The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened a probe into 2.88 million Tesla electric vehicles currently equipped with the company’s “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) system. As first reported by , the NHTSA has received more than 50 reports of traffic-safety violations as well as numerous .
The agency, which oversees the nation’s motor vehicle safety standards, said that Tesla’s FSD software has “induced vehicle behavior that violated traffic safety laws,” with vehicles reportedly running red lights and driving against the flow of traffic.
Among the reports the agency has received, six of them allege that a Tesla vehicle with FSD engaged “approached an intersection with a red traffic signal, continued to travel into the intersection against the red light and was subsequently involved in a crash with other motor vehicles in the intersection.” The probe will begin as a preliminary evaluation, after which the NHTSA could issue a recall if it believes the vehicles pose a great enough risk to public safety.
The agency has conducted numerous investigations into the EV maker this year alone. At the start of the year, it opened an and Actual Smart Summon features, which allow owners to remotely retrieve their vehicles from a parking spot. Just a few weeks ago, it announced an investigation over its door handles and whether they risk trapping passengers inside the vehicle. This is also not the first time the agency has looked into the safety of Tesla’s driver assist features.
Tesla releases its own highlighting that accidents per million miles driven are far less common when its FSD technology is engaged than when it is not. However, the company has also fought to have involving FSD kept from public release, citing confidentiality.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it has opened an investigation into nearly 2.9 million Tesla vehicles after reports of traffic safety violations linked to the electric car maker’s Full Self-Driving system, according to a filing on the government regulator’s website.
The probe by the agency’s Office of Defects Investigation involves Tesla vehicles equipped with “FSD (Supervised)” and “FSD (Beta)” versions of the the company’s self-driving systems. Both require “a fully attentive driver who is engaged in the driving task at all times,” NHTSA said in a document filed as part of the probe.
Reports of traffic violations include vehicles operating with FSD driving through red traffic signals and initiating lane changes into opposing traffic.
NHTSA has received reports of 58 safety violations linked to Tesla vehicles with FSD. Those incidents include more than a dozen crashes and fires, along with 23 injuries, according to the agency.
Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
— This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
Tesla rolled out new, cheaper versions of two of its electric car models on Tuesday in hopes the offerings will help revive flagging sales but investors dumped its stock anyway.
The new Model Y, costing just under $40,000 with a stripped-down interior, comes in a brutal year for Tesla as it tries to attract more customers despite an aging lineup, stiff competition from foreign EV makers and anti-Elon Musk boycotts targeting the company.
The reaction from the stock market after the news broke suggests the new models are not expected to help much.
“Investors were looking for something truly different, not an iteration of a old product,” said Edmunds analyst Ivan Drury, speaking as Tesla stock dropped sharply in the last minutes of trading. “I can’t imagine this will bring levels back to what they want.”
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Tesla also announced a cheaper version of its Model 3 for under $37,000. For New York residents taking advantage of a state rebate, the price was below $35,000.
Tesla has talked about a cheaper car to appeal to more cost-conscious consumers for years, though the two new “standard” models are priced well above the $25,000 price tag promised. They come as customers are widely expected to hold off from purchases over the next several months due to the recent expiration of a $7,500 federal tax credit for electric vehicles.
Tesla stock fell 4.5 percent to $443.09 on Tuesday after closing the day before up more than 5 percent on anticipation of the new model announcement.
Compared to previous models, the new Model Y comes with a shorter 321-mile driving range, fewer audio speakers and a fabric interior, not microsuede. The model also lacks a panoramic glass roof and a touchscreen in the second row.
This model faces stiff competition in the $40,000 range for EVs from vehicles including Ford’s Mustang Mach-E, Chevrolet’s Equinox EV and Hyundai’s Ioniq 5.
The new Model 3 has also cut down on the driving range, ambient lighting and other features.
Tesla just launched two brand new, affordable models. But the catch is that they are not actually new.
The newly unveiled models are practically just a Tesla Model Y SUV and a Model 3 sedan with some basic features removed to get the price tag down.
The Model Y pricing starts at $39,990, and the Model 3 starts at $36,990.
Tesla enthusiasts were speculating that the model would be priced around $25,000.
In the affordable version, the car is almost exactly the same except for changes that were roughly expected. In the Model Y, the panoramic glass roof is now gone. Instead of a center console with extended storage, there is an open center console, and instead of the power-adjust steering wheel, the car will have a manual-adjust steering wheel.
The leather seats and both front and rear light bars have been stripped. The second row seats also won’t be heated anymore, there is no auto-steer, and you can still supercharge in 15 mins, but it’s up to 160 miles now instead of 182 miles.
In the new Model 3, there are similar changes to the supercharger, leather seats, steering wheel, and more, except the affordable model still has the panoramic glass roof. The affordable Model 3’s second-row entertainment touchscreen has also been stripped.
The cars will still include integration with Musk’s AI chatbot Grok, according to an X post by the company.
The Tesla Model Y was once considered the best-selling car in the world, according to automotive analysts from Jato Dynamics, but was recently dethroned by the Toyota RAV4.
The 2021 Model Y vehicles were also the subject of a recent Bloomberg investigation that revealed people were hurt or even died when their Teslas lost power, often after a crash, and their doors wouldn’t open. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has since opened a preliminary probe into the 2021 Model Y door handles.
Musk has been teasing a new and affordable Tesla model for some time. The promise dates all the way back to Musk’s “The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan” that he wrote in 2006, so it took Musk 19 years to semi make it come true.
Company guidance from last year had the reveal slated for the first half of 2025. But the months passed with no update. In an earnings call in July, Musk admitted that the new model won’t really be new at all.
When asked about details on the affordable model, Musk interrupted Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja to say, “It’s just a Model Y. Let the cat out of the bag there.”
It’s great timing for Tesla to unveil a more affordable option. The electric vehicle tax credit just expired last week, thanks to the efforts of the Trump administration, and prices for EV purchases are high right now. Tesla has since hiked up its lease prices as well.
An EV with a lower price tag is a great way to retain some of the buyers that would have been lost in the absence of the tax credit. It’s unclear how much of a boost it will be, but it will at least somewhat help a struggling Tesla.
The affordable yet stripped models are also still more expensive than the now premium Model Y and Model 3 cars were with the EV tax credit.
With a boost coming from the end of the tax credit, Tesla had stellar deliveries this past quarter. But besides that, the overall picture is grim. Tesla deliveries have tanked this year, at least in some part due to Elon Musk’s far-right political turn in the U.S. and Europe. Musk’s support of various far-right parties in Europe especially alienated a huge chunk of its customer bases in the UK and in Germany, a major market for the company.
To add on top of that, although Tesla dominates the American EV market, competition is thick elsewhere. Chinese competitors like BYD dominate the global EV market with affordable electric vehicles and easily run circles around Tesla. BYD’s cheapest model starts at roughly $8,000.
Peter Thiel, PayPal’s first CEO, turned his fintech fortune into a far-reaching empire of influence spanning venture capital, politics and power. Marco Bello/Getty Images
In 2007, Fortune magazine reimagined a classic mafia scene with a Silicon Valley twist: 13 male founders and early employees of PayPal, all long gone from the company, posed at a San Francisco café with slicked-back hair, poker chips and dozens of whiskey glasses. The crowd included some of the most recognizable names in today’s tech scene, like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman. The magazine dubbed them the “PayPal mafia,” not for their time at the fintech company, but for their outsized impact on Silicon Valley through the companies they launched afterward.
