Tesla's sales in Sweden fall 53.7% year-on-year in May
STOCKHOLM, June 2 (Reuters) - Tesla's (TSLA.O), opens new tab new car sales in Sweden fell 53.7% in May from a year earlier to 503 vehicles, registration data from Mobility Sweden showed on Monday.
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Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
5 happiest places to live in America
Reno, Nevada, has been named the happiest place to live in America, chosen as a reformative and affordable 'modern boomtown' with fair weather and creative outlets year round. The city was chosen by Outside , based on factors including overall well-being, public land and affordability, and climate change and inclusivity. Millions of surveys were scoured to assess the best urban areas in the US for well-being, before the researchers looked at house and rental prices and general walkability. Reno was ultimately judged the best in class, undertaking massive transformations to become more inclusive and accessible, attracting major companies like Amazon and Tesla without losing sight of its local arts and crafts culture. Reno, Nevada: With a population of 273,448 and a media house price of $550,000, Reno tops the list of the happiest places to live in America. Outside described Reno as a 'modern boomtown', bustling with green, open spaces, climbing gyms and a summer arts festival as part of a local revival. The outlet noted 'ample public land and mountain vibe' in its decision to award the city the top spot in the rankings. It is a far cry from the city's historic reputation as a hub of casinos and gambling - and part of a steady transformation to a more rounded economy. Reno was once the gambling capital of the United States - before nearby Las Vegas outgrew it. The 'biggest little city in the world' has long struck a chord with artists around the globe, featuring in everything from Johnny Cash's 'Folsom Prison Blues' to Springsteen's 'Reno', The Grateful Dead's 'Friend of the Devil' and REM's 'All the Way to Reno'. Now, the city is home to 18 ski resorts, popular spots for whitewater events, winding cycle trails, a host of music venues and several significant sports stadia. Reno today has enough adventure for locals and tourists year-round, making it a go-to destination inclusive of all. Wilmington, Delaware: Well-connected Wilmington neighbors Philadelphia, New York City, Baltimore and Washington D.C., offering walkability and community to residents. Its population is 71,569 and Delaware's largest city is built at the meeting point of the Christina River and Brandywine Creek, and has had its riverfront revitalized in recent years. Wilmington boasts nearly 70 parks, including the 178-acre Brandywine Park and the Alapocas Run, a 415-acre space filled with hiking and biking trails. Outside reports that the city has an inclusive local culture, with LGBTQ+ community leader Dinea Elliott Collins saying: 'When I travel to other parts of the country, I realize how safe and comfortable I feel in Wilmington.' The median house price is $255,000. New Orleans, Louisiana: Population: 369,749. With a median house price of $360,000, some 80 per cent of residents in New Orleans live within a ten-minute walk of a park, making the city one of the most attractive for residents who enjoy outdoor spaces. Culturally, the city has many attractions bringing visitors each year - from the colonial-era French Quarter to St Charles Avenue and Magazine Street's rows of antique shops. New Orleans remains one of the country's most-visited cities for its deep and complex history, preserving its past in a number of significant museums. In 2016, the city was also ranked the best in the US for live music, cocktail hour and cheap eats - but last for safety. Outside references the city's culture and cuisine, friendliness towards LQBTQ+ people and 'underrated' green spaces in awarding it third place. Cincinnati, Ohio: In the late 1800s, Cincy was dubbed the 'Paris of America', due to ambitious architectural projects that still line the streets of its urban center. Developed as a river town for shipping, the city remains an industralized hub with a large economy attractive to large employers and a quaint market pavilion for merchants to sell local produce. It also remains one of the greenest, with 88 per cent of residents living ten-minutes from a park - and a temperate climate ensuring beautiful year-round vistas to be found in the city's 365 parks and recreation areas. Benefitting from large-scale immigration from Germany in the 1840s, the city also benefits from a rich brewing tradition and has more than 80 organizations still making local beer - surely pushing it up the rankings for happiest places to live. Today, Cincinnati's population is 309,513and the median house price is $272,750. Charlottesville, Virginia: The independent city of Charlottesville is much smaller than most of its competitors (population: 45,373) but boasts the same balance of work opportunities and scenic getaways shared by the country's happiest. Outside notes the city's local University of Virginia has given Charlottesville a 'vibrant startup culture', with high rates of graduates and low unemployment. The city's commercial district, The Corner, also provides Charlottesville with a number of college bars and restaurants, as well as a considerable nightlife scene. Around the city, a 20-mile trail offers hikers and bikers a picturesque loop lined with places beautiful riverside spaces, and a number of breweries are 'scattered throughout the surrounding countryside', according to Outside. The median house price is $456,000.
