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Amidst Tesla’s growing lead in the EV sector, VW boss rallies his troops to avoid being the next Nokia
The cellular phone industry was changed forever on June 29, 2007, when the first generation Apple iPhone was released to the public. It was a fresh and new idea that changed how mobile phones would be used and looked at forever. However, it was a wake-up call to Apple’s competitors and past cell phone manufacturers: Adapt or Fall Behind.
In Germany, a man named Herbert Diess, who runs a little car company called Volkswagen, is aware of the parallels between the automotive and cell phone sectors. Change happens. It happens fast, and if you don’t try to adapt to it, you won’t be relevant in a few years. Take Nokia, for example.
“Nokia is probably a good example of how such a change can happen—if you’re not fast enough, you’re not going to survive,” Diess said in an interview with Bloomberg. “I’m always telling our people this example.”
Nokia was arguably the most popular cell phone brand up until 2007. Most children used their Mom’s Nokia phone to play Snake while their parents shopped, giving it the versatility as a handy portable telephone and entertainment machine. However, Apple thought on a more broad scale and saw the cell phone as an opportunity to revolutionize the way people look at them. Instead of a few buttons and a low-resolution, pixelated screen, Apple got rid of most of the buttons and updated the software within a phone to show that it was capable of everything that a computer could do.
(Credit: AUTO BILD/YouTube)
Fast forward a few years, and Tesla is doing essentially the same thing with the automotive market. The company took the automobile and changed everything about it: the powertrain, the infotainment, the design, and the performance. Now, Volkswagen is trying to avoid becoming the Nokia of cars, looking to adapt to the global automotive market’s ever-changing look.
Volkswagen is arguably the automaker that supports the change to EVs the most of the companies with an ICE-based history. Interestingly, it is the same company that fended off a major emissions scandal within the last decade. However, it still has been the car company with the most support for Tesla and the transition to electrification.
Volkswagen has repaid Dieselgate victims an outrageous compensation package
Volkswagen’s transition begins with updating its currently-operating production plants to support the manufacturing process of EV powertrains. But that is not the biggest challenge the German automaker is facing, according to Diess.
“The bigger transition automotive will face is really as the car is becoming more and more of a software device,” he said, “gathering huge amounts of data, and then building up from the data artificial intelligence, knowledge about the driver, road conditions, safety, and then improving the way this device behaves.”
In regards to Tesla, Diess says that its lead is big, but that the company is helping “pull the industry” along with the guidance of CEO Elon Musk. “He’s a reference for us. If we look into our future and what the car has to become, it has to become electric, and it has to become an internet device.”
In the race to become the premier EV company, Volkswagen has a long way to go. Overtaking Tesla is in the company’s future plans, but Diess realizes that his company is ready for the challenges that lie ahead.
“I think we are the best-prepared company for the EV age. Europe will be one of the main hubs of electrification, and we are well prepared, so I’m happy. The big thing is managing through that transition. In 2024 and 2025, when cars really become Internet devices and start self-driving, I hope that we took the right decisions.”
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s X will start using a Tesla-like software update strategy
The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.
Elon Musk’s social media platform X will adopt a Tesla-esque approach to software updates for its algorithm.
The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.
X’s updates to its updates
As per Musk in a post on X, the social media company will be making a new algorithm to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users. These updates would then be repeated every four weeks.
“We will make the new 𝕏 algorithm, including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users, open source in 7 days. This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed,” Musk wrote in his post.
The initiative somewhat mirrors Tesla’s over-the-air update model, where vehicle software is regularly refined and pushed to users with detailed release notes. This should allow users to better understand the details of X’s every update and foster a healthy feedback loop for the social media platform.
xAI and X
X, formerly Twitter, has been acquired by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI last year. Since then, xAI has seen a rapid rise in valuation. Following the company’s the company’s upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, estimates now suggest that xAI is worth tens about $230 to $235 billion. That’s several times larger than Tesla when Elon Musk received his controversial 2018 CEO Performance Award.
As per xAI, the Series E funding round attracted a diverse group of investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group, among others. Strategic partners NVIDIA and Cisco Investments also continued support for building the world’s largest GPU clusters.
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Tesla FSD Supervised wins MotorTrend’s Best Driver Assistance Award
The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system has been named the best driver-assistance technology on the market, earning top honors at the 2026 MotorTrend Best Tech Awards.
The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system. And it wasn’t even close.
