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Elon Musk’s Tesla pickup truck will likely have few competitors from legacy auto
Elon Musk admits that while Tesla probably has the most exciting product roadmap in the industry today, he has a soft spot for the company’s upcoming pickup truck. In a recent appearance at the Recode Decode podcast hosted by veteran tech journalist Kara Swisher, Musk stated that the Tesla Truck would be “super futuristic,” to the point where it would not look out of place in the Blade Runner franchise.
Musk candidly added that if the first pickup, with its cyberpunk tech and features, proves too radical for the market, then Tesla would release a more conventional truck. Ultimately, it remains to be seen if the company would breach the pickup market through Elon Musk’s Blade Runner cyberpunk truck or a more conventional pickup, but one thing is sure. Tesla would soon be competing in America’s most lucrative auto segment.
It could be argued that pickup trucks are the quintessential American vehicles. In 2017 alone, pickup truck sales across the US accounted for 16.4% of the country’s total car sales. Within this number were nearly 900,000 Ford F-Series pickups and about 950,000 GM-branded trucks. Speaking to Trucks.com last January, Michael Ramsey, an automotive analyst at Gartner Inc., noted that in several areas in the US, a truck is a preferable vehicle for consumers.
“In many areas of the country, the truck is just the preferred lifestyle look. They handle much better than before, and with the aid of technology, are even easier to navigate in tight spaces. The U.S. is ideally suited to bigger vehicles because of big parking spaces and roads,” the auto analyst said.
While the disruption of the auto industry with electric-powered vehicles could be felt in the passenger car market thanks to vehicles like the Tesla Model 3, the EV movement is yet to breach the pickup truck segment. EV startups like Bollinger Motors and Rivian are working on all-electric pickup trucks, but both companies are still building facilities capable of manufacturing vehicles on a mass scale. Rivian, for one, is tooling its 2.6 million sq ft factory in Normal, IL. Legacy automakers, which actually have the necessary infrastructure to mass produce all-electric trucks, have mostly taken a rather conservative stance.
Ford has noted that it is developing a hybrid version of its best-selling F-150 pickup truck. In a post on its official website, the company stated that the F-150 hybrid would be a vehicle with no-compromises, “from low-end torque for extra pulling power to serving as a mobile generator on the job site.” Ford, though, has not announced an official release date for the vehicle, though there is speculation that the legacy automaker would launch the hybrid truck around 2020.
GM, on the other hand, recently took an even more conservative stance. In a statement to the Detroit Free Press, vice president of global strategy Mike Abelson declared that GM would lead the EV industry in the “next decade or so.” Despite this, Abelson noted that its core business — comprised of large, gasoline and diesel-powered pickup trucks — would remain intact for the next couple of decades.
“The core business is going to be the core business for a couple of decades to come. There will not be any AV/EV pickups,” Abelson said.
With legacy automakers seemingly taking their time once more, Elon Musk’s Blade Runner truck might end up being one of the first movers in the electric pickup market. And if there is anything that could be learned in the domination of the Model S and 3 in their respective segments, ignoring Tesla and the potential of its vehicles could be a pretty big mistake.
In a brief brainstorming session on Twitter earlier this year, Elon Musk accepted suggestions for features that would be useful for the upcoming Tesla pickup truck. Among these include four-wheel steering, the capability to parallel park itself, seating for six people, a 240-volt connection for power tools, and a maximum towing capacity of 300,000 pounds. Tesla is yet to provide a teaser for the release date of its pickup truck, though speculations are high that the vehicle would be announced after the Model Y, which is expected to be unveiled in 2019.
Elon Musk has acknowledged that early discussions with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) could bring the company into his ambitious Terafab semiconductor project, signaling a possible partnership with the world’s leading contract chipmaker.
Musk confirmed that early talks are underway, but as of right now, they are “just discussions.” There is no confirmation of a deal nor dismissal of the possibility of one, leaving open the prospect of one of the largest advanced-chip collaborations under discussion in the U.S.
@wholemars Just discussions, but something may come of it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The report that speculated on potential discussions between Terafab and TSMC comes from Tim Culpan, who outlined a few ways the collaboration could operate. One is TSMC using the project as an “anchor customer” for future facilities in Texas, potentially contributing process expertise, operational know-how, or capacity while Terafab provides capital, long-term purchase commitments, or both.
Tesla and SpaceX jointly developed the Terafab project, with Intel already participating on the tech side. Elon Musk announced the project in March, and it intends to produce more than one terawatt of AI compute capacity annually once fully built.
Company statements place the first phase at approximately $16.8 billion in cost, with later filings pointing to a total that could reach well into the tens of billions across multiple stages.
Intel joined the effort in April 2026 and is expected to supply its 14A manufacturing process for the full-scale plant.
Musk has said existing suppliers, including Samsung and TSMC, remain important for near-term needs; Tesla already has production arrangements with Samsung for AI5 and AI6 chips, but that future demand from Optimus robots, Cybercab vehicles, and planned space-based data centers will eventually exceed what the global industry can currently deliver.
