Latest news with #robotaxis
Globe and Mail
a day ago
- Automotive
- Globe and Mail
Why Shares of Pony AI Stock Were Up More Than 100% Last Month
Shares of Pony AI (NASDAQ: PONY) soared 112% in May, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. The upstart is trying to bring self-driving and autonomous vehicle technology to the masses, with a focus on the Chinese market. It has a market cap of $4.67 billion but minimal sales and huge operating losses. However, investors are betting big on the potential future for this self-driving disrupter as it signs many partnerships with companies like Uber. Here's why Pony AI stock was flying high in May. Betting on autonomous vehicles in China and around the world Pony AI is developing autonomous vehicle technology to be deployed on robotaxis, trucks, and everyday owned vehicles. It is focused on large cities in China, such as Shenzhen and Beijing. Shares soared last month because of partnership announcements with Uber and Tencent Holdings. Uber is now a strategic partner with Pony AI and hopes to deploy the technology for ridesharing in a Middle East market shortly. The Tencent partnership is with Tencent Cloud. In the early stages of its business model, Pony AI generated just $14 million in revenue last quarter and a measly $2.3 million in gross profit. On this revenue, it had a $56 million operating loss due to the heavy spending it is implementing on research and development costs. Building self-driving technology is not cheap. The company does have over $500 million in cash on the balance sheet, but that money will run out quickly at its current burn rate. Should you buy Pony AI stock? Betting on Pony AI at a market cap of $4.67 billion does not seem wise. It is barely generating any sales and is working in a wildly difficult market in self-driving technology. Plus, it operates in China, an opaque market for Western investors. This adds up to a ton of risks for the stock. Even if the company keeps scaling with partnerships, it may be years before its revenue and earnings align with what a $4.67 billion market cap demands. For investors interested in self-driving, look at Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet. The service is now doing over 250,000 paid weekly trips, which dwarfs anything Pony AI has been able to achieve. This is not to say that Pony AI's technology does not work -- and it does serve different markets -- just that you are betting on a start-up in a field crowded with huge technology competitors. This feels like a risk not worth taking vs. the stock's current valuation figures, meaning investors should stay away from buying Pony AI stock right now. Should you invest $1,000 in Pony Ai right now? Before you buy stock in Pony Ai, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Pony Ai wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $656,825!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $865,550!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor 's total average return is994% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to172%for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of June 2, 2025 Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Brett Schafer has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Tencent, and Uber Technologies. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Bloomberg
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Bloomberg
A Fatal Tesla Crash Shows the Limits of Full Self-Driving
Industries | The Big Take As Elon Musk touts robotaxis in Austin, federal regulators are investigating whether the system is dangerous even with a human behind the wheel. By and Craig Trudell The setting sun was blinding drivers on the Arizona interstate between Flagstaff and Phoenix in November 2023. Johna Story was traveling with her daughter and a co-worker in a black Toyota 4Runner around a curve that turned directly into the glaring sunlight. They pulled over to help direct traffic around two cars that had crashed. Back before that curve, Karl Stock was behind the wheel of a red Tesla Model Y. He had engaged what the carmaker calls Full Self-Driving, or FSD — a partial-automation system Elon Musk had acknowledged 18 months earlier was a high-stakes work in progress. In a few harrowing seconds, the system's shortcomings were laid bare by a tragedy. The Tesla hit Story, a 71-year-old grandmother, at highway speed. She was pronounced dead at the scene. ► Footage from a front camera on the Tesla shows the bright sun setting. Sun glare becomes more pronounced around the curve. ► A car in the right lane begins to brake. The Tesla appears to maintain its speed. ► More vehicles with hazard lights are parked on the right shoulder. The Tesla still hasn't braked as they come into view. ► A person waves to get the Tesla driver's attention. The Tesla veers left. ► The Tesla sideswipes the 4Runner and hits Johna Story head-on. Story's death — one of 40,901 US traffic fatalities that year — was the first known