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Rising start up Lucid Motors with Tesla DNA lands Samsung SDI battery deal

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Lucid Motors in Arizona

Rising Silicon Valley-based Tesla rival, Lucid Motors, has just landed a battery supply deal with Samsung SDI. But first a little context on who Lucid Motors is.

Until a few months ago, Lucid Motors was better known as Atieva – the company best known for videos showing a Mercedes cargo van named Edna outgunning a Tesla Model S and a Ferrari in a drag race, helped by a 1,000 horsepower electric drivetrain.

Lucid Motors prototype in Los Angeles. Credit: Lucid Motors

Earlier this year, Jia Yueting, the high flying billionaire from China who is behind electric car company LeEco in his home country and Faraday Future in the United States, purchased a controlling interest in Atieva. In October, the company changed its name to Lucid Motors.

Since then, news about the company has been coming thick and fast. Lucid brought a lightly disguised four door sedan prototype to the Los Angeles Auto Show. The company says the car has a 1,000 horsepower fully electric powertrain and can go from 0-60 mph in 2.5 seconds. Lucid also claims the car will have a range of 400 miles, making it the long distance champion among electric cars currently available.

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Shortly after the LA show, Lucid brought its prototype to Casa Grande, Arizona, a city southeast of Phoenix, to announce it would build a $700 million factory in the area. Arizona governor Doug Ducey was on hand to share the good news. Ducey and his administration were instrumental in getting the factory located in Arizona.

“It took a serious partnership of the state, county of Pinal, and city of Casa Grande to bring this deal together,” said Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey in an exclusive interview with the Phoenix Business Journal. “We made an extra effort to bring another major manufacturing facility to Arizona.”

This week, Lucid announced it has landed Samsung SDI as the company’s battery supply partner. The company says that they are collaborating on “next-generation cylindrical cells that are able to exceed current performance benchmarks in areas such as energy density, power, calendar life and safety.” The cells are also being designed to withstand frequent rapid charging, which typically degrades conventional lithium ion batteries.

Lucid’s CTO and former chief Tesla engineer adds, “The breakthrough battery life demonstrated by the new cell from Samsung SDI will be of tangible benefit to our customers, particularly companies with ride-sharing services operating around the clock,”

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Lucid Motors in Arizona

Lucid Motors prototype in Casa Grande, Arizona. Photo credit: Eric Jay Toll, Phoenix Business Journal.

Rawlinson went on to say that Lucid plans to begin manufacturing cars in 2018 and will begin raising funds to build its factory in early 2017.

Building a factory from scratch and getting a car into production in under two years seems like ambitious goals, especially if the money to do both has yet to be found. But the question remains, will this car ever see production? We might be forgiven for maintaining a “wait and see” attitude on that subject.

"I write about technology and the coming zero emissions revolution."

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Tesla FSD (Supervised) fleet passes 8.4 billion cumulative miles

The figure appears on Tesla’s official safety page, which tracks performance data for FSD (Supervised) and other safety technologies.

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system has now surpassed 8.4 billion cumulative miles.

The figure appears on Tesla’s official safety page, which tracks performance data for FSD (Supervised) and other safety technologies.

Tesla has long emphasized that large-scale real-world data is central to improving its neural network-based approach to autonomy. Each mile driven with FSD (Supervised) engaged contributes additional edge cases and scenario training for the system.

Credit: Tesla

The milestone also brings Tesla closer to a benchmark previously outlined by CEO Elon Musk. Musk has stated that roughly 10 billion miles of training data may be needed to achieve safe unsupervised self-driving at scale, citing the “long tail” of rare but complex driving situations that must be learned through experience.

The growth curve of FSD Supervised’s cumulative miles over the past five years has been notable. 

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As noted in data shared by Tesla watcher Sawyer Merritt, annual FSD (Supervised) miles have increased from roughly 6 million in 2021 to 80 million in 2022, 670 million in 2023, 2.25 billion in 2024, and 4.25 billion in 2025. In just the first 50 days of 2026, Tesla owners logged another 1 billion miles.

At the current pace, the fleet is trending towards hitting about 10 billion FSD Supervised miles this year. The increase has been driven by Tesla’s growing vehicle fleet, periodic free trials, and expanding Robotaxi operations, among others.

With the fleet now past 8.4 billion cumulative miles, Tesla’s supervised system is approaching that threshold, even as regulatory approval for fully unsupervised deployment remains subject to further validation and oversight.

