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A Florida jury ordered Tesla to pay $243 million for the fatal Autopilot crash.

 A Florida jury ordered Tesla to pay $243 million for the fatal Autopilot  Elon Musk's electric vehicle company may face additional legal action after a Florida jury on Friday found Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab, liable to pay $243 million to victims of a fatal crash in 2019 involving a Model S equipped with Autopilot.  For victims of Autopilot-related accidents, the verdict is an uncommon victory. Based on a more sophisticated version of its driver assistance software, Musk has been pushing for a quick expansion of Tesla's recently launched robotaxi business.  Tesla's stock is down 25% so far this year after dropping 1.8% on Friday.  According to a verdict sheet, jurors in a federal court in Miami granted the estate of Naibel Benavides Leon and her ex-boyfriend Dillon Angulo $129 million in compensatory damages and $200 million in punitive damages .  33% of the compensatory damages, or $42.6 million, were attributed to Tesla.  Although George McGee, ...

Uber to Invest $300m in Lucid EVs in Robotaxi Deal.

Under their rob taxi agreement, Uber will invest $300 million into electric-car manufacturer Lucid, with plans to launch rob taxi services late next year in at least one big US city.

The new partnership was just announced on Thursday. 

From 2026 and for over six years, Uber will buy and deploy a fleet of more than 20,000 Lucid Gravity SUVs fitted with AV technology from startup Nuro, according to a statement from the three companies.

This renewed agreement puts the revival of plans and fundraising for driverless cabs into perspective. The first wave of autonomous driving investment ultimately yielded only a handful of vehicles, whereas Tesla has launched its rob taxi pilot in Austin, and Waymo, the driverless taxi arm of Alphabet, is now expanding its operations.

Under the announced deal, Uber will invest hundreds of millions of dollars into Lucid and Nuro, which provide self-driving technology to car manufacturers, the joint statement said. Of that sum, $300 million will go to Lucid, according to a separate filing by Lucid to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.

Lucid’s shares surged some 39 percent at 11:15 am in New York (15:15 GMT). The shares had been down by some 24 percent this year. 

This most recent move of Uber highlights its renewed interest in the rob taxi space after it exited in 2020. Since then, Uber has partnered with certain tech developers, such as Waymo and Aurora. 

The Lucid deal follows another one in April with Volkswagen for rob taxi, where it will use ID.  Buzz vans for commercial service, targeted at Los Angeles, for next year.

Commercializing AV tech, however, has proved much harder than expected. Costly, stringent regulations and Federal Investigations have shut down several walkaways, including now General Motors with Cruise.



What remains in the race includes Zoox by Amazon.com, which is testing a rob taxi with no human controls and intends to start commercial service in Las Vegas later this year.

After years of missed deadlines and unmet promises, Tesla commenced a somewhat restricted trial last month with nearly a dozen of its Model Y SUVs in Austin, Texas.  Elon Musk has said it will rapidly expand the service into other cities across the US this year.

Waymo has been cautiously expanding for years with operations in several cities across the United States, with almost 1,500 vehicles. It has recently completed 100 million miles of autonomous driving.

Lucid and Nuro shared that their prototype rob taxi has begun its autonomous operation on a closed circuit inside the testing facility in Las Vegas.
"We are finally moving beyond our traditional EV technology leadership into partnerships and areas that we have not worked in all that much," Lucid's interim CEO Marc Winter Hoff told the Reuters news agency.
Founded and led by ex-Waymo engineers, Nuro has expanded to provide its self-driving technology for commercial and passenger vehicles from its former last-mile delivery robot building.
Dave Ferguson, Nuro's cofounder and president, said, "We have other very active conversations going on the personal vehicle side ... where we would integrate Nuro driver into vehicles that will get sold to end consumers."

He said that Nuro would still need to apply for state-level operating licenses, although it does hold a few licenses from its previous delivery operations.
The company had also said earlier that it was considering a reverse stock split of one-for-10 of its class A common stock.
Lucid stock surged nearly 40 percent, Uber stock was down a bit, 0.1 percent at the time of market opening.

SOURCE : NEWS AGENCIES

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