PayPal went public in early 2002 and was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion the same year. Most of its early employees left the company after the acquisition. They went on to found YouTube, SpaceX and LinkedIn, among other legendary names in Silicon Valley. However, like their cinematic namesake, the group hasn’t avoided controversy. These former colleagues have built billion-dollar businesses while also finding themselves in the crosshairs of public criticism.
For instance, Thiel has faced controversy over his political affiliations and, most notably, for funding Hulk Hogan’s 2012 lawsuit against Gawker Media with $10 million — a case that ultimately drove the online media company into bankruptcy. Musk has also faced criticism for his takeover of Twitter and his prior role in the Trump administration, where he led widespread federal employee firings.
Here’s what they are up to these days:
Peter Thiel: venture capitalist
Peter Thiel. Marco Bello/Getty Images
Peter Thiel, Max Levchin and Luke Nosek founded PayPal in 1998, originally as a software security company. After merging with Elon Musk’s X.com (unrelated to the social media platform he owns today), PayPal shifted its focus to digital payments.
Thiel served as CEO from 1998 until 2002, leaving after the company was sold to eBay. He then co-founded Palantir Technologies, a major U.S. government contractor providing data analytics services. The company now has a market capitalization of $439 billion.
Thiel is also known as a prolific angel investor. He co-founded Clarium Capital, Founders Fund, Valar Ventures and Mithril Capital. In 2004, Thiel became Facebook’s first outside investor after acquiring a 10.2 percent stake in the company for $500,000.
Thiel is among the many former PayPal employees who have entered political and high-profile public arenas. An active donor to the Republican Party, Thiel supported Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign but withheld donations during the 2024 election. He is also credited with helping JD Vance reach the Vice Presidential ticket.
Elon Musk: entrepreneur, the world’s richest person
Elon Musk. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Elon Musk briefly served as PayPal’s CEO before being ousted by the board in 2000. He went on to build one of the most influential portfolios in technology, spanning electric vehicles, space exploration, social media and A.I.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 and has led Tesla since 2008. He also founded Neuralink and The Boring Company, expanding his reach into brain-computer interfaces and infrastructure. In 2022, Musk gained global attention for acquiring Twitter for $44 billion, later rebranding it as X.
His ties to A.I. run deep: Musk co-founded OpenAI with Sam Altman in 2015 but left in 2018 over strategic disagreements. In 2023, he returned to the field by launching xAI, a research venture focused on building A.I. that is more understandable for humans.
Today, Musk is the richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $400 billion. He is also perhaps the only PayPal alumnus to ascend into direct political influence. During the Trump administration, he led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—a name shared with his cryptocurrency venture—before stepping down in May after clashing publicly with the President.
Max Levchin: computer scientist
Max Levchin. John Lamparski/Getty Images
Position at PayPal: co-founder, chief technology officer from 1998 to 2002
As PayPal’s chief technology officer, Max Levchin helped lead the company’s anti-fraud efforts by co-creating the Gausebeck-Levchin test—the foundation for the widely used CAPTCHA security tool. After leaving PayPal, he launched the media-sharing platform Slide in 2004, which was acquired by Google in 2010. Levchin briefly served as Google’s vice president of engineering until Slide was shut down the following year.
In 2012, he co-founded Affirm, a leading “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) company, where he continues to serve as CEO. Today, Affirm has a market capitalization of $27.5 billion, with 21.9 million consumers and more than 350,000 merchant partners on its platform.
Levchin has also held board positions at Yahoo and Yelp. In 2015, he became the first Silicon Valley executive appointed to the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s advisory board, emphasizing the importance of collaboration between companies and regulators.
Reid Hoffman: entrepreneur, investor
Reid Hoffman. Kimberly White/Getty Images for WIRED
Before joining PayPal, Hoffman worked as a senior user experience architect at Apple, contributing to the company’s online social network eWorld. He later became director of product management at Fujitsu. After his online dating startup, SocialNet, folded, Hoffman joined PayPal in 2000 as chief operating officer.
In 2003, he co-founded the career networking site LinkedIn. Following Microsoft’s $26.2 billion acquisition of LinkedIn in 2017, Hoffman joined Microsoft’s board, a move that greatly increased his wealth.
Over the years, Hoffman has served on the boards of Airbnb and OpenAI, where he was also an early investor. Through the venture capital firm Greylock Partners, he has backed dozens of A.I. startups. In 2022, he co-founded Inflection AI with Mustafa Suleyman, who now serves as CEO. Earlier this year, he teamed up with cancer researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee to launch Manas AI, a startup focused on drug discovery.
David Sacks: investor, White House A.I. and Crypto Czar
David Sacks currently serves as the White House A.I. and Crypto Czar. JC Olivera/Variety via Getty Images
Position at PayPal: chief operating officer from 1999 to 2002
Since leaving PayPal, David Sacks has built a career spanning film, tech, investing and politics. In 2005, he produced and financed a political satire that earned two Golden Globe nominations. The following year, he founded Geni.com, a genealogy-focused social network that later spun off Yammer, one of the earliest enterprise social networking platforms. He went on to co-found Craft Ventures, the startup Glue, and the podcast platform Callin.
Jeremy Stoppelman joined Musk’s X.com in 1999 and became vice president of engineering after its transition to PayPal. In 2004, he co-founded Yelp, where he has served as CEO ever since. Under his leadership, the company turned down a 2010 acquisition offer from Google and went public two years later. Stoppelman’s net worth is estimated at more than $100 million.
Ken Howery: investor, U.S. ambassador
Position at PayPal: chief financial officer from 1998 to 2002
Ken Howery served as PayPal’s chief financial officer from 1998 to 2002. After PayPal’s sale to eBay, he became eBay’s director of corporate development until 2003. He later joined Peter Thiel at Clarium Capital as vice president of private equity and went on to co-found Founders Fund as a partner. Beyond investing, he is a member of the Explorers Club, a nonprofit dedicated to scientific exploration, and an advisor to Kiva, the micro-lending nonprofit founded by former PayPal colleague Premal Shah.
Howery is also among the former PayPal executives who have moved into politics. He has donated at least $1 million to Donald Trump’s campaign through Elon Musk’s political action committee. During Trump’s first term, Howery was appointed U.S. ambassador to Sweden and today serves as the U.S. ambassador to Denmark.
Roeloth Botha: venture capitalist
Roelof Botha joined PayPal as director of corporate development shortly before graduating from Stanford University. He later became vice president of finance and went on to serve as chief financial officer until the company’s acquisition by eBay.
Position at PayPal: software architect from 1998 to 2003
Companies later founded: Yelp, Learnirvana
Russel Simmons helped design PayPal’s payment system as a software architect. After leaving the company, he and fellow PayPal alum Jeremy Stoppelman set out to build a platform for restaurant reviews. With a $1 million investment from Max Levchin, they launched Yelp in July 2004. Simmons served as chief technology officer until his departure in 2010. At the time, Yelp said he would remain a “significant” shareholder, though the size of his stake—and whether he still holds it—remains unclear.
