Lifestyle
Tesla’s $7,000 EV incentive is a nail in the coffin for ICE competitors
The reintroduction of the electric vehicle tax incentive credit could be a nail in the coffin to Tesla’s competitors as if the company needed any more help to bury its competitors into the ground officially.
Earlier this week, it was reported that Tesla could be primed to receive the new EV incentives that would grant a $7,000 tax credit to the first 600,000 Tesla EVs sold in the United States. The new GREEN Act indicates that the number of applicable EVs per manufacturer would increase by 400,000 cars, from 200,000 to 600,000, making a considerable number of Tesla’s projected sales for 2021 reasonably less expensive for car buyers.
While Tesla didn’t give an exact estimation for how many cars it plans to build this year, several analysts have projected numbers between 800,000 and 950,000. However, Tesla’s Q4 Earnings Update Letter has a total output of 1,050,000 between its two active production facilities.
Tesla to gain access to 400k more $7k EV tax credits amid Biden’s sustainability push
The GREEN Act states:
“The bill also extends existing tax incentives available for the sale of electric vehicles. The bill increases the electric vehicle credit cap for manufacturers to 600,000 vehicles, but reduces the credit by $500 after the first 200,000 vehicles sold. This would replace the current phaseout period that begins with 200,000 vehicles sold, with a phaseout period that instead begins during the second calendar quarter after the 600,000-vehicle threshold is reached.
“At the start of the new phaseout period created under the bill, the credit is reduced by 50 percent for one calendar quarter and subsequently ends. For manufacturers that already passed the 200,000 threshold before the enactment of the bill, the number of vehicles sold in between 200,000 and those sold on the date of enactment are excluded in determining when the 600,000 threshold is reached.”
Tesla is sitting pretty if this happens to go through. For several reasons, the reintroduction of the EV incentive to Tesla’s cars could effectively bury conventional automakers who have not put a more serious and specific focus on the development of electric powertrains.
It is no secret that the future of vehicles is electric. While classic muscle cars will likely always be in existence for decades to come, mass-market vehicles from other manufacturers, like Ford Escapes, Honda Civics, Toyota Camrys, and Chevy Malibus, will fade away. Let’s be honest with each other here: Nobody is collecting any of them; they just don’t have the “it” factor that a classic vehicle has.
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Even today’s Mustangs, Camaros, and Corvettes don’t hold the value, the sentimental meaning, or the history that early builds have. And even worse, they don’t have the performance, the speed, or the technology and efficiency that an electric car has. EVs are the best of both worlds, and when you buy a Tesla, there is no better car to display that in the most exaggerated manner.
Subtracting another $7,000 from the price of any of Tesla’s vehicles thanks to the GREEN Act would be game over. The Model 3 SR+ would be well below the average cost of a car in the United States today while offering environmentally-friendly transportation, acceleration that is well beyond the norm for a combustion engine car, and pricing that just cannot be matched by some of the “luxury, high-performance” vehicles that are offered in today’s market.
Comparative to the Tesla Model 3 SR+ is the 2021 Mercedes-Benz CLA-Class. Both start at price points slightly below $38,000, but the specs speak for themselves. The Model 3 has a significantly faster 0-60 time at 5.3 seconds, while the Benz sits at 6.2. The quarter-mile race wouldn’t be close either, with the CLA getting to the line in 13.8 seconds. The Model 3 would be finished in 13.1, according to Matthew Cjel, who did three 1/4-mile runs with his SR+ and got times of 13.185, 13.181, and 13.218.
CarBuzz
While competitive without the incentive, pricing wouldn’t be close if the $7,000 credit was applied. That would bring the Model 3 to just under $31,000. Additionally, the CLA only gets 25 MPG City and 35 MPG highway. With spiking gas prices, that would be a considerably frequent trip to the local Shell station. The Model 3 gets 263 miles per charge and can be charged from home or at a local Supercharger for a fraction of the price.