pedestrian fatality linked to Tesla's driving system, prompting an ongoing federal investigation into whether Full Self-Driving poses an unacceptable safety risk. Bloomberg News is publishing photos and partial footage of the crash, which was recorded by the Model Y and downloaded by police, for the first time after obtaining the images and video through a public-records request. As the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigates whether Tesla's human-supervised driving system is potentially defective, the company is proceeding with plans to deploy a small number of vehicles without anyone behind the wheel. Tesla has already started putting driverless Model Ys on public roads for testing in Austin ahead of plans to launch a driverless taxi service on June 12, Bloomberg reported last week. What regulators still want to know is whether Tesla's cars will be capable of confronting conditions similar to those in the 2023 crash. A spokesperson for NHTSA said the agency will take any actions necessary to protect road safety. After spending years investigating Autopilot — a different suite of Tesla driver-assistance features — the regulator found that the carmaker hadn't done enough to prevent drivers from misusing the features. Tesla then recalled 2 million cars. Representatives for Tesla, including Musk, the company's chief executive officer, didn't respond to a list of questions from Bloomberg. Bryant Walker Smith, a lawyer and engineer who advises cities, states and countries on emerging transportation technologies, warned that Tesla's push to deploy driverless cars may be premature. 'They are claiming they will be imminently able to do something — true automated driving — that all evidence suggests they still can't do safely,' he said. Johna Story woke up early the morning of Nov. 27, 2023, to take her grandchildren to school. She and her daughter, Sarah, then headed to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, where they worked transporting vehicles for a rental-car company. That evening, Johna, Sarah and a co-worker, Brian Howard, were driving the Toyota 4Runner from Flagstaff to Phoenix when they came upon an accident shortly after the curve on Interstate 17. Howard exited the SUV and walked back behind the initial crash scene to alert oncoming traffic. Johna stepped out of the front passenger-side door and put on an orange reflective safety vest. The Tesla driver, Karl Stock, was traveling at 65 miles per hour in his Model Y, according to the crash report police compiled. As multiple cars ahead began to brake or came to complete stops near the scene of the first crash, the footage appears to show the Tesla maintained its speed. The Model Y swerved to the left just as it sped past Howard, who stood on the shoulder of the interstate, whipping what appears to be a safety vest in the air. The Tesla jerked back to the right and hit Johna Story head-on with the front bumper, hood and windshield, sending her body tumbling through the air. 'Sorry everything happened so fast,' Stock wrote in a witness statement for police. 'There were cars stopped in front of me and by the time I saw them I had no place to go to avoid them.' The crash report doesn't mention Full Self-Driving or whether Stock tried to override Tesla's system. Stock wasn't cited, a spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Public Safety said. The victim's family has sued Stock, who didn't respond to requests for comment, and Tesla. The fatal collision — and the involvement of Full Self-Driving — came to light because of a standing general order from NHTSA that requires Tesla and other carmakers to report crashes involving cars with driver-assistance systems engaged. Tesla reported the crash seven months after the incident, according to data collected by NHTSA. Read the full Arizona crash report. Two months after Story's death in Arizona, a Tesla Model 3 with Full Self-Driving engaged crashed in Nipton, California, in January 2024. Another Model 3 crashed two months later in Red Mills, Virginia, followed by another two months later in Collinsville, Ohio. In all four incidents, the collisions occurred in conditions that reduced roadway visibility, such as sun glare, fog or airborne dust. The crashes spurred the defect investigation NHTSA opened in October — 18 days before the US election. Musk was campaigning in Pennsylvania that week for Donald Trump and posting regularly about politics on X, his social media network formerly known as Twitter. A day after NHTSA went public with its investigation, Musk wrote on X that Washington had become 'an ever-increasing ocean of brake pedals stopping progress.' The following week, Musk took time out of Tesla's quarterly earnings call to advocate for a federal approval process for the deployment of autonomous vehicles to supersede state-by-state regulations. 