News
Auto expert dubs Tesla Cybertruck as Elon Musk’s boldest, greatest creation yet
The Tesla Cybertruck’s design has been teased by Elon Musk long before it was unveiled, yet the vehicle still dropped jaws when it rolled out on stage during its unveiling event. The Cybertruck has notably polarized the car community, but if a veteran auto expert is any indication, the vehicle may very well be one of Elon Musk’s boldest, greatest creations yet.
In an extensive discussion on his YouTube channel and an accompanying blog post, auto expert Jack Rickard covered several aspects of the Tesla Cybertruck, from its design to the underlying disruption that it would likely trigger in America’s pickup market. Rickard noted that despite its less-than-stellar unveiling, he believes that the Cybertruck may very well be the “most brilliant thing” Elon Musk has ever done, and the “most brilliant design” that Franz von Holfhausen has ever issued.
Rickard argued that with the Cybertruck, Tesla has effectively gone for the pickup market’s jugular by releasing a vehicle that is competitive in cost but exceeding its rivals in terms of toughness and durability, power, spaciousness, and off-road capability. With this particular combination in mind, Rickard noted that he believes the Cybertruck would be “astonishingly successful.”
Pickup trucks, apart from vehicles that are used for work, are also vehicles that invoke toughness. This is evident in the way each of the Big Three in the US promotes their flagship pickups: the F-150, Silverado, and Ram are tough vehicles that can tow and take punishment, but Rickard notes that over the years, these trucks have reached a point where it has become difficult to take them through punishing conditions. “Since some of the larger more tricked out trucks can run $60-$80k, you don’t want to be squeamish about taking it offroad. But the gentle brush of a few branches and that stunning paint job turns to a scratched up mess,” Rickard wrote.
This is where the Cybertruck excels in. With its stainless steel exoskeleton, Tesla has pretty much hit the ball out of the park. The Cybertruck is unpainted and domineering, and it can literally take a sledgehammer without missing a beat. Its thin lights are even designed in such a way that it would be very difficult to break them. Much of this has to do with its origami-like XY design, which Rickard notes have been floated around for a long time but never attempted by mainstream manufacturers due to its challenges. “I predict that the shock of that design will be replaced by the genius of it,” the auto expert remarked.
The Cybertruck also excels in power and towing, two key features that are important for real pickup truck buyers. The tug-of-war demo between the Cybertruck and a screaming Ford F-150 spoke volumes: electric motors are more than capable of besting the internal combustion engine. Apart from this, the Cybertruck also has a cavernous interior, which pickup truck buyers would likely love. Six seats, ample legroom at the rear, and arguably the most massive center console in the market are things that the pickup market would not ignore.
Yet, perhaps the one thing that was largely ignored even in the Cybertruck’s unveiling was its off-road capability, which Rickard states are key to the pickup market. This is because when it comes to pickups, a vehicle must have ample off-road capability, even if it never goes beyond the road in its lifetime. In this regard, Rickard notes that Tesla seems to have knocked the ball out of the park once more. The auto veteran noted that the all-electric pickup reminds him of the Hummer H1, a true rough-and-tough vehicle before its line was toned down with the H2 and H3.
“This thing’s a Hummer. A Ford F-150, the tricked out 4×4 Supercrew cab, has 9.6” of ground clearance. This has 16” – that’s like a Hummer. I think the Hummer H1 was 16. So it makes a big difference in off-roading And underneath that, I’m told it’s all armored, it’s all covered, you can’t get at the motors, you can’t get at the batteries, it’s a skidplate. So specifically, on the things that define a pickup truck, and I’m surprised Elon Musk even knew what those were, but he’s got it, and that’s this offroad capability, and this kind of tough, durable, manly kind of gig,” Rickard remarked.
Overall, the Cybertruck may very well remain a polarizing vehicle for years to come, and some may never really grow to like its origami-style XY look. Despite this, Rickard believes that the vehicle hits all the right notes when it comes to price and features that are essential to the pickup buyer. In conclusion, the auto expert noted that some time from now, Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holfhausen would probably be inducted into the design hall of fame for actually pulling off an XY design. As for CEO Elon Musk, this may be his most brilliant vehicle yet.
-
“He hit all the right notes, on here is a truck you can take a sledgehammer to, and you can beat this truck all you want and it doesn’t even show damage. And it has an off-road capability in case you ever roll it up onto the front lawn of your house,” Rickard noted.
Sweden’s IF Metall union has announced that it is ending all protests against Tesla, effective immediately.
The union said in a statement this morning:
“There seems to be no limits to the length Tesla would go to keep unions out of their operations. Unfortunately, they have managed to pay their way out in Sweden. At least that has given the former IF Metall members more money in their pocket, but the insecurity of not having a union or a collective agreement still remains.”
IF Metall has been after Tesla in Sweden for the past three years, attempting to push unionized operations into its factories. Tesla, on the other hand, has given its employees the chance to unionize in various markets. However, the organization says that Tesla has “bought out all of its striking members.”
🚨 NEW: IF Metall has decided to end all industrial action against Tesla in Sweden, effective immediately.
“IF Metall has decided to end all industrial action against Tesla’s Swedish operations, after the company bought out all of its striking members. With no members remaining… pic.twitter.com/blne8iC6hV
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 13, 2026
“Today, we end our industrial action against Tesla. We do so because it can no longer have an effect – not because our principles have changed,” a written statement said.
Over the past three years, IF Metall has definitely been a thorn in the side of Tesla and its operations in Sweden. The primary strike started in October 2023, when IF Metall members at Tesla’s Swedish Service Centers refused to work.
