Tesla

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Tesla safety driver falls asleep during passenger’s robotaxi ride

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Later in the thread, another poster claims to have had the same safety driver who also fell asleep, this time on a traffic-choked drive from Temescal to San Francisco.

Being a human safety driver in an autonomous car is a relatively hard task, and Waymo insists on a lot of training before letting its employees loose in its cars on the road. It’s possible that Tesla is being far less diligent in this regard.

Tesla’s robotaxi experiment is proving to be more fraught than, say, Waymo’s. There have been at least seven crashes since the launch of its Austin trial in July, although Tesla continues to redact the data it provides to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Its operation in California may be even more shaky. Although Tesla Robotaxi LLC has a permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles to test autonomous cars on public roads with a safety driver, it has no permits from the California Public Utilities Commission for autonomous vehicles. CPUC permits are required to test or deploy an autonomous vehicle with or without a safety driver onboard. (In March, Tesla obtained a permit to operate a conventional ride-hailing service with human drivers.)

Ars has reached out to Tesla regarding the sleeping driver and the status of its California ride-hailing operation and will update this article if we hear back.

Tesla safety driver falls asleep during passenger’s robotaxi ride Read More »

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After years of saying no, Tesla reportedly adding Apple CarPlay to its cars

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Apple CarPlay, the interface that lets you cast your phone to your car’s infotainment screen, may finally be coming to Tesla’s electric vehicles. CarPlay is nearly a decade old at this point, and it has become so popular that almost half of car buyers have said they won’t consider a car without the feature, and the overwhelming majority of automakers have included CarPlay in their vehicles.

Until now, that hasn’t included Tesla. CEO Elon Musk doesn’t appear to have opined on the omission, though he has frequently criticized Apple. In the past, Musk has said the goal of Tesla infotainment is to be “the most amount of fun you can have in a car.” Tesla has regularly added purile features like fart noises to the system, and it has also integrated video games that drivers can play while they charge.

For customers who want to stream music, Tesla has instead offered Spotify, Tidal, and even Apple Music apps.

But Tesla is no longer riding high—its sales are crashing, and its market share is shrinking around the world as car buyers tire of a stale and outdated lineup of essentially two models at a time when competition has never been higher from legacy and startup automakers.

According to Bloomberg, which cites “people with knowledge of the matter,” the feature could be added within months if it isn’t cancelled internally.

Tesla is not the only automaker to reject Apple CarPlay. The startup Lucid took some time to add the feature to its high-end EVs, and Rivian still refuses to consider including the system, claiming that a third-party system would degrade the user experience. And of course, General Motors famously removed CarPlay from its new EVs, and it may do the same to its other vehicles in the future.

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Elon Musk wins $1 trillion Tesla pay vote despite “part-time CEO” criticism

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Tesla shareholders today voted to approve a compensation plan that would pay Elon Musk more than $1 trillion over the next decade if he hits all of the plan’s goals. Musk won over 75 percent of the vote, according to the announcement at today’s shareholder meeting.

The pay plan would give Musk 423,743,904 shares, awarded in 12 tranches of 35,311,992 shares each if Tesla achieves various operational goals and market value milestones. Goals include delivering 20 million vehicles, obtaining 10 million Full Self-Driving subscriptions, delivering 1 million “AI robots,” putting 1 million robotaxis in operation, and achieving a $400 billion adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization).

Musk has threatened to leave if he doesn’t get a larger share of Tesla. He told investors last month, “It’s not like I’m going to go spend the money. It’s just, if we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over that robot army? Not control, but a strong influence. That’s what it comes down to in a nutshell. I don’t feel comfortable building that robot army if I don’t have at least a strong influence.”

The plan has 12 market capitalization milestones topping out at $8.5 trillion. The value of Musk’s award is estimated to exceed $1 trillion if he hits all operational and market capitalization goals. Musk would increase his ownership stake to 24.8 percent of Tesla, or 28.8 percent if Tesla ends up winning an appeal in the court case that voided his 2018 pay plan.

Tesla Chair Robyn Denholm has argued that Musk needs big pay packages to stay motivated. Some investors have said $1 trillion is too much for a CEO who spends much of his time running other companies such as SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), and xAI.