'If there's a Department of Government Efficiency, I'll try to help make that happen,' he said. Musk ended up pumping roughly $290 million into the election in support of Trump and the Republicans and became the public face of DOGE, the organization that razed through agencies across Washington. Trump appointed Sean Duffy to run the Department of Transportation, which oversees NHTSA. Duffy, a former contestant on the MTV reality television series Road Rules, has repeatedly said a federal autonomous vehicle framework is a top priority — both for him and Trump. On May 20, Duffy visited Musk at Tesla's factory and headquarters in Austin. 'We're here because we're thrilled about the future of autonomous vehicles,' the Transportation Secretary said, standing between Musk and one of Tesla's humanoid robot prototypes. While safety is key, Duffy said in a video posted on X, he also emphasized the need to ' let innovators innovate.' Last month, NHTSA sent Tesla a letter asking about basic elements of the company's robotaxi plans only weeks before its slated launch. Tanya Topka, director of NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation, asked Tesla to state the name of the driving systems the company planned to use in driverless taxis, and to detail the number of vehicles it expected to deploy and in what locations. She asked Tesla to describe each of the sensors the company planned to use for its cars to perceive their surroundings, and how the company intended to ensure safety in conditions where roadway visibility is reduced, including sun glare. Crashes like the one that claimed Story's life expose the limits of the hardware Tesla relies on for its driving systems, according to Smith, an associate professor at the University of South Carolina. The company uses a third of the number of sensors that Alphabet Inc. 's Waymo vehicles have. Whereas Waymo employs an array of different kinds of sensors — cameras, radar and lidar — Tesla utilizes only one. Teslas Use Fewer Sensors to See Their Surroundings Waymo relies on radar and lidar in addition to cameras 'There is a reason why Superman could shoot lasers from his eyes, but also uses his eyes for seeing. You want redundancy,' Smith said. 'It is shocking to many people that Tesla has such confidence in a single type of sensor.' That single type of sensor Tesla relies on is cameras. The company places an array of them in each vehicle it sells to capture road signs, traffic lights, lane markings and surrounding cars. Other automakers and autonomous-driving technology companies also use radar and lidar, which emit energy — in lidar's case, laser pulses traveling at the speed of light — to detect the distance of surrounding objects. As active sensors that generate their own signals, they're not affected by external lighting conditions and function better than cameras in direct sunlight. One advantage cameras have over both radar and lidar is cost. Analysts at BloombergNEF estimated in a report late last year that the sensor suite on a Tesla Model 3 costs just $400. The researcher said that the 24 sensors on the Jaguar I-Pace SUVs that Waymo had deployed in states including Arizona cost 23 times more: roughly $9,300 per vehicle. 'The issue with Waymo's cars is they cost way more money,' Musk said during Tesla's most recent earnings call in April. Colin Langan, an equity analyst at Wells Fargo, asked Musk later during the call about how Tesla expected to get around the issue of sun glare overwhelming its cameras. 'Actually, it does not blind the camera,' Musk replied, citing a 'breakthrough that we made some time ago.' Colin Langan: You're still sticking with the vision-only approach. A lot of autonomous people still have a lot of concerns about sun glare, fog, and dust. Any color on how you anticipate on getting around those issues, because my understanding, it kind of blinds the camera when you get glare and stuff. Elon Musk: Actually, it does not blind the camera. We use an approach, which is direct photon count. So, when you see a processed image, so the image that goes from the sort of photon counter -- the silicon photon counter, that then goes through a digital signal processor or image signal processor, that's normally what happens. And then the image that you see looks all washed out, because if you point the camera at the sun, the post-processing of the photon counting washes things out. It actually adds noise. So, part of the breakthrough that we made some time ago was to go with direct photon counting and bypass the image signal processor. And then you can drive pretty much straight at the sun, and you can also see in what appears to be the blackest of nights. And then glare and fog, we can see as well as people can, probably better, but I'd say probably slightly better than people, well, than the average person anyway, and yeah. Langan: So, the camera is able to see when there's direct glare on it; a little surprised by that. Musk: Yeah, yeah. Musk's comments perplexed Sam Abuelsamid, a former vehicle-development engineer who's now vice president of Telemetry, a Detroit-based communications firm. 