Axios

The Saudi government is in discussions with detained royals and businessmen to hand over huge portions of their wealth as a part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's corruption probe, per the FT. The detained officials would hand over up to 70% of their assets — perhaps totaling $300 billion — to the government in exchange for their release. The money would be put toward Saudi Arabia's mounting national deficit.

Why it matters: While the corruption probe has been welcomed by many Saudis, it has been condemned abroad as a power grab and has worried foreign investors Prince Mohammed had hoped to target in order to modernize and diversify Saudi Arabia's oil-dependent economy.

Tesla is hardly the only player in the nascent electric truck market — as Bloomberg notes — as big companies like Daimler and Cummins are moving toward commercialization.

Why electric trucks matter: Trucks, especially big rigs, are a small percentage of vehicles on the road but use lots of oil. (Check out the chart below, reconstructed from the International Energy Agency's new World Energy Outlook 2017.)

Data: IEA World Energy Outlook 2017, OECD/IEA; Chart: Andrew Witherspoon / Axios

Big news from the UN climate talks in Bonn, Germany, today is that multiple countries are forming a coalition to phase out power generation from coal before 2030.

Why it matters: Coal is the most carbon-intensive fossil fuel, and cutting emissions from coal-fired power generation is key to driving global greenhouse gas output downward in the future.

Bonn, Germany – A top adviser to President Trump on international energy issues, George David Banks, sat down with a small group of reporters at the United Nations climate conference here Wednesday. Here are the highlights — and reality checks:

In a move to capture a piece of one of the most promising sectors of robotization, entrepreneur Elon Musk plans tomorrow evening to unveil a Tesla semi-truck, a prototype electric with self-driving technology. According to one estimate, its enormous battery could make it double the price of a standard diesel-propelled vehicle. But Musk has said he already has customers waiting for the vehicle.

The jobs impact: There are about 3.5 million truckers in the U.S., in addition to about 5 million workers in other parts of the industry. Many of those jobs are threatened in a future of autonomous freight transportation.

From a fascinating Rolling Stone profile on Elon Musk, a description of how he thinks of the scientific method, in "mostly his own words":

1. "Ask a question."
2. "Gather as much evidence as possible about it. "
3. "Develop axioms based on the evidence, and try to assign a probability of truth to each one."
4. "Draw a conclusion based on cogency in order to determine: Are these axioms correct, are they relevant, do they necessarily lead to this conclusion, and with what probability?"
5. "Attempt to disprove the conclusion. Seek refutation from others to further help break your conclusion."
6. "If nobody can invalidate your conclusion, then you're probably right, but you're not certainly right."