There's always something surreal about watching Tesla roll out the future. The brand lives on big promises that (sometimes) take a while to deliver. But when Tesla does deliver? Consumers often watch on in awe and generate quite a bit of hype. What gets ignored is the fine print—until things get messy on the road. And now that federal regulators are knocking on Tesla's door while its Robotaxi launch is underway, Tesla's responses are predictably... well, Tesla.
Welcome back to Critical Materials, your daily roundup for all things electric and tech in the automotive space. In today's edition, Tesla asks the U.S. to keep its Robotaxi deployment secrets from the public eye.
Plus, USPS warns Senate Republicans that trying to strip away its EV program is a losing battle and China opens the cheap EV floodgates on Brazil. Let's jump in.
30%: Tesla Tells Feds To Stay Tight-Lipped On Robotaxi Safety Data
Tesla's small pilot fleet of driverless Robotaxis finally hit the road over the weekend, giving Tesla influencers $4.20 meme-worthy rides around Austin, Texas. And while this may be a historic moment for Tesla, it's a worrisome one for the public, especially since the automaker just told the Feds to not publicly disclose safety data.
According to a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) statement Monday, Tesla claims that all answers it provided to the agency after a round of safety-related questioning last month are "confidential business information" that could cause material harm to the automaker if made public.
Essentially, marking the answers as confidential is a way for Tesla to use Federal law to force NHTSA to withhold its answers from the public record and preclude even Freedom of Information Act requests from peeking behind the Robotaxi-shaped curtain.
Reuters explains:
On Friday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it was reviewing answers given in response to the agency's questions about the safety of its self-driving robotaxi in poor weather among numerous issues.
The agency said on Monday that Tesla was invoking a federal law that "restricts NHTSA’s ability to publicly release what the companies label as confidential." The agency added that "following an assessment of these responses and other relevant information, NHTSA will take any necessary actions to protect road safety."
NHTSA has been investigating since October collisions of Tesla vehicles using Full Self-Driving software under conditions of reduced visibility. The probe covers 2.4 million Tesla vehicles equipped with FSD technology after four reported collisions, including a 2023 fatal crash.
NHTSA noted on Monday that "the agency’s investigation into Tesla’s FSD-Supervised/Beta remains open."
First and foremost, Tesla's justification for the invocation of the protection was that the data supplied is commercially valuable.
Tesla says competitors could use information disclosed to the agency to advance their own driver-assistance and automated-driving systems—meaning that Tesla likely discloses some of the proprietary ways it uses its camera-based system in poor weather conditions. Keep in mind that Tesla is also utilizing a team of teleoperators to control its vehicles and warns that the service could be limited in inclement weather.
"Nefarious actors could also use the marked information to smear Tesla's brand for the sake of notoriety," wrote Tesla's senior regulatory counsel in the letter to NHTSA. "Absent public disclosure, access to the marked information and all of the knowledge gained from it would require significant expenditure of time and resources and very intimate knowledge about Tesla."
To be fair, Tesla has a point here. It's using proprietary tech and the autonomous-vehicle game is heating up. But it's also launching a driverless taxi service that turns the entirety of its geofenced area of operation into a giant beta test, and anyone in the vicinity has become a non-consenting participant.
If there's anything we learned from the late Cruise, it's that public trust in AVs needs to be based in transparency. Without it, the success of Robotaxis feels more like smoke and mirrors to distract from underlying undisclosed safety problems. And that could hurt the entire AV industry very quickly if something does go wrong.
60%: Scrapping USPS EV Plans Would Difficult, Waste $1.5B in Taxpayer Funding
The United States Postal Service has a simple message for a Senate looking to unwind years of progress made to modernize and electrify its fleet of delivery vehicles: Don't tread on me.
See, the Federal government—thanks to recent backpedaling of government investments in alternatively fueled cars—wants the USPS to sell off its fleet of 7,200 EVs. That includes its existing Ford e-Transits, as well as writing off the 50,000 units of the Oshkosh Defense Next-Gen Delivery Vehicles (NGDV) it has on order.
USPS warns that overturning this headway would be like lighting $1.5 billion on fire. Not only would it cost the Postal Service $1 billion to replace its current fleet of EVs, but it would also render an estimated $500 million in EV infrastructure "useless" since it has electrical lines already buried underneath pavement.
Fortunately, the Senate can't just snap its fingers and make the Postal Service comply. Here's what Reuters reports:
USPS told Congress "summarily removing all electric vehicles and charging infrastructure would hobble our ability to deliver to the American people, it would directly harm our ability to serve your constituents, and it would waste crucial funds for no reasonable purpose."
