AI is dramatically lowering the cost of building software. That expands the pool of potential founders and accelerates experimentation—but it also erodes one of the historical sources of startup defensibility: the difficulty of building the product itself.

The result is a shift in the startup bottleneck from technical execution to judgment.

The central question is no longer simply: Can this team build it?

‍They are increasingly: ‍

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Until next week,

Steve Greenfield
General Partner
Automotive Ventures

General Motors and Ford have lost more market share in the United States than any other automakers ‌so far this year as buyers prioritize fuel efficiency amid high gas prices, an industry forecast shows. Ford’s vehicle sales are expected to drop 8.8% through the first three quarters of the year, according to a forecast released Thursday from Cox Automotive Inc. That would knock Ford’s market share down ​nearly a full percentage point, to 12.5%. GM’s U.S. vehicle sales pace also is trailing the broader industry, expected to ​decline 6.2% year-to-date through September 30, Cox projects. The firm estimates GM will finish the quarter ⁠with a 16.7% market share, down from 17.4% a year earlier. Those would be the two steepest market-share declines among 13 ​car companies tracked by Cox, according to its quarterly forecast. | Reuters ($)

Building a car company from “zero is pretty hard,” RJ Scaringe likes to say. He founded Rivian, a buzzy electric vehicle start-up, in 2009 but delivering the firm’s first trucks and S.U.V.s would take a dozen years. Developing the second model came easier than the first. At every turn during a recent tour of Rivian’s sprawling seven-million-square-foot complex in Normal, Ill., a roughly two-hour drive south of Chicago, employees pointed out the ways that they streamlined the manufacturing process. More than 400 robots in the body shop help with the early stages of assembly, such as welding together thick metal sheets. Rivian also built in-house tech systems that help workers communicate more efficiently. | The New York Times ($)

As Europe feels compelled to commit hundreds of billions to ramp up defence spending in the face of the menace from Russia and U.S. reluctance to be Europe's protector, car makers that are under commercial attack from Chinese rivals have taken notice. So can the rearmament of Europe save an auto industry and a supply chain facing crisis? Ford Motor Company is hoping that a pivot towards military vehicles can help fill the void created by what the company's UK boss calls the most challenging environment since the invention of the motor car. Once mighty, the European car industry is starting to look puny and is hoping surging defence budgets as Europe re-arms can help it flex its industrial muscles once more. | BBC ($)

For decades, car collecting has been a hobby largely by and for baby boomers, whose tastes have favored chrome, fins and strapping muscle cars from the 1950s and ’60s. But later generations are entering their peak earning years, and with cash to spend on a hobby, they have their own ideas about what defines a classic car. While values are climbing, 1980s and ’90s models are still relatively affordable. Head-turning cars like the 1995 Mazda RX-7, 1992 Nissan 300ZX, 1984 Porsche 944 and 1987 Ford Mustang can all be had for $25,000 or less, according to Hagerty data. Drivability is another factor for these younger enthusiasts. While cars from the RADwood era are generally less powerful, they are also smaller and lighter and have better steering and brakes. Driving one can still be an event, but it’s less of a nail-biter. | The New York Times ($)

The saga of the second-generation Tesla Roadster is practically worthy of its own book at this point—or at least, it might be, if the story had reached a satisfying place to wrap things up. The car that was first teased back in 2017 has seen its actual debut pushed back repeatedly in the years since, with company representatives keeping hope alive by dropping occasional breadcrumbs about it in interviews and on social media. Earlier this month, Tesla promised that the new Roadster will finally, actually, for real this time, be unveiled on October 1. And to show just how serious the company is, it’s reopened the reservation list for anyone who wants the new electric sports car ... and has $50,000 they’re willing to put down ahead of time. For the record, as Tesla’s own Roadster reservation page spells out, only $5,000 of that has to be sent to the company today via credit card payment. The remaining balance of $45,000 must then be issued via wire transfer within 10 days, so if you were hoping to rack up a ton of credit card points on this reservation, tough luck. The deposit is refundable, but as the likes of Sam Altman and Marques Brownlee have pointed out, getting your Roadster money back hasn’t always been easy. | Road&Track

