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Tesla’s race to autonomy: No one said it would be easy
Need to type up a quick memo before work? Forgot to eat breakfast before driving to school? In just a few years, driving may be a more hands-off endeavor than ever before if companies like Tesla, Uber, Volvo, Alphabet, General Motors, or Ford have anything to do about it. You could be a passenger in your own self-driving car, weaving in and out of traffic with ease and parallel parking like a pro every time. It seems like most every company even tangentially related to cars is pouring money into the race for autonomy.
The freedom of self-driving cars is still heavily dependent on regulatory whim and technological availability, but some are setting demanding goals in an effort to finish first in that race. Tesla for example, plans to showcase its Full Self-Driving Capability by driving one of its fleet cars from California to New York, without human involvement, by the end of this year. But their competitors are moneyed, motivated and many.
The Self-Driving Battle Arena
For Uber, success in autonomous driving research could be a sweet distraction from the recent troubles of the company. Its self-driving program has been based in Pittsburgh, right next to Carnegie Mellon with its highly regarded robotics program since it began in 2015. Then-CEO Travis Kalanick was determined to stay on top of the industry. “It starts with understand that the world is going to go self-driving and autonomous,” Kalanick said in a 2016 interview with Business Insider. “So if that’s happening, what would happen if we weren’t a part of that future? If we weren’t part of the autonomy thing? Then the future passes us by basically, in a very expeditious and efficient way.”
Plagued by lawsuits, investigations, and subsequent executive upheaval that saw Kalanick’s resignation from the enterprise he founded, Uber is still one of the best places for researchers and engineers to work on their projects. The company has armies of vehicles across the country, vast datasets of information from the millions of miles its cars have covered through its ride-hailing branch, and the money to fund its engineers’ work.
This does not mean that Uber’s self-driving program has remained untouched. Waymo, the autonomous car division of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, is currently suing Uber over files allegedly by Anthony Levandowski when he moved from Waymo to Uber. According to Reuters, in recent court filings, Waymo has claimed that Uber knew of the stolen intellectual property and even conspired with Levandowski to use it. Uber denies the allegations and actually fired Levandowski on May 30, claiming he had not cooperated with their internal investigation– and probably hoping to win some goodwill from the judge who has already said Waymo had produced a convincing case.
It is unlikely the scandals will affect the decisions of most researchers to stay with the company. As Wired’s Aarian Marshall points out, the long timeline of building a safe autonomous car makes engineers less likely to leave at a moment’s notice in a period of executive instability. And the branch’s position in Pittsburgh rather than Silicon Valley means the roiling news is less sensationalized and the researchers less affected. The ride-sharing company’s failure to live up to certain promises, including backing one of Pittsburgh’s federal grant proposals or hiring from neighborhoods near its test tracks, have drawn ire from many local activists and politicians, as reported by the New York Times. Even so, it has helped the city break away from its steel past and into a high-tech future.
Meanwhile, Uber’s main competitor in the ride-sharing industry, Lyft, has been making strides to continue chipping away Uber’s monopoly in any field, including self-driving cars, as Uber deals with scandal after scandal. As reported by Recode, Lyft is steadily gaining ground on Uber in terms of the share of ride-hailing app downloads as its ratings in the IOS App Store rise and Uber’s falls. This recent shift in market share comes as Waymo and Lyft start a new partnership that will combine Waymo’s advanced technology with Lyft’s vast amounts of data on people, where and how they drive. “Lyft’s vision and commitment to improving the ways cities move with help Waymo’s self-driving technology reach more people, in more places,” a Waymo spokesperson told Wired. Extending Waymo’s dataset beyond the few cities, including Phoenix and Pittsburgh, allows the enterprise to collect the small details of average people’s driving habits much faster and accurately than its test drives around Silicon Valley will.
But despite Waymo’s eight years of self-driving research, it still has to play catch up to Uber in some regards. Waymo just started testing autonomous trucks earlier this month, while Uber first used a self-driving truck to deliver a shipment last August, advancing its technology quickly after it snatched up the self-driving truck startup Otto—founded by Anthony Levandowski after he left Waymo— in January of 2016. Yet, Waymo has the benefit of its parent company’s huge cash reserves and data.
Growing Pains
Tesla is moving its autonomous program forward at an increasingly demanding pace, trying to meet that goal of driving from Los Angeles to New York by the end of this year. It, like Uber, is going through some executive shakeup: after just six months with Tesla, Chris Lattner, Vice President of its Autopilot Software program, left the company after reported tensions with Elon Musk. Tesla explained that the former Apple engineer was not a “good fit.” It stands to mention that working under Musk is notoriously a high-pressure gig. According to LinkedIn Insights, the average tenure of a Tesla employee is only 2.2 years, while companies like General Motors keeps its employees for almost 9. But Lattner’s exit is just one example of many of talented Tesla self-driving engineers leaving the company or being poached by the competition, like Waymo.