IF Metall chair to Elon Musk: “Give us a chance” as Tesla Sweden strike hits 2 years
Strikes extended to blockades and work stoppages at non-Tesla-owned repair shops that service Teslas. This limited and stopped anything related to warranties, transport damage, and other work on Teslas ending, eliminating work arounds for customers.
Sympathy strikes followed, as postal workers, dock workers, electricians, and other tradesmen stopped working. Add in lawsuits and other pressures, and you get the full scope of what strategies the union has used against Tesla over the past several years.
But now, it’s all over.
“We will continue to defend the right of workers to organize. We will continue to fight for collective bargaining. And we will continue to stand in solidarity with workers and trade unions facing similar challenges elsewhere – just as you have stood with us,” IF Metall said.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that flying cars will be coming to the market, something that his own company has hinted at previously.
Musk said on X, in response to a post that read, “We were promised flying cars and all we got is infinite superintelligence for everyone,” “You will get flying cars.”
You will get flying cars
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 12, 2026
The post rang back to when Musk teased flying and hovering capabilities for the Tesla Roadster, the company’s supercar that has been delayed more times than anyone cares to count. It was set for an unveiling earlier this year, but it was then pushed back to August. There is still no sign of it coming.
However, that does not mean it won’t. But one of the biggest features of the Roadster that was teased was a SpaceX package that featured cold gas thrusters on the rear end that would help with white-knuckle acceleration. Another set would face the ground and would help the Roadster gain small bits of altitude, potentially helpful to jump over obstacles.
Elon Musk hints at Tesla Roadster’s “hovering” abilities in SpaceX package
But it is not a straightforward thing for Musk. As a serial entrepreneur, he tends to spend his time on major disruptors; currently, his largest projects are artificial intelligence and compute power, as well as SpaceX’s launches that will eventually make life multiplanetary.
In the past, he has been critical of flying cars and has been in favor of tunnels, one of the big reasons he started the Boring Company. In 2017 at a TED talk, he said:
“There is a challenge with flying cars in that they’ll be quite noisy. The wind force generated will be very high. Let’s just say that if something’s flying over your head, if there are a whole bunch of flying cars all over the place, that is not an anxiety-reducing situation…You’re thinking, ‘Did they service their hubcap? Or is it going to come off and guillotine me as they’re flying past?'”
However, he’s never been against them. He has also said he’s in favor of both tunnels and flying cars.
Contrary to press reports, I’m not against flying cars. Just said it was important to consider both pros and cons.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2015
Most recently, Musk said that anyone who wants a flying car should be able to get one. This was stated last October on the Joe Rogan Experience:
“My friend Peter Thiel once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars… I think if Peter wants a flying car, we should be able to buy one.”
Whether the Roadster will be Tesla’s flying car or potentially another one remains in the mind of Musk. Of course, the Roadster will have to make its way to production lines before we find out.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s next trillion dollar bet has nothing to do with rockets, Musk tells staff
Elon Musk told SpaceX staff AI revenue will soon dwarf rockets and Starlink combined entirely.
Elon Musk told SpaceX employees this week that artificial intelligence, not rockets, will soon carry the company’s revenue. In a roughly 29 minute internal address posted on SpaceX’s X account on Tuesday, Musk said AI revenue will pass every other line of business at SpaceX “probably in September” and pull further ahead by the fourth quarter.
The numbers he gave are specific. SpaceX currently runs 1.4 gigawatts of AI compute capacity. Musk wants that at 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027, a jump he tied directly to revenue: “if we bring 10GW of AI online by the end of next year, it will be $300 billion to $500 billion a year in revenue.” He called those “big numbers,” which undersells a projection larger than what most countries produce in a year.
We made rockets reusable and are rebuilding the internet in space. The next challenge: making life multiplanetary and understanding the true nature of the universe
Watch @ElonMusk deliver a company update to @SpaceX employees pic.twitter.com/5c8rxoCQfu
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) August 11, 2026
Musk went further on where AI fits into SpaceX’s future. “Probably in four or five years, AI will be 99% of the value of SpaceX,” he told staff, adding that digital intelligence would eventually run “a trillion times” ahead of biological intelligence as computing scales. He tied that growth to the company’s founding mission, telling employees “we must win on AI, because the future is overwhelmingly AI and robots,” with the payoff meant to help fund Starship and a Mars program that increasingly runs through Terafab, the joint Tesla, SpaceX and xAI chip plant.
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
None of this is entirely new territory. SpaceX told investors much the same story during its first earnings call as a public company on August 4, where Musk moved the company’s $1 trillion revenue target up a year to 2030 and said Starlink could someday carry a majority of the world’s internet. What the all hands video adds is a hard deadline and a specific power figure Musk had not given publicly before, along with a franker pitch to his own workforce that AI, not launch cadence, is now the thing SpaceX is betting its future on.
The AI revenue itself is not coming from SpaceX training its own models. It is largely Starlink acting as the network layer for xAI’s workloads, plus SpaceX renting out compute capacity directly, the same approach behind the roughly $16 billion the company spent on AI infrastructure in a single quarter.
Musk closed the video with a pitch aimed at recruiting and retention rather than investors, telling employees that anyone who helps SpaceX win the AI race will eventually get the chance to go to the moon or Mars themselves. Whether SpaceX can turn 1.4 gigawatts into 10 in seventeen months is the more immediate question, and one that will show up in quarterly numbers well before anyone leaves Earth.
Sweden’s IF Metall ends all protests against Tesla effective immediately
Tesla CEO Elon Musk says flying cars are coming