Demand for new cars in the U.S. is stagnant, and the incumbent automakers are largely content selling larger, more expensive vehicles. Many affordability-minded consumers are left stranded. That’s where Chinese competitors could make a real difference. They appear to have genuinely advanced the technological frontier of making cars more efficiently, and American buyers should be allowed to reap those cost savings. If the U.S. had banned foreign automakers in the past for protectionist reasons, many of the most affordable options available to Americans today wouldn’t exist. On Car and Driver Magazine’s 2026 list of most affordable cars, for example, the top 12 are all from foreign brands. | The Washington Post ($)

The automobile sector once represented American industrial might, but it’s now emblematic of something else: Beijing’s campaign to deindustrialize the rest of the world. Chinese companies are dumping cheap vehicles abroad to capture market share from North American and European rivals. And Washington is making the problem worse. The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement was supposed to defend the North American market against China. But when the agreement’s mandatory six-year review began this summer, the Trump administration declined to extend the current deal and instead continued separate bilateral talks with Canada and Mexico. The U.S. hasn’t reached a trade deal with Mexico, and U.S.-Canada talks have devolved into tit-for-tat tariffs. That division helps Beijing. Washington squabbling with Ottawa and Mexico City won’t protect anyone’s automobile industries. If the three nations want to stop China, they have a narrow window to agree on a common position: The only Chinese vehicles and auto parts allowed into their borders should be those built in North America. | The Washington Post ($)

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his entourage are not converging on Washington DC this week to sip tea. Nor to hear about President Trump’s plans for the White House State Ballroom. No, they are coming to pounce on an unexpected opening, one that would render America ever more vulnerable to the whims of its most dangerous rival. President Trump himself gave a strong hint about what’s in play during an interview with Fox News last week: “If China wanted to come in and open a plant to build their cars here, Trump said, “I’d be okay with that.” Okay with that? If Donald Trump opens the door, China will quickly overwhelm America’s auto industry, just as it is now ravaging Europe. | Dunne Insights

In the absence of domestic mass-volume car manufacturers, the UK has been a relatively open market for new Chinese entrants without the heavy tariffs seen in the EU and the U.S. Chinese brands have collectively taken a 16 percent share of the UK’s new car market this year, up from 7.8 percent the year before and surpassing Japanese carmakers for the first time, data from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) showed. Many of the newer Chinese cars from BYD and Jaecoo are either plug-in hybrids or electric vehicles with their sales helping to accelerate the UK’s switch away from internal combustion engines to reach its legally binding climate targets. The Chinese cars’ appeal to budget-conscious UK buyers is boosted by being equipped with advanced software and coming with cheap financing deals as well as extended warranties on batteries. | Financial Times ($)

China’s electric grid has a dirty secret: Despite leading the world in renewable energy expansion, it is also the largest emitter of the planet’s most potent greenhouse gas. Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6) is a synthetic chemical that plays a critical role as an electrical insulator in high-voltage equipment. The gas is odorless, invisible, non-toxic and non-flammable. But it is also a climate killer, 24,300 times more effective at warming the planet than carbon dioxide on a pound-for-pound basis. Once released, sulfur hexafluoride remains in the atmosphere for 1,000 years. Emissions come primarily from the electric power sector, where the gas is used in circuit breakers and other high-voltage equipment to prevent electricity from arcing. Nearly indestructible, SF6 serves as a critical backstop for any modern electric grid, ensuring that electricity flows only when and where it is needed. However, when electrical equipment in China reaches the end of its useful life, much of the gas is likely vented into the atmosphere. | Inside Climate News

Car software that does much of the work of driving is becoming more capable by the week. But, strangely enough, the better the technology becomes at steering, braking and navigating, the riskier it may be at least some of the time. Experts call it automation complacency. In other words, drivers may overestimate what the technology can do and become so reliant on it that they stop paying attention and are unprepared when something goes wrong. Most automakers are working on systems that, under certain conditions, steer and brake. Their ultimate aim is to sell fully autonomous vehicles that can act as robot chauffeurs so good that passengers will be able to read, work or fall asleep. | The New York Times ($)

