Tesla is creating the largest Supercharger in New England
MarcoRP/Twitter
As Tesla’s Supercharger expansion continues, the company is opening the largest Supercharger in New England in the city of Canton, Massachusetts later this year, and it will have a Cybertruck-inspired design called “CyberCanopy.”
The Supercharger will be located at the Trillium Brewing Company off of I-93. The plans for the 20-stall charging station were presented by Tesla during the city of Canton’s planning board meeting last week.
This will be the largest the largest Supercharger station in New England, boasting 20 stalls with lights underneath the canopy. What’s more interesting is the mention of a “canopy low side,” a point that along with having the name "CyberCanopy," suggests it’s inspired by the Cybertruck design. The design choice could also help market the vehicle. There will also be Wi-Fi access that’s likely to be powered by SpaceX’s Starlink.
Solar For Supercharging
Six years ago, CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter that Supercharging stations are being “converted to solar/battery power” and will disconnect from the grid over time. Musk also said that solar is already installed at some of the Superchargers, but the full rollout needed Supercharger V3, Powerpack V2, and SolarCity, which Tesla acquired in 2016.
Supercharger V3 and Powerpack V2 have been out for some time now, and the company is even beginning to open its V4 Superchargers, but there are still very few solar canopies atop the chargers.
When Tesla unveiled plans for the first V4 Supercharger in Yuma County, Arizona, they included two 4,500-square-foot solar arrays and a Megapack. This suggested that Tesla was beginning to implement these technologies at select new stations. This further confirms suspicions with the solar arrays being installed at the Canton, Massachusetts location.
45,000 Superchargers—and Counting
Back in April, Tesla’s official “Tesla Charging” Twitter account announced they’ve activated their 45,000th Supercharger. The expansion of Tesla’s innovative charging stations is imperative as the company begins to open the charging stations to non-Tesla vehicles.
Supercharger Network Heads Towards $100 Billion Valuation
We recently reported that Tesla’s Supercharger network was on a path toward a $100 billion valuation, according to industry analysts. A major part of the valuation is due in part to the adaptation of Tesla’s NACS connector by other EV manufacturers, such as GM, Ford, Polestar, Nissan, and more.
Tesla has secured a comfortable spot in the EV charging infrastructure market. With more companies beginning to adopt Tesla’s NACS connector, the company is simplifing the charging process and making EVs more attractive to the masses.
Tesla recently showed off a demo of Optimus, its humanoid robot, walking around in moderately challenging terrain—not on a flat surface but on dirt and slopes. These things can be difficult for a humanoid robot, especially during the training cycle.
Most interestingly, Milan Kovac, VP of Engineering for Optimus, clarified what it takes to get Optimus to this stage. Let’s break down what he said.
Optimus is Blind
Optimus is getting seriously good at walking now - it can keep its balance over uneven ground - even while walking blind. Tesla is currently using just the sensors, all powered by a neural net running on the embedded computer.
Essentially, Tesla is building Optimus from the ground up, relying on as much additional data as possible while it trains vision. This is similar to how they train FSD on vehicles, using LiDAR rigs to validate the vision system’s accuracy. While Optimus doesn’t have LiDAR, it relies on all those other sensors on board, many of which will likely become simplified as vision takes over as the primary sensor.
Today, Optimus is walking blind, but it’s able to react almost instantly to changes in the terrain underneath it, even if it falls or slips.
What’s Next?
Next up, Tesla AI will be adding vision to Optimus - helping complete the neural net. Remember, Optimus runs on the same overall AI stack as FSD - in fact, Optimus uses an FSD computer and an offshoot of the FSD stack for vision-based tasks.
Milan mentions they’re planning on adding vision to help the robot plan ahead and improve its walking gait. While the zombie shuffle is iconic and a little bit amusing, getting humanoid robots to walk like humans is actually difficult.
There’s plenty more, too - including better responsiveness to velocity and direction commands and learning to fall and stand back up. Falling while protecting yourself to minimize damage is something natural to humans - but not exactly natural to something like a robot. Training it to do so is essential in keeping the robot, the environment around it, and the people it is interacting with safe.
We’re excited to see what’s coming with Optimus next because it is already getting started in some fashion in Tesla’s factories.
In a relatively surprising move, GM announced that it is realigning its autonomy strategy and prioritizing advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) over fully autonomous vehicles.
GM is effectively closing Cruise (autonomous) and focusing on its Super Cruise (ADAS) feature. The engineering teams at Cruise will join the GM teams working on Super Cruise, effectively shuttering the fully autonomous vehicle business.
End of Cruise
GM cites that “an increasingly competitive robotaxi market” and “considerable time and resources” are required for scaling the business to a profitable level. Essentially - they’re unable to keep up with competitors at current funding and research levels, putting them further and further behind.
Cruise has been offering driverless rides in several cities, using HD mapping of cities alongside vehicles equipped with a dazzling array of over 40 sensors. That means that each cruise vehicle is essentially a massive investment and does not turn a profit while collecting data to work towards Autonomy.
Cruise has definitely been on the back burner for a while, and a quick glance at their website - since it's still up for now - shows the last time they officially released any sort of major news packet was back in 2019.
Competition is Killer
Their current direct competitor - Waymo, is funded by Google, which maintains a direct interest in ensuring they have a play in the AI and autonomy space.
Interestingly, this news comes just a month after Tesla’s We, Robot event, where they showed off the Cybercab and the Robotaxi network, as well as plans to begin deployment of the network and Unsupervised FSD sometime in 2025. Tesla is already in talks with some cities in California and Texas to launch Robotaxi in 2025.
GM Admits Tesla Has the Right Strategy
As part of the business call following the announcement, GM admitted that Tesla’s end-to-end and Vision-based approach towards autonomy is the right strategy. While they say Cruise started down that path, they’re putting aside their goals towards fully autonomous vehicles for now and focusing on introducing that tech in Super Cruise instead.
NEWS: GM just admitted that @Tesla’s end-to-end approach to autonomy is the right strategy.
“That’s where the industry is pivoting. Cruise had already started making headway down that path. We are moving to a foundation model and end-to-end approach going forward.” pic.twitter.com/ACs5SFKUc3
With GM now focusing on Super Cruise, they’ll put aside autonomy and instead focus solely on ADAS features to relieve driver stress and improve safety. While those are positive goals that will benefit all road users, full autonomy is really the key to removing the massive impact that vehicle accidents have on society today.
In addition, Super Cruise is extremely limited, cannot brake for traffic controls, and doesn’t work in adverse conditions - even rain. It can only function when lane markings are clear, there are no construction zones, and there is a functional web connection.
The final key to the picture is that the vehicle has to be on an HD-mapped and compatible highway - essentially locking Super Cruise to wherever GM has time to spend mapping, rather than being functional anywhere in a general sense, like FSD or Autopilot.
Others Impressed - Licensing FSD
Interestingly, some other manufacturers have also weighed into the demise of Cruise. BMW, in a now-deleted post, said that a demo of Tesla’s FSD is “very impressive.” There’s a distinct chance that BMW and other manufacturers are looking to see what Tesla does next.
BMW chimes in on a now-deleted post. The Internet is forever, BMW!
Not a Tesla App
It seems that FSD has caught their eyes after We, Robot - and that the demonstrations of FSD V13.2 online seem to be the pivot point. At the 2024 Shareholder Meeting earlier in the year, Elon shared the fact that several manufacturers had reached out, looking to understand what was required to license FSD from Tesla.
There is a good chance 2025 will be the year we’ll see announcements of the adoption of FSD by legacy manufacturers - similar to how we saw the surprise announcements of the adoption of the NACS charging standard.
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