Why It’s So Hard to Buy One of the Country’s Top-Selling Cars Right Now

Some websites are going offline after AI helped find one of the most severe online bugs ever. Plus, supply issues for Toyota's most popular US model threaten to put the company behind. "Rav sales are down 30 percent this year, which is not at all to do with demand, it's to do with the fact that they simply cannot make enough to keep up." But how Elon Musk's star-linked speed cap is hurting Ukraine's ability to defend itself. It's Wednesday, October 21st. I'm Alex Osolev for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. First on the show today is some news about meta. A judge in New Mexico has ordered the company to pay the state $25 billion. This month, a jury found meta liable for deceiving users about data privacy, its efforts to fight hate speech and misinformation, and its handling of a third-party app tied to the Cambridge Analytica data breach back in 2018. The state called it one of the largest verdicts in US history. Metas chief legal officer said the ruling makes it difficult to do business in New Mexico, and that the company was confident that it would prevail on appeal. The judge's decision came just a few hours before meta reported its latest earnings. The company reported record third quarter revenue of more than $64 billion dollars, beating analyst expectations. Meta also said it would create a new class of non-voting stock to raise the capital it needs for its AI models. It's planning capital spending of up to $145 billion this year alone. The new stock will have an effective date in January and won't affect CEO Mark Zuckerberg's voting control. In other tech news, we're exclusively reporting that the creators of a technology called PHP, that powers as much as 70% of the world's websites have disclosed a critical security issue. The bug could allow hackers to take control of any system running this widespread software, that means an attacker could steal information or launch a cyber attack on anyone visiting a hacked website. Experts are racing to patch the vulnerability, but in the meantime, web administrators are scrambling to protect themselves, and in some cases, they're preemptively taking their sites offline. It's part of a wave of bugs that AI has helped security researchers discover, and one researcher says it's the most severe AI vulnerability ever found. In this situation, AI presents a threat, too, since hackers using it might find and exploit the vulnerabilities before they can be fixed. I just learned what America's best-selling vehicle is that isn't a pickup truck. It's the Toyota RAV4. It's also the country's most popular SUV. But some production decisions that Toyota made are putting that status in danger. The 2026 model is in short supply, and when the cars do arrive on dealer lots, they're often already spoken for. Journal Auto's reporter Chris Ots joins me now from Detroit. Chris, I've got a picture of the RAV4 in my mind. Why is it such a popular car, and what is different about the 2026 model? It's the number one seller in the number one segment. It's a compact crossover SUV is just perfectly calibrated for kind of the average car shopper in the United States. People really like its fuel efficiency, its resale value, the Toyota reliability, all of those things. What's changed is that every five or six years, there's a new generation of the vehicle may kind of remake the car from the ground up. So the 26 model is the first of the RAV's sixth generation. It is a hybrid vehicle only for the first time in the car's history. The issue here is that Toyota to produce the new RAV, that actually takes quite a bit of factory work to overhaul the tooling, the equipment. You can't just change from one generation to the next as smoothly as you can just go from one model year to the next. The last generation, the 2025 model, was on its way out, demand for that vehicle was still really high, and so they wanted to keep building the 2025 RAV4 and put off the change over work that was necessary in the factories to build the 2026 version. So the effect of all of this, as you say, is that it's simply been harder for customers to get their hands on these cars, and this issue is coming at an important moment for Toyota as it's been poised to take over General Motors in US sales. What impact might the RAV4 supply issue have on Toyota's momentum? They are closing in on General Motors for the top volume automaker in the United States, but it's obviously going to be harder for them to do that without their best selling product and the best selling SUV in the country being in such short supply. So we've seen a big rise in sales of the Honda CR-V, which also has a hybrid option this year, and lots of analysts say that's simply because the RAV isn't available and it's like the next best alternative, RAV sales are down 30% this year, which is not at all to do with demand. It's to do with the fact that they simply cannot make enough to keep up. This is basically like having your key player on the team battling through an injury in the game. So yeah, obviously it does hurt for them, although in their telling, the pain is temporary. That was WSJ Auto's reporter, Chris Odds. Next Chris. Thank you. In markets today, tech companies are climbing after SpaceX beat revenue forecasts and teased a potential merger with Tesla. Tesla stock rose more than 3% ahead of its earnings, which came out today after the bell, while SpaceX shares gained almost 8%. The NASDAQ led the gains in the three major indexes and closed up more than 1%. In bonds, US Treasury yields were flat, while French benchmark bond yields crossed 5% for the first time in 24 years because of the political turmoil there. Coming up, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are calling for Elon Musk to testify under oath about the decision to restrict starlink in Ukraine. That story and more after the break. Turning now to Washington, where