Lifestyle
Self-driving car lanes are coming: Will they help or hinder Level 5 autonomy progress?
Tesla’s long-term Robotaxi plans require Level 5 autonomous driving, i.e., no humans involved, and it certainly sounds like things are moving along quite well. CEO Elon Musk has been chatting about the Full Self-Driving progress on Twitter lately, and some recently published patent applications by the all-electric carmaker have revealed even more details about the machine learning going into an Autopilot overhaul. However, Tesla’s self-driving competitors have another approach to autonomy in mind, and it involves infrastructure restructuring in a major way.
The State of Michigan recently announced plans to create transport lanes dedicated to self-driving vehicles via a public-private partnership project. Over the next 24 months, a study will be conducted to explore the opportunity and viability of building a 40-mile corridor of this type between Downtown Detroit and Ann Arbor. The company chosen to lead the effort is Cavnue, a subsidiary of Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners which is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet.
Cavnue’s plans involve a digital model of a roadway that analyzes road conditions in real-time, shares information, and provides proactive guidance to autonomous vehicles and their (optional) drivers. Based on their published promo materials, this is achieved using layers of technologies like sensors, specialized road markings and signage, and signal hubs for transmitting information to vehicles. Essentially, rather than rely on a vehicle’s onboard self-driving software to analyze, predict, and respond to its environment, this connected infrastructure is supposed to provide that data instead – or supplement it heavily anyhow. It’s also supposed to enable the connected cars to talk to one another so coordinated responses like simultaneous braking, slowing, etc. are possible based on environmental factors from the larger infrastructure system.
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- Cavnue’s plan for self-driving dedicated vehicle lanes. (Source: Cavnue
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- Cavnue’s plan for self-driving dedicated vehicle lanes. (Source: Cavnue
As part of their role in Michigan, Cavnue will be drawing on an advisory committee with representatives from Ford, GM, Argo AI, Arrival, BMW, Honda, Toyota, TuSimple, and Waymo (also a subsidiary of Alphabet).
Both Tesla and Rivian are notably absent from the project’s advisory mentions, which isn’t surprising considering their competitor status through the Alphabet-Waymo connection. But if the lanes are going to involve both long hauler transportation and consumer vehicles, i.e., the Tesla Semi and Models S, 3, X, Y, etc., it must be assumed that the missing companies will eventually get on board with the overall connectivity imagined.
Could efforts like this affect the future of Level 5 autonomy in a negative way? Does it force companies like Tesla and Rivian into a self-driving standard dictated by, say, Waymo? Cavnue’s proposal says its standards will be “open” and “OEM-neutral” if implemented, so it could be a matter of a software install option for owners living in areas with these dedicated lanes. The ability for a competitor’s software to control their vehicles, though, might be a little too big an ask. Or would it?
Tesla is already under an atomic microscope anytime something goes wrong and Autopilot is (or isn’t) involved. What happens when Autopilot is taking a back seat to another OEM’s self-driving software that’s been adopted by a local government? Will that create a code mess to sort through for investigators? How would liability be handled? What if two updates didn’t play well together – something really common in phone and computer apps after OS updates?
“The vision for the corridor is intended to create lanes that are purpose built to accelerate and enhance the full potential of CAVs [connected autonomous vehicles] and move people,” Michigan’s official announcement stated. Getting governments even more involved in the self-driving push is inevitable and already presents one of the biggest obstacles to its adoption. It’s clear from the Great Lakes State’s initiative that this involvement is also intended to be helpful – first by isolating the autonomous cars, then by supplementing their capabilities, and finally by controlling their movements for safety’s sake.
Of course, cars talking to one another isn’t a new or unexpected idea. Even centralizing the information that’s being shared, as proposed in Cavnue’s system, doesn’t seem to impose or hinder anything generally. A legal authority adopting a self-driving standard, though, is another matter. This concern assumes that the authority in question makes it a mandatory standard since millions, perhaps billions, would be invested into these dedicated roadways. What good would they be if the majority of autonomous vehicles that used them were, say, Teslas that don’t bother with the Waymo-developed system?
Then there’s the question of handicap. Once a system is in place to centralize all the environment information self-driving vehicles are supposed to respond to, will it make it more difficult for companies like Tesla to gain local regulatory approval to use their software? Will it disincentivize other companies from improving their software since there’s a centralized program available (or mandatory)? Level 5 autonomy is no easy feat, nor is it cheap to develop. Car maker’s invest in it expecting a return – like in the case of Tesla’s Robotaxi plan.
Cavnue paints a really safe and pretty picture for the future of self-driving vehicles: Less congestion, faster movement at closer distances, more capacity in the same space, reducing or eliminating choke points, etc. But it also seems to require a lot of cooperation from those who don’t necessarily stand to gain from that cooperation.
Whatever the answers, hopefully none will put much damper on current progress towards Level 5 autonomous driving. And if they do, perhaps The Boring Company will have a few big projects under its belt and ready to provide better answers.
You can watch Cavnue’s promotional concept video here.
Lifestyle
NTSB findings on fatal Tesla crash tell a very different story
The NTSB confirmed the driver, not Tesla’s FSD, caused the fatal Texas house crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board released preliminary findings Wednesday confirming that a Tesla driver, not the vehicle’s software, caused a fatal crash in Katy, Texas in June. The driver, 44-year-old Michael Butler, had engaged Full Self-Driving Supervised mode on Rose Hollow Lane, a residential street with a 30 mph speed limit, before manually overriding the system by pressing the accelerator pedal all the way to 100%. Data recovered from the 2025 Tesla Model 3 showed the vehicle was traveling over 70 miles per hour when it struck a home and killed 76-year-old Martha Avila, who was inside. Weather was clear, the road was dry, and it was daylight.
