News
Starlink shines in FL after Hurricane Milton: ‘A game changer’ [Exclusive]
“So Starlink has been a game changer,” the CFO of Florida Jimmy Patronis, told Teslarati in a recent interview. Patronis was in a vehicle during our conversation visiting the areas in Florida impacted by Hurricane Milton. He had just left a part of Florida that was ravaged by at least 30 tornadoes during the hurricane.
“I think it had a lot of use. I bought the Starlink. I built a harness on the back of our car and we were traveling down the road with the Starlink. And I was doing TV interviews, going down the highway at 60 miles an hour and the communication was really impressive,” the CFO of Florida added.
Preparing for Hurricane Milton with Starlink
My interview with Patronis was ironic and interesting, to say the least. While he was in the car traveling to people affected by Milton, I was on the other side of the world, preparing for Typhoon Kristine, the third storm that would hit my home over the last 3-4 months.
I know how important communication lines are during a hurricane. In some cases, it is your only lifeline, and Patronis was well aware of that.
“My own personal experience, I went ahead and decided to buy a Starlink the week before Hurricane Milton made landfall,” Patronis told me.
“When a storm hits, being able to facilitate phone calls, content sharing, interviews, reports, it’s critical. People want to know what is happening. But unless you have dependable communication, it’s very difficult to do that. And we found Starlink to be invaluable when it came to providing those up-to-date communications for our first responders, for our state of operations…” he elaborated.
The internet was our only connection to the rest of the world when the first hurricane hit our house and flooded the streets of our neighborhood and our car. The second time, the water reached about 7 feet high and flooded our car and house. My family in New Jersey were on the phone talking to me as I hurried up the stairs with stuff, trying to beat the rising water rushing into our yard—and eventually into our house.
From my experience, floods are the worst part of hurricanes—and the scariest. I knew we were in trouble when we saw our neighbors asking for rescue through the HOA Facebook group. In the Philippines, people often call for help through social media posts during hurricanes, so the internet is critical.
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First responders often use the internet or cellular lines to see if anyone needs help. It was no different during Hurricane Milton in Florida.
“So my office also coordinates all urban search and rescue where our first responders are on the field literally minutes after the storm has made landfall. They depend on Starlink. They will have Starlink out in the field with them. This is how they’re communicating, which homes they have visited, if there’s any need for any other assistance, equipment, help, you name it. If they just need more urban rescue first responders to show up,” Patronis told me.
Starlink delivering Peace of Mind after Hurricane Milton
The CFO of Florida and everyone in his office has been working non-stop, preparing for Hurricane Milton’s arrival and now helping people get their lives back together. He told me of one couple in their 70s who had recently married and moved into a new home just six days before Milton made landfall.
Unfortunately, a tornado dropped a dumpster on top of their house. Despite the situation they found themselves in, Patronis told me that the couple were not deterred by the damage caused by Hurricane Milton. They didn’t let Milton take away their happiness and were eager to rebuild.
Rebuilding is probably the hardest thing to do after a hurricane but is unavoidable and necessary. After the second hurricane flooded our home and car, my husband and I immediately acted. We got our car to a mechanic and the cleaners—again. We fortified our gates so less water would enter our lot. The one thing we should have done but didn’t do was prepare to be cut off from the world.
As I said earlier, during the interview with Patronis, Typhoon Kristine was entering the Philippines. The internet connection was already spotty as I talked to him. At one point, our call was abruptly dropped because I lost internet connection. I should have known then that we were in for a rough ride.
A day after my interview with Patronis, Typhoon Kristine’s relentless rain over the Philippines caused the river near our neighborhood to overflow for the third time. The water rose fast; within 20 minutes, it was waist-high from street level. Luckily, our reinforced gates held fast. However, our internet and cellular connection were so bad we couldn’t contact our families or get any updates about the typhoon.
