Lifestyle
Alta Motors sees electric motorcycle demand soar 18X, hires CRO
After seeing demand for their line of electric motorcycles soar, California-based Alta Motors is adding Matthew Work to their executive team as Chief Revenue Officer. Alta Motors saw its sales increase 18X in 2017 and added 36 new distributors to their dealership network.
Matthew Work joins the company after nearly two decades of experience in the technology industry, ranging from several SaaS companies to guiding Dice.com to a successful IPO. Work also has a strong passion for motorcycles, having owned more than 50 motorcyclesΒ in the past. He’s been advising Alta Motors for the past 18 months and his move to the management team speaks to the company’s fast growth in 2017.
Alta Motors raised a $27M Series B round this summer, with a total of ~$44M in funding.
“Workβs combined high-tech and motorcycle expertise will be a boon to Alta,” said Alta Motors CEO, Marc Fenigstein. Work’s combined background in technology and his interest in motorcycles will help Alta Motors scale even faster as they prepare for 2018.
Alta Motors was founded in late 2010 and has a strong management team that has developed the powertrain and battery technology in-house. Alta’s battery system boasts one of the highest energy densities in the industry and provides the bikes with incredible performance, according to the company.
One of Alta’s newest customers, Ben Atkinson, a long-time motorbike rider, describes the bike as his favorite out of all the bikes he owns. After having his interest in riding on trails and parks constrainedΒ by noise issues with his other bikes, Atkinson fell in love with Alta’s bike near-silent riding experience combined with the superior performance from the bike’s electric motor.
“I’m becoming a better rider, just because I’m able to ride it a lot more!” Atkinson said in an interview with Teslarati.
“You hear your tires scrubbing the ground… I can focus on other things. I can concentrate on my riding style… hitting different lines, you can hear your rear tire spin and scrub. I think you have just one more indication of how you are hooking up, so I think it’s a better riding experience. You are more in tune with the bike,” Atkinson said.
Alta has seen significant demand from their dealer network and in the midst of working through its order backlog. “Weβve sold more Alta bikes this year than any other single model,” said Scott Bannick, sales manager of Colorado-based Elite Motorsports, a dealership that began carrying Altaβs bikes in November 2016.
Bannick told us about a recent customer that was interested in the Alta Redshift, largely due to all of the action taking place in the electric vehicle segment. “He called me back and knew everything about those two vehicles and he knew everything about Alta and electric vehicles in general. He went from being a lifelong gas dirtbike rider who drives gas cars and rides gas motorcyclesΒ to being someone fully bought into the idea (of electric vehicles),” Bannick said.
Bannick also described other potential customers that happened to be Tesla owners and were seeking the electric motorcyles that offered comparable performance and reliability to Teslas.
βThe success weβve seen was unimaginable a year ago, but now not so surprising. The coolest thing to witness after encouraging a customer to try the electric bike, is seeing that customer return at the end of the day with eyes the size of dinner plates. Itβs priceless,” Bannick said.
Alta Motors added 36 dealers to their network this year, bringing it to a total of 41 dealers in 18 states. “After demonstrating the Redshiftβs ability to compete head to head with combustion, weβre excited to scale our dealership base across the U.S., offering more riders the opportunity to hop on for an initial joy ride,” said Alta Motors CEO, Marc Fenigstein.
I recently spoke with Fenigstein last month on the NextMobility Podcast. The episode was most popular episode in Season 1. You can listen below or subscribe to the podcastΒ here.
Elon Musk
Tesla primes Cybercabs for 4K streaming and high bandwidth gaming with Starlink integration
Tesla is now shipping Cybercabs from Giga Texas with Starlink hardware built in as standard.
Tesla’s Cybercabs are now leaving Gigafactory Texas with Starlink hardware on the rear hatch in significant numbers, according to drone footage captured Tuesday by longtime Austin drone observer Joe Tegtmeyer. Production at the factory ramped back up after the Labor Day weekend, and his flyover of the outbound lot showed rows of gold Cybercabs alongside Model Y Long Wheelbase units, many carrying the satellite module for the first time as standard equipment rather than a one off retrofit.
Giga Texas today is busy with production coming back up following the long weekend. Of interest today in the outbound lot is the appearance of hundreds of Mode; YLβs and many more Cybercabs and for the 1st time equipped with the Starlink module one the hatch in big numbers.
At⦠pic.twitter.com/G9yl6s51m4
β Joe Tegtmeyer π π€ πΈπ (@JoeTegtmeyer) September 8, 2026
Tesla first showed Starlink built into an actual Cybercab on August 10, when the Robotaxi account posted images of a single gold unit with the antenna integrated into the roofline above the taillights and called it the first Cybercab with Starlink integration. That followed a July reveal where Tesla and Starlink jointly posted a cutaway diagram of the antenna placement without a working vehicle to back it up. Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s VP of AI software, said at the time that the connection isn’t required for the car to drive itself. It exists mainly for navigation, customer service and keeping tabs on the fleet.
