Lifestyle
Tesla’s 16-year anniversary: A tale of trials, tribulations, and grit that continues to this day
Sixteen years ago, engineer-entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning incorporated a company that was, for the most part, a legitimate long shot. Named Tesla Motors, the company occupied an office that had three desks and two small rooms in a decrepit building situated at 845 Oak Grove Avenue in Menlo Park, CA. The duo had a crazy business idea: they wanted to make electric cars, and they wanted to turn it into a business. At the time, the idea was practically insane, as EVs were not even part of any legitimate conversations in the auto market. Tarpenning and Eberhard had a concept for a Lotus-based electric sports car, but finding an investor who could pony up the $7 million required to build a prototype was insanely challenging.
Tesla’s Roots
During this time, Elon Musk was still busy looking into the idea of sending mice on a journey into space. Fortunately for Eberhard and Tarpenning, they soon got word that Musk, a multimillionaire who started a private rocket company, was looking to invest in the electric vehicle sphere. The duo flew down to Los Angeles and met with the SpaceX founder on a Friday, and over the course of the following weekend, Musk peppered Tarpenning with a barrage of questions about Tesla Motors’ business model. By the following Monday, Tarpenning and Eberhard were back in LA for another meeting with Musk. At the end of the meeting, Musk simply informed the men, “Okay, I’m in.”
Musk was precisely what Tesla Motors needed. He had the engineering background to understand what the company was trying to build, and his funds from his Silicon Valley fortune were vast. Musk invested $6.5 million into Tesla Motors, making him the largest shareholder and the Chairman of the company. Not long after this, Musk contacted JB Straubel, particularly as Eberhard and Tarpenning were meeting challenges in their vehicle’s batteries. Musk and Straubel had previously formed a kinship after finding common ground in EVs, particularly with the latter’s interest in using lithium-ion batteries to power a car (Musk had also agreed to fund Straubel’s lithium-ion battery ideas). During his meeting with Eberhard and Tarpenning, Straubel told them that he was building the battery they were looking for, also using funding from Musk. “We agreed to join forces and formed this ragtag group,” Straubel said, recalling Tesla Motors’ earliest days.
A lot has happened over the next 16 years. Tesla Inc., as the company is now called, has a market cap of around $40 billion, despite being one of the most shorted companies in the auto industry. The company has also expanded its operations to energy storage systems, a field that Straubel is still incredibly involved with. Elon Musk remains the largest shareholder and stands as the company’s CEO, though he has relinquished his Chairman role to board member Robyn Denholm following a run-in with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Today, Tesla is involved in what could only be described as a battle for the future of transportation, being the undisputed trailblazer in the electric vehicle market. So vast is the potential of the company that legendary investor Ron Baron has predicted that Tesla could eventually be a trillion-dollar company.
From the Tesla Roadster to the Model 3
To say that it took a lot of effort for Tesla to get to this point is an understatement, particularly as every vehicle that the company has released was met with pushback and an immense amount of skepticism. The original Tesla Roadster, the car that Eberhard, Tarpenning, and Straubel were creating since the earliest days of the company, was released in 2008, right in the middle of the US financial crisis. Objectively speaking, a two-seater, all-electric sports car was not a practical purchase then. The original Tesla Roadster had its own fair share of production challenges as well, to the point where auto publication The Truth About Cars actually decided to do a Tesla Death Watch series. Though late, the Roadster became successful nonetheless, forcing the Tesla Death Watch to end and becoming prolific enough to usher in the WhiteStar project, which would eventually become the Model S.
Bringing the Model S to market was just as hard, if not more difficult than the Roadster’s already-painful production ramp. In 2007, Musk showed noted auto designer Henrik Fisker Tesla’s idea for the WhiteStar sedan, a vehicle that must haul a family and cost about half the Roadster’s price. Fisker had a reputation for creating stunning automobiles for Aston Martin, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz, but as noted by Ron Lloyd, the former vice president of Tesla’s WhiteStar project, the designs he submitted for Tesla’s family sedan were strangely substandard. When Musk pushed back, Fisker would blame the physical constraints that Tesla placed on the car. And in 2008, Musk and the Tesla team looked in shock as Fisker started his own car company, Fisker Automotive, and unveiled the Karma, a hybrid vehicle that had all the makings of a well-designed green vehicle. It wasn’t until an established designer from Mazda, Franz von Holzhausen decided to take a leap of faith that project WhiteStar started progressing. Working with Musk on every detail of the car, the results of von Holzhausen’s work was the Tesla Model S, a car that would redefine not just electric vehicles, but cars as a whole.
