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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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For years, there have been images and videos across social media platforms that have reminded me of when I was a 15-year-old kid teased by “Xbox 720” videos on YouTube. These videos are of the supposed “Tesla Phone” that Elon Musk was secretly developing in between leading Tesla with its electric cars and SpaceX with its reusable rockets.
Would you buy a Tesla phone ? pic.twitter.com/aaTwvvIJit
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) October 6, 2023
Although Musk has put those rumors to bed several times, it was never completely out of the realm that he could get involved in cell phones in some capacity. Think outside the box and more macro-level, though. Instead of reinventing the computer, Musk reinvented connectivity by developing Starlink with SpaceX.
It could be something similar, TD Cowen analyst Gregory Williams said in a note last week, where he hinted SpaceX could be gathering some steam to acquire T-Mobile.
Williams said it would be the “clear choice” for SpaceX if it decided to go through with a network acquisition. He also suggested AT&T.
The move would be possible through selling more of its own stock, which would help SpaceX raise the money to purchase T-Mobile, which would cost roughly $300 billion. It could be one of the moves SpaceX makes post-IPO in terms of an acquisition: it already acquired Cursor AI for $60 billion.
Other analysts, like Dan Ives of Wedbush, believe SpaceX and Tesla will eventually merge into one anyway, and that conglomeration could come as soon as this year, some have said.
The implications of SpaceX purchasing T-Mobile are massive. A combined entity would create a truly ubiquitous network: T-Mobile’s terrestrial 5G towers and Starlink’s growing constellation of Direct-to-Cell satellites. This would essentially eliminate dead zones across the U.S. and potentially globally.
SpaceX would instantly become a full-scale facilities-based carrier with satellite differentiation; a huge advantage. This would pressure AT&T and Verizon heavily.
There are also concerns like a potential reduction in long-term competition, and of course, a deal of that size would face intense scrutiny from government agencies.
The strategic fit is compelling due to the existing Starlink–T-Mobile partnership and complementary technologies (space + terrestrial). It could create a dominant integrated communications player. However, the regulatory, financial, and execution hurdles are enormous — this remains highly speculative with no indication SpaceX is actively pursuing it right now.
Tesla revealed a major new Cybercab detail in a guide it released for First Responders, showing new territory in its beliefs and intentions for the ride-hailing-focused vehicle that entered production in April.
The First Responders Guide is released to give fire departments, paramedics, and other emergency personnel the proper guidance on what to do in the event of an accident, entrapment, or other situation that would require immediate attention.
On one of the pages of the First Responders Guide, Tesla revealed a stark detail about the Cybercab, which could help personnel enter the vehicle more easily in case of an emergency.
Tesla Cybercab has one important piece that AI4 cars might need for FSD
It shows Tesla has no intention of releasing any Cybercab units that were initially proposed for ride-hailing services for the general public with any manual controls, meaning a steering wheel or pedals:
“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or acceleration and brake pedals.”
New official Cybercab documentation from Tesla:
“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or… https://t.co/P6ut1mZyzr pic.twitter.com/yq6skl9s2J
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 27, 2026
This is a major development for those who continue to believe Tesla planned to release the Cybercab with any sort of manual controls so that passengers could take over if needed. However, when Tesla started manufacturing production versions of the Cybercab in Giga Texas earlier this year, they were spotted without a steering wheel or pedals.
It essentially confirms the company has no intentions of bringing manual controls to the car’s production versions. Some have argued that the likelihood of Tesla having something
There still are some Cybercab units out there with a steering wheel and pedals, and as Tesla said, these cars are engineering or test vehicles, which have Safety Monitors on board to help the car out of a precarious situation or emergency.
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 Phone? Not quite, but close: analyst
Tesla reveals huge Cybercab detail in new guide for First Responders
