Mercedes-Benz has officially received certification to operate its SAE Level 3 autonomous driving system, DRIVE PILOT, in Nevada, making it the first brand to do so in the United States.
Mercedes first launched its DRIVE PILOT system at the end of 2021. Then they began shipping vehicles with the capability to customers in Germany in mid-2022, becoming the first automaker in the country to pass through the government’s stringent autonomous driving certification process.
Now, the brand has become the first to receive certification in the United States.
The DRIVE PILOT system is officially certified to operate on “suitable freeway sections” in Nevada in high-traffic density situations. It can operate at speeds up to 40 MPH. The company first revealed its paperwork had been filed with Nevada and California earlier this year, with California expected to grant certification later this year. Currently, DRIVE PILOT is available on the Mercedes EQS Sedan and Mercedes S-Class sedans, with vehicles being delivered with the system beginning in the second half of this year.
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- Credit: Mercedes-Benz
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- Credit: Mercedes-Benz
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- Credit: Mercedes-Benz
Mercedes-Benz was granted this approval as DRIVE PILOT meets the requirements of Nevada Chapter 482A for Autonomous Vehicles. As Mercedes states, some functions and applications will be available that would otherwise be blocked while driving. These activities are legally permissible depending on laws that apply where DRIVE PILOT is being used.
Best outlined by Mercedes Board Member Markus Schäfer, this is just the beginning of a larger rollout of the software:
“DRIVE PILOT demonstrates once more that our pioneering spirit is part of our DNA. Certification in Nevada marks the start of its international rollout and, with it, the dawning of a new era.”
To achieve this certification, among other regulations, Mercedes showed that its set of redundant driving systems could keep drivers safe while controlling the vehicle. A combination of steering, braking actuators, and onboard electrical system redundancy measures keep the vehicle maneuverable, even if a system fails.
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- Credit: Mercedes-Benz
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- Credit: Mercedes-Benz
Additionally, the vehicles will rely on a combination of LiDAR, radar, and cameras that allow the car to monitor where it is relative to other vehicles constantly down to the centimeter. Mercedes combines these systems with high-precision GPS mapping, ensuring the most consistent experience possible.
DRIVE PILOT will also take matters into its own hands if drivers fail to take back control, even after “increasingly urgent” audible and visual alerts. Mercedes said that it would brake the vehicle to a standstill in a controlled manner, then will activate hazard lights. Doors will be unlocked, and Mercedes’ emergency call system will contact first responders. This is an increasingly needed feature in case of a major medical emergency.
While the Mercedes technology has often been drawn as a parallel to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving offering, through this most recent certification, Mercedes now differentiates itself in two ways. Foremost, in a crash with another vehicle, while DRIVE PILOT is engaged, Mercedes accepts legal liability for the accident. Furthermore, this certification has shown relevant authorities that it can operate safely, a process that Tesla will likely need to follow through in the near future.
Mercedes’ announcement also follows a series of other major milestones for the company. The German luxury automaker recently revealed that it would be opening its own series of EV chargers, starting in North America and working globally. Mercedes has also recently highlighted (in granular detail) its incredible production shift to EVs occurring worldwide and utilizing each of its current manufacturing plants.
While there is no doubt many still see Mercedes as a non-threat to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite, today’s announcement proves otherwise. Hopefully, through this continued competition, autonomy can improve overall and become available to most people as a safe alternative to regular vehicle operation.
Alongside DRIVE PILOT, Mercedes also announced that its Level 2 driver assistance system would make its North American debut later this year, which features ADAS features like autonomous lane merging, speed controls, and perhaps most importantly, emergency braking.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a photo of himself standing with the Optimus production team inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, arms crossed amid workers in hard hats and safety vests. The image captures a pivotal industrial shift: the same facility space once dedicated to building Tesla’s flagship Model S sedan and Model X SUV is now home to the company’s humanoid robot manufacturing line.
Walking the Optimus production line in Fremont pic.twitter.com/ABS0tuRibW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2026
Tesla’s Fremont Factory, acquired in 2010 from the former NUMMI joint venture between Toyota and GM, has been the company’s original U.S. manufacturing hub since Model S production began in 2012.
The Model X followed soon thereafter. These premium vehicles offered lower annual volumes, recently around 30,000 combined, compared to the high-volume Model 3 and Model Y lines that continue around the site. Over their combined run, the S and X accounted for roughly 610,000 units.
In late January 2026, during Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings call, Elon Musk announced the end of Model S and Model X production in Q2 2026. The final vehicles rolled off the line in early May. Rather than retooling for another vehicle, Tesla chose to convert the dedicated S/X assembly area into a dedicated Optimus Gen 3 production line.
Model 3 and Y manufacturing remains unaffected. Tesla’s official Fremont Factory page now lists Optimus alongside the 3 and Y as core products.
The conversion was executed with remarkable speed. After production stopped, crews dismantled the existing vehicle line and installed entirely new modular equipment—including lines sourced from Germany and dozens of sub-lines for actuators, batteries, and other components—in roughly four months.
Musk described the timeline as “insanely fast,” noting it would be unprecedented for any other manufacturer. Initial Optimus output is expected to ramp slowly due to the robot’s roughly 10,000 unique parts and the brand-new production processes involved. The Fremont line targets an eventual capacity of 1 million Optimus units per year.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Optimus Development Timeline
- August 19, 2021: Optimus (then called Tesla Bot) formally announced at Tesla’s first AI Day. A concept video showed a person in a suit demonstrating the vision for a general-purpose humanoid capable of dangerous, repetitive, or boring tasks using the same AI architecture as Full Self-Driving.
- 2022: Early prototypes displayed. At the second AI Day in September, semi-functional units demonstrated walking across a stage and basic arm movements
- 2023: September videos showed improved capabilities, including sorting colored blocks, precise limb awareness, and holding a Yoda pose.
- 2024-early 2025: Factory integration videos showed Optimus navigating workspaces and handling objects like battery cells.
- January 2026: Gen 3 mass-production activities began at Fremont, with reports of over 1,000 Gen 3 units already operating inside the factory for real-world learning and AI training
- April 2026: Musk confirms Optimus production on converted Fremont line would begin in late July or August 2026. The Gen 3 reveal, originally eyed for Q1, was pushed closer to production start. A second, much larger Optimus factory at Giga Texas is under construction, with volume production targeted for Summer 2027 and long-term capacity of 10 million units annually
- July 1, 2026: Musk’s on-site visit and team photo confirm the Optimus line is operational and the transition is actively progressing
Tesla positions Optimus as potentially its largest project ever, leveraging vertical integration, AI expertise, and car-like manufacturing know-how to scale humanoid robots first for its own factories and later for broader industrial and consumer use.
The Fremont conversion serves as a critical proving ground for this ambitious new chapter in Tesla’s already-rich history.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.
In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.
In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:
“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”
This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.
The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.
The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.
This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.
Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.
“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”
Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12
Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.
It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”
Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.
There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:
“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”
SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.
Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
