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Tesla’s detailed absenteeism reports to Elon Musk are adding to a drop in morale: report
In late May, Elon Musk sent a message to Tesla employees stating that the company would implement a return-to-office policy. According to Musk, Tesla employees are expected to spend a minimum of 40 hours in the office per week. The office must also be where an employee’s colleagues are located, “not in some remote pseudo office,” the CEO stated.
Musk noted that if employees don’t show up to the office, Tesla would assume that they have resigned. In a follow-up email, the CEO clarified that his expectations for in-office attendance are higher for more senior employees. “The more senior you are, the more visible must be your presence. That is why I lived in the factory so much — so that those on the line could see me working alongside them,” he wrote.
Tesla has been following these rules for several months now, but it reportedly has not been easy. Apart from crowded spaces and a reported lack of office equipment, Tesla’s strict attendance policies are reportedly also adding to an overall hit in employee morale. Citing information reportedly from anonymous Tesla employees, CNBC noted that the decline in employee morale was especially notable among teams that were previously allowed to work remotely before the pandemic.
Elon Musk is reportedly involved in tracking the attendance of Tesla employees, with the CEO receiving detailed weekly reports on absenteeism. Absences in Tesla are measured through data from workers’ badges, with unplanned absences being divided by planned time off to tabulate daily totals, according to CNBC.
Not all employees are tracked the same way, as those that report directly to Musk are reportedly not tracked through badge swipe data. As per internal messages reportedly viewed by the media outlet, however, Tesla’s strict attendance policy and absenteeism reports to Elon Musk have caused a notable decline in morale among some workers.
Internal records from Tesla reveal that around 1/8 of employees at the Fremont Factory are absent on a typical day. This number is a bit better if one were to look at the company’s entire roster, with about 1/10 of workers being absent on a typical workday.
It should be noted that when the Fremont Factory was still a GM plant before its NUMMI days, absenteeism was so prominent that one out of five workers didn’t show up for work on a regular workday. Absences were so bad that there were days when GM could not even start the Fremont Factory’s manufacturing line. Fortunately, things improved when the facility became NUMMI.
Prior to the implementation of Covid-19 restrictions, Tesla managers reportedly figured out how much remote work was possible for their respective teams. Musk’s return-to-office policy all but eliminated this option, though deals for “exceptional” employees are still possible. Ultimately, Tesla’s policy reportedly resulted in a number of well-liked employees leaving the company due to their preference for a more flexible working arrangement. Some have also moved closer to Tesla’s offices, resulting in them being hours away from family.
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Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is heading to Czechia after the Czech Ministry of Transport recognised the Dutch RDW’s provisional type approval, making the country the seventh EU member state to clear the system for public roads. Tesla Europe announced on 21 September 2026 that “FSD Supervised is now approved in Czechia” and that rollout “will begin soon.”
The decision marks a notable reversal. Earlier in 2026, Prague had declined to automatically recognise the Netherlands’ April approval, citing concerns over speed-limit compliance, traffic-sign recognition and driver-attention monitoring, and arguing that a coordinated EU approach was preferable. Officials said months of expert review, talks with Tesla and other member states, and real-world data from countries already using the system resolved those issues.
🚨 Tesla FSD heading to Czechia 🇨🇿 pic.twitter.com/mkzlM9QjrB
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) September 21, 2026
“Safety remains the top priority,” the ministry stated.
FSD Supervised remains a Level 2 driver-assistance system: the driver must stay engaged and is legally responsible. Eligible vehicles need AI4, the company’s most up-to-date hardware version. Tesla is expected to push the feature over the air in the coming days, following the pattern seen after earlier national approvals.
Europe’s rollout began when Dutch regulator RDW issued a provisional EU type approval on 10 April 2026 after extensive testing. Mutual recognition then produced a rapid cascade: Lithuania (20 May), Estonia (29 May), Denmark (9 June), Belgium (10 June) and Slovenia (7 September). Czechia now completes that list of seven.
The approvals cover only a modest share of the EU population, but they add political weight ahead of a 6 October vote by the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles. A qualified majority, at least 15 of 27 member states representing 65 percent of the EU population, could open the remaining markets, including large ones such as Germany, France, Italy and Spain that have so far preferred to wait for a bloc-wide decision.
For Czech Tesla owners, the immediate prize is access to the same supervised highway and city driving already available in the other six countries. For Tesla, each new market generates additional European driving data and strengthens the case that FSD Supervised can operate safely under the continent’s varied road rules. The Czech approval is therefore both a local milestone and another incremental step toward a wider European launch.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has established a Temporary Flight Restriction over SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, rocket development and test facility, a move widely viewed as preparation for Tesla’s October 1 Roadster reveal. The restriction took effect September 18 and runs through October 2.
