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Porsche Taycan climbs Austria’s tallest mountain in new promotional video
The Porsche Taycan is still a year or so away from production, but the German automaker is already ramping its promotional efforts for the all-electric car. The company’s latest promotion for the Taycan featured a cinematic flourish, as the vehicle was showcased climbing Austria’s tallest mountain in an ad for the DJI Mavic 2, the drone company’s flagship “DSLR in the sky.”
The collaboration between Porsche and DJI featured the Taycan and a 550 Spyder traversing the twisting roads of the Grossglockner High Alpine Road (Großglockner mountain pass) in Austria, one of the country’s most picturesque routes. The Grossglockner High Alpine Road takes vehicles up 8,215 ft from the bottom to the top. The mountain pass, which features stunning vistas, is a popular site for auto enthusiasts, though it usually becomes inaccessible during winter and early spring due to snow and ice.
The concept of the commercial itself is symbolic of Porsche’s views on the Taycan. Porsche intends to eventually transition most of its fleet to electric cars and hybrid vehicles, and the Taycan is the car that could kickstart the change. The ad starts with aerial shots of the Porsche 550 Spyder, which eventually gets overtaken by the all-electric car. One of the close shots of the Taycan even featured what appears to be the audible sound of the vehicle’s electric motors as it climbed up the mountain pass.
The Taycan is all-electric, and it is equipped with two permanently excited synchronous motors (PSM), which Porsche dubs as the “turbos of the electric motor milieu.” The Taycan’s motors, which were used in the sports-prototype Porsche 919 Hybrid racing car, produce a combined 600 hp (440 kW), allowing the vehicle to accelerate from a dead stop to 60 mph in just 3.5 seconds. Just like the Model 3 Performance, the Taycan is also listed with a top speed of 155 mph, as well as a 310-mile range.
Porsche is one of the auto industry’s legacy carmakers that appears to be taking its electric car initiative seriously. Apart from its continued push of the Taycan, the company has also teased the release of the Mission E Cross Turismo, a variant of the vehicle that features off-road elements, in 2020. Porsche has also recently revealed that the Taycan would be supported by a fast-charging network not unlike Tesla’s Superchargers. Dubbed as Charge Parks, Porsche’s electric car stations would be placed on key locations across well-traveled routes, and it would provide drivers with a system that would allow the Taycan to replenish 248 miles of range in just 15 minutes.
The Porsche Taycan is expected to start production in 2019, though customers in the United States and selected territories can now pre-order the vehicle. The electric car is expected to be produced at Porsche’s Zuffenhausen facility in Stuttgart, Germany, the same facility where the Porsche 911, 718 Boxster, and the 718 Cayman are manufactured. Porsche plans to produce 20,000 Taycans annually when the electric car begins production.
Watch the Porsche Taycan climb Austria’s Grossglockner High Alpine Road in the video below.
Elon Musk
Tesla’s Elon Musk: 10 billion miles needed for safe Unsupervised FSD
As per the CEO, roughly 10 billion miles of training data are required due to reality’s “super long tail of complexity.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has provided an updated estimate for the training data needed to achieve truly safe unsupervised Full Self-Driving (FSD).
As per the CEO, roughly 10 billion miles of training data are required due to reality’s “super long tail of complexity.”
10 billion miles of training data
Musk comment came as a reply to Apple and Rivian alum Paul Beisel, who posted an analysis on X about the gap between tech demonstrations and real-world products. In his post, Beisel highlighted Tesla’s data-driven lead in autonomy, and he also argued that it would not be easy for rivals to become a legitimate competitor to FSD quickly.
“The notion that someone can ‘catch up’ to this problem primarily through simulation and limited on-road exposure strikes me as deeply naive. This is not a demo problem. It is a scale, data, and iteration problem— and Tesla is already far, far down that road while others are just getting started,” Beisel wrote.
Musk responded to Beisel’s post, stating that “Roughly 10 billion miles of training data is needed to achieve safe unsupervised self-driving. Reality has a super long tail of complexity.” This is quite interesting considering that in his Master Plan Part Deux, Elon Musk estimated that worldwide regulatory approval for autonomous driving would require around 6 billion miles.
FSD’s total training miles
As 2025 came to a close, Tesla community members observed that FSD was already nearing 7 billion miles driven, with over 2.5 billion miles being from inner city roads. The 7-billion-mile mark was passed just a few days later. This suggests that Tesla is likely the company today with the most training data for its autonomous driving program.
