As COVID-19 continues to spread throughout parts of the world, conference calls have become a staple in many people’s lives. In the midst of the pandemic last year, Elon Musk stated that video conferencing within a Tesla would “definitely [be] a future feature.” Well, Tesla Model S owner and Mass Luminosity CEO Angel Munoz decided that the future is now.
“Both my wife and I have Teslas. She drives a Model X and I drive a Model S. I just always thought what an incredible piece of real estate is right in the center there,” he told Teslarati. “You know, quite frankly, I’m not going to watch movies in my car, not going to play games in my car—and I’m a gamer. Not interested. But I will do a video conference.”
Munoz happens to be the co-creator of Beacon, a browser-based video and voice conferencing service. He did not initially plan to create Beacon for Tesla, but seemed enticed by the challenge of bringing the service to his car.
Munoz worked closely with Beacon’s Senior VP of Technology Teodor Atroshenko for almost a year to develop Beacon for Tesla. “It didn’t work in the beginning. It didn’t work at all. It took us a while,” he said.
The pair seemed to take a page right out of Elon Musk’s handbook while developing Beacon for Tesla, too. They appear to have gone all out, introducing features and specs to Beacon for Tesla, like 4K ultra high definition, 3D stereo audio, and the ability to transfer calls seamlessly from desktop to phone to Tesla’s infotainment system with a click of a button.
“Teodor and I, we took it as a personal challenge…And we didn’t have to reverse engineer anything,” he explained. “We just had to be aware of how [Tesla] restricts things. And then we created Beacon on the web in a way that it’s immediately accessible by being safe.”
In January 2021, Munoz and Atroshenko made a breakthrough and were able to successfully complete a video conference call in the CEO’s Model S. Beacon for Tesla uses the car’s mics, speakers, and video panel. However, they were not able to access Tesla’s in-cabin camera.
“So right now the way that we have it is that it syncs between the camera on your phone and the call. But we cannot access the [in-cabin] camera without permission,” Munoz stated.
Beacon is open to working with Tesla to bring the full power of its video and audio conferencing service to owners like Munoz himself. He told Teslarati that Beacon for Tesla beta has a tentative launch date set for mid-March 2021.
However, Tesla owners will still be able to use Beacon in their vehicles when it launches. Munoz explained that Tesla owners won’t have to download an app to use Beacon since it is optimized for Chromium browsers, the same engine used for Tesla browsers. So users would just have to log-in to access the service. He noted that Tesla actually saves cookies now so logging into accounts would be easier.
Munoz had one suggestion for Elon Musk about access to browser information in Teslas, though. If Munoz had the chance to talk to Musk he would say:
“Elon, keep that, but make it like you do other things on your Tesla. For example, if you’re going to open the glove compartment…you can make it that it pops a security code that you need to put in or if you want to open your car, you can make a security code. I have both, so do the same for the browser. So, the browser saves that, but before you launch the page, have that security code and then it launches the page. I would love to tell him [Elon] that’s the right way of going about that.”
The Age of the Autonomous Vehicles
Tesla has been dubbed by owners and some experts in the industry as not only the leading EV automaker, but the future leader of autonomous vehicles as well. As a long-time Tesla Model S owner, Munoz seems to understand the future Elon Musk envisions for Tesla with regards to autonomy and the Robotaxi fleet.
“Think about the possibilities. Imagine this. I have a Model 3, and let’s say that autonomous driving becomes a reality—obviously that’s still kinda up in the air,” he said.
“But let’s say that someone is being picked up in a Model 3, and something happens or something, I can call the car and [contact the passenger].” Munoz described other scenarios where an in-car Tesla video conference call would be useful as well.
His examples pointed out that autonomous vehicles would still need some sort of human interaction and communication between the car owner and the passenger. And if there’s anything the pandemic has taught us, it’s that conference calls are a good way to communicate and interact in the absence of physical presence.
The Teslarati team would appreciate hearing from you. If you have any tips, email us at tips@teslarati.com or reach out to me at maria@teslarati.com.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk and Tesla AI Director share insights after empty driver seat Robotaxi rides
The executives’ unoccupied tests hint at the rapid progress of Tesla’s unsupervised Robotaxi efforts.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and AI Director Ashok Elluswamy celebrated Christmas Eve by sharing personal experiences with Robotaxi vehicles that had no safety monitor or occupant in the driver’s seat. Musk described the system’s “perfect driving” around Austin, while Elluswamy posted video from the back seat, calling it “an amazing experience.”
The executives’ unoccupied tests hint at the rapid progress of Tesla’s unsupervised Robotaxi efforts.
Elon and Ashok’s firsthand Robotaxi insights
Prior to Musk and the Tesla AI Director’s posts, sightings of unmanned Teslas navigating public roads were widely shared on social media. One such vehicle was spotted in Austin, Texas, which Elon Musk acknowleged by stating that “Testing is underway with no occupants in the car.”
