Reuters reports that has ruled that the California Department of Motor Vehicles should indeed investigate whether Tesla has overstated its vehicles' self-driving capabilities. It is a separate ruling from the recent May 15th one on whether a class-action lawsuit against Tesla's claims can proceed.
CNBC reports that once again Elon Musk has lied to Tesla shareholders. He boasted that Tesla would be making a huge investment into AI in order to power their supposed robotaxi system. But it turns out that he has been directing the scarce supply of Nvidia AI chips from Tesla to xAI, a separate company that Musk has a huge financial stake in.
Fortune reports that Elon Musk is now facing a lawsuit alleging that he misled investors with fake "epic end of year" sales info while dumping billions of dollars of stock using insider information. This is of course similar to Musk recently propping up stock price with fake robotaxi claims.
NY Times article on the difficulties Cruise is facing to restarting commercial robotaxi service. Given their many problems described in the article one has to assume that GM will dump Cruise sooner rather than later.
Fortune reports on how difficult the robotaxi business is, and how Waymo has outlasted the other companies. But somehow Fortune is impressed with Waymo serving 50,000 rides/week. At $20/ride this is only about $50 million a year, a pittance compared to the billion dollars+ that they are spending.
Opinion piece in Bloomberg on how Elon Musk's pursuit of robotaxis could be a huge setback for Tesla. Musk has placed more of Tesla’s fortunes in the hands of public officials and processes beyond the routinely accommodating environs of the boardroom and the stock market. Reality, and a lower stock price, will surely result.
Article by Electrek on Elon Musk's latest extortion attempt. Given that Tesla is not an AI nor a robotics company, that Elon Musk knows nothing about either of those technologies, and that working on them would only distract Tesla from selling more cars, this is a prime opportunity for the Tesla Board to exercise their fiduciary responsibility and simply state "no thanks".
A detailed article by Fortune on what has happened to Cruise since their October 2nd crash. Though it appears that Fortune still believes that GM will do what is needed to make Cruise successful, when it is actually quite clear that Cruise is doomed.
Bloomberg article on how while Tesla is trying to get out of the lawsuit that it misled consumers on Tesla's self-driving capabilities, a California judge has ruled that some of the negligence and fraud claims can proceed.
Washington Post reports that Cruise settled with the severely injured person who was dragged by their robotaxi October 2nd, 2023. The settlement amount was between $8 million and $12 million, indicating severe and permanently disabling injuries inflicted due to their weak technology.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that Motional has completely halted their Las Vegas commercial self-driving operations and laid off many employees. This is all part of Motional downsizing a total of 550 people. Surely they will soon no longer exist.
Electrek reports that very few trial users are purchasing Full Self Driving after their free trial use. Elon Musk has been propping up Tesla share prices by claiming the real money will be made via autonomous vehicle software and a robotaxi fleet. But it turns out customers are not really interested in paying for Tesla's weak technology.
Markets Insider reports that some investors are seeing through the false claims that Elon Musk has been putting out about their robotaxi and AI initiatives. More will follow.
Reuters reports that Tesla's statements on their autonomous vehicles is now being investigated as possible securities or wire fraud by misleading investors and consumers about its vehicles' self-driving capabilities. This will not end well.
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.
