Remember NFTs? This was an early attempt to use the blockchain to create valuable works of art. It was an interesting, sci-fi sort of idea that was undermined by both functional concerns (digital images are hard to “own”) and the sad fact that most of the art was terrible. This didn’t stop someone from paying as much as $69 million for one.
The theme of today’s Morning Dump news round-up is that I’m kind of over it. Tesla released its earnings report and did its investor call yesterday, and the quick takeaway is that the company made a little more in revenue, but somewhat predictably earned a lot less from that revenue. Was the call entirely focused on short-term fixes for this? Nope. But CEO Elon Musk did talk about who should be in control of his “robot army.”
You know the company most likely to take a big bite out of Tesla in the United States? It’s probably GM. I know that sounds a little crazy, but the company is going to market relatively soon with LIDAR-equipped cars, and I think this is a very big deal.
Would you believe that Volvo is kinda heading in the right direction? The troubled Swedish automaker seems to have (at least temporarily) reversed some of its fortunes. Can Stellantis change its trajectory? Our old pal Carlos Taveres has some feelings about it!
Elon Musk Explains You Can Use Multiple Slurp Juices On A Single Ape
I usually listen live to the Tesla quarterly investor call or, if I’m otherwise engaged, shortly thereafter. This quarter, I wasn’t as interested, as the actual quarterly report kinda said everything I needed to understand.
Tesla made more money than expected, largely on the backs of big sales ahead of the sunsetting of the EV tax credit. At the same time, earnings were down. The company did generate a huge free cash flow for the quarter of nearly $4 billion, though I’m curious to see if that trend magically reverses itself next quarter.
My plan was to read through the call when I saw this headline from Wired: “Elon Musk Wants ‘Strong Influence’ Over the ‘Robot Army’ He’s Building.”
Ok, so it’s going to be another one of those calls. Wired provides a good explanation of what’s happening here, claiming it’s related to Musk trying to get a potential trillion-dollar payday:
Musk has also made it clear that he wants to get paid, a lot. In November, Tesla shareholders will vote on the board’s proposal to pay the CEO a remarkable $1 trillion over the next decade. The deal would also increase Musk’s stake in Tesla from 13 percent to a quarter. But Musk would only get that big figure—and the extra control—if he hits a series of ambitious metrics, including 20 million vehicles delivered, 1 million robotaxis in commercial operation, and an $8.5 trillion valuation. And also, 1 million Optimus humanoid robots delivered.
On a call with investors on Wednesday, Musk locked on to that last point to make his most threatening argument for a gigantic payday yet. “My fundamental concern with regard to how much voting control I have at Tesla is, if I go ahead and build this enormous robot army, can I just be ousted at some point in the future?” he said. “If we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over this robot army? Not control, but a strong influence … I don’t feel comfortable building that robot army unless I have a strong influence.”
This may be political, and David may remove it, but I don’t think anyone should have a trillion dollars or a robot army. Also, I think humanoid robots are kind of stupid. I fear this is like the Cybertruck, where the idea is much more interesting than the actual product, and the market just ends up being smaller than expected.
I’m not anti-tech. Roboticization is real, AI is real, ADAS is real, and all of it is important. Tesla seems to have a lot of advantages here, but the overall story of Tesla is a company that continues to promise a lot of things and not deliver them. [Ed Note: I don’t think that’s the overall story. I think the overall story of Tesla is that it built world-beating EVs/infrastructure that literally revolutionized the car world. Also it promised a bunch of stuff it either didn’t deliver or was late on. -DT].
AI and robots will replace all jobs.
Working will be optional, like growing your own vegetables, instead of buying them from the store.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 21, 2025
Just this week Musk promised that AI and robots would “replace all jobs.” Maybe! That’s a future that is very appealing to people who think they’ll get to be historically rich from building AI and robots and, at the same time, are deeply uncomfortable with actual human people.
You can read through the rest of the transcript to see there’s a lot less addressing some of Tesla’s core issues, and a lot more talk about all the things that will happen, eventually, someday…
It’s all becoming a just a little boring to me. All the promises. All the talk of a utopia that sounds increasingly like the opposite. It’s settling into a drone and persistent echo that rings a lot like “slurp juices” to my ears.
GM Could Beat Tesla To A Self-Driving Experience I’ll Trust
There’s a split in the world of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) between people who think everything can be done with cameras and people who think you need advanced sensors like LIDAR.
I am firmly in the LIDAR camp. Cameras and basic ultrasonic sensors, radar, and super-precise GPS can return an experience that’s quite good as a sort of advanced cruise control. This is what GM’s SuperCruise does well.