This is just one example of where the $7,000 credit would make EVs more appealing than gas cars to those who remain on the fence. Price parity is becoming an outdated argument, and with Tesla’s battery advancements and increased production rates, cars will only become less-expensive every year. Soon enough, Tesla’s $25k mass-market vehicle will hit the roads, and there will be an overwhelming sense of demand from new car buyers. The initial 600,000 EVs will likely disappear as fast as turkey on Thanksgiving, making the tax credit obsolete in virtually no time.
The only real concern that could arise from the new credit is it is likely to increase demand significantly, which could bring issues for Tesla’s projects that have been delayed due to battery constraints. I don’t know how more 3 and Y purchases, along with S and X, would affect Roadster, Semi, or Cybertruck production. However, Tesla is battery constrained, and available cells would likely be subjected to the S3XY lineup, which could further delay the other projects.
Demand is never a bad thing, though. The higher sales of its mass-market vehicles would give Tesla even more capital to invest in battery manufacturing and tech. It would give them more money to source cells from third-party suppliers. It also would only help the company’s financials for many quarters to come. But battery shortages have halted the Semi and Roadster project several times, and the Cybertruck now seems like it could be subjected to the same issues. It seems like Musk could have been hinting toward that in the podcast with Rogan yesterday, where he said that they can “hopefully” begin volume production next year. During the Q4 EC, Musk also said:
“If we get lucky, we’ll be able to do a few deliveries toward the end of this year, but I expect volume production to be in 2022.”
Let’s hope things continue to expand in a timely fashion, I think the EV incentive and the long list of advantages that EVs have over their ICE competitors will be recognized by everyone who remains in limbo over which power source will “fuel” their next vehicle.
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Lifestyle
Tesla Cybertruck targets job site crews with new Tailgate Utility Track and Bed Gear Box accessory
Tesla launched a $350 tailgate track and a $985 lockable Bed Gear Box for Cybertruck.
Tesla’s Cybertruck team added two more items to the Tesla Shop, targeting job site crews and owners who use the truck bed for actual work rather than just showing it off. The official Cybertruck X account posted the Tailgate Utility Track and the Bed Gear Box within minutes of each other, part of a five item batch that also included a reflective jacket, a spray paint hat and an updated reflective tee.
The Tailgate Utility Track runs $350 and turns the folded down tailgate into another mounting surface. It’s a single aluminum track with a T-slot for sliding accessories and two L-track attachment points, plus two load stops included in the box. The pitch is straightforward: strap down oversized cargo, like lumber or a cooler, that hangs off the back of the bed without it sliding out mid-drive. It bolts onto the existing tailgate and works on every Cybertruck trim.
Tailgate Utility Trackhttps://t.co/PCAYXlFBvS pic.twitter.com/sCV2NVxf1W
— Cybertruck (@cybertruck) September 3, 2026
The Bed Gear Box costs $985 and is a different kind of accessory. It’s a lockable aluminum storage box, 55.78 inches long, 19.8 inches wide and 7.79 inches tall, that mounts to the bed’s L-track rails and comes with two internal bins for smaller items. According to Tesla, at just over 57 pounds empty, it’s meant to stay in place rather than come in and out with each trip, giving owners a factory-fit alternative to loose totes for tools, recovery gear or emergency supplies. Tesla’s listing notes that Long Range and Dual Motor AWD Cybertrucks need the L-Tracks accessory installed separately before the Gear Box will mount, since L-tracks come standard only on certain configurations.
Tesla Cybertruck bed gear box accessory
Both accessories lean on the idea Tesla has been building toward since Elon Musk first described the Cybertruck’s third-party attachment strategy at the 2023 shareholder meeting, when he said the truck would ship with mounting points so outside companies, and Tesla itself, could keep adding gear without redesigning the bed. That’s the same L-track backbone underneath the tailgate shield and jumpseats Tesla launched last year, and the off-road armor package that arrived through the same X account in 2025.
Owners looking to round out the rest of the L-track ecosystem, cargo dividers, MOLLE panels, bed racks and similar gear, can find a wider range of options through our Cybertruck accessories collection.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk says he knows how to save Earth for a billion years
Elon Musk says sentient AI satellites launched from the Moon could keep Earth livable forever.
