Ford’s decision to kill its previously announced electric three-row SUV is the latest sign of the challenges facing the EV sector.

After previously delaying the rollout of a vehicle that Ford CEO Jim Farley had touted as a “personal bullet train,” the automaker last week said it was scrapping the vehicle altogether after determining it wouldn’t be profitable soon enough.

Instead, Ford signaled it’s leaning even harder into the gas-electric hybrid vehicles that have proven popular with consumers amid choppy EV demand and growing competitive pressures.

Ford isn’t abandoning EVs—in a recent news release from the company, the automaker outlined plans to introduce a new electric commercial van in 2026, followed by two new electric pickup trucks in 2027. Meanwhile, the company added that a specialized team in California continues its work to deliver a flexible platform for affordable EVs.

“This thing is hard, this whole transition to electrification, because it’s so many different tentacles,” Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of industry insights at Cox Automotive, told Tech Brew. “OEMs are going to continue to have to adjust and figure out how (to) match consumer demand in a very quickly changing marketplace.”

Keep reading here.—JG

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No one likes getting their monthly internet bill, but a new analysis from BroadbandNow suggests consumers are getting more bang for their buck over time.

The price for consumer broadband has “remained steady on average since 2015, hovering around $90 per month” despite inflationary trends, according to the study, which looked at internet plan and pricing data from more than 2,000 ISPs delivering service through cable, DSL, and fiber technologies.

The analysis found that the average price for fiber service dropped nearly 40% after adjusting for inflation. According to BroadbandNow, this indicates that the “gold standard” technology for reliable, high-speed internet “has now matured and expanded into many existing markets.”

Internet affordability has loomed large since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which put a premium on home broadband access. As BroadbandNow noted, the Affordable Connectivity Program offered many people an affordable path to becoming subscribers with monthly bill subsidies, but it ran out of money and lapsed at the end of May, affecting 23 million households.

The Democratic Party included broadband affordability as part of its official platform, released this week, and said “Democrats will keep fighting to reinstate” the ACP. (The Republican Party’s platform contains no mention of broadband or internet issues.)

Keep reading here.—KG

At its Think Retail conference on Tuesday, Google made its annual pitch to merchants to use its search and AI tools—with a few improvements—as they prepare for the holiday season. The tech giant may have lost a landmark ruling to the FTC recently, but that’s not stopping it from finding ways to meet its holiday targets.

In a blog post, the search behemoth said that in the coming weeks, retailers around the world using Merchant Center Next will be able to use Google’s search capabilities to jump on shopping trends that are going viral.

“The trending data is a key way that we can go focus on that, where it’s, here is what users are currently shopping for and looking for right now, and including the words and the way the users are actually framing it, the way they’re searching for it, and allowing the retailers themselves to act on it,” Jeff Harrell, Google’s senior director of merchant shopping, told Retail Brew.

Keep reading here.—VC

Usually, we write about the business of tech. Here, we highlight the *tech* of tech.

Pony up: Our digital assistants can sometimes hinder more than help. Who among us hasn’t had to pull over to call up directions after an obstinate bot declined to comply with our plea for a route home or edit a text after a wild mistranslation of the message we were trying to convey?

Amazon is reportedly debuting a subscription for an AI-juiced Alexa come the fall, according to the Washington Post.

But will consumers go for another subscription, and will Alexa’s new abilities be worth it? That’s still TBD.

Uncut Gems: In other AI assistant news, Google recently announced it will soon allow subscribers to its Gemini AI service to build bespoke bots, called Gems, to help with everything from editing to cheering you on at the gym. Google is also “offering some premade Gems, including a learning coach, an idea brainstormer, a career guide, a coding partner, and an editor,” The Verge reported.

But as with the Alexa subscription, will the Gems have the same impact as a learning coach or a career guide? We’d love to hear from readers who’ve had success using these bots as helpers, coaches, partners, or guides. Drop us a line: annie@morningbrew.com.