News
Opinion: Tesla FSD Beta critics’ pearl-clutching and outrage are getting ridiculous
Tesla’s “Request Full Self-Driving Beta” button is here, and so is the Fear Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD). Over the weekend, Tesla owners with qualified vehicles and who purchased the company’s Full Self-Drivings suite were able to press a button that would allow them to apply for a slot in the company’s soon-to-be-expanded FSD Beta program. The company also launched its Safety Score system as a way to help determine which of its customers are safe drivers.
True to form, it did not take long before Tesla critics pounced on the “Request FSD Beta” button and the company’s “Safety Score” system. Pretty soon, even a US Senator joined the fray in condemning the FSD Beta program. While this is not a surprise and almost expected considering Tesla’s history, it must be said that this time, the pearl-clutching and outrage from the company’s critics are getting quite ridiculous.
Tesla’s Strategy
To get proper context on the FSD Beta expansion, one must know how Tesla started the program in the first place. The FSD Beta program was launched in October 2020, and for nearly a year, it was limited to just about 2,000 drivers. These drivers have accumulated valuable real-world data over the past 11 months, and none were involved in an accident. This effectively did two things: one; it proved that the FSD Beta program is feasible, and two; it set a very high bar for the rest of the FSD Beta rollout.
Expanding the FSD Beta program requires tons of caution. Thus, it was no surprise that the company launched a Safety Rating system designed to evaluate the driving behavior of Tesla owners. This effectively gave the company a rather objective way to evaluate which drivers could participate in the FSD Beta program expansion. It should also be noted that owners who qualify for the program would not be using a consumer release version of the Full Self-Driving suite. They would simply be part of the FSD Beta test program.
Clutching Pearls
This fact seems to have escaped some of the media coverage about the FSD Beta program expansion. Bloomberg, for one, ran with a headline that read “Tesla Starts Judging Owners It Charged $10,000 for Self-Driving.” This premise is quite incorrect as the $10,000 Full Self Driving suite being sold by Tesla is a consumer release product, not the advanced driver-assist system that would be used by owners who qualify for the FSD Beta program. Despite this, sentiments opposing the program, as well as the Safety Score system, have been quite evident among the company’s critics.
Such a misinformed take was evident in a Twitter post shared by US Senator Richard Blumenthal, who noted that Tesla was “putting untrained drivers on public roads as testers for their misleadingly-named, unproven system.” The Senator added that the FSD Beta strategy is a “seeming recipe for disaster” as the company is playing “Russian Roulette for unsuspecting drivers & the public.” Interestingly enough, the politician also cited a tweet from CNBC, which included an article that is, in many ways, slanted against the EV maker.
Outdated Information
Wrong takes on hot topics are typically due to outdated information, and in the case of US Senator Blumenthal, this might be the case. Back in 2018, the politician rode in a Model 3 with Consumer Reports Head of Auto Testing Jake Fisher, who was operating a version of Tesla’s Autopilot that is now incredibly outdated. During the drive, Fisher was quick to point out what capabilities Autopilot was lacking, all while operating the system without his hands on the wheel.
Consumer Reports is hardly a Tesla authority considering that the magazine, which prides itself on consumer advocacy, quite literally featured a thorough walkthrough on how to abuse Tesla’s Autopilot system back in April using defeat devices and a variety of tricks. If Blumenthal is basing his take on Tesla on CNBC‘s recent reporting — which was slanted negatively against the EV maker — and his past experiences with Consumer Reports — which operates Autopilot irresponsibly — then it is no wonder that he is skeptical about the FSD Beta test expansion.
The Irony of it All
The most ironic thing about the pearl-clutching and outrage among Tesla critics today is the fact that the “Request FSD Beta” button essentially does nothing for now. It does not make owners who press the button automatic FSD Beta testers. They’d have to have great Safety Scores for that. And due to the presence of Safety Scores, Tesla owners who wish to participate in the FSD Beta program are now driving safer than ever before. The company effectively incentivized safe driving this weekend, and somehow, it was still met with a ton of negativity.
