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.
Tesla’s robotaxis have been on the road in Austin for just three days, and already there have been nearly a dozen incidents of bad driving behavior.
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:
“A good logo always tries to convey the brand promise,” says type designer and Hoefler & Co. founder Jonathan Hoefler. “And this one definitely foreshadows the tragic collisions ahead.”
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.
An industry-favored 2017 law made Texas a hotbed for AV investment, but critics say safeguards are needed as driverless cars fill public roads.
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:
By contracting with Starlink, T-Mobile is funding Elon Musk’s attacks on democracy in the US and around the world. We’re demanding T-Mobile pick a side. If they choose to continue in partnership with Starlink, they’re complicit in his assault on working people and his support of far-right authoritarian governments around the world.
The protesters are hinting that they’ll boycott T-Mobile if the company doesn’t comply. And given the brand damage that Tesla Takedown has inflicted on Musk’s company, it’s not a threat that T-Mobile can take lightly.
[actionnetwork.org]
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.
And seeing how Tesla has yet to respond to federal regulators’ questions about the safety of its vehicles, Musk also made nice with President Trump. (Trump, for his part, sounded less enthusiastic about burying the hatchet.)
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).
Beyond the request for free advertising labor amid an ongoing brand crisis and political quagmire, Tesla’s 2025 request is also designed to try to flood social media, requiring posts on YouTube, X, and Instagram by July 17th to maybe win a Model Y and a trip to Gigafactory Texas.
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.
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!
Elon Musk says the company has been testing self-driving Model Y cars around Austin without anyone in the driver’s seat for the “past several days.” That’s good news for the company’s fledgling robotaxi business, which may launch as soon as June 12th. Though as Electrek points out, a few weeks of driverless testing is a far cry from the six months Waymo worked through before its Austin launch this year.
[x.com]
After outdoing Tesla’s global revenue last year, Chinese auto manufacturer BYD just outsold it in Europe for the first time too.
BYD sold 7,231 battery-electric cars in Europe in April — up 169 percent over the same month last year — which was enough to just overtake Tesla, which once led Europe’s market but now sits in tenth. Tesla sales of 7,165 are 49 percent down on 2024.
[bloomberg.com]
During an interview with CNBC, Elon Musk laid out some of the details for next month’s robotaxi launch in Austin, Texas, most of which was already known. It will be a small number of vehicles, only 10-20, in the first week, but will increase in size week by week. It will be geofenced to the parts of Austin “that we consider to be the safest,” Musk said. And the vehicles will be monitored by remote operators who can intervene in case of emergency. “We’re going to be extremely paranoid about the deployment as we should be,” he added. “It would be foolish not to be so we’ll be watching what the cars are doing very carefully.” The rest was the standard bluster about “over a million Teslas doing self-driving in the US” and why he thinks Waymo’s use of lidar is fundamentally flawed.
China has implemented new export controls for rare earth minerals and magnets. The changes could upend the shift to electric vehicles.
Tesla’s Optimus robot has been plagued by fakery since it launched with a dancer in a suit followed by remote manipulation at the cybercab event. So what is this? Generative AI? A man behind the curtain in a mocap suit?
Does it even matter if Tesla can’t mass produce them without China’s rare earth magnets?
In the two days leading up to being let go, former Tesla employee Matthew LaBrot published a website calling for Tesla to “move forward without Elon as CEO,” then attended a Tesla Takedown protest, reports Business Insider.
It’s not the first time a former Tesla employee has claimed to have been fired for criticizing Musk.
[businessinsider.com]
