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Tesla, Porsche and Alfa Romeo each launched new vehicles this month, with each brand offering a distinct vision of a car's purpose as driving automation advances. The author, a self-described Alfa Romeo devotee, frames these launches as answering the question of what a car is for once a machine can drive it.
Waymo announced that its next robotaxi will be a purpose-built Toyota bZ4X, assembled entirely at Toyota's Takaoka plant in Japan with Waymo's self-driving sensors and computers installed during manufacturing rather than added afterward. Testing and validation will begin in Japan next year, with the vehicles later rolling out to the UK and other international markets.
Speaking after GM's New York event unveiling its AI-driven 'intelligence-defined vehicle' strategy, chief product officer Sterling Anderson said he does not believe humanoid robots are the right tool for building cars. The broader roadmap centers on centralized computing, new battery chemistries, and virtualized engineering aimed at cutting vehicle development time roughly in half.
Elon Musk revealed that Tesla and SpaceX are exploring a merger, days after SpaceX's compressed-gas thrusters powered a viral stunt with Tesla's Roadster. Tesla's car business still generates about 75 percent of its revenue, but the company has scaled back its 2030 sales target from 20 million to 5 million vehicles after delivering 1.6 million last year.
At its GM Forward event, GM said its hands-off, eyes-off Super Cruise driver-assist system will expand beyond the Escalade IQ to nearly its entire vehicle lineup, including pickups and crossovers. Executive Sterling Anderson said GM is testing the technology at roughly 1 million miles per month across real and virtual environments, and the company also unveiled OnStar AI, a feature meant to handle tasks like placing takeout orders based on driver habits.
During Tesla's Q3 earnings call, VP of Autonomous Driving Ashok Elluswamy said the company aims to let some Model Y owners enroll their vehicles in the Robotaxi network by around the second quarter of 2027. The plan requires the V15 software update and integration into Tesla's geofenced service areas and fleet-management system before private cars could earn fares.
Tesla said it has started manufacturing production-quality units of its Optimus humanoid robot at its Fremont, California plant, previously used solely for EV assembly. The announcement came alongside third-quarter results showing flat revenue of $28.04 billion and net income of $787 million, down 43% year-over-year, as spending on AI and robotics surged.
On Tesla's Q3 earnings call, autonomy VP Ashok Elluswamy said the company expects to let customer-owned Model Y vehicles join its robotaxi fleet around the second quarter of 2027. He said the software is shared with Tesla's Cybercab and will be rolled out via a V15 update, with the remaining requirement being integration into Tesla's geofencing and fleet-management systems.
At its Onward event, General Motors outlined plans to use AI across vehicle design, manufacturing, and driving systems, including compute units it says will be up to 40 times more powerful than current hardware. The automaker also said it aims to bring eyes-off autonomous driving to its best-selling trucks and SUVs and speed up battery chemistry modeling, while cutting its typical four-to-five-year vehicle development cycle down to two years through what it calls 'digital thread virtualization.'
Waymo announced it will bring its autonomous ride-hailing service to the Toronto area in 2028, starting with a limited fleet of Jaguar I-Pace SUVs that will expand over time. Before autonomous rides begin, human-driven Waymo vehicles will map streets and test in neighborhoods like Liberty Village, St. Lawrence Market and Yorkdale, using a sixth-generation driving system built to handle Toronto's winter conditions. Waymo is partnering with Toronto-based Element Fleet Management for maintenance and customer service, and sign-ups are open on its website.
Volvo and Nvidia announced an expanded version of their near decade-long partnership, under which Volvo will integrate three Nvidia technologies: the Hyperion sensor and compute hardware, the Alpamayo driving software stack, and the Halos safety evaluation layer. The system is designed to handle both urban streets and highways, combining AI-based and classical software approaches with multiple sensor types for redundancy. Volvo did not disclose financial terms or specify which model will launch first, though executives said a new vehicle using the stack will arrive within the decade.
Laplace Intelligence, a one-year-old Ann Arbor startup founded by Howie Sun and Henry Liu out of the University of Michigan, is developing automated systems that stress-test robotics and physical AI before deployment. The company grew out of academic research on challenging autonomous driving AI in simulation, including a 2023 paper the pair published in Nature. Laplace is presenting at TechCrunch Disrupt's Startup Battlefield competition on October 13.