News
Lucid CEO Rawlinson says he was Model S Chief Engineer, a claim Elon Musk refutes
Lucid Group CEO and CTO Peter Rawlinson refuted Elon Musk’s claims that he was not Chief Engineer of Tesla’s flagship electric car, the Model S, in a recent interview with HBO Axios. Rawlinson and Musk, former co-workers at Tesla, evidently have not gotten along since the now-CEO of Lucid Group left the company.
Rawlinson has led Lucid Group to the production and initial deliveries of its first electric car, the Lucid Air Dream Edition, which occurred on October 31st. However, in Rawlinson’s tenure of Lucid, he has garnered the respect of many EV enthusiasts, but Musk does not appear to be one of them. Rawlinson has stated on several occasions during interviews as Lucid CEO that much of his EV expertise comes from his experience as Chief Engineer of the Model S program at Tesla in the early 2010s. However, Musk has disputed this claim on several occasions, the most recent being in May 2021.
“Rawlinson was never chief engineer. He arrived after Model S prototype was made, left before things got tough & was only ever responsible for body engineering, not powertrain, battery, software, production, or design,” Musk Tweeted.
Rawlinson said during his Axios interview that his business cards from Tesla listed his job description as “Model S Chief Engineer.” His LinkedIn page also states that his job post at Tesla was “Vice President and Chief Engineer for Model S.” Additionally, he stated that the SEC filings from Tesla during his employment at the company also listed him as Chief Engineer of the Model S. In fact, in an 8-K document filed with the SEC on December 16, 2010, Tesla does list Rawlinson as “Vice President and Chief Engineer.” While it does not indicate Rawlinson was VP and Chief Engineer of the Model S specifically, that would have been the only vehicle Tesla had in development at the time. According to the same presentation, Tesla was planning to complete alpha builds, external body design and engineering, safety and structural design, supplier sourcing, and site preparation for the Model S in 2010.
Credit: SEC | Tesla
In response to Musk’s claims, Rawlinson stated, “I think it’s sort of historical revisionism, isn’t it?”
The story does not stop there. Musk has also stated in the past that “Rawlinson didn’t design Model S. Prototype was done before he joined & he left us in the lurch just as things got tough, which was not cool. He did make some contributions to body/chassis engineering, but not to powertrain, battery, electronics or software.” However, Rawlinson also commented on his reasons for leaving Tesla in 2012, which included his elderly mother needing his assistance “and I had a boss that wasn’t treating me too well.”
A portion of Rawlinson’s interview is available below.
News
Tesla FSD’s newest model is coming, and it sounds like ‘the last big piece of the puzzle’
“There’s a model that’s an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026.”
Tesla Full Self-Driving’s newest model is coming very soon, and from what it sounds like, it could be “the last big piece of the puzzle,” as CEO Elon Musk said in late November.
During the xAI Hackathon on Tuesday, Musk was available for a Q&A session, where he revealed some details about Robotaxi and Tesla’s plans for removing Robotaxi Safety Monitors, and some information on a future FSD model.
While he said Full Self-Driving’s unsupervised capability is “pretty much solved,” and confirmed it will remove Safety Monitors in the next three weeks, questions about the company’s ability to give this FSD version to current owners came to mind.
Musk said a new FSD model is coming in about a month or two that will be an order-of-magnitude larger and will include more reasoning and reinforcement learning.
He said:
“There’s a model that’s an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026. We’re gonna add a lot of reasoning and RL (reinforcement learning). To get to serious scale, Tesla will probably need to build a giant chip fab. To have a few hundred gigawatts of AI chips per year, I don’t see that capability coming online fast enough, so we will probably have to build a fab.”
NEWS: Elon Musk says FSD Unsupervised is “pretty much solved at this point” and that @Tesla will be launching Robotaxis with no safety monitors in about 3 weeks in Austin, Texas. He also teased a new FSD model is coming in about 1-2 months.
“We’re just going through validation… https://t.co/Msne72cgMB pic.twitter.com/i3wfKX3Z0r
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) December 10, 2025
It rings back to late November when Musk said that v14.3 “is where the last big piece of the puzzle finally lands.”
With the advancements made through Full Self-Driving v14 and v14.2, there seems to be a greater confidence in solving self-driving completely. Musk has also personally said that driver monitoring has been more relaxed, and looking at your phone won’t prompt as many alerts in the latest v14.2.1.