Waymo’s latest batch of self-reported data continues to affirm the company’s message that its driverless cars are safer than human drivers. As policymakers continue to debate the safety and economic impact of autonomous vehicles, Waymo is hoping that its own data will help bring more supporters to its side — even as some experts say the data fails to capture the non-crash traffic disruptions caused by its robotaxis. Waymo said it examined 271 million driverless miles in five cities through the end of June, which is 50 million more miles than its last safety report. The total number of miles driven across Atlanta, Austin, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco-Bay Area is the equivalent of over “300 human lifetimes behind the wheel,” assuming every human drives the equivalent of 850,000 miles in their lifetime. The company plans to update its online safety hub to reflect the new driving figures. Waymo’s mileage seems like a lot, but it's still a drop in the bucket compared to the 3 trillion miles driven by humans in the US every year. So there’s still a pretty big gap when trying to draw comparisons between robot-driven vehicles and humans. | The Verge ($)

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) signed a cooperative agreement with SAE International to launch A2SCEND, a three-year, $5 million consortium whose data is intended to inform the first federal performance standard for automated driving systems. Formal execution of the cooperative agreement now sets the project in motion. A2SCEND — Advancing America’s Safety and Competitiveness for the Evolution of National Deployments — will bring together government and industry experts to develop measurable driving competencies for autonomous vehicles and repeatable methods to assess them. | EV

U.S. manufacturers installed roughly 38,500 industrial robots in 2025, a year in which they simultaneously cut more than 100,000 human jobs. Installations of industrial robots in the US grew by 12% last year, making it the second-largest market globally, according to data released Thursday from the International Federation of Robotics. The U.S. still trails well behind China, which installed more than 350,000 industrial robots last year, and on a density basis — measured as the number of robots per worker — the country is still more middle of the pack. But there’s been a notable acceleration in the U.S. embrace of automation in the past few years, and it’s no coincidence that this is happening during a push to make more stuff at home. Faced with a succession of supply-chain disruptions, from Covid to geopolitical turmoil and climate shocks, the world has collectively woken up to the fact that extreme outsourcing was a bad idea. But domestic manufacturing is complicated, in no small part because companies continue to say they can’t find enough people to work in U.S. factories. | Bloomberg ($)

Tesla has ramped up production of its Optimus humanoid robot roughly tenfold in recent months, but the company is still struggling to manufacture the machines reliably at scale. Its production lines are grappling with problems involving the robot’s intricate hands, automated equipment and supplier constraints, according to people familiar with the project. Last month, Tesla produced several hundred robots a week, up from a few dozen robots per week during the second quarter when the company was doing small batch testing for production, according to two people familiar with the work. Managers have told staffers the company wants to set up a continuous automated production line capable of producing more than a thousand robots a week by the end of the year, the people said. That is still far short of its eventual plan to produce around 20,000 a week. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has repeatedly characterized Optimus as the company’s most important product—pitching the humanoid robot as likely to take over everything from manufacturing and data center upkeep to everyday tasks like cooking and cleaning. Tesla primarily earns its revenue through vehicle sales, but Musk has said Optimus will help Tesla pivot further into becoming an AI company. | The Information ($)

Boston Dynamics officially opened its robotics center at Hyundai’s electric vehicle production site outside of Savannah, Georgia, marking the next step on its journey to deploy humanoids and other robots across the automaker’s operations. Boston Dynamics, which became a wholly owned subsidiary of Hyundai in July, is training the robots to take over repetitive parts sequencing and heavy-lifting tasks over the next few years, as well as component assembly by 2030. The company said it plans to begin exploring use cases for Atlas in other industry sectors next year. Hyundai initially plans to deploy 25,000 Atlas units across its global plants, including Kia factories, over the next few years. The automaker also said it will establish a U.S. facility capable of producing 30,000 robots per year. A location was not disclosed. | Wards Auto

