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Behind the Tesla and Elon Musk Attacks: Big Energy and Conservative Groups
Elon Musk and Tesla Motors have their share of detractors, some of whom have become more vicious than usual as of late. According to a recent article published by The Drive, focused attacks on Tesla and SpaceX emanate from conservative group Citizens for the Republic. CftR is an organization founded in 1977 by Ronald Reagan that calls itself ” a national organization dedicated to revitalizing the conservative movement.” Its stated mission is to “ferret out corruption that wastes taxpayer dollars and continually undermines the American people in favor of the powerful and profitable.” CftR lists its national chairman as Laura Ingraham, a right wing pundit and possible press secretary for Donald Trump.
Musk and his various companies are frequently singled out as examples of taxpayer waste. CftR’s recent activity focuses on a website called Stop Elon From Falling Again whose motto is, “The One Stop Database On Stopping Elon Musk.” It claims “Elon Musk has defrauded the American Taxpayer out of over $4.9 Billion in the form of subsidies, grants, and other favors.”
One of CftR’s regular themes is that incentives promoting solar power are wasteful. “The solar industry has been a pet-industry of the Obama Administration and those who claim to care about the environment. Washington has given Solar companies millions in federal tax credits and subsidies that are costing taxpayers millions, despite posting losses year after year. When Solyndra, Ener1, and others get government tax breaks, the American people need to know. The US government needs to stop meddling in industries and create an atmosphere that allows to prosper without pledging taxpayer support.”
The group fails to mention an article in the New York Times from earlier this year that alleges fossil fuel companies get $4 billion a year in subsidies from the federal government. Nor does it include a reference to the finding of the International Monetary Fund earlier this year that fossil fuel interests receive more than $5 trillion in direct and indirect subsidies from governments around the world each year. When it comes to ferreting out wasteful government spending, people tend to overlook benefits that flow to activities they approve of — or are paid to promote.
Can anyone uncover who is really writing these fake pieces? Can't be skankhunt42. His work is better than this. https://t.co/Qs69AFMGE5
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2016
Elon has good reason to be suspicious of his rivals. Earlier this year, the Koch Brothers whose total income from fossil fuel related business estimated at $115 billion let it be known they had created a special $10 million a year fund to induce media to run stories favorable to fossil fuels. It worked.
On March 7, Forbes ran a story entitled Forget The Gas Tax, Here’s How Policymakers Make Drivers Pay. The subtitle is, “CAFE standards are not an effective climate change policy; they are a meaningless gesture.” On the same day, Fortune ran a story entitled What Electric-Car Lovers Get Wrong About Fossil Fuels. On March 11, the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed entitled Voters Should Be Mad at Electric Cars, sensationalizing it with a subheading “If Trump and Sanders fans hate absurd handouts to elites, the Tesla economy is the place to look.”
Also on March 11, The Herald Scotland ran this story: Time to get off the back of fossil fuels and show support rather than back daft divestment campaigns. “Koch Industries does not oppose electric vehicles,” said Philip Ellender, a spokesman for the company. “What we oppose is government subsidizing and mandating a particular form of energy over another. We oppose all subsidies – even for those industries in which we participate.”
Does that sound oddly similar to CftR’s line about how “The US government needs to stop meddling in industries and create an atmosphere that allows to prosper without pledging taxpayer support?” How about this statement from Donald Trump during the campaign? Last May, as reported by CNN, he told the press, “The government should not pick winners and losers, instead it should remove obstacles to exploration.” From Charles’ and David’s mouth to Trump’s ear, perhaps?
Yahoo says, “Musk attracts an unusually large and varied number of shrouded online attacks, including phony op-ed pieces, websites with shadowy backers, and individuals who hide behind aliases.” For whatever reason, some people have it in for Elon Musk and are hoping against hope to see him fail. That may be the reason why Tesla Motors is one of the most shorted stocks on Wall Street. Even analysts are divided into separate camps. The Motley Fool generally looks favorably on the company and its prospects for success. Seeking Alpha often takes a more pessimistic view.
In the digital world, truth and fiction are intertwined in a way that makes it hard for people to glean accurate information. Fake news is everywhere and may even have played a key role in the recent election according to the Washington Post. How does anyone know who or what to believe?
Let the trolls launch their slings and arrows Elon’s way. They will not deter him from moving towards his goal — a world where fossil fuels stay in the ground and abundant renewable electricity from the sun is the order of the day.
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Tesla Robotaxi app update now tells riders if Cybercab is the better choice
Tesla’s Robotaxi app now shows ETAs, wait times and availability for Cybercab and Model Y.
Tesla has rolled out a new vehicle selection screen in its Robotaxi app, and it puts the numbers riders care about most in front of them before they book.
Version 26.11.0 of the app shows the estimated arrival time, the expected wait and current availability for each vehicle option on a single screen, according to a video shared by @gheeunit on X on November 7. Riders deciding between a Cybercab and a Model Y Robotaxi can now compare those figures side by side instead of picking a car first and learning how long it will take afterward.
Tesla first gave riders that choice on September 3, the day paid Cybercab rides began in Austin. The original version of the screen listed the Cybercab, which seats two, next to the Model Y, which seats four. A later build, 26.8.2, added a seating capacity indicator so groups knew which car would fit them. What it did not show was whether choosing the Cybercab meant standing on the curb a few extra minutes.
