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What cars did Elon Musk drive before Tesla?
Musk’s first car was a 1978 BMW 320i that he bought in 1994 for $1,400. It was a fixer upper according to the now Tesla CEO which he drove for two years. One day, he loaned it to a colleague who phoned a short time later to say one of the wheels had literally fallen off the car, leaving a deep gouge in the pavement. Musk junked the car.
The next car would be a 1967 Series I Jaguar XK-E inspired by a book on exotic cars which he received as a present at 17 years of age. The Jaguar caught his eye and he promised himself that one day he would buy one as soon as he could afford to. He and his brother Kimbal Musk had co-founded their first company called Zip2 at the time. When Musk received his first dividend check for $40,000 from the company, sure enough it went straight to buying a Jaguar. And why not? Enzo Ferrari once proclaimed the XX-E the most beautiful production car ever made.
“That one was like a bad girlfriend. It kept breaking down on me and causing me all sorts of trouble”, Musk once said.
Soon after, Elon would be catapulted to Silicon Valley stardom after cashing out of PayPal. What followed would be the purchase of the ultimate tech entrepreneur status symbol, the McLaren F1. “I had it for several years and I put 11,000 miles on it and I drove it from LA to San Francisco. I had it as a daily driver,” Musk said in a interview with Pando Daily.
He would ultimately total the McLaren one day while driving with serial investor Peter Thiel to go chat up Michael Moritz, a venture capitalist with Sequoia Capital. “Peter said ‘so what can this do’ and like probably number one on the list of famous last words I said ‘watch this.’ So I floored it and did a lane change on Sand Hill,” a road in Menlo Park. In a heartbeat, the car went up an embankment, landed on its roof and tore all four wheels off the car. The F1 was a total loss. To make matters worse, the million dollar F1 wasn’t insured.
Image credit: YouTube/Beijing Satellite TV via Business Insider
Following the purchases of a BMW M5 in 2007 and a Porsche 911 in 2012, the Tesla CEO would also buy the famous Lotus Esprit S1 used in the movie The Spy Who Loved Me. This would become the inspiration to Tesla’s James Bond easter egg found in the Model S and Model X.
Musk bought the movie prop in 2013 at an auction in London for $886,000. “It was amazing as a little kid in South Africa to watch James Bond in ‘The Spy Who Loved Me’ drive his Lotus Esprit off a pier, press a button and have it transform into a submarine underwater,” he told the Huffington Post.
“I was disappointed to learn that it can’t actually transform. What I’m going to do is upgrade it with a Tesla electric powertrain and try to make it transform for real,” he says. This would explain Elon’s tweet after a video surfaced showing a Model S driving through a flooded tunnel.
Image credit: AP/ Lefteris Pitarakis
However, the car that most directly influenced an actual Tesla automobile is the Audi Q7 SUV that Musk owns in present day. It was the inspiration for the falcon wing doors on the Model X. Musk says he wanted to make a car with doors that could open in tight spaces. He also wanted to be able to access the third row seats without folding the second row seats forward.
“The Audi Q7 is particularly horrendous,” he told Forbes during an interview in 2012. “Even in the best case scenario, you need to be a dwarf mountain climber to get into the back seat.”
Image credit: Audi
That makes a total of 7 cars Elon Musk has owned and every one of them has been performance oriented. Maybe that’s where the fascination with Teslas that can scoot to 60 mph in under 3 seconds comes from.
Source: Business Insider
Tesla has expanded the footprint of a massive safety feature worldwide with a recent Software Update labeled as 2026.20.6. The expansion of the “Blind Spot Warning While Parked” feature represents the more widespread availability of the feature, which aims to prevent “dooring.”
Dooring is when a driver or passenger opens a car door into the path of an oncoming road user, usually a cyclist or motorcyclist. It is among the most common types of cycling accidents, the League of American Bicyclists says.
For this reason, Tesla created a feature that warns occupants not to open the door because an object is approaching. The feature will sound a chime, and it will also delay the opening of the door to prevent an incident.
The release notes state (via Not a Tesla App):
“If you attempt to open a door while an approaching object is detected in your blind spot (for example, a bicyclist approaching from behind) a chime sounds, and your door will not open upon initial button press. Wait a short time and press the button a second time to override the warning.”
Tesla initially rolled out this feature back in 2024 with the Model 3 “Highland.” However, it remained with the Model 3 exclusively for over a year; that was until Tesla added it to the Cybertruck this past Spring.
Now, it is making its way to the new Model Y, 2021 and newer Model S, and 2021 or newer Model X.
The prevention of dooring incidents could eliminate many injuries to cyclists, especially in an urban setting. Dooring accounts for 10-20 percent of bike-related crashes in major cities, and over 17,000 dooring-related incidents were treated in the U.S. over the course of a decade. These usually involve fractures, contusions, and head trauma.
