Construction is underway on a $300-million hotel next to SoFi Stadium, the latest addition to Rams owner Stan Kroenke’s sprawling mixed-use development on the former site of the Hollywood Park horse racing venue in Inglewood.

The 300-room Kali Hotel is the only hotel in Kroenke’s master plan for Hollywood Park, and developers hope it will be a favored place to stay for visiting football teams and basketball teams, as well as fans who come to see them play.

It is being erected by real estate developer Kali P. Chaudhuri, whose KPC Development Co. owns and builds commercial properties in California and India. It will be the company’s first hotel in the United States.

The hotel will rise 12 stories on Stadium Drive, across a man-made lake from the 70,000-seat stadium, which is home to L.A.’s two NFL teams, the Rams and Chargers. It will be near the YouTube Theater and within walking distance of the Intuit Dome, the recently opened home of the Los Angeles Clippers, and Kia Forum, which are not part of the SoFi development project.

Known officially as the Kali Hotel and Rooftop, Autograph Collection, it will join Marriott’s Autograph Collection, which allows owners to customize their hotels while remaining affiliated with the chain.

The hotel’s 34 suites, which are intended to appeal to sports and entertainment VIPs, will be as large as 1,200 square feet, with some having oversized features such as shower heads mounted 11 feet high.

“It would be an ideal spot for any visiting basketball teams to the Clippers arena, and obviously for SoFi Stadium,” said John Petty, head of development and construction for KPC. “We do anticipate sports teams staying at the hotel.”

Kroenke controls nearly 300 acres surrounding SoFi Stadium on land formerly occupied by the horse racing venue. When the complex is completed, it will be 3½ times the size of Disneyland, making it the largest urban mixed-use development under construction in the western U.S., according to Kroenke’s organization. Plans encompass offices, residences, shops, restaurants and public parks.

The hotel’s grounds will include a well-known feature from the original racetrack, the life-size bronze sculpture of jockey Bill Shoemaker riding famed racehorse Swaps at full gallop that greeted bettors for decades. Swaps and Shoemaker won the 1955 Kentucky Derby, and the thoroughbred also captured the Hollywood Gold Cup, Hollywood Park’s signature race. The sculpture has been in storage for years.

Another element the developers hope will stand out at the hotel will be its rooftop bar and restaurant with views of the stadium, Intuit Dome and the steady stream of airplanes on their final approach to LAX. It’s between two flight paths and will be visible from the air, Petty said. “Our 12th floor will really stand out to anyone landing at LAX.”

The hotel will have three restaurants, a pool and yoga deck, spa, fitness center, ballroom and spaces for meetings.

The scale and cost of the hotel reflect how the neighborhood has evolved, hotel consultant Alan Reay of Atlas Hospitality said.

“Five or 10 years ago, I would have said Inglewood is a tough spot” for a luxury boutique hotel, he said. But “there’s a big positive effect of having a sports team stadium” that can help drive business through games, concerts and other events.

Completion of the hotel is set for spring 2026, and the owners expect it to serve people attending three major events at SoFi Stadium: the FIFA World Cup in 2026, the Super Bowl in 2027 and the Olympic Games in 2028.

The Kali Hotel was designed by Lamar Johnson Collaborative and will be constructed by Clayco.

“Although this will be our first hotel, we’re already planning to build many more,” Chaudhuri said.

KPC is leasing the land for the hotel from Kroenke under a long-term agreement and went through a competitive process to get the nod from the landlord to be the hotelier for Hollywood Park.

“We went through a lot of wringers, but we succeeded,” Chaudhuri said. “We’re fortunate they chose us.”

A groundbreaking ceremony is set for Oct. 22.

Among KPC’s other developments are hospitals in Riverside and Orange counties and a 300,000-square-foot office campus in Corona, where the company is based. It has built a nursing college and 1,000-bed hospital in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. KPC is also building two residential projects in Kolkata, including a 74-story skyscraper, the company said.

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk presented a lofty vision for the future Thursday night, unveiling prototypes of a self-driving taxi and van that he said would revolutionize travel and claiming the electric car company would put fully autonomous vehicles on the road by next year.

