The Porsche Taycan is an uncompromising electric sports sedan. Built on a platform designed specifically for EVs and tapping into electric motor tech that powered past flagship vehicles like the 918 Spyder, the Taycan represents the best of what Porsche can offer today, in an unapologetically electric package.
It is then unsurprising to see that with the Taycan’s arrival, the long-debunked narrative of the “Tesla Killer” was reborn. American online auto information resource Edmunds, for one, proudly declared in a tweet that after experiencing the Taycan that its team “got out with a singular thought: This is a Tesla Killer.” The company then proceeded to state that the Taycan has a “driving ability that no Tesla can match,” especially considering that its track-capable and its optimal 0-60 mph launches could be repeated “endlessly.”
While statements such as these foster both healthy and unhealthy debates among the EV and auto community, it is pertinent to highlight the simple fact that the Taycan is NOT a “Tesla Killer.” Instead, it could very well be the first genuine attempt from an experienced premium automaker to design and release an electric vehicle that is, in more ways than one, a potential “killer” of the internal combustion engine. This makes the Taycan the strongest vehicle yet that could accompany Tesla in Elon Musk’s overall plan to transition the transportation sector away from fossil fuels.
The Taycan, particularly the Turbo S variant, is an honest-to-goodness driver’s car. The German automaker made it clear that when it was designing the vehicle, it made sure that the “soul” that is so valued among the traditional car community is present in the electric four-door sedan. This is evident in the way the company tuned the driving dynamics of the car, which was tuned in the Nurburgring. The Taycan is just like any other Porsche: it’s the type of car that you take up to the mountains on a weekend drive. It just happens to be electric.
During its Annual Press Conference earlier this year, Porsche emphasized how the Taycan is the start of its own transition to a full embrace of electric mobility. The company’s executives acknowledged that more electric vehicles are coming, and it is transitioning its fleet as much as possible to do so. Porsche is serious enough in this initiative that it quite literally changed the face of its historic Zuffenhausen factory to make way for the Taycan and its other upcoming electric cars.
Perhaps what really makes the Taycan a compelling vehicle is the fact that unlike other EVs from veteran carmakers that have come before it, the four-door is not an exercise in compromise. It represents a real effort by an experienced automaker to release an EV that is superior to some of its own ICE-powered creations. A look at the vehicle’s specs shows that apart from its range, which is still far from Tesla’s level, the Taycan is a solid electric car. It could even be stated that with the Taycan’s arrival, it would be pretty silly to choose an equally-priced high-performance car with an internal combustion engine.
Elon Musk has always stated that Tesla’s mission is to accelerate the transition of the auto industry towards sustainability. The company has so far been able to accomplish this by introducing vehicles like the Model S and Model 3, both of which are simply better than the available competition. Yet Musk has also been honest about his belief that Tesla could not push the auto industry towards sustainability alone. It needs other automakers to join the fray by offering excellent electric vehicles that beat out gas cars in key metrics. The Taycan could very well be the first in this list.
Tesla has long been a polarizing company, and it will likely continue to be polarizing for years to come. Regardless of how successful the company gets, or how well vehicles like the Model 3 and Model S perform on the market, there will always be car buyers that will refuse to purchase one of its vehicles based on one reason or another. Accelerating the world’s transition to sustainability is a mass effort, and the auto industry would need a lot more vehicles like the Porsche Taycan to accomplish this.
Overall, could the Taycan potentially steal some customers from Tesla’s higher-priced vehicles like the 345-mile, ~$100,000 Model S Performance? Perhaps, if buyers are in the market for a ~$150,000 car that drives like a classic Porsche, and if they are more open to a high-performance EV with 279 miles of range (under the WLTP standard) and less interior space. But will the Taycan affect the Model 3 in any way? Absolutely not.
News
Tesla is showing us that Cybercab mass production is well underway
Tesla’s Cybercab drives itself off the Gigafactory Texas line in a striking new production video.
Tesla has provided a first look from inside a production Cybercab as it drove itself off the assembly line at Gigafactory Texas. The video footage, posted on X, opens on the factory floor with robotic arms and assembly equipment visible through the Cybercab windshield, and follows the car through a branded tunnel marked “Cybercab”, before autonomously navigating itself to a holding lot.
The first Cybercab rolled off the Giga Texas production line on February 17, 2026, with Musk writing on X, “Congratulations to the Tesla team on making the first production Cybercab.” April marked the official shift to volume production. The Giga Texas line is being prepared to produce hundreds of units per week, with 60 units already spotted on the Gigafactory campus earlier this month.
Purpose-built for autonomy
Cybercab in production now at Giga Texas pic.twitter.com/Y9qG3KyWBa
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 23, 2026
The Cybercab was first revealed publicly at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024 at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, where 20 pre-production units gave attendees rides around the studio lot. Musk said he believed the average operating cost would be around $0.20 per mile, and that buyers would be able to purchase one for under $30,000. The two-seat design is deliberate. Musk noted that 90 percent of miles driven involve one or two people, making a compact two-passenger vehicle the most efficient configuration for a fleet-scale robotaxi. Eliminating rear seats also removes complexity and cost, supporting that sub-$30,000 target.
