Lifestyle
Giving Thanks to the Tesla Village
They say it takes a village to raise a child. I say it takes a village to raise a young car company. A village to handle advertising for the company, so that it doesn’t have to spend big bucks on traditional advertising. A village to help potential owners understand that they too can be free of gas – a novel concept that requires a little faith to fully embrace.
And it was that village that led to my husband and I taking the plunge on a car with a price tag of nearly triple that of the vehicle it replaced. That village that has contributed to our ownership experience wildly exceeding our very high expectations.
First, there came a test drive. After having seen the car in person in November of 2012 at an event, I left scratching my head, interest definitely piqued. Fast forward to Spring 2014, and I convinced the old ball and chain we needed to drive it. There was a lot of soul searching and numbers crunching in the months to follow and we landed in a magical place where hopes, dreams and fears are shared. That is, the forums section of the Tesla Motors website. There, owners and enthusiasts answer newbie questions and share stories. In August, a fine man organized a coffee meet up in the Philadelphia suburbs. One veteran owner and Supercharger pro joined us from a road trip that had taken him to Atlantic City, which was already 2,000 miles away from his home. We chatted about charging and batteries and road trips. Most of all, we chatted about how this was “the best” car any of them had ever driven. Needless to say, meeting real life owners was the exact push we needed. Our order was placed the following morning. To those gentlemen, I say thank you.
Then came the waiting. In October, Elon showed us the D. Between that and the time of the quarter we made our order, our wait was longer than usual for a domestic delivery. 108 days actually. Visiting the Tesla forum became a daily ritual for me. I even attended one more meet up, this time as an actual reservation holder. I also commiserated with others who saw their delivery projection slip from November to December, as Tesla shifted production to accommodate a new motor configuration. Aside from filling my time, I got to learn everything about the car. The mythical “range anxiety” concept proved to be a phenomenon often reserved for potential owners and detractors, not so much once you actually have the car and understand how to plan. To every forum contributor, I say thank you.
Next came the disappointment. The Tesla supercharger map advertised the charger we needed the most as being completed within 2014. Allentown, PA – midway between our Philadelphia home and the driveway/garage-less home of my in-laws – was lit up with a little red dot. Weeks turned to months and 2014 came and went. Finally in the summer of 2015, it was confirmed: the location fell through and the scouting process had to start all over. Every trip we take there requires us to borrow someone’s car to drop our Tesla off at a L2 charger 10 miles away. The Supercharger team has been working extremely hard and scouted a location that will actually work even better for folks traveling North and South along the Pennsylvania Turnpike. They even hit a snag with township zoning board approval that cost the process an entire month, which I know was as frustrating to them as it was to owners counting on that location. To Max and Jesse (who I bugged about this) and the whole Tesla Supercharger team responsible for a whopping 556 supercharging locations to date, I say thank you.
Then came the kindness of a stranger. This summer, my husband and I were headed to Jersey Shore to celebrate with some friends. Two of those friends were coming from Texas with their 1-year old and it was our Model S that would take the 5 of us from Philly to the shore. There are no Superchargers along the way and were no L2 chargers in any convenient location. After making mention of this on the forums, a fellow owner reached out with a solution. That solution was his own home just a short walk from the hotel we were staying in. (Which oddly had no outlets anywhere near the parking spaces.) We touched base a bit about when we would come and his level of accommodation was extraordinary. He moved his own Model S to the street and left his charge cable outside. We parked, took enough juice to get us home with a comfortable buffer, and were on our way without ever having met this kind owner in person. To him, I say thank you.
Last month came Autopilot. It has proven to be the source of countless hours of fun, the inspiration to start making videos, and yet another layer of safety to keep Model S occupants as far away from potential injury as possible. To the engineers and programmers, testers, visionaries and everyone else at Tesla responsible for making this system a reality, I say thank you.
Most recently came protection over profits. After a single vehicle in Europe experienced a detached seat belt situation resulting in no injury, Tesla decided to recall 90,000 vehicles to check them. Last I heard, no other defects had been found. In addition to checking cars at service centers everywhere, Tesla has even taken to sending testers to Superchargers to reach more vehicles and provide no disruption to owners. To the members of the Tesla leadership team that acted swiftly, the number-crunchers that allowed caution over costs, and every employee pulling hard on a belt, I say thank you.
Finally, a great big thank you to the readers. I am now fully entrenched in this wonderful community of Tesla owners and enthusiasts and can only hope that I contribute to someone else’s decision to jump into the future and experience the Tesla life for themselves.
Investor's Corner
Tesla Robotaxi gets a massive upgrade in Nevada
Nevada regulators just approved a massive expansion of Tesla’s robotaxi fleet across the entire county.
Tesla’s robotaxi footprint in Nevada just grew by roughly 500 times in a single regulatory vote.
The Nevada Transportation Authority approved Tesla’s full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit on Thursday, clearing the way for the company to deploy up to 5,000 driverless vehicles across Clark County over the next 12 months. The decision came during a four hour general session meeting that Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt watched live and reported on X, noting the vote replaces the interim order that had limited Tesla to just 10 robotaxis on a narrow stretch of the Las Vegas Strip.
EXCLUSIVE: Tesla has just officially received approval for its full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit in Nevada, clearing the way for Tesla to launch a paid public Robotaxi service in Las Vegas.
