Lifestyle
Why Tesla’s Fremont Factory needed to reopen, with or without permission
It was imperative for Tesla to reopen its Fremont factory.
Before I dive into my personal thoughts on Tesla’s reopening of its Fremont factory, I just want to reinforce that this is my opinion, and I know this may rub some people the wrong way, but that’s not the intent.
I really encourage anyone who reads this to E-Mail or Tweet me if you have a strong opinion that either agrees or disagrees with my point of view. I won’t take any of the other thoughts personally, as I think a massive part of being a better person is to look at varying points of view, especially ones that differ from my own.
With that being said, let’s get started.
Tesla “reopened” Fremont last Sunday, with some workers telling local media by sunrise on that following Monday morning that they had just completed a 12-hour shift at the plant. How Tesla managed to do this, I don’t know. I found it quite impressive that they were able to fly under the radar for as long as they did.
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Elon Musk had been in a heavy sparring session with Alameda County. After Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, stated a collection of facilities would be able to reopen, Tesla immediately started making plans. And why shouldn’t they? Newsom’s orders applied to manufacturing businesses, among others. Last I checked, Tesla is an automotive manufacturer.
However, Alameda County wasn’t ready to give in. They wouldn’t let Tesla reopen, even though the Governor said it was okay as long as the business maintained health and safety standards. We already know Tesla is more than capable of doing that, considering Giga Shanghai has been up and running since February 10. China was the world epicenter of the virus, and the proper precautions were taken at the Tesla facility in Shanghai. This has led to the facility not only producing new variants and customizable features for the Model 3, but it seems they could be just half a year away from having Phase 2 complete. This would make the Model Y available in China very soon.
Then Tesla released the “Return to Work Playbook.” 38-pages of information that would lead to a safe and healthy work environment for the 10,000 people working at Fremont. Not only would it get Tesla back to cranking out electric vehicles, but it would help people get back to work.
I know that unemployment is available, and I know that people were not losing their benefits, but people do need to work. Tesla is still relatively young, and if the company didn’t start making cars again, people would lose benefits, their pay, and their jobs altogether.
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But the impact of closing Tesla’s doors because of a lack of production is much more significant than 10,000 people losing their jobs in Fremont. We’re talking about Tesla employees across the world losing their jobs. Bigger than that, the fight for sustainable transportation and energy would also be set back once again, perhaps ten years or more.
It was evident to me (and Elon Musk) that drastic measures needed to be taken. Musk took it upon himself to call people back to work, and people who wanted to be there could. People that needed to stay home for their health were also allowed to do so.
This is how it should be during a pandemic. Things have seemed to settle down from what I understand, and there is probable cause to believe that figures may be skewed to an extent. However, there is no confirmation that this is the case, and we’ll probably never have one. But why not give people the option to go to work if they choose? This country thrived on businesses running and people working.
Despite all of the evidence that Tesla knew what it was doing, Alameda County did not want the factory to reopen. Musk took it in his own hands and opened the facility himself. This eventually led to some controversy, and people believed the automaker was getting preferential treatment.
Preferential treatment? How? This is the same company that was told it couldn’t open its doors just a day after the Governor said it could. How is that preferential treatment? Tesla literally had to take a huge gamble and open the factory under its own terms just to get some attention.
Look what happened. Tesla reopened, Alameda responded, Tesla gave the County its safety plan, and they’re going to open next week. They are slightly above “Minimum Basic Operations” currently, but next week it appears Tesla will be back to producing its industry-leading electric vehicles.
I know this is going to ruffle some feathers, but Tesla had to make a drastic move to get the County’s attention. They couldn’t be swept under the rug anymore, and they couldn’t continue to have their startup date pushed back. The future of the Earth depends on having these vehicles built.
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TSLAQ might say, “It is just a ploy for Elon to put money in his pocket.” Well, news flash, he’s got plenty of it. I think he’s more concerned about the well-being of his employees at this point. He’s more concerned about saving the world from utter destruction if electric cars don’t become the “norm” of transportation soon.
That’s why his risky move to reopen Fremont in an unapproved setting was totally worth it. There is no reason anyone should have to stay home from work if they don’t think it is necessary. If you’re scared of the virus and believe you are in danger, then stay home, especially if you are given that option.
Tesla made the jump, and it worked out, and it may rub some people the wrong way. After all, not everyone is going to agree with you.
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Lifestyle
Tesla’s driverless Cybercab just passed a big test with State Governor
Florida’s governor rode Tesla’s Cybercab at a closed test track and called the experience impressive.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rode in a Tesla Cybercab on a closed test track this week and came away impressed, posting on X that the vehicle “successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.” He called the ride “impressive.”
The stop was part of a broader event Monday at SunTrax, a 775 acre state owned proving ground in Auburndale that Florida built specifically to test autonomous and connected vehicles before they reach public roads. Standing next to a gold Cybercab, DeSantis described the car in plain terms: “You go in there and you just sit. You have a screen. There’s no steering wheel, no pedals. Clearly these things could be very beneficial.”
We took a ride on a robotaxi on the Suntrax course and it successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.
Impressive! https://t.co/FVAkzFLz3r
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) August 11, 2026
DeSantis paired the praise with a caveat that has followed autonomous vehicles since the category existed. “You don’t want to be in an autonomous vehicle and it drives you into a ditch. That would not be good,” he said, framing safety validation as the gate before wider deployment.
SunTrax, the 2.25 mile oval which the state calls the only high speed autonomous vehicle test track in the Southeast, can simulate rain, pedestrian crossings, hills and crowded urban conditions at highway speeds, letting companies push a car past what an early public rollout would risk. Tesla, Waymo and Beep all use the facility, and Florida’s regulatory approach, among the most permissive for autonomous vehicles in the country, doesn’t require a human operator inside a fully autonomous car.
