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Tesla’s ventilator donations are being used to provoke Elon Musk into another controversy
During a global pandemic, an optimist would hope that people would work together to help those in need out of the common good. A pessimist would suggest that such circumstances would bring out the worst in people instead. Recent developments in the media coverage of Elon Musk and Tesla’s ventilator donations suggest that the pessimist is right. At times like these, there are entities who choose to provoke people that are willing to help–all for the sake of controversy.
Elon Musk is no stranger to controversy, both self-inflicted or otherwise. Over the past years, Musk has butted heads with several entities, from regulators like the SEC to journalists who tend to cover Tesla with pervading negative slant. Some of these bouts have resulted in a lot of pain for Musk and even Tesla shareholders. An example of this is Musk’s spat with British caver Vern Unsworth, whose defamation case against the CEO over comments following the Thailand cave rescue triggered some TSLA stock swings and extensive coverage from multiple premier news outlets.
Musk has a strong tendency to correct misleading reports. Take CNN’s recent coverage of Tesla’s ventilator donations, for example. The news outlet published a report alleging that no ventilators have reached CA hospitals despite Musk’s commitment to do so. Musk then took it upon himself to correct the report, showing messages between Tesla and the medical professionals from the state communicating about the donated machines and their use.
This, of course, triggered even more staff from CNN to double down, alleging that the non-invasive ventilators donated by Tesla weren’t ventilators at all, despite medical professionals stating that the machines are invaluable for non-critical coronavirus cases. The BiBAPs and CPAPs donated by Tesla could even be retrofitted using a simple modification to work for critical cases. Tesla has also started delivering actual invasive ventilators to hospitals, on top of the company’s efforts to develop its own ventilator using Model 3 parts.
Anyone with an iota of sense would see that Tesla and Musk are pretty much doing what they can to address the needs of medical professionals as much as possible. Are the BiBAPs and CPAP’s donated by Musk useful in the battle against the coronavirus? Medical professionals, government officials, and CEOs of actual ventilator makers would agree. Can the machines be modified to work for more severe cases? The doctors at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York say it’s actually pretty simple to do so. With this in mind, it seems like a no-brainer to conclude that the machines Tesla donated are indeed helping in the battle against the ongoing pandemic.
This point was lost entirely in critical articles that have been published about Musk and Tesla’s donations from outlets such as CNN. One who is unfamiliar with the events that led up to Musk’s recent Twitter interactions would likely think that the Tesla CEO brazenly lied when he committed to donating free ventilators, instead giving away cheap machines that are useless against the C-19 virus. Critics would even refuse to acknowledge non-invasive machines as actual ventilators, despite authorities such as John Hopkins listing them as such.
A key thesis against Musk alleges that he lied about ventilator donations to get some free PR and goodwill. This does not hold water, as Tesla and Musk already receive an insane amount of media coverage, and the company is scrutinized consistently by the media and critics from Wall Street. Thus, the idea of Musk wanting more media coverage to stroke his ego does not seem to make sense, considering that he and his companies actually get a little bit too much coverage. With this in mind, it appears that CNN’s recent reports about Tesla’s ventilator donations, as well as the succeeding tweets from the media outlet’s staff doubling down on their narrative, are designed to do one thing. They are posted to provoke Musk, until such a time when he actually responds with something concretely controversial.
Something similar has happened before. Mention Musk’s name with the Thai cave rescue and many will likely remember the CEO’s incendiary comments against British caver Vern Unsworth. A popular narrative for the event also alleges that Musk stuck his nose into the rescue without prompting so he can get free PR, and that he “attacked” the caver just because he wanted to. The fact that Musk was invited to help, that his team was in close communication with rescuers, and that the caver initiated the verbal spat, are largely forgotten. These experiences, as painful as they may be, must now stand as a huge lesson to Elon Musk.
Musk is no stranger to controversies with the media, and having gone through significant pains over the years because of them, he must handle the ongoing attempts to provoke him with extreme caution. At this point, Musk’s critics (and apparently, CNN staff) are practically salivating at the prospect of the CEO firing off a tweet that can be interpreted as a direct act of aggression against the news outlet or any of its staff. So far, Musk’s responses have been sarcastic, and that’s fine and true to his personality. But the Tesla CEO must be aware that he is not playing a fair game here. Every point of syntax and semantics can and will be exploited to fit a narrative, even if it means twisting the context of a statement. With this in mind, Musk’s best strategy for now is to proceed with a ton of caution, or complete silence.
Tesla released the Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite to owners of Hardware 3 or AI3 vehicles today, adding several new features to the vehicles that were once believed to be capable of unsupervised self-driving.
Now, Tesla has released this modified suite to older Tesla vehicles, adding plenty of new features and capabilities.
Here are the full release notes for the suite:
- Distilled the intelligence from HW4 V14 into HW3. This allows HW3 to directly learn how to handle scenarios using HW4 V14 as a guide. This process unlocks the improvements that have been made to HW4 including Reinforcement Learning (RL) and offline models for HW3.