Texas man charged in fatal Tesla crash where he blamed Autopilot
Butler told authorities he had passed out at the wheel. But security camera footage obtained by the NTSB told a different story, and showed the car accelerating through an intersection before leaving the road entirely. Police also found that Butler’s phone had Google searches including the terms “Tesla FSD not aggressive enough 2026” and “Tesla FSD too timid,” raising serious questions about how he was using the system before the crash. Butler has since been charged with manslaughter. The victim’s family has filed a lawsuit against both Butler and Tesla, alleging negligence.
The NTSB findings aligned directly with what Tesla VP of AI Software Ashok Elluswamy had already stated publicly on X in the weeks after the crash, writing that “the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100%.” The data confirmed his account.
Yup. In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area. They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash.
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 22, 2026
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Texas ranch to showcase the lifelong work that changed the world
Elon Musk is building a product gallery at his Texas ranch spanning his lifelong inventions.
Elon Musk took to X earlier today, noting “Am putting together a product gallery at my ranch in Texas.” in response to a resurfaced famous quote from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s wherein he draw parallels of the Tesla CEO to legendary physicist Albert Einstein.
Dimon made the remark at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland back in January 2025, telling CNBC at the time, “SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, I mean, the guy is our Einstein.” The remark seemingly ended a long-time feud between the two high profile execs.
While details are thin about the exact location of Elon Musk’s Texas ranch and any pending projects that would serve as a gallery and homage to his portfolio of revolutionary product inventions spanning from 1984 to 2025, land acquisition records point to roughly a location of several thousand acres in Bastrop County, east of Austin near the Colorado River and held through an LLC called Horse Ranch LLC that’s managed by Musk’s longtime personal friend and family wealth manager Jared Birchall. Birchall also serves as the CEO of Neuralink.
Tesla’s “ecological paradise” in Giga Texas may be larger than expected
The broader Bastrop County footprint surrounding the ranch has grown significantly. Entities tied to Musk have accumulated approximately 2,000 acres in Bastrop County as of mid-2026, up from 700 acres earlier in the year, with possibly as much as 6,000 acres acquired in total across Bastrop and Travis counties based on deed records.
No completion date for the gallery has been announced and Musk has not confirmed whether it will be open to the public. As Teslarati has reported, SpaceX just completed the largest IPO in history raising $75 billion, a milestone that makes this particular moment in Musk’s career a natural inflection point for looking back at what he has built through the years.
Am putting together a product gallery at my ranch in Texas https://t.co/xQf5FRy4uz
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2026
Starting with Blastar, a simple space shooter game Musk coded at 12 years old and sold to a South African magazine for $500. From there the timeline moves through a commercial career that started with Zip2 in 1995, a city guide software company sold to Compaq for roughly $300 million in 1999. That was followed by X.com in 1999, which merged with Confinity to become PayPal, acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. SpaceX came in 2002, Tesla in 2003, SolarCity in 2006, the Supercharger network in 2012, Neuralink in 2016, The Boring Company in 2016, OpenAI co-founded in 2015, X acquired in 2022, xAI in 2023, Optimus in 2024, the Cybercab in 2026, and most recently SpaceXAI following the SpaceX and xAI merger. The gallery will also likely include items that blur the line between product and cultural artifact, among them The Boring Company’s Not-a-Flamethrower from 2018, Tesla Short Shorts from 2020, and Burnt Hair perfume released under X in 2022.
Lifestyle
Tesla makes the cut on California’s newest EV Rebate program
California just signed a $270 million EV rebate into law and it starts this summer.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 168 into law on Monday, July 13, 2026, creating a $270 million EV rebate program that delivers money directly at the dealership rather than as a tax credit applied months later. The program, called MyFirstEV, is funded equally by California’s state budget and participating automakers, with each contributing $135.5 million to make the math work.
The timing is directly tied to the loss of federal support when the $7,500 federal EV tax credit ended, removing the most significant consumer incentive that had driven EV adoption in the U.S. California, which accounts for roughly one-third of all EVs sold nationally, moved to fill that gap with a state-level replacement.
The rebate structure is straightforward. First-time EV buyers can receive $3,500 off any new battery-electric vehicle with an MSRP up to $50,000. Used EVs priced at $25,000 or below qualify for a $1,750 rebate. The credit is applied at the point of sale, which removes the friction of the old federal system where buyers had to wait for tax season to see the benefit. The program goes live later this summer, with the California Air Resources Board expected to release full participation details next month.
California hits Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi driverless cars with new law
For Tesla buyers, the implications are mixed. The Tesla Model 3 RWD at $42,490 and the Model 3 Long Range at $47,490 both fall under the $50,000 cap and would qualify for the full $3,500 rebate for first-time buyers. The Model Y, which starts at $44,990 after Tesla’s recent price adjustment, also qualifies. The Model X, Model S, and Cybertruck all exceed the cap and receive no benefit. As Teslarati has reported, the program also includes a carve-out exempting California-based automakers like Rivian and Lucid from the price cap entirely, a provision that puts Tesla at a disadvantage since it relocated its headquarters to Texas in 2021.
Other qualifying vehicles include the Chevrolet Equinox EV, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, and Volkswagen ID.4.
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