Musk Bets Big on Self Driving

Welcome to the Ride AI Newsletter, your weekly digest of important events and new developments at the intersection of technology and transportation. 

Fresh Pod

This week’s episode of the Ride AI podcast is a mind-meld between automotive analyst Ed Niedermeyer and tech-innovation scholar Horace Dediu about why the car industry is ripe for disruption. Their conversation is a reflection on the transformative power of past innovations like computers and phones, and the concept of unbundling the car for different trip types and purposes. Listen in.

What You Need to Know This Week

Tesla is cutting more than 10% of its global workforce following a poor quarterly sales report, reflecting the intensifying competition in the EV market.

The layoffs come at a time when Elon Musk is, in his own words, going “balls to the wall for autonomy.” Last week Reuters reported the EV company is scrapping its long-standing plan to release a ~$25,000 mass-market car in favor of developing a robotaxi, scheduled to be unveiled on August 8th. This news was followed by the announcement that Tesla is slashing the price of its monthly Supervised FSD (formerly known as “FSD Beta”) subscription from $199 to $99 in pursuit of more ADAS signups. “Everything else is like variations on a horse carriage,” says Musk.

Tesla investor Gene Munster describes these shakeups as “classic Gartner hype cycle,” which is very fitting because we just had Gartner VP Mike Ramsey on the Ride AI podcast to discuss why he believes autonomous tech will soon begin to ascend the slope of enlightenment (listen to the full episode here).

Chinese ridehailing giant Didi says it aims to operate 1 million robotaxis on its platform by 2030.

Following in the footsteps of Kentucky, whose governor last week vetoed a bill to allow self-driving cars, the Canadian province of British Columbia is banning Level 3 and higher autonomous vehicles from its roads. 

China leads the rest of the world in industrial automation by a significant margin.

Cruise comeback? Last week the GM subsidiary announced plans to resume robotaxi service in Phoenix with human drivers behind the wheel. Now the firm has applied to reinstate its permit to operate in its home city of San Francisco.

Meanwhile, Cruise’s rival Waymo officially launched paid rides in Los Angeles. The company is operating a fleet of fewer than 50 cars across a 63-square-mile area, from Santa Monica to downtown L.A.

Basemark, a Finnish startup that develops AR applications for cars, has raised $23.4 million in Series B funding. 

Ford’s hands-free driver-assist system, BlueCruise, has come under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board following a fatal crash in Texas.

A SoCal commuter rail line is getting $1.3 million from the federal government to develop an AI-powered security system to detect unexpected movement on the tracks. 

The robots are coming! Auto manufacturer Magna, which produces and assembles cars for a number of top brands, like Mercedes and BMW, is piloting humanoid robots from Sanctuary AI at its manufacturing facilities. 

Have you heard of Tier IV? The little-known Japanese startup is a triple threat in autonomous vehicles. “Tier IV positions itself as the maker of the software, like Waymo; a seller of self-driving vehicles, like Tesla; and a supplier of both hardware and software to other players in the industry, like Israeli technology company Mobileye.”

After St. Louis’s first attempt at introducing automated red-light cameras was ruled unconstitutional, lawmakers went back to the drawing board and passed a new version of the law to authorize traffic surveillance technology.

NASA has chosen three finalists to design its next-generation autonomous lunar rover: Intuitive Machines, Lunar Outpost, and Venturi Astrolab.