Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out whats clicking on Foxnews.com. Self-driving trucks are moving closer to reality. PlusAI released its first half 2025 performance results, showing how far the company has come toward its goal of launching factory-built autonomous trucks in 2027. Safety case readiness reached 86 percent, with a goal of 100 percent by launch.

Cruise, the self-driving arm of General Motors, said late today it had halted its robotaxi service across the US and would no longer operate its vehicles without safety drivers behind the wheel. That decision to hit the brakes comes two days after California regulators suspended the driverless car company's permit in San Francisco, alleging Cruise had failed to disclose details of an early October collision that sent a woman to the hospital with serious injuries. Cruise's decision shuts down its driverless taxi services offered in Austin and Phoenix, which had continued to operate even after the California suspension. Its fleets in Dallas, Houston, and Miami, where Cruise has been preparing for a commercial launches, will no longer hit the road without humans in the drivers' seats. The company says its orange-and-white Chevrolet Bolts will still be steered by software, but safety drivers will always be behind the wheel to take over if the technology goes wrong.

Germany-based urban air mobility (UAM) startup Volocopter, which plans to launch fully-electric passenger air taxis and cargo drones around the world in coming years, says it has picked up $170 million as the first tranche of Series E funding to kick off services in "cities like Singapore, Rome, and Paris." With its latest round led by South Korean investor WP Investment, Volocopter has raised $579 million to date. The startup is developing a variety of sustainable mobility solutions – VoloCity, VoloConnect, and VoloDrone – for a commercial launch aimed as soon as 2024. As the only electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) company to have received Design Organization Approval (DOA) from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), Volocopter finds itself in a leading position in a highly attractive emerging market. Volocopter has spectacular investors from around the globe, which puts us in an excellent position to focus on our first-to-certification and first-to-market strategies before we embark on the path to public listing. Notably, the company's new backer, WP Investment, is also entering into a strategic partnership with Volocopter to create a joint venture that will soon bring passenger air taxis to South Korea's cities.

Sony has revealed plans to start an electric car company, making it the latest electronics manufacturer to target the automotive sector. The Japanese tech firm is "exploring a commercial launch" of electric vehicles, and will launch a new company, Sony Mobility Inc, in the spring, its chairman and president, Kenichiro Yoshida, told a news conference before the Consumer Electronics Show in the US. Yoshida on Wednesday presented a prototype sport utility vehicle, the Vision-S 02, which uses the same electric vehicle platform as the previously announced Vision-S 01, a coupe that began testing on public roads in Europe from December 2020. "With our imaging and sensing, cloud, 5G and entertainment technologies combined with our content mastery, we believe Sony is well positioned as a creative entertainment company to redefine mobility," he said. An increasing number of consumer electronics companies have looked into targeting the burgeoning electric car market.

Uber Eats has unveiled its newest drones which will be used to deliver food in San Diego, California, next year. The new drones feature'innovative rotating wings with six rotors' - a design that has previously only been featured in flying car prototypes. Uber Eats said it believes the rotating wings will help to avoid food spillages, as the design enables a smoother transition between vertical takeoff and forward flight. Today, the company unveiled a new look for its drone, which utilises'innovative rotating wings with six rotors', a design that's usually only featured in flying car prototypes The rotors will be positioned vertically for takeoff and landing, but move into a forward position'for increased speed and efficiency during cruise flight', reports The Verge. NASA veteran Mark Moore designed similar rotors for the company's flying-taxi prototype which is also part of the companies Uber Elevate project - to take its services to the sky.

Mike Rhodin is senior vice president of IBM Watson. DETROIT -- IBM Watson initially won fame as the artificially intelligent computer system that won $1 million for whipping former Jeopardy! Since then, under the leadership of 1984 University of Michigan graduate Mike Rhodin, Watson has morphed into a muscular big business with lots of tentacles and more than 2,000 employees. Earlier this month in Ann Arbor, I interviewed Rhodin, the New York-based senior vice president of IBM Watson who was in town to speak with two groups of University of Michigan business students and budding entrepreneurs. Rhodin smiled when I asked the sci-fi question he hears often: When will machines turn on humans and take over the world?