Lifestyle
Exterior airbag design looks to cut car crash injuries by 40%
Internal airbags are a standard safety feature in today’s cars, but a German auto supplier is hoping to export their benefits to the exterior of vehicles as well. ZF Friedrichshafen AG’s external vehicle airbags look and function exactly as you’d expect them to – after sensing the approach of a collision event, the bags deploy in milliseconds to cushion the blow. They boast a 40% reduction in injury levels, but after ten years in development, ZF’s system still faces significant hurdles before ever being brought to the consumer market. Convincing auto manufacturers to incorporate their product into newly-built vehicles and overcoming regulatory issues are the primary obstacles to overcome, but ZF is confident that the advantages external airbags would provide to consumers will win the day for their product.
The primary advantage of external vehicle airbags is the disbursement of impact forces. Rather than concentrating the energy of a crash in the area that’s hit, the force would be sent along the full length of the airbag, specifically along the side of the vehicle, per ZF Friedrichshafen AG’s design. The company’s airbags are installed into the outside bodywork of a vehicle under the doors and run the full length of all doors. Additionally, thanks to the electronics and software safety suites already installed in most new vehicles today, the triggering mechanisms needed for external airbags are already incorporated into vehicles that ZF hopes to include its product in. LIDAR, laser-light radar, is the preferred sensor system for the airbag deployment as the quickest way to detect and respond to incoming threats.
Unfortunately, due to the space required in key areas of a vehicle and the integration into existing onboard sensor systems, installation of ZF’s external airbags would need to happen at the time of manufacture. This engineering demand is a significant commitment from car makers to utilize the technology. However, ZF claims its airbag product would reduce intrusions into the car cabin up to 30% as well as nearly halving the significance of injury levels. As stated in a press release on the product, “Tests have shown it can help reduce the occupant injury severity up to 40 percent.” Those stats alone might make the product worth the effort. The company also has an existing line of airbag products further making a case for its newest airbag product’s safety claims.
ZF Friedrichshafen AG was founded in 1915 and is a company dedicated to overall vehicle safety, not just to improvements made in their one external airbag product. As an international company with an American headquarters in Michigan, ZF has its products incorporated into numerous vehicle makes and models, including transmissions, control units, and sensor systems. As an interesting note, ZF’s products also include gearboxes for wind power generators, and the company was originally founded to produce gears for Zeppelins and other airships. ZF is also quite dedicated to electrification of vehicles and autonomous driving overall, altogether demonstrating the company’s history and commitment with/to future-focused transportation products.
First introduced at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show, ZF’s external airbag system can be integrated into vehicles and on the market within two years, according to Uwe Class, director of safe mobility systems at ZF, in comments published in an article in Popular Mechanics. Also mentioned was the fact that while several car makers have shown interest in the system, no contracts have been secured at this time. Given ZF’s long history in the automotive market, though, especially as a solutions-oriented company constantly researching and designing systems that improve driver experience and security, external airbags could likely end up becoming a “when” rather than an “if” as a vehicle feature.
Investor's Corner
Tesla Robotaxi gets a massive upgrade in Nevada
Nevada regulators just approved a massive expansion of Tesla’s robotaxi fleet across the entire county.
Tesla’s robotaxi footprint in Nevada just grew by roughly 500 times in a single regulatory vote.
The Nevada Transportation Authority approved Tesla’s full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit on Thursday, clearing the way for the company to deploy up to 5,000 driverless vehicles across Clark County over the next 12 months. The decision came during a four hour general session meeting that Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt watched live and reported on X, noting the vote replaces the interim order that had limited Tesla to just 10 robotaxis on a narrow stretch of the Las Vegas Strip.
EXCLUSIVE: Tesla has just officially received approval for its full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit in Nevada, clearing the way for Tesla to launch a paid public Robotaxi service in Las Vegas.
This officially allows @Tesla to deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis over the next… pic.twitter.com/DPs5UtUlrE
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 20, 2026
That earlier cap, covered here after it surfaced on August 13, came with restrictions that looked stricter than what Tesla runs in Austin: a 45 mph speed ceiling, no airport pickups, and a geofence confined to the Strip corridor. The new approval extends Tesla’s operating authority to all of Clark County, with room to request an even wider geofence across the state.
Tesla representatives at the meeting said they have no intention of putting 5,000 cars on the road right away. Commercial rides are expected to start within 30 days, pending vehicle inspections, insurance filings, and fare approval, the standard steps every robotaxi operator in Nevada has had to clear.
Tesla’s own Robotaxi account replied to the news with a short line, The golden future is upon us.
