Category: Tesla

At Tesla’s highly anticipated “We, Robot” event, the company introduced its much-awaited Robotaxi, a two-seater designed exclusively for driverless operations. However, the real surprise of the night was the reveal of an autonomous van, dubbed the “Robovan,” capable of carrying 20 passengers or handling cargo for various commercial purposes.

While the event was expected to focus on the Robotaxi and offer updates on Optimus, Tesla’s humanoid robot, the autonomous van stole the spotlight. The Robotaxis were showcased in action, transporting attendees around the Warner Bros. studio lot, and Optimus robots served drinks and distributed goodie bags. But the Robovan’s debut, though somewhat unexpected, offered a glimpse of Tesla’s broader ambitions for driverless mass transit and logistics.

If you’re drawn to the bold, angular design of the Tesla Cybertruck and its reputation for toughness, then the Zeal Motor Fat Truck 2.8C currently up for grabs on Bring A Trailer might just pique your interest. While it may not outpace a Porsche 911 while towing another Porsche 911 like its electric counterpart, the Fat Truck boasts its own set of impressive features.

Seating up to eight passengers comfortably, this rugged vehicle comes equipped with an external roll cage and monstrous 1640×640 Fat Truck low-pressure tires, complete with a central tire inflation system designed to conquer both land and water terrains with ease.

Many critics of electric vehicle (EV) technology have often raised concerns about the potential limitations of range. However, recent advancements in charging infrastructure and battery technology have substantially mitigated these concerns. Now, Tesla’s Semi truck is poised to further alleviate these apprehensions.

In an independent study conducted by the North American Council for Freight Efficiency (NACFE), a Tesla Semi achieved an extraordinary distance of 1,076 miles over a 24-hour period. This remarkable feat was accomplished during the 18-day “Run On Less” program organized by the NACFE and required only three charging stops, with two of those stops taking less than 45 minutes, as reported by Freight Carbon Zero.

CATL, renowned for its cutting-edge battery technology, continues to assert its dominance as the world’s largest lithium-ion battery manufacturer. With a relentless focus on innovation and sustainability, CATL has played a pivotal role in the electric vehicle (EV) ecosystem, supplying batteries to industry giants like Tesla.

Recently, CATL unveiled a groundbreaking lithium-ion phosphate battery poised to redefine EV performance standards. This innovative technology promises to add approximately 400 kilometers (about 249 miles) of range in a mere 10-minute charge, enabling electric vehicles to travel over 700 kilometers (around 435 miles) on a single charge. These impressive figures represent a monumental leap in battery technology, with far-reaching implications not only for Tesla but the entire EV industry.

In a recent video posted by the official Tesla Optimus account, Tesla’s humanoid robot, Optimus, has demonstrated significant progress. The video showcases Optimus operating on the same end-to-end neural network used in Tesla’s cars, enabling it to process video input and generate control output.

The video commences with Optimus, also known as the Tesla Bot, performing a self-calibration routine, a crucial step in adapting to new environments. It highlights how Optimus utilizes its vision and joint position sensors to accurately determine the position of its limbs in space, entirely independent of external feedback. This capability empowers Optimus to interact with objects and execute tasks with precision and dexterity.

Tesla’s new cluster will employ 10,000 Nvidia H100 compute GPUs, which will offer a peak performance of 340 FP64 PFLOPS for technical computing and 39.58 INT8 ExaFLOPS for AI applications. In fact, Tesla’s 340 FP64 PFLOPS is higher than 304 FP64 PFLOPS offered by Leonardo, the world’s fourth highest-performing supercomputer. With its new supercomputer, Tesla is significantly enhancing its computing capabilities to train its full self-driving (FSD) technology faster than ever. This could not only make Tesla more competitive than other automakers but will make the company the owner of one of the world’s fastest supercomputers.

“Due to real-world video training, we may have the largest training datasets in the world, hot tier cache capacity beyond 200PB — orders of magnitudes more than LLMs,” explained Tim Zaman, AI Infra & AI Platform Engineering Manager at Tesla. While the new H100-based cluster is set to dramatically improve Tesla’s training speed, Nvidia is struggling to meet demand for these GPUs. As a result, Tesla is investing over $1 billion to develop its own supercomputer, Dojo, which is built on custom-designed, highly optimized system-on-chips. 

