News
Jeff Bezos ponders Tesla’s ‘complexity’ in China following Musk’s Twitter acquisition
Following Elon Musk’s acquisition of social media platform Twitter yesterday, Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos pondered the potential hoops Tesla, Musk’s automotive company, may have to jump through as a company operating in China. Due to Musk’s purchase of Twitter, Bezos questioned whether China gained “a bit of leverage” over the platform’s censorship, but backtracked.
A Tweet from New York Times reporter Mike Forsythe identified Tesla’s success in the Chinese market. After entering China as an automaker in early 2020, Tesla has experienced success in the market with its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, which have routinely been identified as a couple of the best-selling EVs in the country. Tesla’s production facility in China, known as Gigafactory Shanghai, outpaced Tesla’s U.S. factory in Fremont, California, in production figures in 2021, accounting for 51.7 percent of the company’s total vehicle deliveries for the year.
Apropos of something:
-Tesla’s second-biggest market in 2021 was China (after the US)
-Chinese battery makers are major suppliers for Tesla’s EVs.
-After 2009, when China banned Twitter, the government there had almost no leverage over the platform
-That may have just changed— Mike Forsythe 傅才德 (@PekingMike) April 25, 2022
Forsythe recognizes this, along with Chinese battery suppliers and their links to Tesla. However, his Tweet begins to also call out China’s ban of Twitter in 2009, and how the government had “almost no leverage over the platform.” With Musk’s purchase yesterday, “That may have just changed,” the Tweet concludes.
Bezos responded and jostled with the question, “Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square,” using the term as Musk has in the past to compare Twitter to a social gathering of people to discuss ideas and issues. “My own answer to this question is probably not. The more likely outcome in this regard is complexity in China of Tesla, rather than censorship at Twitter.”
My own answer to this question is probably not. The more likely outcome in this regard is complexity in China for Tesla, rather than censorship at Twitter.
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) April 26, 2022
Musk, who purchased Twitter for $44 billion yesterday, said in the past his reasons for buying Twitter are related to free speech and censorship, is unlikely to see any real changes from China just because he’s bought the platform. Many American social media outlets are unavailable in China because, as the government has described in the past, it is a way to avoid “risks in the ideological field from the Internet.”
The true challenges will occur in China for Tesla; at least, Bezos thinks so. However, the automaker has had a reasonably positive relationship with China and its government, especially as Tesla has expanded operations at its plant, providing thousands of jobs to local workers.
Bezos, whose former company Amazon has done business in China for many years, purchased the Washington Post in 2013. The newspaper had no reservations about challenging Musk’s fight against censorship with stories earlier this month. Musk called the headline, “a good laugh.”
Ouch, I just snorted coffee out of my nose. pic.twitter.com/bDCYhMhdag
— Marc Andreessen (@pmarca) April 5, 2022
Additionally, a report from Dauxe Consulting reported that some 38 percent of Amazon’s top-selling brands were based in China.
Tesla has performed extremely well in China with sales, but it has also had its issues. The company had its vehicles banned from government properties and military bases due to its use of external cameras equipped for Full Self-Driving and Sentry Mode. Tesla’s in-cabin cameras are not active in China.
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Cybertruck
Tesla drops latest hint that new Cybertruck trim is selling like hotcakes
According to Tesla’s Online Design Studio, the new All-Wheel-Drive Cybertruck will now be delivered in April 2027. Earlier orders are still slated for early this Summer, but orders from here on forward are now officially pushed into next year:
Tesla’s new Cybertruck offering has had its delivery date pushed back once again. This is now the second time, and deliveries for the newest orders are now pushed well into 2027.
According to Tesla’s Online Design Studio, the new All-Wheel-Drive Cybertruck will now be delivered in April 2027. Earlier orders are still slated for early this Summer, but orders from here on forward are now officially pushed into next year:
🚨 Tesla has updated the $59,990 Cybertruck Dual Motor AWD’s estimated delivery date to April 2027.
First deliveries are still slated for June, but if you order it now, you’ll be waiting over a year.
Demand appears to be off the charts for the new Cybertruck and consumers are… pic.twitter.com/raDCCeC0zP
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) February 26, 2026
Just three days ago, the initial delivery date of June 2026 was pushed back to early Fall, and now, that date has officially moved to April 2027.
The fact that Tesla has had to push back deliveries once again proves one of two things: either Tesla has slow production plans for the new Cybertruck trim, or demand is off the charts.
