Two stories today:

France mandates solar panels on parking lots

France will require all parking lots with over 80 spaces to put in solar panels. That's huge, and means the power will be generated right where cars are charging in the morning -- no grid distribution needed.

France Mandates Solar Panels On Most Parking Lots; A Great Marriage With The EV

In a short interview snippet, Karpathy, who recently stepped down from being director of AI for Tesla, explains their reasoning for taking out radar, ultrasonics, and never using LIDAR or detailed maps.

"The best part is no part" is Elon's philosophy, and it's a valid one, if you are an automaker who wants to lower costs. But is it the right philosophy if you want to be first on the road with a safe robocar?

A press release from Electrify America, the largest non-Tesla charging network, revealed that their average stall is used slightly more than once a day.

I explore what that might be and what it means, with questions about how much people road trip in non-Teslas and the issues with poor reliability of these stations. And I point out ways to improve that reliability, including failing operational at the risk of giving out some free electricity.

Tesla is conducting a vote among owners on where to put new Superchargers. This will identify popular locations, but popularity may not be the only metric to use to decide where fast charging goes. Tesla paved the way by creating chargers not to use in your home town, but so that you would feel confident you could take your EV on long road trips -- something not possible before. The best choices may be small and rural, where people only go rarely, but where they want to feel they could go if they wanted.

At ONT airport (Ontario California, east of L.A.) you can now once again get a pass to meet your family at the gate. That stopped on 9/11. But modern technology should be able to get rid of security lines and restore us to those simpler times of the past when flying wasn't a nightmare. Through the use of remote inspectors who can keep the x-ray belt rolling non-stop, and appointments at security and other tricks there is no reason most of the nightmare that airports have become can't be fixed.

Today I attended the launch of the Alef, a new e-VTOL vehicle that drives as well as flies. Most so-called flying cars don't actually drive, and there are reasons for this, but Alef thinks the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

I've been friends with Alef since 2018, though I have no stock, so here's my report on the issues in their design and launch.

Read Launching the Alef, a try fly-and-drive flying car

Amazon's robotaxi company, Zoox, has always worked to be different, with its own custom vehicle designed from the ground up. They have added thermal cameras to it for night vision and detection of people and animals. I look at what that does and other factors about the normally low-profile company in this new Forbes.com article.

Zoox gets more different with thermal cameras

Tesla announced that new model 3 and Y vehicles delivered will no longer have the 12 ultrasonic sensors in the bumpers. They also disabled park assist and auto-park along with summon and the useless smart summon in these new cars, but promise those features will return soon as they work out how to do them with the cameras and software.

That's a remarkable move that no other auto OEM would do. Why have they done it and will it work? Read about it in a new Forbes site column at

Last week I published part 1 of a 2-part video and text series on the factors standing in the way of you getting a robocar.

Here's part 2 as video:

I've made a 2 part series, text and video on what the key blocking factors are in the way of getting robocars into production. You can watch on YouTube. Or read the text version at why don't you have a robocar yet

In June, Cruise had the first crash for an uncrewed robotaxi which caused injuries to 3rd parties, including a passenger and a person in the other vehicle. The Cruise vehicle was partly at fault.

In this article I outline the new details we have learned about the crash, but also discuss what it means for the future, and whether the use of a NHTSA "Recall" for this particular software update is the right idea.

With California mandating all new cars be EVs by 2035, and other places doing the same, EV-skeptics argue the power grid can't handle this. This claim appeared again during the recent California heat wave that came close to overloading the California grid over a false report that the state asked EV drivers not to charge their cars. (In reality it just repeated the everyday policy to avoid charging from 4pm to 9pm on high usage days.)

Tesla announced the price for the FSD software add-on will rise to $15K (from $12K) Sept 5. The price is amazingly high for a prepaid pre-order of a product that doesn't exist yet. Yet people only pay $4K for it in the aftermarket, and the take rate keeps going down as they raise the price, negating revenue gains.

So what does it all mean? One unusual option is that at $15K/head, Tesla could fail at producing the FSD software, but buy another company that does succeed (using LIDAR probably) and retrofit the old cars at a profit. At this price it's hard for them to lose.

Some transit agencies want to be in charge of how self-driving cars are deployed in their cities. Otherwise, they say, robocars will compete with transit, as if that would be bad.

Read more about these issues at Will Transit Agencies Fight Or Yield To The Self-Driving Revolution?

There has been lots of buzz over a video made by Tesla Critic Dan O'Dowd of a Tesla allegedly in FSD mode hitting a dummy in the shape of a child. We've seen Tesla fans duplicate it with their own kids, and Tesla asking the original video be taken down, and NHTSA saying not to use your own kids and more.

But it all misses the point. Of course a prototype fails in ways like this. The question is, are people actually getting hurt, and how do we really test these things to get them working? Is it OK to have customers participate in testing?

Baidu has finally moved to having a paid robotaxi service with no employee in the car. While they have remote monitoring and even driving over 5G this is still a big step and a show of internal confidence in the vehicle.

Read more at Baidu starts paid robotaxi service in China

Two recent stories -- about BMW charging a monthly fee to use the heated seats pre-installed in your car, and Tesla replacing a 60kwh battery with a 90kwh under warranty, but forgetting to software limit it to 60kwh, then finally applying the limit after two resales of the car as an (unknowingly accidental) 90 model, have opened up cans of worms about the question of software enabled and disabled features, and whether they are good or bad for the customer or just good for the company.

Baidu Apollo has released their own custom robotaxi plan. This one looks more like a regular minivan/custom taxi, but its steering wheel, there only for compliance purposes, is designed to be removed when the law allows, and that opens up the interior. They also say they can make it for about $37,000.

For more details see my Forbes.com story at Custom Robotaxi from Baidu

Several instances have taken place where multiple Cruise robotaxis have all frozen as a group, sometimes blocking intersections.

I discuss reasons for that, and why it's not that big a deal, in this new article on the Forbes site.

Cruise Robotaxis are failing in groups in SF

I have written a guide of useful hints and tricks for doing an EV road trip and barely spending any time charging. I've done over 10,000 miles of EV road trips and you can to, once you get an EV.

Read this at Forbes.com:

All you need for a great EV road trip

I have two other articles on Forbes.com that I didn't publish here in the blog: