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Self-driving Teslas and autonomous vehicles will end traffic as we know it
We are all fascinated with autonomous driving in terms of what it can do for us. Make the elderly mobile again without endangering the rest of us with their arguably reduced reaction times, less acute hearing and vision. We dream of the day when we can sleep through a long, boring trip. Doing valuable work in what would otherwise be dead time is a plus too. One thing we haven’t talked about too much is how autonomous cars can radically reduce the congestion of our roads.
Six Inches of Separation (With All Due Respect to Kevin Bacon)
One way we can reduce highway congestion is to reduce the following distances between cars. It takes a human about four seconds to react to a car stopping ahead of us. At 60 mph, that translates to 88 feet per second or a total traveled of 352 feet before you are really starting to stop the car. Using the 2 1/2 second rule would yield 220 feet. Now if you have a car which reacts in, oh say, 1,000 nanoseconds, or a millionth of a second, some have argued that a six inch separation would be more than enough time for the computer to stop the car in time to avoid a collision. So, a non-autonomous car would take up about 220 feet of roadway per car, autonomous cars would take up roughly 20 feet per car. 220 divided by 20 yields about 11 cars per 220 feet of roadway rather than one. You’ve magically increased the carrying capacity which decreases congestion.
Platooning
This increased use of autonomy will almost certainly create “platooning” on our roads where cars headed in the same direction are pulled up within inches of the car ahead creating a “car train” of 30, 50, or more cars all traveling at high speed to a destination ahead of them. With level 5 autonomy, some have suggested that 90 mph is reasonable while remaining very safe.
So let’s do a mind experiment here. You have a 220 foot stretch of roadway which can now safely carry 1 car traveling at 60 mph. Let’s put in a platoon of 11 cars traveling at 90 mph. That 220 foot stretch of roadway at 90 mph can carry 15 cars rather than 11 because 90 is 150% of 60. You have now increased the carrying capacity of the roadway by 1500%, or put another way, it would be like the New York State Thruway had 1/15 the cars on it that it does now. Rush hour would be like driving at three in the morning.
You may say that 220 feet is a preposterous amount of road and that people routinely travel only 10 to 20 feet behind the car in front of them. My response is look at the accident statistics. Yeah, you can travel that close. You just can’t travel that close safely.
Goose it Man!
One of the arguments against high speed travel in cars has been that as you increase speed, miles per kilowatt drop radically. Wind resistance is the big thief of range. When you read about people who manage to get ridiculous miles per charge out of their Teslas you can bet that last dollar that they are driving slowly!
Here’s where we can take a lesson from NASCAR and…wait for it, GEESE! Any fan of NASCAR knows that the drivers “draft” the car in front of them to save gas. The reason is very simple. The car in front is pushing the air out of the way, and the car behind benefits from traveling at the same speed in a partial vacuum, enabling the following driver to save fuel and possibly avoid a pit stop.
Why am I talking about geese? Ever wonder why geese travel in that cool V-formation? Similar reason. They avoid the turbulence from the goose ahead and conserve energy. Being cooperative sorts they trade places with the leader, who drops back and lets the next goose in line take over the toughest place, which is the lead. That way all the geese get to where they’re going quicker and with less fatigue. In our terms, with less battery energy expended.
I foresee platooning supplemented with leader “dropback” like the geese, let’s say, every five miles, to enable very fast driving times with lower fuel/kilowatt hour consumption. This will become part of the autonomous software suite.
So, all hail the goose, and I, for one, look forward to autonomous driving because of the effect platooning will have on our drives, and the automatic increase of the carrying capacity of our roads. Cool, very cool!
Allan Honeyman
(Submitted via email to the Teslarati Network. Do you a post you’d like to share? Email it to us at info@teslarati.com)
Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
Tesla has stunned by gaining yet another approval for its Full Self-Driving suite in Europe, its second in two days and its fifth overall.
Belgium will be the latest country to allow Tesla owners to utilize FSD on public roads in Europe, joining a quickly growing list that started with the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Estonia.
On Tuesday, Denmark announced its approval of the FSD suite, which has now been followed by Belgium just one day later.
The country’s Minister of Mobility, Annick De Ridder, announced the approval on her X account, stating that she had just signed the approval of Tesla FSD. It now goes to the country’s homologation department for the last step of the approval process.
De @Tesla community houdt hier al geruime tijd de vinger aan de pols over de toelating voor de FSD-technologie op onze Vlaamse en Belgische wegen.
