Tesla

The Wall Street Journal reports that Troy Jones, director of Tesla’s North American sales, is leaving after 15 years at the company. This comes after Tesla reported a steep drop in sales for the second quarter. Other execs have similarly been fleeing. Elon Musk fired Omead Afshar, who formerly led operations in North America and Europe. And the company’s director of human resources for North America, Jenna Ferrua, departed in June, according to the Journal. The C-suite is getting thin.

Don’t expect Elon’s EV company to turn its fortunes around any time soon after launching in India today. It may be the world’s third-biggest auto market, but EVs make up less than 5 percent.

The xAI chatbot will arrive on Tesla vehicles by “next week at the latest,” according to Elon Musk, who previously said in January that it was “coming soon.” This wasn’t mentioned during last night’s live demo of Grok 4.

Apparently following through on his threat to challenge Republicans who supported Donald Trump’s budget bill, Musk tweeted, “Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.” He also said it will be ready next year -- a “consistently proven wrong” theme for Musk.

A bunch of Tesla fans seem to think that the popular YouTuber needs to shave his head now that Tesla has successfully launched its (very limited, still in beta) robotaxi service. After all, that was the bet he made last year, right? Not so fast, Marques says. Here he is on the Waveform podcast reminding us about the actual bet he made.

When I first saw the Robotaxi wordmark, I assumed someone had already vandalized the car like a Waymo caught in a protest. The creative experts consulted by Fast Company are even more critical of the cyberdork aesthetic:

By most accounts, the company’s robotaxi launch in Austin yesterday went off without a hitch. Most of the Tesla fans and influencers who received invites to test it out said the experience was “smooth” and “natural.” But you knew something was going to happen, and that something turned out to be a robotaxi briefly driving in the opposite lane of traffic. Not a good look.

The anti-Elon Musk protest organizers sent a letter to T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert demanding he “cut ties to Starlink,” citing T-Mobile’s use of the SpaceX subsidiary to power its T-Satellite direct-to-cell satellite messaging service:

Just food for thought ahead of the company’s robotaxi launch later this month.

Last month, Bloomberg reported that the launch would be July 12th. But Tesla never confirmed it, and now Musk is saying the long-awaited robotaxi service will “tentatively” kick off in Austin, Texas, on June 22nd. (An X user spotted one of the first driverless Teslas in the city earlier this week.) Musk also claimed that a Tesla vehicle will drive itself from the factory to a customer’s home for the first time on June 28th.

You might recognize this TeslaVision campaign seeking fan-submitted ads as a callback to the Project Loveday contest from 2017 (that was the year the Model 3 started shipping, but the new Roadster and Semi did not).

A Tesla Model Y with no one behind the steering wheel was spotted driving through Austin recently, according to a video posted to X and noticed by InsideEVs. The video was also reposted by Tesla’s head of autonomy, Ashok Elluswamy, who wrote “Slowly slowly at first, then …” seemingly confirming its authenticity. The Model Y also has “Robotaxi” written in Tesla’s notoriously difficult-to-read Cybertruck font on the passenger door. Bloomberg previously reported that the company’s robotaxi service was set to launch this week on June 12th, though the automaker has yet to formally confirm the date.

An update on how the extremely public political breakup is going today, as protestors face off with federal immigration agents in Los Angeles.

Did something happen today?

Yesterday I wrote about Elon Musk’s fall from power. Today he is beefing with the president on X, instead of picking up his phone to make a call. Hm!