Sometime next week, NASA's newest rover on Mars, Perseverance, will set a record for the most distance driven by any vehicle on another world.

The automobile-sized rover, which landed on Mars in February 2021, will traverse beyond 45.16 km (28.06 miles) across the Martian surface. In doing so it will break the previous distance record held by the long-lived Opportunity rover, which ceased communications with NASA in 2018.

So how did Perseverance reach this record-setting distance in just a third of the time?

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Sometime next week, NASA's newest rover on Mars, Perseverance, will set a record for the most distance driven by any vehicle on another world.

The automobile-sized rover, which landed on Mars in February 2021, will traverse beyond 45.16 km (28.06 miles) across the Martian surface. In doing so it will break the previous distance record held by the long-lived Opportunity rover, which ceased communications with NASA in 2018.

So how did Perseverance reach this record-setting distance in just a third of the time?

Read full article

Comments

A police department in Parker, Colorado, pulled over a Tesla going 64 mph in a 45 mph zone whose driver insisted they weren’t responsible, because the car was running “Full Self-Driving.”

Of course, Tesla will never take responsibility for that incident, but the frustrating part is that Tesla already has the solution and yet it refuses to implement it.

Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov laid out the clearest technical case yet for why cameras alone can’t take a self-driving system to full autonomy, arguing that “weak sensing” hits a safety ceiling long before it reaches superhuman performance.

He never said the word Tesla. But camera-only is Tesla’s entire bet, and this was a direct shot at it.

A growing number of Tesla owners running the new Full Self-Driving v14 “Lite” build on Hardware 3 (HW3) vehicles are reporting Autopilot computer overheating alerts — and, in some cases, outright computer failures.

The reports have stacked up in the two weeks since Tesla pushed v14 Lite to wide release, and four owners have contacted Electrek directly about the same problem.

A former Tesla manager who ran the company’s “Full Self-Driving” test fleet in Houston says the operation was so understaffed that its cars became “rolling hazards on public streets,” according to a lawsuit.

The manager, Javier Medrano, filed the wrongful-termination complaint in Houston federal court, and its contents were reported this week. He oversaw the fleet before Tesla launched its driverless “Robotaxi” in the city.

Elon Musk says Tesla expects to have self-driving working on the Tesla Semi “probably around the end of this year or early next year.”

Going by Tesla’s record on self-driving deadlines, it is: their jobs are safe for a long time.

Elon Musk was asked directly on Tesla’s Q2 2026 earnings call whether the company still plans to upgrade Hardware 3 (HW3) cars so they can run its latest “Full Self-Driving” software. His answer made one thing clear: Tesla still has no concrete plan.

Instead of committing to a fix, Musk floated a grab-bag of options and timelines — none of them firm — for the millions of vehicles Tesla sold with the promise that they had “all the hardware necessary” for self-driving.

France’s Transport Minister, Philippe Tabarot, says the country won’t authorize Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” (Supervised) “as it currently stands,” pointing to two safety problems: the system lets drivers speed, and it doesn’t keep them attentive enough in cities.

But this isn’t France slamming the door on Tesla. It’s France refusing to rubber-stamp the Netherlands’ national approval and holding out for a proper EU-wide sign-off.

Tesla reported 207 crashes involving its driver-assist systems in a single month — the most it has ever logged. The figure comes from Tesla’s own crash reports to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

The record month lands as Tesla pushes Full Self-Driving harder than ever, and as the company continues to redact nearly every detail of what actually happened in these crashes.

NHTSA is now demanding a Tesla internal document titled “Radar Saves Us” as part of its investigation into “Full Self-Driving” crashes in low-visibility conditions.

The request is buried in a new 24-part information demand sent to Tesla on July 2, and it points the probe straight at the decision that started all of this: Tesla removing radar from its cars.

I got a speeding ticket this weekend while using Tesla’s Full Self-Driving. The car was driving itself in Standard mode on FSD when it took me up to 78 km/h in a 50 km/h zone.

A police officer coming the other way clocked me on radar and pulled me over on the spot. I’d turned FSD on less than two minutes earlier.

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier is asking a federal appeals court to wipe out the $243 million verdict a Miami jury handed Tesla over a fatal Autopilot crash.

The attorneys general of Alabama and Georgia joined the July 9 brief, which asks the 11th Circuit to throw out the judgment entirely — or, failing that, cut the $200 million punitive award down to three times compensatory damages.

Tesla shareholders have flooded the company’s Q2 2026 earnings Q&A portal with questions, and the most-upvoted ones tell a bleak story: retail investors are now demanding that Elon Musk explain why the company keeps missing its own short-term goals.

The tone has shifted from asking about Tesla’s grand vision to asking why almost none of it is showing up on schedule — on robotaxi, “Full Self-Driving,” and Optimus.

Tesla says “Cybercab employee rides at Giga Texas” are “starting soon” — its first stated step toward putting people inside the wheel-less, pedal-less robotaxi.

But the announcement, spread across two Tesla accounts and roughly 2.9 million combined views, is thinner than it sounds. It’s not clear whether Tesla means Cybercabs running a real ride service in Austin or simply driving employees around a factory parking lot.

The family of a 76-year-old woman killed when a Tesla Model 3 crashed into her Katy, Texas, home has sued Tesla and the driver, alleging the company’s “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” systems are defectively designed.

The wrongful death suit lands just days after the crash — and it leans on the same argument that produced last year’s landmark $243 million Autopilot verdict against Tesla in Florida.

Tesla now confirms that its self-driving system was engaged when a Model 3 left a residential road in Katy, Texas, and killed a 76-year-old woman inside her home — but the company says the driver overrode it by pressing the accelerator to 100%.

Everything points to a pedal misapplication while the car was under “Full Self-Driving.” Does that mean Tesla is not at fault?

Federal safety regulators are now investigating the fatal Tesla crash in Katy, Texas, where a Model 3 left a residential road, tore through a brick home, and killed a 76-year-old woman inside.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Monday it is examining the June 20 crash, after the driver told deputies his Tesla was on Autopilot at the moment of impact.

A driver told Harris County investigators that his Tesla was on Autopilot before it left a residential road in Katy, Texas, crashed through the brick wall of a home, and killed a 76-year-old woman inside.

The crash happened around 8 p.m. Friday in the 21300 block of Rose Hollow Lane, according to the Harris County Precinct 5 Constable’s Office and the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.

The Dutch collective claim against Tesla over broken “Full Self-Driving” promises on Hardware 3 vehicles has reached nearly 7,000 verified participants and secured backing from law firm Kennedy Van der Laan for a formal legal action.

The initiative, which launched in April with 3,000 signups in its first week, is now preparing to transfer the case to a foundation that will pursue the claim on behalf of all participants under Dutch collective action law.