Uit waardering voor jullie niet-aflatende interesse (en aanmoediging 😉), krijgen jullie hierbij de primeur: ik heb net de toelating… pic.twitter.com/Yrps4OHTj8— Annick De Ridder (@AnnickDeRidder) June 10, 2026
The Belgian approval is one of mighty importance because it truly shows how quickly countries in Europe could greenlight the FSD suite consecutively. Approvals are already coming in relatively quickly, which is a great sign.
Perhaps the next big development that could come from FSD approvals in Europe is an approval from a country like England, Italy, France, Spain, or Germany. It would be something to see how FSD would perform in a major European metro, such as London, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Rome, or Berlin.
Getting Full Self-Driving in Spain and England will be such huge milestones for Tesla. I am so excited to see how FSD performs in Madrid, Barcelona, and London, specifically.
The ultimate test will always be Mumbai or New Delhi. Excited for India’s eventual approval! https://t.co/paw9Ch1qmL pic.twitter.com/9RdDERVSSJ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
Full Self-Driving does an excellent job of roaming around major U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles, but other high-profile international cities of significance would truly mark a line in the sand for Tesla, which can simply enable any vehicle in its customer-owned fleet to run FSD with the correct approvals.
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently confronted worries about orbital data centers and launching satellites in mass quantities in space, as some voiced concerns about crowding.
Musk’s SpaceX plans to combat the issue of needing data centers by launching them into space instead of taking up valuable real estate on Earth. It has been a major point of SpaceX’s future, including its looming IPO, which could be the largest ever.
In a recent interview filmed at SpaceX’s Starlink terminal factory in Bastrop, Texas, Elon Musk directly addressed concerns that deploying large numbers of AI satellites for orbital data centers could crowd Earth’s orbit. His message was straightforward and reassuring: space is vast beyond human intuition.
“Space is really big,” Musk said. “It’s not like space is gonna get crowded. Space is enormous. If you actually look at it relative to the Earth, the satellites are so tiny you can’t even see them.” He emphasized that even zooming in makes a satellite appear large, but from a planetary perspective, they are minuscule specks.
Elon on concerns that AI satellites will crowd space:
“Space is really big. It’s not like space is gonna get crowded. Space is enormous. If you actually look at it relative to the earth, the satellites are so tiny you can’t even see them.” https://t.co/Mvr7NpL25Q pic.twitter.com/5Fi629Rii7
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 8, 2026
Musk pointed to SpaceX’s real-world experience operating roughly 10,000 Starlink satellites as evidence that large constellations can be managed safely. “We’ve got a pretty good idea of how to operate just really large constellations and do it safely,” he noted. SpaceX remains the only operator with meaningful experience at this scale, giving the company unique insight into tight orbital packing without compromising safety
The discussion highlighted SpaceX’s plans for “AI1” satellites—essentially orbiting racks of AI compute powered by massive solar arrays and cooled via radiative panels in space’s vacuum.
These satellites leverage proven Starlink V3 technology, making them simpler to design than communications satellites. A first-generation unit targets around 150 kW peak power, with a 70-meter wingspan for solar panels and radiators. Laser links will connect them to each other and the Starlink network, delivering low-latency access (on the order of a few milliseconds from low-Earth orbit).
FCC accepts SpaceX filing for 1 million orbital data center plan
Musk framed orbital data centers as a practical solution to Earth’s constraints on AI growth. Ground-based facilities face power shortages, water demands for cooling, and grid limitations. In space, constant sunlight (no day-night cycle), vacuum radiative cooling, and abundant solar energy offer clear advantages.
Production will ramp up at an expanded “Gigasat” factory in Bastrop, with solar manufacturing already underway and full AI satellite output expected at reasonable volume by the end of 2027. Starship’s rapid, high-volume launch capability, aiming for multiple flights per hour, will make massive deployment feasible.
Critics sometimes raise risks like space debris or Kessler syndrome, but Musk’s response underscores scale: even a million satellites would represent an imperceptible fraction of available orbital volume when viewed against Earth’s size. SpaceX’s automated collision avoidance and deorbiting designs for Starlink further mitigate concerns.
This vision ties into broader ambitions. Musk sees orbital AI compute as a step toward harnessing more of the Sun’s energy, advancing humanity on the Kardashev scale from a Type 0 civilization toward Type 1 and eventually Type 2. By moving power-hungry data centers off-planet, SpaceX aims to unlock orders-of-magnitude more compute while preserving Earth’s resources.
Musk’s comments should ease public anxiety. With proven operational expertise, incremental engineering, and the immensity of space itself, orbital data centers represent not overcrowding, but smart expansion into the final frontier.
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla stuns with another FSD approval in Europe, its second in two days