Replacing the current 7,200 electric vehicles would directly cost the Postal Service at least $450 million and USPS has also spent $540 million on electrical infrastructure upgrades "which is literally buried under parking lots, and there is no market for used charging equipment," the company added.
USPS would also face significant costs from Oshkosh for halting EV purchases under its contract. USPS said in December that purchases in 2025 would be around "50-50" EVs and gas-powered. USPS plans to buy some 66,000 electric vehicles by 2028.
Senate Republicans argued scrapping EVs would "focus USPS on delivering mail and not achieving the environmental aims pushed by the Biden administration."
The solidification of the USPS' discretion to keep course was justified when the Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough provided input to the disagreement over the weekend. According to MacDonough, if the federal government wants USPS to scrap its electrification plans, a simple majority vote in the Senate wouldn't be enough. Instead, a 60-vote supermajority vote would be needed to force the sale of the Post Office's electric fleet. Currently, Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate.
Last week, MacDonough also noted that the Biden-era emission regulations could not be overturned in the so-called Big Beautiful Bill without the same kind of supermajority vote.
USPS warned earlier this month that scrapping its EV plans would "seriously cripple [its] ability to replace an aging and obsolete delivery fleet." And honestly, from an outsider perspective, commanding USPS to ditch all of its brand new EVs while it's already lost around $100 billion since 2007 feels like the equivalent of Netflix being told it needs to go back to mailing out DVDs.
The USPS EV fleet gets to live on another day—for now at least.
90%: China Opens The Dam, Begins Flooding Brazil With Cheap EVs
China's EV stock is overflowing. Its 100-some EV manufacturers are fighting to compete in an increasingly cramped market and some brands have had to result in either forcing stock on dealers or selling new cars as used in order to prop up sales and not sit on excess inventory.
These EV makers may have figured out another way to offload its extra supply of vehicles: Sell them.
I know that seems like an obvious solution. But how exactly do you sell cars in a market that's oversaturated to begin with? Well, as BYD has figured out, you find another market to sell them in somewhere else in the world. In this case, that means shipping supplemental stock all the way to Brazil.
Automotive News reports:
BYD, the world’s top producer of electric and plug-in hybrid cars, is the largest among several Chinese brands targeting Brazil for growth. China-built vehicle imports are expected to grow nearly 40 percent this year, to about 200,000, according to Brazil’s main auto association. That would account for roughly 8 percent of total light-vehicle registrations.
Industry and labor groups say China is taking advantage of Brazil’s temporarily low tariff barriers to ramp up its exports rather than investing to build Brazilian factories and create jobs. They are lobbying Brazil’s government to accelerate by a year a plan to increase Brazil’s tariff on all EV imports to 35 percent from 10 percent, rather than gradually phasing in higher levies.
"Countries around the world started closing their doors to the Chinese, but Brazil didn't," said Aroaldo da Silva, a Mercedes-Benz production worker and president of IndustriALL Brasil, a confederation of unions across six industrial sectors. "China made use of that."
While consumers in Brazil are undoubtedly happy to have access to cheap cars, nobody in Brazil's car industry is thrilled with what's going on. In fact, the influx in Chinese EV imports is sounding an alarm echoed by local automakers, union leaders, and even government officials.
See, in 2023, Brazil cheered on BYD as it announced plans to purchase an old Ford factory to domesticate local production. It did exactly that and planned to bring the factory online by 2026. It was later accused of enabling slave-like labor conditions while construction was underway at the plant. The fate of the factory is now unclear with BYD reportedly turning away press who attempt to visit the factory and the company increasing imports significantly.
The founder of Chinese automaker Geely recently said that the auto industry is facing the very real threat of overcapacity. This theory was previously denounced by Great Wall Motors in 2024 when it was called a "fake concept." Now Chinese brands are struggling to offload cars in their home markets and are seeking out alternative countries (like Brazil) to begin launching affordable models and offset the stockpiled cars that would otherwise be sent to local dealers.
100%: Should Automakers Be Able To Keep Safety Data Secret?
I said it earlier, but I really want to reiterate this point: Consumer trust in autonomous vehicles is not only reliant on the real-world performance of the cars, but is tied directly to the transparency demonstrated by brands.
Tesla used to be fairly forthcoming with this, publishing crash data and other statistics that were crucial to proving the claim of just how "safe" its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving driver-assistance systems are compared to the human driver. But now—fighting the feds to keep safety data secret? That isn't exactly inspiring consumer confidence.
Should all AV providers be forced to share safety data both with regulatory agencies and publicly? Why or why not, and what information, if any, should be shielded? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
