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Tesla’s Elon Musk trades compliments with Volkswagen CEO at Auto Award show
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Volkswagen Auto Group CEO Herbert Diess answered questions jointly regarding the future of electric vehicles in Germany during the 2019 Golden Steering Wheel Awards in Berlin. The two CEOs gave each other numerous words of wisdom as they both work toward a future involving sustainable transportation.
Musk flew to Berlin on November 12 to accept a prestigious Golden Steering Wheel Award won by the Tesla Model 3. This award comes on the heels of Tesla’s Navigate on Autopilot receiving top honors from Germany’s Connected Cars Innovation. After accepting the award for the company’s most affordable sedan, Musk was joined by Volkswagen’s Herbert Diess on stage, where both CEOs were asked about if they were inspired by one another. “First of all, I really wanted to congratulate you, great achievement, I know all of this competition here in Germany, this award, its a great achievement. We know each other, we don’t meet so often though. I would say that we share a vision, which is that we only can achieve the CO2 targets and reduce carbon emissions through electric cars,” Diess said.
An interesting quote from Diess, as the Volkswagen CEO was under fire for the company’s “Dieselgate” emissions scandal where the German automaker was caught placing emissions cheat devices in its vehicles. Although Diess joined VW after the scandal began, he was under intense scrutiny from some German government agencies for stock manipulation. Since the beginning of the Dieselgate scandal, Volkswagen has paid around $33 billion in penalties. The company is attempting to put the scandal behind them and move onto battery-powered cars. Diess announced the Volkswagen ID.3 electric-car on September 9, the company’s first attempt at a non-gasoline powered vehicle.
Despite the allegations against Diess, he has received kind words from Musk, who stated on Twitter “Herbert Diess is doing more than any big carmaker to go electric. The good of the world should come first. For what it’s worth, he has my support.” Musk offered his two cents following the announcement that VW would begin producing its own lithium-ion batteries in an attempt to transition to the mass-production of electric vehicles in the future.
Musk was then asked why Germany was so far behind on the electric vehicle revolution. “Well, first of all, I don’t think Germany is that far behind. But I always think it’s difficult when, you know, there’s a lot of momentum around in all technology. There is a lot of infrastructure, a lot of capital and that kind of thing that is tied up in all the technology,” Musk said. “When you have new technology, the market is unproven. So then, you say ‘Does it really make sense to place a bet on this technology that is unproven?’ And when we started out at Tesla, everyone thought we were huge fools. I thought we were fools too, frankly. But I thought it was important to get to ultimately a sustainable energy future,” he added.
Diess and Musk were sure to trade compliments during the question and answer session, noting the motivation they give each other toward the mission of creating environmentally-friendly and sustainable transportation. “I thank you for pioneering, for pulling us, for pushing us. I think really Elon is the innovator, which is driving us along. So it’s worthwhile to talk about batteries and the right concepts, and I always enjoy talking to you because, he’s really a visionary,” Diess said about the Tesla CEO.
Elon Musk has always said that Tesla’s competitors are not those companies who are also making electric cars, but the companies working toward keeping petrol-based vehicles as the primary source of transportation in the world. Musk and Diess working together toward the ultimate goal of sustainability shows the future of electric cars depends on working together and recognizing the only way to achieve the goal of environmental-sustainability and longevity is to develop the technology together. With Volkswagen ultimately deciding to invest $33 billion into the future of electric vehicles, the German-based company evidently wants to put their emissions scandal behind them, and it seems they have support from the frontman of the electric vehicle movement.
You can watch the entire Golden Steering Wheel Awards ceremony below:
Tesla has expanded the operational geofence for its driverless Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, marking the first such increase in some time. The updated Service Area for Robotaxi in Austin now spans about 288 square miles and is roughly 9 percent larger than the previous boundary.
This incremental growth adds approximately 24 square miles of coverage, bringing the prior zone of roughly 264 square miles into a broader footprint that better serves northern suburbs.
The expansion extends the geofence northward toward Pflugerville along the US 183 corridor, incorporating additional neighborhoods north of the Domain and areas such as Mesa Park. These additions include higher-end residential and commercial districts that previously sat just outside the allowed operating zone.
Riders can now request unsupervised trips that begin or end in these newly included locations, provided the entire route remains inside the digital boundary:
Tesla has just expanded its Robotaxi service area in Austin, Texas for the first time in 10 months.
The new service area is roughly 9% larger than the old one, and is about 288 square miles in total. pic.twitter.com/i4oBM1KfWS
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 31, 2026
Tesla first launched public Robotaxi operations in Austin in mid-2025 with a modest initial zone of about 20 square miles. Subsequent enlargements in 2025 and early 2026 steadily grew the map until it covered much of the metropolitan area.