The most terrifying thing about a hurricane is being unable to communicate during or after it. It fills you with dread, and fear, and unfathomable thoughts. Information is a crucial part of natural disasters to stop the fear, focus on something else, and get through it. Otherwise, it feels endless.
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Starlink provided people in Florida with information during and after Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene. Something I wish I had during Hurricane Kristine.
“So you know we’re very committed to using cellular, but in some cases, the Starlink has been a provider of information that…it’s been priceless.
“We were also able to—with the help of T-Mobile—get the FCC to open up a full-blown texting in Florida via satellite and Starlink,” Patronis told me.
Are you rebuilding after Hurricane Milton?
I understand that rebuilding after a hurricane can be difficult. Patronis told me about predators that have been coercing people to sign over their insurance benefits while they try to rebuild their lives and move forward.
The CFO of Florida’s office handles insurance fraud cases and also helps people with their insurance claims. You may seek help by calling 1877-My-FL-CFO or visiting PrepareFL.com.
The best thing you can do after going through a calamity is to ask for help.
What’s your experience with Starlink Cellular? Please share them with me through maria@teslarati.com
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If you have any tips, contact me at maria@teslarati.com or via X @Writer_0100110.
Tesla got its largest order for the all-electric Class 8 Semi yet, a 500-unit order from Einride AB, a Swedish trucking company.
Einride made the announcement this morning following its second-quarter earnings call. The company said it plans to use 500 Tesla Semi units on its fleet intelligence platform, called Saga AI. The deployments will serve large companies like Amazon and will extend Einride’s electric freight network across logistics routes in California, New Jersey, Texas, Illinois, and Georgia.
🚨 Tesla has received a MASSIVE order from Swedish freight company Einride AB, which placed an order for 500 Tesla Semi trucks
Tesla’s biggest order for the Semi yet! pic.twitter.com/PrtLp5yzvh
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 18, 2026
The deployment is being carried out in several phases over the next two years as Tesla ramps production of the Semi at its dedicated production facility in Sparks, Nevada. Einride will receive its first Semi units in September.
Saga AI
Saga AI is Einride’s dedicated fleet intelligence platform. It enables scaled adoption of electric trucks for freight use and allows shippers to integrate electric capacity without the operational burden or capital risks of managing a fleet. This helps integrate cost-efficient logistics and makes budgeting and forecasting much more accurate.
Tesla Semi’s Adoption
The Tesla Semi is now gathering large-scale clients past those who have helped the company operate a Pilot Program to gain initial information and feedback from real-world drivers.
Perhaps the biggest and most notable is that of Frito-Lay and PepsiCo., who have worked with Tesla for the past several years to dial in the finer details of the truck, including its efficiency and operation-related components.
Tesla Semi gets strange-but-understandable comparison from Jay Leno
There has been tremendous progress in that time, and it even catalyzed Tesla to make some design changes, which were unveiled earlier this year.
But Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli says his company’s partnership with Tesla will continue to push those things forward:
“This deployment is yet another proof point that we can execute at the scale our customers demand. Working closely with Tesla to bring next-generation Semis into active operations quickly and at scale is a testament to the strength of that partnership, and how quickly this technology is maturing from promise to daily operations.”
Additionally, Dan Priestley, the Director of the Semi Program at Tesla, said the partnership is ideal due to Einride’s focus on sustainable transport:
“Einride is at the forefront of sustainable freight, and we are thrilled to deepen our relationship with them through this order of 500 Semis. EV heavy trucks provide lower costs per mile from fuel savings, reduced maintenance, and better uptime over diesel trucks. These savings increase further through operational efficiency when deploying EV trucks at scale, and we are excited that Einride recognizes this and look forward to supporting their deployments.”
Elon Musk
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
Elon Musk says X now exposes government censorship, but India’s secrecy laws complicate that promise.
Elon Musk’s promise to make government censorship requests on X “clearly visible” is running into a wall in India, where the law forbids the very disclosure Musk is promising.
