Lifestyle
Should Tesla carry the burden of teaching the public about artificial intelligence?
Welcome to a FREE preview of our weekly exclusive! Each week our team goes ‘Beyond the News’ and handcrafts a special edition that includes our thoughts on the biggest stories, why it matters, and how it could impact the future.
You can receive this newsletter along with all of our other members-exclusive newsletters, become a premium member for just $3/month. Your support goes a long way for us behind the scenes! Thank you.
—
In a recent podcast discussion Elon Musk had with AI expert Lex Fridman about artificial intelligence, consciousness, and Musk’s brain-computer interface company Neuralink, an interesting question arose about Tesla’s role as an educator in that realm. Referring specifically to the Smart Summon feature that’s part of the company’s Version 10 firmware, Fridman asked Musk whether he felt the burden of being an AI communicator by exposing people for the first time (on a large scale) to driverless cars.
To be honest, Musk’s response wasn’t really, well, responsive. He deferred to the more commercial-oriented goals of the company: “We’re just trying to make people’s lives easier with autonomy.” The long-term goals of Neuralink are pretty scary for mainstream humans, so to me, this question really deserves a long sit-and-think. After all, we’re talking computer self-awareness and capabilities well beyond what we’d consider superhuman and beyond the ability of humans to control after a certain point. Neuralink wants the type of AI connection implanted in our brains.
On one hand, the evolution of Autopilot with each iteration and the evolution of Smart Summon with each new release exposes people to the process of how humans teach computers and how computers teach themselves. In other words, it shows people that AI is somewhat similar to how people learn. However, I don’t know that it gives everyday people a full picture of what Musk is really talking about all the time regarding the pace of AI learning and how that leads to doom scenarios.
If anything, is Tesla lowering expectations for AI’s future? If a Tesla is the first “robot” people see, and then they see years of functionality that’s sub-par to an attentive human at the wheel before seeing the full promise of the Tesla Network, what picture is being painted? Then, what about the wake of uncertainty it will leave behind?
In the interview, Musk described our minds as essentially a monkey brain with a computer trying to make the monkey brain’s primitive urges happy all the time. Once we start letting computers take over what little functions the monkey brain enjoyed or needed to keep in check (driving, painting, laboring, etc.), how is the AI eventually going to decide to deal with what it will just see as…the monkeys? Right now, we’re seeing robot cars driving into curbs and highway dividers, making us feel pretty superior to them despite the fact that humans do this much more frequently. What happens if the car one day decides to do that on purpose because its calculations factor out that humans need to exist?
Okay, I know I’m getting a touch ridiculous here, but it just brings me back to Fridman’s original question about whether Tesla carries the burden of educating the public on these matters with their push for self-driving. Perhaps if they were just focused on moving the world to sustainable energy and production, their driver-assist features would be just as Musk describes them – a convenience or value-added feature. After all, most other self-driving companies and auto manufacturers working on self-driving just have the customer in mind, not so much a robot overlord future.
But that’s not the future Musk is working towards. He’s both warning us about the future of AI while actively developing our defense against it. Should his car company then play a big role in acclimating and teaching people about what AI will really be able to do beyond getting them to work and back? Hosting 3-4 hour long “Investor Day” presentations are part of this educational effort, I suppose, but 99% (or more) of the general public is not going to be interested or even able to understand what Tesla’s genius developers are talking about, much less understand how it might apply to their lives beyond their cars one day.
I don’t really know what Tesla’s teaching could or would or should look like, but it’s an interesting question given the acceleration the company is making in bringing AI into our lives on a scale much bigger than harvesting our data to sell us ads.
Lifestyle
NTSB findings on fatal Tesla crash tell a very different story
The NTSB confirmed the driver, not Tesla’s FSD, caused the fatal Texas house crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board released preliminary findings Wednesday confirming that a Tesla driver, not the vehicle’s software, caused a fatal crash in Katy, Texas in June. The driver, 44-year-old Michael Butler, had engaged Full Self-Driving Supervised mode on Rose Hollow Lane, a residential street with a 30 mph speed limit, before manually overriding the system by pressing the accelerator pedal all the way to 100%. Data recovered from the 2025 Tesla Model 3 showed the vehicle was traveling over 70 miles per hour when it struck a home and killed 76-year-old Martha Avila, who was inside. Weather was clear, the road was dry, and it was daylight.
Texas man charged in fatal Tesla crash where he blamed Autopilot
Butler told authorities he had passed out at the wheel. But security camera footage obtained by the NTSB told a different story, and showed the car accelerating through an intersection before leaving the road entirely. Police also found that Butler’s phone had Google searches including the terms “Tesla FSD not aggressive enough 2026” and “Tesla FSD too timid,” raising serious questions about how he was using the system before the crash. Butler has since been charged with manslaughter. The victim’s family has filed a lawsuit against both Butler and Tesla, alleging negligence.
