What We’re Reading

• Tesla wins first US Autopilot trial involving fatal crash (Reuters, October 31, 2023)

  Yesterday, a 12-member jury announced that Tesla won the first case in the U.S. over allegations that Autopilot caused a fatality, and that Tesla knowingly sold the vehicle with the defective feature. The 9-3 verdict announced that the vehicle did not have a manufacturing defect, and that the crash was caused by human error.

  The crash occurred in 2019 when a Model 3 veered off a Los Angeles highway at 65 miles per hour, striking a tree and bursting into flames, resulting in the death of the driver, Micah Lee, and serious injuries to the two passengers, including an 8-year-old child. While the lawsuit alleged that Autopilot was defective when the vehicle was sold, Tesla “denied liability, saying Lee consumed alcohol before getting behind the wheel. The electric-vehicle maker also claims it was unclear whether Autopilot was engaged at the time of the crash.”

  This decision is a major victory for Tesla while the company has been under regulatory and legal scrutiny. This case also marks the second time this year that the company has won in trial, having won a case in April in which the jurors “believed Tesla warned drivers about its system and driver distraction was to blame.”

• Ford will postpone about $12 billion in EV investment as buyers become more cautious (CNBC, October 24, 2023)

  Like GM, Ford has announced that it is retreating from some of its more ambitious EV development plans, citing a lack of interest among American consumers in “paying a premium” for an EV over a traditional gas-powered or hybrid model. Ford specifically is “postponing about $12 billion it planned spending on new EV manufacturing capacity.”

  Yet, despite these apparent retractions, as noted in recent news articles, the EV market is growing—just not as quickly as some OEMs anticipated or would have liked. Again like GM, Ford is clear that it is not abandoning its EV plans altogether, just slowing the pace. As CFO John Lawler explained, “[w]e’re not moving away from our second generation [EV] products. ... We are, though, looking at the pace of capacity that we’re putting in place. We are going to push out some of that investment.”

• Kodiak expands Maersk autonomous freight lane from Houston to Oklahoma (FleetOwner, October 24, 2023)

  As Kodiak Robotics, one of the leaders in developing driverless trucking technology, continues to refine its technology to remove drivers from hard to fill and physically demanding long-haul routs, it is expanding its autonomous trucking lane between Houston and Oklahoma City for global logistics company A.P. Moller-Maersk.

  “Hauling commercial freight gives us the opportunity to work together to integrate Kodiak’s autonomous trucking solution into Maersk’s operations,” Don Burnette, Kodiak founder and CEO, said. “As the first autonomous trucking company to establish this new commercial lane between Houston and Oklahoma City, we are demonstrating our team’s ability to introduce new lanes and bring new efficiencies to the entire logistics industry.” 

  Michael Wiesinger, Kodiak’s VP of commercialization added that every mile a Kodiak truck travels helps its engineers improve the self-driving system known as the Kodiak Driver. “Over the last four years, we have delivered over 4,000 loads for our partners using our autonomous technology between Dallas and Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Oklahoma City, and Atlanta,”, Wiesinger stated. “We have made tremendous technical and operational progress over that time and learn a ton from the real-world operational challenges we see on a daily basis. It’s not enough to build a perfect technology in a lab—we need a solution that works for our partners in real-world operations.”