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Elon Musk fires back after Wikipedia co-founder claims neutrality and dubs Grokipedia “ridiculous”

Musk’s response to Wales’ comments, which were posted on social media platform X, was short and direct: “Famous last words.”

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UK Government, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk fired back at Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales after the longtime online encyclopedia leader dismissed xAI’s new AI-powered alternative, Grokipedia, as a “ridiculous” idea that is bound to fail.

Musk’s response to Wales’ comments, which were posted on social media platform X, was short and direct: “Famous last words.”

Wales made the comments while answering questions about Wikipedia’s neutrality. According to Wales, Wikipedia prides itself on neutrality. 

“One of our core values at Wikipedia is neutrality. A neutral point of view is non-negotiable. It’s in the community, unquestioned… The idea that we’ve become somehow ‘Wokepidea’ is just not true,” Wales said.

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When asked about potential competition from Grokipedia, Wales downplayed the situation. “There is no competition. I don’t know if anyone uses Grokipedia. I think it is a ridiculous idea that will never work,” Wales wrote.

After Grokipedia went live, Larry Sanger, also a co-founder of Wikipedia, wrote on X that his initial impression of the AI-powered Wikipedia alternative was “very OK.”

“My initial impression, looking at my own article and poking around here and there, is that Grokipedia is very OK. The jury’s still out as to whether it’s actually better than Wikipedia. But at this point I would have to say ‘maybe!’” Sanger stated.

Musk responded to Sanger’s assessment by saying it was “accurate.” In a separate post, he added that even in its V0.1 form, Grokipedia was already better than Wikipedia.

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During a past appearance on the Tucker Carlson Show, Sanger argued that Wikipedia has drifted from its original vision, citing concerns about how its “Reliable sources/Perennial sources” framework categorizes publications by perceived credibility. As per Sanger, Wikipedia’s “Reliable sources/Perennial sources” list leans heavily left, with conservative publications getting effectively blacklisted in favor of their more liberal counterparts.

As of writing, Grokipedia has reportedly surpassed 80% of English Wikipedia’s article count.

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Tesla Sweden appeals after grid company refuses to restore existing Supercharger due to union strike

The charging site was previously functioning before it was temporarily disconnected in April last year for electrical safety reasons.

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Credit: Tesla Charging

Tesla Sweden is seeking regulatory intervention after a Swedish power grid company refused to reconnect an already operational Supercharger station in Åre due to ongoing union sympathy actions.

The charging site was previously functioning before it was temporarily disconnected in April last year for electrical safety reasons. A temporary construction power cabinet supplying the station had fallen over, described by Tesla as occurring “under unclear circumstances.” The power was then cut at the request of Tesla’s installation contractor to allow safe repair work.

While the safety issue was resolved, the station has not been brought back online. Stefan Sedin, CEO of Jämtkraft elnät, told Dagens Arbete (DA) that power will not be restored to the existing Supercharger station as long as the electric vehicle maker’s union issues are ongoing. 

“One of our installers noticed that the construction power had been backed up and was on the ground. We asked Tesla to fix the system, and their installation company in turn asked us to cut the power so that they could do the work safely. 

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“When everything was restored, the question arose: ‘Wait a minute, can we reconnect the station to the electricity grid? Or what does the notice actually say?’ We consulted with our employer organization, who were clear that as long as sympathy measures are in place, we cannot reconnect this facility,” Sedin said. 

The union’s sympathy actions, which began in March 2024, apply to work involving “planning, preparation, new connections, grid expansion, service, maintenance and repairs” of Tesla’s charging infrastructure in Sweden.

Tesla Sweden has argued that reconnecting an existing facility is not equivalent to establishing a new grid connection. In a filing to the Swedish Energy Market Inspectorate, the company stated that reconnecting the installation “is therefore not covered by the sympathy measures and cannot therefore constitute a reason for not reconnecting the facility to the electricity grid.”

Sedin, for his part, noted that Tesla’s issue with the Supercharger is quite unique. And while Jämtkraft elnät itself has no issue with Tesla, its actions are based on the unions’ sympathy measures against the electric vehicle maker. 

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“This is absolutely the first time that I have been involved in matters relating to union conflicts or sympathy measures. That is why we have relied entirely on the assessment of our employer organization. This is not something that we have made any decisions about ourselves at all. 

“It is not that Jämtkraft elnät has a conflict with Tesla, but our actions are based on these sympathy measures. Should it turn out that we have made an incorrect assessment, we will correct ourselves. It is no more difficult than that for us,” the executive said. 

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