Founded in 2003, Tesla is the top manufacturer of electric vehicles in the US. Led by billionaire CEO Elon Musk, the automaker upended the industry with the futuristic designs and technology of the Gigafactory, the Model S sedan, the Model X SUV, the mass-market Model 3, and soon, the Model Y compact SUV and the unconventional, Blade Runner-inspired pickup Cybertruck. The company has also experienced a number of growing pains on the path to that status as a leader, including public clashes with government agencies, and it commonly faces questions about its technology, issues with its manufacturing, and the treatment of its workforce. The Verge covers all of Tesla’s product launches and ambitions, including energy generation and storage, and the push towards autonomous cars.
Guests are being invited to “experience the future of full autonomy” at the event in Austin, Texas. The gold-tinted driverless vehicle has been popping up around the country, although often with a steering wheel and pedals, as employees continue to gather data. In the lead up to the event, the company has increasingly been operating its fleet of Model Y robotaxis without human supervision.
Eleven automakers, including Tesla and Xiaomi, launched software updates to comply with China’s largest recall ever over mechanical door release handles that may be hard to find or operate during emergencies. China previously banned Tesla-style concealed door handles because people were getting trapped inside their cars. The country also ordered Tesla to add driver monitoring to over 2 million vehicles to make sure drivers keep their eyes on the road, Electrek reports.
Nevada’s transportation authority unanimously approved permits for Tesla, Waymo, and Uber, paving the way for up 7,000 robotaxis to flood the streets of Clark County over the next 12 months, TechCrunch reports. Tesla received approval for 5,000 robotaxis — though the company’s reps said they’d be thrilled if they get to 2,500 — while Waymo and Uber were authorized for 1,000 each. Amazon’s Zoox already has a permit for 100 robotaxis in the city. The vote positions Las Vegas as the next major robotaxi market, with Amazon, Uber, Waymo, and Tesla all battling for customers.
Swedish trucking company Einride says it will buy 500 Tesla Semis, representing the largest order for the electric Class 8 truck yet reported. But as Electrek notes, it’s not clear that Einride has enough money to fund the purchase. The trucking company has about $77 million in the bank, which is less than the estimated $145 million it will cost to buy the Tesla Semis.
TechCrunch reports that the new factory would be located 45 minutes outside of Houston:
The new factory, called Project Crystal Sun, could cost as much as $10.1 billion. Tesla has applied for tax incentives to partially offset the cost, saying that it is exploring other sites “across multiple U.S. states.” The factory would create about 9,700 full-time jobs, Tesla said.
Correction, August 21: fixed the “million” typo in the headline to correctly say “billion.”
Tesla’s chief car designer Franz von Holzhausen said the second generation Roadster is coming “very soon,” while eagerly rubbing his hands together on the latest episode of Jay Leno’s Garage. What was hailed as “the quickest production car ever made” when announced in 2017, has so far missed its 2020, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 dates. Will 2026 be any different?
This Reddit user claims a Tesla employee left the door open on this Cybercab while charging. Sure! There’s steering wheel inside, which we’ve seen before. But also there’s something called “Rodeo controls” on the touchscreen, with buttons labeled “Short oops,” “Long oops,” “Win,” and “Voice notes.” These are no doubt controls for safety driver to record incidents or mistakes made by the self-driving system. Business Insider previously reported the existence of Tesla’s Project Rodeo, in which safety drivers would deliberately delay taking manual control longer than a typical driver.
No specs or timeframe accompanied the photos, or even a justification for why you’d want satellite internet in a taxi that targets dense urban environments where cellphone signal is strong. The car certainly doesn’t need it to drive, but, as Electrek notes, it’s a nice recurring revenue stream for SpaceX, and further justification for the two companies to merge and make Richie Rich another $1 trillion richer.
An escape clause in Elon Musk’s $1 trillion Tesla pay package approved last year would eliminate daunting operational targets if SpaceX were to purchase Tesla, as many expect. Under the terms, an acquisition treats those performance goals as met. Depending on the acquisition price SpaceX sets for Tesla, which Musk can heavily influence, a merger could instantly award him hundreds of millions of Tesla shares and consolidate his voting control.
