News
Tesla co-founder shares warning about OEM’s EV focus: “They haven’t really done the math fully”
Former Tesla CTO and co-founder JB Straubel recently shared some insights about the electric vehicle revolution and the focus of OEMs on pure electric cars. While conversing with startup investor Jason Calacanis’ in an episode of YouTube’s This Week in Startups, Straubel covered several topics, including Tesla’s early days, the importance of battery recycling, and how some OEMs’ alleged complete dedication to electric vehicles may not be very well thought out at all.
As noted by Straubel, Tesla was actually quite surprised that the Model S did not cause a substantial shift among OEMs to commit fully to battery-electric cars. The Model S was designed to be the best car, period, and for all intents and purposes, it did not disappoint. However, despite the rave reviews of the Model S and the vehicle proving that electric cars could be at the pinnacle of the auto sector, legacy automakers did not make a serious shift to EVs.
“The Model S was such a different car. The Roadster was a technology validation. We proved that batteries could work, they could go on a car, they could be safe, they could do the range and acceleration. The S was a whole different thing. It was so good. We put so much effort into that. Elon was hell-bent on making it the best car on the road. And I think we really delivered on that at the time. It was phenomenal.
“I’m still amazed at the skepticism there was. Even after delivering those, we kinda imagined, I imagined, that people would see this and go ‘Clearly this is the future. This is all gonna work.’ All the car companies are gonna copy this immediately, and we’ll have to go really fast to figure out how we can carve out a niche. And it just didn’t happen. Customers loved it. It was a runaway hit with reviewers and magazines and customers, but the copying and market change didn’t happen,” Straubel said.
The automotive landscape today is different, however. With Tesla now the most valuable automaker by market cap and with Chinese car companies aggressively coming up with modern electric cars, OEMs have now adopted the narrative that they are going all-in on EVs. Straubel, however, noted that these announcements might not necessarily be realistic.
“So many different OEMs, countries, factories, customers are leaping into EVs. You know, making these huge announcements, you know, saying that they’ll be fully electric this decade or the next. They haven’t, I don’t think they’ve done the math fully. What that entails on the supply chain and tracing it all the way back, literally all the way back to the mines. You need to do that, or else, you know, you haven’t really solved it. It has the feeling to me of kind of like a giant overbooked flight.
“All these people like, ‘Oh, this is great. We’re all gonna go to that new place. We all wanna go there. It looks great. Sweet. Let’s all go on the plane and go.’ So everybody’s saying that we all wanna go there at the same time. Meanwhile, we have to sort of build the planes to get there; we have to figure out how to sequence everyone. The figurative runway is like the time to do all this, and it could all get sorted out over time. But obviously, we’re trying to do this fast as a society and as a species,” Straubel said.
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Watch Straubel’s full interview with Jason Calacanis’ This Week in Startups in the video below.
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Tesla has launched a new Vehicle-to-Load (V2L) Outlet Adapter for Premium Model Y vehicles in the United States, meaning you can now power devices like laptops or light strings with your vehicle’s battery.
It appears the capability will be available for any Model Y Premium trim, including those that were purchased prior to the Adapter being launched. It will also only impact Juniper Model Y vehicles, so the first-gen owners will unfortunately not have access to this capability.
If your Model Y was purchased before Tesla renamed the trim levels to “Premium” and “Standard,” it does not seem to be compatible. My Model Y is technically a Premium build, as it is the Long Range All-Wheel-Drive. However, Tesla says it is not compatible with my vehicle.
🚨 Tesla has launched the Outlet Adapter for Model Y Premium in the U.S., enabling V2L capability for all Premium trims (that’s what it appears to be as it is available for purchase with all Premium trims)
It’s available for $80. 2.4kW max power and rated for 120v, 20A pic.twitter.com/lDxlVIk5s8
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 14, 2026
For $80, you can now utilize your car as a portable charger for small appliances or devices. This is perfect for things like tailgates, concerts, or camping, as you can now plug in devices that you might use. Those string lights for camping? That laptop for the other games that are on at the tailgate?
They’ll both utilize energy from your Tesla’s battery to be powered. This is the first time Tesla has expanded the capability to vehicles outside of the Model Y Performance and Cybertruck. However, this feature has been highly requested by owners for an extended period of time.
Tesla launched the Outlet Adapter in China last year:
Tesla China rolls out Model Y L V2L adapter, and it’s free for early owners
You will need the Mobile Connector to operate the Outlet Adapter: the Outlet Adapter will plug into the main housing of the Mobile Connector, where the appropriate adapter to charge your vehicle will plug in.