Terafab is positioned as the long-term answer to that projected shortfall, and Tesla did something similar during COVID to avoid a chip shortage. This is just a much larger-scale solution.
If the partnership were to materialize, it would add TSMC’s industry-leading strategies to a project that already combines Tesla’s and SpaceX’s capital and offtake with Intel’s process technology. For now, the only public confirmation is Musk’s brief acknowledgement that conversations are occurring.
Tesla’s early strategy for charging units operating within its Robotaxi fleet reveals that the company surely has not lost any of that scrappy DNA that took it from an unlikely success story to the most valuable carmaker in the world.
An observer at a Tesla Supercharger in Austin spotted ten total Robotaxi vehicles arrive: one Cybercab and nine Model Y units. A Tesla employee was waiting at the lot and allowed each unit to park itself; every car that arrived had nobody in it.
Tesla wins FCC approval for wireless Cybercab charging system
The Tesla employee would walk around and plug each car in, adjusting the parking if needed:
So look at what I found. This is how Tesla charges unsupervised robotaxis at a public supercharger. Here is a driverless Cybercab showing up with no one in it. There are 9 other Model Ys that showed up too. A Tesla employee is walking around and plugging each of them in. She also moves the cars if they are not positioned well enough to charge. I love this process. One person charges multiple robotaxis at once
— Abhimanyu Yadav (@WorldlyReviewer) October 3, 2026
It’s a very interesting strategy, but extremely understandable at this early point in the Robotaxi program. It’s only been out for about 15 months, and Cybercab just entered the fleet in early September.
On top of that, Tesla is still working tirelessly on its wireless charging apparatus, and a new patent was just published regarding that product last week.
However, this is just another example of how Tesla still has plenty of that scrappy DNA leftover from the “production hell” days, when CEO Elon Musk slept on the floor of the factory, employees were working crazy hours, Tesla was building Sprung Structures to build cars in, and the company was tiptoeing on the brink of bankruptcy.
@Teslarati Sheer magnitude of the entire production system is hard to appreciate. Almost every element of production is >75% automated. Only wire harnesses & general assembly, which are <10% of production costs, are primarily manual.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 12, 2020
For now, Tesla is utilizing a simple system for recharging its ride-hailing vehicles, and that is a Tesla employee doing it manually until another solution presents itself. Sure, it’s not the most high-tech thing, and it certainly is not what people might have expected at this point in time, but it works, and it’s keeping the entire suite running.
Tesla is expanding its Robotaxi service hours by pushing the time back by one hour, keeping the ride-hailing service operational until 11 p.m., one hour later than previously.
CEO Elon Musk confirmed the change and offered a specific reason the expansion has been gradual: the system still needs to reliably avoid small pets that are difficult to see after dark, as they commonly blend into the color of the road, especially when they’re grey.
The latest adjustment restores only a fraction of the operating window the service once held. When paid Robotaxi rides began in Austin on June 22, 2025, vehicles ran from 6 a.m. to midnight.
In September 2025, Tesla lengthened the day to a 2 a.m. close, producing a 20-hour window that stayed in place for most of the following year. By early August of this year, the cutoff had already been pulled back; an August 26 update formalized hours of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. across Austin and several other markets.
The October move to 11 p.m. therefore leaves the Austin day one hour shorter than the original launch schedule and three hours shorter than the 2025 peak.
Musk addressed the constraint directly after the announcement. “The main thing we’re trying to solve is making sure that we don’t run over pets when they’re hard to see at night,” he wrote. “Literally trying to avoid grey kittens on grey tarmac in the dark.”
Robotaxi operating hours moved from 10pm to 11pm.
The main thing we’re trying to solve is making sure that we don’t run over pets when they’re hard to see at night. Literally trying to avoid grey kittens on grey tarmac in the dark.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The example points to a low-contrast perception problem in which a small animal can blend into the road surface under limited lighting.
Tesla’s vehicles rely on cameras and neural-network processing rather than lidar; Musk has previously argued that advanced vision software can extract useful information even in low light by analyzing photon counts, but the pet-detection case remains the stated limiter in later hours.
The modest schedule change arrives alongside faster growth in the purpose-built Cybercab fleet. Texas registration data tracked by observers showed the Austin Cybercab count rising sharply in recent weeks, reaching 169 vehicles after more than 100 were added in a short span.
Tesla has indicated that a broader shift toward 24-hour operation is tied to the upcoming FSD v15 software release expected this month on Robotaxi vehicles. Until that capability is validated for the edge cases Musk described, the company continues to add service time incrementally rather than jumping straight to overnight coverage.
The one-hour extension gives Austin riders a later option for evening trips while the underlying detection work continues.
Elon Musk teases TSMC as potential Terafab partner
Tesla reveals early Robotaxi charging strategy, showing scrappy DNA