New York Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who runs a state retirement fund that owns over 3.3 million shares, slammed the pay plan in a webinar last week. He said that Musk’s existing stake in Tesla should already “be incentive enough to drive performance. The idea that another massive equity award will somehow refocus a man who is hopelessly distracted is both illogical and contrary to the evidence. This is not pay for performance; this is pay for unchecked power.”

Musk and his side hustles

With Musk spending more time at xAI, “some major Tesla investors have privately pressed top executives and board members about how much attention Musk was actually paying to the company and about whether there is a CEO succession plan,” a Wall Street Journal article on Tuesday said. “An unusually large contingent of Tesla board members, including chair Robyn Denholm, former Chipotle CFO Jack Hartung, and Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, met with big investors in New York last week to advocate for Musk’s proposed new pay package.”

Elon Musk wins $1 trillion Tesla pay vote despite “part-time CEO” criticism Read More »

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Tesla’s European and Chinese customers are staying away in droves

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Tesla’s shareholders are ready to vote tomorrow on whether to give Elon Musk an even more vast slice of the company in an effort to keep him focused on selling electric vehicles. Currently, the trolling tycoon appears a little obsessed with the UK, a place he appears to conflate with Middle Earth, which investors may or may not take into account when making their decision. What they ought to take into account is how many cars Tesla sold last month.

Although Tesla only publishes quarterly sales figures and does not divide those up by region, slightly more granular data is available from some countries via monthly new car registrations. And the numbers for October, when compared year on year to the same month in 2024, should be alarming.

Sales fell by double-digit margins in Sweden (89 percent), Denmark (86 percent), Belgium (69 percent), Finland (68 percent), Austria (65 percent), Switzerland (60 percent), Portugal (59 percent), Germany (54 percent), Norway (50 percent), the Netherlands (48 percent), the UK (47 percent), Italy (47 percent), and Spain (31 percent).

Only France bucked the trend—there, a new subsidy helped bump sales by 2 percent year on year.

Things in China were better, but not by much; Tesla sales dropped 9.9 percent in October compared to last year. And that’s bound to be very bad news for the bottom line; even with record sales in Q3, Tesla saw its margins shrink, its costs climb, and its profits begin to evaporate.

A common factor in both Europe and China is that Tesla now faces a huge amount of competition for EV buyers from both established OEMs and new Chinese startups. Tesla has failed to expand its range beyond the Models 3 and Y, both of which look increasingly stale despite recent cosmetic tweaks.

Tesla’s European and Chinese customers are staying away in droves Read More »

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Boring Company cited for almost 800 environmental violations in Las Vegas

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Workers have complained of chemical burns from the waste material generated by the tunneling process, and firefighters must decontaminate their equipment after conducting rescues from the project sites. The company was fined more than $112,000 by Nevada’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration in late 2023 after workers complained of “ankle-deep” water in the tunnels, muck spills, and burns. The Boring Co. has contested the violations. Just last month, a construction worker suffered a “crush injury” after being pinned between two 4,000-foot pipes, according to police records. Firefighters used a crane to extract him from the tunnel opening.

After ProPublica and City Cast Las Vegas published their January story, both the CEO and the chairman of the LVCVA board criticized the reporting, arguing the project is well-regulated. As an example, LVCVA CEO Steve Hill cited the delayed opening of a Loop station by local officials who were concerned that fire safety requirements weren’t adequate. Board chair Jim Gibson, who is also a Clark County commissioner, agreed the project is appropriately regulated.

“We wouldn’t have given approvals if we determined things weren’t the way they ought to be and what it needs to be for public safety reasons,” Gibson said, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal. “Our sense is we’ve done what we need to do to protect the public.”

Asked for a response to the new proposed fines, an LVCVA spokesperson said, “We won’t be participating in this story.”

The repeated allegations that the company is violating regulations—including the bespoke regulatory arrangement agreed to by the company—indicates that officials aren’t keeping the public safe, said Ben Leffel, an assistant public policy professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“Not if they’re recommitting almost the exact violation,” Leffel said.

