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How Starlink & T-Mobile’s partnership will impact 5G for the better for AI cameras
Starlink and T-Mobile’s partnership will be revolutionary for cellular service and Smarter AI CEO Chris Piche had some thoughts on how the new partnership will impact 5G capability for the automotive industry.
Chris, who has created services including AT&T TV, BBM Video, Poly Video, and STUN/TURN/ICE shared his thoughts on the effect of 5G on vehicles and telecommunications in an interview with Teslarati.
AI Cameras, Tesla, Starlink & autonomous vehicles
Before founding Smarter AI, the Top 40 under 40 entrepreneur’s company created a technology that BlackBerry licensed to enable voice and video calling. This gave Chris a front-row seat to witness the speed at which technology can transform markets.
Smarter AI is a software platform for artificial intelligence cameras.
“Smarter AI is to cameras as Android and iOS are to phones,” he told me. The company’s first vertical market is focusing on transportation. Vehicle camera systems such as dash cams or other camera systems for larger vehicles are in this market.
“The connection here with Tesla, Starlink, and T-Mobile is all around autonomous transportation. Today’s autonomous transportation whether it’s in Tesla or another kind of vehicle all relies on line of sight situational awareness. In Tesla’s case, they rely on some cases exclusively and other cases primarily on cameras and computer vision to try to understand what’s happening around the car.”
“Many of their competitors use LiDAR and don’t rely on cameras. But in both cases, it’s all based on line of sight. What they can actually see in a straight line.”
Seeing beyond the line of sight
Chris told me that one of the new technologies that Smarter AI and other companies are developing is called vehicle to vehicle (V2V) or vehicle to everything else (V2X).
“These technologies enable cars to see beyond line of sight. Imagine you’re coming to an intersection and are planning to take a turn.”
Instead of waiting to see what’s ahead of you on the street, you’re turning on to, the technology will tell you exactly what is ahead. There could be a stopped car, a pedestrian about to jaywalk, or some type of temporary obstruction that you are unaware of.
“Imagine if there was a camera system located at the intersection. Imagine that as your vehicle is approaching that intersection, your vehicle could communicate with the camera and the camera could tell your vehicle that there’s some sort of obstacle.”
An autonomous vehicle would use this information to determine whether or not it can make that turn. This technology, Chris told me, relies on high-capacity and high-availability communications networks such as 5G.
Starlink & T-Mobile’s partnership could help with the challenges of implementing V2V and V2X
“One of the challenges with implementing technologies like V2V or V2X on top of 5G is that 5G deployments tend to be pretty good and getting better in large urban areas.”
5G is pretty spotty in Baton Rouge and personally, 4G LTE works faster than 5G does for me although there’s a tower across the street from me. Chris, who is in Las Vegas, said that the coverage is pretty good for his friend with AT&T. He doesn’t have AT&T and his coverage is pretty spotty like mine is.
“But this agreement with Starlink and T-Mobile has the promise or the potential to either eliminate or significantly reduce the spottiness in the 5G coverage and that will enable technologies that are designed on top of 5G such as V2V and V2X to work either more reliably in urban areas where 5G is already available but is a little bit spotty,” he said.
“It would also enable these technologies to work in other areas where there is no 5G. We think this is a really significant announcement in terms of the promise of autonomous transportation and bringing it much closer to being a reality.”
How V2V and V2X could improve Tesla’s Autopilot
Chris told me he’s been using Tesla’s Autopilot for around five years.
“It’s so good. It’s to the point that for the things it can see, it’s a way better driver than I am,” he said adding that when he drives for over a couple of minutes, he engages Autopilot. However, there are a couple of things that it lacks.
“It can’t see that far ahead and it lacks context. Sometimes, if there’s a car making a turn in front of my car, the Autopilot won’t understand the context that maybe this other car is momentarily in front of mine. And if I was driving, I’d keep driving. I wouldn’t take my foot off the accelerator or slam on the brakes unless I could see that something was going wrong with the turn that the other car was making.”
One way to improve Autopilot is through V2V or V2X, Chris explained.
“In V2V, my car would talk to the car that’s making the turn in front of me and they would orchestrate the speed and direction of both of the cars so that the car in front of me could make its turn and my car could continue driving without slamming on the brakes.”
“With V2X, that would enable my car to talk to the cameras, traffic lights, and intersections to gain situational awareness about either other cars that aren’t equipped with the same technology or about other objects such as bicycles, pedestrians, or other obstacles on the street.”
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Tesla has expanded its branded ‘For Business’ Supercharger program that it launched last year, as yet another company is using the platform to attract EV owners to its business and utilize a unique advertising opportunity.
Francis Energy of Oklahoma is launching four Superchargers in Norman, where the University of Oklahoma is located. The Superchargers, which are fitted with branding for Francis Energy, will officially open tomorrow.
It will not be the final Supercharger location that Francis Energy plans to open, the company confirmed to EVWire.
Back in early September, Tesla launched the new “Supercharger for Business” program in an effort to give businesses the ability to offer EV charging at custom rates. It would give their businesses visibility and would also cater to employees or customers.
