The oldest rail line in the western U.S. has gone electric, but data released suggest the old one used more fuel than giving each rider a Hummer. How can that be solved?

A short term partnership will help both companies learn. But the question of a long-term partnership is much more complex.

Waymo says it's new 6th generation driver has significantly reduced cost. A robotaxi can end up cheaper than a regular car. Here's a list what it doesn't need.

To my various Republican and conservative friends, it's time to talk about Donald Trump. In particular it's time for hard thinking on whether, for the sake of the GOP and conservatism, it's past time to cut him loose. Not for any of the arguments made by your leftie friends, but because it's the right thing for you. It's also time to leave the sinking ship.

Tesla doesn't have robotaxi software yet, and it's done almost nothing on robotaxi logistics. But it might be able to launch early with a cheaper, greener Uber style ride.

In the young Olympic event of "speed climbing," Sam Watson (USA) set two new world records, breaking his own previous world record. For that, he got the Bronze medal. The reason he did relates to some concepts I have been mulling over about what makes a good spectator event. The Olympics are the rare time when a whole bunch of sports that are generally relatively obscure become big-audience, big-advertising events. Spectator sports are sports as entertainment, but they are also still athletic.

Making a working self-driving car is hard, but there's a ton more to do to open a robotaxi service area. Here's an outline of the surprisingly long list of things.

A few days ago, I wrote about Olympics Streaming and the challenge of quickly navigating around streaming/downloaded sports programs with typical streaming or cloud DVR services.

I tend to make heavy use of "jump" buttons which skip forward or back amounts like 10, 15, 30 or 120 seconds. With a local disk DVR (and some very good streaming ones) this is done with super fast response time and a live preview, so it's easy to move around a program to what you want.

I cut the TV cord many years ago, and watch everything streaming or downloaded. When it comes to sports, though, particularly the Olympics, streaming and Cloud DVR don't remotely cut it, and so I record the over-the-air broadcast to a local disk using open source DVR software, and watch from my local disk, sometimes delayed just a few minutes to an hour from "live."

Robotaxis may not look like old-school cars. What will be their key innovative features, and what is Tesla likely to show in their October concept reveal?

Canceling the Origin is a sad moment for Cruise, but it's the right decision on their path to rebirth. Get the software right, then do the hardware.

Some plan fleets of robotaxis. Others, like Tesla may expect private owners to hire out their cars into networks, like Ubers they don't have to drive. Which is best?

In election season, we regularly see references in the USA to "The popular vote" as well as nationwide polls comparing presidential candidates. These are self-destructive, and ideally should be curtailed.

A busy pedestrian city core is common in Europe, and the jewel of any city, but US cities rarely make it work. Cars are banned but they also bring in pedestrians

The market's upset that Tesla may delay their robotaxi reveal, but the truth is they are many years away from having a production robotaxi

If Tesla FSD-S does get that good, will it trigger "automation complacency" and create a danger?

Manhattan's plan to charge up to $15 to drive downtown won't happen, but there are better, more high tech ways to do it.

Tesla FSD has learned some antisocial behavior. But what if self-driving systems work together to make a more cooperative and social road?

It's time to radically scale back the postal service, by banning the mailing, on paper, of computer files.

The US Postal Service delivers 44% of the mail in the world. 127B total pieces of mail, plus packages, and 46B pieces of first class mail (down from 103B at the peak) of which 13B are "single piece" first class mail with a stamp. That's a lot of trees and a lot of energy.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Agency is investigating 31 incidents involving the robotaxi company s vehicles.