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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.
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SpaceX hid behind another name in the Arizona desert, and now it’s going big
SpaceX puts a $50 billion price on its Arizona supercompute campus ahead of December’s hearing.
SpaceX has put a price tag on the supercomputer campus it wants to build in the southern Arizona desert. In a statement Thursday, the company said it is pursuing a roughly $50 billion supercompute campus in Cochise County, about 80 miles east of Tucson. Together with a separate facility planned at Starbase, Texas, the two projects add up to more than $74 billion in planned investment.
The Arizona figure had not been disclosed before. SpaceX’s involvement only became public on November 4, when company representatives hosted a packed town hall at Cochise Elementary School for an application filed under the name Tombstone Resources LLC. A SpaceX representative told residents the filing used another name because putting SpaceX on it “draws attention” from outside the county, local station KVOA reported.
The application describes a 747-acre site near the Willcox Playa with up to nine buildings of about 493,000 square feet each. SpaceX plans to bring the campus online in four phases of roughly 1.5 GW, reaching 6 GW at full build, backed by a 24 GWh battery system and about $3.6 billion in grid upgrades. At that size, it would draw about 2.5 times more power than every data center in Maricopa County combined, according to an Arizona Republic analysis.
SpaceX says the project will create about 5,500 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs, and that it could cut electricity bills for members of the local cooperatives by up to 20 percent. The campus would use dry cooling with no industrial groundwater use. Its application estimates ongoing water needs of 7 to 10 acre-feet a year, roughly what 20 to 30 homes consume.
Power is the bigger question. The site sits next to the Apache Generating Station, a coal and natural gas plant with about 1 GW of capacity that had been slated to retire by 2028. SpaceX told residents its investment could expand the station to more than 6 GW.
Local opposition is organized. A petition asking the county to deny the permit has gathered about 2,400 signatures, and the nearby playa is a landing spot for federally protected sandhill cranes, which SpaceX says its design accounts for. The Cochise County Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing on December 9 in Bisbee, with written comments due November 27. If approved, construction could start in March 2027.
The Texas project faces a vote the same day. The Starbase City Commission will consider a property tax abatement for SpaceX’s $24 billion gas plant and supercompute facility at its own December 9 hearing, as Teslarati reported. SpaceX said Thursday the Starbase site has already generated more than 3,000 construction jobs, and it committed $220 million to Brownsville’s water and wastewater systems, $40 million of which has been paid.
Both campuses would expand a footprint still centered on the Memphis area, where SpaceX’s Colossus data centers run largely on gas turbines and the company won a permit for a power plant in Southaven, Mississippi earlier this year. SpaceX ended the third quarter with 1.7 GW of nameplate compute. The Arizona campus alone, at full build, would be more than three times that size.
Elon Musk
Nvidia’s board meets on Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk already has an answer
Elon Musk says it would be an honor to hire Jensen Huang amid Nvidia turmoil.
Elon Musk says he would welcome Jensen Huang at one of his companies if Nvidia’s board decides to push out its longtime chief executive.
On Wednesday evening, the financial account ZeroHedge posted “Elon please hire Jensen” on X. Musk replied roughly two hours later: “That would be an honor.” Neither Huang nor Nvidia had responded publicly as of Wednesday night.
Musk’s reply came as Nvidia’s board met to decide Huang’s future. The Wall Street Journal reported that directors were preparing to oust him following reports of two extramarital relationships. One involves Alice Huang, a Singapore-based businesswoman whom U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe was working for China’s Ministry of State Security. The New York Times separately reported a relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care. Huang acknowledged being unfaithful in a memo to employees on Sunday but gave no details.
@zerohedge That would be an honor
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 12, 2026
Under Nvidia’s bylaws, a majority of its 11 directors can remove the CEO with or without cause. Bloomberg reported that the board has been working with an outside firm on possible replacements and may name an interim chief, with CFO Colette Kress seen as the likely pick. Nvidia shares fell more than 8 percent in extended trading, according to CNBC, and the company is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on November 17.
Musk has more riding on Nvidia’s leadership than most tech executives. In August, he told investors on SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company that it would build its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware, calling Vera Rubin “the best architecture.” SpaceX is also working with Nvidia on the compute payload for Starmind, its planned orbital AI constellation. In October, SpaceX said it had a binding commitment for a roughly $40 billion lease of Vera Rubin GPUs and related equipment, with the leases expected to begin in the first half of 2027.
The scale of that dependence is already enormous. On its Q3 call, SpaceX said it was bringing roughly 200,000 to 220,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs online each month and expects 2.5 to 3 GW of nameplate compute by the end of the year. That buildout is now reaching new sites like the proposed $24 billion power plant and supercomputer campus at Starbase.
The relationship between the two executives also goes back nearly a decade. Huang has often told the story of personally delivering Nvidia’s first DGX-1 AI supercomputer to Musk in 2016, when no other customer wanted one. “Nobody wanted to be part of it, except for Elon,” Huang said on the Joe Rogan Experience last December.
Musk did not say what role Huang might fill, and his reply stops short of a formal offer. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and still owns about 3.6 percent of its stock, so any move to a Musk company would depend on whether, and how, he leaves the chipmaker he has run for more than three decades.
SpaceX officially launched the Starlink Mini 2 on November 10, delivering the first portable Starlink terminal designed around independent power.
Invitation-only preorders for select U.S. customers are priced at $999 plus tax, a figure that includes a full year of Roam Unlimited service valued at roughly $2,100. A refundable $100 deposit reserves the kit, with the balance due at shipment, expected to begin in mid-December. Broader availability is listed as coming soon.
Starlink just unveiled Mini 2, its next-gen portable dish.
Quick-swap battery, up to 4.5 hrs per charge
USB-C power
Built-in Wi-Fi
Online in about 60 secondsPreorders are open now. https://t.co/QawqgbswrQ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 10, 2026
The headline feature is the quick-swap 71 Wh battery. Clipped to the rear of the dish without tools, it delivers up to 4.5 hours of connectivity on a single charge.
The 490-gram pack includes its own USB-C port and LED indicators, so users can charge a spare separately and swap it in seconds while staying online. Starlink notes that the terminal can continue operating while the battery charges or run directly from a 60 W USB-C source. The retail box includes one battery, a 60 W USB-C charger, and a 3-meter cable.
Beyond power, the Mini 2 is thinner at 23.1 mm (versus 38.5 mm on the original Mini) while measuring 263 × 314 mm. With the battery and kickstand attached it weighs 1.6 kg.
Built-in Wi-Fi 6 expands coverage to up to 1,800 square feet, an IP67 rating protects against dust and water, and a standard 1/4-20 tripod thread plus physical power button round out the design. Field of view remains 110 degrees, and the unit retains support for mobile use.
For travelers, campers, and remote workers, the swappable battery removes the longstanding requirement for an external power bank or vehicle outlet that defined the first Mini. Spare packs sold separately further extend runtime, turning the compact terminal into a more self-contained solution.
While the bundled $999 invitation price sits well above the original Mini’s current $149 starting point, the included year of service and genuine untethered operation mark a clear step forward in portable satellite internet.
SpaceX hid behind another name in the Arizona desert, and now it’s going big
Nvidia’s board meets on Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk already has an answer