Based on his Christmas Eve post, Musk seemed to have tested an unmanned Tesla himself. “A Tesla with no safety monitor in the car and me sitting in the passenger seat took me all around Austin on Sunday with perfect driving,” Musk wrote in his post.
Elluswamy responded with a 2-minute video showing himself in the rear of an unmanned Tesla. The video featured the vehicle’s empty front seats, as well as its smooth handling through real-world traffic. He captioned his video with the words, “It’s an amazing experience!”
Towards Unsupervised operations
During an xAI Hackathon earlier this month, Elon Musk mentioned that Tesla owed be removing Safety Monitors from its Robotaxis in Austin in just three weeks. “Unsupervised is pretty much solved at this point. So there will be Tesla Robotaxis operating in Austin with no one in them. Not even anyone in the passenger seat in about three weeks,” he said. Musk echoed similar estimates at the 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting and the Q3 2025 earnings call.
Considering the insights that were posted Musk and Elluswamy, it does appear that Tesla is working hard towards operating its Robotaxis with no safety monitors. This is quite impressive considering that the service was launched just earlier this year.
Elon Musk
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service has continued its rapid global expansion, surpassing 9 million active customers just weeks after crossing the 8 million mark.
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
9 million customers
In a post on X, SpaceX stated that Starlink now serves over 9 million active users across 155 countries, territories, and markets. The company reached 8 million customers in early November, meaning it added roughly 1 million subscribers in under seven weeks, or about 21,275 new users on average per day.
“Starlink is connecting more than 9M active customers with high-speed internet across 155 countries, territories, and many other markets,” Starlink wrote in a post on its official X account. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell also celebrated the milestone on X. “A huge thank you to all of our customers and congrats to the Starlink team for such an incredible product,” she wrote.
That growth rate reflects both rising demand for broadband in underserved regions and Starlink’s expanding satellite constellation, which now includes more than 9,000 low-Earth-orbit satellites designed to deliver high-speed, low-latency internet worldwide.
Starlink’s momentum
Starlink’s momentum has been building up. SpaceX reported 4.6 million Starlink customers in December 2024, followed by 7 million by August 2025, and 8 million customers in November. Independent data also suggests Starlink usage is rising sharply, with Cloudflare reporting that global web traffic from Starlink users more than doubled in 2025, as noted in an Insider report.
Starlink’s momentum is increasingly tied to SpaceX’s broader financial outlook. Elon Musk has said the satellite network is “by far” the company’s largest revenue driver, and reports suggest SpaceX may be positioning itself for an initial public offering as soon as next year, with valuations estimated as high as $1.5 trillion. Musk has also suggested in the past that Starlink could have its own IPO in the future.
News
NVIDIA Director of Robotics: Tesla FSD v14 is the first AI to pass the “Physical Turing Test”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine.
NVIDIA Director of Robotics Jim Fan has praised Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14 as the first AI to pass what he described as a “Physical Turing Test.”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine. And just like smartphones today, removing it now would “actively hurt.”
Jim Fan’s hands-on FSD v14 impressions
Fan, a leading researcher in embodied AI who is currently solving Physical AI at NVIDIA and spearheading the company’s Project GR00T initiative, noted that he actually was late to the Tesla game. He was, however, one of the first to try out FSD v14.
“I was very late to own a Tesla but among the earliest to try out FSD v14. It’s perhaps the first time I experience an AI that passes the Physical Turing Test: after a long day at work, you press a button, lay back, and couldn’t tell if a neural net or a human drove you home,” Fan wrote in a post on X.
Fan added: “Despite knowing exactly how robot learning works, I still find it magical watching the steering wheel turn by itself. First it feels surreal, next it becomes routine. Then, like the smartphone, taking it away actively hurts. This is how humanity gets rewired and glued to god-like technologies.”
The Physical Turing Test
The original Turing Test was conceived by Alan Turing in 1950, and it was aimed at determining if a machine could exhibit behavior that is equivalent to or indistinguishable from a human. By focusing on text-based conversations, the original Turing Test set a high bar for natural language processing and machine learning.
This test has been passed by today’s large language models. However, the capability to converse in a humanlike manner is a completely different challenge from performing real-world problem-solving or physical interactions. Thus, Fan introduced the Physical Turing Test, which challenges AI systems to demonstrate intelligence through physical actions.
Based on Fan’s comments, Tesla has demonstrated these intelligent physical actions with FSD v14. Elon Musk agreed with the NVIDIA executive, stating in a post on X that with FSD v14, “you can sense the sentience maturing.” Musk also praised Tesla AI, calling it the best “real-world AI” today.
Elon Musk and Tesla AI Director share insights after empty driver seat Robotaxi rides
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