In 2014, Simmons co-founded Learnirvana, an online learning platform.
Andrew McCormack: entrepreneur
Position at PayPal: assistant to Thiel from July 2001 to November 2002
Companies later founded: Valar Ventures
Andrew McCormack began his career as an assistant to Peter Thiel at PayPal and followed him into subsequent ventures. From November 2002 to April 2003, he oversaw operations at Thiel’s hedge fund, Clarium Capital.
In 2010, McCormack co-founded Valar Ventures with Thiel and James Fitzgerald, focusing on fintech investments. He remains a general partner at the firm.
Luke Nosek: investor
Position at PayPal: co-founder and vice president of marketing and strategy from 1998 to 2002
Companies later founded: Founders Fund, Gigafund
In 2005, Luke Nosek joined Peter Thiel and Ken Howery to launch Founders Fund, a San Francisco–based venture capital firm that has backed companies such as Airbnb, Lyft and SpaceX. While his exact net worth is unclear, Nosek has made substantial investments through his venture firms. At Founders Fund, he led one of the firm’s earliest major deals with a $20 million investment in SpaceX, later serving on its board.
In 2017, Nosek left to co-found Gigafund, which went on to invest $1 billion in SpaceX, according to the company. He also sits on the board of ResearchGate.
Premal Shah: entrepreneur
Position at Paypal: product manager
Companies later founded: Kiva
Three years after leaving PayPal, Premal Shah co-founded Kiva, a nonprofit that provides loans to entrepreneurs in underserved communities worldwide. He also serves on the boards of other nonprofits, including the Center for Humane Technology, the Change.org Foundation, Watsi and VolunteerMatch.
Keith Rabois: investor
Position at PayPal: executive vice president of business development
After leaving his executive role at PayPal, Keith Rabois became an active investor, backing companies including Slide, YouTube and Palantir. He also invested in LinkedIn, where he served as vice president of business and corporate development, and Square, where he was chief operating officer.
Rabois joined venture capital firm Khosla Ventures from 2013 to 2019 and was a partner at Founders Fund from 2019 to 2024.
Tesla launched its own auto insurance options for California customers back in 2019, but it may soon lose its authorization to do just that. The California Department of Insurance (CDI) issued enforcement actions against Tesla Insurance, which acts as an agent for State National Insurance Company and is also named in the legal notice. The issued warning claims that Tesla Insurance and State National saw “repeated failures to comply with long-standing claims handling laws.” The agency also accused Tesla Insurance of “egregious delays” when responding to its customers’ claims and not conducting “thorough, fair and objective investigations of claims.”
According to the filing, the CDI received 97 complaints about State National in 2022 and determined that 21 were justified, while also noting that the insurance provider committed 40 violations of the state’s insurance regulations. The numbers skyrocketed over the years, eventually hitting 1,095 received complaints about State National, which were boiled down to 415 justified complaints between January 1, 2025 and September 22, 2025. Within this year’s complaints so far, the CDI said that State National committed 1,498 violations of the state’s insurance code.
As for Tesla Insurance, the CDI received 842 complaints and said that 166 of which were justified in the same time period. The agency also accused Tesla of committing 532 violations. On top of the violations, the state agency claimed that Tesla Insurance’s Head of Claims position was left vacant for several months, and when eventually filled, saw frequent turnover between April 2023 and May 2025.
After the filing on Friday, Tesla Insurance and State National have 15 days to respond to the CDI. If the two insurance providers don’t resolve the issues laid out in the complaint, they will be put in front of a judge who will determine if they can continue offering insurance in the state. Along with the potential regulatory consequences, Tesla Insurance and State National will face “monetary penalties up to $5,000 for each unlawful, unfair, or deceptive act, or up to $10,000 for each such act determined to be willful.”
Tesla vehicles line a parking area at the company’s Fremont, Calif., factory, Aug. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
(AP) – The parents of two college students killed in a Tesla crash say they were trapped in the car as it burst into flames because of a design flaw that made it nearly impossible for them to open the doors, according to lawsuits filed Thursday.
The parents of Krysta Tsukahara and her friend, Jack Nelson, allege that the company that helped Elon Musk become the world’s richest man knew about the flaw for years and could have moved faster to fix the problem but did not, leaving the two trapped amid flames and smoke that eventually killed them.
Tesla did not reply to a request for comment.
The new legal threats to Tesla filed in Alameda County Superior Court come just weeks after federal regulators opened an investigation into complaints by Tesla drivers of problems with stuck doors. The probe and suit come at a delicate time for the company as it seeks to convince Americans that its cars will soon be safe enough to ride in without anyone in the driver’s seat.
Tsukahara, 19, and Nelson, 20, were in the back of a Cybertruck in November 2024 when the driver, drunk and on drugs, smashed into a tree in the San Francisco suburb of Piedmont, California, according to the suits. The driver also died. A fourth passenger was pulled from the car after a rescuer broke a window and reached in.
The Tsukahara lawsuit was first reported by The New York Times.
Tesla doors have been at the center of several crash cases because the battery powering the unlocking mechanism can be destroyed in a fire and the manual releases that override that system are difficult to find.
The lawsuit follows several others that have claimed various safety problems with Tesla cars. In August, a Florida jury decided that the family of another dead college student, this one killed by a runaway Tesla years ago, should be awarded more than $240 million in damages.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which opened its stuck-door investigation last month, is looking into complaints by drivers that after exiting their cars, they couldn’t open back doors to get their children out and, in some cases, had to break the window to reach them.
The parents of two college students who died in a Cybertruck crash last fall are suing Tesla, alleging the truck’s door design trapped the victims inside.
Separate lawsuits filed Thursday by the families of 20-year-old Jack Nelson and 19-year-old Krysta Tsukahara claim that the Cybertruck’s design, including electric-powered doors with hidden manual releases, made it nearly impossible for the students to escape after the crash, according to Bloomberg.
The lawsuits come as Tesla’s signature electric door handles have already been under scrutiny in recent months. In September, U.S. regulators launched a probe into faulty door handles on certain Tesla models. And a Bloomberg investigation earlier this year also revealed multiple cases in which people were hurt or even died when Teslas lost power, typically after crashes, and their doors wouldn’t open.
This crash happened on the night of November 27, 2024, in Piedmont, a suburb of San Francisco. According to a California Highway Patrol report, the Cybertruck was speeding down a residential street when it slammed into a tree and burst into flames. The accident caused the truck’s electric doors to malfunction, trapping all four passengers inside. Three of them—Nelson, Tsukahara, and another passenger—did not survive. The fourth passenger survived after being pulled out through a broken window.
Tesla’s Cybertruck lacks traditional exterior door handles. Instead, doors open with small electronic buttons near the windows. There are manual releases inside the truck, but they are hard to find, especially for passengers in the back. To open the truck’s rear doors, riders have to lift up a mat in the door’s storage pocket and tug on a cable hidden underneath. Combined with the Cybertruck’s stainless steel panels and reinforced armor glass windows, which make rescue operations especially difficult, the lawsuits argue these design features are at fault for the passengers’ deaths.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo.