While Autopilot can do many impressive things— change lanes, brake before obstacles, and generally act as a rational human driver— it is far from perfect. The program is still technically in “public beta” testing, and rated by the National Transportation Safety Board as a 2 out of 5 on its scale of autonomy.
The fatal crash of a Model S owner Joshua Brown in May 2016 serves as a good reminder that drivers are cautioned to pay attention and keep their hands on the wheel at all times while using Autopilot. Tesla’s driving-assist feature, at the time, could not distinguish the difference between the bright sky and the white truck. Tesla and Autopilot were cleared of responsibility by the NTSB because Brown was given several warnings to take back control of the wheel. But it is a poignant example that Autopilot does not function as a self-driving car and still requires a driver’s full attention. After the accident, Tesla was forced to start developing its own hardware for Autopilot. Mobileye, which previously supplied Tesla’s image processing chips, ended its partnership in a public spat with Musk.
According to Lattner’s public resume, the transition to its own hardware presented “many tough challenges” to the Tesla team. Musk commented to shareholders in June that Tesla is “almost there in terms of exceeding the ability” of the original hardware. All of Tesla’s vehicles in production, including the upcoming Model 3, have the capability to engage Autopilot (for a price) and the necessary hardware to enable full self-driving someday. Autopilot will continue using the camera-based system that Tesla swears by, even as most of the industry focuses on developing LiDAR technology based on light and lasers.
And while Tesla prefers to work mostly alone, the rest of the industry is also pairing up, making deals, partnerships, and contracts between manufacturers, data giants, and service teams. Musk is taking a move out of Steve Jobs’ playbook by vertically integrating everything within the business, from top-to-bottom. Waymo and Honda, Lyft and Waymo, Autoliv and Volvo, Hertz and Apple, Intel and Mobileye, Audi and NVIDIA, and almost every other combination you could think of. Predictions for when the first company will reach the finish line range from within a year to two decades from now. And even if the car is made, there is still the question of if cities and states will allow autonomous vehicles to drive on their streets. The technology is closer than ever, but for now, please keep your eyes on the road.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has awarded the 2025-2026 Tesla Cybertruck crew cab pickup its highest honor: Top Safety Pick+. This marks the Cybertruck as the only full-size pickup to achieve this distinction in recent evaluations.
The award applies specifically to vehicles built after April 2025, following structural upgrades including front underbody reinforcements and footwell modifications.
These changes enabled strong performance in updated crash tests. The Cybertruck earned “Good” ratings in the small overlap front (driver and passenger sides), updated moderate overlap front, and updated side tests—core requirements for the Top Safety Pick+ designation.
It also secured acceptable or good headlights across trims and a “Good” rating for its standard front crash prevention system in pedestrian scenarios, along with acceptable or good performance in vehicle-to-vehicle testing.
The Cybertruck avoided every single pedestrian collision, including:
- Daytime child crossing
- Nightitime adult crossing
- Night parallel adult
In IIHS pedestrian front crash prevention tests, @Cybertruck avoided every single collision – daytime, nighttime & different angles
It was also the only pickup to earn Top Safety Pick+ (highest award) in 2026https://t.co/BNPqT9TbsW pic.twitter.com/M6nwDisBFK
— Tesla (@Tesla) June 24, 2026
In the large pickup category, competitors such as the Toyota Tundra received only a standard Top Safety Pick, while the Ford F-150 and Ram 1500 did not qualify for either award. This positions the Cybertruck as a standout in occupant protection and crash avoidance among its peers.
Credit: IIHS
Ironically, the same vehicle celebrated for superior U.S. safety performance remains banned from public roads in the United Kingdom and much of Europe. Regulators there cite the Cybertruck’s sharp external edges and highly rigid stainless-steel construction as failing pedestrian-protection standards. European and UK rules require rounded surfaces on protruding parts to minimize injury risk in collisions with vulnerable road users.
Critics also point to the truck’s substantial weight and unyielding body structure, which some argue could transfer more force to other vehicles or pedestrians rather than absorbing it.
Tesla’s engineering philosophy underpins the Cybertruck’s strong IIHS results. The vehicle features a distinctive stainless-steel exoskeleton made from ultra-hard 30X cold-rolled stainless steel. This provides exceptional structural rigidity and a robust safety cage that resists deformation in side impacts and rollovers.
Engineers designed integrated load paths to channel crash forces away from the occupant compartment while allowing controlled energy absorption in key zones. Post-April 2025 refinements to the front underbody further optimized performance in overlap crashes.
Complementing the passive structure is Tesla’s advanced active safety suite, including the standard Collision Avoidance Assist system with automatic emergency braking. This contributed directly to the vehicle’s strong front crash prevention scores. The skateboard platform and low center of gravity also enhance stability and handling, reducing the likelihood of certain crashes.