the Supreme Court has ruled that the Trump administration has to keep providing transgender federal prisoners with hormone treatments and other gender-related care. It was a 7-2 decision that left in place an order from a lower court. The Supreme Court's decision was just a two-sentence order, and its temporary well litigation continues. It's also a rare loss for the Trump administration on the Supreme Court's emergency docket. In dozens of other cases, the high court has intervened on an emergency basis on the side of the administration. And, with less than two weeks until the election, wealthy donors are stepping up their support for President Trump's midterm operation. Federal election filings show that, in the six weeks through October 14th, that's a week ago, the MAGA Inc. super PAC raised about $25 million. Big donors include Casino, Mogul, Steve Wynn, and Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman. And the super PACs aren't just raking in money, they're spending it too. Democrats also show that a network of super PACs affiliated with Trump spent more than $237 million, between September and mid-October, on competitive races, including Senate Contests in Texas and Michigan. And yesterday, President Trump posted on social media that he plans on spending more than $400 million by Election Day. We go now to Ukraine, where Elon Musk's decision to impose limits on a military version of the Starlink Satellite Internet Service has scrambled the country's defenses at a time when Keyes' relationship with Washington is suffering. For more, I'm joined now by WSJ Ukraine Bureau Chief, Marcus Walker. Marcus, what is going on in Ukraine as a result of this slowdown? The effect is that Ukrainian forces can only fly their drones up to a certain speed. If they fly faster than 100 miles an hour, they lose the video connection via Starlink Internet Satellite Service on this particular military version of Starlink that the Pentagon has provided for the Ukrainian military. Now, the effect in practice is, felt mostly in two areas. One is that the intercepted drones that Ukraine uses to shoot down these Russian drones, which are attacking and terrorizing key event of the Ukrainian cities. Those fly at high speeds. So to shoot them down, you need very fast intercepted drones. So the Ukrainians are saying that intercepted drones are no longer flying fast enough or they lose the connection if they go too fast and that means that more of these Russian drones are hitting Ukrainian cities and killing people. The second area is that the Ukrainian army has successfully held the Russian army in the field all year, in part because they have conducted a very successful campaign of strikes against Russian logistics behind the lines. And those mid-range strikes against logistics are relied on Ukrainian drones that use this Starlink service. And if this persists then the Ukrainian army is worried that this could turn the tables back in Russia's favor. Shifting now to the revelation that Musk was behind the decision to impose this speed cap, what has the reaction been in Ukraine? Well, not for the first time Ukrainians feel that Elon Musk is dabbing the country in the back, that he is susceptible to Russian-talking points and Russian propaganda, and that the country is going to pay a price for making itself reliant on Musk's technology, which is excellent, but the problem is that Musk himself decides to intervene in the use of his technology for political reasons. That is the feeling in Ukraine. However, the Ukrainian government has said nothing at all about this, because they are trying very hard to smooth this over, they're trying to negotiate with Marco Rubio, in particular, to try and restore the full functionality of their styling service so that they can continue defending themselves so that they have not come out and criticize Musk at all. It seems like the relationship between Washington and Kiev is at a bit of a low point right now, but Washington and Moscow seem really to be getting along. Today, Russia released a former American school teacher, Stephen Hubbard, who has been in prison there for four years, and also today Putin has agreed to restart peace talks with Ukraine. Marcus, how significant is that in the scheme of things? Restarting peace talks between Russia, Ukraine and the US at a lowly technical level, as the Russians call it, is not particularly significant, because there have been many meetings at that level, and they got absolutely nowhere. What is missing is any indication from Putin that he is willing to give up his grandiose war aims, which center on dismembering and subjugating Ukraine. Journal Ukraine Bureau Chief Markets Walker, thanks so much for the update. Thank you. In more fallout from the Wall Street Journal's reporting on Starlink and Ukraine, bipartisan lawmakers are calling for an investigation into Musk. Pennsylvania Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick said Congress should call on Musk and other witnesses to testify under oath, and he said Congress could block funding for federal agencies that played a role in throttling the network. Delaware Democratic Senator Chris Coons raised concerns about Musk's power on MS now last night. We should be asking hard questions about why this one man has the same power of one of our four-star generals in terms of the outcome of a conflict halfway around the world, where our interests are aligned with Ukraine, not with Russia. On X today, Musk posted, quote, "some fools still think the legacy news is real, amazing. It wasn't immediately clear if he was referring to the journal's report." SpaceX, which operates Starlink, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. And that's what's news for this Wednesday afternoon. Today's show is produced by Pierre-Bienna-May with supervising producer Tally Arbel. I'm Alex Ocelef for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening. [BLANK_AUDIO]