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Panasonic deepens ties with Tesla and bets big on Auto Tech
The following post was originally published on EVANNEX
As the inevitability of a major disruption in the auto industry becomes clearer, we’ve been reading (and writing) a lot about the companies that seem likely to lose out – Big Oil, incumbent automakers, some parts suppliers. But who will be the winners? Battery-makers obviously, but also providers of “auto tech.” This term includes the electronics that make electric powertrains go – motor controllers, inverters, chargers and the like – as well as self-driving hardware and software, and customer-facing components such as touchscreens, head-up displays and infotainment systems.
Tech companies are infiltrating the automotive space, making acquisitions and alliances to position themselves for profits under the new order. Last year, GM paid a billion bucks for Cruise Automation and invested half a billion in Lyft. Intel is putting its recent acquisition, Mobileye, to work in a partnership with BMW to build self-driving vehicles. Google is working with Fiat Chrysler on self-driving cars and providing display systems for Volvo. Israeli startup Otonomo is competing with Google and Apple to sell user data to Daimler and other automakers.
No company is better placed to thrive in the electric, automated future than Panasonic, which is steadily redirecting its focus from consumer electronics to auto tech. In February, Panasonic named Tom Gebhardt Chairman and CEO of its North American operations. Gebhardt’s former post was leading the company’s Automotive Systems subsidiary.
“Our business has evolved… from purely a consumer business to a B2B business,” Gebhardt recently told Business Insider. “There’s a number of reasons for that: The commoditization of consumer products [and] the unfavorability in some of the cost models led us to look for better values in in-vehicle technologies.”
Gebhardt said Panasonic is devoting more resources to digital cockpits and vehicle entertainment systems as self-driving vehicles get closer to reality. “If the scenario says the car drives itself, it’s similar to sitting in an airplane seat, because you’re no longer actively driving,” he said. “We see that as an evolution of the space that has infinite possibilities for us.”
Panasonic offered several glimpses of those possibilities at CES in January. Fiat Chrysler’s semi-autonomous Portal concept car featured a Panasonic touchscreen with facial and voice recognition. Panasonic also revealed a new system with a head-up display and augmented reality that’s designed to replace the traditional instrument cluster and many of the car’s physical controls. Some speculated that it was a preview of Model 3’s user interface. A few days later, Panasonic CEO Kazuhiro Tsuga said in an interview, “We are deeply interested in Tesla’s self-driving system. We are hoping to expand our collaboration by jointly developing devices for that, such as sensors.”
Meanwhile, Panasonic’s collaboration with Tesla on batteries gives it a large stake in the potential profits as electrification gathers momentum. Panasonic is one of the largest battery manufacturers in the world, and it plans to invest $1.6 billion in Tesla’s Gigafactory. And looking back, in 2007 Panasonic began working with Tesla on the Roadster and has established a strong track record supporting Tesla over the past decade — even investing $30 million with Tesla at a critical juncture (in 2010) in order to develop lithium-ion battery cells for its forthcoming Model S sedan.
A lot has changed since those early days. Nevertheless, global electric vehicle sales are still hovering around 1% of the market. That said, there are many reasons to expect a breakout soon. Orders for Tesla’s upcoming Model 3 keep growing, and legacy automakers from VW to BMW to Ford are responding with plans for new electric models.
“The future is definitely electric, no question in my mind,” Gebhardt said. “What is the future timeline? Is it 10 years, 15 years, 40 years? It’s just a matter of what the adoption hits at the scale that makes this a slam dunk… We’re pretty bullish on the fact that this is a space that will continue to grow and there’s value there.”
Gebhardt conceded that EV adoption is slow in the US, a trend that may continue now that the federal government has shifted from supporting electrification to trying to revive the elderly fossil fuel industries. However, he characterizes this as “a short-term problem,” and points out that it’s a very different scene in China, the world’s largest car market. “If they adopt in a big way, that changes the balance of where electric is today versus where it will be going.”
Panasonic’s increasing investment in auto tech is already paying off, according to Nikkei Asian Review. At a recent financial briefing, President Kazuhiro Tsuga said the company is expecting an increase in net profit in fiscal year 2017, its first gain in two years, largely because of strong growth in EV batteries and other auto tech-related products. “We are confident we can achieve increases both in sales and profit for the year through March 2018 and later years,” he said.
Infographic
What auto tech opportunities are coming in the next decade? Check out this infographic for a few possibilities…
Sources: Business Insider, Nikkei Asian Review / Infographic: Futurism
News
Tesla intertwines FSD with in-house Insurance for attractive incentive
Every mile logged under FSD now carries a documented financial value—lower risk, lower cost—based on Tesla’s internal driving data rather than external crash statistics alone.