NBC News
5 hours ago
- NBC News
Tesla's planned robotaxi launch in tech-friendly Austin has Musk playing catch-up in his hometown
Tesla's long-awaited entry into the robotaxi market — expected later this month — is coming to Austin, Texas, which has emerged as a key battleground for self-driving technology. CEO Elon Musk wrote in a post on X last week that the company has been testing Model Y vehicles with no safety drivers on board in the Texas capital for several days. Tesla's Austin robotaxi service will kick off with 10 vehicles and expand to thousands, moving into more cities if the launch goes well, Musk said in a May 20 interview with CNBC's David Faber. But while the market remains nascent, Tesla already faces a hefty amount of competition. The electric vehicle maker is one of several companies using Austin as a testing ground and debut market for self-driving technology. They're all taking advantage of Austin's robotics and AI talent, tech-savvy residents, affordable housing relative to other technology hubs and a city layout with horizontal traffic lights and wide roads that makes it particularly conducive to mapping software. But the biggest reason they love Texas may be the state's robotaxi-friendly regulation. Already in Austin are Alphabet's Waymo, Amazon's Zoox, Volkswagen subsidiary ADMT, and startup Avride. Waymo began offering robotaxi rides in Austin with Uber in March. Zoox started testing there last year, while ADMT has been testing Volkswagen's electric ID vehicles in the city since 2023. Avride is headquartered in Austin and is testing its autonomous vehicles and delivery robots in the Texas capital. Avride said it plans to begin offering paid robotaxi rides in the city later this year. 'The winners of the space are emerging, and it's just a matter of scaling,' said Toby Snuggs, head of sales and partnerships at Avride. According to Uber, its Austin launch with Waymo has proved successful thus far. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told investors in May that riders are choosing the robotaxis over regular cars, and the company is preparing to scale its Austin autonomous fleet to hundreds of vehicles in the coming months, ahead of a robotaxi expansion into Atlanta later this year. 'These approximately 100 vehicles are now busier than over 99% of all drivers in Austin in terms of completed trips per day,' Khosrowshahi told investors in May. Avride, which spun out of former parent company Yandex last year, has delivery robots in a fleet of about a dozen Hyundai Ioniq 5 vehicles in downtown Austin. The company said it plans to expand its Austin fleet to 100 vehicles later this year and aims to begin offering robotaxi rides in Dallas with Uber in 2025. Tesla primarily relies on camera-based systems and computer vision to navigate its vehicles rather than the Waymo model of using sophisticated sensors such as lidar and radar. Tesla's 'generalized' approach to robotaxis is more ambitious and less expensive than Waymo's, Musk said during Tesla's first-quarter earnings call with investors in April. Musk has been promising Tesla investors that a self-driving car is on the way for roughly a decade and has repeatedly missed self-imposed deadlines. 'There's probably a lot of ways it can be done, but we're the only ones that have done it,' Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana told CNBC's Deirdre Bosa in May. 'We've been doing it 24 hours a day for almost five years. And so to us, it's really important to focus on safety ... and then cost — not cost and then safety.' 'You have to be able to see at night, you have to be able to have this vision that's better than humans,' Mawakana said. 'Friendly' regulation In addition to Austin, Phoenix is an AV hub for companies such as Waymo, which has been testing in the region since 2016. Waymo and the auto manufacturer Magna International announced in May that they plan to double robotaxi production at their new plant in the Phoenix suburb of Mesa by the end of 2026. The San Francisco Bay Area, where Google began working on its self-driving car project in 2009, also has a large fleet of Waymo vehicles. Waymo opened its paid ride-hailing service to all local users almost a year ago, and said earlier this year that it's expanding its service to include another 27 square miles of coverage in the region. Zoox is also testing in San Francisco. While Tesla was started in the Bay Area, Musk moved its corporate headquarters to Austin in late 2021. In California, regulators at individual municipalities closely control where and how companies can operate autonomous vehicles. Texas has more relaxed regulations that benefit AV companies. When Waymo decided on Austin, it 'looked at the operational structure and how friendly the regulatory environment is,' said Shweta Shrivastava, Waymo's senior product and strategy executive. 