SpaceXAI launched Grok 4.5, the NHTSA called out autonomous cars, and Volkswagen is employing 100 sheep at a solar farm in Poland

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SpaceXAi launched Grok 4.5, its first built with cursors help.
The Nhtsa called out autonomous cars for interfering with first responders.
And Volkswagen is employing 100 sheep at a solar farm in Poland. It's Thursday, July 9th, and here's a quick look at some of the news happening in and around tech this morning from Engadget.
SpaceXAi has launched the first Grok model after its rebranding from XAI and the first one it trained with AI company Cursor. The company says that Grok 4.5 is its smartest model yet, but specifically to excel at coding, agentic tasks, and knowledge work. It was trained across tens of thousands of Nvidia Gb300 GPUs on datasets full of coding, science, engineering, and math information. The model, SpaceX claims, outdoes other leading models at real engineering tasks and is highly proficient at creating functional apps with minimal instructions. SpaceXAi also says that it was designed to respond faster than flash models and to deliver results at far lower costs. It's priced at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens. Now, for comparison, OpenAI GPT 5.6's most powerful variant, Sol, costs $5 per million input tokens and $30 per million output. However, its most affordable variant, Luna, only costs $1 per million input tokens and $6 per million output. Grok 4.5 is now the default model powering the company's terminal-based AI coding agent Grok Build, which you can use not just for coding, but also for Excel, PowerPoint, and Word tasks. It's also available from the SpaceXAi console and in all of Cursor's plans. In April, SpaceXAi and Cursor struck a partnership to develop AI together. The deal could see SpaceXAi either investing $10 billion into Cursor or acquiring it altogether later this year for $60 billion.
They have yet to reveal their decision. For now, you can judge whether they work well with each other through Grok 4.5. Take note that you cannot access the model yet if you're in the European Union, though, where it's expected to become available in mid-July.
The US. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is demanding action from autonomous carmakers after identifying a clear pattern of driverless AVs interfering with law enforcement and other first responders over the past few months. Jonathan Morrison, the agency's administrator, wrote a letter addressing the developers and issuing a call to action. Emergency situations are not rare or edge cases, he wrote, so he wants AV developers and operators to focus their resources on fixing the issue immediately. While the NHTSA did not give specific examples, there's been news about self-driving vehicles getting in the way of ambulances and fire trucks for years. After a deadly shooting at a bar in Austin, Texas, back in March, a Waymo vehicle blocked an ambulance that was responding to the incident. While an officer was able to manually drive the Waymo Robo taxi out of the way, it cost them a few minutes to resolve the problem. According to Wired, emergency first responder leaders told regulators during a meeting in March that they were becoming frustrated at the behavior of autonomous vehicles on the streets. They said they've had to spend time during emergencies resolving problems with frozen or stuck cars. Officials from San Francisco and Austin, where Waymo's Robo taxi service has been in operation for a while now, said the company's vehicles have been getting worse. They've apparently seen backsliding in the AV's performance, with the vehicles now committing more traffic violations. San Francisco Fire Department Chief Patrick Rabbit reportedly said that Waymo vehicles have recently been freezing and blocking the department's fire stations and trucks. Austin officials echoed what Rabbit said. Waymo vehicles have also been freezing up in that city and have been failing to recognize first responders' hand signals. Dealing with the company's robo-taxis are costing them precious time and preventing them from responding to emergencies in a timely manner.
Volkswagen has some woolly new unofficial employees flocking to one of its European facilities. There are now 100 sheep grazing at the solar farm that powers the car company's manufacturing plant in Poland. Electric reports that in addition to replacing lawn mowers, the critters are part of a bigger research project to study agrovoltaics, where agriculture and energy are farmed in the same space in a symbiotic relationship. A local university is handling the study of the flock, exploring how the grazing activity impacts animal welfare, biodiversity, soil quality, vegetation, and the microclimate at the site. Agrovoltaics has become a compelling subject for the energy industry, allowing hybrid use of land. We've seen experiments with crops grown under solar panels, but the introduction of livestock seems both smart and adorable.