

News
Lucid Motors announces DreamDrive, a Tesla-style Autopilot with LIDAR
Lucid Motors just introduced DreamDrive, the startup’s version of a Tesla-style Autopilot for their upcoming luxury electric vehicles. Described as a Level 2 autonomous driving program, the advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) will be included with the company’s first Lucid Air sedans set to be delivered to customers in 2021.
“DreamDrive will offer the most comprehensive sensor suite on the market,” the carmaker’s announcement stated. “And it’s expected to be the first combining LIDAR with an innovative driver monitoring system as standard equipment.”
To substantiate their claims, Lucid’s DreamDrive is said to have 32 multimodal sensors with the most up-to-date technology. Altogether, 19 driver-assist features will be available when the system is launched with eight more on the way to be delivered via over-the-air updates. Notably, a few features of DreamDrive may be familiar to current Tesla drivers such as Surround View Monitoring, Traffic Signal Recognition, and Autonomous Parking Assist.
“DreamDrive is fully future-proofed — and ready for upgrades to Level 3 features as they become available,” the nascent carmaker additionally stated. “It’s also the first ADAS system built on a high-speed Ethernet Ring electric architecture, which also serves as a fully redundant platform for key functions like steering, brakes, and sensors.”
Lucid’s decision to lean on a LIDAR system for its self-driving software suite is one area where the company diverges from Tesla’s approach. During last year’s Autonomy Day, Tesla CEO Elon Musk expressed his distaste for the technology.
“LIDAR is a fool’s errand, and anyone who relies on LIDAR is doomed. It’s like having expensive appendices. You’ll see,” Musk said. This sentiment looks to be based on how neural networks’ inspiration – the human brain – works. “You all used your own neural network in your brains to get here. You didn’t shoot lasers from your eyes to drive,” Tesla’s Sr. Director of Artificial Intelligence, Andrej Karpathy, joked during the same event. However, while Musk’s company may be moving away from LIDAR, many others in the self-driving arena still use the tech as a central part of their autonomous software. Alphabet’s Waymo, for instance, takes this approach.
More details about DreamDrive will be revealed at Lucid’s upcoming online event on September 9th this year, according the the recent announcement. Alongside further self-driving system information, the production version of the Air vehicle will finally be revealed. Lucid’s flagship sedan is said to have a 400+ mile range, 1,000+ horsepower, and a 235 mph top speed. CEO Peter Rawlinson also confirmed in comments last week that a future variant will have a .21 drag coefficient (Cd), thought to be the lowest Cd of a luxury production-intent vehicle.
News
Tesla plans to use Unreal Engine for driver visualization with crazy upgrade
This could change the way Driver Visualization looks for Tesla owners.

Tesla looks to be planning a major upgrade to its driver visualization for Autopilot with a crazy upgrade from its current version.
Tesla’s driver visualization appears on the center screen and shows the vehicle, its surroundings, and, when it is operating on Autopilot or Full Self-Driving, shows the route of travel.
It has improved over the years, and even includes things like pedestrians, pets, and the shapes of other vehicles. It also helps with manual driving because it can be a good representation of your surroundings when trying to change lanes or merge in traffic.
However, it appears Tesla is planning a pretty substantial upgrade with the
Coding found in the 2025.20 firmware by Tesla hacker greentheonly showed the company is planning to utilize Unreal Engine for Autopilot visualization. He said the one Tesla currently uses is “godot-based.”
Hm, I did not notice it at first, but it looks like Tesla is adding unreal-engine based AP viz (the one you see today is godot-based).
The binaries are already shipping starting from firmware 2025.20 only on amd-based s and x cars for nowtime to see if that could be activated…
— green (@greentheonly) August 8, 2025
Unreal Engine is a 3D computer graphics game engine that was developed by Epic Games, the developer of the popular third-party shooter game Fortnite. It was first released back in 1998, and the most recent version is Unreal Engine 5. The sixth version is in development, and it could be out in 2027 or 2028.
However, Tesla could use it for a more realistic representation of vehicle surroundings. It would undoubtedly improve driver visualization, creating a smoother and freer-flowing depiction of what is outside of the car.
Tesla’s Autopilot visualization could look like this with Unreal Engine https://t.co/OOKNpeDM6F pic.twitter.com/mnjaxW36tO
— The Tesla Newswire (@TeslaNewswire) August 13, 2025
News
SpaceX is rolling out a new feature to Starlink that could be a lifesaver
Starlink now has a new Standby Mode that will enable low-speed internet access in the event of an outage.

