Tesla has been granted a permit to operate a taxi service in California, a spokesperson for the California Public Utilities Commission, a state regulator, said Tuesday. It marks the first step towards Tesla's and CEO Elon Musk's vision of operating a driverless taxi service in the state. One day, Musk has said, Tesla owners should be able to rent out their cars as sort of self-driving Ubers while they're not using them. He has said current owners should be able to operate their Models 3 and Y autonomously in the state later this year--a plan that faces both technological and regulatory hurdles. But despite the permit, Tesla's driverless taxi future still seems far off in California, which has the perfect climate for self-driving cars but some of the strictest regulatory requirements in the US for testing and operating them.

The following footage obtained by The Washington Post shows Colorado authorities responding to a car crash on May 16, 2022, in Evergreen, Colo. This story is best experienced with sound. Hans von Ohain and Erik Rossiter were on their way to play golf one afternoon in 2022 when von Ohain's Tesla suddenly swerved off Upper Bear Creek Road. The car's driver-assistance software, Full Self-Driving, was struggling to navigate the mountain curves, forcing von Ohain repeatedly to yank it back on course. "The first time it happened, I was like, 'Is that normal?'" recalled Rossiter, who described the five-mile drive on the outskirts of Denver as "uncomfortable." "And he was like, 'Yeah, that happens every now and then.'"

Tesla assures its millions of electric car owners that their privacy "is and will always be enormously important to us". The cameras it builds into vehicles to assist driving, it notes on its website, are "designed from the ground up to protect your privacy". But between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees privately shared via an internal messaging system sometimes highly invasive videos and images recorded by customers' car cameras, according to interviews by Reuters with nine former employees. Some of the recordings caught Tesla customers in embarrassing situations. One ex-employee described a video of a man approaching a vehicle completely naked.

In its defense, Tesla lawyers said that "mere failure to realize a long-term, aspirational goal is not fraud." That argument is contained in a motion to dismiss the case that was filed last week in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The main plaintiff is Briggs Matsko, a resident of Rancho Murieta, Calif. If the case goes forward, it could lead to deposition of Tesla employees who helped develop the technology and reveal what Musk knew and didn't know about its true capabilities when he made numerous forecasts over the years -- including the prediction that there would be a million Tesla robotaxis on the road by the end of 2020, that customers could make $30,000 a year hiring them out, and that their cars would appreciate in value. Tesla lawyers are attempting to prevent that information from going public.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk kicked off its Tesla AI Day 2022 with a quick level set on expectations -- "we've come a long way" -- and then stepped aside to allow the first iteration of its robot walk out onto the stage. The robot wasn't a human dressed in a robot costume like last year. Instead, Tesla introduced a functioning robot, albeit with exposed cables and a bit wobbly, at its second annual event. According to Musk, it was the first time it was working without "any support, cranes, mechanical mechanisms or cables." After a brief turn about the stage, the robot left the stage before the rest of the presentation continued, which included several short videos of the robot (now tethered for stability) carrying a box in an office, watering a plant and lifting a small piece of metal in the Tesla factory in Fremont, California.

In brief Tesla reportedly fired an employee after he uploaded videos to YouTube critiquing the automaker's autonomous driving software. John Bernal, an ex-Tesla operator working on the Autopilot platform, runs a YouTube channel under the username AI Addict. He has filmed and shared several videos demonstrating the capabilities of Tesla's still-in-development Full Self-Driving (FSD) product. He claims he was axed by management in February after being told that he "broke Tesla policy" and that his YouTube channel was a "conflict of interest," according to CNBC. Bernal insists he never revealed confidential information, and that his reviews were always of FSD versions that had been released to public beta testers.

A Tesla employee in Northern California is dead and another has been arrested after a fatal shooting outside the company's Fremont factory on Monday afternoon. Detectives arrested Anthony Solima, 29, of Milpitas on a homicide warrant Monday night, according to the Fremont Police Department. Jail records show Solima is being held on suspicion of murder and is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday afternoon. Tesla representatives did not respond to emails from The Times seeking comment on Monday or Tuesday. Alarmed by Tesla's public self-driving test, state legislators demand answers from DMV Until now, the DMV has taken a hands-off approach to Tesla's development of self-driving cars.

Tesla has reigned over the electric car market for over a decade, but these new autos are hoping to give Tesla a run for their money. Current and former Tesla employees working in the company's open-air "tent" factory say they were pressured to take shortcuts to hit aggressive Model 3 production goals, including making fast fixes to plastic housings with electrical tape, working through harsh conditions and skipping previously required vehicle tests. For instance, four people who worked on the assembly line say they were told by supervisors to use electrical tape to patch cracks on plastic brackets and housings, and provided photographs showing where tape was applied. They and four additional people familiar with conditions there describe working through high heat, cold temperatures at night and smoky air during last year's wildfires in Northern California. Tesla can't appeal to women: Electric cars, Elon Musk may be off-putting Why I bought a Tesla: One woman's experience buying Elon Musk's sleek EV Their disclosures highlight the difficult balance Tesla must strike as it ramps up production while trying to stem costs. Tesla recently told shareholders that in the three months ending June 30, 2019, it made 87,048 vehicles, including 72,531 Model 3s, the company's lowest-priced sedan.

Tesla, the electric-automobile manufacturer led by famed CEO Elon Musk, has struggled mightily with safety over the past few years. California nonprofit Worksafe, a worker safety advocacy group, recently made headlines when it reported that the injury rate at Tesla's Fremont, California, plant was more than 30 percent higher than the industry average in 2014 and 2015. Musk insists, however, that safety is the number one priority at Tesla. He claims that recent actions, like the company's hiring thousands of employees to create a third shift and reduce excess overtime, have made a major impact in lowering the injury rate. A recent email Musk sent to employees indicates just how seriously he's taking the issue.

Elon Musk's Tesla Motors Inc. sued Thursday a former employee who was in charge of its Autopilot program, accusing him of stealing confidential company information and also of attempting to poach fellow Tesla employees for his new business venture. According to the complaint filed by Tesla in a San Jose, California, court, Sterling Anderson (former director of Tesla's Autopilot program) attempted to recruit at least a dozen Tesla employees (of which only two left eventually) and also took a "hundreds of gigabytes" of confidential and proprietary information related to the development of the semiautonomous Autopilot system which were used to benefit Aurora Innovation LLC, a company Anderson allegedly founded while still employed by Tesla. The lawsuit also says Anderson was assisted in his recruitment efforts by Chris Urmson, the former head of Google's self-driving car project (now called Waymo). Anderson's employment was terminated Jan. 4, according to court documents. "Tesla cannot sit idly by when an employee like Anderson abuses his position of trust and orchestrates a scheme to deliberately and repeatedly violate his non-solicit agreement, hide evidence, and take the company's confidential and proprietary information for use in a competing venture," Tesla said in the lawsuit, according to the Wall Street Journal.