Amazon’s investments in robotics, which date to its $775 million acquisition of Kiva Systems in 2012, have put it at the center of a debate around how automation and artificial intelligence will affect workers, including its own workforce of more than 1.5 million. The company says its investments in robots to sort, lift and move packages have created high-paying, skilled jobs and reduced the rate of recordable workplace injuries by more than 40%. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

Traffic to news sites is plummeting in the U.S. as tech giants shift users from search and social sites to AI interfaces. That dynamic is forcing digital publishers to pivot faster than many are prepared, driving layoffs and consolidation. Stopgap efforts to slow the decline are costly and unsustainable. | Axios ($)

The first casualty of war is truth. But a reliable GPS signal comes a close second. Jamming signals from a global navigation satellite system (GNSS), such as America’s GPS, is so easy it has become common when the shooting starts. Stronger signals from newer kit can make jamming harder, but the potential scale of the threat now looks much greater than previously thought. A paper posted in June by a team led by Todd Humphreys of The University of Texas at Austin traced scores of broad GPS disruptions across Europe and elsewhere since 2019 to a constellation of Russian satellites. Jamming or even inadvertent interference from space, the research suggests, could affect an entire continent. One alternative to GNSS is simply to mount cameras on a craft and use software to keep track of the terrain below. But that only works over land, and can be stymied by cloud cover, haze or darkness. So two other, quite different, methods are under investigation. One employs quantum phenomena—the angular momentum of photons and the spin of electrons—to follow magnetic maps of Earth’s surface (this is the approach of Automotive Ventures portfolio company Dirac Labs). The other establishes an observer’s position by tapping ambient radio waves broadcast for other purposes. Neither method can yet match the precision of GNSS, but both are becoming credible backups. | The Economist ($)

Richardson, TX city officials gave Amazon zoning approval to start drone delivery service in December as part of the company’s nascent Prime Air program. It promises customers tens of thousands of items — nail trimmers for pets, ankle bracelets, handcrafted, razor-tipped bread lames for scoring sourdough — in as little as 30 minutes. The delivery could be free or cost up to $4.99. The Federal Aviation Administration, which governs U.S. airspace, gave Amazon clearance to fly its drones. Now many other parts of the United States can expect their own drone deliveries, a welcome convenience for some, but an invasion for others. Last month, Amazon announced that Prime Air deliveries would expand to 500 towns and cities by the end of the year. Other companies are also using drone deliveries, and the F.A.A. has forecast that by 2030 the number could explode to more than 3.5 million, up from the current number of 897,000 registered drones. | The New York Times ($)

There’s a very good chance you’ve seen this famous image of three iterations of SpaceX’s Raptor rocket engine. The Raptor engine was developed for SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft (the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy use the Merlin engine); it was first test-fired in 2016, first flew on Starhopper in 2019, and first flew on a Starship prototype in 2020 and on the full Starship stack in 2023. Since then, it’s continued to improve, going from the tangle of pipes and wires you can see on the Raptor 1 to the smooth, streamlined design of the Raptor 3, which first flew in May of this year. The evolution is so dramatic that many folks initially believed that it wasn’t real; Tory Bruno, the then-CEO of space launch company United Launch Alliance, tweeted that there was “no need to exaggerate this by showing a partially assembled engine,” which was followed by SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell tweeting a picture of the Raptor 3 firing successfully. | Construction Physics

Our Automotive Ventures “Car of the Week”: a 1990 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.5-16 Evolution II. | Bring a Trailer

📢 Steve discusses the current state of the automotive industry: why the traditional dealership BDC model could become obsolete within five years due to voice AI, how dealers can capture revenue from older vehicles in operation amid a K-shaped economy, and what global competition from Chinese OEMs means for long-term dealership strategy. | Virginia Automobile Dealers Association (VADA)

EPIC | Streamline your loan payoff to lien release process to deliver improved cash flow and maximize profit opportunity from faster turnarounds. | EPIC

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