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Nissan sides with Tesla on camera-based self-driving approach, LiDAR not needed

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Japanese automaker Nissan Motor Co Ltd stated on Thursday that it would be using cameras and radar in the development of its full self-driving technologies. Seemingly siding with American electric car maker Tesla, Nissan argued that LiDAR, a key component in the autonomous driving systems of competitors such as GM and Ford, is too expensive for its capabilities.

Nissan’s announcement comes roughly a month after Tesla held its Autonomy Day, where Elon Musk dubbed LiDAR a “fool’s errand.” During the event, Musk predicted that companies relying on the light-based sensors would likely abandon the technology in the future. For his part, Tetsuya Iijima, general manager of advanced technology at Nissan, noted in a statement to reporters that LiDAR’s capabilities currently fail to match up to advanced camera and radar solutions.

“At the moment, LiDAR lacks the capabilities to exceed the capabilities of the latest technology in radar and cameras. It would be fantastic if LiDAR technology was at the level that we could use it in our systems, but it’s not. There’s an imbalance between its cost and its capabilities,” Iijima said.

Iijima’s statements about LiDAR are not just empty words from the Japanese carmaker, as Nissan has unveiled its own camera and radar-focused self-driving technology recently. Unlike Tesla’s current Autopilot system, which requires drivers to keep their hands on the steering wheel, Nissan’s system allows hands-free driving in single lanes on highways on predefined routes.

To enable this technology, Nissan utilizes cameras, radar, and sonar sensors to compile three-dimensional mapping data, enabling the company’s vehicles to “see” their surroundings accurately. The Japanese carmaker is also developing a “Tri-Cam” system that focuses on three points to the front and sides of a vehicle, allowing cars to capture a wide area of view.

Nissan plans to roll out its self-driving technology even to its lineup of affordable vehicles in the future. By doing so, the carmaker expects to see a boost in sales, enabling it to recover from a profit slump. Nissan’s earnings have been rough as of late, with the company noting during a recent report that it had hit “rock bottom” amidst the aftermath of a financial scandal related to its former chairman, Carlos Ghosn.

Tesla’s full self-driving strategy, which uses cameras and artificial intelligence, was explained by Sr. Director of AI Andrej Karpathy during the electric car maker’s Autonomy Day event last month. Karpathy likened Tesla’s full self-driving approach to the way humans operate a vehicle, even joking that the event’s attendees only used their biological cameras (eyes) and neural networks (brain) to drive to the event’s venue. “You all used your own neural network in your brains to get here. You didn’t shoot lasers from your eyes to drive,” Karpathy lightly said.

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Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk says flying cars are coming

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Credit: Grok Imagine

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that flying cars will be coming to the market, something that his own company has hinted at previously.

Musk said on X, in response to a post that read, “We were promised flying cars and all we got is infinite superintelligence for everyone,” “You will get flying cars.”

The post rang back to when Musk teased flying and hovering capabilities for the Tesla Roadster, the company’s supercar that has been delayed more times than anyone cares to count. It was set for an unveiling earlier this year, but it was then pushed back to August. There is still no sign of it coming.

However, that does not mean it won’t. But one of the biggest features of the Roadster that was teased was a SpaceX package that featured cold gas thrusters on the rear end that would help with white-knuckle acceleration. Another set would face the ground and would help the Roadster gain small bits of altitude, potentially helpful to jump over obstacles.

Elon Musk hints at Tesla Roadster’s “hovering” abilities in SpaceX package

But it is not a straightforward thing for Musk. As a serial entrepreneur, he tends to spend his time on major disruptors; currently, his largest projects are artificial intelligence and compute power, as well as SpaceX’s launches that will eventually make life multiplanetary.

In the past, he has been critical of flying cars and has been in favor of tunnels, one of the big reasons he started the Boring Company. In 2017 at a TED talk, he said:

“There is a challenge with flying cars in that they’ll be quite noisy. The wind force generated will be very high. Let’s just say that if something’s flying over your head, if there are a whole bunch of flying cars all over the place, that is not an anxiety-reducing situation…You’re thinking, ‘Did they service their hubcap? Or is it going to come off and guillotine me as they’re flying past?'”

However, he’s never been against them. He has also said he’s in favor of both tunnels and flying cars.