Tesla confirmed this morning that it has sent the first production units, manufactured with no steering wheel or pedals, to on-road testing in Austin, sharing video of the first rides with no human controls.
The lack of steering wheels and pedals in the Cybercab aligns with Tesla’s self-certification of Robotaxi as Level 4 SAE, a platform it plans to make widespread through internal vehicles and customer-owned cars that will operate and generate revenue for individuals.
The start of these engineering tests is a major signal for Tesla, which plans to bring driverless, wheel-less, and pedal-less Cybercabs to market in the coming months. With production already well underway at Gigafactory Texas, where the Cybercab is built, there is some inclination to believe the first public rides could happen sooner rather than later.
Engineering tests of the first production Cybercab have begun in Austin pic.twitter.com/fk3KQvcE8a
— Tesla (@Tesla) June 30, 2026
Tesla’s engineering tests will put the Cybercab in real-world scenarios, testing not only the hardware, but more importantly, the software that drives the car around Austin with nobody supervising it within the car.
This is perhaps the biggest part of the internal testing process, especially prior to allowing regular, everyday people to hail the Cybercab for an autonomous ride. These early rides serve as a true benchmark for Tesla: How many rides can it achieve safely? How many miles did it travel consecutively without needing an intervention? What scenarios challenge the Full Self-Driving suite the most?
The proper precautions have already been put into place as well, as Tesla released the First Responders Guide to Cybercab over the weekend, ensuring that emergency services have 24/7 access to Robotaxi Assistance, as well as other boundaries, such as Geofencing features that can be used to redirect autonomous vehicle traffic due to accidents, road closures, construction, or maintenance.
Cybercab seems genuinely close to being added to the Robotaxi fleet in Austin, but Tesla has prioritized safety throughout this entire process. Therefore, we think it could be months before it truly starts giving rides to the public. People have been frustrated with this, but Robotaxi in Austin has a tremendous safety record so far, so the slow rollout has kept people safe and accidents to a minimum.
The most important thing is that Tesla continues to show consistent progress in the Cybercab’s ramp-up toward fleet addition. A few weeks back, we saw the EPA reward the Cybercab a Certificate of Conformity, allowing it to enter the stream of commerce. Then, we saw Tesla add decals, signaling that it was likely about to start testing it publicly. That has now happened.
The next big move will be the announcement of the first rides, so this Summer should be filled with anticipation.
For years, there have been images and videos across social media platforms that have reminded me of when I was a 15-year-old kid teased by “Xbox 720” videos on YouTube. These videos are of the supposed “Tesla Phone” that Elon Musk was secretly developing in between leading Tesla with its electric cars and SpaceX with its reusable rockets.
Would you buy a Tesla phone ? pic.twitter.com/aaTwvvIJit
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) October 6, 2023
Although Musk has put those rumors to bed several times, it was never completely out of the realm that he could get involved in cell phones in some capacity. Think outside the box and more macro-level, though. Instead of reinventing the computer, Musk reinvented connectivity by developing Starlink with SpaceX.
It could be something similar, TD Cowen analyst Gregory Williams said in a note last week, where he hinted SpaceX could be gathering some steam to acquire T-Mobile.
Williams said it would be the “clear choice” for SpaceX if it decided to go through with a network acquisition. He also suggested AT&T.
The move would be possible through selling more of its own stock, which would help SpaceX raise the money to purchase T-Mobile, which would cost roughly $300 billion. It could be one of the moves SpaceX makes post-IPO in terms of an acquisition: it already acquired Cursor AI for $60 billion.
Other analysts, like Dan Ives of Wedbush, believe SpaceX and Tesla will eventually merge into one anyway, and that conglomeration could come as soon as this year, some have said.
The implications of SpaceX purchasing T-Mobile are massive. A combined entity would create a truly ubiquitous network: T-Mobile’s terrestrial 5G towers and Starlink’s growing constellation of Direct-to-Cell satellites. This would essentially eliminate dead zones across the U.S. and potentially globally.
SpaceX would instantly become a full-scale facilities-based carrier with satellite differentiation; a huge advantage. This would pressure AT&T and Verizon heavily.
There are also concerns like a potential reduction in long-term competition, and of course, a deal of that size would face intense scrutiny from government agencies.
The strategic fit is compelling due to the existing Starlink–T-Mobile partnership and complementary technologies (space + terrestrial). It could create a dominant integrated communications player. However, the regulatory, financial, and execution hurdles are enormous — this remains highly speculative with no indication SpaceX is actively pursuing it right now.
Tesla expands massive safety feature worldwide in latest update
Tesla sends production Cybercab with no steering wheel, pedals to on-road testing
