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Tesla and EV-only carmakers are legacy auto’s karma for killing the electric car
Karma could be a cruel mistress. It has a tendency to sneak up from behind before delivering a cruel haymaker to the jaw. Karma takes a while to rev up sometimes, but when it comes, things change, and sometimes these changes can be painful. Considering the state of the auto market, as well as the momentum carried by companies like Tesla, Lucid Motors, and Rivian, it appears that legacy carmakers are finally dealing with some well-deserved karma — for killing the electric car.
The general death of EVs amidst the emergence of the internal combustion engine during the early days of automobiles is understandable. Back then, fossil fuels presented a cheap, efficient way to travel, with vehicles like the Baker Electric and the Porsche P1 taking a very long time to charge. However, the death of the electric car that happened in the late 90s was something that is far more difficult to justify.
During the mid-90s, a modern electric vehicle was created by General Motors, and it could have been the driving force of a change in the motoring world. The vehicle, dubbed the EV1, was on the bleeding edge of tech at the time, with its three-phase alternating current induction motor and lead-acid (later changed to NiMH) battery. It had enough range for inner-city travel, it was fast, and it was sleek. But inasmuch as it was beloved by those who leased it, the EV1 was fated to meet an unfortunate demise.
In a series of events that inspired the creation of the documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car,” General Motors decided to discontinue the EV1, reclaiming the car from the leasees and destroying the vehicles. Segments of the acclaimed documentary depicted customers asking GM if they could just purchase the all-electric car, with some even holding demonstrations for the EV. But despite all these efforts, GM let the EV1 die, and most, save for a few, were unceremoniously crushed.
There were many speculations surrounding the EV1’s demise. General Motors insisted that the vehicle was not commercially viable. But the trend of large, gas-guzzling SUVs that followed the EV1 in GM’s lineup contributed to rumors that the electric car was killed because it represented a potential threat to the fossil fuel industry. In a sense, the electric car did die a painful, crushing death in the 90s, and it was not until Tesla came to the picture that EVs emerged as viable alternatives to gas-powered cars once more.
And it’s not like there was no resistance to the emergence of electric cars like Tesla, either. Tesla faced and continues to face strong opposition, and if it weren’t for its dedicated team and Elon Musk’s own stubbornness and resilience, the company could have followed the same fate as the EV1. But with vehicles like the Model S changing the game and cars like the Model 3 disrupting vehicle classes that used to be dominated by the internal combustion engine, it eventually became evident that this time around, it will be far more difficult to kill the electric car.
Amidst the success of companies like Tesla, even legacy automakers are playing catch up. Vehicles like the Jaguar I-PACE and the Chevy Bolt EV are representations of this. But even with these efforts, the pace of innovation in the electric vehicle segment is fast. Companies like Tesla work like tech companies, failing fast and failing forward. And now, legacy auto does not only have Tesla to contend with. Other premier electric cars from companies that are EV-only are coming. Tesla may have put EVs back on the map, but now, more companies are joining the fray.
There’s Lucid Motors with the Air, a hyper-luxury sedan that would likely put the Mercedes S-Class in its place. There’s the Rivian R1T and R1S, which bring luxury and comfort even in places off the beaten path. Even Bollinger Motors is attacking a small niche of rock-crawling vehicles with its no-nonsense, rough-and-tough B1 and B2. These are only the tip of the iceberg as well. Veteran auto is even getting increasingly dedicated to EVs, as evidenced by Porsche’s decision to revamp its entire factory in Zuffenhausen just to get the company ready for more electric vehicles like the Taycan.
It appears that this time around, killing the electric car will not be as simple or easy as before. Unlike the early 1900s, EVs now charge fast and they go the distance, and unlike the 90s, electric cars are now being embraced by mainstream consumers. There’s a demand for them, and EVs are now being noted for their performance. Electric cars are here to stay, and every single one that gets released is additional karma to an auto industry that appears to have dug itself far too deep into fossil fuels.
