Episode #1272: Uber drops $100M to power up its autonomous future., Tesla’s first Cybercab rolls off the line with no wheel and no pedals — but is FSD ready? Meanwhile, the U.S. military airlifts a next-gen mini nuclear reactor.
- Uber is doubling down on autonomy with a $100M bet on charging infrastructure, aiming to lock in self-driving scale before competitors do. As Tesla, Waymo, and others race for robotaxi dominance, Uber wants to own the backbone.
- Uber will invest over $100M to build DC fast-charging hubs at autonomous depots and high-traffic “pit stop” locations.
- Initial rollout hits the Bay Area, LA, and Dallas before expanding nationwide.
- Uber is partnering globally with EVgo, Electra, Ionity, and others through “utilization guarantee agreements” to accelerate charger deployment.
- Tesla’s first Cybercab has rolled off the line at Gigafactory Texas — a purpose-built robotaxi with no steering wheel, no pedals, and no human fallback. It’s the purest expression yet of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving vision… and its biggest bet.
- Cybercab depends entirely on Tesla’s FSD software — the same system currently powering its Austin and San Francisco robotaxi pilots.
- In Austin, that fleet has logged roughly one crash every 57,000 miles, compared to Tesla’s own cited human average of 229,000 miles per crash — raising real questions about Cybercab readiness.
- Musk says Tesla needs 10 billion miles of data to achieve safe unsupervised driving, a threshold projected around mid-2026 — before additional training, validation, and debugging.
The U.S. military just airlifted a next-generation mini nuclear reactor to Utah — the first time a modern modular reactor has flown on a military aircraft. It’s part of a broader push to fast-track advanced nuclear for national security and grid resilience.
- Three C-17s transported Valar Atomics’ unfueled Ward 250 reactor to Hill Air Force Base for testing.
- The system will begin testing at 250 kilowatts and can scale to 5 megawatts — enough to power roughly 5,000 homes.
- As Utah Gov. Spencer Cox put it: “Energy is not just an economic issue… it is a national security issue as well.”
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