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Longtime Slashdot reader sinij shares a report from Car and Driver: Sales of electric vehicles surged in September as shoppers rushed to take advantage of the $7500 federal EV tax credit before it disappeared at the end of the month. With the government subsidies now gone, EV sales were expected to take a hit in October. While only a few automakers still report sales on a monthly basis, the results we do have do not paint a rosy picture for EVs in a post-tax credit world. The Korean automakers were hit particularly hard by the loss of the tax credit. The Hyundai Ioniq 5, which was the fifth-best-selling EV through the third quarter of this year, experienced a 63 percent drop, moving 1642 units in October 2025, down from 4498 in 2024. Its platform-mates saw similar declines. The Kia EV6 moved just 508 units, down 71 percent versus the same month the year before, while the luxurious Genesis GV60 only found 93 buyers, a 54 percent slide year over year. Things were even worse at Honda. While the Acura ZDX was recently discontinued after just a single model year, the related Honda Prologue remains on sale but registered just 806 units, down 81 percent from 4130 sales in October 2024. [...] Obviously, this isn't the full picture, as several major players -- including General Motors, Toyota, Nissan, and Volkswagen -- only release sales reports on a quarterly basis, and others, such as Tesla and Rivian, don't break out individual sales at all. But with four of the top 10 bestselling EVs through Q3 all showing noteworthy declines in October, it spells trouble for the EV market at large. The end-of-year sales figures will provide a much clearer picture of whether October was just a blip or the start of a much more widespread problem for EV sales.

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Australia's new "solar sharer" program will give households in NSW, south-east Queensland, and South Australia at least three hours of free solar power each day starting in 2026 -- even for those without rooftop panels. Other areas will potentially follow in 2027. The Guardian reports: The government said Australians could schedule appliances such as washing machines, dishwashers and air conditioners and charge electric vehicles and household batteries during this time. The solar sharer scheme would be implemented through a change to the default market offer that sets the maximum price retailers can charge customers for electricity in parts of the country. The climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, said the program would ensure "every last ray of sunshine was powering our homes" instead of some solar energy being wasted. Australians have installed more than 4m solar systems and there is regularly cheap excess generation in the middle of the day. Part of the rationale for the program is that it could shift demand for electricity from peak times -- particularly early in the evening -- to when it is sunniest. This could help minimize peak electricity prices and reduce the need for network upgrades and intervention to ensure the power grid was stable.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: An Antarctic glacier shrunk by nearly 50% in just two months, the fastest retreat recorded in modern history, according to a new study -- and the way it retreated could have big implications for global sea level rise. The Hektoria Glacier, roughly the size of Philadelphia, is on the Antarctic Peninsula, a spindly chain of mountains sticking off the continent like a thumb pointing toward South America. It is one of the fastest warming regions on Earth. Grounded glaciers like Hektoria, which rest on the seabed and don't float, generally retreat no more than a few hundred meters a year. But between November and December 2022, Hektoria retreated by 5 miles, according to the study published Monday in the journal Nature Geoscience. [...] Understanding more about why this happened is vital; if larger glaciers retreat at similar rates, it could have "catastrophic implications for sea level rise," the authors wrote in a statement accompanying the report. Antarctica holds enough ice to raise global sea level by around 190 feet. Models show that the latest time this kind of ice plain melting occurred was between about 15,000 and 19,000 years ago, "during a period of warming that ended the last Ice Age," notes the report. "[W]e hadn't seen it play out live before, certainly not at this rate," said Naomi Ochwat, a study co-author and postdoctoral associate at the University of Colorado Boulder.

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