MotorTrend reverses course
MotorTrend awarded Tesla FSD (Supervised) its 2026 Best Tech Driver Assistance title after extensive testing of the latest v14 software. The publication acknowledged that it had previously criticized earlier versions of FSD for erratic behavior and near-miss incidents, ultimately favoring rivals such as GM’s Super Cruise in earlier evaluations.
According to MotorTrend, the newest iteration of FSD resolved many of those shortcomings. Testers said v14 showed far smoother behavior in complex urban scenarios, including unprotected left turns, traffic circles, emergency vehicles, and dense city streets. While the system still requires constant driver supervision, judges concluded that no other advanced driver-assistance system currently matches its breadth of capability.
Unlike rival systems that rely on combinations of cameras, radar, lidar, and mapped highways, Tesla’s FSD operates using a camera-only approach and is capable of driving on city streets, rural roads, and freeways. MotorTrend stated that pure utility, the ability to handle nearly all road types, ultimately separated FSD from competitors like Ford BlueCruise, GM Super Cruise, and BMW’s Highway Assistant.
High cost and high capability
MotorTrend also addressed FSD’s pricing, which remains significantly higher than rival systems. Tesla currently charges $8,000 for a one-time purchase or $99 per month for a subscription, compared with far lower upfront and subscription costs from other automakers. The publication noted that the premium is justified given FSD’s unmatched scope and continuous software evolution.
Safety remained a central focus of the evaluation. While testers reported collision-free operation over thousands of miles, they noted ongoing concerns around FSD’s configurable driving modes, including options that allow aggressive driving and speeds beyond posted limits. MotorTrend emphasized that, like all Level 2 systems, FSD still depends on a fully attentive human driver at all times.
Despite those caveats, the publication concluded that Tesla’s rapid software progress fundamentally reshaped the competitive landscape. For drivers seeking the most capable hands-on driver-assistance system available today, MotorTrend concluded Tesla FSD (Supervised) now stands alone at the top.
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Elon Musk’s Grokipedia surges to 5.6M articles, almost 79% of English Wikipedia
The explosive growth marks a major milestone for the AI-powered online encyclopedia, which was launched by Elon Musk’s xAI just months ago.
Elon Musk’s Grokipedia has grown to an impressive 5,615,201 articles as of today, closing in on 79% of the English Wikipedia’s current total of 7,119,376 articles.
The explosive growth marks a major milestone for the AI-powered online encyclopedia, which was launched by Elon Musk’s xAI just months ago. Needless to say, it would only be a matter of time before Grokipedia exceeds English Wikipedia in sheer volume.
Grokipedia’s rapid growth
xAI’s vision for Grokipedia emphasizes neutrality, while Grok’s reasoning capabilities allow for fast drafting and fact-checking. When Elon Musk announced the initiative in late September 2025, he noted that Grokipedia would be an improvement to Wikipedia because it would be designed to avoid bias.
At the time, Musk noted that Grokipedia “is a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.”
Grokipedia was launched in late October, and while xAI was careful to list it only as Version 0.1 at the time, the online encyclopedia immediately earned praise. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger highlighted the project’s innovative approach, noting how it leverages AI to fill knowledge gaps and enable rapid updates. Netizens also observed how Grokipedia tends to present articles in a more objective manner compared to Wikipedia, which is edited by humans.
Elon Musk’s ambitious plans
With 5,615,201 total articles, Grokipedia has now grown to almost 79% of English Wikipedia’s article base. This is incredibly quick, though Grokipedia remains text-only for now. xAI, for its part, has now updated the online encyclopedia’s iteration to v0.2.
Elon Musk has shared bold ideas for Grokipedia, including sending a record of the entire knowledge base to space as part of xAI’s mission to preserve and expand human understanding. At some point, Musk stated that Grokipedia will be renamed to Encyclopedia Galactica, and it will be sent to the cosmos.
“When Grokipedia is good enough (long way to go), we will change the name to Encyclopedia Galactica. It will be an open source distillation of all knowledge, including audio, images and video. Join xAI to help build the sci-fi version of the Library of Alexandria!” Musk wrote, adding in a later post that “Copies will be etched in stone and sent to the Moon, Mars and beyond. This time, it will not be lost.”
Elon Musk’s X will start using a Tesla-like software update strategy
Tesla FSD Supervised wins MotorTrend’s Best Driver Assistance Award
