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GM’s self-driving arm Cruise hit with its latest fine over crash response

Credit: Cruise

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General Motors’ (GM’s) driverless ride-hailing company Cruise has been hit with its latest fine, after the company failed to disclose certain details about an accident involving a pedestrian last October.

Cruise has agreed to pay a $500,000 criminal fine over the record it submitted following an accident with a pedestrian last October, as detailed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in deferred prosecution that was revealed on November 14 (via Automotive News). The decision was made within the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of California, and it comes as the most recent legal penalty the company has had to pay after regulators said it “omitted” and “misrepresented” details about the accident.

According to NHTSA special agent Cory Legars, who is overseeing the Cruise case, the fine is intended to help hold Cruise and its staff accountable, following a “lack of candor” in response to the 2023 crash in which a robotaxi dragged and pinned a pedestrian.

The DOJ echoed the company’s withholding of certain details following the accident, which caused “multiple traumatic injuries” for the pedestrian, according to emergency responders. Cruise has also been criticized over its response to the accident by other agencies, including the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV).

Along with the fine, Cruise must also implement a safety compliance program, submit yearly reports to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and cooperate with all government agency investigations.

In a written statement, Cruise Chief Administrative Officer Craig Glidden said that company maintained a “firm commitment to transparency with our regulators.”

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Cruise leadership pledges more transparency, greater culture of safety in new letter

Cruise’s October 2023 accident and other crash response fines

In the accident, which took place on October 2, 2023, a Cruise robotaxi struck a pedestrian moments after she had been hit by a car with a human driver. The pedestrian ended up in the path of the Cruise vehicle, which hit her, dragged her about 20 feet, and engaged an emergency stop sequence that caused the vehicle to stop on top of her with hazard lights on until authorities arrived.

Following the accident, the DMV and other agencies noted that Cruise avoided sharing certain details, including exactly what the robotaxi did after it ran over the individual. Weeks later, Cruise disclosed a more full version of events, but it was only after the DMV specifically requested more details. The agency also suspended Cruise’s permit to operate self-driving vehicles, effective immediately.

“Cruise’s omission hinders the ability of the department to effectively and timely evaluate the safe operation of Cruise vehicles and puts the safety of the public at risk,” said Bernard Soriano, DMV deputy director, after the accident.

In the following weeks and months, Cruise would go on to see a significant staff and executive shake-up, with its two co-founders resigning alongside several other high-level employees. The company also went on to let go of around a quarter of its staff, before hiring several new executives in attempts to regain public and regulator trust and relaunch the service.

Cruise is currently aiming to reboot driverless ride-hailing sometime this year, though it has faced multiple fines from agencies and regulators in addition to the $500,000 agreement with the DOJ.

In June, following months of commission deliberation, Cruise was ordered by the CPUC to pay the maximum penalty of $112,500 for its crash response, after the company originally lobbied for a fine of just $75,000. In September, the NHTSA ordered Cruise to pay a $1.5 million fee, along with submitting a corrective action plan and additional details on how the company plans to fulfill reporting standards in any future incidents.

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What are your thoughts? Let me know at zach@teslarati.com, find me on X at @zacharyvisconti, or send us tips at tips@teslarati.com.

Cruise robotaxi pedestrian accident review concludes with strange findings

 

Zach is a renewable energy reporter who has been covering electric vehicles since 2020. He grew up in Fremont, California, and he currently lives in Colorado. His work has appeared in the Chicago Tribune, KRON4 San Francisco, FOX31 Denver, InsideEVs, CleanTechnica, and many other publications. When he isn't covering Tesla or other EV companies, you can find him writing and performing music, drinking a good cup of coffee, or hanging out with his cats, Banks and Freddie. Reach out at zach@teslarati.com, find him on X at @zacharyvisconti, or send us tips at tips@teslarati.com.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk follows Trump’s lead, says a SpaceX name change is coming

Elon Musk says SpaceXAI will become SpaceXSI, marking its second rebrand in under three months.

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Elon Musk wants to rename his artificial intelligence company again, less than three months after its last rebrand.

In a string of posts on X early Sunday morning, Musk wrote “No more AI,” followed by “SI” and “It’s better.” He then added, “SpaceX is a super intelligence company.” When a user asked whether SpaceXAI could become SpaceXSI, Musk replied, “Yes, we will make that change.”

The posts extend a terminology push that began at the White House last week. On September 29, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” and “AI” with “Super Intelligence” and “SI” on government websites, policy documents and press releases. The same day, Musk sat beside Trump as the heads of the largest AI companies signed a voluntary safety accord, as Teslarati reported. Speaking to reporters afterward, Musk caught himself mid sentence: “I think it is worth highlighting the positive benefits of A.I. … S.I., pardon me.”

Elon Musk and Trump are closer than ever, and Tesla could be the big winner

SpaceXSI would be the third name for the business since February. SpaceX acquired xAI on February 2 in a deal that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion. In May, Musk said xAI would be dissolved as a separate company, and on July 6 the division adopted the SpaceXAI name and a new logo that placed the xAI letters inside the SpaceX identity.

Musk gave no timeline. He did not say whether SpaceXSI would be a legal name change or a branding update, whether the @SpaceXAI handle on X would change, or how the shift would apply to products like Grok. The company had not issued a formal announcement as of Sunday morning.

