Happy Friday, and welcome to Critical Materials, your source for the biggest stories shaping the future of the auto industry.

Every Friday, we break down the week’s biggest EV news, keep you up to speed on the cars we’re testing, and recap must-read stories from around the web on driverless cars, batteries, charging, and more.

– Today’s email was written by Rob Stumpf and Tim Levin.

About two years after first revealing the golden, two-seat taxi, Tesla officially launched the Cybercab at a private event in Austin on Thursday.

Tesla influencers were able to take some of the first quasi-public rides in Cybercabs, which are built from the ground up to be autonomous and lack steering wheels, pedals, and mirrors. On Friday, the company says, Cybercab rides will open to the broader public—giving patrons of its Robotaxi service another vehicle option beyond the driverless Model Ys already in its fleet.

It’s undoubtedly a big moment for Tesla and for its CEO, who has been promising for over a decade that Tesla would someday deliver a gleaming, self-driving future for all. The company’s biggest fans have wasted no time taking victory laps on X. But throughout all the promises of “1 million robotaxis by 2020” and “unsupervised Full Self-Driving next year, for sure,” the competition hasn’t just waited around.

A few years ago, Tesla would’ve been early. Now it’s finding its footing in the robotaxi business as competitors make strides of their own. Consider the developments in the space from just the past week.

Amazon-owned Zoox kicked off paid rides in a quirky autonomous pod of its own last month in Las Vegas, and offers free driverless jaunts in San Francisco. This week it announced that it’s expanding testing to Houston and San Diego, laying the groundwork for robotaxi operations in more cities. Also this week, the company became the first autonomous provider to start driving to and from the Las Vegas airport. Airports are seen as cash cows for robotaxi companies, but the chaotic environment makes operating there tricky.

On Thursday, Uber and autonomous-tech partner Wayve launched what they’re calling the UK’s first autonomous rides. During this initial phase, sensor-equipped Ford Mustang Mach-Es will arrive with a driver in the front seat to monitor the system. Over time, the two companies plan to deploy autonomous vehicles on the Uber app in 12 markets. They say Tokyo is coming online later this year, with help from Nvidia. Uber has struck dozens of partnerships to deploy AVs, including one with Lucid and Nuro that’s supposed to bear fruit by the end of this year.

And we can’t forget Waymo. America’s autonomous-vehicle leader announced the start of driverless rides in three more cities this week: San Diego, Tampa, and Denver. The latter will bring a challenge Waymo has never contended with during commercial operation: rides in the snow. The news brings Waymo’s footprint to 14 U.S. cities, by far the most of any robotaxi operator. Right now everybody in the space, Tesla included, is playing catch up with Alphabet’s self-driving outfit.

Tesla is betting that it can come out on top through vertical integration and a cheaper, camera-only self-driving system that eschews the lidar and radar sensors practically all the competition uses.

In these early innings, it’s not yet clear that that approach can scale broadly. Tesla has registered 420 autonomous vehicles—including 45 Cybercabs—with the DMV in Texas, where most of its robotaxi operations take place. It’s not clear how many of those are actually in service at any given time. Waymo, meanwhile, operates over 4,000 driverless Jaguars and Zeekr vans across the country, logging some 500,000 rides per week.

If the gamble pays off, Tesla could undercut Uber, Waymo, and the rest and ride the Cybercab to robotaxi domination. Such an outcome could prove Musk’s pivot away from the traditional auto business—the Cybercab is its first all-new vehicle in years—was a sound move.

But if it doesn’t, or takes too long to pan out, Tesla risks watching rivals seize the self-driving future Musk has envisioned for so long.

-Tim Levin

The Range Rover Electric has broken cover with 333 miles of EPA range, 350 kW charging, and a starting price of about $140,000. Perhaps the biggest selling point: It looks identical to gas-powered versions. Mack and Tim discuss on this week’s Plugged-In Podcast.

EVs hit a record 98.7% market share in Norway last month. We broke down the top sellers.

Slate's affordable pickup might be coming sooner than we thought. In fact, deliveries could start as early as December, per a Business Insider report.

Thursday was the official launch of the Tesla Cybercab. We got to learn a lot about the underlying tech, but one particularly interesting hardware change is its lack of brake lines. Here's how the Cybercab actually comes to a stop.

Meanwhile, Ford is looking to launch its new sub-$30,000 Fathom EV pickup with a bang. The Blue Oval is apparently aiming to selling 100,000 units its first year, The Wall Street Journal reported. In the U.S., only Tesla has managed to sell more than 100,000 units of an EV model in a single year.

While Chinese cars begin to take on Europe and Canada, it's still too expensive to import them into the U.S. thanks to tariffs. The auto industry’s main lobbying group wants to go a step further and is asking Congress to ban China-sourced cars.

Speaking of which, Xiaomi is formally launching its siege on Europe. It’s coming to European markets, including Germany, in 2027. It’s signed on with several dealer networks to make that happen.

Battery diagnostics firm Aviloo studied the results of 500,000 EV battery health checks and published the results. After 150,000 kilometers most models evaluated had median health scores above 90%. Across various mileage milestones studied, the Hyundai Ioniq 5 came out on top. Show that to your friend who’s worried about their EV battery becoming a brick.

You may want to get in the habit of checking charging rates before you plug in. One driver was hit with a $418 charging bill after plugging in at a dealership that set its chargers to bill $5 per kilowatt-hour and $5 per minute.

We tried out Walmart's new EV charging network and it didn't exactly go as planned.

The industry is starting to go hard on battery-swapping tech. Industry giant Magna even invested $35 million into a startup that does exactly that.

Another automaker looks to bring solid state batteries closer to production. Chinese brand Chery says that it will begin real-world testing of its solid state batteries next year.

If you're traveling for Labor Day, stay on the lookout for an Ionna charger. You'll be able to nab a 50% discount for DC fast charging this weekend.

One way that automakers up-market their interiors is with the use of passenger screens. A new study by JD Power shows that more than a third of drivers have never once used the screens at all.

The Tesla Cybercab is officially live in Texas. Tesla unleashed 45 of its steering wheel-less robotaxis loose on Austin streets and starting on Friday, anybody can get a ride in one.

Toyota is planning to launch a Level 2++ driver-assistance system by 2028.

Tesla also managed to his a big milestone this week: one million miles of (actually) unsupervised self-driving.

Waymo has merch now! If I don’t get one of these tiny I-Paces in my stocking this year, I will be storming out of the living room like a child. You’ve been warned.

Thanks for reading Critical Materials. See you next week!

-Tim Levin, Senior Editor