News
Elon Musk spoke with Consumer Reports following Tesla Model 3 test results
In a recent episode of Consumer Reports’ Talking Cars, Auto Test Director Jake Fisher recounted a conversation he had with Tesla CEO Elon Musk following the release of CR’s test results for the Model 3.
While the magazine stated that there was “plenty to like” about the electric car, such as its excellent range and handling, there were several aspects of the vehicle that left much to be desired. The most prominent of the Model 3’s shortcomings were the car’s brakes, which had an average stopping distance of 152 feet from 60-0 mph — longer than any vehicle in its class. Due to its shortcomings, Consumer Reports opted not to give the Model 3 a “Recommended” rating.
Musk promptly responded to the magazine’s findings on Twitter, stating that Tesla would address the Model 3’s braking issues in an over-the-air firmware update. Musk also pledged to continuously improve the Model 3’s brakes, saying that “Tesla won’t stop until Model 3 has better braking than any remotely comparable car.”
As revealed in Consumer Reports’ recent Talking Cars episode, Musk also reached out to Auto Test Director Jake Fisher after the magazine’s test results were published. During their conversation, Musk and Fisher discussed the Model 3 and possible improvements to the vehicle.
“He was remarkably candid about things. Honestly, he actually thanked us for bringing these things to attention, and said that we’re helping him make the car better,” Fisher said.
Fisher noted that he and Musk talked about several of the Model 3’s deficiencies, such as its controls, brakes, wind noise, rear seats, and its suspension. According to the CR Auto Test Director, Musk stated that Tesla has implemented improvements to the Model 3’s design over the past few months.
During the March-April timeframe, for one, Tesla rolled out changes to the Model 3’s glass to adjust wind noise in the cabin. Around the same time, Tesla also made modifications to the suspension, such as its shock absorbers, to make the ride more comfortable.
Musk discussed the controls of the Model 3 as well, a particular aspect of the vehicle that was considered as a weakness in Consumer Reports’ evaluation. According to Fisher, Musk threw out some ideas to make the car’s controls better.
“We talked about the vents, and he talked about ideas of, well, maybe as you move the seat, (the Model 3) would automatically adjust the vents and the mirrors to suit you,” Fisher said.
Consumer Reports recently published the results of its tests for the Model 3. [Credit: Consumer Reports/YouTube]
Musk also discussed another one of Consumer Reports’ complaints about the Model 3 — the car’s keycard. During its testing, the magazine noted that the phone key worked very well with the Model 3, but using the keycard proved cumbersome. Musk addressed this issue during his phone conversation with Fisher as well.
“He (Musk) admitted that yeah, this isn’t working too well, and we really should do something better. Again, I don’t know if they’re gonna do it or not, but he said we really need to provide a normal key to the customers of this car,” Fisher said.
The Model 3’s keycard stands as one of its differences with its larger siblings, the Model S and the Model X, both of which use Tesla’s ubiquitous electric car-shaped key fobs. The keycard, which is credit card-sized for easy storing in a wallet, is embedded with a small chip that acts as a digital signature for the vehicle.
Since the Model 3 keycard uses near field communication (NFC) technology, the card has a limited transmission range of about 4 inches, requiring owners to tap the electric car’s B-pillar to unlock the door. The card is also placed between the front seats of the vehicle to start the car.
Consumer Reports has been mixed with Tesla’s vehicles so far. The magazine dubbed the Model S as the best car it ever tested. The Model X, on the other hand, was dubbed by CR “fast and flawed,” citing the overcomplicated Falcon Wing Doors of the all-electric luxury SUV. Despite its reservations with the Model X, however, Consumer Reports nevertheless ranked Tesla as the sole American automaker in its Top 10 list for 2018.
Watch Consumer Reports’ recent episode on the Tesla Model 3 in the video below.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Boring Company has big plans for Las Vegas by year’s end
Elon Musk’s Boring Company says Vegas Loop stations will double by year end once again.
The Boring Company says the Vegas Loop’s station count will double by the end of the year, tying the target to a hiring push for drivers and operations managers in Las Vegas. “Vegas Loop is getting bigger – the station count will double by end of year!” the company wrote in a post on X, attaching listings for a Loop driver and a senior Loop operations manager.
The number checks out against what’s already public, with the Vegas Loop currently running 14 operational stations, while the Boring Company’s own project page lists 28 as the target for the end of 2026.
Vegas Loop is getting bigger – the station count will double by end of year!
Urgently hiring exceptional and enthusiastic Drivers and Ops Managers.
Apply here!
Driverhttps://t.co/ZUPXBYTONb
Senior Loop Ops Managerhttps://t.co/mV6V22V8jH pic.twitter.com/IZ9FqIw8WY
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) September 14, 2026
Much of that growth is tied to tunnels that are already built and waiting on an opening date. A roughly two-mile dual tunnel system under Paradise Road, connecting Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, is expected to open in stages over the coming weeks, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority chief executive Steve Hill told the Review-Journal last week. New stations at 4744 Paradise, Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, and the former Gordon Biersch site would come online with it, several of them built to speed up rides to Harry Reid International Airport ahead of Formula 1’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Clark County entitled Vegas Loop for 123 stations after approving 19 more in August, as Teslarati reported at the time. Entitlement and construction move at different speeds on this project, so county approval alone does not guarantee a station opens on any particular schedule.