Judging by how Tesla is already planning to raise the price based on demand in just a few days, it seems like the company knows it is giving a tremendous deal on this spec of Cybertruck, and units are moving quickly.
That points more toward demand and not necessarily to slower production plans, but it is not confirmed.
Tesla Cybertruck’s newest trim will undergo massive change in ten days, Musk says
Tesla is set to hike the price on March 1, so tomorrow will be the final day to grab the new Cybertruck trim for just $59,990.
It features:
- Dual Motor AWD w/ est. 325 mi of range
- Powered tonneau cover
- Bed outlets (2x 120V + 1x 240V) & Powershare capability
- Coil springs w/ adaptive damping
- Heated first-row seats w/ textile material that is easy to clean
- Steer-by-wire & Four Wheel Steering
- 6’ x 4’ composite bed
- Towing capacity of up to 7,500 lbs
- Powered frunk
Interestingly, the price offering is fairly close to what Tesla unveiled back in late 2019.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk outlines plan for first Starship tower catch attempt
Musk confirmed that Starship V3 Ship 1 (SN1) is headed for ground tests and expressed strong confidence in the updated vehicle design.
Elon Musk has clarified when SpaceX will first attempt to catch Starship’s upper stage with its launch tower. The CEO’s update provides the clearest teaser yet for the spacecraft’s recovery roadmap.
Musk shared the details in recent posts on X. In his initial post, Musk confirmed that Starship V3 Ship 1 (SN1) is headed for ground tests and expressed strong confidence in the updated vehicle design.
“Starship V3 SN1 headed for ground tests. I am highly confident that the V3 design will achieve full reusability,” Musk wrote.
In a follow-up post, Musk addressed when SpaceX would attempt to catch the upper stage using the launch tower’s robotic arms.
“Should note that SpaceX will only try to catch the ship with the tower after two perfect soft landings in the ocean. The risk of the ship breaking up over land needs to be very low,” Musk clarified.
His remarks suggest that SpaceX is deliberately reducing risk before attempting a tower catch of Starship’s upper stage. Such a milestone would mark a major step towards the full reuse of the Starship system.
SpaceX is currently targeting the first Starship V3 flight of 2026 this coming March. The spacecraft’s V3 iteration is widely viewed as a key milestone in SpaceX’s long-term strategy to make Starship fully reusable.
Starship V3 features a number of key upgrades over its previous iterations. The vehicle is equipped with SpaceX’s Raptor V3 engines, which are designed to deliver significantly higher thrust than earlier versions while reducing cost and weight.
The V3 design is also expected to be optimized for manufacturability, a critical step if SpaceX intends to scale the spacecraft’s production toward frequent launches for Starlink, lunar missions, and eventually Mars.
News
Tesla FSD (Supervised) could be approved in the Netherlands next month: Musk
Musk shared the update during a recent interview at Giga Berlin.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk shared that Full Self-Driving (FSD) could receive regulatory approval in the Netherlands as soon as March 20, potentially marking a major step forward for Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance rollout in Europe.
Musk shared the update during a recent interview at Giga Berlin, noting that the date was provided by local authorities.
“Tesla has the most advanced real-world AI, and hopefully, it will be approved soon in Europe. We’re told by the authorities that March 20th, it’ll be approved in the Netherlands,’ what I was told,” Musk stated.
“Hopefully, that date remains the same. But I think people in Europe are going to be pretty blown away by how good the Tesla car AI is in being able to drive.”
Tesla’s FSD system relies on vision-based neural networks trained on real-world driving data, allowing vehicles to navigate using cameras and AI rather than traditional sensor-heavy solutions.
The performance of FSD Supervised has so far been impressive. As per Tesla’s safety report, Full Self-Driving Supervised has already traveled 8.3 billion miles. So far, vehicles operating with FSD Supervised engaged recorded one major collision every 5,300,676 miles.
In comparison, Teslas driven manually with Active Safety systems recorded one major collision every 2,175,763 miles, while Teslas driven manually without Active Safety recorded one major collision every 855,132 miles. The U.S. average during the same period was one major collision every 660,164 miles.
If approval is granted on March 20, the Netherlands could become the first European market to greenlight Tesla’s latest supervised FSD (Supervised) software under updated regulatory frameworks. Tesla has been working to secure expanded FSD access across Europe, where regulatory standards differ significantly from those in the United States. Approval in the Netherlands would likely serve as a foundation for broader EU adoption, though additional country-level clearances may still be required.
Tesla drops latest hint that new Cybertruck trim is selling like hotcakes
Elon Musk outlines plan for first Starship tower catch attempt