Tesla’s next vehicles were no less challenging. The Model X was dismissed as an impossible vehicle to make due to its Falcon Wing Doors. While significantly delayed, the all-electric SUV nevertheless entered production, though it took extreme measures, such as Musk sleeping in the Fremont factory, to get the vehicle’s manufacturing underway. Fortunately for Tesla, it appears that the Model X became a lesson for the company, as evidenced by the more straightforward design of the Model 3, and later on, the Model Y. After coming to terms with its own hubris and creating what Elon Musk aptly described as the Fabergé egg of cars in the Model X, Tesla appears to have matured. This could be seen in the similarity of the company’s two mass-market vehicles.
Into the Future
Led by arguably one of the most relentless innovators alive today, Tesla remains engaged in battle every step of the way. Yet, despite the emergence of competitors that are generously dubbed “Tesla Killers,” and despite the persistently negative narrative surrounding the company, the electric car maker continues to grow. Tesla has even expanded its operations in China, where Gigafactory 3 is being built at a record pace. Once that is completed, Tesla could tap into China’s lucrative electric vehicle market without any unnecessary restraints. Other vehicles in the company’s lineup, from the new Tesla Roadster to the Tesla Semi to the Tesla Truck, are expected to be just as disruptive as every other electric car that the company has released.
Tesla’s electric cars are by no means the first EVs on the market. But they are the vehicles that forced the auto industry to recognize that there is a legitimate demand for compelling, well-designed electric cars. The presence of EVs such as the Porsche Taycan, which the German automaker expects will likely be practically as important as the 911, is proof that Tesla has and is succeeding in its mission to accelerate the world’s transition to renewable energy. A lot has happened in 16 years, but if Tesla’s character is any indication, it would seem that the company’s story is still just beginning.
Watch a Tesla enthusiast’s tribute video to Tesla’s 16 years in the video below.
Elon Musk
SpaceXAI just launched into your kitchen with their new app
SpaceXAI just powered its first consumer app and it predicts what you want to buy.
SpaceXAI just made its first move into consumer AI, and it involves your grocery cart. On June 3, 2026, Gopuff and SpaceXAI announced the launch of Go, a Grok-powered shopping assistant built directly into the Gopuff app that predicts what you need before you even start searching for it.
Gopuff is an instant delivery platform that operates more than 400 micro-fulfillment centers across the U.S., delivering everyday essentials, snacks, drinks, and household items in as little as 15 minutes. It is not a restaurant delivery app or a marketplace. It owns its inventory, controls its warehouses, and handles its own logistics, which means it has built one of the most detailed consumer behavior datasets in retail over its 13-year history.
Go combines SpaceXAI’s advanced reasoning, voice, and image generation models with Gopuff’s dataset of hundreds of millions of orders and real-time cultural signals from X to prepare a suggested cart the moment a customer opens the app. It learns each shopper’s habits and automatically builds a personalized cart based on time of day, location, order history, and real-time indicators. Returning customers can check out with a single tap.
Rather than searching for specific items, users can describe a situation like a game-day party or the desire for a healthy breakfast and Go will assemble a cart automatically. It can also predict when shoppers are running low on items like coffee or paper towels and have them packed and delivered in under 15 minutes. Grok voice integration lets users talk to the app in plain conversational language and check out completely hands-free.
Gopuff co-founder and co-CEO Yakir Gola said: “Today, we believe the greatest friction left in commerce is not delivery or instantaneous access to the essentials customers need. It’s the moment before: the thinking, the deciding, the remembering. We’re combining Gopuff’s demand intelligence with xAI’s frontier reasoning to create an everyday shopping experience that feels like a true extension of you.”
Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO
The timing carries context beyond the product launch. SpaceXAI was formed after SpaceX completed an all-stock merger with Elon Musk’s xAI earlier this year, folding one of the most advanced AI labs in the world into the same corporate structure as the company preparing what could be the largest IPO in history. SpaceXAI is dipping into consumer-focused AI just as it prepares for its public debut, and while Musk has openly discussed building an everything app, this launch uses Grok to power another company’s product rather than launching a standalone consumer platform. Every consumer-facing deployment of Grok ahead of the IPO roadshow adds tangible evidence that SpaceXAI is not just an infrastructure play but a direct competitor in the AI application layer where OpenAI and Google are already fighting for dominance.
Lifestyle
Tesla saves its passengers again – This time after a 300-foot cliff fall in Malibu
A Tesla Model 3 fell 300 feet off a Malibu cliff and both passengers survived.