NOTAM FDC 6/3825 covers a 1.5-nautical-mile radius around the site near Waco and extends from the surface to 10,000 feet above ground level. The FAA cited hazards under 14 CFR 91.137(a)(3) and barred aircraft and drones from the zone. Tesla’s invitation to reservation holders already placed the event in Waco, about 20 minutes from McGregor, making the timing and location more than coincidental.
A TFR has appeared around SpaceX’s McGregor Testing Site up to 10,000ft and runs through until the 2nd of October 👀 pic.twitter.com/rcZ4p4JkLm
— Niall Anderson (@INiallAnderson) September 18, 2026
What stands out is the altitude. Typical recent TFRs at McGregor for engine static fires and component tests have used far lower ceilings, often around 2,000 feet. Raising the limit to 10,000 feet is unusually high even compared with some Starbase restrictions and signals operations that go beyond a standard ground-level engine test.
That extra airspace has fueled speculation about the long-promised SpaceX Package for the Roadster. Elon Musk has described cold-gas thrusters that could deliver sub-one-second 0-60 times and, more dramatically, brief lift-off. Reports earlier this year indicated Tesla planned a remote-controlled demonstration at McGregor in which the car would leave the ground with no one inside; spectators kept hundreds of yards away because of the noise.
The 10,000-foot envelope would give operators a large safety buffer even if the vehicle only hovers a short distance.
Tesla has not confirmed a flight demo. The company has only used the phrase “Go for launch” and posted a teaser image of the car on what looks like a launch pad. The TFR itself mentions only hazards. Still, closing airspace this high and this close to the reveal date strongly suggests the event will include more than a static display.
Whether the Roadster actually hovers on October 1 remains to be seen. What is certain is that the FAA has cleared a large vertical slice of Texas sky for whatever Tesla and SpaceX intend to show. Reservation holders heading to Waco will be among the first to find out if the car can do more than drive.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk drops a surprise update on Boring Company’s next big dig
Musk says Boring Company could shrink the Austin to San Antonio drive to just minutes.
Elon Musk says The Boring Company is working on what he called “a simple, precursor Hyperloop” tunnel connecting Austin and San Antonio, targeting speeds above 200 mph and cutting a drive that can take up to two and a half hours down to a consistent under 30 minutes. Musk posted the idea on X Sunday, in a reply to a repost of an AI generated video imagining a science fiction future with human colonies on other worlds, which he shared with the line “This is the future we shall bring into being.”
This is the future we shall bring into being pic.twitter.com/8aD0w8MDVc
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 20, 2026
The Boring Company’s own account picked up the idea in the same thread, adding a detail about how the trip would actually work: “Because Loop/Hyperloop is express (i.e. no intermediate stops), one could travel from an Austin parking lot to a favorite San Antonio restaurant in about 30 minutes. As long as they both have Loop stations.” That framing ties the proposed intercity link to the same station model the company already runs in Las Vegas, where riders enter the tunnel network through small, garage style stops rather than one central terminal.
This is not the company’s first run at the Austin to San Antonio corridor. Boring Company floated tunnels between the two cities as far back as 2021, and later competed for a separate San Antonio Loop project tied to the airport before that specific bid stalled. Pitches for tunnels in Chicago, Los Angeles, and a New York to Washington corridor have followed a similar pattern of big announcement without a shovel in the ground.
What is different this time is the balance sheet, especially since The Boring Company closed a 3 billion dollar funding round led by investors in the United Arab Emirates earlier this month at a valuation near 23 billion dollars, giving the tunneling company more capital to chase speculative projects than it had during its earlier Texas pitches. The company is also mid-build on two other intercity systems it has actually broken ground on, inc;luding a Nashville tunnel linking downtown to the airport, where a second boring machine finished commissioning in June, and its Las Vegas network, where the station count keeps climbing on paper faster than tunnels get dug.
That gap between announcement and execution is the reason to treat Sunday’s post as an opening bid rather than a project. A tunnel spanning roughly 80 miles between two metro areas, running at speeds Boring Company has not demonstrated over any real distance, would dwarf anything the company has built. For now, the Austin to San Antonio Hyperloop exists as a caption under an AI generated space video.
Tesla Full Self-Driving expands to another European country
Tesla Roadster event requires restricted airspace, and the FAA obliges
