Lifestyle
Tesla’s most searched Google terms of 2020: Stock, Net Worth, and Baby Names
Data from Google reveals that Tesla was among the most popular automotive-related search terms in 2020. Those interested in the all-electric automaker or its well-known CEO Elon Musk searched for terms far and wide, relating to the company’s stock spike, its Coronavirus operations, its new Model Y crossover that launched in March, and its frontman’s polarizing and unique baby name.
Tesla was most popular on Google during the week of February 2nd to the 8th, and it was a week that was filled with events for the company. Most notably, the company’s stock began to surge that week, and on the 4th, it was up 114% for the year already. This was far from the end of Tesla’s stock surge, which we have covered on many occasions. Tesla rose over 700% last year and is still on its way up. In 2021, it led to Elon Musk being named the World’s Richest Person, and Tesla becoming the sixth-most valuable company on Earth, passing Facebook.
Tesla's monster bull run continues as TSLA soars past $880 in Tuesday pre-market
It wasn’t all good, though. Tesla also announced that its China-located stores were closing due to an illness that was sweeping across the country. Since then, that same illness has spread worldwide and ended up closing businesses, states, and even countries for at least a short period.
Tesla’s slowest week on Google was from March 29th to April 4th. Interestingly, it wasn’t a slow week in terms of news related to the Silicon Valley-based car company. Tesla beat Wall Street’s Q1 2020 delivery estimates by announcing 88,400 deliveries during the first three months of the year. Elon Musk also showed his humanitarian side by admitting Tesla would donate FDA-approved ventilators to hospitals around the world for free.
Tesla's Elon Musk announces worldwide deliveries of FDA-approved ventilators
Among the most popular Tesla-related queries were dominated by Elon Musk’s newborn child, X Æ A-12, which he then revealed details about in a second interview with Joe Rogan. But the big hit for Tesla was Battery Day, as it was the second-most popular term, Google data showed.
Battery Day unveiled Tesla’s full-scale plans for a new battery cell. After it unveiled the new 4680 battery, it revealed how it would cut costs, eliminate harmful materials, and increase EV performance with an in-house cell. Ultimately, Musk says that the 4680 cells have been operational for “months.” But on a more broad scale, the cell will help Tesla obtain price parity with gas-powered cars, and could end up being the company’s key to mass-market status and EV affordability, two things that would cement Tesla as the leader of auto in general, not just electric car production.
Norway was the most heavily populated region for Tesla-related searches, followed by Denmark and the United States. Interestingly, Norway is one of the most popular EV countries in the world. Electric cars took market share from gas cars in 2020, accounting for 56% of all new cars sold in the country. Tesla is also coming off of its most successful month in Norway in December, where it sold 4,232 Model 3 units in the last month of the year. This was by far the biggest month for Tesla in Norway and would have made the Model 3 the sixth most popular EV in the country if Tesla hadn’t sold any Model 3s during the other 11 months of the year.
Moving forward, 2021 will be a year to remember for Tesla. Two new production plants are set to open this year, which could help Tesla close in on a one million vehicle a year production rate. Along with battery developments and a continuously increasing stock price, Tesla has plenty of momentum to break big stories once again in 2021.
Investor's Corner
Tesla Robotaxi gets a massive upgrade in Nevada
Nevada regulators just approved a massive expansion of Tesla’s robotaxi fleet across the entire county.
Tesla’s robotaxi footprint in Nevada just grew by roughly 500 times in a single regulatory vote.
The Nevada Transportation Authority approved Tesla’s full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit on Thursday, clearing the way for the company to deploy up to 5,000 driverless vehicles across Clark County over the next 12 months. The decision came during a four hour general session meeting that Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt watched live and reported on X, noting the vote replaces the interim order that had limited Tesla to just 10 robotaxis on a narrow stretch of the Las Vegas Strip.
EXCLUSIVE: Tesla has just officially received approval for its full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit in Nevada, clearing the way for Tesla to launch a paid public Robotaxi service in Las Vegas.