Leffel questioned whether a $250,000 penalty would be significant enough to change operations at The Boring Co., which was valued at $7 billion in 2023. Studies show that fines that don’t put a significant dent in a company’s profit don’t deter companies from future violations, Leffel said.

A state spokesperson disagreed that regulators aren’t keeping the public safe and said the agency believes its penalties will deter “future non-compliance.”

“NDEP is actively monitoring and inspecting the projects,” the spokesperson said.

This story originally appeared on ProPublica.

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Tesla’s standard-range Model 3, Model Y join the lineup

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Today, Tesla announced a new variant of the Model Y crossover for North America. Tesla fans have long-awaited a cheaper entry-level model; this was supposed to be the $25,000 Model 2. But the development of that electric vehicle was shelved earlier last year as CEO Elon Musk began to lose interest with car-making in favor of humanoid robots.

However, car sales still make up the overwhelming majority of Tesla’s revenue, and the removal of the IRS clean vehicle tax credit at the end of September may have juiced US EV sales in Q3 2025, but sales are expected to dip significantly in the current quarter.

The new Standard Range Model Y starts at $39,990, with 321 miles (516 km) of range from its rear-wheel drive powertrain, compared to the now-Premium rear-wheel drive Model Y, which has an EPA range of 357 miles (574 km). In the past, Tesla has software-locked batteries to a smaller configuration; however, here we believe the Standard Range Model Y uses a 69 kWh pack.

The cheaper Model Y is decontented in other ways. There’s no AM or FM radio, and no touchscreen in the back for passengers to control their climate settings. The roof is metal, not panoramic glass, and there’s a simpler center console and manual adjustment for the steering wheel. Tesla has reduced the choice of interior trim materials, there’s a less-capable particulate filter (with no HEPA mode), and there’s no seat heating for the back seats or cooling for the front seats.

Tesla’s standard-range Model 3, Model Y join the lineup Read More »

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Why iRobot’s founder won’t go within 10 feet of today’s walking robots

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In his post, Brooks recounts being “way too close” to an Agility Robotics Digit humanoid when it fell several years ago. He has not dared approach a walking one since. Even in promotional videos from humanoid companies, Brooks notes, humans are never shown close to moving humanoid robots unless separated by furniture, and even then, the robots only shuffle minimally.

This safety problem extends beyond accidental falls. For humanoids to fulfill their promised role in health care and factory settings, they need certification to operate in zones shared with humans. Current walking mechanisms make such certification virtually impossible under existing safety standards in most parts of the world.

Apollo robot

The humanoid Apollo robot. Credit: Google

Brooks predicts that within 15 years, there will indeed be many robots called “humanoids” performing various tasks. But ironically, they will look nothing like today’s bipedal machines. They will have wheels instead of feet, varying numbers of arms, and specialized sensors that bear no resemblance to human eyes. Some will have cameras in their hands or looking down from their midsections. The definition of “humanoid” will shift, just as “flying cars” now means electric helicopters rather than road-capable aircraft, and “self-driving cars” means vehicles with remote human monitors rather than truly autonomous systems.

The billions currently being invested in forcing today’s rigid, vision-only humanoids to learn dexterity will largely disappear, Brooks argues. Academic researchers are making more progress with systems that incorporate touch feedback, like MIT’s approach using a glove that transmits sensations between human operators and robot hands. But even these advances remain far from the comprehensive touch sensing that enables human dexterity.

Today, few people spend their days near humanoid robots, but Brooks’ 3-meter rule stands as a practical warning of challenges ahead from someone who has spent decades building these machines. The gap between promotional videos and deployable reality remains large, measured not just in years but in fundamental unsolved problems of physics, sensing, and safety.

Why iRobot’s founder won’t go within 10 feet of today’s walking robots Read More »

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How automakers are reacting to the end of the $7,500 EV tax credit

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Just after midnight this morning, in addition to getting a federal government shutdown, we also lost all federal tax credits for new electric vehicles, used electric vehicles, and commercial electric vehicles.

Sadly, this was not a surprise. During last year’s election, the Trump campaign made no secret of its disgust toward clean vehicles (and clean energy in general), and it promised to end subsidies meant to encourage Americans to switch from internal combustion engines to EVs. Once in power, the Republicans moved quickly to make this happen.

