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A steel Starship soars around the Moon in this official render. (SpaceX) A steel Starship soars around the Moon in this official render. (SpaceX)

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Billionaire resigns CEO role to pay, train for SpaceX’s first crewed Starship Moon launch

Major Starship and SpaceX investor Yusaku Maezawa has officially resigned his role as Zozo CEO and sold roughly $2.3B of stock to Yahoo Japan. (SpaceX)

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Eccentric Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa — known for collecting modern art and founding online fashion retailer Zozo — has stepped down as CEO to free up time and money for his privately-chartered launch around the moon.

Set to launch no earlier than 2023 on what is expected to be SpaceX’s first crewed, circumlunar Starship launch, Maezawa stated in September 2018 that he had arranged to pay SpaceX a huge amount of money (likely several hundred million dollars) for that right. Along with resigning as CEO of Zozo, Maezawa will sell ~85% of his 36% stake to Yahoo Japan, giving the conglomerate a 50.1% ownership stake of Zozo and Maezawa a $2.3 billion cash windfall.

As noted by Business Insider, when asked by a follower if he had any money after an announcement that he would sell off a portion of his extensive art collection in a Sotheby’s auction, Maezawa admitted that he frequently has “no money” because he spends it “right away”, inadvisable but admittedly in-line with his eccentric reputation.

The resignation and sale comes just weeks after SpaceX successfully completed Starhopper’s second and final launch, reaching an altitude of ~150m (500 ft) with the power of a single Raptor engine. During a September 2018 SpaceX press event, Maezawa announced that he had come to an agreement with the company to buy the entirety of Starship’s first crewed mission around the Moon. The billionaire’s motivation: gifting the 8-10 available ‘seats’ to some of the best artists in the world in a project known as dearMoon.

Maezawa and Musk spoke for about an hour during an official September 2018 media event inside SpaceX’s Hawthorne Falcon factory. (Yusaku Maezawa)

At the same event, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk estimated that the company’s Starship program would cost anwhere from $2B- $10B and confirmed that the bulk of Maezawa’s contributions would go directly towards the rocket’s development costs. Business Insider also quotes Musk as stating that “[Maezawa is] paying a lot of money that would help with the ship and its booster – ultimately paying for the average citizen to travel to other planets.” Alongside Yusaku’s frank Twitter acknowledgment that he may not be the most financially responsible individual and repeated indications that he is extremely proud of Zozo, it’s safe to surmise that the decision to resign was not easily made.

More likely than not, now that SpaceX has completed its Starhopper flight program and is on the verge of its first Starship prototype flight tests, Maezawa simply needs money – and a huge amount of it – to continue fulfilling his contractual commitment to SpaceX. Even if a significant portion of the $2.2-2.3B cash payout he is set to receive goes to settling old debts, the Japanese billionaire should now have more than enough assets to fully fund his SpaceX contract.

Yusaku Maezawa stands on the first BFR composite tank/fuselage section prior to his Sept. 17 announcement. (Yusaku Maezawa)

At the time, SpaceX had partially completed pieces of the megarocket – then referred to as BFR – in a makeshift development facility at the Port of Los Angeles, pictured above with Maezawa. Since then, SpaceX has renamed the rocket to Starship, drastically redesigned it, and relocated all production operations to Hawthorne, CA, Boca Chica, Texas, and Cocoa, Florida.

Currently, SpaceX is developing twin Starship prototypes at launch and landing test facilities in Boca Chica, Texas (“Mk1”) and in Cocoa, FL (“Mk2”). Musk recently visited the facilities and announced that he is planning to present a technical Starship development update as early as September 28th.

According to an interview posted on WWDJapan.com as part of a September 12th Zozo press conference, Maezawa explained that he believes he made some missteps while serving as Zozo CEO, negatively affecting the company’s bottom line. He believes that more team-oriented business practices and a change of leadership could help to improve the company, which is currently holding its head well above water but still likely to far fall behind its FY2019 performance goals. It’s also hoped that selling an ownership stake in the company will give Yahoo Japan the flexibility to grow Zozo and improve its global reach.

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The role of Zozo CEO now goes to Kotaro Sawada who accompanied Maezawa on stage at the announcement event along with Yahoo Japan’s president, Kentaro Kawamata. According to Forbes.com Maezawa stated that “Sawada is the exact opposite of my instinct-based management and adept at management based on logic, like crunching data and testing things out first.”

While Yahoo Japan will look to expand Zozo and the associated online shopping mall Zozotown to compete with other online retailers such as Amazon and Rakuten, Maezawa says that he will turn his attention to achieving his personal goal of a trip around the moon. He mentioned that he plans to fly to space prior to his circumlunar flight in 2023 and will spend much of his time training and learning foreign languages for spaceflight.

Yusaku Maezawa admires a drawing of himself appearing as an astronaut with the moon behind him given to him by his family on his 43rd birthday. (Yusaku Maezawa)

He also plans to pursue building another company from the ground up. Whether his next company will be an endeavor focused around space tourism remains to be seen.