Tesla intertwined its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) suite with its in-house Insurance initiative in an effort to offer an attractive incentive to drivers.
Tesla announced that its new Safety Score 3.0 will automatically have a perfect score of 100 with every mile driven with Full Self-Driving (Supervised) enabled.
The change is designed to boost customers’ average safety scores and deliver noticeably lower monthly premiums.
The move marks the clearest link yet between Tesla’s autonomous driving technology and its proprietary insurance product. Tesla Insurance already relies on real-time vehicle data—such as acceleration, braking, following distance, and speed—to calculate a Safety Score between 0 and 100. Higher scores have long translated into cheaper rates.
Under the previous system, however, even brief manual interventions could drag down the average, frustrating owners who rely heavily on FSD. Version 3.0 eliminates that penalty for supervised autonomous miles, effectively treating FSD-driven segments as the safest possible driving behavior.
The incentive is immediate and financial. Drivers who keep FSD engaged for the majority of their trips will see their overall score rise, potentially shaving hundreds of dollars off annual premiums.
Tesla framed the update as a direct response to customer feedback, many of whom had complained that the old scoring model punished the very behavior it was meant to encourage.
For now, the program applies only to new policies in six states: Indiana, Tennessee, Texas, Arizona, Virginia, and Illinois.
Existing policyholders are not yet included, a point that drew swift questions from the Tesla community. Many owners in other states, including California and Georgia, expressed hope that the benefit would expand nationwide soon.
The announcement arrives as Tesla continues to roll out FSD Supervised updates and push for regulatory approval of more advanced autonomy. By tying insurance savings directly to FSD usage, the company is putting its own actuarial weight behind the technology’s safety claims.
Every mile logged under FSD now carries a documented financial value—lower risk, lower cost—based on Tesla’s internal driving data rather than external crash statistics alone.
Tesla has not disclosed exact premium reductions or the full rollout timeline beyond the six launch states.
Still, the message is clear: the more drivers trust FSD Supervised, the more Tesla Insurance will reward them. In an era when legacy insurers remain cautious about autonomous tech, Tesla is betting that its own data will prove the safest miles are the ones driven hands-free.
Elon Musk
Tesla finalizes AI5 chip design, Elon Musk makes bold claim on capability
The Tesla CEO’s words mark a strategic shift. Tesla has long emphasized software-hardware co-design, squeezing maximum performance from every transistor. Musk previously described AI5 as optimized for edge inference in both Robotaxi and Optimus.
Tesla has finalized its chip design for AI5, as Elon Musk confirmed today that the new chip has reached the tape-out stage, the final step before mass production.
But in a brief reply on X, Musk clarified Tesla’s AI hardware roadmap, essentially confirming that the new chip will not be utilized for being “enough to achieve much better than human safety for FSD.”
He said that AI4 is enough to do that.
Instead, the AI5 chip will be focused on Tesla’s big-time projects for the future: Optimus and supercomputer clusters.
Musk thanked TSMC and Samsung for production support, noting that AI5 could become “one of the most produced AI chips ever.” Yet, the key pivot came in his direct answer: vehicles no longer need the bleeding-edge silicon.
And thank you to @TaiwanSemi_TSC and @Samsung for your support in bringing this chip to production! It will be one of most produced AI chips ever.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2026
Existing AI4 hardware, which is already deployed in hundreds of thousands of HW4-equipped Teslas, delivers safety metrics superior to human drivers for Full Self-Driving. AI5 will instead accelerate Optimus robot development and massive Dojo-style training clusters.
The Tesla CEO’s words mark a strategic shift. Tesla has long emphasized software-hardware co-design, squeezing maximum performance from every transistor. Musk previously described AI5 as optimized for edge inference in both Robotaxi and Optimus.
Now, with AI4 proving sufficient, the company avoids costly retrofits across its fleet while redirecting next-generation compute toward higher-value applications: dexterous robots and exponential training scale.
But is it reasonable to assume AI4 enables unsupervised self-driving? Yes, but with important caveats.
On the hardware side, the claim is credible. Tesla’s FSD stack runs end-to-end neural networks trained on billions of miles of real-world data. Internal safety data reportedly shows AI4-equipped vehicles already outperforming average human drivers by a significant margin in controlled metrics (collision avoidance, reaction time, edge-case handling).
Dual-redundant AI4 chips provide ample headroom for the driving task, leaving bandwidth for future model improvements without new silicon. Musk’s assertion aligns with Tesla’s pattern of over-provisioning compute early, then optimizing ruthlessly, exactly as HW3 once sufficed before HW4 scaled further.
