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NHTSA chief says fatal Tesla crash won’t halt autonomous driving development
Speaking at the Automated Vehicle Symposium in San Francisco this week, National Highway Transportation Safety Administration head Mark Rosekind offered strong support for the continued development of autonomous driving systems. His comments did not specifically mention the crash that killed Joshua Brown on May 7, although he did reference “a recent incident. The agency has opened an investigation into that accident.
“No one incident will stop the NHTSA from promoting highly automated driving development,” Rosekind told the conference. He indicated the government would still work to promote self driving cars by providing a framework to support the development of autonomous technology.
Rosekind insisted the US Department of Transportation is taking a “forward leaning” position on highly automated driving. He told the audience that 19 out of 20 collisions each year in the US involve driver error. That means autonomous driving systems could potentially 30,000 or more lives per year. Rosekind hinted that NHTSA was willing to accept imperfect technology during development of highly automated driving because of its life saving potential. But he cautioned that his agency would not accept technology that is merely as safe as human drivers.
That should be good news for Tesla. Statistically, there is one highway fatality for every 90 million miles driven on American roads. The first Autopilot fatality occurred after Tesla automobiles had driven about 130 million miles on Autopilot. That in itself is nearly a 50% improvement in traffic safety.
Although Tesla is leading the way forward for semi-autonomous driving with its Autopilot system, the world’s automakers are all pushing hard to develop self-driving technology of their own. NHTSA has said it will be releasing its first guidelines for those systems later this year.
After Consumer Reports issued a public call last week for Tesla to disable its Autopilot system until it was improved, some began to worry the government might stifle further development of self driving technology. Now the US Senate has gotten into the act, demanding that Tesla explain why Autopilot did not prevent the death of Joshua Brown.
But NHTSA apparently is almost as big a fan of autonomous systems as Elon Musk is. Both recognize that accidents and fatalities will continue to occur while computers are assisting human drivers, but overall there will be far fewer of them. Based on Rosekind’s remarks, Tesla has little reason to fear NHTSA will vigorously oppose the use of its Autopilot system.
Source: CNET Road Show
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.
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.
News
Starlink launches Communities Program for passive income through internet sharing
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.
Big news! SpaceX is introducing a new @Starlink for Communities program that lets you earn money by providing Starlink internet to your neighbors or people nearby, who can pay for access by the hour, day, week, or month.
Neighbors pay for the access they need, while the person… pic.twitter.com/DtOUs0Ekvt
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) October 1, 2026
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.
News
Tesla just made its headlights even better through a software update
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.
2026.38 just dropped.
Model 3 gets Dynamic Headlight Leveling — low beams auto-aim around traffic for max visibility, less glare. Model 3 / Y (AMD HW3) also pick up sharper Tesla visuals + an enhanced park scene on the center display.
Legacy Intel cars get Supercharger Site… pic.twitter.com/45ac4AH6Vs
— Frunk To Trunk (@FrunkToTrunk) September 30, 2026
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.