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Tesla beefs up India executive team with Porsche alumnus

(Credit: Tesla)

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Tesla has added another member to its executive team for its electric car operation in India. Samir Jain, who previously worked for Porsche, will assume the position of “Lead Aftersales – Regional Service Manager – India,” according to his LinkedIn page.

Previously, Jain was Head of Aftersales and Network Development for Porsche in Mumbai, where he was responsible for “Network Steering and Dealer Business Management.” His roles also required him to expand Porsche’s network in India to make way for the responsible launch and execution of the German automaker’s introduction of electric cars in India.

Aftersales generally refers to anything that occurs after the vehicle has been delivered to the customer. This can include service and support and likely hints toward the introduction into potential Service Center locations for Tesla that the company will need to build throughout the country to keep its vehicles up and running.

Jain’s position will be based in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

Jain’s experience with Porsche’s electrification efforts makes him an ideal candidate for the Tesla position. As demand for Tesla’s vehicles continues to rise, there is evidence based on the thirst of the company’s entrance into the market that there will be plenty of sustained demand after the company erects a production facility in India.

Tesla started making progress with its India project in January after many years of speculation on when and if the automaker would emerge into the country. Because of expensive import taxes, Tesla vehicles are unaffordable for many as the tax nearly doubles the price of the cars. For years, Tesla enthusiasts in India have pleaded with CEO Elon Musk to enter India, and the company finally made moves in early 2021.

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Tesla’s executive team for India is full of automotive industry veterans and Tesla employees who are not new hires. David Feinstein will be Director of Global Trade and New Markets and has been with Tesla for over 9 years. Vaibhav Taneja has been Tesla’s Chief Accounting Officer for over two years. Prashanth R. Menon has assumed the role of Director of Tesla’s India operation and has been with the company for over four years.

Tesla also added Manuj Khurana for Policy and Development, Nishant Nishant for Charging Infrastructure, and Chithra Thomas for Human Resources.

It is not currently clear when Tesla will begin making building a Gigafactory or production facility in India, but it is likely coming in the next few years. Tesla is currently working on completing the Giga Texas and Giga Berlin production facilities in Austin and Germany. These manufacturing plants will be up and running by the end of the year with limited production rates, according to Musk. However, volume production is expected to begin early next year, according to the automaker’s estimates.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below, or be sure to email me at joey@teslarati.com or on Twitter @KlenderJoey.

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Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Tesla FSD’s newest model is coming, and it sounds like ‘the last big piece of the puzzle’

“There’s a model that’s an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026.”

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla Full Self-Driving’s newest model is coming very soon, and from what it sounds like, it could be “the last big piece of the puzzle,” as CEO Elon Musk said in late November.

During the xAI Hackathon on Tuesday, Musk was available for a Q&A session, where he revealed some details about Robotaxi and Tesla’s plans for removing Robotaxi Safety Monitors, and some information on a future FSD model.

While he said Full Self-Driving’s unsupervised capability is “pretty much solved,” and confirmed it will remove Safety Monitors in the next three weeks, questions about the company’s ability to give this FSD version to current owners came to mind.

Musk said a new FSD model is coming in about a month or two that will be an order-of-magnitude larger and will include more reasoning and reinforcement learning.

He said:

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“There’s a model that’s an order of magnitude larger that will be deployed in January or February 2026. We’re gonna add a lot of reasoning and RL (reinforcement learning). To get to serious scale, Tesla will probably need to build a giant chip fab. To have a few hundred gigawatts of AI chips per year, I don’t see that capability coming online fast enough, so we will probably have to build a fab.”

It rings back to late November when Musk said that v14.3 “is where the last big piece of the puzzle finally lands.”

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With the advancements made through Full Self-Driving v14 and v14.2, there seems to be a greater confidence in solving self-driving completely. Musk has also personally said that driver monitoring has been more relaxed, and looking at your phone won’t prompt as many alerts in the latest v14.2.1.

This is another indication that Tesla is getting closer to allowing people to take their eyes off the road completely.

