Waymo Starts Testing in Minneapolis

Waymo has begun supervised testing in Minneapolis and is preparing a path to rider service through winter validation, city feedback, and new Minnesota rules.https://wilwaldon.com

Tesla shareholders approved Elon Musk's $1.2 trillion compensation package despite a Delaware court ruling it illegal, as Chinese competitors sell EVs for $10,000 and Tesla pivots from cars to humanoid robots. We examine why the board gave Musk the largest pay deal in history, how Chinese automakers threaten Tesla's survival, and why Musk demands 25% voting control or threatens to build his AI empire elsewhere.https://wilwaldon.com

Tesla says its Optimus robot could perform surgery in the future; this episode breaks down what Optimus can do now, what changes by 2026, the regulatory steps between a demo and a medical device, and why the manufacturing plan matters for investors and patients.

The Starship system is a fully reusable, two‑stage‑to‑orbit super heavy‑lift launch vehicle under development by SpaceX. The system is composed of a booster stage named Super Heavy and a second stage, also called "Starship"

Waymo now offers fully driverless Level 4 robotaxi rides on freeways in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix, and it connects San Francisco to San Jose with curbside pickup at SJC. This expansion enables faster airport trips and cross metro rides without a safety driver and brings autonomous service to everyday commuter use cases.Learn how highway driving, availability, safety protocols, pricing pressure, and competition from Uber, Tesla, and Zoox will shape self driving car adoption in 2025 across California and Arizona. Keywords to help discovery include robotaxi, autonomous vehicles, driverless rides, freeway routes, airport pickup, SJC, SF to San Jose, LA, Phoenix, reliability, and scale.

Tesla's Cybercab production start is scheduled for April 2026, with production expected to begin at Gigafactory Texas. This timeline was announced by CEO Elon Musk at the company's annual shareholders meeting, which also included images of the pilot production line for the fully autonomous, two-seat vehicle. Timeline: Production is expected to start in April 2026.Location: The Cybercab will be produced at Gigafactory Texas.Vehicle details: The Cybercab is designed for full autonomy, without pedals or a steering wheel, and is optimized to minimize the cost per mile of operation.Production goal: Tesla aims for high-volume production, with a goal of producing millions of Cybercabs annually once multiple factories reach full capacity. 

A general purpose, bi-pedal, autonomous humanoid robot capable of performing unsafe, repetitive or boring tasks. Achieving that end goal requires building the software stacks that enable balance, navigation, perception and interaction with the physical world.

With the scale of Starship and the technological breakthroughs it is engineered to achieve, SpaceX is moving at a historically rapid pace. Starship provides unmatched capability to explore the Moon, thanks to its large size and ability to refill propellant in space. One single Starship has a pressurized habitable volume of more than 600 cubic meters, which is roughly two-thirds the pressurized volume of the entire International Space Station, and is complete with a cabin that can be scaled for large numbers of explorers and dual airlocks for surface exploration. For comparison: each of Starship’s two airlocks have a habitable volume of approximately 13 cubic meters, which is more than double the space that was available in the Apollo lander. Cargo variants of the Starship lander will be capable of landing up to 100 metric tons directly on the surface, including large payloads like unpressurized rovers, pressurized rovers, nuclear reactors, and lunar habitats.To return Americans to the Moon, SpaceX aligned Starship development along two paths: development of the core Starship system and supporting infrastructure, including production facilities, test facilities, and launch sites — which SpaceX is self-funding representing over 90% of system costs — and development of the HLS-specific Starship configuration, which leverages and modifies the core vehicle capability to support NASA’s requirements for landing crew on and returning them from the Moon. SpaceX is working under a fixed-price contract with NASA, ensuring that the company is only paid after the successful completion of progress milestones, and American taxpayers are not on the hook for increased SpaceX costs. SpaceX provides significant insight to NASA at every stage of the development process along both paths, including access to flight data from missions not funded under the HLS contract.Both pathways are necessary and made possible by SpaceX’s substantial self-investments to enable the high-rate production, launch, and test of Starship for missions to the Moon and other purposes. Starship will bring the United States back to the Moon before any other nation and it will enable sustainable lunar operations by being fully and rapidly reusable, cost-effective, and capable of high frequency lunar missions with more than 100 tons of cargo capacity.

Tesla 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting | Tesla

NASA Artemis 2 Mission 2025 explores the first crewed Artemis flight, the Orion spacecraft, the Space Launch System rocket, the Moon mission timeline, the astronaut crew, and NASA’s plan to return humans to the Moon for the first time since Apollo 17. This episode covers the Artemis 2 launch date, the mission objectives, the flight profile, the lunar flyby trajectory, and the crew training updates. We break down the NASA Artemis program, the Artemis 1 results, and how Artemis 2 prepares for Artemis 3 and the future lunar landing.Learn about the Orion capsule systems, the SLS Block 1 rocket performance, the crew safety systems, the mission milestones, and NASA’s deep space exploration goals. Hear detailed analysis of the Artemis 2 astronauts, including Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen, and discover how their historic lunar orbit mission advances human spaceflight.This episode also explores the NASA Artemis timeline updates, the Starship lunar lander integration, the Gateway lunar station plans, and international collaboration through ESA, CSA, and JAXA. Get expert commentary on the Artemis 2 mission risks, the Moon return strategy, the spaceflight technology, and NASA’s roadmap for Mars exploration.