A Tesla Model 3 plunged roughly 300 feet off a cliff on Mulholland Highway in Malibu on Friday morning, May 29, 2026, and both occupants survived. The crash was reported at approximately 7:30 a.m. near the 2500 block of Mulholland Highway, triggering a multi-agency rescue operation involving Malibu Search and Rescue, the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the California Highway Patrol, and McCormick Ambulance.
When first responders arrived, the male driver was outside the vehicle shouting for help while the female passenger remained pinned inside the Tesla. Rescue crews rappelled down the cliffside on ropes to reach the wreckage. A flight medic was lowered by helicopter to begin treating both victims, and the driver was hoisted up to the roadway before crews used the Jaws of Life to free the trapped passenger. Both were airlifted to a local trauma center with moderate injuries despite a remarkable result for a fall that steep.
The outcome is not surprising, considering Model 3 earned an overall 5-star rating from NHTSA in every category and sub-category, and recorded the lowest probability of injury of any car ever evaluated by the U.S. New Car Assessment Program. The absence of a traditional engine in the front of the vehicle creates a longer crumple zone that absorbs impact energy before it reaches occupants, and the battery pack running along the floor gives the car an unusually low center of gravity that reinforces structural rigidity.
This is not the first time a Tesla has kept passengers alive after going off a cliff. A Tesla Model Y carrying a family of four survived a plunge off a cliff at Devil’s Slide near San Francisco in January 2023, with two adults and two children walking away from a 250-foot fall. That incident drew widespread attention to how the structural integrity of Tesla’s electric platform performs in extreme crash scenarios that most vehicles would not survive.
Tesla Model Y driver who drove off cliff with family attempts to avoid criminal conviction
Elon Musk
NASA’s first human outpost on the Moon starts now – SpaceX on deck
NASA named the rovers, landers, and vendors that will build America’s first Moon Base.
NASA has laid out its most detailed Moon Base plan to date, describing a permanent outpost near the Moon’s south pole that the agency intends to build over the coming decade as a direct stepping stone to Mars. “The Moon Base will be America’s and humanity’s first outpost on another celestial world,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said, adding that every mission crewed and uncrewed “will be a learning opportunity as we return to the lunar surface, build the infrastructure to stay, and master the skills required to live and operate in one of the most demanding and dangerous environments imaginable.”
The plan is structured in three phases involving both uncrewed and crewed missions to deliver equipment, vehicles, and infrastructure to the surface, with the first three moon base missions targeted to launch before the end of 2026.
Moon Base I, targeting fall 2026, will use Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lander to deliver scientific instruments to the Shackleton Connecting Ridge, the same region where Artemis astronauts will land. Moon Base II will send Astrobotic’s Griffin lander carrying more than 1,100 pounds of cargo including Astrolab’s FLIP rover to begin developing mobility systems on the surface. Moon Base III will carry the Lunar Vertex science mission on Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C Trinity lander to study lunar swirls near the south pole, with ESA and Korean science payloads aboard.
On the rover side, NASA awarded Astrolab $219 million and Lunar Outpost $220 million to build the first phase of Lunar Terrain Vehicles, with both rovers targeted for deployment to the lunar surface by 2028. Astrolab’s crewed rover weighs roughly 2,000 pounds and can reach over 6 mph. Lunar Outpost’s Pegasus rover can operate autonomously or via remote control at over 9 mph. Blue Origin separately received $188 million with an option worth $280.4 million to deliver cargo landers for rover transport.
NASA also confirmed that MoonFall, a mission deploying four survey drones to scout Artemis landing sites, has selected Firefly Aerospace to build the transport spacecraft, with a 2028 launch target.
SpaceX sits at the center of that commercial layer. SpaceX holds the NASA Human Landing System contract for the Starship-derived lander that will put astronauts on the surface under Artemis IV, currently targeting 2028. Before that can happen, SpaceX must demonstrate in-orbit propellant transfer at scale, a process requiring multiple Starship tanker launches to fuel a single mission. Water ice at the lunar south pole is central to the base’s long-term viability, as it can be converted into drinking water, breathable oxygen, and rocket fuel, directly reducing dependence on Earth resupply. That resource loop becomes far more practical if Starship can land and be refueled on or near the Moon itself.
Elon Musk has publicly stated that Starship V3, which recently completed its first flight, should be capable enough for initial Mars missions. The Moon Base plan announced Tuesday is the infrastructure layer that connects everything between those two ambitions, and SpaceX is the only American company currently contracted to build the rocket that gets humans to either destination.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is taking over Europe: fourth country gets FSD approval
Tesla revises FSD transfer policy on new Cybertruck trim, causing cancellations