Most recently, Musk said that anyone who wants a flying car should be able to get one. This was stated last October on the Joe Rogan Experience:

“My friend Peter Thiel once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars… I think if Peter wants a flying car, we should be able to buy one.”

Whether the Roadster will be Tesla’s flying car or potentially another one remains in the mind of Musk. Of course, the Roadster will have to make its way to production lines before we find out.

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Elon Musk

SpaceX’s next trillion dollar bet has nothing to do with rockets, Musk tells staff

Elon Musk told SpaceX staff AI revenue will soon dwarf rockets and Starlink combined entirely.

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Elon Musk told SpaceX employees this week that artificial intelligence, not rockets, will soon carry the company’s revenue. In a roughly 29 minute internal address posted on SpaceX’s X account on Tuesday, Musk said AI revenue will pass every other line of business at SpaceX “probably in September” and pull further ahead by the fourth quarter.

The numbers he gave are specific. SpaceX currently runs 1.4 gigawatts of AI compute capacity. Musk wants that at 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027, a jump he tied directly to revenue: “if we bring 10GW of AI online by the end of next year, it will be $300 billion to $500 billion a year in revenue.” He called those “big numbers,” which undersells a projection larger than what most countries produce in a year.

Musk went further on where AI fits into SpaceX’s future. “Probably in four or five years, AI will be 99% of the value of SpaceX,” he told staff, adding that digital intelligence would eventually run “a trillion times” ahead of biological intelligence as computing scales. He tied that growth to the company’s founding mission, telling employees “we must win on AI, because the future is overwhelmingly AI and robots,” with the payoff meant to help fund Starship and a Mars program that increasingly runs through Terafab, the joint Tesla, SpaceX and xAI chip plant.

Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry

None of this is entirely new territory. SpaceX told investors much the same story during its first earnings call as a public company on August 4, where Musk moved the company’s $1 trillion revenue target up a year to 2030 and said Starlink could someday carry a majority of the world’s internet. What the all hands video adds is a hard deadline and a specific power figure Musk had not given publicly before, along with a franker pitch to his own workforce that AI, not launch cadence, is now the thing SpaceX is betting its future on.

The AI revenue itself is not coming from SpaceX training its own models. It is largely Starlink acting as the network layer for xAI’s workloads, plus SpaceX renting out compute capacity directly, the same approach behind the roughly $16 billion the company spent on AI infrastructure in a single quarter.

Musk closed the video with a pitch aimed at recruiting and retention rather than investors, telling employees that anyone who helps SpaceX win the AI race will eventually get the chance to go to the moon or Mars themselves. Whether SpaceX can turn 1.4 gigawatts into 10 in seventeen months is the more immediate question, and one that will show up in quarterly numbers well before anyone leaves Earth.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla has one big financial question to answer for investors: Morgan Stanley

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Credit: Tesla

In a new note to investors on Tuesday, Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco said that Tesla has one big financial question to answer for investors regarding its Robotaxi rollout, Full Self-Driving software, and Optimus.

Percoco said in the note that, for the most part, investors are still very positive about the direction the company is headed. However, there are some things the firm would like to see, and they have to do with financials.

Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue

Tesla bulls are more than convinced that the company’s Full Self-Driving software is proof it can develop physical AI. Financially, however, there are still some questions, especially on elevated spending, which CEO Elon Musk said would occur as the company works to roll out Robotaxi faster and continue developing its Optimus robot.

The latter two are where Tesla will have to prove progress to investors, as Percoco writes that both projects “will require clearer evidence that Robotaxi is scaling and more tangible Optimus proof points to support the ROI on elevated capex.”

Percoco said the second quarter earnings call did not change his long-term thesis of where Tesla is positioned in the AI race, which is out in front. However, there are concerns that weaker gross margins and higher R&D spend will stress financials, and that has “sharpened our (and investors’) focus on measurable progress across Robotaxi and Optimus.”

Additionally, Robotaxi still needs to be proven with more operation in existing cities while maintaining safety but improving how many rides it gives in any given time, he said. For Optimus, Percoco wrote that he is “still looking for evidence beyond commentary around SOP.”

Morgan Stanley put Percoco in charge of covering Tesla after long-time analyst Adam Jonas transitioned to the automotive side.

Currently, Morgan Stanley has a $415 price target on Tesla and a ‘Hold’ rating on the stock. It is trading at around $330 at the time of publication, which was 2:30 P.M. on the East Coast.

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