News
Gassed Up: Prices at the pump fall, unlike Tesla’s delivery numbers
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This week, it came to my attention when driving by my local Sheetz gas station (if you’re ever in the vicinity of one, get the Chicken Tender sub) that gas prices are getting low. Low in the sense that it is much lower than the typical $2.79 that I see on the sign. When they’re sitting at $2.09, it makes me interested in why, especially considering my county and, more specifically, my entire state of Pennsylvania is on a “Stay at Home” order currently. Prices are low, but nobody is driving. When I travel to my Dad’s house or to go on a hike at a local trail, my commute time is typically anywhere from 2-5 minutes quicker as I am not forced to deal with an excess amount of cars on the road.
Most would think that these low gas prices would entice some to buy that vehicle they’ve always wanted—the gas-guzzling truck, maybe that petrol-pounding sports car. Who knows, people want different things. But you’d think low prices would lead to higher petrol-powered sales, and it isn’t. Teslas continue to sell, and they’re selling in record numbers.
But what’s interesting to me is the fact that nobody is driving, and nobody is buying cars. Yet, the overwhelming appeal of low gas prices, combined with the new oh-so-brilliant rollback on emissions that I wrote about last week, is making cars cheaper. With people out of work, there are still people out there getting paid, and some could be interested in buying cars. After all, Tesla owners are, because the company just had its best Q1 yet.
With showrooms of the world’s most popular automakers becoming more and more bloated, inventories rising above what a building can contain, and salespeople out of work, the LA Times says that manufacturers and showroom managers alike are ready to cut a deal. No cars moving out of the building is costing some companies hundreds of thousands of dollars a day. Service is where dealerships make their money, and that is, in reality, how some are managing to survive.
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Unless, of course, there was a way that a carmaker could have customers order vehicles over the internet or phone. Then, that vehicle could be built to the buyer’s exact specifications and delivered or picked up without ever needed to come in contact with another human being. Oh, wait. This sounds familiar!
Tesla’s contactless delivery process has helped the company continue delivering vehicles to customers. While COVID-19 shut down some stores and provided barriers for delivery in others, Tesla found a way to work around that. The process was documented on our site a few weeks ago, and it showed that the company’s deliveries could continue without human-to-human contact.
According to the same LA Times article I talked about earlier, a Chevy dealership is “delivering” cars to people’s houses in a safe way. I’ll give credit where credit is due, and that’s a great way to adapt to the changing world we live in.
But as gas vehicles should appeal to people now more than ever because of low fuel prices, there’s plenty of evidence that suggests the tide is changing in favor of electric forms of transportation.
Let’s think about this:
1. Dealerships and petrol car manufacturers require government assistance to stay open. These businesses are laying off massive amounts of people, and they can’t afford to pay them currently at all. Their buildings are shut down, some dealerships are not running currently, and people are not buying gas vehicles anyway.
2. Tesla just released its Q1 2020 numbers. Despite Giga Shanghai being closed for an extended period, and Fremont being closed for the final week of the first quarter (which is where the company seems to push out massive amounts of vehicles to maximize delivery numbers), the company still had its biggest Q1 as a company. Eighty-eight thousand four hundred vehicles delivered in total, well above Wall Street’s estimates.
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It is fair to assume a decent amount of these 88,400 cars were delivered before things got dicey here in the United States. Even still, Tesla has a lot to be proud of here.
I think all of us expected a slow Q1, and we all thought it was understandable. Even if things would have been even more impressive if deliveries and production were not affected by COVID, there is still a lot to be happy about. The whole situation is quite impressive, and it seems that Tesla’s ability to adapt to situations has led to its mass-appeal to car buyers.
Join me next week as I go ‘Beyond the News’ and give you my take on the current state of the industry and beyond.