It is rated for 120 volts and 20 amps, and has a max power rating of 2.4kW.
You can buy it here from Tesla for $80.
Tesla is nearing its long-awaited unveiling of the all-electric Tesla Roadster, a new report from The Information claims, as the company has said several times this year that the event would take place “soon.”
Now, it appears there is movement on Tesla’s end regarding when it will happen.
The report says that Tesla will unveil the Roadster as soon as this month with a SpaceX version that will utilize cold-gas thrusters to help the vehicle float for a short period of time. This is something CEO Elon Musk has talked about with the Roadster for years.
🚨 The Information is reporting this morning that Tesla is ready to unveil the “flying” Roadster as soon as this month
It’s almost here, folks. pic.twitter.com/IdL4atsucQ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 14, 2026
Additionally, due to the delays, Tesla explored “a variety of designs” for the Roadster, potentially planning to abandon the design it showed off for the first time in 2017 and adopting an entirely new aesthetic.
According to The Information, Tesla considered utilizing a repurposed Model S Plaid and even wanted to upgrade the look to something like a Lamborghini Countach.
We’ve heard all of these things before, including teases about the date and how “soon” the Roadster will finally be ready to be shown off to the world (for the second time). Musk said that the event would occur in April, then May, then Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen continued to say it would be coming “soon.”
We do expect to see the Roadster by the end of the year, and now with this new report swirling, it appears it could be sooner rather than later.
The wait has been incredibly long, but there is likely a good reason for it. Tesla’s desire to make the Roadster the craziest vehicle on the road was non-negotiable, and it likely took a lot of time and resources to develop and perfect into something that was safe and suitable for a vehicle like this.
Featured
Tesla finally got its Nevada Robotaxi Permit but with a few catches hard to miss
Nevada granted Tesla’s robotaxi permit, but capped the fleet at just ten vehicles for now.
Tesla has received its robotaxi permit in Nevada, more than two months after regulators closed the public comment period on the company’s application. News of the approval surfaced Wednesday night when Tesla investor and longtime company watcher Sawyer Merritt posted a copy of the interim order, and the Nevada Transportation Authority’s own carrier registry now lists the permit, AVNC Permit 002 under Docket 26-05015, as active for Tesla Robotaxi, LLC.
Tesla asked Nevada in June for authority to run up to 5,000 vehicles in Clark County within a year, however the permit the NTA issued is initially capping Tesla at ten fully autonomous vehicles and confines them to a defined geofence along the Las Vegas Strip corridor. Any expansion of that operating area, or any increase to the fleet size, requires the NTA’s approval first.
Tesla has received its Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit in Nevada.
The Nevada Transportation Authority says that operations are limited to a maximum fleet of 10 fully autonomous vehicles and shall be conducted only within the Authority-approved Operational Design… https://t.co/Cxfd6GIfDk pic.twitter.com/iOO6wSZkHF
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 13, 2026
The order also sets rules that look more restrictive than what Tesla runs in Austin. Rides are barred on roads with posted speed limits above 45 miles per hour, pickups are off limits within a quarter mile of Harry Reid International Airport without separate authorization, and every vehicle has to carry visible “Robotaxi” markings while notifying riders before each trip that no one is driving. The order also requires “appropriate human supervision”, language that suggests Nevada isn’t ready to let Tesla offer the rides without a safety monitor that it has run in parts of Austin since January. As with standard protocol with robotaxi services, Tesla must report any accident, system failure, or vehicle that becomes stranded on a Nevada road within five business days.
Tesla is entering a market Nevada already knows well. Zoox, the Amazon owned robotaxi company, has run its own autonomous vehicle permit in the state since last year, building up to roughly 100 vehicles and 350,000 rides along the Strip. That history likely explains why the NTA started Tesla at ten cars rather than the fleet size the company asked for. The agency has a template for scaling a permit up once a company proves out its safety record.
Tesla’s Nevada application first surfaced in June, when the company filed for the permit alongside plans for a maintenance hub in southwest Las Vegas. The company has said it won’t meaningfully scale its robotaxi fleet anywhere until FSD v15 ships, expected in late 2026 or early 2027, which makes the ten vehicle cap less of a constraint today than it might look on paper. For now, Tesla has the legal right to start Nevada rides. Whether it starts before FSD v15 arrives is a separate question the permit doesn’t answer.
Tesla launches V2L Outlet Adapter for Premium Model Y in the U.S.
Tesla Roadster unveiling nears, and it will fly: The Information
