Lifestyle
Tesla community mobilizes to help in Elon Musk’s end-of-Q2 push: Here’s why they do it
Tesla volunteers are mobilizing once more to help the electric car maker deliver as many vehicles as it can before the end of the second quarter. These volunteer-driven initiatives are happening not only in the United States, but in foreign territories as well. Earlier this month, for example, reports emerged stating that Tesla owners from Beijing are volunteering their time and effort to help the company hand over electric cars to new buyers.
This remarkable community-driven initiative initially started out of necessity amidst Tesla’s efforts to hit profitability back in Q3 2018, but it quickly evolved into something of a tradition among electric car enthusiasts. For some Tesla owners, volunteering their time and helping the company is a worthwhile endeavor, and it is something that they do not mind doing every quarter. This is true for the Tesla Owners Silicon Valley group, who visited three Tesla locations this Friday to deliver over 100 donuts for the electric car maker’s employees.
For John, the president of the group, doing something as simple as sharing food for the company’s workers goes a long way, particularly at the current time where the narrative surrounding the company is persistently negative. “We love the Tesla brand. Unfortunately, the media is cutting them down any chance they get. It’s like kicking a horse that’s down. We do small things like volunteering at the delivery center and giving donuts to show our appreciation,” he wrote in a message to Teslarati.
Tesla’s volunteer-driven end-of-quarter initiatives are incredibly unique simply because they caught on despite the pervading negativity around the company. When Elon Musk initially responded positively to owner-enthusiast Ryan McCaffrey’s suggestion that the company accept help from volunteers last year, Tesla was mocked incessantly. Auto-themed website Jalopnik, for one sarcastically dubbed the community-driven program as a way for the billionaire Musk to tap into “free labor from generous, giving fans.” Undeterred, the community helped nonetheless, and it resulted in Tesla posting a profit in Q3 2018.
Perhaps critics find it difficult to rationalize why regular Tesla owners are open to volunteering their time and effort to help the electric car maker. In this sense, it appears that one must have a personal encounter with one of the company’s creations to understand why Tesla commands such a strong following, both among owners and enthusiasts alike.
Marques Brownlee, a Model S owner better known on YouTube as MKBHD, noted that it is really all about the product when it comes to Tesla. Narrating his experiences with the company in a message to Teslarati, the prolific tech YouTuber, who has used and reviewed his own fair share of hyped products over the years, noted that he became comfortable talking about Tesla when he developed a passion for its electric cars. “The main thing that got me to talk about Tesla is the product itself. The company could have all the hype in the world, and all the greatest incentives, but if the product didn’t live up to it, everything would fall flat for me. But testing and now owning the car was all it took for me to develop a passion for the product, just like I have for many other tech products in the past,” Brownlee wrote in a message to Teslarati.
Tesla owner-enthusiast and Ride the Lightning podcast host Ryan McCaffrey is on the same camp. Being an enthusiast long before he owned his Model 3 Performance, McCaffrey stated that there is just something unique and remarkable about the company’s creations. “It’s the products. No one would care as deeply about Tesla as many in the community do if the products weren’t incredible. It’s why one test drive is all it takes to convert so many new owners. It’s an instant, oh-my-goodness-this-is-amazing experience,” he wrote.
Some owners even go above and beyond with their efforts to introduce new electric car buyers to the Tesla ecosystem. Among these is longtime Tesla owner Vivianna Van Deerlin, who, together with her husband, created an actual “Tesla Boot Camp” program for new owners. For the Van Deerlins, Tesla has become much more than a simple company that just happens to make excellent, compelling electric cars. “The company inspires us because they have a mission (that’s) important for humanity. It is bigger than just the corporation,” Vivianna wrote.
A look at the later portions of Tesla’s 2019 Annual Shareholder Meeting shows that similar sentiments run across the company’s investors. During the Q&A portion of the meeting, several shareholders brought up the issue of the overwhelmingly negative narrative surrounding the company, and it showed a level of empathy for a company that rarely seen. Some even personally offered to help address the misinformation surrounding Tesla. Musk admitted that the constant negativity thrown at Tesla is distressing, though he, together with CTO JB Straubel and VP for Tech Drew Baglino, thanked the shareholders for being the electric car maker’s line of defense. “Customer testimony and referrals are the key to our sales,” Musk said.
So what is it really about Tesla that makes it easy for owners to become enthusiasts? Perhaps it is the company’s mission of accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy, or perhaps it is the flourishing community that has, in multiple instances, shown empathy towards its members. Regardless, it appears that Tesla, at this point, has pretty much become an idea; one that represents the possibility of a more sustainable future. And as history would show us, it takes far more than an aggressively negative narrative to bring down an idea.
Lifestyle
NTSB findings on fatal Tesla crash tell a very different story
The NTSB confirmed the driver, not Tesla’s FSD, caused the fatal Texas house crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board released preliminary findings Wednesday confirming that a Tesla driver, not the vehicle’s software, caused a fatal crash in Katy, Texas in June. The driver, 44-year-old Michael Butler, had engaged Full Self-Driving Supervised mode on Rose Hollow Lane, a residential street with a 30 mph speed limit, before manually overriding the system by pressing the accelerator pedal all the way to 100%. Data recovered from the 2025 Tesla Model 3 showed the vehicle was traveling over 70 miles per hour when it struck a home and killed 76-year-old Martha Avila, who was inside. Weather was clear, the road was dry, and it was daylight.