Could it be that COVID is helping Tesla in a way? Not only is the big picture of environmental sustainability being answered through the lack of cars on the road, but the numbers suggest Tesla vehicles are being bought while gas cars are not. How is it that a car company could post its most impressive first quarter amidst a situation that has done nothing but hurt every other company in the world? The proof is in the pudding, and Tesla’s adaptability seems to be appealing to car buyers.
I use this newsletter to share my thoughts on what is going on in the Tesla world. If you want to talk to me directly, you can email me or reach me on Twitter. I don’t bite, be sure to reach out!
-Joey
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Elon Musk
Tesla FSD takes owner on a 20,000+ mile joy ride
Tesla owner David Moss just pushed his intervention free FSD streak past 20,000 miles total.
Tesla Model 3 owner David Moss has spent the better part of eight months turning his vehicle into a rolling stress test for Full Self-Driving, and this week he pushed his single, continuous FSD streak past 20,000 miles without a human intervening.
Moss, a Tacoma, Washington resident who sells LiDAR scanning equipment for a living, first drew wide attention in December 2025 when he logged 10,000 consecutive miles on FSD v14.2. Days later he drove from the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, covering 2,732 miles in two days and 20 hours with zero disengagements, the first verified coast to coast autonomous drive in Tesla’s history. Tesla even featured the trip as an official customer story in March. That original streak eventually reached 12,961 miles across 30 states before ending in rural Wisconsin in January, when snow and single digit temperatures forced Moss to take over.
Tesla FSD successfully completes full coast-to-coast drive with zero interventions
He started over, and this run has gone further. In late May, Moss drove 3,760 miles across Canada with two companions, from Horseshoe Bay in Vancouver to a Tesla showroom in Halifax, again without a single intervention, a trip Tesla AI software VP Ashok Elluswamy publicly congratulated him for on X. In June, he pushed the same unbroken streak south, aiming to link the Canadian border to the Mexican border, and crossed 10,000 miles on Tesla’s newly added in car streak counter along the way, the first driver to do so since Tesla began showing confetti animations for the feature.
20,000 Mile Tesla FSD Screen Streak!
Special thank you to @DevinOlsenn, @scotsrule08, & @OwenSparks for helping co drive during all these fun adventures these last couple of months
Also thank you to @wholemars for always tracking me along the journey verifying it all with his… pic.twitter.com/CZ2yO6Ev0X
— David Moss (@DavidMoss) July 27, 2026
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It’s worth noting that every mile is logged through the FSD Database, a community run tracker built by Tesla influencer Omar Qazi, well known as @WholeMars on X, that pulls telemetry straight from the car and records disengagements down to a tenth of a mile. That verification is what separates Moss’s numbers from casual claims on social media.
The streak itself is a fairly recent addition to Tesla’s software. FSD v14.2 introduced a Self Driving Stats panel tracking the ratio of autonomous to manual miles, and v14.3.4 added the live streak counter in June, which resets the moment a driver brakes, wrenches the wheel or cancels navigation. Reaching 20,000 miles on that counter means a single Tesla drove itself through countless highways, city grids, construction zones and Supercharger stalls without a single reset.
Moss has said the goal was never to set a record for its own sake, but to show, mile by verified mile, what the software can already do.
Elon Musk told The Economist that artificial intelligence will likely surpass the combined intelligence of every human on Earth within about five years, and that humans may not remain in charge once that happens. In a wide-ranging interview with editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes, recorded at Giga Texas for the outlet’s Insider series, Musk compared the widening gap between AI and human intelligence to the gap between humans and chimpanzees.
“It’s hard to imagine that the chimpanzee would be in charge,” he said, addressing what happens to human authority once AI moves far beyond us.
Elon Musk reiterates his most optimistic prediction yet with “UHI” forecast
Musk’s timeline stretches out from there. Five years for AI to out-think humanity combined, ten years before humans lose meaningful control, and by 2036, he says, money itself may stop mattering.