This officially allows @Tesla to deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis over the next… pic.twitter.com/DPs5UtUlrE
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 20, 2026
That earlier cap, covered here after it surfaced on August 13, came with restrictions that looked stricter than what Tesla runs in Austin: a 45 mph speed ceiling, no airport pickups, and a geofence confined to the Strip corridor. The new approval extends Tesla’s operating authority to all of Clark County, with room to request an even wider geofence across the state.
Tesla representatives at the meeting said they have no intention of putting 5,000 cars on the road right away. Commercial rides are expected to start within 30 days, pending vehicle inspections, insurance filings, and fare approval, the standard steps every robotaxi operator in Nevada has had to clear.
Tesla’s own Robotaxi account replied to the news with a short line, The golden future is upon us.
The timing lines up with Tesla’s broader robotaxi push this month. The company is preparing to open Cybercab rides to the public in Austin as soon as this month, and it opened a sweepstakes for riders to win a seat at the launch event. Tesla filed its original application for a 5,000 vehicle Nevada fleet back in June, a request regulators trimmed to 10 vehicles when they issued the interim order in July. Thursday’s vote effectively grants the number Tesla asked for from the start.
Zoox, the Amazon owned robotaxi operator, has run in Nevada since 2025 and was capped at 100 vehicles before Thursday’s decision. Tesla’s new ceiling puts it well ahead of that comparison on paper, though the company has said its actual fleet size will depend on how quickly FSD v15 rolls out, the software update executives have called the gateway to scaling unsupervised robotaxi operations nationwide.
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India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
Elon Musk says X now exposes government censorship, but India’s secrecy laws complicate that promise.
Elon Musk’s promise to make government censorship requests on X “clearly visible” is running into a wall in India, where the law forbids the very disclosure Musk is promising.
On August 15, Musk responded to an update from X’s open-source algorithm team by writing “Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible.” The claim referred to a change X pushed two days earlier to its public xai-org/x-algorithm repository, which now includes a controversial filter written directly into the code. The filter suppresses posts from 665 accounts flagged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court from appearing in the For You feed of any viewer located in Brazil, unless the viewer already follows the account. The election tied to the filter is scheduled for October 4.
India’s government wasn’t as impressed, and responded on Monday that “X will have to follow the law of the land,” in response to Musk’s transparency push covered by the Times of India. The problem is structural rather than political. India issues content blocking orders under Section 69A of its IT Act, and Rule 16 of the accompanying 2009 Blocking Rules requires those orders to stay confidential. Publishing an India equivalent of the Brazil filter, naming specific accounts and citing specific government orders, would itself violate Indian law. Government use of Section 69A has grown from roughly 6,000 orders a year between 2018 and 2023 to about 24,300 in 2025, according to a Tech Times report.
The contrast puts Musk’s transparency pledge in an odd spot. It works largely as advertised in Brazil, where electoral law requires disclosure and X can point to specific account IDs and a specific court order in public code. It cannot work the same way in India, where the law requires the opposite. X users in India will keep seeing content disappear from search and their feeds without any public accounting of why, even as X tells the rest of the world that its censorship compliance is now inspectable.
This isn’t the first time X’s fights with a national government have shaped how the platform operates. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to suspend the accounts of sitting lawmakers and journalists in 2024, a standoff that cost X its Brazilian revenue for months and froze Starlink’s local accounts before the investigation into Musk and X was closed in March with no evidence of wrongdoing found. X also sued California over a state law requiring moderation disclosures, arguing the mandate itself violated the First Amendment.
Whether India’s government pursues anything beyond a public statement remains to be seen. For now, the mismatch between what X can legally publish and what different governments legally allow it to publish is the real story behind Musk’s seven word claim.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s driverless Cybercab just passed a big test with State Governor
Florida’s governor rode Tesla’s Cybercab at a closed test track and called the experience impressive.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rode in a Tesla Cybercab on a closed test track this week and came away impressed, posting on X that the vehicle “successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.” He called the ride “impressive.”
The stop was part of a broader event Monday at SunTrax, a 775 acre state owned proving ground in Auburndale that Florida built specifically to test autonomous and connected vehicles before they reach public roads. Standing next to a gold Cybercab, DeSantis described the car in plain terms: “You go in there and you just sit. You have a screen. There’s no steering wheel, no pedals. Clearly these things could be very beneficial.”
We took a ride on a robotaxi on the Suntrax course and it successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.
Impressive! https://t.co/FVAkzFLz3r
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) August 11, 2026
DeSantis paired the praise with a caveat that has followed autonomous vehicles since the category existed. “You don’t want to be in an autonomous vehicle and it drives you into a ditch. That would not be good,” he said, framing safety validation as the gate before wider deployment.
SunTrax, the 2.25 mile oval which the state calls the only high speed autonomous vehicle test track in the Southeast, can simulate rain, pedestrian crossings, hills and crowded urban conditions at highway speeds, letting companies push a car past what an early public rollout would risk. Tesla, Waymo and Beep all use the facility, and Florida’s regulatory approach, among the most permissive for autonomous vehicles in the country, doesn’t require a human operator inside a fully autonomous car.
Tesla has reason to want the blessing of Florida and states beyond, as the Cybercab entered volume production at Gigafactory Texas this spring and has since self certified as SAE Level 4 under Texas law. Public road testing so far has kept a safety monitor in the passenger seat, and Florida is where Tesla has been expanding its existing Model Y based Robotaxi service instead, adding Miami in July and then Orlando and Tampa two weeks later. A closed track endorsement from a sitting governor doesn’t change any of that, but it does put Tesla’s newest hardware in front of a state that has already shown it will move fast on rules.
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