The complaints land at a time when Tesla’s electric door handles are already under regulatory scrutiny. Just last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened a preliminary investigation into failing door handles on 2021 Model Y vehicles after receiving several reports of parents being unable to get back inside their cars with children left trapped inside them. This probe covers nearly 175,000 cars and will assess whether the defect poses a serious safety risk.
Bloomberg’s investigation found that the NHTSA has received over 140 complaints since 2018 about Tesla doors sticking, not opening, or otherwise failing.
The parents of a college student killed in a Tesla crash say she was trapped in the car as it burst into flames because of a design flaw that made it nearly impossible for her to open the door, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.
The parents of Krysta Tsukahara allege that the company that helped Elon Musk become the world’s richest man knew about the flaw for years and could have moved fast to fix the problem but did not, leaving the 19-year-old arts student trapped amid flames and smoke that eventually killed her.
Tesla did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The new legal threat to Tesla filed in Alameda County Superior Court comes just weeks after federal regulators opened an investigation into complaints by Tesla drivers of stuck-door problems. The probe and suit come at a delicate time for the company as it seeks to convince Americans that its cars will soon be safe enough to ride in without anyone in the driver’s seat.
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Tsukahara was in the back of a Cybertruck when the driver who was drunk and had taken drugs smashed into a tree in a suburb of San Francisco, according to the suit. Three of the four people in the car, including the driver, died. A fourth was pulled from the car after a rescuer smashed a window and reached in.
The lawsuit was first reported by The New York Times.
Tesla doors have been at the center of several crash cases because the battery powering the unlocking mechanism can be destroyed in a fire and the manual releases that override that system are difficult to find.
The lawsuit follows several others that have claimed various safety problems with Tesla cars. In August, a Florida jury decided that the family of another dead college student, this one killed by a runaway Tesla years ago, should be awarded more than $240 million in damages.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which opened its stuck-door investigation last month, is looking into complaints by drivers that after exiting their cars, they couldn’t open back doors to get their children out and, in some cases, had to break the window to reach them.
Despite years of effort and the outlay of billions of dollars, none of the world’s automakers have yet to match Tesla’s prowess in delivering over-the-air (OTA) software updates. Just like with your phone and laptop, these operating system refreshes allow owners to upgrade their cars remotely.
Tesla introduced OTAs in 2012, but now Elon Musk’s company pumps out these updates like no other automaker. “Tesla once issued 42 updates within six months,” Jean-Marie Lapeyre, Capgemini’s CTO for automotive, tells WIRED. But for many other automakers, says Lapeyre, OTAs ship “maybe once a year.”
For traditional car companies, software remains, or has been until very recently, merely one bolt-on component among many. In contrast, for Tesla and other digital-native automakers—among them Rivian, Lucid, Polestar, and Chinese brands such as BYD, Xpeng, and Xiaomi—it’s almost the whole shebang.
Interestingly, GM was actually the first automaker to introduce OTA functionality, two years ahead of Tesla, but it was limited to the OnStar telematics system. OTAs from traditional automakers often add just infotainment tweaks, while OTAs from the digital-first brands can be shape-shifters, increasing range and boosting speed. They often also gift features from the puerile to the genuinely performative: fart noises on demand from Tesla, plusher suspension for Rivian owners, and car unlocking by phone from Polestar.
Cars have had onboard microprocessors since the 1970s, but until relatively recently traditional automakers made their cars with software designed to remain largely unchanged throughout a vehicle’s 20-year lifespan. Since 2021, the complexity of the latest vehicle software platforms has increased by about 40 percent per year, estimates McKinsey. There are now 69 million OTA-capable vehicles in the US, reckons S&P Global.
Done right, OTAs not only freshen a car’s user experience, they can also slash the cost of recalls for automakers. More than 13 million vehicles were recalled in 2024 due to software-related issues, a 35 percent increase over the prior year. Before OTAs, the average cost of an auto recall was about $500 per vehicle. OTAs may be delivered wirelessly, but they are not cost-free, either for the environment or for automakers—Harman Automotive, a supplier of OTA software, estimates that it costs an automaker $66.50 per vehicle to deliver a 1 GB update.
But it’s usually only the digital natives sending out huge update files, because generally only they are capable of firmware over-the-air (FOTA) updates. These can update powertrains, battery management, and braking systems. FOTA capabilities require cars—usually EVs—to have good, persistent connectivity and significant computing power, much of it left latent for future updates. Lucid’s Gravity electric SUV, for instance, is equipped with the latest Nvidia Orin-X processor, with 512 GB of onboard storage, yet the vehicle’s OS fits on just 100 GB, leaving oodles of room for later OTA refreshes.
As Western car company revenues fall, automakers are looking to make money from OTA-enabled subscriptions. Give Tesla $2,000 and, with the optional Acceleration Boost, your EV can be unlocked over-the-air to become a tire squeal quicker off the mark. For another $10 a month, Tesla’s “premium connectivity” package adds streaming data, live sentry cams, and other goodies. Want what critics claim is the misleadingly named Full Self Driving (FSD) Supervised feature? It’s yours for an additional $99 a month.
The family of Krysta Tsukahara, one of three victims in a fatal Piedmont Tesla Cybertruck crash last November, filed a lawsuit against Tesla in an Alameda County court on Thursday, alleging the vehicle’s design failed to provide a manual door to allow their daughter to escape the vehicle.
The filing represents an escalation in the family’s pursuit of legal remedies connected to the death of their daughter in late November 2024, taking aim at the Cybertruck automaker which has come under scrutiny for eight recalls since 2024 and ongoing concerns about battery combustion.
“Her death was preventable. She was alive after the crash. She called out for help. And she couldn’t get out. We are filing this lawsuit not just for accountability, but because there are other families out there who may never know the risks until it’s too late,” Krysta’s parents, Carl and Noelle Tsukahara, said in a statement.
Krysta Tsukahara, 19, died from smoke inhalation and burns suffered in a fatal car crash on Nov. 27, 2024, in Piedmont. Her family is suing the owner of the vehicle, Charles Patterson, and the family of the driver, Soren Dixon. Courtesy of the Tsukahara family
The Tsukaharas’ lawsuit alleges Tesla had ignored concerns from customers, bystanders and first responders about the company’s reliance on electronic doors for its vehicles, according to the complaint. The lawsuit further states that Tesla was aware of the threats its electronic doors posed to vehicle occupants, according to the lawsuit, but continued to “design, market and sell” vehicles with this feature.
“Consumers lodged dozens of complaints with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), many warning that rear-seat passengers — especially children — could be trapped inside during a crash or a fire,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit calls out Tesla founder Elon Musk for being personally aware of the problems with Tesla vehicles’ doors. At a 2013 earnings call, Musk acknowledged these issues, saying that “occasionally the sensor would malfunction … so you’d pull on the door handle and it wouldn’t open.” Musk assured investors that the design flaw had been fixed, even as failures continued to happen for years, with the lawsuit citing more than 30 examples of customers’ complaints about Tesla vehicles’ doors refusing to open.
On Nov. 27, 2024, Krysta Tsukahara, after returning home for Thanksgiving break from Savannah College of Arts and Design, attended a party with other graduates of Piedmont High School. The party, held at a private residence, included alcohol consumption by minors.