Texas man charged in fatal Tesla crash where he blamed Autopilot
Butler told authorities he had passed out at the wheel. But security camera footage obtained by the NTSB told a different story, and showed the car accelerating through an intersection before leaving the road entirely. Police also found that Butler’s phone had Google searches including the terms “Tesla FSD not aggressive enough 2026” and “Tesla FSD too timid,” raising serious questions about how he was using the system before the crash. Butler has since been charged with manslaughter. The victim’s family has filed a lawsuit against both Butler and Tesla, alleging negligence.
The NTSB findings aligned directly with what Tesla VP of AI Software Ashok Elluswamy had already stated publicly on X in the weeks after the crash, writing that “the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100%.” The data confirmed his account.
Yup. In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area. They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash.
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 22, 2026
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Texas ranch to showcase the lifelong work that changed the world
Elon Musk is building a product gallery at his Texas ranch spanning his lifelong inventions.
Elon Musk took to X earlier today, noting “Am putting together a product gallery at my ranch in Texas.” in response to a resurfaced famous quote from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s wherein he draw parallels of the Tesla CEO to legendary physicist Albert Einstein.
Dimon made the remark at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland back in January 2025, telling CNBC at the time, “SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, I mean, the guy is our Einstein.” The remark seemingly ended a long-time feud between the two high profile execs.
While details are thin about the exact location of Elon Musk’s Texas ranch and any pending projects that would serve as a gallery and homage to his portfolio of revolutionary product inventions spanning from 1984 to 2025, land acquisition records point to roughly a location of several thousand acres in Bastrop County, east of Austin near the Colorado River and held through an LLC called Horse Ranch LLC that’s managed by Musk’s longtime personal friend and family wealth manager Jared Birchall. Birchall also serves as the CEO of Neuralink.
Tesla’s “ecological paradise” in Giga Texas may be larger than expected
The broader Bastrop County footprint surrounding the ranch has grown significantly. Entities tied to Musk have accumulated approximately 2,000 acres in Bastrop County as of mid-2026, up from 700 acres earlier in the year, with possibly as much as 6,000 acres acquired in total across Bastrop and Travis counties based on deed records.
No completion date for the gallery has been announced and Musk has not confirmed whether it will be open to the public. As Teslarati has reported, SpaceX just completed the largest IPO in history raising $75 billion, a milestone that makes this particular moment in Musk’s career a natural inflection point for looking back at what he has built through the years.
Am putting together a product gallery at my ranch in Texas https://t.co/xQf5FRy4uz
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2026
Starting with Blastar, a simple space shooter game Musk coded at 12 years old and sold to a South African magazine for $500. From there the timeline moves through a commercial career that started with Zip2 in 1995, a city guide software company sold to Compaq for roughly $300 million in 1999. That was followed by X.com in 1999, which merged with Confinity to become PayPal, acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. SpaceX came in 2002, Tesla in 2003, SolarCity in 2006, the Supercharger network in 2012, Neuralink in 2016, The Boring Company in 2016, OpenAI co-founded in 2015, X acquired in 2022, xAI in 2023, Optimus in 2024, the Cybercab in 2026, and most recently SpaceXAI following the SpaceX and xAI merger. The gallery will also likely include items that blur the line between product and cultural artifact, among them The Boring Company’s Not-a-Flamethrower from 2018, Tesla Short Shorts from 2020, and Burnt Hair perfume released under X in 2022.
Lifestyle
Tesla makes the cut on California’s newest EV Rebate program
California just signed a $270 million EV rebate into law and it starts this summer.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 168 into law on Monday, July 13, 2026, creating a $270 million EV rebate program that delivers money directly at the dealership rather than as a tax credit applied months later. The program, called MyFirstEV, is funded equally by California’s state budget and participating automakers, with each contributing $135.5 million to make the math work.
The timing is directly tied to the loss of federal support when the $7,500 federal EV tax credit ended, removing the most significant consumer incentive that had driven EV adoption in the U.S. California, which accounts for roughly one-third of all EVs sold nationally, moved to fill that gap with a state-level replacement.
The rebate structure is straightforward. First-time EV buyers can receive $3,500 off any new battery-electric vehicle with an MSRP up to $50,000. Used EVs priced at $25,000 or below qualify for a $1,750 rebate. The credit is applied at the point of sale, which removes the friction of the old federal system where buyers had to wait for tax season to see the benefit. The program goes live later this summer, with the California Air Resources Board expected to release full participation details next month.
California hits Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi driverless cars with new law
For Tesla buyers, the implications are mixed. The Tesla Model 3 RWD at $42,490 and the Model 3 Long Range at $47,490 both fall under the $50,000 cap and would qualify for the full $3,500 rebate for first-time buyers. The Model Y, which starts at $44,990 after Tesla’s recent price adjustment, also qualifies. The Model X, Model S, and Cybertruck all exceed the cap and receive no benefit. As Teslarati has reported, the program also includes a carve-out exempting California-based automakers like Rivian and Lucid from the price cap entirely, a provision that puts Tesla at a disadvantage since it relocated its headquarters to Texas in 2021.
Other qualifying vehicles include the Chevrolet Equinox EV, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, and Volkswagen ID.4.
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