Tesla has made a strategic move by acquiring a German company with a specialization in wireless charging technologies. While the exact financial details remain undisclosed, it is widely believed that the acquisition of Wiferion was valued at approximately $76 million, as indicated in Tesla’s recent earnings report under ‘Business Combinations’. This acquisition signifies Tesla’s commitment to further enhancing its electric vehicle (EV) offerings and expanding its capabilities in the field of wireless charging.

While neither Tesla nor Wiferion have publicly commented on the deal, signs of the acquisition are evident through changes on Wiferion’s website, which now states that it is part of ‘Tesla Engineering Germany GmbH’. The German Commercial Registry has also reflected updates, indicating a shift in focus towards “products and services in the field of power electronics and other technical disciplines to support the advancement of electric vehicles and stationary energy storage systems and devices.”

PepsiCo has offered an insightful look into the innovative utilization of its Tesla Semi electric trucks through a captivating video, offering a glimpse into the future landscape of trucking. With Tesla’s electric semitrucks still in limited production, PepsiCo stands at the forefront of embracing this transformative technology, especially evident at its solar-powered, electrified Sacramento facility.

The majority of PepsiCo’s 21 Tesla Semi electric trucks are actively deployed for deliveries within a 100-mile radius, often involving multiple stops. These remarkable vehicles operate efficiently for up to 12 hours per day, exemplifying the practicality and reliability of electric trucking.

Tesla Inc is determined to make significant strides in the world of supercomputing, with CEO Elon Musk revealing the company’s ambitious plan to invest more than US$1 billion into its Project Dojo by the end of 2024.

During a conference call with investors, Musk explained that Project Dojo involves the development of an in-house supercomputer specifically designed to handle vast amounts of data, including the extensive video footage captured by Tesla cars. This data is crucial for the advancement of autonomous driving software.

In its second-quarter earnings report for 2023, Tesla revealed its ambitious plan to address vehicle autonomy at scale with four key technology pillars: an extensive real-world dataset, neural net training, vehicle hardware, and vehicle software. Notably, the electric vehicle manufacturer asserted its commitment to developing each of these pillars in-house. A significant milestone in this endeavor was announced as Tesla started the production of its custom-built Dojo training computer, a critical component in achieving faster and more cost-effective neural net training.

While Tesla already possesses one of the world’s most potent Nvidia GPU-based supercomputers, the Dojo supercomputer takes a different approach by utilizing chips specifically designed by Tesla. Back in 2019, Tesla CEO Elon Musk christened this project as “Dojo,” envisioning it as an exceptionally powerful training computer. He claimed that Dojo would be capable of performing an exaflop, or one quintillion (10^18) floating-point operations per second, an astounding level of computational power. To put it into perspective, performing one calculation every second on a one exaFLOP computer system would take over 31 billion years, as reported by Network World.

Tesla’s humanoid robot, aptly named “Optimus,” capable of tackling unsafe, repetitive, or tedious tasks, has made its way to the company’s retail stores in North America and China. The move comes as Tesla aims to boost customer engagement and improve store performance.

After generating significant attention at an AI expo in China, Tesla saw an opportunity to leverage Optimus as a marketing gimmick to drive interest in its electric vehicles. The company’s retail stores in North America have faced some challenges in performance compared to their counterparts in China. Installing Optimus is one of the initiatives aimed at invigorating customer interactions and enhancing the overall shopping experience.

Tesla’s supremacy in the electric vehicle (EV) market continues to expand, encompassing not only vehicle production but also EV-related infrastructure. Recently, both GM and Ford announced plans for their EVs to be compatible with Tesla chargers, solidifying Tesla’s position as a leader in the charging network space.

Tesla’s foray into the charging business was originally unintentional. The ongoing debate about charging infrastructure prompted Tesla to construct its own network, not with the aim of generating profit but rather to assure buyers that they could travel across the country without concerns of running out of power.