Along with the Robotaxi program’s success, there is evidence that Tesla could be close to solving FSD. However, it is not perfect. We’ve had our own complaints with FSD, and although we feel it is the best ADAS on the market, it is not, in its current form, able to perform everything needed on roads.

But it is close.

That’s why there is some legitimate belief that Tesla could be releasing a version capable of no supervision in the coming months.

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All we can say is, we’ll see.

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Investor's Corner

SpaceX IPO is coming, CEO Elon Musk confirms

However, it appears Musk is ready for SpaceX to go public, as Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger wrote an op-ed that indicated he thought SpaceX would go public soon. Musk replied, basically confirming it.

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Joel Kowsky, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk confirmed through a post on X that a SpaceX initial public offering (IPO) is on the way after hinting at it several times earlier this year.

It also comes one day after Bloomberg reported that SpaceX was aiming for a valuation of $1.5 trillion, adding that it wanted to raise $30 billion.

Musk has been transparent for most of the year that he wanted to try to figure out a way to get Tesla shareholders to invest in SpaceX, giving them access to the stock.

He has also recognized the issues of having a public stock, like litigation exposure, quarterly reporting pressures, and other inconveniences.

However, it appears Musk is ready for SpaceX to go public, as Ars Technica Senior Space Editor Eric Berger wrote an op-ed that indicated he thought SpaceX would go public soon.

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Musk replied, basically confirming it:

Berger believes the IPO would help support the need for $30 billion or more in capital needed to fund AI integration projects, such as space-based data centers and lunar satellite factories. Musk confirmed recently that SpaceX “will be doing” data centers in orbit.

AI appears to be a “key part” of SpaceX getting to Musk, Berger also wrote. When writing about whether or not Optimus is a viable project and product for the company, he says that none of that matters. Musk thinks it is, and that’s all that matters.

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It seems like Musk has certainly mulled something this big for a very long time, and the idea of taking SpaceX public is not just likely; it is necessary for the company to get to Mars.

The details of when SpaceX will finally hit that public status are not known. Many of the reports that came out over the past few days indicate it would happen in 2026, so sooner rather than later.

But there are a lot of things on Musk’s plate early next year, especially with Cybercab production, the potential launch of Unsupervised Full Self-Driving, and the Roadster unveiling, all planned for Q1.

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Tesla adds 15th automaker to Supercharger access in 2025

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla has added the 15th automaker to the growing list of companies whose EVs can utilize the Supercharger Network this year, as BMW is the latest company to gain access to the largest charging infrastructure in the world.

BMW became the 15th company in 2025 to gain Tesla Supercharger access, after the company confirmed to its EV owners that they could use any of the more than 25,000 Supercharging stalls in North America.

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Newer BMW all-electric cars, like the i4, i5, i7, and iX, are able to utilize Tesla’s V3 and V4 Superchargers. These are the exact model years, via the BMW Blog:

  • i4: 2022-2026 model years
  • i5: 2024-2025 model years
    • 2026 i5 (eDrive40 and xDrive40) after software update in Spring 2026
  • i7: 2023-2026 model years
  • iX: 2022-2025 model years
    • 2026 iX (all versions) after software update in Spring 2026

With the expansion of the companies that gained access in 2025 to the Tesla Supercharger Network, a vast majority of non-Tesla EVs are able to use the charging stalls to gain range in their cars.

So far in 2025, Tesla has enabled Supercharger access to:

  • Audi
  • BMW
  • Genesis
  • Honda
  • Hyundai
  • Jaguar Land Rover
  • Kia
  • Lucid
  • Mercedes-Benz
  • Nissan
  • Polestar
  • Subaru
  • Toyota
  • Volkswagen
  • Volvo

Drivers with BMW EVs who wish to charge at Tesla Superchargers must use an NACS-to-CCS1 adapter. In Q2 2026, BMW plans to release its official adapter, but there are third-party options available in the meantime.

They will also have to use the Tesla App to enable Supercharging access to determine rates and availability. It is a relatively seamless process.

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