Musk notes that if robots and AI produce more goods and services than people could ever consume, currency loses its purpose. He told Beddoes that governments could respond with direct payments, what he called “universal high income,” a term he first used in an X post last August describing a future where “everyone will have the best medical care, food, home, transport and everything else.”
There will be universal high income (not merely basic income).
Everyone will have the best medical care, food, home, transport and everything else.
Sustainable abundance.
-— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 24, 2025
He also floated a more surprising prediction that deflation, and not inflation, would become the bigger economic problem, since expanding the supply of goods and services faster than the money supply grows would push prices down rather than up.
None of this is new territory for Musk, who has spent years describing an “age of abundance” built on Optimus and autonomous vehicles. What’s notable is the timing. The interview landed the same week Tesla shares dropped roughly 19 percent following a second quarter earnings report that beat on revenue but missed badly on profit, and as SpaceX stock continues to slide from its post-IPO peak.
Musk’s own net worth has fallen close to $700 billion since mid-June, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, even as he describes a future where personal wealth stops being the point.
Musk did not dodge the risk side of the equation either. He put the odds of AI contributing to human extinction somewhere in the 10 to 20 percent range, then arrived at what he called his “philosophical conclusion” since the technology cannot realistically be stopped and the arguably better response is to keep building it and hope the outcome leans toward abundance rather than catastrophe. “I’ve gone from exhilaration to terror regarding AI,” he told Beddoes, “even intraday.”
Tesla is adding a new “Traction Control Modes” feature to its cars for better handling in any conditions. These features will roll out to the Model 3 and Model Y, the two vehicles in Tesla’s lineup that typically do not have drive modes for various conditions.
Tesla did include this in the Model S and Model X, as well as the Cybertruck.
The new feature will roll out with the 2026 Summer Update, which Tesla announced last week and subsequently started rolling out to some owners today. The Summer Update is the latest iteration of the usual four seasonal releases the company rolls out throughout the year. These releases typically feature some owner-requested features, as well as improvements to things like the Full Self-Driving suite.
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
This release is no different. Among the changes are improvements to Navigation, new customization options with wraps and how they can be shared and stored, more functionality with the Tesla smartphone app, and new gamification with self-driving.
However, Tesla announced today that it was adding another feature to the Summer Update. Traction Control Modes will now be available with the release
Tesla describes them:
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“Choose from three updated Traction Control Modes: Auto for normal driving conditions, Slippery Surface for icy or wet roads, Stuck Assist when stuck in snow, mud, or sand. The mode resets to Auto at the start of each drive. To select, go to Controls > Dynamics > Traction Control Mode.”
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update also includes new Traction Control Modes
📸: @PatchesHQ https://t.co/N9cD2lGP14 pic.twitter.com/ogLC5ROIgc
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 26, 2026
The use of these modes will help improve a Tesla’s overall performance in less-than-ideal conditions. Typically, these traction control modes monitor wheel speed through sensors and track engine power to adjust responsiveness in various conditions.
These drive modes are not an ultimate solution to all driving conditions; just because there is a “Stuck Assist,” doesn’t mean your Tesla will dig itself out of a foot-and-a-half trench during a blizzard. It is important to remember that some of these scenarios also require some assistance from the driver. For example, driving in sand requires tires to be aired down significantly to increase traction and control.
However, this will be a welcome addition for those who use the Full Self-Driving suite and might not be convinced of its performance in adverse conditions. Some of us prefer to be in control in rain, snow, or ice, which is totally understandable. However, adjusting the Traction Control Mode while utilizing FSD in snow, rain, or ice could increase confidence and overall experience.
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Tesla’s Summer Update is already rolling out to some owners, so it should be making its way to most of the fleet over the next several weeks. The Spring Update rolled out at a very conservative pace, so if you don’t have it by the end of August, don’t be too upset. It might just be Tesla’s method.
Tesla FSD takes owner on a 20,000+ mile joy ride
Elon Musk explains what happens when AI outsmarts all of us
