Self-driving cars should be taxed to offset job losses, thinktank urges
THE SO WHAT
Calls to tax autonomous vehicles to fund displaced drivers are an early sign that AV economics will be shaped as much by policy as by hardware costs. If you’re building or deploying AV fleets, model scenarios where per-mile taxes or levies become a material line item in your unit economics.
READ THE SOURCE
MORE FROM THE WIRE
Robotics & AutonomyFCC Grants First Robotics Ban Exemption to a Robomower Company
An FCC exemption for Husqvarna’s robot mowers cracks the door on the current robotics import ban and sets a precedent others will try to follow. Hardware teams targeting the US should be mapping their products to this exemption logic now — the regulatory path may be narrower, but it’s no longer binary.
Robotics & AutonomyEurope’s first truly driverless robotaxi is running in Croatia, on Chinese software
Europe’s first fully driverless robotaxi service running in Zagreb on Chinese software — with Uber as the booking layer — shows autonomy, platforms, and geopolitics are now intertwined. City and fleet operators will have to choose not just a tech stack but a jurisdictional stack, with regulatory approval caps becoming a hard scaling constraint.
Robotics & AutonomyVideo Friday: Humanoid Robot Takes On Monkey Bars
Humanoids handling monkey bars is less about circus tricks and more about dynamic whole-body control getting closer to human-level agility. If your operations involve ladders, scaffolding, or irregular access paths, the window where “robots can’t handle this environment” was a safe assumption is starting to close.
Robotics & AutonomyThe FCC's drone ban brands ordinary consumer tech as 'military-grade', and 98.6% of respondents to the proposal reject it — even DJI’s main US-based rival Skydio won’t fully endorse it
Regulators are testing a definition of "military-grade" that sweeps in commodity sensors like LiDAR and thermal cameras — and nearly every stakeholder, including domestic rivals, is pushing back. If your stack depends on foreign-origin components, assume future rules may target capabilities, not brands, and start mapping substitution paths.