Around 3 a.m., Soren Dixon, 19, convinced Tsukahara and a handful of other partygoers to go to his home at 6861 Estates Dr. to pick up a Cybertruck that was owned by his grandfather, according to court documents. Dixon drove the Cybertruck with Jack Nelson, 20, Jordan Miller, 19, and Tsukahara as his passengers as they drove along Hampton Avenue toward another Piedmont residence, according to authorities.
Dixon had consumed approximately eight alcoholic beverages that evening, according to an unidentified witness in a California Highway Patrol report. Dixon’s autopsy also confirmed the presence of 180 nanograms of cocaine and 55 nanograms of methamphetamine per milliliter of blood at the time of the crash.
Just blocks away from their destination, Dixon accelerated out of a stop sign, crashed into a tree and struck a retaining wall. Another Piedmont High graduate, Matt Riordan, had followed in a vehicle behind the Cybertruck when he came upon the wreck as flames began to consume the vehicle. Riordan used a tree branch to break the passenger door window, where he pulled Jordan Miller from the vehicle. He returned moments later to save Krysta, Nelson and Dixon.
“I could hear Krysta yelling and the car saying ‘crash detected,’ ” Riordan told authorities, according to court documents. “I went back to the broken window and yelled for them to try to get out at this window. … Krysta tried to come up, sticking her head (out) from the back, I grabbed her arm to try and pull her towards me, but she retreated because of the fire.”
In April, the Tsukaharas filed a lawsuit against Dixon’s family, claiming they had been barred from accessing the vehicle and kept in the dark by the other families affected by the crash. The Tsukaharas alleged that Dixon “negligently and carelessly drove” the vehicle, causing their daughter’s death.
The Tsukaharas’ latest lawsuit blames Tesla, too, claiming its “negligent” door design caused the sudden and tragic death of their daughter.
“Krysta was a bright light in our lives — an honors student, a creative soul, and a beloved daughter,” Carl and Noelle Tsukahara said in a statement. “We never want this to happen to anyone else.”
The Elon Musk-helmed company saw its delivery numbers soar after a shaky few quarters. Photo by Katherine KY Cheng/Getty Images
The end of U.S. electric vehicle tax credits is expected to pose long-term challenges for industry leaders like Tesla. But the policy’s looming expiration fueled a surge in sales in the latest quarter. Tesla delivered 497,099 vehicles in the July-September quarter, a record high and up 7 percent from the same quarter last year. The strong quarter marks a turnaround for the carmaker, which has struggled with intensifying EV competition and growing backlash over CEO Elon Musk’s political activity. Its previous quarterly results showed deliveries of 384,122, a 13.5 percent year-over-year drop and the company’s second consecutive decline.
The rush in sales was driven in large part by the September 30 termination of federal EV tax credits, which offered up to $7,500 per purchase. The policy change, enacted earlier this year by President Donald Trump, spurred buyers to close deals before the deadline. Tesla wasn’t the only beneficiary—Cox Automotive projects total U.S. EV sales in the third quarter will reach 410,000, a 21 percent increase over last year.
“This was a great bounce back quarter for [Tesla] to lay the groundwork for deliveries moving forward,” said Dan Ives, a Wedbush Securities analyst, in a client note. Nevertheless, “EV demand is expected to fall with the EV tax credit expiration,” he warned. Tesla shares are down by more than 4 percent today (Oct. 2).
Whether Tesla can sustain this momentum remains uncertain. Musk has increasingly positioned his company around a future dominated by self-driving cars and robotics, rolling out autonomous cars in Austin this summer. But for now, the bulk of Tesla’s revenue continues to come from EV sales, accounting for nearly three-quarters of its $22.5 billion in revenue last quarter.
The company faces particular headwinds in Europe, where political backlash has weighed heavily on sales. In the first eight months of 2025, Tesla registrations in European Union countries fell 43 percent compared to the same period last year, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. August alone saw a 36 percent year-over-year drop. Overall, however, EV adoption in the EU continues to climb, with market share rising to 15.8 percent from last year’s 12.6 percent.
In China, Tesla is also losing ground. Shipments from its Shanghai Gigafactory reportedly fell 4 percent year-over-year in August, marking declines in seven of the past eight months. In an effort to combat local EV rivals, Tesla recently introduced its Model Y L to the region.
One bright spot for the company is its energy storage unit. The unit deployed 12.5 GWh of storage products over the past three months, up more than 80 percent from last year. The business, which includes Megapack and Powerwall battery systems, is gaining traction with utilities and companies expanding their A.I. infrastructure. Musk’s own A.I. startup, xAI, was among its clients, contributing nearly 2 percent of Tesla’s $10 billion in energy revenue last year.
Tesla raised the lease prices for its most popular electric vehicles on Wednesday, according to figures posted to the company’s website. The change comes after the federal EV tax credit, which was $7,500 for new vehicles and leases and $4,000 for used vehicles, expired on Tuesday.
Tesla’s model Y lease has jumped from between $479 and $529 per month to between $529 and $599 per month, Jalopnik points out. And Model 3 lease prices went from between $349 and $699 per month to between $429 and $759 per month.
Tesla still sells more EVs in the U.S. than any other company, but Elon Musk’s market share has eroded in recent years. Tesla accounted for over 80% of all EV sales back in 2017, at the dawn of President Donald Trump’s first term. But that’s down to just 38% this past August, according to CNBC.
Musk has built his empire on companies that rely on massive government funding, through contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits, according to the Washington Post, which recently tallied it all at $38 billion. But Musk, as head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) until just a few months ago, did his best to dismantle the federal government without personally harming a single thing that benefited him financially.
The sole exception was the expiration of the EV tax credit, which Republicans worked hard to kill with Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which passed in July. The tax credit was originally not scheduled to end until 2032 under the Inflation Reduction Act, which was passed under President Joe Biden and a Democratic-controlled Congress in 2022.
JPMorgan has previously estimated that the loss of the EV tax credit will cost Tesla about $1.2 billion per year. But it will take some time to see just how much of a dent is made by the EV tax credit going away. Tesla has already been suffering immensely, due in large part to Musk getting intimately involved in presidential politics.
Musk endorsed President Trump in July 2024 and spent over $270 million to get him elected. And the billionaire’s far-right politics caused the Tesla brand to suffer with liberal drivers, the people who used to support electric vehicles and Musk the most fervently. Musk’s two Nazi-style salutes on the day President Trump was inaugurated for a second time didn’t help his popularity with left-leaning car consumers.
A protester holds a sign that reads “Musk is a Nazi” at a protest on Feb. 17, 2025 in San Diego, California. Photo: Gizmodo / Matt Novak
Musk became the world’s richest person again this week after some brief competition from Larry Ellison. The Tesla CEO is now worth $500 billion, according to a new estimate by Forbes, becoming the first person in the history of the world to reach that milestone.
Tesla didn’t respond to questions emailed on Wednesday. Gizmodo will update this article if we hear back, though we’re not counting on it. Musk got rid of the company’s press relations team in 2020.
new video loaded: The E.V. Road Trip Went from Impossible to Easy
Francesca Paris, an Upshot reporter, shows how the quick growth of electric vehicle charging stations has continued in the United States despite the Trump administration’s hostility to the green energy transition.
