Apple's Siri AI will be powered by Gemini Tesla's Full Self-Driving is switching to a subscription-only service The shift will remove the $8,000 up-front payment and start after February 14. Tesla will stop selling its $8,000 Full Self-Driving (FSD) option and make it strictly a monthly subscription service after February 14, CEO Elon Musk announced on his X platform . Musk didn't reveal the price or why he's making the switch, though FSD is already available by subscription for $99 per month or $999 per year. The shift could be advantageous for buyers, particularly if they decide to dump their new Tesla or trade it in . It will also allow prospective owners to hedge their bets, as Tesla has overpromised on the feature since it was first announced.

Tesla brings back Mad Max mode in its Full Self-Driving system update, allowing more aggressive driving amid ongoing regulatory investigations.

A Tesla Takedown alum has launched a campaign for stricter regulation of autonomous vehicles in the US. Tesla's self-driving robotaxis use only cameras and software to navigate. Critics say this approach is less safe than designs that use additional sensors like lidar. A new advocacy group is pushing state lawmakers to pass more stringent autonomous vehicle regulations. The group, Safe Autonomous Vehicles Everywhere in the United States (SAVE-US), says its goal is to ensure that new self-driving technology will save lives instead of doing harm.

The electric vehicle tax credit is gone, and Tesla's new, more affordable models don't quite close the gap. For nearly two decades, CEO Elon Musk has promised Tesla would make a more affordable electric vehicle, to, as he put it in 2006, "help expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy towards a solar electric economy." On Tuesday, Tesla announced a new Model Y and Model 3 Standard, versions of its popular compact SUV and sedan stripped of a few higher-end touches and features to bring the price down to $39,990 and $36,990, respectively. They're both about $5,000 cheaper than the Premium variants, which goes a ways--but not all the way--toward recouping the $7,500 tax credit canceled by the GOP-led Congress this past summer . The price point also puts Tesla's newest models firmly in the "more affordable" EV camp.

Tesla Is Urging Drowsy Drivers to Use'Full Self-Driving'. Experts say that advising customers to switch in on when they're drifting between lanes is exactly the wrong move. Since Tesla launched its Full Self-Driving (FSD) feature in beta in 2020, the company's owner's manual has been clear: Contrary to the name, cars using the feature can't drive themselves. Tesla's driver assistance system is built to handle plenty of road situations--stopping at stop lights, changing lanes, steering, braking, turning. Still, "Full Self-Driving (Supervised) requires you to pay attention to the road and be ready to take over at all times," the manual states.

Automakers and tech developers testing and deploying self-driving and advanced driver assistance features will no longer have to report as much detailed, public crash information to the federal government, according to a new framework released today by the US Department of Transportation. The moves are a boon for makers of self-driving cars and the wider vehicle technology industry, which has complained that federal crash reporting requirements are overly burdensome and redundant. But the new rules will limit the information available to those who watchdog and study autonomous vehicles and driver assistance features--tech developments that are deeply entwined with public safety but which companies often shield from public view because they involve proprietary systems that companies spend billions to develop. The government's new orders limit "one of the only sources of publicly available data that we have on incidents involving Level 2 systems," says Sam Abuelsamid, who writes about the self-driving vehicle industry and is the vice president of marketing at Telemetry, a Michigan research firm, referring to driver assistance features such as Tesla's Full Self-Driving (Supervised), General Motors' Super Cruise, and Ford's Blue Cruise. These incidents, he notes, are only becoming "more common."

The United States government's road safety agency is again investigating Tesla's "Full Self-Driving" system, this time after getting reports of crashes in low-visibility conditions, including one that killed a pedestrian. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says in documents that it opened the probe on Oct. 17 with the company reporting four crashes after Teslas entered areas of low visibility, including sun glare, fog, and airborne dust. In addition to the pedestrian's death, another crash involved an injury, the agency said. Investigators will look into the ability of "Full Self-Driving" to "detect and respond appropriately to reduced roadway visibility conditions, and if so, the contributing circumstances for these crashes." The investigation covers roughly 2.4 million Teslas from the 2016 through 2024 model years.

The US government's road safety agency has opened an investigation into 2.4m Tesla vehicles with the automaker's Full Self-Driving software after four reported collisions, including a fatal crash. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) on Friday said it was opening the preliminary evaluation after four reports of crashes where Full Self-Driving was engaged during reduced roadway visibility like sun glare, fog or airborne dust. In one crash "the Tesla vehicle fatally struck a pedestrian. One additional crash in these conditions involved a reported injury," NHTSA said. The investigation covers 2016-2024 Model S and X vehicles with the optional system as well as 2017-2024 Model 3, 2020-2024 Model Y, and 2023-2024 Cybertruck vehicles.

A select number of all-electric Tesla Cybertrucks now have the ability to drive on US highways hands-free, after the automaker pushed an update to vehicles this morning. Tesla AI head Ashok Elluswamy wrote on X that Cybertrucks will be the first Tesla vehicles to receive the "end-to-end on highway" driving feature, which the company says uses a "neural net" to navigate all parts of highway driving. "Nice work," Tesla CEO (and X owner) Elon Musk responded to his AI chief. The feature appears to be in "early access," meaning it's available only to some Cybertruck owners who purchased the feature. It's unclear when the automaker will release the feature more widely.

Buyers that paid at least 93,990 to be among the first to own (and beta test) Tesla's Cybertruck are finally getting a key, promised feature: Full Self-Driving (FSD). Several people on the Cybertruck Owners Club forum -- including an Angeleno who posted a video -- say that it has finally arrived in early access to select users, Electrek reported. After Tesla promised that FSD would arrive to Cybertrucks in September, the supervised version 12.5.5 v12 (the latest available) is shipping, but only to users in the early access program. That means the feature (included in the Tesla Cybertruck Foundation package) won't be available to most buyers for at least another month, based on Tesla's previous FSD history. FSD worked smoothly for the short amount of time it was shown, according to the video above from Cybertruck Owner's Club forum user espresso-drumbeat.