At an event on the Warner Bros. Studios lot in Burbank, Musk rolled out examples of what he dubbed the Cybercab. The futuristic, metallic silver vehicles lacked steering wheels, pedals and rearview mirrors. Invited guests took short rides around the studio’s closed roads.

A lot is riding on the Cybercab for Musk, who has been selling unfulfilled promises of autonomous vehicles for years. Although Tesla’s sales of its signature electric cars stumbled early in 2024, the company has an $800-billion market capitalization built largely on the expectation that it will be able to overtake competitors to dominate the burgeoning robotaxi market. Whether Tesla is anywhere close to completing its push to develop the technology needed to do so, however, remains an open question.

On Friday, investors signaled they were skeptical of Musk’s latest claims. At 10:55 a.m Pacific time, shares of Tesla stock were trading at about $219.50, down 8% on the day.

“Investors have clearly been very excited about this for many years even though Tesla hasn’t delivered on it,” said Sam Abuelsamid, a transportation analyst at Guidehouse Insights.

“Tesla’s valuation is much higher relative to their revenues and their profits and that is almost entirely based on the presumption that they will suddenly start generating mountains of new profits,” he said.

Musk also unveiled the Robovan on Thursday night, a self-driving vehicle that can transport goods or up to 20 people. And he topped off his highly produced event with a demonstration of a humanoid robot named Optimus, several of which performed dance moves for the crowd or served drinks.

The event, which the company called “We, Robot,” made clear that Musk has ambitions for the future that go beyond transportation. Speaking to the invite-only crowd and those watching online, he conjured up a world where every family has an Optimus robot capable of doing the grocery shopping, babysitting and watering the plants. The automated labor, he said, would make goods and services less expensive and more accessible.

“It will be an age of abundance, the likes of which almost no one has envisioned,” Musk told the crowd.

While some viewed the event as a proof of concept for Musk’s robotaxi, others were far more skeptical, saying it was all show and no substance.

“Having a prototype vehicle says nothing about whether a company has developed the hardware and software necessary to safely operate that vehicle without a human driver,” said Bryant Walker Smith, an associate professor of law at the University of South Carolina who specializes in emerging transportation technology.

Testing the Cybercab on closed roads is one thing, while being able to produce one that is able to safely navigate real roads is something altogether different, Smith said.

Musk said the Cybercab would be in production no later than 2027 and would be available for purchase for about $30,000. He did not specify whether the Cybercab would rely on Tesla’s so-called Full Self-Driving technology, or FSD, which is already deployed in many Teslas on the road but is not capable of operating without a driver present.

“When we think about transport today, there’s a lot of pain that we think is normal, like having to drive around L.A. in three hours of traffic,” Musk said Thursday. “With autonomy, you get your time back,” he said.

It was a familiar promise from Musk, who has claimed repeatedly since 2014 that Tesla was nearly ready to launch fully autonomous vehicles.

Musk has come under criticism for his claims about the capabilities of FSD, which the company has been selling to customers for thousands of dollars since 2020. The tech is currently dubbed FSD Supervised because it requires an alert, human driver to be behind the wheel during operation.

“The Model S and Model X at this point can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person, right now,” Musk said in 2016, according to a clip that some say has been altered. Tesla’s self-driving feature cannot be used without someone in the driver’s seat and has been linked to several accidents, including fatal crashes.

In May, a Tesla in FSD mode nearly hit a moving train after failing to detect the locomotive. The driver hit the brakes himself and accepted responsibility for the accident, but told NBC News he believes FSD is a defective product.

“Tesla has said that a human driver needs to be more attentive, not less attentive, when using this feature,” Smith said of FSD. “Yet it is the very system that the Tesla CEO has for many years indicated would be imminently capable of automated driving.”

In addition to the robotaxi unveiled Thursday night, Musk spoke of his vision for an ad hoc taxi service, in which owners of Tesla vehicles equipped with FSD would be able to deploy them to pick up paying customers.

Musk said FSD capable of this unsupervised driving would be available to owners of Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in Texas and California by next year.