By Francesca Paris, Eve Washington, Laura Bult, Sutton Raphael, David Jouppi and James Surdam
September 30, 2025
Francesca Paris, Eve Washington, Laura Bult, Sutton Raphael, David Jouppi and James Surdam
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The autonomous vehicle industry is years — maybe decades — from maturing. And so there’s still a Wild West quality to the sector, in spite of the steady stream of announcements that do show marked progress. Two such news items from this week illustrate my point of progress, possibility, and even a bit of peril (at least to the ups and downs a public market can provide).
First up is Gatik, an AV and logistics startup that is applying its tech to middle-mile trucks. The startup, which I first wrote about in 2019, announced a multi-year and expanded commercial partnership with Canada’s largest retailer, Loblaw. Under the deal, Gatik will deploy 20 autonomous trucks by the end of 2025 to provide driverless delivery to Loblaw’s network of stores in the greater Toronto area. Co-founder and CEO Gautam Narang told me the company will add another 30 autonomous trucks to the fleet by the end of 2026.
The deal is notable, and not just because of the fleet size. As Narang explained to me, the trucks will be handling the full regional network for Loblaw. This means these third-generation AV trucks will operate autonomously to pick up products from two distribution centers and make deliveries to over 300 retail stores. “These are multiple brands within the Loblaw umbrella,” he said.
In other words, this is not some fixed-route pilot program. It’s commercial, and it’s complex.
Next up is Kodiak Robotics, another startup I have reported on since its founding. The company, which is developing self-driving trucks for highway, industrial, and defense uses, began trading on Nasdaq this week under the tickers KDK and KDKRW.
The company, which is now called Kodiak AI, went public via a merger with special-purpose acquisition company Ares Acquisition Corporation II, an affiliate of Ares Management. The deal valued the startup at about $2.5 billion.
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Kodiak raised $275 million in financing. More than $212.5 million came from certain institutional investors, including $145 million in PIPE funding and about $62.9 million in trust cash from Ares. It should be noted that the trust cash is smaller (it was $562 million), as some SPAC investors redeemed their shares.
I spoke to founder and CEO Don Burnette the day before Kodiak’s big debut about why he took the company public — let alone via a SPAC. It was a big moment for Burnette, whose family was on hand to watch him ring the bell and mark the milestone. The stock was trading at about $7.70 Friday, down about 10% from its market open.
“As you can imagine, building and scaling a transformative autonomous driving company is very capital intensive, and we were looking to access the public markets as a path forward for the company. And when choosing between, you know, traditional IPO or a SPAC, we considered all the options,” he said. “We felt like, from a timing perspective, it was the right decision for the company (to take the SPAC route).”
It should be noted that Burnette is also quite bullish on defense. Here’s why:
“I think autonomy is the future of ground transportation broadly,” he said, before noting the benefits within defense for logistics and reconnaissance operations for ground vehicles. “One of the key things is defense requires unstructured autonomy, and this is one of the areas where we become specialists.”
A little bird
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
A few weeks ago, we wrote about some trouble at Hyundai‘s electric air taxi startup Supernal, including that the company had stopped work on its air taxi program and that its CEO and CTO were out.
This week, a little bird told us that a wider reorg of Supernal’s C-suite was afoot — something Hyundai Motor Group has now confirmed to us.
Chief strategy officer Jaeyong Song and chief safety officer Tracy Lamb are part of a “transition to new leadership,” according to the Korean conglomerate. Song’s departure is particularly notable, as he was once the VP of Hyundai’s Advanced Air Mobility division, which Supernal was spun out of in 2021. Also gone is Lina Yang, who most recently served as chief of staff to the startup’s now-former CEO, but who also served as Supernal’s “Head of Intelligent Systems” before that.
RememberMoxion Power, the portable battery startup that raised $110 million before going bankrupt? The founders are back with a new startup called Anode Technology Company, which has designed a mobile battery and inverter that can be used for EV charging and supplying remote power to construction sites and live events. The startup just raised $9 million in seed funding in a round led by Eclipse Ventures; its partner, Jiten Behl, who spearheaded the deal, was previously Rivian’s chief growth officer. Apparently, Behl’s interest was sparked by his experience at Rivian.
Side note: Palo Alto-based venture capital firm Eclipse sure has been busy this year. The VC firm led the $105 million round of Also, the micromobility startup that spun out of Rivian, and recently hired longtime T. Rowe Price Group investor Joe Fath as partner and head of growth.
The firm doesn’t explicitly focus on transportation, but some of its portfolio companies in this sector include Arc, Bedrock Robotics,Reliable Robotics, Skyryse,and Wayve.
Other deals that got my attention …
Rapido, a popular ride-hailing platform in India that competes with Uber, doubled its valuation to $2.3 billion following a secondary share sale by food delivery giant Swiggy. The share sale comes just weeks after Rapido began piloting food deliveries, edging into Swiggy’s core territory.
Telo, the tiny electric truck developer, raised $20 million in a Series A funding round co-led by designer and Telo co-founder Yves Béhar and Tesla co-founder Marc Tarpenning, who is on Telo’s board. Additional investment came from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and early-stage funds like TO VC, E12 Ventures, and Neo.
TheTrump administration is seeking up to a 10% stake in Lithium Americas in exchange for renegotiating the repayment period of a $2.26 billion Department of Energy loan. GM is a major investor in the Canadian company, which is developing a lithium mine in Nevada that is expected to be the largest in the Western Hemisphere.
Notable reads and other tidbits
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Hackers have had quite an active week in the transportation sector. Stellantisconfirmed a data breach involving customers’ personal information. The breach is linked to a hack of its Salesforce database. Meanwhile, a hack that began last Friday and targeted check-in systems provided by Collins Aerospacecaused delays at Brussels, Berlin, and Dublin airports, as well as London’s Heathrow. The U.K.’s National Crime Agency has arrested a man in connection to the ransomware attack. And finally, Jaguar Land Roversaid it will not resume production at its factories for yet another week as it continues to grapple with fallout from a cyberattack.
Battery materials startup Silastarted operations at its facility in Moses Lake, Washington, a milestone that could pave the way for longer-range, faster-charging EVs. The factory is the first large-scale silicon anode factory in the West and will initially be capable of making enough battery materials for 20,000 to 50,000 EVs. Future expansion could fulfill demand for as many as 2.5 million vehicles.
Automakers continue to pull back on EVs and electrified vehicles. Honda is ending U.S. production of its Acura ZDX electric vehicle that was being built by General Motors in Tennessee, CNBC reported. And Stellantis has canceled plans to produce a 4xe plug-in hybrid Jeep Gladiator in North America by the end of 2025. Which EV is next on the chopping block?
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administrationopened an investigation into Rivian over issues with the seat belts in its electric delivery vans that could introduce additional risk in the event of a crash, Bloomberg reported.
Tesla asked the Environmental Protection Agency not to roll back current vehicle emissions standards, breaking from other major automakers that want to see the rules eased.
TuneIn, an audio streaming service, is collaborating with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to deliver emergency alerts directly to drivers.
Volvo Cars is pledging a commitment to U.S. production. The company said it will continue to invest in its U.S. car plant near Charleston, South Carolina, and announced plans to expand the factory to produce a hybrid vehicle by the end of the decade.