Optimus and our supercomputer clusters.
AI4 is enough to achieve much better than human safety for FSD.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2026
Unsupervised autonomy, meaning Level 4 or higher, is not solely a compute problem. Regulatory approval remains the primary gate.
Even if AI4 achieves “much better than human” safety statistically, agencies like the NHTSA demand exhaustive validation, liability frameworks, and public trust.
Tesla’s supervised FSD has shown rapid gains in recent versions, yet real-world edge cases, like construction zones, emergency vehicles, and adverse weather, still require driver intervention in many jurisdictions. Competitors like Waymo operate limited unsupervised fleets, but only in geofenced areas with extensive mapping. Tesla’s vision-only, fleet-scale approach is more ambitious—and harder to certify globally.
In short, Musk’s post is both pragmatic and bullish. AI4 is likely capable of unsupervised FSD from a technical standpoint. Whether regulators and consumers agree, and how quickly, will determine if Tesla’s bet pays off.
The company’s capital-efficient path keeps existing cars relevant while pouring future compute into robots. If the safety data holds, unsupervised autonomy could arrive sooner than many expect.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk signals expansion of Tesla’s unique side business
Long envisioning the Tesla Diner as more than a charging stop, Musk has clearly adopted the idea that the Supercharger and Restaurant combo is a good thing for the company to have. It’s a blend of classic American drive-in culture with futuristic Tesla flair, complete with a 1950s-inspired design, movie screens, and on-site dining.
Elon Musk has signaled an expansion of Tesla’s unique side business, something that really has nothing to do with cars or spaceships, but fans of the company have truly adopted it as just another one of its awesome ventures.
Musk confirmed on Wednesday that Tesla would build a new Diner location in Palo Alto, Northern California. After hinting last October that it “probably makes sense to open one near our Giga Texas HQ in Austin and engineering HQ in Palo Alto,” it seems one of those locations is being set into motion.
Sure
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 15, 2026
Long envisioning the Tesla Diner as more than a charging stop, Musk has clearly adopted the idea that the Supercharger and Restaurant combo is a good thing for the company to have. It’s a blend of classic American drive-in culture with futuristic Tesla flair, complete with a 1950s-inspired design, movie screens, and on-site dining.
He first floated broader expansion plans shortly after the LA opening in July 2025, noting that if the prototype succeeded, Tesla would roll out similar venues in major cities worldwide and along long-distance Supercharger routes.
Earlier hints included a confirmed second site at Starbase in Texas, tied to SpaceX operations, underscoring the Diner’s role in enhancing Tesla’s ecosystem behind vehicles.
The Los Angeles location on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood has served as a high-profile test case. Opened in July 2025 at 7001 Santa Monica Blvd., it features the world’s largest urban Supercharging station with 80 V4 stalls open to all NACS-compatible EVs, over 250 dining seats, rooftop views, and 24/7 service.
The retro-futuristic building replaced a former Shakey’s and quickly became a destination. Tesla reported selling 50,000 burgers in the first 72 days—an average of over 700 daily—drawing crowds with Cybertruck-shaped packaging, breakfast extensions until 2 p.m., and movie screenings.
Palo Alto stands out as a logical next step for several reasons. As Tesla’s longstanding engineering headquarters in the heart of Silicon Valley, the city is home to thousands of Tesla employees, engineers, and executives who could benefit from a convenient, branded gathering spot.
The area boasts high EV adoption rates, dense tech talent, and heavy traffic along key corridors, making a large Supercharger-diner an ideal fit for both daily commuters and long-haul travelers.
Proximity to Stanford University and the innovation ecosystem would amplify its appeal, potentially serving as a showcase for Tesla’s vision of integrated mobility and lifestyle experiences. It could be a great way for Tesla to recruit new talent from one of the country’s best universities.
If Tesla and Musk decide to move forward with a Palo Alto diner, it would build directly on the LA prototype’s momentum while addressing Musk’s earlier calls for expansion near core Tesla hubs.
Whether it materializes as a full confirmation or evolves from these hints remains to be seen, but the pattern is clear: Tesla is testing ways to make charging stops memorable. For EV drivers and enthusiasts alike, a Silicon Valley outpost could blend cutting-edge tech with nostalgic comfort, further embedding Tesla into everyday culture. As Musk’s comments suggest, the future of the Diner looks promising.
Tesla intertwines FSD with in-house Insurance for attractive incentive
Tesla finalizes AI5 chip design, Elon Musk makes bold claim on capability