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Why SpaceX is finishing another space-internet system that isn’t Starlink
SpaceX launched three final O3b mPower satellites Sunday, finishing a lesser known SES satellite network.
SpaceX had an 87 minute window opening at 2:49 p.m. Eastern on Sunday to fly a Falcon 9 out of Cape Canaveral carrying the final three satellites for SES’s O3b mPower constellation, a project that has taken more than a decade to finish since Boeing and SES first signed SpaceX on for the work.
Unlike the thousands of Starlink satellites SpaceX has stacked into orbit over the years, O3b mPower flies in a different neighborhood entirely. The three new satellites, tagged F11, F12 and F13, are headed for medium Earth orbit at roughly 5,000 miles up, more than ten times higher than Starlink’s shell around 340 miles but still a small fraction of the 22,000 miles where old school geostationary satellites sit. That middle position is the whole point, because a satellite that far out needs far fewer siblings to blanket the globe than a low orbit constellation does. Essentially, SES only needed 13 satellites total to build a network offering quick, steady service that used to require thousands of spacecraft.
With most people having heard plenty about Starlink and almost nothing about O3b mPower, SES and SpaceX already blend the two networks for some customers. Both SpaceX and SES sell satellite broadband, but they’re aimed at different buyers. Starlink is built for volume, direct to consumers, RVs, homes, small businesses, plus a growing aviation and maritime business. O3b mPower skips consumers entirely and sells enterprise grade connectivity to airlines, cruise lines, offshore energy operators, telecoms needing backhaul, and governments, priced and provisioned more like a dedicated circuit.
A 2023 partnership lets cruise ships combine Starlink’s speed with O3b mPower’s steady capacity depending on what a ship needs at a given moment. Sunday’s completed 13 satellite constellation effectively finishes the medium orbit half of that pairing, years after.
Sunday’s mission was already a something on SpaceX’s manifest well before O3b mPower entered the picture. This flight marked its 29th trip to orbit, a history that includes two crewed Axiom missions, the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope and 22 separate Starlink batches. SpaceX has landed boosters on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas so often that Sunday’s touchdown attempt, if it went as planned, was set to be the 661st successful Falcon booster landing to date.
For a company that pushed the Starlink constellation past 11,000 satellites back in August, almost entirely through bulk launches from California, Sunday’s flight was a reminder that SpaceX’s schedule still has room for someone else’s satellites too. SES gets a finished network built for a narrower set of customers, and Falcon 9 gets one more line on an already long resume.
Elon Musk
Tesla gives the Roadster an official “Go for launch” demonstration date
Tesla teased an October 1 Roadster reveal, reviving years of delayed SpaceX thruster hover promises.
Tesla teased an October 1 event date for its next generation Roadster, posting an image on X Saturday that shows the car lit up like it is sitting on a launch pad, with the date “10.01” stamped across the bottom and the caption “Go for launch.” A countdown clock on Tesla’s Roadster order page now points to the same date, which falls on a Thursday. The company has not said where the event will happen or whether it will be streamed at the moment. Stay with us @Teslarati for live updates.
Go for launch pic.twitter.com/Khu03eiZ04
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 12, 2026
Tesla has since sent formal invitations to reservation holders confirming the event will take place in Waco, Texas, about 90 minutes north of its Austin headquarters, based on a digital ticket shared on X by Sawyer Merritt. Tesla did not name the exact venue, though Waco sits close to SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, rocket test site, previously reported as the planned location for a Roadster thruster demonstration. The invite sets the reveal for 8:30 p.m. Eastern on October 1, requires RSVPs by midnight on September 16, and limits entry to guests 21 and older. Invitations are non-transferable.