Tesla’s annual production goal is 2 million Cybercabs per year once several factories reach full design capacity. The Cybercab has no steering wheel, no pedals, and relies entirely on Tesla’s vision-based FSD system. What the video shows is the first evidence of that system working not as a demo, but as a production reality, driving itself off the line and into the world.
🚗 Our first ride in Tesla Cybercab last October: pic.twitter.com/kGqIqgJPRn https://t.co/BITCXFhbVd
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2025
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s last manually driven Tesla will do something no other production car will do
Elon Musk confirmed the Roadster as Tesla’s last manually driven car, with a debut coming soon.
During Tesla’s Q1 2026 earnings call on April 22, Elon Musk made a brief but notable comment about the long-awaited next generation Roadster while describing Tesla’s future vehicle lineup. “Long term, the only manually driven car will be the new Tesla Roadster,” he said. “Speaking of which, we may be able to debut that in a month or so. It requires a lot of testing and validation before we can actually have a demo and not have something go wrong with the demo.”
That single statement is the entire Roadster update from yesterday’s call, and while it represents another timeline shift, it comes as no surprise with Tesla heads-down-at-work on the mass rollout of its Robotaxi service across US cities, and the industrial scale production of the humanoid Optimus.
The fact that Musk specifically framed the Roadster as the last manually driven Tesla is significant on its own. As the rest of the lineup moves toward full autonomy, the Roadster becomes something rare in the Tesla-sphere by keeping the driver in control. Driving enthusiasts who buy a $200,000 supercar are not doing so to be passengers. They want the physical connection to the road, the feel of acceleration under their own input, and the experience of controlling something with that level of performance. FSD, however capable it becomes, removes that entirely. The Roadster signals that Tesla understands this distinction and is building a car specifically for the people who consider driving itself the point.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
The specs for the Roadster Musk has teased over the years are genuinely unlike anything in production. The base model targets 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, and up to 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery. The optional SpaceX package takes it further, rumored to add roughly ten cold gas thrusters operating at 10,000 psi, borrowed directly from Falcon 9 rocket technology. With thrusters, Musk has claimed 0 to 60 mph in as little as 1.1 seconds. In a 2021 Joe Rogan interview he went further, stating “I want it to hover. We got to figure out how to make it hover without killing people.” Tesla filed a patent for ground effect technology in August 2025, suggesting the hover concept has not been abandoned. The starting price remains $200,000, with the Founders Series requiring a $250,000 full deposit. Some reservation holders placed those deposits in 2017 and are approaching a full decade of waiting.
With production now targeted for 2027 or 2028 at the earliest, the Roadster remains Tesla’s most audacious promise and its longest-running delay. But if what Musk is testing lives up to even half of what he has described, the demo alone should be worth waiting for.
Elon Musk says the Tesla Roadster unveiling could be done “maybe in a month or so.”
He said it should be an extraordinary unveiling event. pic.twitter.com/6V9P7zmvEm
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
Elon Musk
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla confirmed HW3 vehicles cannot run unsupervised FSD, replacing its free upgrade promise with a discounted trade-in.
Tesla has officially confirmed that early vehicles with its Autopilot Hardware 3 (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving, while extending a path forward for legacy owners through a discounted trade-in program. The announcement came by way of Elon Musk in today’s Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call.
🚨 Our LIVE updates on the Tesla Earnings Call will take place here in a thread 🧵
Follow along below: pic.twitter.com/hzJeBitzJU
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
The history here matters. HW3 launched in April 2019, and Tesla sold Full Self-Driving packages to owners on the understanding that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. Some owners paid between $8,000 and $15,000 for FSD during that period. For years, as FSD’s AI models grew more demanding, HW3 vehicles fell progressively further behind, eventually landing on FSD v12.6 in January 2025 while AI4 vehicles moved to v13 and then v14. When Musk acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 simply could not reach unsupervised operation, and alluded to a difficult hardware retrofit.
The near-term offering is more concrete. Tesla’s head of Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed on today’s call that a V14-lite will be coming to HW3 vehicles in late June, bringing all the V14 features currently running on AI4 hardware. That is a meaningful software update for owners who have been frozen at v12.6 for over a year, and it represents genuine effort to keep older hardware relevant. Unsupervised FSD for vehicles is now targeted for Q4 2026 at the earliest, with Musk describing it as a gradual, geography-limited rollout.
For HW3 owners, the over-the-air V14-lite update is welcomed, and the discounted trade-in path at least acknowledges an old obligation. What happens next with the trade-in pricing will define how this chapter ultimately gets written. If Tesla prices the hardware path fairly, acknowledges what early adopters are owed, and delivers V14-lite on the June timeline it committed to today, it has a real opportunity to convert one of the longest-running sore subjects among early adopters into a loyalty story.
Tesla is showing us that Cybercab mass production is well underway
Elon Musk’s last manually driven Tesla will do something no other production car will do
