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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Elon Musk
Tesla FSD is about to know your specific house and neighborhood better than any map
Tesla confirmed it is building a feature that lets you teach your car where to go.
Tesla is building a feature that will let drivers talk to their car in plain language and teach it exactly what to do, with the vehicle remembering those instructions for every future trip. Tesla VP of AI Software Ashok Elluswamy confirmed it this week on X after a user pointed out one of FSD’s most persistent real-world limitations is that the system has no way to receive contextual instructions the way a human driver would.
“FSD would be twice as useful in neighborhoods if I could actually talk to the car and tell it which driveway to pull into, the same way I would with a person driving me home. Right now, there isn’t really an input for telling Tesla what color the house is or giving it specific context like that. Google Maps is also notorious for putting pins on houses that aren’t actually yours.” Tesla owner Chris further noted, “It would be so cool if I could talk to the car while going down my street and say something like, ‘It’s the white house on the left, just past that SUV,’ and then have FSD remember that for next time.”
FSD would be twice as useful in neighborhoods if I could actually talk to the car and tell it which driveway to pull into, the same way I would with a person driving me home.
Right now, there isn’t really an input for telling Tesla what color the house is or giving it specific…
— Chris (@ChrissGPT) July 8, 2026
This feature would carry more weight than it might seem. Grok has been available inside Tesla vehicles since July 2025, expanded to European vehicles in February 2026, and gained a hands-free “Hey Grok” wake word with location-based reminders and natural-language navigation in the Spring 2026 update. But up to this point, Grok has had no authority over how FSD actually drives. Lane changes, braking, speed, and parking maneuvers remain entirely within FSD’s autonomous decision-making loop. What Elluswamy confirmed is that the next step pushes Grok into a supervisor role, one that translates spoken intent directly into driving decisions.
Tesla teases greater Grok FSD integration and ‘Banish’ feature ‘in about 3 months’
Elluswamy acknowledged at a January 2026 conference that while fully integrated voice control is on Tesla’s roadmap, “it opens up an entire area of testing that we have to do. For example, you shouldn’t be able to tell the car to crash, and it shouldn’t crash.” Elon Musk subsequently confirmed on June 23 that Grok voice commands will pass to FSD’s planning layer by September 2026, a three month timeline from confirmation to deployment.
The deeper significance is what this does for Tesla’s AI training flywheel. Every time an owner corrects FSD with a spoken instruction and the car learns and remembers it, that interaction becomes a data point covering an edge case that no simulation or scripted test could have generated. A fleet of millions of Tesla vehicles crowdsourcing hyper-local contextual knowledge, which driveway, which gate entrance, which side of the street, builds a layer of geographic and behavioral intelligence that competitors without a comparable fleet simply cannot replicate at the same speed or scale.
As Teslarati has reported, Tesla’s Cybercab and robotaxi operations have expanded to Miami following the Austin launch, with rider profiles already collecting preference data. Voice-taught contextual instructions linked to individual rider profiles means a Cybercab could eventually know before it arrives exactly which entrance to use, where to wait, and how to navigate the final hundred feet of any trip it has made before.
Lifestyle
Tesla app update makes Robotaxi ownership make a lot more sense
Tesla’s app now shows a live indicator when your car is actively driving itself.
A recent Tesla app update, released last week (4.58.5), gives visibility on whether a vehicle is navigating in its semi-autonomous mode or being drive by a human driver. The updated app now displays a live “Self-Driving” indicator in bright blue text directly beneath the vehicle’s speed readout whenever Full Self-Driving is actively engaged, along with the signature glowing blue navigation path that FSD users see on the main touchscreen. It is a small visual update with meaningful implications for how Tesla owners monitor their vehicles remotely.
The feature was first spotted in the wild by X user Jordan Camina, who shared video of a Hardware 3 Model S displaying the new animation through the app while driving. That detail is significant because it confirms the update is not limited to newer HW4 vehicles. It works across hardware generations, and Tesla confirmed it will eventually support all vehicles regardless of chip platform once both the app and vehicle software are updated. The vehicle side requires software version 2026.20.6.1, which has reached nearly 40% of the fleet so far, as monitored by NotaTeslaApp.