This is another indication that Tesla is getting closer to allowing people to take their eyes off the road completely.
Along with the Robotaxi program’s success, there is evidence that Tesla could be close to solving FSD. However, it is not perfect. We’ve had our own complaints with FSD, and although we feel it is the best ADAS on the market, it is not, in its current form, able to perform everything needed on roads.
But it is close.
That’s why there is some legitimate belief that Tesla could be releasing a version capable of no supervision in the coming months.
All we can say is, we’ll see.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX IPO is coming, CEO Elon Musk confirms
However, it appears Musk is ready for SpaceX to go public, as Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger wrote an op-ed that indicated he thought SpaceX would go public soon. Musk replied, basically confirming it.
Elon Musk confirmed through a post on X that a SpaceX initial public offering (IPO) is on the way after hinting at it several times earlier this year.
It also comes one day after Bloomberg reported that SpaceX was aiming for a valuation of $1.5 trillion, adding that it wanted to raise $30 billion.
Musk has been transparent for most of the year that he wanted to try to figure out a way to get Tesla shareholders to invest in SpaceX, giving them access to the stock.
He has also recognized the issues of having a public stock, like litigation exposure, quarterly reporting pressures, and other inconveniences.
However, it appears Musk is ready for SpaceX to go public, as Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger wrote an op-ed that indicated he thought SpaceX would go public soon.
Musk replied, basically confirming it:
As usual, Eric is accurate
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2025
Berger believes the IPO would help support the need for $30 billion or more in capital needed to fund AI integration projects, such as space-based data centers and lunar satellite factories. Musk confirmed recently that SpaceX “will be doing” data centers in orbit.
AI appears to be a “key part” of SpaceX getting to Musk, Berger also wrote. When writing about whether or not Optimus is a viable project and product for the company, he says that none of that matters. Musk thinks it is, and that’s all that matters.
It seems like Musk has certainly mulled something this big for a very long time, and the idea of taking SpaceX public is not just likely; it is necessary for the company to get to Mars.
The details of when SpaceX will finally hit that public status are not known. Many of the reports that came out over the past few days indicate it would happen in 2026, so sooner rather than later.
But there are a lot of things on Musk’s plate early next year, especially with Cybercab production, the potential launch of Unsupervised Full Self-Driving, and the Roadster unveiling, all planned for Q1.
Tesla has added the 15th automaker to the growing list of companies whose EVs can utilize the Supercharger Network this year, as BMW is the latest company to gain access to the largest charging infrastructure in the world.
BMW became the 15th company in 2025 to gain Tesla Supercharger access, after the company confirmed to its EV owners that they could use any of the more than 25,000 Supercharging stalls in North America.
Welcome @BMW owners.
Download the Tesla app to charge → https://t.co/vnu0NHA7Ab
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) December 10, 2025
Newer BMW all-electric cars, like the i4, i5, i7, and iX, are able to utilize Tesla’s V3 and V4 Superchargers. These are the exact model years, via the BMW Blog:
- i4: 2022-2026 model years
- i5: 2024-2025 model years
- 2026 i5 (eDrive40 and xDrive40) after software update in Spring 2026
- i7: 2023-2026 model years
- iX: 2022-2025 model years
- 2026 iX (all versions) after software update in Spring 2026
With the expansion of the companies that gained access in 2025 to the Tesla Supercharger Network, a vast majority of non-Tesla EVs are able to use the charging stalls to gain range in their cars.
So far in 2025, Tesla has enabled Supercharger access to:
- Audi
- BMW
- Genesis
- Honda
- Hyundai
- Jaguar Land Rover
- Kia
- Lucid
- Mercedes-Benz
- Nissan
- Polestar
- Subaru
- Toyota
- Volkswagen
- Volvo
Drivers with BMW EVs who wish to charge at Tesla Superchargers must use an NACS-to-CCS1 adapter. In Q2 2026, BMW plans to release its official adapter, but there are third-party options available in the meantime.
They will also have to use the Tesla App to enable Supercharging access to determine rates and availability. It is a relatively seamless process.
Tesla FSD’s newest model is coming, and it sounds like ‘the last big piece of the puzzle’
SpaceX IPO is coming, CEO Elon Musk confirms