On August 15, Musk responded to an update from X’s open-source algorithm team by writing “Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible.” The claim referred to a change X pushed two days earlier to its public xai-org/x-algorithm repository, which now includes a controversial filter written directly into the code. The filter suppresses posts from 665 accounts flagged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court from appearing in the For You feed of any viewer located in Brazil, unless the viewer already follows the account. The election tied to the filter is scheduled for October 4.
India’s government wasn’t as impressed, and responded on Monday that “X will have to follow the law of the land,” in response to Musk’s transparency push covered by the Times of India. The problem is structural rather than political. India issues content blocking orders under Section 69A of its IT Act, and Rule 16 of the accompanying 2009 Blocking Rules requires those orders to stay confidential. Publishing an India equivalent of the Brazil filter, naming specific accounts and citing specific government orders, would itself violate Indian law. Government use of Section 69A has grown from roughly 6,000 orders a year between 2018 and 2023 to about 24,300 in 2025, according to a Tech Times report.
The contrast puts Musk’s transparency pledge in an odd spot. It works largely as advertised in Brazil, where electoral law requires disclosure and X can point to specific account IDs and a specific court order in public code. It cannot work the same way in India, where the law requires the opposite. X users in India will keep seeing content disappear from search and their feeds without any public accounting of why, even as X tells the rest of the world that its censorship compliance is now inspectable.
This isn’t the first time X’s fights with a national government have shaped how the platform operates. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to suspend the accounts of sitting lawmakers and journalists in 2024, a standoff that cost X its Brazilian revenue for months and froze Starlink’s local accounts before the investigation into Musk and X was closed in March with no evidence of wrongdoing found. X also sued California over a state law requiring moderation disclosures, arguing the mandate itself violated the First Amendment.
Whether India’s government pursues anything beyond a public statement remains to be seen. For now, the mismatch between what X can legally publish and what different governments legally allow it to publish is the real story behind Musk’s seven word claim.
Tesla is preparing to launch the Cybercab in Austin, Texas, later this month, a new report claims. Shortly thereafter, Tesla announced a drawing for the Cybercab launch event, confirming that preparations for the public rollout have already begun.
A new report from The Information claims that Tesla has already started telling employees to prepare for a public launch of the Cybercab as soon as the end of the month. The vehicle will launch publicly to riders in Austin initially.
The two-seater has no pedals or steering wheel, and will rely completely on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software to operate.
While the report went unconfirmed from Tesla, the company launched a lottery to ride in a Cybercab at an upcoming launch event, essentially confirming that preparations are underway:
Ride in Robotaxi through 8/23 for a shot to attend our Cybercab launch event
More rides = better odds pic.twitter.com/NxA4H9sWF2
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) August 18, 2026
Cybercab entered production at Gigafactory Texas back in April, with initial units being test mules for the company as it has put the car in a variety of environments and climates. Tesla has sent Cybercab to many states, including Texas, California, Nevada, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, Washington, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
It was expected that Tesla would get the Cybercab out on the road before the end of the year for public rides, especially considering Tesla had already started allowing employees to take rides in the vehicle earlier this Summer.
Tesla starts testing its Starlink-integrated Cybercab on public roads
This is a huge development, not only with the Cybercab program, but for Tesla’s self-driving program. Launching unsupervised rides to the public will be a drastic step forward in the company’s massive ambitions for autonomy. It is a long time coming, too. Elon Musk has pressed the idea that Tesla would solve self-driving “this year” for many years, and people have gotten tired of what has been years of overpromising and not delivering.
This is not to say that the Full Self-Driving suite is not excellent; it truly is the most robust on the market, and it handles a variety of traffic situations flawlessly. It definitely has its faults, but generally, it is fantastic.
Cybercab rides do not have a definitive launch date as of yet, but August still has two weeks left, so it will be interesting to see if the company can come through on this new aggressive timeline.
Tesla Semi gets its largest order yet
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