Clark County approved 18 additional stations back in 2023, part of a plan that pushed the system’s target to 69 stations across 65 miles, doubling the network on paper for the first time. The target kept climbing after that, to roughly 93 stations by the end of that year and 104 by last year, before August’s vote pushed it to 123. This week’s announcement is the first time that doubling language has been attached to stations actually running rather than stations merely approved on a county map.
Ridership gives some sense of what a denser network could carry. Boring Company executive Mike Baier said in July that the Vegas Loop already moves around 40,000 passengers on busy convention days, a total that tops most light rail systems in the country despite the system running on a fraction of its planned tunnel mileage. Company leadership has projected ridership could triple or quadruple once the airport connector tunnels fully open.
Boring Company did not say which stations beyond those already under construction would open by year end, or whether the hiring push points to a fleet expansion alongside the new stops.
Tesla is looking to expand into a new Asian market, strengthening its presence in a region that has been bullish on electric vehicles as a whole.
Tesla officially filed to establish a subsidiary of its business in Vietnam, a report from Reuters suggests. Tesla named the entity “Tesla Motors Vietnam Limited Liability Company.”
The planned entrance into the Vietnamese market is a good sign and move for Tesla, as it has become one of the fastest-growing EV markets in Southeast Asia. It is already among the leaders in the region in both volume and electrification rate. In the first half of this year, Vietnam led Southeast Asia in battery-electric passenger car sales at about 116,000 units, up about 71 percent year over year.
Currently, Vietnamese EV drivers rely on VinFast’s V-Green network, which has about 150,000 ports, but these are primarily reserved for VinFast vehicles. Public third-party charging is fragmented and unreliable for those who do not own chargers that are dedicated to a certain manufacturer’s vehicles.
Tesla has had mixed results in Asia as a whole, and as China remains the core part of its story in Asia, the company is evidently working on expanding its footprint on the continent. Tesla’s domestic retail deliveries fell about 12 percent year over year through the first eight months of 2026.
Model Y remains a standout individual product, holding its position as one of, if not the, best-selling vehicles in the world. However, Model 3 has been weaker than it has been in past years.
Gigafactory Shanghai, the company’s Chinese production facility, still performs very well. Wholesale volumes in terms of exports have more than doubled and now exceed domestic retail sales; Giga Shanghai builds vehicles for Europe, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and other markets. South Korea has been an explicit bright spot, with registrations doubling year-to-date and Tesla frequently appearing as the top imported brand.
Tesla just did something in South Korea that no foreign carmaker has ever done
Tesla’s entrance into Vietnam signals a broader effort to take over the Asian market and grab more market share from rivals.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s companies made up with Apple but OpenAI still on the hook
Elon Musk’s X Corp and SpaceXAI dropped their Apple antitrust suit, leaving OpenAI as defendant.
X Corp and SpaceXAI, Elon Musk’s social platform and AI venture, have dropped Apple from the antitrust lawsuit that they filed against the iPhone maker and OpenAI last year. In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, attorneys for X and SpaceXAI moved to dismiss the Apple portion of the case, first reported by Reuters. The filing does not explain why the companies are dropping Apple or say whether a settlement was reached.
X and SpaceXAI say they intend to keep pursuing the case against OpenAI, which remains a defendant. That resolves the dispute with one company while leaving the core allegation intact against the other, with no public accounting of what changed in between.
The lawsuit dates to August 2025, when xAI and X sued Apple and OpenAI, arguing that Apple’s decision to make ChatGPT the only generative AI chatbot built into iOS gave OpenAI an unfair structural advantage. The complaint claimed ChatGPT controlled roughly 80 percent of the chatbot market at the time, while Grok held only a few percent. It sought billions of dollars in damages and asked the court to unwind the arrangement.
Elon Musk’s xAI and X file antitrust suit against Apple and OpenAI over AI exclusivity
The filing followed weeks of Musk publicly complaining that Grok and X weren’t appearing in Apple’s “Must Have” App Store section, though Grok ranked second in the Productivity category and X ranked first in News at the time. He accused Apple of “playing politics” and warned of immediate legal action before following through days later.
Apple and OpenAI tried to get the case thrown out, but a federal judge denied both motions in November, ruling the dispute was better suited to summary judgment than an early dismissal. That decision sent the case into discovery, which is presumably what led to Monday’s filing.
Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either 𝕏 or Grok in your “Must Have” section when 𝕏 is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps?
Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know. https://t.co/3wenLZGtwG
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 11, 2025
The timing is notable given how Musk’s sentiment toward Apple has shifted, with Musk noting that he was open to letting Grok power a revamped Siri after a user suggested Apple replace its aging assistant with xAI’s model.
xAI, the AI venture Musk folded into X Corp last year, has since combined with SpaceX under the SpaceXAI brand. That structure now puts X, Grok and SpaceX’s rocket and satellite businesses under one roof as Musk pushes his AI ambitions beyond chatbots.
OpenAI remains the sole defendant going forward, and Musk’s companies have not said if there’s any changes to those original claims. Apple and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing.
Elon Musk’s Boring Company has big plans for Las Vegas by year’s end
Tesla looks to expand into new Asian market, strengthening presence