“I think this is a historical event, the most important that Tesla has done in the last decade,” said Dan Ives, an equity analyst at Wedbush Securities. “Many of the skeptics never thought Tesla was going to get electric vehicles on the road,” he said.

Tesla’s robotaxi business could create $10 billion to $15 billion in annual revenue for the company, Ives projected.

Tesla’s share price has risen nearly 40% over the last six months amid anticipation that the company would soon create a fleet of robotaxis and develop artificial intelligence that would enable fully autonomous driving.

Waymo, the autonomous taxi service owned by Alphabet Inc., already has self-driving cars on the road in Los Angeles and San Francisco. In both cities, Waymo vehicles are completing trips for real customers without a driver present.

Even without drivers, autonomous taxis have expenses, such as charging, cleaning and insurance, which eat into profits.

“No one has really yet figured out a business model for robotaxis,” Abuelsamid said.

Waymo cars use laser-based sensors known as Lidar to perceive the surrounding environment and make autonomous driving possible. Musk has dismissed Lidar as unnecessary and too expensive, but has so far been unable to achieve autonomous driving with alternate technology that relies instead on cameras to take in a vehicle’s surroundings.

“Elon Musk has been quite clear that he doesn’t believe that radar and Lidar are needed and that they can do it with cameras alone,” Abuelsamid said. “So far to date, no one has actually demonstrated that that is a sufficiently safe and viable solution.”

Despite optimistic investors and rising share prices in recent months, Tesla’s sales have slumped, with the company on track to record its first annual vehicle sales decline. The company delivered 462,890 vehicles in the third quarter, missing some analysts’ estimates but marking the first quarterly increase in sales this year. Tesla also slashed roughly 10% of its global workforce in April.

Increased competition in the electric vehicle space has squeezed Tesla’s sales even as the company attempts to appeal to more customers with price cuts and offers of free charging. Startup electric vehicle makers such as Rivian are offering customers other products, while traditional auto manufacturers such as Hyundai and Ford have also released lines of electric options.

Although consumers have options, concerns over driving range and charging time have contributed to faltering sales of electric vehicles in California. Electric vehicle sales are down in the state after years of growth, a trend that has hit Tesla particularly hard.

Musk has set expectations high for his company, and with the Cybercab he is trying to shed a reputation that he makes empty promises. Abuelsamid is doubtful that Tesla will actually deliver on the technology showcased Thursday night in the near future, he said.

“It’s Tesla, it’s Elon Musk, it’s obviously going to be a hype fest,” he said.

Fisker Inc. will wind down operations under a bankruptcy plan approved Friday that should allow car owners to drive their cars for years — while not paying anything to shareholders who were wiped out investing in the defunct Southern California electric-vehicle maker.

The plan approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Thomas Horan in Delaware comes as Fisker is grappling with a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation into possible securities violations at the company before its June bankruptcy filing.

Fisker disclosed in August that it had been subpoenaed by the SEC, which recently confirmed that it was investigating the company and demanded that the bankruptcy plan preserve records.

“The SEC has been much more aggressive in pursuing its claims and remedies, even if the focus of its investigation has filed for bankruptcy,” said Jennifer Lee, a former assistant director at the SEC Division of Enforcement now in private practice.

The agency has declined to comment on its investigation.

Co-founders Henrik Fisker, the company’s chairman and chief executive, and his wife, Geeta Gupta-Fisker, the chief financial and operating officer, and other officials are facing multiple shareholder lawsuits.

Plaintiffs allege violations of fiduciary duties and securities laws, including media appearances by Henrik Fisker touting the company’s prospects even as its fortunes declined.

Horan issued his ruling after a flurry of filings, hearings and closed-door meetings this week as Fisker, its creditors and owners worked out an agreement.

Leadership of the Fisker Owners Assn. came out last week in favor of the proposed plan, stating the vehicle maker had made progress in addressing open recalls Fisker had issued for its Ocean SUV and had engaged in “constructive dialogue” over maintenance issues.

The approved plan also resolved concerns by the National Highway Transportation Safety Board over how to pay for the costs of recalls, including one for malfunctioning brakes and another for a defective water pump. Under the approved plan, Fisker’s estate will cover those costs.

