#automobiles

June 9, 2025

Waymo was the first to launch a driverless robotaxi service in 2020 and now operates in cities like Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Austin. By early 2025, total rides exceeded 10 million. This marked a ride-volume growth of over 5,500% since August 2023. It averages over 200,000 rides each week. They have about 1,500 vehicles now and also plan to add 2,000 more by 2026.

Pony.ai is a Nasdaq-listed autonomous driving startup that recently drew bullish analyst attention.

Pony.ai is launching its Gen-7 robotaxi vehicles in Shenzhen. They are partnering with Xihu Group and aim to deploy over 1,000 units. The company announced a deal with Tencent.

Profitability is expected by 2029, and strong funding is in place.

WeRide, a Nasdaq-traded company (WRD), posted Q1 2025 revenue of RMB72.4 million (US$10 million). This is a 1.8% increase from last year. Robotaxi revenue rose to RMB16.1 million, making up 22.3% of total revenue. This is a jump from 11.9% the previous year.

Analysts expect the company to turn profitable by 2027 but note regulatory and cost uncertainties.

While dozens of companies — 60 in all — have active permits to test autonomous vehicles with a safety driver, it’s far less common to receive permission for driverless vehicles. Only AutoX, Nuro and Waymo hold this driverless permit.

In December 2018, Zoox became the first company to gain approval for providing self-driving transport services to the public in California.

In September 2020, Zoox became the fourth company in the State of California to receive permit to test driverless automobiles on public roads.

Instead of accepting that their cars would become rolling paperweights, Fisker Ocean owners organized, reverse-engineered their vehicles’ proprietary software, hacked into CAN bus networks, built open-source tools on GitHub, and effectively stood up a volunteer-run open-sourced car company from the ashes of Fisker.

On GitHub, a developer named MichaelOE reverse-engineered the API behind Fisker’s official “My Fisker” mobile app and built a Home Assistant integration that exposes every cloud API value as a sensor — with all the app’s buttons available as Home Assistant controls. The project has 135 commits, 20 releases, and is licensed under Apache 2.0. It’s a small but functioning example of what an open-source vehicle interface looks like.

Separately, CAN bus files for the Fisker Ocean have been published on GitHub, including DBC files for CAN viewer filtering and processing. The Ocean runs multiple CAN buses — CCAN, PTCAN, Inverter CAN, and BCAN, all at 500kbps — and community members have been systematically mapping them.

One of the more impressive individual efforts comes from Majd Srour, who published a multi-part series on Medium documenting how to sniff CAN traffic and decode Diagnostic Trouble Codes on the Ocean. The goal: put diagnostic capabilities into mobile apps so owners can run their own DTC scans, instead of relying on dealer tools that no longer exist for a company that no longer exists.

Bushwhacker fender flares

F150, lightning with raptor, suspension and wheels and fender flares

The news signals a big vote of confidence in Rivian’s nascent autonomy efforts, which include designing its own custom AI chips to power Level 4 autonomous vehicles. Uber, meanwhile, has been on something of a robotaxi partnering spree, corralling a variety of companies from all parts of the globe while promising access to its hundreds of millions of customers.

Rivian and Uber said the first phase of their partnership will involve deploying 10,000 autonomous R2 vehicles as robotaxis in several cities, starting with San Francisco and Miami in 2028. The companies said they expect to expand to 25 additional cities by 2031. Rivian’s autonomous robotaxi fleet will be available exclusively on Uber’s app.

The EV maker is increasingly emphasizing the potential of artificial intelligence, driverless technology and humanoid robots to drive future growth as its traditional business of selling automobiles struggles.

The EV maker is also halting production of its S and X model vehicles and will repurpose the production facilities in Fremont, California, for Optimus. The Model S, a luxury sedan that costs about $95,000 and the Model X, an SUV with a pricetag of nearly $100,000, are low volume vehicles compared to Tesla’s more affordable 3 and Y models.