Also ironic is the fact that statistics are on Tesla’s side. Take the well-publicized NHTSA investigation on Autopilot crashing into stationary emergency vehicles, for example. When the probe was launched, the news was extensively covered with headlines like CNN‘s “Tesla is under investigation because its cars can’t stop hitting emergency vehicles.” But while such headlines are compelling, the fact is that the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report notes that there are about 8,000 stationary emergency vehicle crash injuries per year. Tesla had nine crash injuries with stationary first responder vehicles in the last 12 months, and some of those involved drivers who were not paying attention to the road.
The NHTSA notes that there are about 2,740,000 crash injuries in the United States per year, and there’s hardly any outrage for the human lives included in this grim statistic. Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system, which generally drives very conservatively, could effectively reduce this number by a notable margin. It is then quite disappointing to see the narrative being formed around the expansion of the FSD Beta program, especially considering that the advanced driver-assist system would only be released for owners who generally drive safely.
Valid Tesla Criticism
Interestingly enough, there are actual valid angles of criticism for Tesla’s FSD Beta rollout. The program for now is vastly focused on the United States, but the company sells the FSD suite to owners worldwide. It would then be beneficial to Tesla owners if the program’s expansion is expedited to areas such as Canada and Europe, to name a few. FSD, after all, is intended to be a universal system that should be capable of operating anywhere. Following this logic, FSD Beta must be tested on a wider set of areas as well — as soon as possible.
There are also Tesla owners who purchased the Full Self-Driving suite years ago on vehicles that are still equipped with MCU1 units. Some of these vehicles are already coming out of warranty, and their owners are yet to enjoy any FSD features since most of the advanced driver-assist system’s functions today require an MCU2 unit. Considering that Tesla owners were promised that their cars would be equipped with the hardware necessary for Full Self-Driving with an FSD suite purchase, it would only be right for Tesla to expedite MCU1 to MCU2 retrofits for owners with vehicles that were produced from March 2018 or earlier.
But misrepresenting the FSD Beta program expansion and criticizing the Safety Score system, that’s a far harder sell.
Don’t hesitate to contact us with news tips. Just send a message to tips@teslarati.com to give us a heads up.
Elon Musk said he is planning to give “every one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America” in 2027, stating that “this will be the first of many.”
SpaceX went public earlier this year, and its stock price has been relatively stable since leveling off shortly after its IPO. Based on its current price, it’s a gift of just over $10 billion to children across the United States.
It appears to be closely related to President Donald Trump’s bank accounts for children, which were set up earlier this year as Trump Accounts.
Just hours earlier, Anthropic had announced the establishment of its Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, “a new wholly-owned entity dedicated entirely to public benefit.” Musk responded by stating he recommended “giving the shares directly to the public,” and that he would be doing it that way.
Just a little bit later, Musk said children across the U.S. would be getting a share from him:
Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America.
This will be the first of many.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2026
There are roughly 70 million children, meaning someone under the age of 18, in the United States, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Musk’s ownership of SpaceX stock shows he has around 849 million Class A shares of SpaceX stock, according to filings with the SEC.
Elon Musk revealed in a post on X that “Permits were impossible to get,” explaining the fate of The Boring Company’s most ambitious East Coast proposal.
The comment responded to a query about what became of his July 20, 2017 announcement that he had “just received verbal govt approval” for an underground Hyperloop connecting New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., capable of carrying passengers from the Big Apple to the Nation’s Capital in just 29 minutes.
The Boring Company receives verbal ‘approval’ to build NY to DC Hyperloop tunnel
The 2017 post, which envisioned city-center stations and multiple elevators in each city, sparked immediate scrutiny. Local and state officials in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and D.C. said they had no knowledge of any approval. A White House spokesperson confirmed only “promising conversations” about the transformative infrastructure.
Musk clarified shortly after that there was “still a lot of work” to do for formal approvals.