'It's a tech-forward city — there's a lot of openness in terms of welcoming and adopting new technologies, so that's been great.' Part of that friendliness is a 2017 Texas law that prohibited municipalities from regulating autonomous vehicles, giving the state full authority. 'It's not like California, where you have certain regulations in LA, separate regulations in San Francisco, and municipalities between,' said Yulia Shveyko, Avride's head of communications. 'In Texas, it's the same all across the state, and this is one of the great things about being here as an operator.' The state is responsible for establishing the framework for autonomous vehicle operation, which includes that AVs must adhere to the same regulations as traditional vehicles, including registration, insurance and compliance with traffic laws. Texas law also requires AVs to have data recording systems to document potential accidents and incidents. The Texas Department of Transportation's 'role is to work with autonomous vehicle (AV) companies on what is needed to ensure the state's infrastructure is prepared for the safe and efficient rollout of AVs,' a spokesperson said in an emailed statement. Texas law allows for AV testing and operations on Texas roadways, 'as long as they meet the same safety and insurance requirements as every other vehicle on the road.' Companies are choosing to test their AVs in Austin because of its 'lower barriers both in terms of regulation and the acceptance by consumers in the area,' said Wassym Bensaid, chief software officer at EV maker Rivian. 'This is really what makes Austin and San Francisco more open to this technology,' Bensaid added. Rivian in March rolled out a ' hands-free version ' of its driver-assistance system for highway driving, and the company plans to have an 'eyes-off-hands-off' system available by the end of next year, Bensaid said. Texas' transportation department created an AV task force in 2019. Formal meetings take place two to four times per year. Members of the task force include representatives from other agencies in the state and public entities as well as key industry stakeholders, its website says. Waymo is an active member of the task force, the company confirmed. The state's transportation department didn't respond to CNBC's requests for further information about the task force. Waymo has built goodwill with Austin officials by engaging with Texas stakeholders since it began testing in the city in 2015, the company told CNBC. Known then as Google's self-driving car project, the company started driving on Austin streets a decade ago with safety drivers on board. Waymo closed Austin operations in 2019 to focus on its testing efforts in Phoenix, the spokesperson said, adding that it returned in March 2023, when the company's technology was 'more mature.' Long before Waymo began testing in Austin, University of Texas at Austin's Peter Stone entered his team's vehicle in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Urban Challenge in 2007. Stone is the director of the Learning Agents Research Group at UT, and his team's entry was called Austin Robot Technology — one of the first deployments of a partially automated driving system on the streets of Austin. Stone has been at the university for 23 years and has taught several students who are now employees at Waymo and other car companies, he said. Advancements in machine learning and years of testing have contributed to companies such as Waymo being able to navigate roads better than some human drivers, he said. Lone Star influence Officials from around the U.S. and the world are looking to Texas as a model for self-driving regulations, experts said. Some regulation, however, is still being sorted out. Lewis Leff, City of Austin assistant director, said that more cities are reaching out to ask, 'How do you handle these situations?' Cities that have inquired include New Orleans and Nashville, Tennessee, as well as some outside the U.S., Austin officials told CNBC. 'We were in Japan launching our service with Rakuten earlier this year and the minister of economics, and the questions they were asking was, 'What is the regulation in Texas like?'' Avride's Snuggs said. Meanwhile, the AV industry is pushing for federal-level standards that would ease regulatory uncertainty around putting new tech on public roads. In Tesla's third-quarter earnings in October, Musk said that should Donald Trump win the coming election, he would use his influence with the administration to push for federal AV regulation. As president, Trump and his transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, have both been supportive of federal-level standards, Waymo's Mawakana told CNBC in May, adding that she's 'optimistic' it will be arranged sometime during this presidential term. Waymo supports proposed federal frameworks for national safety standards and has voiced that support to the Trump administration, a company spokesperson said. 