'At some point, you have to process the signal,' Abuelsamid said. 'There has to be an image processor somewhere. Tesla's online owner's manual for the Model Y cautions that the vehicle's front-facing cameras 'may not detect objects or barriers that can potentially cause damage or injury,' and that 'several external factors' can reduce their performance. The company says the cameras aren't intended to replace drivers' visual checks or substitute careful driving. In other forums, Musk and Tesla have struck a much different tone about the capabilities of its cars. 'Sip tea in a Tesla while it drives you,' the CEO wrote in a May 9 post, sharing a video of an X user filming herself holding a cup on a saucer while in slow-moving traffic. In another post, the company claimed: 'With FSD Supervised, your steering wheel may start collecting dust.' The recent posts follow previous warnings from NHTSA about Tesla's social media activity. Shortly after opening its defect investigation, the agency released an email it had sent months earlier, in May 2024, taking issue with Tesla reposting X users who had disengaged from the task of driving while using the company's partial-automation systems. 'While Tesla has the discretion to communicate with the public as it sees fit, we note that these posts show lost opportunities to temper enthusiasm for a new product with cautions on its proper use with the points that Tesla has made to us,' Gregory Magno, a division chief within NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation, wrote to Tesla. A NHTSA spokesperson declined to comment specifically on whether the agency had concerns about Tesla's more recent posts, but noted that the company's vehicles aren't self-driving and require a fully attentive driver to be engaged at all times. Musk has said that 'solving' self-driving is pivotal to Tesla's future. 'That's really the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money and being worth basically zero,' he said in May 2022. The CEO has put off plans for a cheaper mass-market vehicle that many Tesla investors — and some insiders — pushed for and view as crucial to the carmaker's near-term prospects. 'Elon Musk has bet the entire company on this philosophy that current Tesla vehicles are capable of being a robotaxi,' said Michael Brooks, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, a Washington-based advocacy group. 'We know the FSD system is camera-based, and sun glare can inhibit camera-based operations.' 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Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Daily Mail
Driverless taxis are beginning to react like humans on San Francisco streets… and the results could be terrifying
Driverless cars are beginning to display human-like behaviors like impatience on the roads, in a sign of increased intelligence in the robotaxis. The chilling development was identified by University of San Francisco engineering Professor William Riggs, who has been studying Waymo cars since their inception. On a journey with a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle, the pair noticed the Waymo they were traveling in crept to a rolling start at a pedestrian crossing before the person had reached the other footpath. The subtle movement was reminiscent of the way humans act behind the wheel, but a strange occurrence for the robotic Waymo, which prides itself on being safer than a driver because it errs on the side of caution and leaves no room for human error. The action of letting the foot gently off the break moments before they should to allow the car to begin creeping forward at a rolling pace displays a sense of impatience - a human reaction not previously seen in the robotic cars. 'From an evolutionary standpoint, you're seeing a lot more anticipation and assertiveness from the vehicles,' Riggs said. Up until this point, Waymo taxis have been known to follow the road rules down to the letter, sometimes causing frustration among motorists. But robotaxis are designed to constantly gather information about road conditions, and the algorithm is often fine-tuned to ensure the product is the best it can be. David Margines, the director of product management at Waymo, said human specialists who drive the cars to train them had to juggle two separate goals: ensuring the Waymo followed every traffic law, whilst simultaneously working to transport customers in a reasonable timeframe. 'We imagined that it might be kind of a trade-off,' he told the publication. 