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Tesla may push the boundaries of automotive technology but its production process is a bit of a mess. In a recent initial quality survey from JD Power and Associates, Tesla customers reported 250 build defects (misaligned body panels, shoddy paintwork, things of that nature) per 100 vehicles. The national average is around 166 defects per 100 vehicles. But hey, at least you can spend $3,000 on an autopilot feature that probably won’t crash you headlong into a highway median divider. Probably.

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Pickups have grown to monstrous proportions in recent years — effectively becoming gussied up SUVs with open air trunks — often at the direct expense of their gas mileage. However, Ford is looking to move its pickup lineup to greener pastures with its 2021 F-150 hybrid. Its 3.5L twin-turbocharged V6 pairs with a 35kWh electric motor to deliver a whopping 700 mile range between fill ups. It’s still not the most environmentally friendly transportation option out there, but it will hold us over until Ford releases the all-electric version it’s been developing.

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And once Ford does release its fully-electric F-150 pickup, you’ll be able to drive that sweet ride clear across the country thanks to Electrify America’s efforts. The company has just completed a nation-wide EV charging network which will allow drivers to run from LA clear through to Washington DC. Next year’s Gumball Rally is going to wild.

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When not gobbling down naming rights to as-of-yet unbuilt hockey arenas, Amazon is spending big bucks on self-driving car technology. Last week the internet retail behemoth snapped up Zoox, an autonomous automotive startup, to the tune of $1.2 billion dollars.

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When you gotta go, you gotta go — even when you’re outside the bounds of Earth’s gravity. But rather than fight with the current evacuatory system NASA employs (those hoses go where?), the space agency is calling on the public for ideas to better relieve yourself while in orbit. The winning submission will earn $35,000, though there’s no word if you can trade that prize money for the equivalent value in TP.

A key part of the negotiations reportedly revolved around Amazon’s commitment to continuing investment in the company. Zoox will reportedly operate independently from Amazon much as Twitch does.

Zoox has nearly 1,000 employees and has been working on a self-driving “bi-directional” vehicle with no steering wheel or defined front and back end. With that design, it could drive in either direction and quickly reverse course if stuck on a narrow street, for instance. That kind of feature would be greatly helpful in cities both for ride-hailing and delivery services.

Zoox planned to launch its own robotaxi service in 2020, but had to push those plans forward as its software wasn’t ready. To date, Waymo is the only company operating a driverless services (in suburban Phoenix), but has said that doing so in crowded metropolitan areas would be more difficult by “orders of magnitude.”

That’s been a very common theme in the self-driving industry. We expected to see fully autonomous (Level 5) driverless cars by now, but there still aren’t even any Level 3 vehicles that could take over for a human in certain circumstances. As it stands now, many billions have been spent on the technology but no one is really making any money off it yet. The deal could be official unveiled as early as today.

Tesla has prevailed in a key lawsuit over trade secret theft. Self-driving car startup Zoox has settled with Tesla and acknowledged that some of its new logistics recruits “were in possession of Tesla documents” that covered shipping and warehouse processes. Zoox agreed to both pay an unmentioned amount to Tesla and go through an audit to make sure no employees were holding on to or using Tesla data.

The autonomous driving field has been fiercely competitive, with frequent job swaps, acquisitions and allegations of trade secret theft — see the drama between Waymo and Uber as an example. Zoox alone had over 100 ex-Tesla employees as of spring 2019. It won’t be surprising if these kinds of lawsuits continue, at least until the self-driving space is relatively mature.

There are some restrictions, of course. Waymo can’t charge for these rides, and every vehicle must have a safety driver behind the wheel. Interestingly, the CPUC will allow Waymo to contract out its safety driver operations to a third party — a decision prompted by Waymo’s assessment that operating and scaling a “meaningful pilot” requires a large group of drivers who are “more efficiently engaged.” They will still go through Waymo’s proprietary driver training program.

This isn’t the first milestone for Waymo in its bid to roll out a nationwide service — the company launched its first commercial ride-hailing offering last year in Arizona, where there’s less regulatory red tape for companies to deal with. Nor is this the first permit of its kind to be issued in California — Zoox scored that accolade in December last year. Nonetheless, the news represents an important advance for Waymo’s efforts in the state, where the race is perpetually on to achieve firsts in what is essentially the tech capital of America.

According to Tesla, the four former employees violated the terms of their contracts by forwarding documents and other information from work email addresses to personal accounts. The files included inventory documents, company schematics and other proprietary pieces of information. Tesla says it caught on to the alleged scheme when one of the former employees now at Zoox mistakenly sent an email to another former Tesla employee’s old Tesla email account. The email had an attached image of an internal Tesla document, unchanged from the original but emblazoned with a Zoox logo.

Zoox, a California-based company, has staffed up with a considerable number of Tesla expats. According to Business Insider, more than 100 former Tesla employees now work at the company. It’s not uncommon for workers in the field to jump ship to competitors and things can often get ugly in the process. A similar situation occurred when an engineer left Google-owned autonomous car company Waymo to join Uber and allegedly took more than 14,000 company files with him. The case was settled without any party admitting guilt.