What We’re Reading

• Autonomous vehicle regulation focus of House subcommittee hearing (Smart Cities Drive, July 26, 2023)

  The Innovation, Data and Commerce Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a pre-scheduled hearing entitled “Self-Driving Vehicle Legislative Framework: Enhancing Safety, Improving Lives and Mobility, and Beating China.” The agenda for the hearing included consideration of draft federal legislation that would require the DOT “to have AV developers submit safety assessments, to develop a rulemaking plan, and to update federal motor vehicle safety standards for AVs.” Currently, regulation of AVs is left largely to the states.

  In a letter signed by 22 organizations and sent to the committee in advance of the hearing, the trade group Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association (AVIA) expressed support for legislation generally but “urged lawmakers ‘not to advance legislation that will turn our Nation’s public roadways into private testing grounds and turn the public against this technology.’”

  While coverage of the hearing is still developing, this and other early reports suggest that, while momentum is building, federal AV legislation still faces many roadblocks.

  Opening statements from the hearing can be found here.

• Tesla to license FSD to other OEMs, allow transfer of FSD to new cars (TechCrunch, July 19, 2023)

  On the heels of opening its Supercharger network to rival automakers, Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed during last week’s earnings call that Tesla is in advanced discussions with major OEMs regarding the licensing of FSD. Of note, this would require other automakers to onboard both Tesla’s software and hardware suite, which potentially could add additional revenue streams to Tesla’s arsenal in the form of vehicle data sales.  

  In what appears to be a pure play at increasing its data collection capacity in order to bolster its efforts to achieve full autonomy, Musk also announced that Tesla will allow the transfer of FSD software to new vehicles for a limited time during the third quarter. At present, Tesla owners do not have the ability to transfer previously purchased FSD to a new model vehicle. “This is a one-time amnesty,” said Musk, encouraging buyers to place their orders in Q3 or “within reasonable delivery time frames.”

  Finally, Tesla announced that it will soon commence production of its Dojo training computer, which will be used to train Tesla’s neural nets to improve the functionality of FSD and the automaker’s humanoid robot, Optimus. Musk added that Tesla has committed to spending over $1 billion on Dojo, which it claims will be able to compute in one second what a current desktop would need billions of years to calculate. The stakes for developing this computer power are extremely high, as Tesla has essentially bet the company on bringing reliable and commercially scalable full autonomy to the masses. 

• In challenge to Tesla, automakers launch US EV charging network (Reuters, July 26, 2023)

  Following weeks of reports about OEMs adopting Tesla’s charging standard, and just as Tesla confirms it may license its FSD technology to other automakers (see top right), at least seven major automakers are hoping to challenge Tesla’s market dominance by “forming a new company to provide electric vehicle charging in the U.S.” The unnamed group—which includes GM, Stellantis, Hyundai and Kia, Honda, BMW, and Mercedes—hopes to start by placing 30,000 chargers along major highways in cities with a timeline to be determined. The new company will support Tesla’s charging standard as well as the rival Combined Charging System.

  While the White House lauded the effort, some experts have expressed antitrust concerns given the number of manufacturers involved.