The change would reach well beyond a chatbot. SpaceXAI now houses Grok, the X platform, the Colossus training clusters in Memphis and the coding tool Cursor, which SpaceX acquired in August. It also runs the orbital compute effort SpaceX is building around Nvidia hardware, which Musk said during the company’s first earnings call would be exclusive to Nvidia.

It’s unclear if rivals like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta and Nvidia have plans to also rename their companies or products. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has continued to say “AI” in public, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has gone partway, describing data centers as “super intelligence factories.”

The rename would also line up SpaceX’s AI branding with the federal government’s language as Musk takes on a new advisory role at the Pentagon, where he is helping lead the Project Meridian study on the future of warfare.

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Starlink launches Communities Program for passive income through internet sharing

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(Credit: Starlink | X)

Starlink is launching a new beta path for ordinary property owners and local operators to turn a single Starlink kit into a small shared-access business for passive income.

Under the Starlink for Communities program, a host installs one dish and router setup in a location with nearby demand: an apartment complex, campground, rural crossroads, or event site. Neighbors or local users can buy short-term passes rather than full individual subscriptions, giving the Starlink provider a potential path to passive income.

Hour, day, and week passes cover one device. A month pass covers up to four. Starlink handles account creation, payments, access controls, and the satellite link itself. The host’s role is mainly placement, power, and basic upkeep, with earnings tied to each paid connection.

The model echoes the passive-income vision long attached to Tesla’s Robotaxi plans, and it seems like it’s something Musk has hinted toward in the past as he believes AI will make the need to work relatively optional. In both cases, the platform owns the hard parts of matching, billing, and network management, while an individual supplies a physical asset that sits idle much of the time.

A Starlink host’s dish can serve multiple nearby users without each household buying and installing its own terminal. A Tesla owner, under the stated Robotaxi concept, would leave a vehicle enrolled in the fleet during unused hours so the car generates rides while the owner is at work or asleep.

Both arrangements convert under-utilized hardware into a revenue stream. They also let the company scale coverage or capacity without owning every endpoint.

Differences are practical. A Starlink kit is a fixed, relatively low-cost terminal whose main constraint is local congestion and line-of-sight. A Tesla Robotaxi is a mobile, high-value vehicle whose earnings depend on demand density, utilization rates, insurance, cleaning, and charging.

Starlink’s program is already accepting host applications in multiple countries and describes the revenue split as ongoing. Tesla’s owner-network version remains more aspirational.

The company currently operates a limited company-controlled robotaxi service in select areas and has solicited interest from fleet buyers for Cybercab vehicles, while private Full Self-Driving owners have not yet been able to dispatch their own cars for paid rides at scale.

Tesla primes Cybercabs for 4K streaming and high bandwidth gaming with Starlink integration

Starlink is a satellite broadband service operated by SpaceX that uses a constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to deliver internet to locations where terrestrial broadband is slow, expensive, or absent. It has grown to millions of subscribers worldwide by selling direct residential, mobile, and enterprise terminals, and have become widely available at a wide array at retail locations like Target and Best Buy.

The Communities program extends that reach by letting hosts resell short bursts of capacity to people nearby, while also providing high-speed internet access to those who are simply around a Starlink user.

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Tesla just made its headlights even better through a software update

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Credit: @jojje167 on X

Tesla just upgraded its headlights through a software update, making them even better without any physical or hardware upgrade.

Tesla’s latest software update is quietly improving nighttime driving for a small number of owners. Version 2026.38 includes a new capability called Dynamic Headlight Leveling.

The feature automatically adjusts the aim of the low beams in response to driving conditions and nearby traffic, with the goal of giving the driver more usable light on the road while reducing glare for oncoming vehicles and traffic ahead.

Unlike Tesla’s matrix high-beam system, which selectively dims individual LED segments to create shadows around other cars, Dynamic Headlight Leveling physically tilts the low-beam projectors. Internal motors respond to changes in vehicle pitch.

When the car accelerates hard, climbs a steep grade, or carries extra weight in the rear, the headlights can otherwise point higher than intended. The software counters that movement in real time so the beam stays aimed at the road surface rather than into the eyes of other drivers.

Early indications reveal the update is reaching a limited set of vehicles, including certain Model 3 and Cybertruck examples in the United States and the United Arab Emirates. The rollout does not appear tied to a single hardware revision, and Tesla has not published a broader schedule. It is simply a common waiting game until your car receives it.

The change arrives against a backdrop of wider complaints about headlight glare. Some earlier Model 3 and Model Y vehicles were the subject of an NHTSA recall related to excessive low-beam glare; the software adjustment offers a potential mitigation for cars equipped with the necessary leveling hardware. It does not replace adaptive high beams where those are already available, nor does it alter the basic low-beam pattern itself.

Instead, it keeps an existing beam pointed where it is most useful.

For drivers who have received the update, the system requires no new settings or user input. The headlights simply respond as road conditions and traffic change. As the feature reaches more vehicles, it adds another example of Tesla using over-the-air software to refine existing hardware rather than waiting for a new model year. Nighttime visibility and reduced glare for others are the practical results owners are expected to notice first.

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