@cybrtrkguy Permits were impossible to get
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2026
Limited progress followed, as Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s administration issued a conditional utility permit and supported work near Fort Meade. In 2018, Washington, D.C., granted a preliminary permit for site preparation and excavation on a vacant lot at 53 New York Ave. NE in the NoMa neighborhood, which The Boring Company said could become a station.
A draft environmental assessment for a D.C.-Baltimore segment was released in 2019. Yet, by April 2021, the company had removed the project from its website, and the Federal Highway Administration reported receiving no indication of further interest. Communication with Maryland officials had ceased.
The full corridor would have required coordination among the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, the Federal Highway Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Park Service, and other agencies.
Environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, utility clearances, and approvals for novel infrastructure added to the overall complexity of the project and its approval.
Speculation on the permitting barriers centers around a few factors, but a multi-state, multi-level route involving unproven high-speed vacuum-tube technology inherently triggers exhaustive safety, environmental, and engineering reviews that can stretch for years, even for conventional projects.
There are also other elements, of course, like officials who may face political exposure if a privately funded, untested system encountered anything such as cost overruns, delays, or safety issues. On the outset of this project, there were limited things such as engineering plans or demonstrated technology maturity, which also added to the potential skepticism.
The East Coast vision for Boring Co., once framed as a privately funded revolution that could reshape Northeast travel, quietly ended without construction of the promised network. Musk’s recent statement frames the outcome as a regulatory impasse, unfortunate but not unexpected.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to his social media platform X on Sunday to remind everyone that the Roadster’s true meaning is not about company growth or adding dollars to shareholders’ pockets. Sometimes, you just do things because you can.
Following the Roadster’s epic unveiling event last Thursday, skeptics and critics of the company or the project itself came out to say that the vehicle is a pointless project because it is not geared toward growing the company, delivering supreme margins for profitability, nor does it contribute to the big picture of Artificial/Super Intelligence.
But that’s just the thing: Roadster is not meant to be some shareholder dream; it’s meant to be a vehicle that people buy just because it is something awesome, unique, and the first of its kind.
Tesla Roadster: Three configs, one can fly, 0-60 in 0.8 seconds
Musk had to remind those who are skeptical about the Roadster’s importance to the company mission that while it is not a major contributor to Tesla’s long-term goals, it is something that is being built just because it can be:
“Optimus and Cybercab will be the vast majority of Tesla’s value. The only things that will scale to incredible size (K2 and beyond) economically are super intelligence, robots, solar power, and mass to space. And, of course, if you have the first two, the rest will follow. But Roadster is super cool, so we’re doing it anyway.”
Musk has said on many occasions that Optimus would be the project that would make up the vast majority of Tesla’s value in the coming years.
Robotics will be a major focus of Tesla over the coming years, especially as Musk believes Optimus will enable work to be optional for humans and will enable what he calls “High Universal Income.”
Optimus and Cybercab will be the vast majority of Tesla’s value.
The only things that will scale to incredible size (K2 and beyond) economically are super intelligence, robots, solar power and mass to space.
And, of course, if you have the first two, the rest will follow.
But Roadster is super cool, so we’re doing it anyway.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 18, 2026
Cybercab will be a passive income opportunity for owners, Musk and Tesla have said for a very long time, as a fleet of self-driving vehicles will operate within a ride-hailing Robotaxi service that won’t require a human driver to be present.
Tesla investors are more than enthusiastic about the company’s future projects, at least from a general consensus perspective. However, it is important to note that the Roadster is a fun and cool project that pushes the boundaries of what people thought was possible for an automobile.
What we saw last week was the first true example of a flying car, and despite the backlash about how it might not contribute to Tesla’s grand ambitions, it’s okay to have fun sometimes, too.
Elon Musk will give ‘every kid in America’ a SpaceX share in 2027
Elon Musk reveals why Boring Co’s biggest East Coast project never happened
Tesla CEO Elon Musk reminds everyone about Roadster’s true meaning
SpaceX reveals how its 1 Million AI satellite network will work and prevent space collisions
Tesla Roadster: Three configs, one can fly, 0-60 in 0.8 seconds
