As those who have followed him for many years already know, Elon Musk is a perpetual fountain of groundbreaking ideas.
From his vision of colonizing Mars with SpaceX to his promise that Teslas (TSLA) will one day drive themselves and earn money for their owners, Musk is a pied piper of technological wonder, so it’s no wonder he has a legion of doe-eyed fans that hang on his every word.
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Musk’s charisma made Tesla a wildly successful company and got more people behind the wheels of electric vehicles than ever before in automotive history.
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But after aligning himself with Donald Trump after the president’s win in late 2024, Musk’s reputation took a major hit. And after leaving the administration to try to recover Tesla as the company sustained intense losses, Musk engaged in a still-ongoing mudslinging contest with Trump.
It may be one of the reasons Musk hoped to forge an alliance with a major carmaker — and one that could have been a terrific boon for Tesla when it really needed a boost.
Licensing Tesla’s tech
Back in 2023, Elon Musk talked about Tesla’s autonomous driving technology, Autopilot and Full Self Driving (FSD), saying he would be willing to license it to other automakers.
During Tesla’s Q4 earnings call, Musk also said he had been in talks with several companies to do just that, although he did not name any of the companies.
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Now, Ford (F) CEO Jim Farley has spoken up and said Ford was one of those companies, but that he chose not to go with Tesla because he believed that Waymo had better tech.
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During an appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival last week, Farley said that he had had conversations with Musk, but the thing that made him favor Waymo was its use of Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR), a technology that uses laser lights to measure distances. Tesla does not use LiDAR.
While Farley acknowledged that both companies had made major headway on self-driving, he also said that Ford considered LiDAR to be crucial to the tech’s functionality, saying, “where the camera will be completely blinded, the LiDAR system will see exactly what’s in front of you.”
Tesla continues to draw criticism, skeptics
Musk finally launched his much-hyped Robotaxi in Austin in June, despite lawmakers pushing to put the brakes on the event until September.
While Musk glowed about the event the day after on X, boasting about what a success it had been, videos quickly surfaced of the Robotaxis making mistakes, including one where it drove in the wrong lane for five seconds.
This naturally led to more criticism from those who noticed that Tesla only opened the event to Tesla superfans and held it in a small geofenced area, where it would not encounter any major traffic challenges.
Tesla also announced more lackluster news on July 2 with 384,122 vehicles delivered in Q2, as compared to 443,956 in Q2 2024.
While the number is up 14.1% from its Q1 total, it still shows that Musk has a lot of work to do. And instead of focusing his energy on beefing with President Trump about the Big Beautiful Bill, he might want to turn his attention to his struggling EV company.
Related: Forget Tesla, Ford is eyeing even bigger EV rivals