After the last major update roughly ten months earlier, the company held the boundary steady while it collected additional miles and refined the FSD suite.
The modest nine percent increase still matters for daily utility. Longer trips become possible, more residents gain access, and the fleet can accumulate more diverse real-world data across new road types and traffic patterns. Observers note that the added territory aligns with existing Tesla service infrastructure, which could support more efficient vehicle staging in the North end of Austin.
Although the geofence has grown, Tesla continues to operate a relatively small unsupervised fleet in the city. The company has emphasized safety and software readiness over rapid geographic scaling. This latest map update signals that Tesla remains committed to expanding Robotaxi availability in its home market as it prepares for further software improvements and potential Cybercab deployments.
The 288-square-mile zone now gives Austin riders one of the larger driverless service areas currently available in the United States.
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update turns Grok from a talking companion into a true in-car controller, with considerably expanded capabilities. Where the assistant once answered questions and handled navigation, it can now operate hardware and software through ordinary speech, including several requests at the same time.
Grok has become incredibly robust over the past few quarters, and this new ability that Tesla has included with its Summer Update is perhaps the clearest sign of just how capable it has become.
You can issue many commands to Grok at once, and each will be taken care of: anything from headlight control to climate adjustments to mirror folding can now all be taken care of with a simple sentence spoken toward Grok:
This is cool, you can now give Grok a ton of commands at once in your Tesla and it’ll do them all together.
The commands I gave:
• Fold mirrors
• Turn on wipers to fastest setting
• Change temp to 65°
• Open self-driving app
• Open gloveboxComes with Tesla’s 2026 Summer… pic.twitter.com/drZxoHrknv
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 26, 2026
Here’s another example I used in my Model Y:
🚨 Using Grok to control the cabin temperature and turn on headlights in 2026 Model Y on FSD v14.3.8 and 2026.26.6.5 pic.twitter.com/7clgQkGABk
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 27, 2026
Tesla’s official Release Notes list the core powers of Grok’s new capabilities: Grok can place phone calls from a paired phone, search a streaming service and queue music, adjust climate, and search the Controls panel. Drivers can also ask it questions about the vehicle or the latest features included in a recent software update.
It can also take care of driving settings, dynamics, and other relevant preferences that deal with how the car operates and handles.
Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features
It’s also more of a use case than a novelty feature. Grok was great for learning about something that was being pondered while Full Self-Driving was taking care of the major automotive responsibilities, but it did have some useful functionality when it came to navigation.
Another less-noted improvement is the swift transition that Grok has from thinking of its answer to giving you one. In the past, it would take a few seconds for Grok to truly come up with a valuable response. It now seems that it is improving, at least slightly.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is set to get a major fix with pothole avoidance, a feature that CEO Elon Musk said recently was “coming soon.” The feature has been included within the FSD v14 release notes for some time as an upcoming improvement.
Potholes come in all shapes and sizes, but one thing is universal about them, and that is the fact that every driver wants to avoid them. Driving into or over a pothole can cause tire and wheel damage, alignment issues, and even, in some more severe instances, injury to occupants or major damage to a vehicle in despair.
Tesla Cybercab uses a unique strategy for picking up the right rider
Musk said late last night in a post that pothole avoidance while utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite is “coming soon.”
Coming soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 31, 2026
Full Self-Driving, even in its most recent and robust forms, still has its shortcomings. While the suite has performed exceptionally well with avoiding on-road obstacles like cardboard boxes, horse droppings, car parts, and other debris, it still seems to struggle with recognizing certain things.
Potholes and other abrupt changes in a road’s layout are things that FSD still tends to struggle with. Perhaps the suite’s 3D modeling is still in need of some additional data or some sort of script that will help it to avoid a potentially destructive pothole or bump in the road that would be easily recognizable by the human eye.
Musk has mentioned pothole avoidance for some time, with the initial idea coming in April 2019 when an owner first requested the feature. Musk said that Tesla would “definitely” develop pothole avoidance.
In August 2020, Musk said Tesla was in the process of labeling bumps and potholes so cars can either slow down or steer around them altogether.
Tesla to utilize micro maps for pothole-detection in future update
Avoiding major disturbances in the road is a necessary feature for Full Self-Driving to have, especially as Tesla is working toward a fully autonomous program that will eventually allow every occupant in the vehicle to sleep, work, or enjoy leisure time while traveling.
That truly begins this week with the launch of Cybercab on Thursday.
Tesla expands driverless Robotaxi geofence in Austin
Elon Musk’s Grok can basically control anything in your Tesla now