'Now's the time,' Mawakana said, pointing to places such as China, which invests in AV supply chains and grants and has federal AV rules. 'We should be in the exact same position.' 'Changing environments' The concentration of regulatory power, however, comes with some concern that cities will be mostly powerless should issues arise, experts said. A state senate transportation hearing in September addressed the lack of regulation in Texas for driverless vehicles. 'To many of our first responders communities, this is new territory for them,' Democratic Texas state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt reportedly said at the hearing. 'I mean pulling over an autonomous vehicle, you know, what do you do? An autonomous vehicle in an accident, what do you do?' In one example, Houston city officials reportedly faced delays in enforcement instructions from state regulators after Cruise cars caused a backup on the city's Montrose Boulevard in 2023. Texas has at least 17 companies that have deployed or tested on roads, said Nick Steingart, director of state affairs at Alliance for Automotive Innovation, at the state hearing. 'As the technology matured and evolved, we fully expected that the laws would evolve as well,' Steingart said. The state is considering legislation that may provide some clarity, according to Austin's transportation department. Several AV companies in Austin have safety protocols and proactively work with local first responders. Zoox, for example, has held trainings with first responders and met with city officials, a spokesperson said. But there is technically no requirement for AV companies to engage with emergency services, Austin officials confirmed. Companies hoping to succeed in Texas often begin their conversations with the state by focusing on safety first, Austin's Leff said. 'They note their technology can recognize a fire vehicle or a hand signal, so there's a lot of focus on things like that,' he said. Austin's transportation department has been collecting information about incidents that pose a risk to public safety and relaying that data to the appropriate operators, the city said. It places 'all reports we receive about AV incidents into our dashboard, about half of which over time have come from our city department colleagues,' city officials said. Waymo, which has become one of the most visible leaders in the robotaxi market, has said it has made safety a priority. Mawakana and co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov told employees at a November all-hands meeting that they should scale up as aggressively as possible but do so with safety at the forefront of all their efforts, people familiar with the matter told CNBC. The people asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Waymo tracks incidents involving its vehicles but doesn't share city-level data publicly, a company spokesperson said. With Texas regulation around AVs relatively lax, some AV makers worry what impact a collision by one of the players in the state could mean for the entire industry. 'It takes a long time to earn trust, and it doesn't take that long to lose it,' Mawakana said. 'There can always be an overreaction by regulators — their job is to protect the public.' Already, the AV industry has suffered a number of black eyes. General Motors shut down its Cruise robotaxi service in December after one of its vehicles dragged a woman 20 feet on a street in San Francisco in 2023. Uber also pulled out of the self-driving space after one of its self-driving test vehicles struck and killed a woman in Arizona in 2018. In Austin, a woman posted a TikTok video in April showing a Waymo vehicle that she said had abruptly stopped underneath a highway with her and another passenger inside. After other cars began honking at them, they contacted customer support for help but were told the Waymo couldn't be moved. The woman said the car locked the passengers inside until they threatened to go live on TikTok. 'Now we're walking,' the woman says in the video, 'and our Waymo is still there. This is insane.' Riders 'always have the ability to pause their ride and exit the vehicle when desired by pulling the handle twice — once to unlock and another to open the door,' a Waymo spokesperson said in response to the video. Despite such incidents, UT's Stone said he thinks cities are being overly cautious. 'The standard people are aiming for is perfection, and the standard they should be aiming for is better than people,' he said. 'A fatal car accident rarely makes the local news, but if autonomous cars reduce that number, it should be seen as a huge societal win.'