Waymo, Volvo, and many Chinese automakers have turned to LIDAR-supported systems as the future for an experience that’s more like true self-driving.
GM announced last night that this is exactly where the company is going, starting in 2028 with the Cadillac IQ, which will get “eyes-off driving” on the vehicle for highways.
From a GM press release:
Unlike vision-only systems, GM’s approach is built on redundancy with lidar, radar, and cameras integrated into the vehicle’s design. At the core is sensor fusion: the lidar, radar, and cameras build the perception layer; real-world driving data trains the decision-making model; and high-fidelity simulation validates performance across rare or hazardous scenarios. This provides a safe, reliable, and highly capable eyes-off autonomous system.
GM’s foundation in Super Cruise proves that this kind of complex driver-assist technology can scale safely. Since its debut in 2017, Super Cruise has expanded to 23 vehicle models, enabling more than 700 million hands-free miles with zero reported crashes attributed to the system.
The other big feature is “conversational AI,” which is something that’s becoming more popular in China, where consumers are using a lot more voice activation to solve HMI issues.
Volvo Is Kind Of Killing It Right Now
If you’ve gotten this far and are yearning for a Butlerian Jihad, then this next joke will appeal to you. Hakan Samuelsson, the automotive CEO who sounds most like a character who was actually around for the Butlerian Jihad, has a reason to celebrate.
The Volvo leader retired from the company, only to be dragged back to help save it from the abyss. His big strategy was just to cool everyone’s jets and cut back on employees. That’s not a long-term strategy, but it seems to have worked great in the short-term.
Volvo Cars, based in Sweden but majority-owned by China’s Geely Holding (GEELY.UL), said it made an operating profit before one-off costs of 5.9 billion Swedish crowns ($627 million) in July-September, soaring above analysts’ consensus forecast of 1.6 billion crowns, according to Bernstein.
This was despite a 7% drop in sales, with fully electric cars still accounting for less than a quarter of the total.
Volvo Cars shares were up 32% at 0842 GMT, on track for one of their strongest daily performances on record and returning to levels not seen since July 2024.
Volvo is weirdly in a decent position because it has a factory in the United States that exports cars. It sounds like the plan is to use it for more domestic production of hybrids, which makes sense.
Ex-Stellantis Boss Says He Sees Company Being Broken Up In The Future
Ex-Stellantis CEO Carlos Taveras, pictured above, is back in the news. He’s got a new book out (it’s only in French currently) that can be translated to “A Captain in the Storm,” which is hilarious given that I’d argue he actively steered his ship further into a tempest.
Oh well. Someone at Bloomberg read it and pulled this little bit out:
Carlos Tavares, in a new book, says that the group’s French, Italian and US operations might have to go their separate ways if the maker of Jeep sport utility vehicles and Fiat cars fails to withstand pressures from various stakeholders in its home bases.
Within Stellantis, “I am worried that the three-way balance between Italy, France and the US will break,” Tavares said in a book published Thursday in France. The group’s survival as a standalone company will depend on management paying attention to unity “every day” given the risk of being pulled in multiple directions.
Tavares seems to be complimentary of his successor, Antonio Filosa, but added this:
“With me gone, I am not sure that the French interests that I always had at heart — whether you believe it or not — will be as well defended,” Tavares said in the book.
Never change, Carlos!
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Sudan Archives is back with a very club-inflected album called The BPM. The song “A Bug’s Life” is a good entry and feels like a very throwback ’90s electronic song, layered with the artist’s energetic violin playing. I dig it.
The Big Question
What is your experience with ADAS systems? Do you have a car with one? Have you driven a car with one? Have you never even used cruise control?
Top photo: Tesla/The Boring Company
I’ve used basic cruise control on some long interstate drives, but probably not for more than a few minutes in the past decade or two (I don’t drive long distances much anymore). I’ve sat in Teslas while they’re self-driving, and I’m impressed that it works at all to the extent that it does (we didn’t rear-end an ambulance or tow truck at 70 MPH) but I remained a bit nervous the entire time.
If I ever buy a newer car of any kind where some semi/self-driving is an optional extra, I will decline (let alone spend $10,000.+ or whatever Tesla charges for FSD now) preferring instead to drive the car myself, even though I’m aging. I’ve been using computers almost constantly since 1978, and they’re good for all sorts of things, but I don’t feel like trusting one with my own life, let alone the lives of others.
At this point, Elon is either just delusional or pumping his stock because that’s all he has left. Optimus is such a joke. It would have been much easier to just make the semi, model 2 and roadster and actually have a shot at being a real car company. Now it’s just a joke.