Camila Domonoske

As electric cars grow in popularity and visibility, experts say a revolution is coming in a place most people overlook: corporate and municipal fleets.

The scooter company Lime is the latest firm to announce that it plans to completely remove gas- and diesel-powered vehicles from its fleet and power its new electric work vehicles with renewable energy.

Around the turn of the millennium, General Motors made a decision: Electric cars were out. Giant trucks were a hit.

So the company abandoned its pioneering electric vehicle — not just stopping production but pulling cars off the road and crushing them. And it went all-in on the gas-guzzling military-style behemoth called the Hummer.

For the vast majority of Americans, helicopters are hardly a routine form of transportation. But a high-profile helicopter disaster — like the crash in Calabasas, Calif., that killed Kobe Bryant and eight other people on Sunday — can draw widespread attention to helicopter safety.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has always had ambitious goals. Make electric cars cool, save the world, all while making money as a brand new car manufacturer.

And from the start some people have been confident that he would fail. So they shorted Tesla stock — placing a bet that the company's stock value would collapse.

So far, that has been a phenomenally bad bet.

In the first two weeks of 2020 alone, short sellers were down some $2.6 billion, according to Ihor Dusaniwsky, the head of predictive analytics at S3 Partners.

Microsoft has announced an ambitious plan to not just reduce its carbon emissions, but to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere — going "carbon negative" by 2030.

And by 2050, the tech giant pledges it will "remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since it was founded in 1975."

Maersk — the world's largest container shipping company — has an astonishing goal. By 2050, the company vows to send goods — everything from electronics to soybeans to sneakers — around the world with zero carbon emissions.

The environmental logic behind such a promise is straightforward: Shipping contributes substantially to global climate change.

But the business case is not as obvious.

Updated at 1:49 p.m. ET

Virgin Galactic, the space tourism company founded by billionaire Richard Branson, is preparing to enter the stock market by the end of 2019, through a merger with an existing company.

It would be the first spaceflight company to be publicly owned; Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Elon Musk's SpaceX are both privately held.

Lee Iacocca, one of the best known auto executives, died Tuesday. He was 94.

Iacocca was a top executive at two of America's largest car companies — Ford and Chrysler. His career spanned decades and several generations. He was known for developing the Mustang and bringing the minivan to scores of American family garages, as well as orchestrating a remarkable turnaround at Chrysler.

His daughter Lia Iacocca Assad confirmed his death to NPR in a phone call.

OPEC used to shift world oil markets with a single announcement. These days, the Saudi-led organization needs help from some key partners — most significantly Russia — to exert that kind of influence.

The expanded alliance, which also includes Kazakhstan, Mexico and other nations, is known as "OPEC+." And on Monday and Tuesday, OPEC+ made its unofficial expansion a little more official.

Member and non-member states have agreed on a "Charter of Cooperation" to formalize their relationship, pending approval from individual governments.

Updated at 5:10 p.m. ET

OPEC and other allied major oil producers have agreed to extend crude oil production cuts for nine months, a move designed to keep oil prices from falling as U.S. production increases and concerns grow about global demand.

Crude oil prices rose after early reports of OPEC's decision. However, prices are not expected to rise dramatically, as countries that don't cooperate with OPEC — like the United States — have enough capacity to meet projected growth in demand.

Alex Schefer loves his Teslas — the Model S he and his wife use to tote their kids around, the Roadster that's part of their premium car-sharing club.

But he's been waiting not-so-patiently to have some other options for luxury electric vehicles.

"This car came out in 2012," he says, from behind the wheel of his Model S. "In 2015, Porsche said, 'Hey, we're gonna make this Mission E.' And that's great. I love Porsches, but now it's 2019 and I still can't buy one."

Many new cars sold today can take preemptive action to help prevent crashes — hitting the brakes before a collision, steering around obstacles or alerting drivers to hazards in their blind spots.

Those safety features — collectively known as advanced driver-assistance systems, or ADAS — reduce the risk of crashes. It might seem logical to assume that as a result, they'd reduce the cost of car insurance.

President Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on goods imported from Mexico, starting next week, if Mexico doesn't take action to reduce the flood of Central American migrants across the Southern border of the U.S.

The proposed tariffs — which would start at 5% on goods crossing the border and could ramp up to 25% over time — would play havoc with supply chains in the auto industry.

To understand why, consider a vehicle's wiring harness — the car's nervous system, consisting of a complex network of wires that connect electronic components throughout the car body.

For most companies, losing $1 billion in a quarter would be a big disappointment. But Uber's first report as a publicly traded company was actually better than it had warned investors to expect.

The ride-hailing and food-delivery giant brought in more than $3 billion in revenue in the first three months of 2019 — a 20% jump from the same quarter a year earlier.

