TechCrunch reports that SoftBank was the lead in Wayve's recent $1B funding round for developing an autonomous vehicle system. Impressive that SoftBank still has money to burn.
The Fortune article is important because it reports that he wasn't just dismissing Rebecca Tinucci, who was the executive in charge of Supercharger operations and also Tesla's highest ranking woman executive at Tesla. The entire Supercharger team of 500 employees is getting the boot! And the Supercharger operation is highly successful and critical to Tesla sales. This is yet another highly counterproductive move by Musk.
Three key execs jumped ship in the last few weeks, 14,000+ employees laid off, plus the CFO left in August. And today it is announced that two additional key execs are pushed out along with hundreds of subordinates. Rebecca Tinucci was the senior director of Tesla’s Supercharger division and the highest ranking woman executive at Tesla. The Supercharger has been Tesla's greatest success and other EV manufactures have had to adapt to its standard. It has also been key in Tesla sales because having many chargers alleviates range anxiety. Daniel Ho was the head of the new vehicles program and was with Tesla for almost 11 years after being at Ford for over 12 years. If Tesla was going to bring out a new lower cost Tesla then Ho would have been the one doing it.
NY Times article on how Elon Musk went to China and allegedly reached an agreement to access detailed map data, which might lead to Tesla getting permission to offer FSD in China. This vague announcement caused Tesla stock to increase by 15%.
Detailed article in TechCrunch on upcoming legislation winding its way through the California legislature. Includes details on why the changes are needed, and why the AV companies are fighting them.
Article from Futurism.com, with a video, showing an autonomous vehicle driving the chaotic streets of India. Somehow the article fails to point out the irony of spending lots of money trying to develop an autonomous vehicle for a place where human drivers are extremely cheap.
