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By Joseph White, Global Automotive Correspondent

Greetings from the Motor City!

I spent roughly six hours yesterday making a drive to and from Northern Ohio that should have taken half that time. It made me wonder about the future of automated driving as envisioned by Elon Musk.

On the plus side, I saw the total eclipse of the Sun, which lived up to the hype.

On the less good side, I saw parts of Ohio and Michigan I had never visited, and ideally never will again. The AI route mapper in my phone sent me through subdivisions and then out into the swampy farm country west of Lake Erie as it hunted (unsuccessfully) for faster paths around the multi-mile traffic jam on the freeway between Toledo and home.

While traveling at zero miles per hour with my fellow eclipse hunters, I wondered how the electric robotaxi Elon Musk promised to unveil in August would have handled this trip?

The 150-mile round trip distance is within the range of a Tesla. Check. But could my automated car have managed the meandering route – including stretches well off main highways – forced by the insane eclipse traffic?

What about the last-minute decision to visit a Lake Erie beach – not programmed into the trip at the start? How would I have ordered that up – since I didn’t start out knowing where to go?

Would my robotaxi have understood if my traveling companion suddenly jumped out of the car to walk a dog next to a line of traffic? A passenger in the Lexus SUV stuck behind me did that. (She and the dog had no trouble keeping up with the car.)

If we had seen a coffee shop on the drive, we would have pulled in – another unprogrammed stop. But I wouldn’t pre-program my car to stop at Starbucks – the easy robotaxi option. I never liked their coffee.

Our journey ended safe and sound.  Where the race to automate road trips of the future will wind up is just one of the subjects for today’s review of the news from the World of Cars.

Don’t forget your special glasses! Here we go –

Today –

• • Tesla settles an automated driving lawsuit 

  • China EV sales growth slows

  • Ferrari’s careful battery play

A Baidu robotaxi in China. REUTERS/David Kirton 

Tesla avoided a trial this week that could have exposed more of the internal debate about its automated driving systems. The company did not release terms of its settlement with the family of Apple engineer Walter Huang, who drove his Tesla into a highway barrier while on Autopilot.

The settlement’s timing is the key. With Tesla sales and share price declining, Elon Musk is now trying to redirect attention to an event on Aug. 8 when he promises to reveal a new generation of Tesla vehicles that will be fully automated, for real.

Tesla’s current “Full Self Driving” technology is not a fully automated driving system. It requires drivers to pay attention and be ready to re-take control. Regulators continue to investigate whether the system’s design is safe.

Musk’s decision to park an affordable EV project and hit the gas on robotaxis comes as rivals in China are gearing up to mass produce automated vehicles by next year.

U.S. robotaxi ventures such as Cruise have been slowed by safety, regulatory and funding setbacks. In China, would-be automated vehicle producers are charging ahead, backed by the government. They are hoovering up powerful chips and software from Nvidia and Chinese tech giants.

BYD and other Chinese EV makers are no longer just pursuing a price war to take electric car market share. They are challenging Tesla for pre-eminence in a world where a lot of transport may be delivered as a service, powered by AI.

Headed to a market near you. Reuters/Joseph White

Electric vehicle sales in China rose by 10.5% in March, capping off the slowest quarterly growth in Chinese EV sales in a year.

The positive take: EV sales are still growing at roughly twice the pace of the overall Chinese market in a challenging macro-economic environment.

The bear take: Chinese EV sales are edging toward a single-digit growth pace despite government stimulus efforts and aggressive price cutting and sales promotions from the leading names in the sector – BYD and Tesla.

The lackluster EV sales report coincided with a visit to Europe by China’s commerce minister, Wang Wentao, whose talking points included assurances that Western governments had no basis for fears that Chinese EV makers planned to dump the EVs they cannot sell at home into overseas markets.

Your battery delivers 1,000-km range? Prove it. REUTERS/ Flavio Lo Scalzo  

Ferrari, with sales of 14,000 vehicles a year, has no hope of getting a volume discount on EV batteries or becoming a viable battery maker.

But CEO Benedetto Vigna is investing in making Ferrari a better informed customer for battery producers. A research center backed by Ferrari and chipmaker NXP at Italy’s Bologna University is part of that effort.

Other automakers have made similar investments as a defense against battery producers selling them what Vigna called “black boxes” – batteries with chemistry and costs the automaker does not understand. Automakers, like geopolitical adversaries, want to “trust, but verify.”

Lucid outperformed Tesla on Tuesday by reporting Q1 deliveries that exceeded expectations. The outperformance was off a very low base. Analysts expected Lucid to deliver 1,745 vehicles during the quarter. With the help of price cuts, Lucid actually handed over 1,967 of its premium sedans. Whether that resulted in a narrower loss will be revealed on May 6.

Toyota is putting its scandal-rocked Daihatsu mini-car affiliate on a shorter leash, the better to avoid more reputation-denting revelations from an operation that contributes little to the overall bottom line.

Hyundai-Kia will work with India’s Exide to produce lithium-iron EV batteries in India. Hyundai has outlined a $2.4 billion plan to expand EV sales in the world’s most-populous nation.

Volkswagen’s CEO said the German automaker cannot keep up in the Chinese EV market, and will avoid setting “utopian goals” for its share of the world’s largest market. VW, once a leader in China, has lost roughly 1 million vehicles per year in sales in China since 2019 and is looking at deep cost cuts in its Chinese ventures.

U.S. regulators fined South Korean battery maker SK On for worker safety violations at a U.S. battery plant in Georgia that supplies Ford and Volkswagen. Worker safety is a top issue for United Auto Workers organizers trying to convince U.S. battery plant workers to join the union.

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