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Cybertruck

Tesla launches Cybertruck orders in a new market with a catch

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla is launching Cybertruck orders in a new market, but there’s a bit of a catch.

The Cybertruck was launched in the Middle East earlier this year, as Tesla launched the ability to place a reservation for the all-electric pickup in the United Arab Emirates. It would be the first market outside of North America that would have the ability to place an order for the Cybertruck.

Tesla confirms Cybertruck will make its way out of North America this year

Other markets where the vehicle has been widely requested, like Europe and Asia, have still not approved the vehicle to be sold to the public, mostly because of size and design restrictions.

However, in the UAE, Tesla is opening up the ability for those who placed reservations for the vehicle to finally put in their order. The Order Configurator is only available to those who have already placed a reservation; it is not yet available to the public.

Tesla said it would open up the public online configurator across the Middle East in the coming weeks:

The UAE is not the only country that will have access to the Cybertruck, as fans in other Middle Eastern countries will also be able to place orders soon. Tesla announced back in April that Saudi Arabia and Qatar would also have Cybertruck deliveries.

These vehicles will be built at Tesla’s Gigafactory Texas plant just outside of Austin, as Gigafactory Berlin and Gigafactory Shanghai, two factories located in the same hemisphere as the Middle East, do not have established lines for Cybertruck production.

As for the other markets, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has hinted that the company could develop a smaller Cybertruck for those markets, as he admitted that in the long term, it likely made sense to build a more compact version for regions where roads are traditionally tighter.

Elon Musk hints at smaller Tesla Cybertruck version down the road

There has been no evidence of Tesla developing this more compact version, but it could eventually happen.

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Tesla rolls out new life-saving feature for kids in Europe

On average, 37 children die every year from being left in vehicles unattended.

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tesla model x
Credit: Tesla

Tesla is rolling out a new life-saving feature in the European market, one that has been available in the United States for some time and can be considered potentially invaluable.

One of the most preventable causes of death for children is being left in cars unattended. On average, 37 children die every year after being left in hot vehicles. The cause of death is usually heatstroke, and it is incredibly avoidable.

Tesla rolls out new crucial safety feature aimed at saving children

However, there are instances where kids are left in vehicles and lose their lives, something that many companies have tried to fight with alerts and features of their own.

Tesla is one of them, as it has rolled out features like ultrasonic sensors to detect heartbeats, interior cameras to detect movement, and alerts to notify parents if they leave someone in the car.

A few months ago, Tesla rolled out a new feature called “Child Left Alone Detection” in the United States. It was described as:

“If an unattended child is detected, the vehicle will flash the exterior indicator lights, play an alert tone, and send a notification to your Tesla app. This will repeat at regular intervals until you return to your vehicle. Cabin data is processed locally and is not transmitted to Tesla.

This feature is enabled by default. To disable, go to Controls > Safety > Child Left Alone Detection.”

This feature was only rolled out in the U.S. at the time. It is now making its way to the European market, according to Not a Tesla App, which detected the rollout in the 2025.32.6 software update.

The rollout of this feature could specifically change many unfortunate situations. For many of us, it seems hard to think about leaving something as precious as another human life in a hot car. Many of us won’t leave our vehicles without our cell phones, so it seems unlikely that someone would do it without a child.

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Tesla gets another NHTSA probe, this time related to door handles

“Although Tesla vehicles have manual door releases inside of the cabin, in these situations, a child may not be able to access or operate the releases even if the vehicle’s driver is aware of them.”

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla is facing another investigation into its vehicles by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), this time related to an issue with its door handles.

In a new Open Investigation named “Electronic door handles become inoperative,” the NHTSA says that it has received nine complaints from owners of the 2021 Tesla Model Y stemming from “an inability to open doors.”

These issues were reported after “parents exited their vehicle after a drive cycle in order to remove a child from the pack seat or placing a child in the back seat before starting a drive cycle.” Parents said they were “unable to reopen a door to regain access to the vehicle.”

Tesla door handles become unlikely hero as they stump road rager

Four of the nine complaints ended with having to break a window to regain access to the cabin.

The NHTSA goes on to explain that, while Teslas do have a manual door release inside the cabin, a child may not be able to access it:

“Although Tesla vehicles have manual door releases inside of the cabin, in these situations, a child may not be able to access or operate the releases even if the vehicle’s driver is aware of them. As a result, in these instances, an occupant who remains inside a vehicle in this condition may be unable to be rapidly retrieved by persons outside of the vehicle.”

It appears that the agency is attributing the issue to a low voltage in the vehicle’s 12V DC battery. This would mean there needs to be some sort of notification to the driver that the battery is running low on power and should be replaced to avoid this issue.

The NHTSA estimates that 174,290 vehicles are potentially impacted by this issue. It plans to assess the scope and severity of the condition, the agency says. The NHTSA also wants to see what approach Tesla uses to supply power to door locks and the reliability of the applicable power supplies.

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