the US Commerce Department has declined to authorize imports of new Polestars from model year 2027 onward as part of a rule banning connected cars from automakers with Chinese links.

Polestar says it will continue to sell its existing stock of Polestar 3 and Polestar 4 SUVs and "will continue to support customers, including providing access to its service network." But we can forget about the Polestar 5 sedan, the Polestar 6 roadster, or any future models making it to these shores.

The automaker was spun out of Volvo Cars several years ago as a pure EV brand by its corporate parent, Zhejiang Geely Holding, a Chinese company that also owns OEMs like Lynk and Co and Zeekr. And just weeks ago, Commerce authorized Volvo to import MY27 vehicles. At the time, Polestar told Ars that it was continuing to work with US authorities to meet the regulations; that work was evidently in vain.

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Apple ratchets up prices, blames the cost of memory

Apple bumped its prices across much of its product lineup today, in some cases adding hundreds of dollars to the cost of a new Macintosh. An entry-level MacBook Neo that cost $599 is now $699. The formerly $1,299 iMac will now be a $1,499 iMac. An M5 MacBook Pro that was $1,699 is now $1,999. And at the very high end, an M3 Ultra Mac Studio—which features 96GB of memory—sees a $1,300 price increase to $5,299.

The iPad line is also getting more expensive, between $100 and $200, depending on the model. Smaller price increases have been applied to products like the Apple TV and HomePod. The price of iPhones remains unchanged, at least for now.

The culprit? The soaring price of memory, according to an interview that Apple CEO Tim Cook gave to The Wall Street Journal earlier this month. “Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable,” Cook told the paper. “We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable.”

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© Andrew Cunningham

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