The difficulties of achieving autonomy were referenced by Elon Musk recently, when he commented on Nvidia’s Alpamayo program. As per Musk, “they will find that it’s easy to get to 99% and then super hard to solve the long tail of the distribution.” These sentiments were echoed by Tesla VP for AI software Ashok Elluswamy, who also noted on X that “the long tail is sooo long, that most people can’t grasp it.”
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Tesla earns top honors at MotorTrend’s SDV Innovator Awards
MotorTrend’s SDV Awards were presented during CES 2026 in Las Vegas.
Tesla emerged as one of the most recognized automakers at MotorTrend’s 2026 Software-Defined Vehicle (SDV) Innovator Awards.
As could be seen in a press release from the publication, two key Tesla employees were honored for their work on AI, autonomy, and vehicle software. MotorTrend’s SDV Awards were presented during CES 2026 in Las Vegas.
Tesla leaders and engineers recognized
The fourth annual SDV Innovator Awards celebrate pioneers and experts who are pushing the automotive industry deeper into software-driven development. Among the most notable honorees for this year was Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s Vice President of AI Software, who received a Pioneer Award for his role in advancing artificial intelligence and autonomy across the company’s vehicle lineup.
Tesla also secured recognition in the Expert category, with Lawson Fulton, a staff Autopilot machine learning engineer, honored for his contributions to Tesla’s driver-assistance and autonomous systems.
Tesla’s software-first strategy
While automakers like General Motors, Ford, and Rivian also received recognition, Tesla’s multiple awards stood out given the company’s outsized role in popularizing software-defined vehicles over the past decade. From frequent OTA updates to its data-driven approach to autonomy, Tesla has consistently treated vehicles as evolving software platforms rather than static products.
This has made Tesla’s vehicles very unique in their respective sectors, as they are arguably the only cars that objectively get better over time. This is especially true for vehicles that are loaded with the company’s Full Self-Driving system, which are getting progressively more intelligent and autonomous over time. The majority of Tesla’s updates to its vehicles are free as well, which is very much appreciated by customers worldwide.
Elon Musk
Judge clears path for Elon Musk’s OpenAI lawsuit to go before a jury
The decision maintains Musk’s claims that OpenAI’s shift toward a for-profit structure violated early assurances made to him as a co-founder.
A U.S. judge has ruled that Elon Musk’s lawsuit accusing OpenAI of abandoning its founding nonprofit mission can proceed to a jury trial.
The decision maintains Musk’s claims that OpenAI’s shift toward a for-profit structure violated early assurances made to him as a co-founder. These claims are directly opposed by OpenAI.
Judge says disputed facts warrant a trial
At a hearing in Oakland, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers stated that there was “plenty of evidence” suggesting that OpenAI leaders had promised that the organization’s original nonprofit structure would be maintained. She ruled that those disputed facts should be evaluated by a jury at a trial in March rather than decided by the court at this stage, as noted in a Reuters report.
Musk helped co-found OpenAI in 2015 but left the organization in 2018. In his lawsuit, he argued that he contributed roughly $38 million, or about 60% of OpenAI’s early funding, based on assurances that the company would remain a nonprofit dedicated to the public benefit. He is seeking unspecified monetary damages tied to what he describes as “ill-gotten gains.”
OpenAI, however, has repeatedly rejected Musk’s allegations. The company has stated that Musk’s claims were baseless and part of a pattern of harassment.
Rivalries and Microsoft ties
The case unfolds against the backdrop of intensifying competition in generative artificial intelligence. Musk now runs xAI, whose Grok chatbot competes directly with OpenAI’s flagship ChatGPT. OpenAI has argued that Musk is a frustrated commercial rival who is simply attempting to slow down a market leader.
The lawsuit also names Microsoft as a defendant, citing its multibillion-dollar partnerships with OpenAI. Microsoft has urged the court to dismiss the claims against it, arguing there is no evidence it aided or abetted any alleged misconduct. Lawyers for OpenAI have also pushed for the case to be thrown out, claiming that Musk failed to show sufficient factual basis for claims such as fraud and breach of contract.
Judge Gonzalez Rogers, however, declined to end the case at this stage, noting that a jury would also need to consider whether Musk filed the lawsuit within the applicable statute of limitations. Still, the dispute between Elon Musk and OpenAI is now headed for a high-profile jury trial in the coming months.
Tesla’s Elon Musk: 10 billion miles needed for safe Unsupervised FSD
Tesla earns top honors at MotorTrend’s SDV Innovator Awards