Daily Mail
6 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Jon Stewart roasts Elon Musk over spectacular fall from grace at the White House
Jon Stewart has roasted Elon Musk as 'one of America's least efficient government workers' as his time in the White House came to an end. The talk show host laid into the world's richest man in a blistering monologue on The Daily Show on Monday, saying Donald Trump has 'broken this poor man'. 'Elon spent $300 million of his own money to get Trump elected, irreparably damaged his personal brand and almost all of his business, and is clearly suffering some kind of issue,' the comedian said. He referenced a New York Times report last week alleging Musk took a cocktail of drugs including ketamine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms during the 2024 presidential election campaign. The report claimed the Tesla founder took so much ketamine it impacted his bladder, with Stewart saying his time heading DOGE left him a shell of his former self. 'Let this be a lesson to Elon and anybody in Trump's orbit: whatever your passionate political belief or whatever your ideology is, you will go from reaching for mine stars to dissolving in a puddle of your own urine and shame,' Stewart said. The host's monologue also took aim at Musk's poor relationship with his transgender child, saying he was 'starting a fight club with your kid just to be able to feel because Trump… Trump doesn't believe in anything, man.' The talk show host laid into the world's richest man on Monday's The Daily Show monologue, saying that President Trump has 'broken this poor man' and devastated his businesses as Musk's five-month stint leading DOGE concluded Musk left the White House in controversial fashion as he slammed President Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' in a media blitz as he departed DOGE. He has claimed to have saved over $100 billion in the federal government's budget, but Trump's legislation is set to raise the national deficit by over $2 trillion, with Musk saying Trump had 'undermined' his work. Stewart ridiculed the way that Musk had fawned over Trump in his early days in the administration, as he went from a 'tech titan given a mandate to move fast and crush the deep state' to a 'guy who had a bad night in a Nashville bar he can't remember.' 'He's leaving his job to make more family with his time,' he quipped, pointing to Musk's ever-growing number of children. As he brought up a picture of Musk jumping up and down on stage by Trump at a campaign rally and then to an image of Musk with a black eye at his final Oval Office press conference, Stewart continued: 'Look at this poor b***ard. 'He's looking beaten down. He's got that look on his face that I imagine his employees normally have — black eye, 1000-yards stare. This dude has seen some s***.' Musk said in his first media interviews after leaving the White House that he was going back to his multiple businesses '24/7.' At an event on Thursday for his space travel company SpaceX, Musk unveiled bold plans for his starships to soon colonize Mars. Branding it the next phase in space exploration, Musk said SpaceX aims to launch its first crewed Starship mission to the Red Planet in 2026, with a Tesla Optimus robot on board. 'Launching two years later, we would be sending humans, assuming the first missions are successful,' said Musk. But while the SpaceX event saw Musk confidently speak of the future, his interview with CBS on Tuesday got awkward as the billionaire bristled at questions on his history with Trump. CBS' David Pogue first queried Musk on whether his businesses had been impacted by President Donald Trump's tariffs and then asked the South African-born Musk if he supported Trump's attempts to ban foreign students. 'Yeah. I mean, I think we wanna stick to, you know, the subject of the day, which is, like, spaceships, as opposed to, you know, presidential policy,' Musk responded. Pogue pushed backing telling the billionaire that he had been told 'anything is good' as far as an interview subject. 'No, well - no,' Musk replied. But throughout the sit-down, Musk complained that DOGE became blamed for anything unpopular the Trump Administration was doing. 'Yeah, I think … what was starting to happen was that, like, it's a bit unfair because, like, DOGE became the whipping boy for everything,' Musk said. 'So, if there was some cut, real or imagined, everyone would blame DOGE.'