The IIHS recognition highlights how Tesla’s combination of high-strength materials, structural innovation, and software-driven safety systems can deliver top-tier protection in rigorous testing. While global regulatory differences on design and pedestrian interaction continue to limit the Cybertruck’s availability outside North America, its U.S. safety credentials set a new benchmark for full-size pickups.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
Elon Musk confirmed Starmind as SpaceX’s AI satellite constellation name, targeting one million orbital compute nodes.
Elon Musk confirmed that Starmind will be the official name of SpaceX’s planned AI satellite constellation, following a trademark filing by xAI that surfaced earlier this week. Starmind is what’s being described to the FCC as a constellation of up to one million AI satellites
It’s worth noting that SpaceX’s Starlink communication satellite and Starmind are built on the same orbital infrastructure concept but serve entirely different purposes. Starlink is a connectivity network, with satellites receiving and relaying data between points on Earth, and functioning as a high-speed internet backbone in space. The satellites themselves do not process or think, and move information from one place to another, the same function a fiber cable performs underground.
SpaceX just forced Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to team up for the first time in history
Starmind, on the other hand, is something completely different, and tather than moving data, its satellites would compute data through artificial intelligence and directly in orbit using onboard processors powered by large solar arrays. Where a Starlink satellite is essentially a very fast pipe, a Starmind satellite is a server. The practical implication is that Starmind would allow AI models to run inference, process queries, and generate outputs from space, then beam results down to users anywhere on Earth within milliseconds, and without the data ever needing to travel to a terrestrial data center.
Starship will be able to carry 30 to 50 AI1 satellites per launch, delivering the equivalent of dozens of server racks per flight, with no land acquisition, no power grid approval, and no cooling infrastructure required on the ground.
SpaceX is pursuing this new technology as terrestrial data centers are running into hard limits such as lack of physical space, community opposition, and power and water consumption at a scale that is increasingly difficult to permit. Space has unlimited solar power, natural vacuum cooling, and no zoning boards. Musk said in a June 8 video presentation that he expects space to become the lowest-cost location to deploy AI compute within two to three years. Two AI1 prototypes are scheduled to launch in early 2027, with volume production targeted for the end of that year at a new facility called Gigasat.
The real world applications Starmind enables extend well beyond powering Grok. A constellation of orbiting AI processors could run inference workloads for any paying customer, anywhere on Earth, with latency measured in milliseconds rather than the seconds associated with ground-based cloud routing across continents. Starmind, if it scales as described, would make SpaceX the landlord of AI compute the same way Starlink made it the landlord of satellite internet.
Tesla is pushing back against the unfair reporting of accidents involving its vehicles. Many media outlets were quick to jump to conclusions about a fatal accident involving a Tesla in Katy, Texas, that happened recently.
The driver of the vehicle, which slammed into a brick house and killed a woman inside, stated the car was operating on Autopilot. Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Head of AI Ashok Elluswamy both challenged that claim, with Elluswamy revealing last night that the system was overridden by the driver, who pressed the accelerator pedal “all the way to 100%.”
Tesla finally clarifies fatal Texas crash, confirms driver manually overrode acceleration
The car reached a speed of 73 MPH during the crash, Elluswamy detailed, and stated that the accelerator pedal was even pressed after the crash.
The story has been spread throughout the media with either incomplete or incorrect reporting, with some stories still not updated nearly 24 hours after Musk and Elluswamy posted answers about the crash on X.
The reporting has been a thorn in the side of Tesla for several years. Vehicle accidents involving Teslas are usually reported with the manufacturer’s name in the headline, while other companies are free of criticism when their cars are involved in accidents.
Here’s an example of that:
So you don’t report the vehicle’s make when it isn’t a Tesla, but you do report it when it is a Tesla?
The vehicle in your post above is a Hyundai Ioniq 5 EV. pic.twitter.com/4WT3sZ2DHm
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) February 17, 2026
Many media outlets stated the car was in “self-driving mode” or “Autopilot mode” when the car crashed. The truth is, now that Tesla has chimed in, that the driver had manually overriden the system by pressing the accelerator. Elluswamy commented on the unfair reporting:
“This blatantly irresponsible reporting does more harm to people than they realize.
Using Tesla self-driving is far safer than manual driving, and this was measured over 10B miles.
Planting such FUD in the minds of general public, who might not know the all the facts, might prevent them from using this technology that makes them safer.”
This blatantly irresponsible reporting does more harm to people than they realize.
Using Tesla self-driving is far safer than manual driving, and this was measured over 10B miles.
Planting such FUD in the minds of general public, who might not know the all the facts, might…
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 22, 2026
The damage these headlines do to Tesla and the self-driving car movement is unexplainable. Most people do not realize the safeguards that are in place with Tesla’s self-driving functions; many people who have used it know the car would never travel at that speed in a residential area, not even on the most aggressive “Mad Max” setting.
It is important to remember that Tesla Full Self-Driving is not autonomous, and the company never claimed it was. Drivers are still responsible for paying attention and remaining vigilant. They must be able to take over at all times.
Tesla Cybertruck is officially the safest pickup, IIHS says
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