Federal clean vehicle incentives had only recently been revamped in then-US President Joe Biden’s massive investment in clean technologies as part of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. To qualify for the $7,500 tax credit, a new EV had to have its final assembly in North America, and certain percentages of its battery content needed to be domestically sourced.

A separate $7,500 commercial tax credit for new EVs was created, which did not require domestic assembly or content and which applied to leased EVs. And Congress finally added a $4,000 tax credit for the purchase of a used EV.

Visiting the relevant IRS page today, though, you’ll see an update declaring that the “New Clean Vehicle Credit, Previously-Owned Clean Vehicle Credit, and Qualified Commercial Clean Vehicle Credit are not available for vehicles acquired after Sept. 30, 2025.”

How automakers are reacting to the end of the $7,500 EV tax credit Read More »

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Burnout and Elon Musk’s politics spark exodus from senior xAI, Tesla staff

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Not a fun place to work, apparently

Disillusionment with Musk’s activism, strategic pivots, and mass layoffs cause churn.

Elon Musk’s business empire has been hit by a wave of senior departures over the past year, as the billionaire’s relentless demands and political activism accelerate turnover among his top ranks.

Key members of Tesla’s US sales team, battery and power-train operations, public affairs arm, and its chief information officer have all recently departed, as well as core members of the Optimus robot and AI teams on which Musk has bet the future of the company.

Churn has been even more rapid at xAI, Musk’s two-year-old artificial intelligence start-up, which he merged with his social network X in March. Its chief financial officer and general counsel recently departed after short stints, within a week of each other.

The moves are part of an exodus from the conglomerate of the world’s richest man, as he juggles five companies from SpaceX to Tesla with more than 140,000 employees. The Financial Times spoke to more than a dozen current and former employees to gain an insight into the tumult.

While many left happily after long service to found start-ups or take career breaks, there has also been an uptick in those quitting from burnout, or disillusionment with Musk’s strategic pivots, mass lay-offs and his politics, the people said.

“The one constant in Elon’s world is how quickly he burns through deputies,” said one of the billionaire’s advisers. “Even the board jokes, there’s time and then there’s ‘Tesla time.’ It’s a 24/7 campaign-style work ethos. Not everyone is cut out for that.”

Robert Keele, xAI’s general counsel, ended his 16-month tenure in early August by posting an AI-generated video of a suited lawyer screaming while shoveling molten coal. “I love my two toddlers and I don’t get to see them enough,” he commented.

Mike Liberatore lasted three months as xAI chief financial officer before defecting to Musk’s arch-rival Sam Altman at OpenAI. “102 days—7 days per week in the office; 120+ hours per week; I love working hard,” he said on LinkedIn.

Top lieutenants said Musk’s intensity has been sharpened by the launch of ChatGPT in late-2022, which shook up the established Silicon Valley order.

Employees also perceive Musk’s rivalry with Altman—with whom he co-founded OpenAI, before they fell out—to be behind the pressure being put on staff.

“Elon’s got a chip on his shoulder from ChatGPT and is spending every waking moment trying to put Sam out of business,” said one recent top departee.

Last week, xAI accused its rival of poaching engineers with the aim of “plundering and misappropriating” its code and data center secrets. OpenAI called the lawsuit “the latest chapter in Musk’s ongoing harassment.”

Other insiders pointed to unease about Musk’s support of Donald Trump and advocacy for far-right provocateurs in the US and Europe.

They said some staff dreaded difficult conversations with their families about Musk’s polarizing views on everything from the rights of transgender people to the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Musk, Tesla, and xAI declined to comment.

Tesla has traditionally been the most stable part of Musk’s conglomerate. But many of the top team left after it culled 14,000 jobs in April 2024. Some departures were triggered as Musk moved investment away from new EV and battery projects that many employees saw as key to its mission of reducing global emissions—and prioritized robotics, AI, and self-driving robotaxis.

Musk cancelled a program to build a low-cost $25,000 EV that could be sold across emerging markets—dubbed NV-91 internally and Model 2 by fans online, according to five people familiar with the matter.

