Welcome to the Ride AI Newsletter, your weekly digest of important events and new developments at the intersection of technology and transportation.

What You Need to Know Today

NHTSA has opened a safety probe into Tesla’s FSD tech, impacting an estimated 2.4M vehicles. The investigation was initiated after NHTSA identified four collisions that took place in low-visibility conditions while the FSD feature was engaged.

Meanwhile Europe is pumping the brakes on Tesla’s ADAS. An outgoing Tesla exec says that regulators have delayed a decision that would allow FSD to launch in the UK and Europe, possibly until as late as 2028.

Toyota-backed Pony AI has filed to go public on the US stock market, joining Zeekr, WeRide, and other Chinese AV firms seeking to raise capital overseas. Pony’s filings reveal an ambitious new entrant with modest operations (~440 robotaxis and robotrucks in China), solid growth (sales nearly doubled to $24.7M in H1 2024, YoY), and at least for now, negative earnings (losses totaled $270M between 2022-2023, driven by high R&D spending).

The FAA announced much-anticipated eVTOL regulations, clearing an important hurdle for powered-lift aircraft in commercial operation in the US.

Even with most of its robotaxi fleet on hiatus, Cruise managed to burn through $435M in Q3. Still that’s a major improvement from the $791M it lost during the same period of 2023.

Toyota Research Institute (TRI) is teaming up with Boston Robotics to accelerate the development of humanoid robots, using TRI’s LLM and the Boston Robotics’ Atlas humanoid robot.

The Indianapolis 500 is going to robotic, but not the racecars. The organizers of iconic race have begun using gasoline-sniffing drone dogs for security purposes.

The best way to overcome the public’s doubts about AVs is to give them the chance to ride in a driverless car. Just ask the people of San Francisco. “Just last year residents wanted to get rid of robotaxis. Now locals and tourists can’t get enough.”

Serve Robotics unveiled a faster, larger sidewalk delivery bot, which will soon hit the streets in Los Angeles as part of a partnership with Uber Eats. The new model can move twice as fast, travel twice as far, and has 15% more cargo capacity than previous versions.

Waymo launched a public transit incentive in San Francisco, offering a $3 credit to riders who connect “to or from eligible Bay Area transit stations.”

Fare thee well, “Cybercab” and “Robovan.” Tesla has settled on new names for the pair of autonomous vehicles it unveiled earlier this month: “Robotaxi” and “Robobus.”

Lidwave has raised $10M to improve machine vision with on-chip lidar. The round was led by Jumpspeed Ventures and Next Gear Ventures.

‍

‍

‍