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Tesla has reason to want the blessing of Florida and states beyond, as the Cybercab entered volume production at Gigafactory Texas this spring and has since self certified as SAE Level 4 under Texas law. Public road testing so far has kept a safety monitor in the passenger seat, and Florida is where Tesla has been expanding its existing Model Y based Robotaxi service instead, adding Miami in July and then Orlando and Tampa two weeks later. A closed track endorsement from a sitting governor doesn’t change any of that, but it does put Tesla’s newest hardware in front of a state that has already shown it will move fast on rules.
Elon Musk
The real reason Elon Musk wants every car connected to space
Elon Musk says all cars will eventually need Starlink to handle massive AI bandwidth demand.
Elon Musk is making the case that satellite internet, not fiber or cellular towers, will end up wired into every car on the road. In a string of posts on X, the SpaceX CEO wrote that all cars will have Starlink in the future and called satellite connectivity the only way to get super high bandwidth to billions of vehicles.
The posts started with Musk endorsing a Cloudflare forecast that traffic generated by autonomous AI agents will soon dwarf traffic generated by humans browsing the internet, a shift he described as not a close call at all. From there he narrowed the argument to infrastructure, writing that the only system that can support the insanely fast bandwidth growth needed by AI is Starlink, before extending the logic to cars specifically.
AI agentic Internet traffic will obviously VASTLY exceed human usage. Not a close call at all.
Cloudflare’s forecast is accurate. https://t.co/VztgrinN5k pic.twitter.com/Wo4FiRKjPU
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 9, 2026
The timing lines up with Tesla’s own hardware decisions. On July 20, Tesla confirmed the Cybercab would ship with a Starlink V5 terminal built into its roof, the first time the company had put satellite hardware in a production vehicle. A day later, Tesla’s head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, explained the connection wasn’t there for safety and that Cybercab’s driving stack runs entirely on onboard cameras and compute, while the satellite link exists for navigation, customer service, and fleet management instead. Musk followed with his own post about the feature, saying riders would be able to watch 4K streaming video during rides.
By July 22, Musk had already said Starlink would extend beyond Cybercab to Tesla’s full lineup. Sunday’s posts push that same logic outward again, this time framed as a requirement across the industry rather than a feature specific to Tesla, and tied directly to the bandwidth AI systems are expected to consume.
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
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The AI argument has been building on SpaceX’s side for months. The company has an FCC filing pending for a third generation Starlink constellation, and it has separately proposed Starmind, a constellation of up to a million satellites designed to run AI computation directly in orbit rather than just relay data. Musk has said he expects space to become the cheapest place to deploy AI compute within two to three years. Starlink and Starmind serve different jobs inside that vision, one moving data and the other processing it, but Sunday’s posts treat vehicles as one more category of hardware that will eventually need both.
None of this changes anything for Tesla owners today. Cars already on the road keep running on LTE and Wi-Fi, and Tesla hasn’t outlined a retrofit path for existing vehicles. The July 22 commitment applies to future production, not the fleet already delivered. What Musk added on Sunday is the reasoning: satellite connectivity isn’t a Cybercab novelty, it’s a bet that ground based networks won’t keep up with how much data cars, robots, and AI systems are about to generate.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
The Boring Company’s new tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units.
The Boring Company just introduced a new piece of hardware, and it runs on parts pulled straight from a Tesla showroom. Liner Truck 3, unveiled in a post from the tunneling company’s official X account, is an all electric vehicle built around Tesla Model 3 battery packs and drive units, purpose built to move concrete tunnel segments to the boring machine face without a single person underground.
Introducing Liner Truck 3 — our latest fully electric tunnel vehicle.
– Tesla Model 3 battery and drive units
– Transports 22,000+ lb of concrete segments to the boring machine
– 28 miles of range
– 12 mph max operating speed
– Remotely piloted from Global OCC in Texas, with… pic.twitter.com/XB7FgSXnpy— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) August 7, 2026
The job itself is unglamorous but critical. Each precast segment run weighs more than 22,000 pounds, roughly the load of a full cement mixer, and Liner Truck 3 hauls that weight repeatedly between the surface staging area and wherever the Prufrock machine happens to be cutting.
The Boring Company said Liner Truck 3 is piloted remotely out of its Global Operations Control Center in Texas, extending the Zero-People-In-Tunnel approach the company has spent years building toward. An earlier version of a ZPIT liner truck was already tested at the company’s Bastrop, Texas research tunnels, and a factory tour released last month showed an employee flying a fully loaded liner truck with a PlayStation controller. Liner Truck 3 looks like the production version of that same idea, cleaned up and pushed into daily use.
The timing lines up with a company digging in more places than it ever has before. The Boring Company now has multiple Prufrock machines active or arriving in Nashville, where Music City Loop construction has been accelerating since February, and its Vegas Loop network keeps adding tunnel mileage on a near monthly basis. Every one of those projects depends on getting concrete segments to the cutting face fast enough to keep the boring machine from idling, which is exactly the bottleneck Liner Truck 3 is designed to remove.
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It also reinforces something Tesla owners have watched happen gradually across Musk’s companies: passenger car hardware finding a second life in heavy equipment. Model 3 drive units already move people through the Vegas Loop, and now the same components are hauling concrete underground in Nashville and wherever The Boring Company digs next. Whether that kind of component reuse extends further into TBC’s equipment lineup, or into other Musk owned industrial hardware, is the next thing worth watching.
SpaceX just launched a secret payload from California
Tesla V2L adapter for Model Y stirs up a new complaint among owners
