Welcome to the Ride AI Newsletter, your weekly digest of important events and new developments at the intersection of technology and transportation.

In case you missed it, the first Ride AI summit is coming to LA on April 2nd. Early bird tickets are now available at 66% off, so grab yours while they last. Interested in sponsoring? Fill out our sponsorship form to get involved. Have a great speaker in mind or want to take the stage yourself? We’d love to hear from you here.

What You Need to Know Today

A new IIHS study finds that, despite its driver-assist tech’s vaunted reputation for safety, Tesla has the highest fatal accident rate of any car brand.

Related: A new job listing reveals Tesla may be building a teleoperations team. The move suggests Elon Musk is both serious about deploying robotaxis on public roads and overstating the extent to which those robotaxis will be able to drive autonomously without human intervention.

Also Tesla just released its self-driving parking tech in Europe and the Middle East, which allows users to summon their cars through an app from nearby parking spots. It’s a neat feature, but because of strict AV regulations in Europe, you would basically need to be standing right next to your car for it to work over there. (Here’s how it works in the US.)

Does Uber want a piece of Pony? Rumor has it that the US ride-hail giant will buy $10M of the Chinese AV startup’s shares at IPO, prompting speculation that the two firms are plotting a global partnership.

Singapore is welcoming more AV experiments to overcome the challenges of labor shortages and land scarcity. “While on-road trials in Singapore began in 2015, the pace has picked up recently, and this year has been particularly eventful. Authorities have greenlit self-driving robot sweepers for street cleaning and AVs to transport goods for FairPrice, the country’s largest supermarket chain. Changi Airport kicked off a two-year trial in July to test autonomous buses to ferry workers, while an all-terrain self-driving vehicle began delivering feed at the bird park.”

New BMWs and Minis are driving themselves off the assembly line in Germany, using BMW’s Automated Driving In-Plant system.

Pickle Robot, a robotics company specializing in truck unloading, has raised $50M in Series B funding. The round was led by Teradyne Robotics Ventures.

Related: Teleo, a construction robotics startup, has raised a combined $16.2M in a pair of extensions to its Series A round. Both rounds were led by UP.Partners.

May Mobility is demo’ing its driverless shuttle service in its second city, Anne Arbor, MI. This is a rare AV deployment in a city that sees significant annual snowfall, so it will be interesting to see how the company’s self-driving minivans fare in inclement weather.

Revv, an AI-driven platform for optimizing automotive ADAS repair and diagnostics, has raised $20M in funding. Led by Left Lane.

Cruise is issuing an update to improve the way its robotaxis interact with first responders.

The XPeng P7+ electric coupe, a cheaper rival to Tesla’s Model 3 that has similar ADAS functionality, is now on sale in China with a $26,000 starting price. The automaker pledges Europe is next.

Waymo rolled out a fun new feature that allows passengers to see other Waymo vehicles on its dashboard display.

As the Biden era comes to a close, Stanford’s Cyberlaw blog has an extremely helpful primer on the state of federal AV policy.

Gen Alpha might not just skip drivers licenses, they might skip strollers too. This toddler in China rides around his city on a robotic dog.

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