Elon Musk spent part of his weekend describing a plan to keep the planet livable for roughly a billion years, and it starts with satellites that can think for themselves.
In a post on X, Musk argued that swapping fossil fuels for solar and wind power will not be enough to protect humanity from what he called extremely severe extinction events, the kind that occur roughly every 100 million years. His fix is what he called sentient satellites, or solar-powered satellites, controlled by AI, that would sit in a fixed spot between Earth and the Sun after being launched off the Moon using a giant electromagnetic catapult instead of rockets.
The satellites’ onboard AI would make continuous, small adjustments rather than waiting on human instructions. The mass driver is Musk’s proposed way of getting the raw material there cheaply by using an electromagnetic launch track built on the Moon, where lower gravity and no atmosphere make it far easier to fling cargo into space than it is from Earth.
But we do need to act much faster than that if people still want to live where the beach is today. We have about 50 years or so to take action, which should be more than enough time for the space satellites to solve any heating problems. https://t.co/xhrVQALwQw
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 30, 2026
Musk shared a Grok generated estimate suggesting roughly 5 percent of Florida’s land, or about 1.68 million acres, could face regular flooding by 2070 under a high sea level rise scenario, and said humanity has about 50 years to act before coastal living looks very different than it does today.
This is not the first time Musk has floated the idea. He raised a similar concept in November, describing a solar powered AI satellite constellation that could make tiny adjustments to incoming sunlight to fine tune Earth’s temperature. Musk has also tied planetary risk to his broader vision at SpaceX, where his compensation package is explicitly linked to establishing a self-sustaining Mars colony, one he has described as an insurance policy against the kind of extinction event he referenced this weekend, and where he has said humans could set foot within five to seven years.
A former Vancouver police sergeant with ALS accounts his journey to become a patient for Elon Musk’s Neuralink wireless brain-computer interface technology.
“I’m texting you from my brain right now.” That was the first message Lee Marten sent after waking up from Neuralink surgery, five hours and one migraine after dozens of threads were stitched into his motor cortex.
Marten, a former Vancouver police sergeant, is one of the first Canadian ALS patients to receive Neuralink’s N1 brain implant, and the 26th recipient overall. He tells his story in a first-person account published by Maclean’s.
Marten recounts how he was a healthy, athletic Vancouver police sergeant until April 2022 when symptoms of muscle twitching and balance loss, were followed by a bad fall that broke his leg. He would eventually be diagnosed with ALS in early 2025 at the age of 47. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that progressively destroys the motor neurons controlling voluntary muscle movement, eventually taking away a patient’s ability to walk, speak, swallow and breathe. There’s no cure, and most patients live two to five years after diagnosis.
He describes the devastation of the diagnosis and how he began preparing for it while connecting with other young ALS patients through a WhatsApp group called Young Guns. Through that group he learned about a Neuralink clinical trial at Toronto Western Hospital and, after a roughly seven-month vetting process (physical assessments, psychiatric evaluation, a final interview with the Neuralink team), was accepted this past April as the trial’s 26th recipient and the first Canadian ALS patient to get the N1 implant. He recounts the May surgery in detail, including the robotic system that stitched 64 threads into his brain, and describes the app, Link, translating his neural signals into cursor control, which he was using within hours of waking up.
Marten walks through what daily use looks like, including weekly “brain training” exercises, a real-time neural-activity display, charging the implant via a beanie-mounted MagSafe charger, and using the implant for emailing, texting, social media, and gaming via a “Magic Box” that connects it to other devices. He also gives brief context on brain-computer interface history and quite candid about Musk, calling him “divisive” but saying he found him “easy to admire.
The piece closes on a heavier note, with Marten seeking to pursue medical assistance in dying as his symptoms progressed, noting that he’ll be able to communicate his final words to his family through Neuralink rather than facing a silent decline. He expresses hope the data from his case will help future ALS patients, even without a cure in his own lifetime.
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