Waymo launched “Waymo for Business,” a new service designed for companies to set up accounts so their employees can access robotaxis in cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, and San Francisco.
Zoox has asked federal regulators for an exemption that would allow the Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle company to commercially deploy its custom-built robotaxis, which lack traditional controls like pedals and a steering wheel.
One more thing
Finally, proof of life from Luminar founder Austin Russell.
You may remember that Russell was mysteriously and suddenly replaced in May as CEO of the lidar company he created. The company has never truly explained his departure, only that it was the result of a “code of business conduct and ethics inquiry” initiated by the board.
Russell has been silent; while he remains on Luminar’s board, he hasn’t signed any of the filings the company has submitted with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission since he was replaced. This week, he reappeared as the co-founder of a new company called Russell AI Labs. It’s billed as a “platform that backs and builds transformative AI and frontier technology companies.”
It doesn’t seem like his troubles at Luminar have affected his ability to attract high-profile support or make eyebrow-raising deals. Russell’s co-founders are Markus Schäfer, CTO and board member at Mercedes-Benz Group AG, and Murtaza Ahmed, who served as a managing director at Goldman Sachs before joining SoftBank and was a partner in the $100 billion Vision Fund and managing partner of its $5 billion Latin America Fund.
As part of Russell AI Lab’s debut, the startup announced it has taken a $300 million stake in agentic AI company Emergence AI.
About 75 miles from Hollywood, an animated high school science teacher held his phone screen up to his students. He had taught Celeste Rivas Hernandez years ago, he told the class, displaying a photo of himself alongside her. Rivas Hernandez, a 15-year-old girl who was found dead this month in the trunk of an impounded Tesla, had, he added, “been missing since I taught her.”
The remarks, as displayed in footage obtained by TMZ, were among the latest installments in the trail of breadcrumbs left behind about Rivas Hernandez and D4vd, the 20-year-old Los Angeles singer to whom the Tesla is registered, and a testament to the morbid interest that has accompanied it. After receiving a report of a rotting odor coming from a car in an impound lot near the Hollywood Hills home where D4vd had been staying, authorities identified Rivas Hernandez’s dismembered corpse. On Monday, days after police raided the property, the homeowner told the Daily Mail that D4vd’s manager broke his $20,000-per-month lease.
A suspect has not been named in the investigation into Rivas Hernandez’s death, and D4vd has not been accused of any wrongdoing. The intrigue surrounding the case has largely centered on the correspondences between Rivas Hernandez and D4vd’s lives. An unreleased Dv4d track appeared online that included lyrics describing how the scent of a girl named Celeste, “with my name tattooed on her chest,” was sticking to the singer’s clothes. The teen had a tattoo reading “Shhh…” on her right index finger, TMZ reported, and D4vd has one in the same location. Footage surfaced of the two of them livestreaming together in the months before she went missing in 2024. (A spokesperson for D4vd said in a statement to NBC News that the singer “has been informed about what’s happened,” and “is fully cooperating with the authorities.”)
The singer’s blunt self-presentation and motifs, now often taken literally, have stoked public interest in the case. D4vd has brought a casket on stage at performances, made a music video in which one blood-soaked version of his body carries another into a trunk, and, among his many macabre lyrics delivered in a flat affect, sang in his 2022 breakout single “Romantic Homicide,” “I killed you and I didn’t even regret it.”
D4vd began making music in Houston as a homeschooled teenager. From the start, his output was tied to the social media waters in which he was swimming: He has said he grew up listening only to gospel, and that his mother suggested songwriting as an alternative when YouTube started cracking down on his montages of copyrighted video games. Landing on a wobbly mixture of bedroom pop, indie rock, and R&B, he made his debut on the Billboard Hot 100 after snippets of “Romantic Homicide” found traction on TikTok and soon signed to Interscope Records. By 2025, he was opening for SZA and sharing the front row at an Amiri runway show in Paris with J Balvin and Lucky Blue Smith.
Oracle founder and potential TikTok overlord Larry Ellison’s current net worth is estimated at $393 billion, making him the second-richest person in the world in 2025, only behind Elon Musk. His fortune has grown rapidly due to massive gains in Oracle’s stock, driven by the AI boom, and a significant stake in Tesla.
Ellison pledged to donate 95% of his wealth as part of the Giving Pledge in 2010. Since then, he’s distanced himself from traditional nonprofits and says he’s opting to give away wealth on his own terms. He founded the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), a for-profit philanthropic organization at The University of Oxford.
But Ellison’s EIT has recently been destabilized by leadership changes, according to a report in The New York Times. In 2024, he hired scientist John Bell to head the research. But in August, Ellison announced he had hired former University of Michigan President Santa Ono to “collaborate” with Bell. Just two weeks later, Bell announced his departure from the “very challenging project.”
The Times reports there are tensions over “how best to commercialize Mr. Ellison’s scientific research, along with persistent questions about how much the institute could trust Mr. Ellison to deliver on his financial commitments.”
Here’s what we know—and don’t—about Ellison’s plans to give away his fortune eventually.
Net worth (2025)
Estimated at $393 billion as of September 2025.
Most of his wealth derives from his 41% share in Oracle and a significant stake in Tesla.
Philanthropy and plans for giving
His main philanthropic focus is through the Ellison Institute of Technology, which aims to address global issues such as healthcare, food insecurity, climate change, and AI advancements, with a major new campus opening in Oxford worth approximately $1.3 billion.
In the past, Ellison has donated hundreds of millions to establish research and treatment centers, including a $200 million contribution to the University of Southern California for a cancer research center and approximately $1 billion in total to the Ellison Medical Foundation (now closed), primarily for medical research.
Amounts already given and future commitment
Direct charitable disbursements are less than those of some peers, but commitments to the Giving Pledge and the Ellison Institute total in the billions.
Key known contributions:
$200 million to USC for cancer research.
Over $1 billion to aging and disease prevention through the Ellison Medical Foundation, before winding it down.
$1.3 billion toward the Oxford Ellison Institute campus, set to open by 2027.
He continues to indicate nearly all his fortune will eventually be directed toward philanthropic causes—done on his own terms and timeline.
Ellison’s net worth has reached record highs in 2025, and though he has pledged to give away almost all of it, his giving is uniquely structured—focusing on large self-driven projects such as the Ellison Institute, rather than broad public charity.
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
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Seven or eight years ago, anyone consuming business tech news might have come across the phrase “the race to build autonomous vehicles.” In private conversations, company execs and startup founders I spoke to sometimes referred to the commercialization of autonomous vehicle technology as “a race.” The phrase seeped into reporting at the time — including some of my articles.
What we’ve learned is that this is not a race so much as a long, curved, and fragmented road — one that looks more like the fan of an alluvial plain than a racetrack — to develop and prove the technology works and make it a profitable business. It’s not a race against others as much as an internal contest with existential stakes.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t real battlegrounds among those working on the technology, especially with robotaxis. Many might point to the number of cities a company has launched in as one indicator. I believe that while helpful, it’s a bit too vague and easy to manipulate.
Two recent news items got me thinking about more narrow and specific battlegrounds within cities: airports and public transit.
Airports were critical to the success of ride-hailing companies. Robotaxis are no different. Today, Waymo offers rides to and from Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport. And it’s clearly looking to unlock more.