Newest version of @robotaxi app has a new vehicle selector UI for choosing between Cybercab and Model Y and shows you the fare for both simultaneously! https://t.co/7qoDQ0vACX — mantequilla 🧈 (@gheeunit) November 7, 2026
That question matters more now than it did two months ago. Tesla had 45 Cybercabs on the Texas DMV roster when rides started. By late October the state listed 573, alongside 631 Model Ys, and community trackers logged a record 1,576 Cybercab sightings across Austin on Halloween alone. With two large fleets sharing one service area, the closest car and the quickest pickup are not always the same vehicle.
Inline availability also changes what happens when demand spikes. If no Cybercab is free nearby, the rider sees that on the selection screen rather than after trying to book one.
For now the comparison is mostly an Austin feature. Riders in Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth and the Florida markets are still matched with Model Y vehicles, though Tesla said on its third quarter earnings call that Cybercab rides would launch in Dallas this month.
The update follows a steady run of smaller changes to the rider experience. Late last month Tesla brought a quiet mode that blacks out the cabin screen to Model Y Robotaxis after first testing it in the Cybercab, and it has stretched Austin service to run from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m.
The Cybercab side of that selection screen is about to get much busier. Elon Musk said this week that Tesla will wind down Cybertruck production at Gigafactory Texas around the middle of 2027 to make room for more Cybercab output, and Tesla has said it is aiming to get Cybercabs to customers by the end of this year.
Tesla has not published official release notes for version 26.11.0.
Cybertruck
Tesla is ending Cybertruck production
Tesla is ending Cybertruck production sometime in mid-2027, according to CEO Elon Musk.
Musk made the announcement on X last night, which came as a shock to many. He said that the Cybertruck will end production “to make room for increased Cybercab production” at Gigafactory Texas.
It is a huge blow to the fans of Tesla who have come to love the Cybertruck and identify with it as a symbol of their fandom. It has been the best-selling electric pickup, but it has had an underwhelming sales performance in terms of what was expected. This is mostly due to Tesla not meeting the prices it planned to offer the Cybertruck, as its unveiling and actual release were four years apart.
Tesla will be winding down production of the Cybertruck at Gigafactory Texas around the middle of next year to make room for increased Cybercab production
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2026
Overall, the responses were mixed. Some fans understood the move toward Cybercab production, especially as Tesla is truly pushing the autonomous future through its Robotaxi platform. However, others did not understand it.
“Damn, how many Cybercabs do you guys need?” one response read. Another said it was “Sad but understandable.”Even analyst Gary Black had responded to the news, stating he hoped Tesla planned to replace it with a traditional pickup design.
It doesn’t seem like that will be the case.
Tesla is so hell-bent on delivering autonomy and eventually providing a driverless service that owning a car seems like an arbitrary idea, according to their thesis. Instead, Cybercabs will be available to pick you up and drop you off on demand, safely, without any human help.
As a result, Tesla has thinned its lineup considerably, and one can only ask where the vehicle lineup goes from here. Eventually, it seems like Cybercab could be the only vehicle that Tesla will sell.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s next Starship flight set to make history on Friday the 13th
SpaceX is targeting Friday, November 13 for Starship Flight 15 and its first ship catch.
SpaceX is targeting Friday, November 13 for Starship Flight 15, the mission the company plans to use for its first attempt at catching the ship itself with the launch tower.
SpaceX Vice President of Launch Kiko Dontchev shared the date on stage at the UP.Summit on Thursday, according to Ars Technica’s Eric Berger, who was in attendance. It is the first launch target to come directly from a SpaceX executive. Until now, the public schedule had relied on FAA air traffic planning slides, which listed Flight 15 for no earlier than November 8 and later November 12. SpaceX has not posted an official mission page yet, and no launch time has been shared.
The date lands inside the window Elon Musk sketched out last month. Speaking at Giga Texas on October 10, Musk said the flight would “probably launch a little bit before Thanksgiving,” as Teslarati reported. On SpaceX’s third quarter earnings call ten days later, he confirmed that Flight 15 would try to catch both the Super Heavy booster and the ship, and put the odds of a successful ship catch at “more likely than not.” SpaceX also aired an animation of the maneuver during that webcast, showing the ship swinging vertical over Starbase before dropping into the tower’s chopsticks.
The hardware is ready. Booster 22 fired all 33 of its Raptor engines for a full duration static fire at Pad 2 on October 25. Ship 42 followed with a single engine burn simulating a deorbit maneuver on October 26 and a 60 second firing of all six engines the next day, according to NASASpaceflight. Ship 42 had already rehearsed the catch in September, when the Pad 2 arms lifted it into position and crews connected the quick disconnect arm while the vehicle hung from the tower.
The remaining hurdle is regulatory. The FAA’s Starship page does not yet list a Flight 15 license. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in October that, after “significant constructive engagement with the FAA,” she expects the license to cover a return to the launch site and a tower catch for both stages. Bringing the ship home means a reentry path that heads toward land, rather than ending over open ocean as every Starship flight so far has.
SpaceX has caught Super Heavy three times, on Flights 5, 7 and 8, but the ship comes back from orbital velocity and has never been caught. Flight 14 on September 28 was the first Starship to reach orbit, deploying 26 Starlink V3 satellites before splashing down despite an early engine shutdown that Musk blamed on engine computer software.
Musk has called a successful ship catch “the first time that there’s been full recovery of an orbital class rocket,” and he has already named the step after it: a Flight 16 where both the booster and the ship fly again. NASASpaceflight reports that Ship 43, the next vehicle in line, is set for static fire testing in December.