This officially allows @Tesla to deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis over the next… pic.twitter.com/DPs5UtUlrE
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 20, 2026
That earlier cap, covered here after it surfaced on August 13, came with restrictions that looked stricter than what Tesla runs in Austin: a 45 mph speed ceiling, no airport pickups, and a geofence confined to the Strip corridor. The new approval extends Tesla’s operating authority to all of Clark County, with room to request an even wider geofence across the state.
Tesla representatives at the meeting said they have no intention of putting 5,000 cars on the road right away. Commercial rides are expected to start within 30 days, pending vehicle inspections, insurance filings, and fare approval, the standard steps every robotaxi operator in Nevada has had to clear.
Tesla’s own Robotaxi account replied to the news with a short line, The golden future is upon us.
The timing lines up with Tesla’s broader robotaxi push this month. The company is preparing to open Cybercab rides to the public in Austin as soon as this month, and it opened a sweepstakes for riders to win a seat at the launch event. Tesla filed its original application for a 5,000 vehicle Nevada fleet back in June, a request regulators trimmed to 10 vehicles when they issued the interim order in July. Thursday’s vote effectively grants the number Tesla asked for from the start.
Zoox, the Amazon owned robotaxi operator, has run in Nevada since 2025 and was capped at 100 vehicles before Thursday’s decision. Tesla’s new ceiling puts it well ahead of that comparison on paper, though the company has said its actual fleet size will depend on how quickly FSD v15 rolls out, the software update executives have called the gateway to scaling unsupervised robotaxi operations nationwide.
Elon Musk
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
Elon Musk says X now exposes government censorship, but India’s secrecy laws complicate that promise.
Elon Musk’s promise to make government censorship requests on X “clearly visible” is running into a wall in India, where the law forbids the very disclosure Musk is promising.
On August 15, Musk responded to an update from X’s open-source algorithm team by writing “Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible.” The claim referred to a change X pushed two days earlier to its public xai-org/x-algorithm repository, which now includes a controversial filter written directly into the code. The filter suppresses posts from 665 accounts flagged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court from appearing in the For You feed of any viewer located in Brazil, unless the viewer already follows the account. The election tied to the filter is scheduled for October 4.
India’s government wasn’t as impressed, and responded on Monday that “X will have to follow the law of the land,” in response to Musk’s transparency push covered by the Times of India. The problem is structural rather than political. India issues content blocking orders under Section 69A of its IT Act, and Rule 16 of the accompanying 2009 Blocking Rules requires those orders to stay confidential. Publishing an India equivalent of the Brazil filter, naming specific accounts and citing specific government orders, would itself violate Indian law. Government use of Section 69A has grown from roughly 6,000 orders a year between 2018 and 2023 to about 24,300 in 2025, according to a Tech Times report.
TESLARATI Premium Membership
$19.99 USDThe contrast puts Musk’s transparency pledge in an odd spot. It works largely as advertised in Brazil, where electoral law requires disclosure and X can point to specific account IDs and a specific court order in public code. It cannot work the same way in India, where the law requires the opposite. X users in India will keep seeing content disappear from search and their feeds without any public accounting of why, even as X tells the rest of the world that its censorship compliance is now inspectable.
This isn’t the first time X’s fights with a national government have shaped how the platform operates. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to suspend the accounts of sitting lawmakers and journalists in 2024, a standoff that cost X its Brazilian revenue for months and froze Starlink’s local accounts before the investigation into Musk and X was closed in March with no evidence of wrongdoing found. X also sued California over a state law requiring moderation disclosures, arguing the mandate itself violated the First Amendment.
Whether India’s government pursues anything beyond a public statement remains to be seen. For now, the mismatch between what X can legally publish and what different governments legally allow it to publish is the real story behind Musk’s seven word claim.
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.
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.
Tesla will launch Cybercab on September 3
SpaceX and a new Trump order that could rewrite the next decade of launches