- Improved both proactive and reactive responsiveness across a wide variety of categories including navigation handling, merges and forks, pedestrian interactions, traffic lights, and vehicle cut-in scenarios.
- Improved general comfort in nominal scenarios through fewer false slowdowns, smoother steering and more consistent lane centering.
- Introduced parking, unparking, and reversing capabilities.
- Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, or at the Curbside.
- Speed Profiles are now available at all times, to further customize driving style preference.
These improvements, according to Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, help distill the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of AI3.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ for older cars finally gets released
He added:
“It includes destination options and speed profiles on city roads, but more importantly significantly improved safety. We hope you’ll enjoy it, once the build ships wide.”
FSD v14 Lite is now rolling out to AI3 early-access customers. Based on the feedback, will rollout to more customers over the next few weeks.
This build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute config of AI3. It includes destination…
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 29, 2026
Tesla will continue to roll out the v14 Lite suite more widely in the coming weeks, the company said.
Tesla has finally released its Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite for older cars that equip the Hardware 3 or AI 3 chip, which have not been able to handle the newest versions of the company’s driver assistance software.
Tesla officially started releasing the v14 Lite suite to owners in the Early Access Program last night. The company’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said that the rollout will continue over the next few weeks. The build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of an AI3 car.
🚨 Tesla is releasing v14 Lite for AI3 owners who are in early-access
This will give AI3 cars the ability to experience new FSD features like parking preferences. https://t.co/pp6Q5FOKoz pic.twitter.com/tqexMB8SVy
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 29, 2026
It also includes a variety of new features that were available to AI4 cars running v14, including:
- Start Self-Driving from Park
- Arrival and Parking Options
- Speed Profiles
The release is highly anticipated because those owners with AI3 vehicles were early adopters into the FSD platform and were promised that their cars would be capable of achieving Full Self-Driving.
However, Tesla CEO Elon Musk admitted during the company’s recent Q1 Earnings Call that these vehicles would not be capable of achieving unsupervised Full Self-Driving, which is what Tesla had originally said.
Owners were not pleased with this answer, or the idea that their commitment to buying the suite outright for thousands of dollars would not yield the ability to drive without operating the car. Tesla gave some solutions for this, including a discount on a new car, or an upgrade to an AI4 or AI5 self-driving computer and new, upgraded cameras.
Tesla owners do not seem pleased with these options, as they require giving the company more money.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that Tesla came through for owners here by releasing v14 Lite before the end of Q2, something it had promised owners during the previous Earnings Call. Tesla has had trouble keeping up with timelines, but this is a big achievement for the team.
Tesla released what analysts believe the company will report in terms of deliveries and energy deployments for Q2, but the figures seem to confirm a long-standing theory on the company’s vehicle division.
For years, Tesla was just looked at as a car company. Now that it has established itself as a powerhouse in energy, AI, and tech as a whole, the company is now less hellbent on achieving quarterly growth, on a sequential basis, at least from a major standpoint.
Tesla topped out its annual deliveries in 2023 at 1.81 million, and in the two years since, the company has reported a decrease in deliveries for the entire 12-month term both times.
With Tesla delivering 358,023 cars in Q1, a 6.3 percent increase over Q1 2025, but falling short of Wall Street expectations at 365,000-370,000 units, the narrative around vehicle deliveries and their importance continued to change earlier this year. Some might say it is convenient, but others might say it is the typical evolution of a company that continues to change over time.
For Q2, Tesla’s delivery consensus estimates sit at 406,024 units, analysts believe. They were surveyed from Daiwa, DB, Wedbush, Cowen, Canaccord, Baird, Wolfe, BMP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, RBC, Evercore ISI, Barclays, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Truist, UBS, Jefferies, JPM, Needham & Co., HSBC, and William Blair.
Credit: Tesla
Tesla is also expected to report deployments of 13.8 GWh this quarter.
The change to Tesla’s overall narrative now leans less on vehicle deliveries and more on its other projects. Most notably, Tesla’s Robotaxi project has taken the priority over most of its other business ventures, and investors and the public are more concerned about the deployment of vehicles into the fleet, the operation of a driverless ride-hailing service, Cybercab production and operation, and expansion into new cities.
Tesla analyst realizes one big thing about the stock: deliveries are losing importance
This big narrative switch happened when Tesla indicated it was looking at making transportation a service by launching a ride-hailing service that will operate using Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite. Once unsupervised operation begins, Robotaxi could be a new way for people to get around, all without a driver in their car.
Instead, they will rely on the billions of miles Tesla has accumulated from its real-world fleet.
It is important to note that Tesla remains significant in the automotive sector, and deliveries must continue as they have for years. Tesla still has a strong automotive business and needs to execute further on all facets to keep its investors happy.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ Release Notes: new capabilities and features
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ for older cars finally gets released