Musk has made a different case in public. During Tesla’s Q2 earnings call, he said the company can’t afford robotaxis stranded in what he called “Bermuda Triangles of lack of cellular connectivity,” and he separately claimed on X that Starlink will eventually reach every Tesla built, calling it the only way to deliver high bandwidth to billions of vehicles. He has also pitched the antenna as an entertainment upgrade, telling riders they would be able to stream 4K video or play games during a trip.
The rollout has moved fast since. Robotaxi service opened to the public in Austin on September 3, and Cybercabs had already been spotted with Starlink hardware in Houston and near Miami International Airport in the weeks before Tuesday’s factory footage showed the module shipping at volume rather than on scattered test units. Whether the satellite link earns its keep is still an open question. Tesla’s unsupervised service currently runs in dense metro geofences in Texas and Florida, markets where cellular coverage is already strong, which is not where the rural dead zones Musk describes tend to show up.
Lifestyle
Tesla Cybertruck targets job site crews with new Tailgate Utility Track and Bed Gear Box accessory
Tesla launched a $350 tailgate track and a $985 lockable Bed Gear Box for Cybertruck.
Tesla’s Cybertruck team added two more items to the Tesla Shop, targeting job site crews and owners who use the truck bed for actual work rather than just showing it off. The official Cybertruck X account posted the Tailgate Utility Track and the Bed Gear Box within minutes of each other, part of a five item batch that also included a reflective jacket, a spray paint hat and an updated reflective tee.
The Tailgate Utility Track runs $350 and turns the folded down tailgate into another mounting surface. It’s a single aluminum track with a T-slot for sliding accessories and two L-track attachment points, plus two load stops included in the box. The pitch is straightforward: strap down oversized cargo, like lumber or a cooler, that hangs off the back of the bed without it sliding out mid-drive. It bolts onto the existing tailgate and works on every Cybertruck trim.
Tailgate Utility Trackhttps://t.co/PCAYXlFBvS pic.twitter.com/sCV2NVxf1W
β Cybertruck (@cybertruck) September 3, 2026
The Bed Gear Box costs $985 and is a different kind of accessory. It’s a lockable aluminum storage box, 55.78 inches long, 19.8 inches wide and 7.79 inches tall, that mounts to the bed’s L-track rails and comes with two internal bins for smaller items. According to Tesla, at just over 57 pounds empty, it’s meant to stay in place rather than come in and out with each trip, giving owners a factory-fit alternative to loose totes for tools, recovery gear or emergency supplies. Tesla’s listing notes that Long Range and Dual Motor AWD Cybertrucks need the L-Tracks accessory installed separately before the Gear Box will mount, since L-tracks come standard only on certain configurations.
Both accessories lean on the idea Tesla has been building toward since Elon Musk first described the Cybertruck’s third-party attachment strategy at the 2023 shareholder meeting, when he said the truck would ship with mounting points so outside companies, and Tesla itself, could keep adding gear without redesigning the bed. That’s the same L-track backbone underneath the tailgate shield and jumpseats Tesla launched last year, and the off-road armor package that arrived through the same X account in 2025.
Owners looking to round out the rest of the L-track ecosystem, cargo dividers, MOLLE panels, bed racks and similar gear, can find a wider range of options through our Cybertruck accessories collection.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk says he knows how to save Earth for a billion years
Elon Musk says sentient AI satellites launched from the Moon could keep Earth livable forever.
Elon Musk spent part of his weekend describing a plan to keep the planet livable for roughly a billion years, and it starts with satellites that can think for themselves.
In a post on X, Musk argued that swapping fossil fuels for solar and wind power will not be enough to protect humanity from what he called extremely severe extinction events, the kind that occur roughly every 100 million years. His fix is what he called sentient satellites, or solar-powered satellites, controlled by AI, that would sit in a fixed spot between Earth and the Sun after being launched off the Moon using a giant electromagnetic catapult instead of rockets.
The satellites’ onboard AI would make continuous, small adjustments rather than waiting on human instructions. The mass driver is Musk’s proposed way of getting the raw material there cheaply by using an electromagnetic launch track built on the Moon, where lower gravity and no atmosphere make it far easier to fling cargo into space than it is from Earth.
But we do need to act much faster than that if people still want to live where the beach is today. We have about 50 years or so to take action, which should be more than enough time for the space satellites to solve any heating problems. https://t.co/xhrVQALwQw
β Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 30, 2026
Musk shared a Grok generated estimate suggesting roughly 5 percent of Florida’s land, or about 1.68 million acres, could face regular flooding by 2070 under a high sea level rise scenario, and said humanity has about 50 years to act before coastal living looks very different than it does today.
This is not the first time Musk has floated the idea. He raised a similar concept in November, describing a solar powered AI satellite constellation that could make tiny adjustments to incoming sunlight to fine tune Earth’s temperature. Musk has also tied planetary risk to his broader vision at SpaceX, where his compensation package is explicitly linked to establishing a self-sustaining Mars colony, one he has described as an insurance policy against the kind of extinction event he referenced this weekend, and where he has said humans could set foot within five to seven years.


