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Tesla competitors are opening their doors to former employees affected by layoffs

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In the wake of the Tesla layoffs earlier this month, employers around the US, including some of the company’s direct competitors like Nikola Motor Company and Volvo USA, appear to be looking to capture some of the automaker’s just-released talent. Many have taken to social media to announce their respective companies’ openings for positions relevant to former Tesla employees’ skill sets. Overall, the outreach efforts have been positive, encouraging, and focused on helping those affected continue to see the value in their training and efforts to date.

In a post published on his official LinkedIn account, Trevor Milton, CEO at Nikola Motor Company, offered to help usher Tesla workers’ resumes into his company’s human resources office. Citing similar layoffs from other competitors such as Faraday Future and General Motors, he spoke positively of Tesla’s business process and intentions, and further touted Nikola’s company culture as a good fit for former Tesla workers. That sentiment was followed up by Jesse Schneider, Executive VP of Technology, Hydrogen & Fuel Cells at Nikola, in a post of his own directing potential applicants to the company’s job board.

Also promoting their company’s open positions for Tesla-related skills sets was Volvo USA. In a LinkedIn status post similar to the ones posted by those at Nikola, Christine Whitehill from the People Experience department at Volvo sympathized with impacted Tesla workers and indicated her company’s interest in becoming their “next opportunity.” Volvo’s pivot towards electric vehicles of its own (and possible embrace of a Tesla-style direct-sales model) indicates the Swedish automaker may have positions impacted workers would find appealing and applicable to their skills.

Sam Tan, Exterior Hardware & Glazing Engineering Leader at electric upstart Lucid Motors wrote, “For those affected by Tesla layoffs, please PM me with your resume. I have multiple openings for Mechanical Design Engineer, Exterior Systems.” Chadwick Conway, founding engineer at Span.IO with prior experience at Tesla, posted his own encouraging message directing interested applicants to his company which develops technology for combating climate change: “Those impacted by the layoffs at #Tesla, I am sorry that you are going through an unexpected career change. If you are eager to continue accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy…We are hiring power electronics, firmware, embedded, and all facets of software engineers!”

Company representatives from Sonoco, EaglePicher Technologies, LLC (battery systems), Kodiak Robotics, VEO Robotics, Velociti (technology project management company), as well as beer makerΒ Sierra Nevada are among others vying for attention from Silicon Valley’s newest free agents.

While a few former Tesla employees have taken to social media to express their interest in new positions due to the circumstances, it seems that legal concerns have kept any related commentary to a bare minimum. California’s WARN Act requiring a 60-day layoff notice, among other conditions, may have inspired some creative maneuvering on Tesla’s behalf to avoid any disgruntled fallout, something not uncommon in mass layoff situations. Still, a few individuals related to those impacted by the layoffs (friends or family) publicly offered a few details on the circumstances: Possible offers made to transfer to other Tesla locations for fewer hours and/or pay, some departments eliminated entirely, and others were given two-month severance pay.

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Further details made available in a separation agreement obtained by CNBC revealed a few more specifics surrounding the Tesla layoffs. In the agreement, employees were asked not to “disparage Tesla”, to refrain from sharing details surrounding their separation, and to cooperate with the manufacturer in any future legal events such as a class action lawsuit. Also, salaried employees received a minimum of 60 days of bay and benefits, and if they agreed to sign the separation agreement, Tesla would pay for their COBRA healthcare and provide additional severance pay based on the employee’s time at the company.

The major cuts appear to have primarily been made in the sales and delivery teams for Models S and X, according to the sources cited by CNBC, although employees were cut back across all areas of the company. Nighttime production for those same vehicles at the company’s Fremont, California plant have also reportedly been suspended. The backgrounds of those who announced their being impacted by the layoffs included recruiting, robotics/controls/equipment automation, inside delivery advising, process engineering, production planning, and industrial/material flow.

In Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s letter to employees addressing the layoffs, he explained the move as related to the ramp up of Model 3 production and lowering its cost to meet affordability goals. “Tesla will need to make these cuts while increasing the Model 3 production rate…Higher volume and manufacturing design improvements are crucial for Tesla to achieve the economies of scale required to manufacture the standard range (220 mile), standard interior Model 3 at $35k and still be a viable company. There isn’t any other way,” he stated. All considered, the staffing layoff observations seem to correlate with Musk’s expressed reasoning and plan.

Accidental computer geek, fascinated by most history and the multiplanetary future on its way. Quite keen on the democratization of space. | It's pronounced day-sha, but I answer to almost any variation thereof.

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Elon Musk

Tesla primes Cybercabs for 4K streaming and high bandwidth gaming with Starlink integration

Tesla is now shipping Cybercabs from Giga Texas with Starlink hardware built in as standard.

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tesla cybercab with no manual controls showing a movie with two employees inside

Tesla’s Cybercabs are now leaving Gigafactory Texas with Starlink hardware on the rear hatch in significant numbers, according to drone footage captured Tuesday by longtime Austin drone observer Joe Tegtmeyer. Production at the factory ramped back up after the Labor Day weekend, and his flyover of the outbound lot showed rows of gold Cybercabs alongside Model Y Long Wheelbase units, many carrying the satellite module for the first time as standard equipment rather than a one off retrofit.

Tesla first showed Starlink built into an actual Cybercab on August 10, when the Robotaxi account posted images of a single gold unit with the antenna integrated into the roofline above the taillights and called it the first Cybercab with Starlink integration. That followed a July reveal where Tesla and Starlink jointly posted a cutaway diagram of the antenna placement without a working vehicle to back it up. Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s VP of AI software, said at the time that the connection isn’t required for the car to drive itself. It exists mainly for navigation, customer service and keeping tabs on the fleet.

Musk has made a different case in public. During Tesla’s Q2 earnings call, he said the company can’t afford robotaxis stranded in what he called “Bermuda Triangles of lack of cellular connectivity,” and he separately claimed on X that Starlink will eventually reach every Tesla built, calling it the only way to deliver high bandwidth to billions of vehicles. He has also pitched the antenna as an entertainment upgrade, telling riders they would be able to stream 4K video or play games during a trip.

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The rollout has moved fast since. Robotaxi service opened to the public in Austin on September 3, and Cybercabs had already been spotted with Starlink hardware in Houston and near Miami International Airport in the weeks before Tuesday’s factory footage showed the module shipping at volume rather than on scattered test units. Whether the satellite link earns its keep is still an open question. Tesla’s unsupervised service currently runs in dense metro geofences in Texas and Florida, markets where cellular coverage is already strong, which is not where the rural dead zones Musk describes tend to show up.

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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.

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Tesla Cybertruck construction site

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.

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

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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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