Another issue that was resolved was access to Fisker’s cloud server for over-the-air software updates the Ocean must receive to operate. Access to those updates will be provided by American Lease, a Bronx, N.Y., business that leases Uber and Lyft cars. It bid $46.25 million for Fisker’s unsold inventory of more than 3,000 cars.

American Lease agreed late this week to pay $2.5 million for access to the cloud for five years and will share that access with Fisker’s more than 6,000 car owners for an undetermined price.

“We’re happy with the outcome today, and we’re optimistic about the future,” said Brandon Jones, president of owners association. “There’s still some discussion and negotiation needed, but we’ll have the services we need to maintain our cars.”

Founded in 2016, Fisker went public in 2020 via a special purpose acquisition company backed by private equity firm Apollo Global Management. The company raised $1 billion in equity capital and borrowed even more, but ran out of money.

Headquartered in Manhattan Beach, Fisker moved to La Palma in Orange County earlier this year.

Henrik Fisker, a noted automotive designer, envisioned the company’s debut model, the Ocean, as a competitor to Tesla’s Model Y, but the company had trouble making and delivering the high-tech SUV. The Ocean was plagued by software glitches, though its ride and build were praised.

Several thousand car owners were eligible to vote on the plan, because they had filed claims against Fisker making them unsecured creditors.

Evan Scott, 39, filed two claims, one for nearly $28,000 based on the loss of value of his Ocean after price cuts, and a second for $1,000 after his car was delivered with faulty tires that had to be replaced after four months. He said he voted for the plan but feels he was misled by the company after purchasing some $50,000 in stock, which is now worthless.

“Everything they said was a lie for the last six months, and they knew they were going to file for bankruptcy,” said the Portland, Ore., resident.

Fisker’s stock reached a high of $28.50 in March 2021 amid peak interest in electric vehicles and a stock bubble that was popped after a rise in interest rates the following year. By the time of Fisker’s bankruptcy, its shares were trading for a nickel.

The Ocean’s base model retailed for $38,999 with the highest trim version going for more than $60,000, until a series of sharp price cuts. American Lease purchased its fleet of Oceans for about $13,900 per vehicle.

Fisker filed for bankruptcy after it was unable to secure a strategic investment from an auto manufacturer that Reuters identified as Nissan. It also failed in efforts to sell the company to other buyers. It estimated liabilities of up to $500 million and assets at between $500 million and $1 billion at the time of the filing.

It is being liquidated under Chapter 11 of the bankruptcy code typically used by companies seeking to restructure and remain in business. The process, however, has allowed management to remain in control of day to day operations of the company as it works through recalls and other issues.

By the time the bankruptcy plan was approved there were more than 4,000 claims filed against Fisker, including two that totaled more than $1 billion — one for $694 million for debt held by U.S. Bank, and a second for $475 million by Magna International, which manufactured the Ocean for Fisker at an Austrian plant.

Fisker has yet to sell the assets it owns in Austria as well as its intellectual property, which includes the vehicles designs and software code — which theoretically could be purchased by another auto maker to produce the Ocean and other vehicles Fisker had planned. Proceeds from those sales will go into a trust, with the majority received by the company’s secured creditor.

That creditor is CVI Investments and its investment manager, Heights Capital Management Inc., affiliates of Susquehanna International Group, a large Pennsylvania trading firm founded by billionaire Jeff Yass. It has a secured claim of more than $180 million stemming from debt it is owed by Fisker.

A number of shareholders sent letters to the court asking for an SEC inquiry into Fisker’s dealings with the creditor, whose position as a secured lender had been opposed by unsecured creditors earlier in the bankruptcy process. Attorneys for CVI have not responded to requests for comment.

Car owners seeking compensation may have other avenues to recover funds from the loss of warranty protection, software and mechanical problems and other issues.

The law firm Hagens Berman is filing arbitration cases against J.P. Morgan Chase Bank, a leading Fisker auto loan maker. Partner Steve Berman said his firm is proceeding with some 1,300 individual arbitration demands. Chase declined to comment.