'It wasn't that at all. Being an assertive driver means that you're more predictable, that you blend into the environment, that you do things that you expect other humans on the road to do.' The result is a more 'humanistic' way of driving. In another example of these developments, Margines provided an example of a Waymo driving through an intersection, merging into traffic in which it had the right of way. Another car swerves into Waymo's path. The robotaxi hit the brakes and prevented a crash, while simultaneously beeping its horn to let the other driver know of its displeasure. The act of using its horn is just another example of human-like behavior which serves as a reminder of the intelligence capabilities of the robot. These small tweaks may be beneficial in getting a passenger from point A to B faster, but it raises the question of whether the car is becoming too similar to humans, now to the point that it is mimicking poor choices motorists make on the roads out of frustration or emotion. While Waymo prides itself as the 'world's first autonomous ride-hailing service' and is intended to give riders a safer experience, that has not always been the experience customers have had. Data suggests there have been 696 crashes involving a Waymo since 2021. This does not mean the Waymo was at fault. In one tragic accident, the W aymo killed a small dog which was off leash and wasn't detected by the technology in the car. The service is available in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Waymo cars are also coming to Austin, Atlanta, and Miami. Elon Musk's Tesla had planned to roll out its own self driving taxi this month in Austin, Texas, with about 10 models powered by its Full Self-Driving (FSD) program.. His vision suffered a minor hitch last month when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) sent the company a letter to gather additional information. The NHTSA wants to 'understand how Tesla plans to evaluate its vehicles and driving automation technologies for use on public roads' before the robotaxis are unleashed on busy Austin streets. The agency highlighted its investigations into four crashes and a pedestrian linked to Tesla's FSD. The automaker is also developing a dedicated autonomous model, dubbed the Cybercab, with production starting next year. 'I predict that there will be millions of Teslas operating fully autonomously in the second half of next year,' he said. Musk made a similar prediction six years ago, in 2019, saying 'next year, for sure, we'll have over one million robotaxis on the road.' Tesla also revealed in April that it has completed more than 1,500 trips and 15,000 miles of autonomous driving, which has helped them develop and test FSD networks, the associated mobile app and other supporting technologies. However, the NHTSA seems alarmed at the idea of Tesla is basing the robotaxi service on its FSD program. Since October 2024, the NHTSA has been investigating Tesla's FSD software — an advanced driver-assistance system that allows vehicles to operate semi-autonomously — due to concerns about its performance in low-visibility conditions. Tesla is required to respond to the NHTSA's information request by June 19. If Tesla fails to meet this deadline, or the answers it provides are not satisfactory, it could delay the robotaxi launch.
Free Malaysia Today
4 days ago
- Automotive
- Free Malaysia Today
Tesla executives question Musk after he denies killing US$25,000 EV project
Elon Musk and Tesla had said the planned US$25,000 EV would be an all-new model, designed and built from scratch on a new platform. (Reuters pic) TEXAS : Some senior Tesla executives were alarmed last year when Elon Musk denied a Reuters report that the company had killed a planned all-new US$25,000 electric vehicle (EV) that investors had expected to drive explosive vehicle sales growth, according to people familiar with the matter. 'Reuters is lying,' Musk had posted on X, minutes after the story published on April 5, 2024, halting a 6% decline in Tesla's stock. Tesla shares recovered some of the loss after Musk's post, but the stock was down 3.6% at market close. 'The executives knew that Musk had, in fact, canceled the low-cost vehicle, which many investors called the Model 2, and pivoted Tesla to focus on self-driving robotaxis,' the people said. The company had told employees the project was over weeks earlier, Reuters reported, citing three sources and company documents. Musk's post was so confusing to some senior managers that they asked him whether he'd changed his mind. Musk rejected their concerns and said the project was still dead, according to the people with knowledge of the matter. The executives' concerns, which haven't been previously reported, shed light on the company's struggle to deliver a low-cost, mass-market EV, considered a core promise of the company. Some other Tesla executives were unconcerned about Musk's X post, said people familiar with the matter. 