The U.S. Postal Service is experimenting with self-driving trucks to move mail across state lines.

The USPS has partnered with San Diego-based TuSimple on a two-week pilot program focusing solely on a 1,000-mile route between Dallas and Phoenix.

Know a young driver who's ignoring your pleas to buckle up? Chevrolet suggests you might try to see if they'll listen to a different authority figure: their car.

The automaker is introducing a feature, specifically for teen drivers, that will temporarily block the auto from shifting into gear if their seat belt isn't buckled. A message will alert the driver to buckle up in order to shift into gear.

After 20 seconds, the vehicle will operate normally.

Updated at 3:30 p.m. ET

Ford is eliminating about 7,000 white-collar jobs — or about 10% of its salaried workforce — as part of a previously announced companywide global restructuring.

About 800 U.S. workers will lose their jobs between now and August. Another 1,500 U.S. employees took voluntary buyouts last year.

Globally, some of the 7,000 affected workers are being laid off, while others are being reassigned, Ford says.

The Trump administration's trade war with China continues to roil markets and draw headlines. But that's not the only trade tension in town.

For about a year, the White House has been weighing the possibility of imposing tariffs or quotas on cars and car parts imported from close allies in Europe and Japan.

The auto industry is united in opposition to the tariffs. But carmakers and auto suppliers may have to keep waiting to find out whether their pleas have been heard.

Uber will go public on Friday in a highly anticipated initial public offering that will be the largest since 2014 — and one of the biggest in U.S. history.

After speculation that the ride-hailing company could be valued at as high as $120 billion, Uber is now targeting a valuation of $80 billion to $90 billion. At the same time, it has never made a profit — and has instead been burning through cash at a prodigious rate.

New York City is preparing to become the first urban area in the U.S. to adopt congestion pricing — a fee for drivers entering the city center, designed to reduce gridlock and help fund the city's struggling subway system.

And nearly two years before the fees are put in place, a poll by Quinnipiac University found that 54% of New Yorkers are opposed to the change in policy. That's no surprise to experts on transportation policy.

Robots have revolutionized auto manufacturing, making plants safer and products more reliable — and reducing the number of people involved in the process. But walk inside a modern auto plant, and you'll quickly realize that robots have hardly replaced the human touch — at least, not in some areas.

Volvo is a Chinese-owned Swedish company making cars in the U.S. When it decided to set up a plant in South Carolina to build cars to ship around the world, it was following a long tradition.

With its port, Charleston, S.C., has been a shipping hub for centuries. And the state has been home to international manufacturers for decades — BMW, Michelin and Bosch are among the many global firms with footholds there.

But before the plant opened last year, President Trump transformed America's approach to trade policy.

Multinational oil giant Chevron will buy the American oil and gas production and exploration company Anadarko Petroleum in a $33 billion cash-and-stock deal that strengthens Chevron's position in the booming Permian Basin.

Updated at 5:41 p.m. ET

Going green is often easier said than done, but a new business organization is hoping to change that. While focusing on large-scale energy buyers, the group plans to push for changes that could make renewable power more accessible for all Americans.

Companies from a variety of industries — including Walmart, General Motors, Google and Johnson & Johnson — are forming a trade association to represent firms that purchase renewable energy and remove barriers that make it complicated to shift away from carbon.

Boeing's bestselling jetliner, the 737 Max, has crashed twice in six months — the Lion Air disaster in October and the Ethiopian Airlines crash this month. Nearly 350 people have been killed, and the model of plane has been grounded indefinitely as investigations are underway.

Boeing has maintained the planes are safe. But trust — from the public, from airlines, from pilots and regulators — has been shaken.

So far, experts say, Boeing has mishandled this crisis but has the opportunity to win back confidence in the future.

With its fastest-selling plane grounded in the U.S. and around the world, Boeing faces potential hits to its bottom line as well as to its reputation. A lengthy delay could cut Boeing's revenues by billions, some analysts say.

Some people love electric scooters. Some people hate them. And some people charge them — for money.

By day, Joel Kirzner is a consultant in Arlington, Va. But when he wraps up work in the office, he pulls out his phone and checks multiple scooter apps to see what's available nearby.

If there are scooters low on battery, they'll show up in the map on his phone. And if he can find the scooter in real life (and beat any rival chargers to the punch), he'll earn a few bucks for each one he charges at home.

"It's like Pokémon Go and you make money," he says.

Most American automobiles are powered by internal combustion engines: Gas or diesel goes in, tiny explosions power pistons and turn a crankshaft, the car moves forward, and carbon dioxide goes out.

But a growing chorus of environmental activists, business analysts and auto executives are predicting a sea change as battery-powered electric vehicles grow in popularity.