Daniel Ho, who helped oversee the project as director of vehicle programs and reported directly to Musk, left in September 2024 and joined Google’s self-driving taxi arm, Waymo.

Public policy executives Rohan Patel and Hasan Nazar and the head of the power-train and energy units Drew Baglino also stepped down after the pivot. Rebecca Tinucci, leader of the supercharger division, went to Uber after Musk fired the entire team and slowed construction on high-speed charging stations.

In late summer, David Zhang, who was in charge of the Model Y and Cybertruck rollouts, departed. Chief information officer Nagesh Saldi left in November.

Vineet Mehta, a company veteran of 18 years, described as “critical to all things battery” by a colleague, resigned in April. Milan Kovac, in charge of Optimus humanoid robotics program, departed in June.

He was followed this month by Ashish Kumar, the Optimus AI team lead, who moved to Meta. “Financial upside at Tesla was significantly larger,” wrote Kumar on X in response to criticism he left for money. “Tesla is known to compensate pretty well, way before Zuck made it cool.”

Amid a sharp fall in sales—which many blame on Musk alienating liberal customers—Omead Ashfar, a close confidant known as the billionaire’s “firefighter” and “executioner,” was dismissed as head of sales and operations in North America in June. Ashfar’s deputy Troy Jones followed shortly after, ending 15 years of service.

“Elon’s behavior is affecting morale, retention, and recruitment,” said one long-standing lieutenant. He “went from a position from where people of all stripes liked him, to only a certain section.”

Few who depart criticize Musk for fear of retribution. But Giorgio Balestrieri, who had worked for Tesla for eight years in Spain, is among a handful to go public, saying this month he quit believing that Musk had done “huge damage to Tesla’s mission and to the health of democratic institutions.”

“I love Tesla and my time there,” said another recent leaver. “But nobody that I know there isn’t thinking about politics. Who the hell wants to put up with it? I get calls at least once a week. My advice is, if your moral compass is saying you need to leave, that isn’t going to go away.”

But Tesla chair Robyn Denholm said: “There are always headlines about people leaving, but I don’t see the headlines about people joining.

“Our bench strength is outstanding… we actually develop people really well at Tesla and we are still a magnet for talent.”

At xAI, some staff have balked at Musk’s free-speech absolutism and perceived lax approach to user safety as he rushes out new AI features to compete with OpenAI and Google. Over the summer, the Grok chatbot integrated into X praised Adolf Hitler, after Musk ordered changes to make it less “woke.”

Ex-CFO Liberatore was among the executives that clashed with some of Musk’s inner circle over corporate structure and tough financial targets, people with knowledge of the matter said.

“Elon loyalists who exhibit his traits are laying off people and making decisions on safety that I think are very concerning for people internally,” one of the people added. “Mike is a business guy, a capitalist. But he’s also someone who does stuff the right way.”

The Wall Street Journal first reported some of the details of the internal disputes.

Linda Yaccarino, chief executive of X, resigned in July after the social media platform was subsumed by xAI. She had grown frustrated with Musk’s unilateral decision-making and his criticism over advertising revenue.

xAI’s co-founder and chief engineer, Igor Babuschkin, stepped down a month later to found his own AI safety research project.

Communications executives Dave Heinzinger and John Stoll, spent three and nine months at X respectively, before returning to their former employers, according to people familiar with the matter.

X also lost a rash of senior engineers and product staff who reported directly to Musk and were helping to navigate the integration with xAI.

This includes head of product engineering Haofei Wang and consumer product and payments boss Patrick Traughber. Uday Ruddarraju, who oversaw X and xAI’s infrastructure engineering, and infrastructure engineer Michael Dalton were poached by OpenAI.

Musk shows no sign of relenting. xAI’s flirtatious “Ani bot” has caused controversy over sexually explicit interactions with teenage Grok app users. But the company’s owner has installed a hologram of Ani in the lobby of xAI to greet staff.

“He’s the boss, the alpha and anyone who doesn’t treat him that way, he finds a way to delete,” one former top Tesla executive said.