'The automaker keeps its product plans flexible,' one person said, to respond to market conditions. A year later, struggling with a dated lineup and falling sales around the world, Tesla has still not released the low-cost EV that Musk once called pivotal to the company's future. Neither Musk nor Tesla has explicitly confirmed killing an all-new model that investors and Tesla enthusiasts have long referred to as the Model 2 because it would slot in below the current cheapest model in Tesla's lineup, the US$42,500 Model 3. On Wednesday, Musk announced that he is leaving his role as a special advisor to US President Donald Trump to return his focus to his companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, Neuralink, and the social media company X. Tesla and Musk did not respond to requests for comment. Weeks after Musk's post on X, Tesla published an investor update that assured Tesla still planned 'new vehicles, including more affordable models' that will be built on current manufacturing lines. Musk and Tesla had said previously that the planned US$25,000 EV would be an all-new model, designed and built from scratch on a new platform. Musk had touted the project as a testbed for groundbreaking manufacturing innovations that would lower the cost of EVs. However, instead of an all-new model, Tesla is working on stripped-down versions of the Model 3 sedan and Model Y compact SUV, Reuters reported in April. No pricing on those models has been announced and the cars, set to roll out in the first half of 2025, have been delayed. On Tesla's earnings call in April, engineering chief Lars Moravy said that the affordable models would 'resemble in form and shape the cars we already make'. 'The key is they'll be affordable, and you'll be able to buy one,' he added. 'After Musk denied the Reuters report about killing the Model 2, executives questioned Musk about what the company should tell perplexed suppliers and investors,' people familiar with the matter said. Some executives told associates the denial made no sense – investors and the public would inevitably learn the truth – and worried it would hurt Tesla sales as buyers delayed purchases to wait for a US$25,000 Tesla that, in reality, it had decided not to build. Their concerns were not universally shared at the company. One of the sources familiar with the internal deliberations about Musk's public denial told Reuters that Tesla has considered a variety of strategies for producing low-cost EVs over the years. Gary Black, a Tesla investor who manages money for the Future Fund LLC, said he didn't view Musk's statement as a 'denial' at the time, noting that Musk often makes 'brief and abrupt' comments that 'can be about anything'. That said, Black told Reuters he recently sold his fund's US$1.2 million position in Tesla in part out of concern the affordable new vehicle will be a 'stripped down Model Y' rather than a 'differentiated product'. Worries about SEC enforcement Some Tesla executives told associates they were worried that denying the Model 2 was dead could land Musk in hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for misleading investors about a future product line that had been baked into their forecasts for the company. Musk had previously paid a US$40 million settlement in 2018 over another social media post that the agency alleged misled investors that Musk planned to take Tesla private. Reuters could not determine whether executives approached Musk directly with the SEC enforcement concern, nor if they alerted the SEC itself. An SEC spokesman declined to comment. Musk's agreement with the SEC requires him to have his social media posts about certain aspects of Tesla, such as new business lines and forecasts about the company, first vetted by a lawyer. Musk despises the settlement, according to people familiar with his thinking, and has told associates he doesn't post anything that needs attorney approval. 'The same day Musk denied the Reuters report, he lifted Tesla's stock again in after-hours trading with a post saying 'Robotaxi unveil 8/8' for Aug 8, a plan he had not widely announced to Tesla employees,' said people familiar with the matter. The Hollywood-style debut of a two-door 'Cybercab' ended up being delayed until October and underwhelmed investors. Many investors long ago gave up hope for a transformational US$25,000 EV that would juice sales. Instead, Tesla posted its first annual vehicle sales decline in 2024 and sales were down 13% in the first quarter of 2025 amid rising competition and public protests against Musk's work in the Trump administration. In April, Chinese automaker BYD outsold Tesla in Europe for the first time and is taking the global lead in affordable EVs. BYD's entry-level Seagull electric hatchback costs less than US$10,000 in China and sells competitively for more than double that price in export markets.
Bloomberg
28-05-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Analysis of Nvidia's First-Quarter Earnings
Nvidia wants to be seen as a one-stop-shop, particularly for companies developing robotaxis and humanoid robotics. The pitch is that it has three offerings in parallel: chips that go in to actual robots/robotaxis (called deployment at-the-edge), chips that go in to data centers to train core algorithms and then what it calls Omniverse that allows for simulation and synthetic data. This has started to resonate more with the investors I speak to on the show who see a broader set of end markets, beyond GenAI tools that are apps for consumers or enterprise applications.