“Purchase and install Superchargers at your business,” Tesla wrote on a page on its website for the new program. “Superchargers are compatible with all electric vehicles, bringing EV drivers to your business by offering convenient, reliable charging.”
The first site opened in Land O’ Lakes, Florida, which is Northeast of Tampa, as a company called Suncoast launched the Superchargers for local EV owners.
Tesla launches its new branded Supercharger for Business with first active station
The program also does a great job at expanding infrastructure for EV owners, which is something that needs to be done to encourage more people to purchase Teslas and other electric cars.
Francis Energy operates at least 14 EV charging locations in Oklahoma, spanning from Durant to Oklahoma City and nearly everywhere in between. Filings from the company, listed by Supercharge.info, show the company’s plans to convert some of them to Tesla Superchargers, potentially utilizing the new Supercharger for Business program to advertise.
Moving forward, more companies will likely utilize Tesla’s Supercharger for Business program as it presents major advantages in a variety of ways, especially with advertising and creating a place for EV drivers to gain range in their cars.
Tesla Cybercab is perhaps the most highly-anticipated project that the company plans to roll out this year, and as it is undergoing its testing phase in pre-production currently, there are some things to work through with it.
Over the weekend, an image of the Cybercab being loaded onto a tow truck started circulating on the internet, and people began to speculate as to what the issue could be.
Hmmmmmm… https://t.co/L5hWcOXQkb pic.twitter.com/OJBDyHNTMj
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) January 11, 2026
The Cybercab can clearly be seen with a Police Officer and perhaps the tow truck driver by its side, being loaded onto, or even potentially unloaded from, the truck.
However, it seems unlikely it was being offloaded, as its operation would get it to this point for testing to begin with.
It appears, at first glance, that it needs assistance getting back to wherever it came from; likely Gigafactory Texas or potentially a Bay Area facility.
The Cybercab was also spotted in Buffalo, New York, last week, potentially undergoing cold-weather testing, but it doesn’t appear that’s where this incident took place.
It is important to remember that the Cybercab is currently undergoing some rigorous testing scenarios, which include range tests and routine public road operation. These things help Tesla assess any potential issue the vehicle could run into after it starts routine production and heads to customers, or for the Robotaxi platform operation.
This is not a one-off issue, either. Tesla had some instances with the Semi where it was seen broken down on the side of a highway three years ago. The all-electric Semi has gone on to be successful in its early pilot program, as companies like Frito-Lay and PepsiCo. have had very positive remarks.
The Cybercab’s future is bright, and it is important to note that no vehicle model has ever gone its full life without a breakdown. It happens, it’s a car.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that there has been no official word on what happened with this particular Cybercab unit, but it is crucial to remember that this is the pre-production testing phase, and these things are more constructive than anything.
Tesla analyst Andrew Percoco of Morgan Stanley teased the company’s dominance in its self-driving initiative, stating that its lead over competitors is “not even close.”
Percoco recently overtook coverage of Tesla stock from Adam Jonas, who had covered the company at Morgan Stanley for years. Percoco is handling Tesla now that Jonas is covering embodied AI stocks and no longer automotive.
His first move after grabbing coverage was to adjust the price target from $410 to $425, as well as the rating from ‘Overweight’ to ‘Equal Weight.’
Percoco’s new note regarding Tesla highlights the company’s extensive lead in self-driving and autonomy projects, something that it has plenty of competition in, but has established its prowess over the past few years.
He writes:
“It’s not even close. Tesla continues to lead in autonomous driving, even as Nvidia rolls out new technology aimed at helping other automakers build driverless systems.”
Percoco’s main point regarding Tesla’s advantage is the company’s ability to collect large amounts of training data through its massive fleet, as millions of cars are driving throughout the world and gathering millions of miles of vehicle behavior on the road.
This is the main point that Percoco makes regarding Tesla’s lead in the entire autonomy sector: data is King, and Tesla has the most of it.
One big story that has hit the news over the past week is that of NVIDIA and its own self-driving suite, called Alpamayo. NVIDIA launched this open-source AI program last week, but it differs from Tesla’s in a significant fashion, especially from a hardware perspective, as it plans to use a combination of LiDAR, Radar, and Vision (Cameras) to operate.
Percoco said that NVIDIA’s announcement does not impact Morgan Stanley’s long-term opinions on Tesla and its strength or prowess in self-driving.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang commends Tesla’s Elon Musk for early belief
And, for what it’s worth, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang even said some remarkable things about Tesla following the launch of Alpamayo:
“I think the Tesla stack is the most advanced autonomous vehicle stack in the world. I’m fairly certain they were already using end-to-end AI. Whether their AI did reasoning or not is somewhat secondary to that first part.”
Percoco reiterated both the $425 price target and the ‘Equal Weight’ rating on Tesla shares.
Tesla expands its branded ‘For Business’ Superchargers
Tesla Cybercab ‘breakdown’ image likely is not what it seems
