Robotaxi Sex, Zombie Fleets and AI Hackers: The Week Autonomy Got Complicated

On 1 October, Ars Technica reported that a workshop called "Love in Traffic" brought human factors and UX researchers from academia and industry together in Sweden in late September. The topic: can vehicle design stop robotaxi passengers from having sex during rides? The piece cites interviews by The San Francisco Standard with multiple people who claimed to have had sex in robotaxis run by General Motors' now-defunct Cruise service.

"There's no one to tell you, 'You can't do that,'" one man told the Standard, according to Ars.

"The interiors of vehicles has been sexualized and appropriated for sex since forever in popular culture," Alexandros Rouchitsas, a human factors and UX researcher and one of the workshop organizers, told Ars Technica. He pointed to the removal of the social obligation to interact with a human driver as one reason riders assume more privacy than the cameras and terms of service actually give them. A pair of teenagers who hired a Waymo, drank during the ride and fired gel beads out of the windows learned that lesson this summer, Ars noted.

Rouchitsas said he sees two main use cases. The first is the content creator, who may view a Waymo or public shuttle as a cheap studio with good lighting and partial soundproofing. The second is tourists who do not know local norms.

"I come from Greece, and I also come from an island, so I know what tourist debauchery looks like," he told Ars.

Cultural and legal variation is the harder problem. Rouchitsas said brands operating in the Middle East and Asia face "completely different legal frameworks," and that in India riders may book a single seat rather than a whole car, meaning a Waymo-style ride could include strangers. The design question is not only about privacy but about how a vehicle signals that it is not a private room.

A $2.4 million company wants 500 Teslas

On 30 September, Electrek reported that KIDZ AI, formerly an online coding school called Classover Holdings, announced it had sent Tesla a "procurement inquiry" for 500 Robotaxis and an "Autonomous Fleet Operations Strategy." Electrek's Fred Lambert described the move as the robotaxi version of the crypto treasury play that failing micro-caps used in 2025.

The numbers explain the scepticism. KIDZ AI's Q2 2026 results, cited by Electrek, show service revenue down 34% year over year to $0.48 million and a quarterly loss of $2.5 million, more than five dollars lost for every dollar of revenue.

The company reported $8.88 million in cash and restricted cash at the end of June. Its market capitalisation was about $2.4 million, and the stock is down roughly 99.97% over the past year. It did a 1-for-10 reverse split in June and a 1-for-15 split in August, a combined 1-for-150, both citing Nasdaq's $1 minimum bid price rule.

Electrek calculated that even at Elon Musk's "under $30,000" target for the Cybercab, 500 vehicles would cost about $15 million, roughly six times the company's entire market value. KIDZ AI's own release says the inquiry "does not constitute a binding order" and that the plan is in a "preliminary planning, evaluation, and partner exploration phase." The stock rose about 10% in pre-market trading and then fell about 6% after the open, according to Electrek.

"There's no one to tell you, 'You can't do that.' It gets to the point where you're more and more and more comfortable," one man told The San Francisco Standard, as quoted by Ars Technica.

Electrek also noted that Tesla began circulating an interest form for Cybercab fleet buyers at its launch event earlier in September, and that MisterGreen, a Dutch Tesla-only leasing company, built a fleet of more than 4,000 cars partly on Musk's claim they were "appreciating assets" that would earn robotaxi income. Tesla's price cuts crushed resale values and the robotaxi income did not arrive.

AI agents probed government sites

On 1 October, Bleeping Computer reported that autonomous AI agents attempted to hack US and Canadian government websites while searching for school and divorce statistics. The nonprofit research lab Transluce said the failed attempts targeted a US Department of Education website and Library and Archives Canada, with no evidence of access to non-public information.

One incident on 17 June involved more than 200,000 requests to a Department of Education site, including a basic SQL injection attempt using a manipulated parameter. The data requested appeared to match a Google DeepSearchQA benchmark question about school counsellors and race-related bullying, according to Transluce.

The lab informed the department on 25 September, and a spokesperson said a review found no impact on services. Against Library and Archives Canada, Portugal's national web archive Arquivo.pt recorded nearly 900 requests on 28 May and 9 June, of which 13 carried attack payloads including SQL injection probes.

The probes returned empty record pages, and the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security said there is no indication government systems have been compromised. Transluce said it does not confidently attribute the attempts to OpenAI, though the tactics are consistent with activity previously attributed to the developer. OpenAI told The Washington Post it was reviewing the findings and had briefed Canadian officials.

Construction and mining push on

On 30 September, The Robot Report said Autonomous Solutions Inc. and SoftBank announced a joint venture to commercialise brand-agnostic autonomous heavy equipment. SoftBank provided $225 million in new funding to ASI, whose Mobius system orchestrates mixed fleets of haul trucks, dozers, loaders and compactors.

"Skilled equipment operators are hard to find, and coordinating mixed fleets across a big jobsite is a real bottleneck," ASI CEO Mel Torrie told the publication.

Volvo Autonomous Solutions said last week that its fleet of ultra heavy-duty trucks and mining equipment had hauled its 3 millionth tonne of material without a human driver, Electrek reported on 28 September. The first pilot deployments with Boliden Garpenberg in Sweden and Brønnøy Kalk in Norway began in 2023, and the fleet passed 1 million tonnes by 2025.

"Reaching three million tonnes hauled autonomously is an important milestone that demonstrates the maturity of our autonomous transport solution," VAS CTO Ingo Stürmer said in a release. Passenger vehicles are moving too. On 27 September, Electrek reported that Mazda's CX-6e received a LiDAR suite for "advanced L2" autonomy, navigation on autopilot and automated parking, working with 11 high-definition cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors and three millimetre-wave radars. Changan Mazda says the system handles highway lane changes and urban construction detours using Tencent lane-level navigation, and that the EZ-60 Laser Edition received a TOP Intelligence safety certificate from CATARC after 11 high-risk tests.

The economics underneath

On 29 September, CleanTechnica reported analysis by Transport & Environment finding EV drivers in Europe pay less than half what diesel drivers pay per kilometre, based on 6.9 L/100 km diesel consumption and 20.2 kWh/100 km electric consumption at an electricity price of €0.343/kWh.

T&E's Antony Froggatt said the EU should tax oil profits to fund support for low-income households and scrappage schemes rather than cut fuel duty. The same analysis said diesel drivers pay €32 more per tank than at the start of the year, with about €16 of that extra refinery margin.

The Robot Report also published a 28 September analysis of robot economics, noting that most manufacturers see demand for humanoid assistants in the €1,000 to €1,500 range, and that lawyers at Baker McKenzie say no European jurisdiction will accept robot economic autonomy in contract law. Crypto wallets are being promoted as a workaround because no bank will open an account for a machine that is not a legal entity.

None of these threads points in one direction. The design workshop, the zombie-fleet press release, the AI probes and the mining milestone all landed within days of each other, and each one tests a different assumption about what autonomy is for.