Tech

Tesla reveals two Robotaxi crashes involving teleoperators

Published

17 hours ago

May 15, 2026

Tesla Robotaxis have crashed at least twice since July 2025 while a teleoperator was remotely driving the vehicles, according to newly unredacted information submitted to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Both crashes happened in Austin, Texas and occurred at low speeds. In each case, there was a safety monitor behind the wheel and no passengers were onboard.

The new information comes just a few months after Tesla told lawmakers that it allows remote operators to pilot one of the company’s vehicles as long as they stay under 10 miles per hour. “This capability enables Tesla to promptly move a vehicle that may be in a compromising position, thereby mitigating the need to wait for a first responder or Tesla field representative to manually recover the vehicle,” the company said at the time.

Tesla, like other companies working on autonomous vehicle technology, is required to submit detailed information about any crashes to NHTSA. Unlike most of those other companies, though, Tesla had always redacted the descriptions of its crashes, claiming they were confidential business information.

It’s not clear why, but Tesla changed course this week, and the latest version of the data released by NHTSA now provides a narrative description for all 17 crashes Tesla has recorded since last year with its nascent Robotaxi network.

In July 2025, shortly after Tesla first started operating the network in Austin, the company’s automated driving system (ADS) apparently had trouble moving forward while stopped on a street. The safety monitor requested help from Tesla’s remote assistance team, and a teleoperator “took over vehicle control and gradually increased vehicle speed and turned the Tesla ADS left toward the left side of the street.”

The teleoperator then drove “up the curb and made contact with a metal fence.”

A similar sequence played out in January 2026. The Tesla ADS was driving the vehicle straight on a street, when the safety monitor “requested support to assist with vehicle navigation.”

“The teleoperator took over vehicle control when the ADS was stopped and proceeded straight on the street. The Tesla vehicle made contact with a temporary barricade fora. construction site at approximately 9MPH, scraping the front-left fender and tire,” according to the data submitted to NHTSA.

Similar to other autonomous vehicle companies like Waymo, most of the other newly unredacted crashes involve Tesla Robotaxi vehicles being crashed into instead of causing crashes.

But at least two of them involve a Tesla Robotaxi clipping its mirrors on other vehicles. In one crash, from September 2025, the Tesla ADS was unable to avoid hitting a dog that ran into the street. (Tesla reported the dog was able to run away.)

In another September 2025 crash, a Tesla Robotaxi made an unprotected left turn into a parking lot and ran into a metal chain. (NHTSA recently closed an investigation into the occasional tendency of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software to crash into parking lot bollards, chains, and gates. Waymo also issued a recall last year related to a similar problem.)

While other robotaxi companies like Waymo and Zoox have reported more crashes than Tesla, Elon Musk’s company is operating at a fraction of the scale. The details that were revealed this week in the newly un-redacted data may help explain why Tesla is scaling up its nascent autonomous ride-hailing network so slowly. Musk himself admitted last month that “making sure things are completely safe” is the biggest limiting factor to Tesla expanding the network, saying the company is being “very cautious.”

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Tech

ChromeOS Flex Kit Is Sold Out: 5 Alternatives for Old Windows 10 PCs

Published

4 hours ago

May 16, 2026

qasimgillani

Google’s $3 ChromeOS Flex kit sold out. Here are five lightweight operating system alternatives for older Windows 10 PCs.

The post ChromeOS Flex Kit Is Sold Out: 5 Alternatives for Old Windows 10 PCs appeared first on TechRepublic.

Tech

Vibe Coding Cheat Sheet: Tools, Prompts, Security Tips, and More

Published

4 hours ago

May 16, 2026

qasimgillani

This vibe coding cheat sheet explains how plain-language prompts can build apps fast, plus the planning, testing, and security checks needed.

The post Vibe Coding Cheat Sheet: Tools, Prompts, Security Tips, and More appeared first on TechRepublic.

Tech

General Catalyst posted VC rage bait and it worked, especially on a16z

Published

14 hours ago

May 15, 2026

qasimgillani

One of the most entertaining moments in VC this week was a piece of rage-bait marketing from General Catalyst.

In a now-viral post on X that parodies the old Mac vs. PC commercials, the venture firm — better known as GC — posted a “VC vs GC” video on Wednesday. The VC was played by a tall actor in a baggy shirt and vest with a distinctly large, bald head — an apparent dig at Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen. (But the real Andreessen never looks that disheveled).

The GC character was played by a man with a thick head of dark hair, white kicks and a tendency to stare deeply into the camera. He was clearly supposed to represent actor Justin Long’s cooler, “hipper” Mac character from the original commercials, in contrast to John Hodgman’s straight-laced “square” PC persona.

GC asks VC about his robotic dog.

VC explains “This is Woof AI” and then extols the virtues of the artificial companion (you don’t need to walk it or break the news to the kids when it dies!) and declares “you’ll never want a real dog after this.” VC mentions that his firm is leading the seed round and pitches GC to join the cap table.

GC explains how people like real dogs and remarks, “I’d love to hear more, but we actually have a really high bar around responsibility for these things.”

Then VC kicks the AI dog and the dog chases him off the screen. The post has now been viewed 2.4 million times with hundreds of shares and comments, and thousands of likes.

I’d have to read so far between the lines that I’d be off the page and peering into another book to unpack this, but I’ll try anyway. The message, roughly: other VCs, and a16z in particular, will fund anything. GC won’t. (I asked about this. GC hasn’t responded.)

It’s a pointed argument if so, and not entirely without basis. Andreessen’s firm frequently invests in companies that are considered controversial, like the surveillance startup Flock Safety, AI notetaker Cluely, and Adam Neumann’s Flow. But the same measure could just as easily be applied to General Catalyst. GC’s portfolio includes Anduril, Percepta, and Polymarket.

My own takeaway is that GC wanted to show an a16z-type character kicking a dog, without anyone actually kicking an actual dog because that would be a major problem.

Many of the comments on the video seemed to find the video, and the choice to post it, cringe. Plenty liked and loved it, too.

Compulsive X user Andreessen himself couldn’t resist responding, many, many times. He said it made GC look “smarmy,” and said “Stay tuned for our upcoming ad campaign, ‘We’re the VC who doesn’t sneer at your idea.'” He kept going from there. My personal favorite was: “The thing they got right is the relative heights.”

As others noted, you know you’ve hit the right rage bait when the target takes it.

There were plenty of a16z partners and staffers who came to Andreessen’s defense, too. So much so that their reactions drew lots of comments. My personal favorite in this category was from VSC Ventures VC Jay Kapoor: “GC vs. A16Z beef is like Kendrick vs. Drake for people who know what a 409A valuation is.”

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