“He does not have shades of grey, is highly calculated, and focused… that makes him hard to work with. But if you’re aligned with the end goal, and you can grin and bear it, it’s fine. A lot of people do.”

Additional reporting by George Hammond.

© 2025 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

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Three crashes in the first day? Tesla’s robotaxi test in Austin.

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These days, Austin, Texas feels like ground zero for autonomous cars. Although California was the early test bed for autonomous driving tech, the much more permissive regulatory environment in the Lone Star State, plus lots of wide, straight roads and mostly good weather, ticked enough boxes to see companies like Waymo and Zoox set up shop there. And earlier this summer, Tesla added itself to the list. Except things haven’t exactly gone well.

According to Tesla’s crash reports, spotted by Brad Templeton over at Forbes, the automaker experienced not one but three crashes, all apparently on its first day of testing on July 1. And as we learned from Tesla CEO Elon Musk later in July during the (not-great) quarterly earnings call, by that time, Tesla had logged a mere 7,000 miles in testing.

By contrast, Waymo’s crash rate is more than two orders of magnitude lower, with 60 crashes logged over 50 million miles of driving. (Waymo has now logged more than 96 million miles.)

Two of the three Tesla crashes involved another car rear-ending the Model Y, and at least one of these crashes was almost certainly not the Tesla’s fault. But the third crash saw a Model Y—with the required safety operator on board—collide with a stationary object at low speed, resulting in a minor injury. Templeton also notes that there was a fourth crash that occurred in a parking lot and therefore wasn’t reported. Sadly, most of the details in the crash reports have been redacted by Tesla.

Three crashes in the first day? Tesla’s robotaxi test in Austin. Read More »

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Chinese EV buyers are cooling on Tesla and BYD

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Meanwhile, BYD now accounts for 1.1 percent of all new cars sold in the European Union.

There is one bright spot for Tesla, however—it sold 8,370 cars in Turkey in August, making it that country’s second-most popular automaker.

Robots will save Tesla?

But perhaps Tesla shareholders shouldn’t worry about cratering sales. On Monday night, Tesla CEO Elon Musk used his social media network to yet again prophesize that the company’s future is not cars. Despite the fact that selling cars brings in 75 percent of the revenue and is responsible for the carbon credits that keep the company in the black, EVs are but a mere distraction. Instead, Musk claims that 80 percent of Tesla’s value will come from selling humanoid robots.

Musk has been promoting Tesla’s humanoid robot for some years now, with flashy demos that, instead of actual robotics, were waldos in action, mindlessly copying the motions of human controllers who were operating them remotely.

Despite the very non-humanoid shape of industrial robots in car factories, Musk has said the Tesla robots will find their way onto the company’s production line to build cars, presumably to replace workers whom he would otherwise have to pay salaries and benefits. But the CEO has grander ambitions for his robots, claiming on an investor call last year that the company will sell billions of humanoid robots a year.

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Tesla loses Autopilot wrongful death case in $329 million verdict

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Tesla was found partially liable in a wrongful death lawsuit in a federal court in Miami today. It’s the first time that a jury has found against the car company in a wrongful death case involving its Autopilot driver assistance system—previous cases have been dismissed or settled.

In 2019, George McGee was operating his Tesla Model S using Autopilot when he ran past a stop sign and through an intersection at 62 mph then struck a pair of people stargazing by the side of the road. Naibel Benavides was killed and her partner Dillon Angulo was left with a severe head injury.

While Tesla said that McGee was solely responsible, as the driver of the car, McGee told the court that he thought Autopilot “would assist me should I have a failure or should I miss something, should I make a mistake,” a perception that Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk has done much to foster with highly misleading statistics that paint an impression of a brand that is much safer than in reality.

The jury heard from expert witnesses about Tesla’s approach to human-machine interfaces and driver monitoring, as well as its use of statistics, then considered their verdict on Thursday afternoon and Friday before deciding that, while McGee was two-thirds responsible for the crash, Tesla also bore a third of the responsibility for selling a vehicle “with a defect that was a legal cause of damage” to Benavides’ relatives and Angulo. The jury awarded the plaintiffs $129 million in compensatory damages, and a further $200 million in punitive damages.

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