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Tesla dashcam causes SUV driver to possibly lose license over road rage incident

(Credit: KETV.com)

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After being stuck at home for almost two weeks, Omaha-based Tesla Model 3 owner Ken Woodward was looking forward to getting back to work. But before he could go back to his workplace, he needed to get another Covid-19 test. He took his trusty Model 3 to head over to the testing site, and things were completely normal. Unfortunately for Woodward, he was about a mile away from home when things took a turn for the worse.

At around 12:30 p.m. local time, the 40-year-old Tesla owner was driving near 204 and Center Streets when he encountered fellow 40-year-old Brian Frey, who was behind the wheel of an SUV. Unfortunately for the Model 3 owner, Frey was seemingly at a state where he is willing to hurt a fellow driver when he’s upset.

Frey was several car lengths behind the Model 3, with both the all-electric sedan and the SUV going around the speed limit. Woodward then came upon a red car that was driving much slower. Since he wanted to pass the slower car, Woodward merged into the adjacent lane in a standard overtaking maneuver.

This triggered something in the SUV driver. Speaking with local media after the incident, Woodward noted that he saw Frey throwing up his hands in the air like he was frustrated with the electric car driver. But that was just the beginning, as things were about to take a turn for the worse. Frey promptly accelerated hard, hitting the Model 3’s bumper. He followed it up by attempting to run the all-electric sedan off the road.

For good measure, and as Woodward was trying to keep his vehicle under control, Frey aggressively overtook the Tesla and slammed on his brakes. This resulted in the Model 3 crashing straight into the back of the SUV, throwing the massive vehicle forward.

“He forcefully whipped up behind me. He accelerated at me into my bumper, so that was the first hit. Then he pulled up next to me and forced me off the road completely almost into the guardrail going over Center Street. I regained my position back on the road. He overtook me and that’s when you can see in the video that he swerved in front of me and slammed on the brakes as hard as he could,” Woodward noted.

When authorities arrived on the scene, police were faced with conflicting accounts of the incident. Frey argued that it was the Tesla owner who tried to force him off the road before ramming his SUV from behind. Unfortunately for Frey, every single second of his road rage episode was recorded by the Model 3’s built-in dashcam feature. And once the footage was reviewed by the police, the authorities knew exactly what to do.

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Deputies promptly ticketed Frey for willful reckless driving. And thanks to his road rage incident, he now stands to lose his license from 30 days to one year.

Speaking to local KETV News about the incident, Capt. Wayne Hudson with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department highlighted that the Model 3’s dashcam feature proved to be the difference-maker in Woodward and Frey’s road rage case. “Having the video in the vehicle was beneficial to our investigation,” Hudson said.

Watch a news segment about the road rage incident in the video below.

Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla has one big financial question to answer for investors: Morgan Stanley

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Credit: Tesla

In a new note to investors on Tuesday, Morgan Stanley analyst Andrew Percoco said that Tesla has one big financial question to answer for investors regarding its Robotaxi rollout, Full Self-Driving software, and Optimus.

Percoco said in the note that, for the most part, investors are still very positive about the direction the company is headed. However, there are some things the firm would like to see, and they have to do with financials.

Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue

Tesla bulls are more than convinced that the company’s Full Self-Driving software is proof it can develop physical AI. Financially, however, there are still some questions, especially on elevated spending, which CEO Elon Musk said would occur as the company works to roll out Robotaxi faster and continue developing its Optimus robot.

The latter two are where Tesla will have to prove progress to investors, as Percoco writes that both projects “will require clearer evidence that Robotaxi is scaling and more tangible Optimus proof points to support the ROI on elevated capex.”

Percoco said the second quarter earnings call did not change his long-term thesis of where Tesla is positioned in the AI race, which is out in front. However, there are concerns that weaker gross margins and higher R&D spend will stress financials, and that has “sharpened our (and investors’) focus on measurable progress across Robotaxi and Optimus.”

Additionally, Robotaxi still needs to be proven with more operation in existing cities while maintaining safety but improving how many rides it gives in any given time, he said. For Optimus, Percoco wrote that he is “still looking for evidence beyond commentary around SOP.”

Morgan Stanley put Percoco in charge of covering Tesla after long-time analyst Adam Jonas transitioned to the automotive side.

Currently, Morgan Stanley has a $415 price target on Tesla and a ‘Hold’ rating on the stock. It is trading at around $330 at the time of publication, which was 2:30 P.M. on the East Coast.