The timing lines up with Tesla’s broader robotaxi push this month. The company is preparing to open Cybercab rides to the public in Austin as soon as this month, and it opened a sweepstakes for riders to win a seat at the launch event. Tesla filed its original application for a 5,000 vehicle Nevada fleet back in June, a request regulators trimmed to 10 vehicles when they issued the interim order in July. Thursday’s vote effectively grants the number Tesla asked for from the start.
Zoox, the Amazon owned robotaxi operator, has run in Nevada since 2025 and was capped at 100 vehicles before Thursday’s decision. Tesla’s new ceiling puts it well ahead of that comparison on paper, though the company has said its actual fleet size will depend on how quickly FSD v15 rolls out, the software update executives have called the gateway to scaling unsupervised robotaxi operations nationwide.
Elon Musk
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
Elon Musk says X now exposes government censorship, but India’s secrecy laws complicate that promise.
Elon Musk’s promise to make government censorship requests on X “clearly visible” is running into a wall in India, where the law forbids the very disclosure Musk is promising.
On August 15, Musk responded to an update from X’s open-source algorithm team by writing “Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible.” The claim referred to a change X pushed two days earlier to its public xai-org/x-algorithm repository, which now includes a controversial filter written directly into the code. The filter suppresses posts from 665 accounts flagged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court from appearing in the For You feed of any viewer located in Brazil, unless the viewer already follows the account. The election tied to the filter is scheduled for October 4.
India’s government wasn’t as impressed, and responded on Monday that “X will have to follow the law of the land,” in response to Musk’s transparency push covered by the Times of India. The problem is structural rather than political. India issues content blocking orders under Section 69A of its IT Act, and Rule 16 of the accompanying 2009 Blocking Rules requires those orders to stay confidential. Publishing an India equivalent of the Brazil filter, naming specific accounts and citing specific government orders, would itself violate Indian law. Government use of Section 69A has grown from roughly 6,000 orders a year between 2018 and 2023 to about 24,300 in 2025, according to a Tech Times report.
The contrast puts Musk’s transparency pledge in an odd spot. It works largely as advertised in Brazil, where electoral law requires disclosure and X can point to specific account IDs and a specific court order in public code. It cannot work the same way in India, where the law requires the opposite. X users in India will keep seeing content disappear from search and their feeds without any public accounting of why, even as X tells the rest of the world that its censorship compliance is now inspectable.
This isn’t the first time X’s fights with a national government have shaped how the platform operates. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to suspend the accounts of sitting lawmakers and journalists in 2024, a standoff that cost X its Brazilian revenue for months and froze Starlink’s local accounts before the investigation into Musk and X was closed in March with no evidence of wrongdoing found. X also sued California over a state law requiring moderation disclosures, arguing the mandate itself violated the First Amendment.
Whether India’s government pursues anything beyond a public statement remains to be seen. For now, the mismatch between what X can legally publish and what different governments legally allow it to publish is the real story behind Musk’s seven word claim.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s driverless Cybercab just passed a big test with State Governor
Florida’s governor rode Tesla’s Cybercab at a closed test track and called the experience impressive.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rode in a Tesla Cybercab on a closed test track this week and came away impressed, posting on X that the vehicle “successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.” He called the ride “impressive.”
The stop was part of a broader event Monday at SunTrax, a 775 acre state owned proving ground in Auburndale that Florida built specifically to test autonomous and connected vehicles before they reach public roads. Standing next to a gold Cybercab, DeSantis described the car in plain terms: “You go in there and you just sit. You have a screen. There’s no steering wheel, no pedals. Clearly these things could be very beneficial.”
We took a ride on a robotaxi on the Suntrax course and it successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.
Impressive! https://t.co/FVAkzFLz3r
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) August 11, 2026
DeSantis paired the praise with a caveat that has followed autonomous vehicles since the category existed. “You don’t want to be in an autonomous vehicle and it drives you into a ditch. That would not be good,” he said, framing safety validation as the gate before wider deployment.
SunTrax, the 2.25 mile oval which the state calls the only high speed autonomous vehicle test track in the Southeast, can simulate rain, pedestrian crossings, hills and crowded urban conditions at highway speeds, letting companies push a car past what an early public rollout would risk. Tesla, Waymo and Beep all use the facility, and Florida’s regulatory approach, among the most permissive for autonomous vehicles in the country, doesn’t require a human operator inside a fully autonomous car.
Tesla has reason to want the blessing of Florida and states beyond, as the Cybercab entered volume production at Gigafactory Texas this spring and has since self certified as SAE Level 4 under Texas law. Public road testing so far has kept a safety monitor in the passenger seat, and Florida is where Tesla has been expanding its existing Model Y based Robotaxi service instead, adding Miami in July and then Orlando and Tampa two weeks later. A closed track endorsement from a sitting governor doesn’t change any of that, but it does put Tesla’s newest hardware in front of a state that has already shown it will move fast on rules.
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