This week, Waymo was granted a permit to start testing its autonomous vehicles at San Francisco International Airport, ahead of the launch of a commercial service. This comes just two weeks after Waymo was cleared to start testing at nearby San Jose Mineta International Airport — and as Tesla is also trying to elbow its way into offering ride-hail service to these airports.
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Meanwhile, Waymo and transit software company Viastruck a deal that could have far-reaching implications for cities. Government agencies that use Via’s software for public transit will be able to fold Waymo’s robotaxis directly into their public transit networks. The first city will be Phoenix suburb Chandler through its Chandler Flex fleet of on-demand, shared vehicle fleet.
This is meaningful, in terms of reach, although it may not be a cash cow for Waymo in the short term. As a Waymo spokesperson explained to me: When a traditional Chandler Flex vehicle isn’t available, riders may have the choice to book a trip with Waymo. Should a person choose to ride with Waymo, Chandler Flex will direct them to the Waymo app to hail a fully autonomous ride at a reduced price of $2 or less. At such a low price, it’s hard to see how this will push Waymo’s balance sheet into the black.
Still, it’s an important volume play. And Via CEO Daniel Ramot indicated in one interview that he hopes this spreads to hundreds of cities.
A little bird
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
I gave you three little birds last week, and this week … welp, none that I could verify. Don’t fret — there will be more in the future.
U.K. startup Wayve has garnered buzz for locking up deals — and capital — for its generalized end-to-end approach to automated driving technology. You might recall that a year ago, Wayve raised $1.05 billion in a Series C round with SoftBank Group, Microsoft, and Nvidia participating.
Wayve is now working on a Series D round, and it appears that Nvidia is ready to plunk down more capital. In a letter of intent, which the two companies recently signed, Nvidia said it will evaluate making a $500 million strategic investment in Wayve’s next round. I spoke to Wayve CEO Alex Kendall, and he wouldn’t say exactly when this round is expected to close. But he did say “we’re working quickly towards it.”
Other deals that got my attention …
Divergent Technologies was once solidly in the automotive sector. These days, the advanced manufacturing company has positioned itself as a defense company and has locked up deals with Lockheed Martin, RTX, and General Dynamics. Now it’s raised $290 million, including $40 million in debt, to expand production of missile parts and other specialized components for the military.
EV Realty, a startup focused on providing charging for semitrucks, raised $75 million in a round led by private equity investor NGP. The startup will use the funds to build additional charging hubs throughout California.
Moove, the African vehicle-financing startup backed by Uber, is trying to raise more than $300 million in a round with a post-valuation of more than $2 billion, Bloomberg reported, citing anonymous sources.
XL Batteries, a Marlborough, Massachusetts-based startup developing flow batteries for energy storage, raised $7.5 million from Merrin Investors.
Notable reads and other tidbits
Image Credits:Bryce Durbin
Hyundai Motor Groupis intent on growing, and North America is central to its plan. During its investor day, the Korean automaker said it wants to increase annual sales from 4.17 million in 2025 to 5.55 million by 2030. In the short term (meaning for this year), the company shared new targets for an increase in revenue of between 5% and 6% and an operating profit margin of between 6% and 7%.
To get there, Hyundai is investing capital, including putting $2.7 billion over three years into expanding the total production capacity of the Hyundai Motor Group Metaplant America in Georgia. The company said “electrified vehicles” (that includes 18 new hybrid models by 2030) are expected to account for 60% of total sales, reaching 3.3 million units, with significant growth anticipated in North America, Europe, and Korea.
Rivian officially broke ground on its long-planned factory near Atlanta.
Stellantisended plans to produce the all-electric Ram 1500 REV pickup truck, citing low demand for full-size EV trucks; however, it’s holding on to the extended-range Ramcharger, which is now confusingly being renamed to Ram 1500 REV.
Tesla said it will redesign its door handles so they’re less likely to trap people inside their cars. The decision came a day after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into claims that Tesla’s door handles become inoperable in certain situations on Model Y SUVs. It also follows an investigation by Bloomberg that exposed the problem.
Meanwhile in Australia, Tesla recalled Powerwall 2 home batteries in the country after the company received reports of fires that led to “minor property damage.”
Uber will test using drones for Uber Eats deliveries in some U.S. markets by the end of this year, part of a new partnership with Israeli startup Flytrex.
Waymo is launching a commercial robotaxi service in Nashville in 2026, and it’s partnering with Lyft to expand its reach.
One more thing …
Speaking of Wayve, I thought it was worth reminding y’all that the startup’s co-founder and CEO, Alex Kendall, will be joining us onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. The event will be held October 27 to October 29 at Moscone West in San Francisco. Register here to join more than 10,000 startup and VC leaders at Disrupt.
Yesterday, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into Tesla following a report by Bloomberg that its electric door handles could stop working when a vehicle’s low-voltage battery fails. That created a safety hazard that the publication found could trap passengers when a Tesla car was in an emergency situation, such as a crash. Now, Bloomberg is back with the news that Tesla plans to redesign those problematic handles.
Tesla design head Franz von Holzhausen appeared on Bloomberg‘s Hot Pursuit! podcast and said the company is considering a new approach that combines the electric and manual release mechanisms. “The idea of combining the electronic one and the manual one together into one button, I think, makes a lot of sense,” he said. “That’s something that we’re working on.” He didn’t specify why Tesla was working on a redesign, but it’s hard to imagine the timing of the federal probe isn’t relevant.
The company has already been in the NHTSA’s sights this year. Last month, the regulator opened an investigation into how Tesla was reporting crashes with its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving systems. Although Tesla claimed the inconsistencies in reports were due to a system error that it has fixed, the NHTSA said it would continue the probe.
Tesla is “working on” redesigning its door handles so they are less likely to trap people inside the company’s cars, chief designer Franz von Holzhausen told Bloomberg News on Wednesday.
The news comes just one day after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened an probe into Tesla’s door handles, and one week after a Bloomberg News investigation highlighted multiple instances where owners or passengers were stuck in their cars following a crash.
Von Holzhausen didn’t specify when Tesla made the decision to rethink how its door handles work, according to Bloomberg. China has already been pushing automakers to reconsider the use of fully concealed door handles because of safety concerns, although the country’s top regulator has not taken a final action.
One of the two apparent problems with Tesla’s door handles has been they use electronic locks, which can stop working if they aren’t receiving power from the car’s battery system. The other is that, while Tesla does have manual door releases built into its cars, they are often hard to find and difficult to access.
“The idea of combining the electronic one and the manual one together into one button, I think, makes a lot of sense,” von Holzhausen told Bloomberg. “That’s something that we’re working on.”
NHTSA opened its investigation on Tuesday after the agency said it had received nine complaints from Tesla owners who experienced a failure with their door handles. In four of those cases, the safety agency said the owners had to break a window “to regain entry into the vehicle.”
Tesla includes instructions in its owner’s manuals that describe how to use an outside power source to activate dead electronic door locks, as both NHTSA and Bloomberg have noted. But NHTSA noted in its preliminary report that none of the owners who contacted the agency reported seeing low-voltage battery warnings — meaning they likely would not have known what was causing the problem.