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Investor's Corner

SpaceX AI investment gamble will make it a big winner, firm says

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Credit: SpaceX

SpaceX’s massive investment in AI will make it a big winner, Argus Research said after the company’s successful earnings call last week.

The firm also upgraded shares to a Buy from Hold and set a $160 price target.

SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) is currently recovering from its heavy AI infrastructure investments, as it spent nearly $16 billion in Q2 alone. The company did this primarily by monetizing high-demand GPU compute capacity at a much faster pace than traditional data center economics would suggest.

Company CFO Bret Johnsen said that SpaceX would be able to pay back anything on new deployments within a year.

There are plenty of ways the company can do this:

Leasing excess compute capacity through contracts

SpaceX has already built Colossus and Colossus II, largely for its own model training. However, much of that capacity is already rented out to third parties. It already has major deals with Anthropic, Google, and Reflection AI. These partnerships are adding billions per month to SpaceX’s spreadsheet.

SpaceX is charging Anthropic massive money for its compute

High utilization driven by industry-wide scarcity

The demand for advanced AI training and inference capacity continues to exceed what is available for use. SpaceX can fill new racks quickly after they come online, so the capital deployed converts into revenue with minimal idle time.

Additionally, management and outside observers have described the new compute capital as behaving more like a cost-of-goods-sold than traditional multi-year capex, especially because of this rapid monetization pattern.

Capacity has already scaled from ~0.4 GW a year to 1.4 GW annually by the end of Q2. There are targets of more than 2 GW by year-end.

High incremental margins on the rental business once capacity is online

GPU cloud providers often operate at strong gross margins. SpaceX can monetize capacity that was already partially built or can be added efficiently. This means that incremental EBITDA margins on the rental revenue are usually high. This accelerates cash recovery relative to the gross capital outlay.

Parallel monetization of its own AI software and applications

Beyond pure infrastructure rental, SpaceX also generates revenue from Grok through subscriptions and usage, from X through ads, data, and other related services, enterprise APIs, and the planned integration of the Cursor coding tools acquisition.

These application layers ride on the same compute infrastructure and provide additional high-margin streams that could offset build-out costs. AI-segment revenue overall rose sharply to about $2.6 billion in Q2, according to Motley Fool. This was driven primarily by the infrastructure contracts, but the software side is also partially responsible.

Efficient, large-scale deployment and vertical integration advantages

SpaceX has emphasized the rapid construction of power and cooling infrastructure and favorable cost-per-megawatt economics relative to industry benchmarks in some disclosures.

Combined with its ability to scale capacity aggressively and the fact that many contracts start generating revenue within months of capacity coming online, the effective payback compresses dramatically compared with more conventional multi-year data-center projects.

SpaceX’s dominant near-term recovery path will turn the AI clusters into a hyperscale-style compute rental business for other leading AI companies while still using a portion for internal models.

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Tesla headlights cause recall of over 20,000 Model 3 and Model Y

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Tesla headlights have caused a recall of over 20,000 of the company’s two most popular vehicles, the Model 3 and Model Y, due to the low-beam bulb exceeding the maximum allowed intensity according to federal standards.

Tesla initiated the recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) this morning, stating that the low-beam output “exceeds the maximum allowed intensity in the outer upper-right and outer upper-left areas of the 10U and 90U zone, as prescribed in FMVSS No. 108.”

Tesla sourced the impacted headlights from Marelli Automotive Lighting, a Mexico-based company. The recall impacts 2020-2023 Model Y vehicles and 2017-2023 Model 3 vehicles. It is estimated that every VIN in this recall is impacted by the defect.

Typically, Tesla would remedy recalls of this nature through an Over-the-Air software update, which has been a major focus of criticism by the company and its supporters because the NHTSA still refers to it as a “recall,” even though it requires no action by the vehicle owner. The fix is shipped over the internet and downloaded to the car.

However, there appears to be a potentially different solution for this problem. Tesla has not developed a remedy for this issue, so it could potentially be on the way. The big issue appears to be the fact that these recalled lamps are out of production, and this is an old body style for both vehicles. The headlights and front-end designs are completely different.

Tesla switched to another supplier when the affected headlight design was discontinued. It plans to begin notifying owners of their remedy options by September 15.

Tesla filed a petition protesting the recall to fix the vehicles’ headlight issue, but the NHTSA denied it. Now, Tesla will come up with a solution to fix it.

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