The Recall That Keeps Giving
Waymo remembered its robotaxis. Again.
Specifically, the 3,871 cars currently zipping around California.
They’re back. Not because they got tired of the commute but because of a specific, nasty glitch. The machines have a habit of plowing straight into freeway construction zones. Or, if not plowing, they prioritize other hazards so aggressively that they miss the orange barrels entirely. Speeding right into the cones. It sounds like a bug that should have been squashed in beta. Instead. It made it to the roads.
Thank a regulatory quirk for the free rides if you’ve got one nearby, but the engineering oversight is hard to ignore.
Autonomous vehicles prioritizing wrong hazards or ignoring closures altogether is a failure of basic recognition logic.
GM Plays House
GM Energy flipped a switch. Vehicle-to-grid charging is live.
The idea? Plug in your Chevy EV. Let the house drink power from it. Or better yet. Let the whole neighborhood sip on that stored energy during peak hours.
Sounds futuristic. Probably will be. The question hanging in the air, thick as battery smoke: Will anyone actually turn it on? Most of us just want to drive. Using your car as a stationary generator feels like using a Ferrari to mow the lawn. It’s technically possible. Practically weird.
Texas. Tesla. Trouble
A woman died in Texas.
The crash involves Tesla. The bigger issue? Did Full Self-Driving (Supervised) play a part.
Note the word “Supervised.” It does the heavy lifting legally while shifting the moral weight to the human in the driver’s seat. This is setting up a massive legal fight. The families of victims won’t accept a checkbox on a software menu as the final verdict. Courts hate ambiguity. Tech companies thrive on it. We’re watching the collision.
Stealing Batteries at the Source
The theft isn’t happening at your home. Or your workplace.
It’s at the factory gate. Tesla’s Nevada plant saw nine major suspected cargo heists in January. Trucks loaded with batteries. Gone before the seals even broke. Sheriff records obtained by WIRED confirm the pattern. It’s not random crime. It’s industrial extraction. Someone is moving raw lithium-ion power faster than the supply chain can secure it.
Waymo’s World Cup?
Welcome to the spectacle.
It’s called the Waymo World Cup. You might think “autonomous racing” implies slick, high-tech drone strikes of precision. Think again.
It feels like the World Cups of old. Clunky. Bureaucratic. Familiar in ways that shouldn’t apply to robotaxis. For better or worse, we are just humans putting robots in boxes and asking them to race. Nothing new about that desire.
The Trump-China Paradox
Here’s the twist. Trump helped China build America’s cheapest electric vehicle.
Slate, a Chinese automaker, switched to low-cost battery tech. Why? Because the new administration repealed the tax credits that forced material sourcing to stay domestic. The subsidy wall fell. The floodgates opened for Chinese components. You wanted protectionism? You got integration instead.
The market doesn’t care about your policy speeches. It cares about the price tag.
Polestar’s Death Spiral
The law killed the dealership. Not competition. Not bad reviews. The government.
Dealers who invested in the Swedish EV brand Polestar? Locked out of the US market next year. Federal authorization to bypass the Chinese tech ban was denied. So if you want a new Polestar in 2025. Good luck finding a lot. They’re walking away.
“Vital” for the Iran War
The Justice Department wants xAI to win a lawsuit. How?
They argue xAI is “vital” for national security. Specifically. For the Iran War.
Lawyers claimed the AI company’s work is integral to military ops. That is a bold claim for a lawsuit about polluting gas turbines. The NAACP sued because of the emissions. The DOJ is trying to dismiss it by waving the flag of war. Is your GPU cluster more important than the air your neighbor breathes? Apparently yes, if Washington has its way.
The DOJ claiming an AI startup is key to military operations in the Iran War to avoid environmental liability is a startling pivot.
Musk Gets Rich. Neighbors Get Poisoned
Elon Musk is about to make hundreds of billions. Again.
His SpaceX IPO looms large. Meanwhile. In Mississippi. In Tennessee. People are angry. Very angry.
The gas turbines powering xAI’s supercomputers are loud, dirty, and right on their doorstep. You’re building the future of intelligence while burning coal-equivalents next to schools. The contrast is ugly. The timing