The NTSB findings aligned directly with what Tesla VP of AI Software Ashok Elluswamy had already stated publicly on X in the weeks after the crash, writing that “the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100%.” The data confirmed his account.
Yup. In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area. They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash.
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 22, 2026
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Texas ranch to showcase the lifelong work that changed the world
Elon Musk is building a product gallery at his Texas ranch spanning his lifelong inventions.
Elon Musk took to X earlier today, noting “Am putting together a product gallery at my ranch in Texas.” in response to a resurfaced famous quote from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s wherein he draw parallels of the Tesla CEO to legendary physicist Albert Einstein.
Dimon made the remark at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland back in January 2025, telling CNBC at the time, “SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, I mean, the guy is our Einstein.” The remark seemingly ended a long-time feud between the two high profile execs.
While details are thin about the exact location of Elon Musk’s Texas ranch and any pending projects that would serve as a gallery and homage to his portfolio of revolutionary product inventions spanning from 1984 to 2025, land acquisition records point to roughly a location of several thousand acres in Bastrop County, east of Austin near the Colorado River and held through an LLC called Horse Ranch LLC that’s managed by Musk’s longtime personal friend and family wealth manager Jared Birchall. Birchall also serves as the CEO of Neuralink.
Tesla’s “ecological paradise” in Giga Texas may be larger than expected
The broader Bastrop County footprint surrounding the ranch has grown significantly. Entities tied to Musk have accumulated approximately 2,000 acres in Bastrop County as of mid-2026, up from 700 acres earlier in the year, with possibly as much as 6,000 acres acquired in total across Bastrop and Travis counties based on deed records.
No completion date for the gallery has been announced and Musk has not confirmed whether it will be open to the public. As Teslarati has reported, SpaceX just completed the largest IPO in history raising $75 billion, a milestone that makes this particular moment in Musk’s career a natural inflection point for looking back at what he has built through the years.
Am putting together a product gallery at my ranch in Texas https://t.co/xQf5FRy4uz
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2026
Starting with Blastar, a simple space shooter game Musk coded at 12 years old and sold to a South African magazine for $500. From there the timeline moves through a commercial career that started with Zip2 in 1995, a city guide software company sold to Compaq for roughly $300 million in 1999. That was followed by X.com in 1999, which merged with Confinity to become PayPal, acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. SpaceX came in 2002, Tesla in 2003, SolarCity in 2006, the Supercharger network in 2012, Neuralink in 2016, The Boring Company in 2016, OpenAI co-founded in 2015, X acquired in 2022, xAI in 2023, Optimus in 2024, the Cybercab in 2026, and most recently SpaceXAI following the SpaceX and xAI merger. The gallery will also likely include items that blur the line between product and cultural artifact, among them The Boring Company’s Not-a-Flamethrower from 2018, Tesla Short Shorts from 2020, and Burnt Hair perfume released under X in 2022.
Lifestyle
Tesla makes the cut on California’s newest EV Rebate program
California just signed a $270 million EV rebate into law and it starts this summer.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 168 into law on Monday, July 13, 2026, creating a $270 million EV rebate program that delivers money directly at the dealership rather than as a tax credit applied months later. The program, called MyFirstEV, is funded equally by California’s state budget and participating automakers, with each contributing $135.5 million to make the math work.
The timing is directly tied to the loss of federal support when the $7,500 federal EV tax credit ended, removing the most significant consumer incentive that had driven EV adoption in the U.S. California, which accounts for roughly one-third of all EVs sold nationally, moved to fill that gap with a state-level replacement.
The rebate structure is straightforward. First-time EV buyers can receive $3,500 off any new battery-electric vehicle with an MSRP up to $50,000. Used EVs priced at $25,000 or below qualify for a $1,750 rebate. The credit is applied at the point of sale, which removes the friction of the old federal system where buyers had to wait for tax season to see the benefit. The program goes live later this summer, with the California Air Resources Board expected to release full participation details next month.
California hits Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi driverless cars with new law
For Tesla buyers, the implications are mixed. The Tesla Model 3 RWD at $42,490 and the Model 3 Long Range at $47,490 both fall under the $50,000 cap and would qualify for the full $3,500 rebate for first-time buyers. The Model Y, which starts at $44,990 after Tesla’s recent price adjustment, also qualifies. The Model X, Model S, and Cybertruck all exceed the cap and receive no benefit. As Teslarati has reported, the program also includes a carve-out exempting California-based automakers like Rivian and Lucid from the price cap entirely, a provision that puts Tesla at a disadvantage since it relocated its headquarters to Texas in 2021.
Other qualifying vehicles include the Chevrolet Equinox EV, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, and Volkswagen ID.4.
Elon Musk says your Tesla will start to learn your individual preferences
Ron DeSantis calls out media bias in Tesla crash coverage