The tease follows nine years of a project defined by unimaginable specs along with slipped dates. Musk first showed the second generation Roadster in November 2017 as a surprise reveal at the end of the Tesla Semi event, promising a 0 to 60 mph time under two seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery, and production starting in 2020. At last November’s shareholder meeting, Musk set an April 1 demo date and joked the choice gave him “deniability” if it slipped again, which it did, moving first to late April, then to “a month or so,” then to August.
Tesla Roadster SpaceX Package’s 1.1-second 0-60 mph launch visualized in concept video
Whatever Tesla shows on October 1 is expected to center on the SpaceX developed thruster package Musk has described since 2018. Internally code named A71, a nod to the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the system reportedly uses cold gas thrusters fed by a composite overwrapped pressure vessel, the same tank design SpaceX uses on Falcon 9. Musk has said a thruster equipped Roadster could hit 60 mph in about 1.1 seconds under roughly 2.75 g of launch force, well past the 1.9 second figure quoted for the standard car. That version reportedly will not be street legal and has reportedly been discussed as a limited run sold through a track only program.
The standard Roadster is still expected to carry the original $200,000 base price and $250,000 Founders Series tier, both set when Tesla opened $50,000 and $250,000 reservations in 2017. Tesla VP of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moravy has confirmed production will happen at Gigafactory Texas, with Musk targeting 2027 or 2028, 12 to 18 months after whatever the company demonstrates next month.
Tesla is planning to roll out some pretty significant safety and accident avoidance features with Full Self-Driving version 15, which will be the next major FSD deployment from the company.
Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy used a near-miss this week to preview what the company says is the next leap in Full Self-Driving.
In response to a driver whose car had swerved away from another vehicle pulling out of a parking lot, Elluswamy wrote that he was glad the owner was safe and that “even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance” would arrive with FSD v15.
Glad you are safe. Even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance coming as part of the next big upgrade (v15).
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) September 11, 2026
The comment landed as Tesla continues to treat software as the primary safety upgrade path. v15 is described internally as a larger architectural step, with a much bigger neural network and tighter coupling between prediction and control.
The company has already begun using early v15 software in some robotaxi operations while rolling out safety features such as Automatic Collision Evasion into current customer cars, allowing the driving stack to intervene even when the driver is in manual control.
Tesla is rolling out a new FSD version with a massive safety addition
Tesla’s published telemetry is the backbone of its safety argument. In recent North American Vehicle Safety Report data, vehicles with FSD (Supervised) engaged traveled roughly 5.1 million to 5.7 million miles between major collisions, defined as airbag-deployment events.
Tesla’s estimate of the U.S. average over the same period is about 699,000 miles per comparable crash. That is the comparison Tesla often frames as roughly seven times fewer major collisions.
A tighter comparison uses the same Tesla fleet. Cars driven manually with active safety features such as automatic emergency braking still recorded a major collision about every 2.1 million miles. Against that baseline, FSD’s advantage shrinks to roughly 2.4 to 2.7 times fewer severe crashes, which independent researchers argue is the more apples-to-apples figure.
European data released in 2026 pointed in the same direction: Tesla reported FSD as 3.5 times safer than manual driving in the Netherlands and 4.1 times fewer collisions than manually driven Teslas with active safety across more than 100 million kilometers in five approved countries.
Those numbers do not settle every debate. NHTSA’s Standing General Order still shows Tesla accounting for the large majority of U.S. Level 2 driver-assist crash reports, in part because the fleet logs far more assisted miles than rivals. Critics also note that Tesla’s “U.S. average” mixes crash definitions and driving mix.
Even so, Tesla’s own same-car comparisons, plus lower rates of automatic emergency braking and harsh maneuvers when FSD is engaged, are the evidence Elluswamy is pointing to when he says v15 will push prediction and collision avoidance further. The claim is not that software already eliminates risk. It is that each major version is meant to widen the gap between the system and an unaided human driver.
Why SpaceX is finishing another space-internet system that isn’t Starlink
Tesla gives the Roadster an official “Go for launch” demonstration date