The feature makes the most practical sense when viewed through the lens of Tesla’s expanding robotaxi operation. In a robotaxi context, the owner of a vehicle generating ride revenue has a direct financial and safety interest in knowing whether their car is operating under autonomous control at any given moment. The app’s new FSD indicator gives fleet owners exactly that visibility, the same way a logistics company monitors whether a delivery driver is following the planned route. It also carries implications for Tesla’s insurance model. Tesla’s own insurance product prices premiums in part based on FSD engagement rates, and real-time visibility into when FSD is active creates a feedback loop that could eventually tie directly into policy pricing. For individual owners who have opted their personal vehicles into the robotaxi network, the update effectively turns the Tesla app into a fleet management dashboard, one that tells you whether your car is earning money, whether it is driving itself to do it, and whether everything is operating the way it should from wherever you happen to be.
Tesla expands Robotaxi to Florida, marking its third state for autonomy
As Teslarati has reported, Tesla launched unsupervised robotaxi rides in Miami this summer, a milestone that makes a remote FSD status indicator significantly more practical than a cosmetic feature. When a vehicle is operating as a robotaxi without a driver present, the owner or fleet operator needs a reliable way to confirm autonomy is engaged. The app now provides exactly that.
As noted by NotATeslaApp, The update also arrived alongside a hint buried in the same app version that Tesla plans to use the cabin camera to verify driver identity before FSD can be activated. Pairing identity verification with a live autonomy status indicator points toward the infrastructure Tesla is building for a fleet of driverless vehicles that owners can monitor the way you would track a package delivery.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The Boring Company’s Prufrock MB2 is commissioned and ready to mine beneath Nashville’s streets.
The Boring Company’s second tunnel boring machine, Prufrock MB2, is officially ready to dig in Nashville. The company confirmed the news on X, posting: “Prufrock-MB2 is ready to mine in Nashville! MB2 commissioning is complete, including the brief 11 rpm rotation shown here. Will MB2 catch up to MB1, who had quite the head start? And Prufrock-MB3 ships in August!”
MB2 arrives with meaningful improvements over its predecessor. Lessons learned from the launch and operation of MB1 have already been applied to MB2 to improve efficiency and prepare the machine for launch.
Traditional tunnel boring machines operate in a stop-and-go cycle, digging roughly five feet, halt, erect precast concrete segments to line the tunnel wall, then resume. That repeated interruption is one of the main reasons conventional tunneling is slow and expensive. Prufrock is designed to install the tunnel liner simultaneously with mining, eliminating the need to stop every five feet. The machine also skips the need for excavated launch pits. Prufrock arrives on a truck, tilts down, and launches into the ground within 24 hours. And when the tunnel is complete, it emerges from the ground and drives to its next launch site on a trailer, eliminating the need for expensive cranes or pit excavation. The machine is also fully electric and runs with zero people in the tunnel during normal operations, controlled remotely from a surface operations center.
Prufrock-MB2 is ready to mine in Nashville! MB2 commissioning is complete, including the brief 11 rpm rotation shown here.
Will MB2 catch up to MB1, who had quite the head start?
And Prufrock-MB3 ships in August! pic.twitter.com/TTrMql2aRg
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) June 17, 2026
It won’t be long before we hear of another major update on The Boring Company’s Music City Loop project – a planned underground transit network beneath Nashville that would move passengers in electric vehicles through a series of tunnels at highway speeds, and bypassing surface traffic entirely. Nashville was selected in part because of its strong rock conditions that suits the Prufrock machines well, and relatively less regulatory hurdles.
Progress has been steady on multiple fronts. All 37 permits and approvals required ahead of tunneling have been obtained, out of 45 total. Key wins include a fully executed TDOT tunnel permit authorizing 25 miles of tunnel, unanimous airport authority approval for a Nashville International Airport station, and the city’s first residential station agreement serving downtown tower residents.
With MB1 already tunneling, MB2 now commissioned, and MB3 shipping in August, Nashville is becoming something of a live proving ground for scaled tunnel boring. The broader ambition is not limited to one city. The Boring Company’s stated goal is to make underground transportation a practical alternative to surface roads across major metro areas. Nashville is one of many cities, including a successful Las Vegas tunnel system, where that idea is being put to the test at real speed.
Tesla FSD is about to know your specific house and neighborhood better than any map
The secret behind Tesla’s Cybercab Gold goes well beyond just the color
