NHTSA grants a 30-day extension, Optimus tactile-sensor patent, former Optimus AI head departs, Cybercenter trademark

Key evidence

• NHTSA public memo, 8 Oct: Tesla asked on 18 Sep for an extension of 8 weeks, to 20 Nov, but NHTSA granted only 30 days, so the new deadline for the sworn answer on Cybercab self-certification is 30 Oct. On 10 Sep chief counsel Simshauser issued a Special Order with legal force, and the response must come with an executive's sworn statement. On 3 Sep NHTSA opened AQ26002 to examine the foundational judgement, which sidesteps the cap of 2,500 exempted vehicles a year, that some FMVSS standards do not apply under self-certification.
• Tesla's tactile-sensor patent was published on 8 Oct (filed 11 Sep 2025). A flexible tactile sensing layer conforms to the curved surfaces of the fingers, palm and thumb. Two flexible films with conductive patterns sandwich a deformable spacer layer, in capacitive and resistive variants, and each film contains many independent pixels. With enough pixels, touch can reliably indicate position and the type of object. This follows The Information's 26 Sep report on production pain points: more than 100 screws in the hand assembled by hand, and unreliable tactile sensors.
• Confirmed on 7 Oct: Ashish Kumar, formerly head of Optimus AI, has co-founded Intelligent Machines in San Francisco to build non-humanoid industrial robots (for manufacturing and aerospace), aiming to raise about $100 million. This follows the 14 Sep move of Milan Kovac, a former head of Optimus, to Hyundai as an adviser, so core AI talent keeps leaving. The strategic split: Kumar is voting with his feet for non-humanoid, questioning whether Tesla's humanoid route is the best one for industrial settings.
• On 7 Oct Tesla filed a Cybercenter trademark application with the US Patent and Trademark Office, covering power generation facilities, online data storage services and research into environmentally friendly energy technology, on an intent-to-use basis. It had first filed in Jamaica on 8 Apr (there is no public database there, which helps keep it confidential) and filed in the US within the 6-month window to claim priority. This follows the Terafab chip plant (from $16.8 billion, 8 Aug) and the Crystal Sun solar cell plant ($10.1 billion, 16 Aug). Energy storage gross margin of 20.4% in Q2 is the highest in the company.