Adjusted earnings per share were 50 cents in the quarter, Tesla said Wednesday, higher than the average of analyst estimates. The results snap a string of quarters in which profit was weaker than expected.

The profit beat helps offset disappointment stemming from a steady decline in vehicle sales: Tesla earlier this month reported a 9% decline in 2025 deliveries from the previous year. That slump sharpened in the fourth quarter, when deliveries dropped 16% from a year earlier.

Revenue from regulatory credits fell 22% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier, showing how a lucrative revenue stream is drying up. The company receives the payments from competitors who exceed federal fuel economy standards. That income has dropped after the Trump administration eliminated penalties for automakers that failed to meet the standards. Due to the lower regulatory credit revenue and a drop in vehicle deliveries, Tesla’s 2025 revenue declined for the first time.

The company reported 1.1 million active subscribers for its Full Self Driving driver assistance software — up nearly 40% from a year earlier. The software, which currently is not considered autonomous and requires constant human supervision, is becoming subscription-only starting after Feb. 14.

Robotaxi launched in Austin in June. This month, Tesla started rolling out “a few” robotaxis without human driver supervision in Austin. It plans to scale this to its entire Austin fleet over time. The company also operates a rideshare service on the same app in the San Francisco Bay Area that is not considered autonomous and has drivers in the front seat. It also has permits to test the service in Nevada and Arizona.

Shortly after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy took office in February, the DOT suspended the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program, which was part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that Biden signed into law in 2021.

The Trump administration has pursued a number of policies to boost the sale of gas-powered vehicles and cut EV incentives for automakers and consumers.

There are many OBD2 scanners, but does FORScan somehow differ? Yes, because it is designed especially for Ford, Mazda, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles. So supports specific features of the manufacturer protocols, making the FORScan more powerful in work with these models than any regular OBD2 scanner.

For example, FORScan can detect modules which are not visible for regular OBD2 scanners, it can show you and reset trouble codes which are never displayed by OBD2 scanners. FORScan can show you PIDs which are not supported by any OBD2 scanner, and also run specific tests and service procedures. Version of FORScan for Windows can also perform configuration and programming functions. In other words, FORScan can do things that regular OBD2 scanners can not do.

Main features

Detect vehicle on-board network configuration Read and reset Diagnostic Trouble Codes from all modules (see list of supported modules) Reading of modules' sensors' data Run test diagnostic procedures Run service procedures Configuration and programming functions (only in FORScan for Windows, require Extended License)

AUX18L Auxiliary and Start/Stop Battery, by East Penn

good 12v battery replacement vid

We used the Remy 12V Battery AUX18L

In the US it's important to know that you can use the: Energizer TX24HL AGM Motorcycle and ATV 12V Battery​ as a replacement for the 12 volt. It costs $105 at Amazon. Its been working flawlessly since November of 2023. It may be important to note that in my 2014 the entire car went dead and I had to watch a YouTube to find the emergency hood pull. I had bought the car from a dealer in 2017 so my original 12 volt was between 7 and 9 years old. Absolutely amazing.

I’d caution slightly. This battery seems to be a different physical size than the OEM, and the terminals look different as well. I like this one, because it is a one for one replacement: https://remybattery.com/start-stop-aux18l-auxiliary-battery.html

I worked with Ohmmu to ensure that its LFP battery would work well with an i3. The i3 DC-DC converter's output voltage is ideal for an LFP battery. The 0.5V higher resting voltage of Ohmmu's LFP isn't a problem with an i3's 12V electronics because 12V components are designed work well with the 14.0+ output voltage of the DC-DC converter. The higher resting voltage and the much more flat voltage vs. charge level curve of a LFP battery means that the risk of all of the spurious DTC's being stored when the OEM battery's voltage drops too low when it fails isn't as great with a LFP battery. My Ohmmu LFP battery has been in our former 2019 and current 2021 i3's for about a year without any problems.

If your car still has its original 12 volt battery, your problems may be caused by a 12 volt battery failure. They tend to fail within 4 or 5 years, and, when they do, the car becomes completely inoperable.