SpaceX is rolling out a new feature to Starlink that could be a lifesaver in some instances, but more of a luxury for others.
Starlink is the satellite internet service that Elon Musk’s company SpaceX launched several years ago. It has been adopted by many people at their homes, many airlines on their planes, and many maritime companies on their ships.
It has been a great way for customers to relieve themselves of the contracts and hidden fees of traditional internet service providers.
Now, Starlink is rolling out a new service feature on its units called “Standby Mode,” which is part of Pause Mode. The company notified customers of the change in an email:
“We’re reaching out to you to let you know the Pause feature on your plan has been updated. Pause now includes Standby Mode, which comes with unlimited low-speed data for $5.00 per month, perfect for backup connectivity and emergency use. These updates will take effect in 30 days. All of your other plan features remain the same. You are able to cancel your service at any time for no charge.”
SpaceX did not define how fast these “low speeds” will be. However, there are people who have tested the Standby Mode, and they reported speeds of about 500 kilobytes per second.
The mode is ideal for people who might deal with internet or power outages, but still need to have some sort of internet access.
It could also be used as a backup for people who want to stay with their ISP, but would like to have some sort of alternative in case of an outage for any reason.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk says this essential Tesla Robotaxi feature will be here soon
Tesla will work to solve automatic parking at available Supercharger stalls with future updates.

Elon Musk reiterated that one feature, which is ultimately an essential part of the operation of the Tesla Robotaxi platform, will be here soon.
Tesla released a new video of its longest Full Self-Driving demo yesterday, showing off a zero-intervention drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The drive is roughly seven hours and 360 miles long, and not a single need for the driver to touch the wheel was recorded.
Tesla flexes its most impressive and longest Full Self-Driving demo yet
There was one question that was brought up by an owner that brings up an interesting point. Tesla still needs to solve the vehicle’s ability to pull into Superchargers automatically, something that does not currently have a high success rate, at least for the owner who got a response from CEO Elon Musk.
Musk assured him that a Tesla’s ability to pull into open parking spaces at Superchargers would be more reliable with future software updates. Owners can see how many and which exact stalls are available before traveling to a Supercharger, so Teslas should be able to identify these stalls and pull in automatically:
Yeah, it will work essentially perfectly with future software updates
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2025
This is a small part of what will be imperative for the charging experience when Robotaxi launches in the coming years. Tesla plans to enable customer-owned cars to potentially enter the Robotaxi fleet and become an autonomous ride-sharing vehicle by next year.
However, it still needs to figure out autonomous charging. There are two parts to that process: pulling into the spot and charging without human need to connect the Supercharger to the vehicle.
Tesla used to consider a robotic snake-arm charger for this, but it has talked about induction charging more recently. Wireless charging seems to be the route that Tesla plans to go, but it might take some time to resolve the energy loss issue and make it an efficient charging method.
Tesla flexes Robotaxi wireless charging — autonomy from top to bottom
Tesla has said its wireless charging efficiency is “well above 90 percent.”
Nevertheless, Tesla is still working toward figuring out all of the edge cases of Robotaxi operation. Figuring out charging without the need of a human is just one part of the puzzle it still has yet to solve, but with its improvements over the past few years, there’s no doubt Tesla will find the missing piece.
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