The massive $16.8 billion chip facility, which is being built by Tesla and SpaceX with help from Intel, will be located in Grimes County, population 29,268. After securing over a billion dollars in tax breaks from two rural school districts, SpaceX says it will break ground later this year. The fab will supply AI chips to power Musk’s plans to build a “robot army” that includes self-driving cars and humanoid robots, as well as for the data centers he plans on launching into space.
“Fake news,” is how he responded to a Wall Street Journal report on the possible sale of Tesla’s business in its second-largest market:
Now, some Tesla executives have been told to prepare for a separation of the China business ahead of a potential merger, a person familiar with those talks said. And Tesla advisers have discussed possible options for a separation, including a spinoff, sale or closure, another person said.
Musk responded similarly to reports of mass layoffs at Twitter, canceling the $25,000 Model 2 ... you get the idea.
“When I logged into my Tesla account and view my lease/contract with it, it loads a PDF which just shows the Book of Enoch?” the anonymous owner said in a Reddit post (first spotted by Electrek). “What do I even do with this? Lol.” The Book of Enoch is a 2,000 year old apocalyptic religious book about angels and demons, so it’s anyone’s guess why it would pop up for a Tesla solar customer looking for their lease. AI-prompted mixup seems like a likely bet.
Props to Fred Lambert at Electrek for catching this: the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is requesting from Tesla all information about a document called “Radar Saves Us” in its investigation into Full Self-Driving crashes. The details could prove that Tesla knew its camera-only approach to autonomous driving was flawed, which could trigger another massive recall for the company.
Tesla filed an NHTSA crash report that lists the driver as “Remote (Commercial / Test),” which Electrek says is a first for Tesla. It’s one of numerous accidents with Tesla’s robotaxis in the past year, and involved a Model Y hitting a tree stump while trying to get out of a dead end road.
Not what anyone expected — or wanted — but a Tesla-branded balance bike is now available for the junior edgelord in your life.
New Jersey wants driverless cars, so long as they have multiple sensors. But Tesla’s are camera-only.
The terms of the settlement weren’t disclosed, but the lawsuit concerned a 71-year-old woman who was killed by a Tesla Model Y driver using Full Self-Driving. It was the first known pedestrian fatality linked to FSD, Bloomberg reports. The news comes as Tesla faces another lawsuit from the family of a Texas woman who was killed in her home by a speeding Tesla driver.
The fire occurred in Martin County late last week after “a brake pad from the trailer hauling the six Teslas ignited and quickly spread to the vehicles,” according to local news outlet WPTV. Both lanes of Florida’s Turnpike and part of I-95 were shut down as toxic fumes and smoke clouded the area.
Tata Electronics, an India-based manufacturing partner for both companies, says it’s investigating a “cybersecurity incident” after the World Leaks ransomware group posted more than 200,000 component and specification documents on the dark web. The files reportedly include inspection standards for iPhone circuit board components, and drawings for the Model 3 revamp that Tesla launched in 2023.
That’s what investigators in Harris County, Texas, aim to find out after Michael Butler’s Model 3 smashed into the home of a 76-year-old woman, killing her in her own living room. Tesla’s driver assist system has been linked to thousands of crashes and dozens of fatalities, and yet the company claims its tech makes driving safer.
He said the company’s autonomous ridehail vehicles would be available to half the US population by the end of 2025. Well, here we are in June 2026, and Tesla only has 59 vehicles in a handful of Texas cities. Bloomberg breaks down the growing chasm between Musk’s bombastic predictions and the realities of a very slow, often inconvenient robotaxi service.
That’s the conclusion from a Reuters investigation that includes a hard look at Tesla’s statistical methodology and interviews with company insiders. Tesla workers routinely review video clips from FSD-enabled vehicles of animal deaths or narrow misses with children. And there’s a lot of speeding:
One employee said labelers saw Teslas regularly exceeding speed limits by 20 to 30 miles per hour after the automaker introduced an FSD “Mad Max” mode enabling more-aggressive driving. Another labeler reported seeing an FSD-piloted vehicle traveling 60 mph in a 25-mph zone.
During a recent episode of Ryan McCaffrey’s Ride the Lightning podcast, Tesla’s chief designer, Franz von Holzhausen, confirmed its second-gen Roadster (first announced in 2017) will be built in Texas. The company’s vice president of engineering, Lars Moravy, also confirmed that alpha prototypes of the vehicle are currently in testing.
