News
‘Tesla Killers’ are like Bigfoot: They don’t exist and they never will
The term “Tesla Killer” should be retired for the rest of time. For years, automakers across the world have released their introductory electric cars into the quickly growing EV sector. With plans written out and cool, sporty photographs and renders of the “next big thing” in the EV sector being released by some of the world’s largest and oldest car company’s, many media outlets, including this one, have referred to some cars as “Tesla Killers” because that is what automakers are trying to do: knock Tesla off of its pedestal and try to derail some of the momentum that Elon Musk’s company has gained through the past several years.
The problem is this: These cars that are always coined as “Tesla Killers” never pan out to what they’re supposed to be. They’re all hype and relatively no real threat to Tesla or any of its vehicles. In all honesty, “Tesla Killers” are like Bigfoot. You always hear about them, but you never see them, and in the back of your mind, you think that it could be real, but more than likely, it isn’t.
I will admit, there are cars out there that have legitimate potential to derail some of Tesla’s momentum. I think the Lucid Air could be a great competitor to the Model S, and I think Rivian’s R1T could be a great option for potential Cybertruck owners. Some great cars are coming to the market, but none of them are worthy of being deemed a “Tesla Killer.”
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The fact is, the word “killer,” when attributed to everything, means it is a complete ending to any chance of success when used in the comparison of two things. A “Tesla Killer” would have to make a competing car model obsolete, killing it off from the market, and this simply doesn’t happen in the automotive world, at least in my opinion. Even if cars have slumpy sales records or slow months, someone will still buy that car eventually, no matter how crappy, inadequate, or ineffective that vehicle is.
The truth is that all of the cars labeled as “Tesla Killers” have always fallen short. I can remember the Mercedes-Benz EQC donning the label, only to sell barely any units and have the German automaker reconsidering its stance on EVs. The same thing was said about the EQS unveiling. While it is a beautiful car, does anyone really think it’s going to make Tesla reconsider its plans for future models or make it redesign any of its current ones?
Once-deemed ‘Tesla killer’ Mercedes EQC flops with 55 units sold in Germany to date
No, it won’t. It’s not an “it likely won’t” or “there’s a small chance.” It won’t happen. Period.
Tesla is on the top of the EV sector. Like it or not, nobody can really compete with them currently, and vaporware is the only real threat to Tesla’s current momentum. For years, these car companies have said they will build these incredible EVs with all of these great features. Towing capabilities, wading depth, 0-60 MPH times that are more than impressive, astronomical range ratings. You name it, one of these car companies has said it. But how many times, honestly, has a car company kept its word with an EV that it plans to release? How many times have these car companies with decades or even a century of experience come up short? How many times have EV enthusiasts been promised “the next big thing in the EV sector,” only to come up short and revise their plans?
The truth is, it happens more often than not. Car companies need to start getting honest about their issues when developing EVs. I believe transparency, not hopeless promises, is the key to winning over the incredibly loyal EV enthusiasts that make up the community. It is no secret that Tesla owners and fans are quite dismissive toward competitors. Can you really blame them? Can you see how for years, these other car companies have made all of these promises, only for their entire plan to crumble apart like an extra dry cookie?
This isn’t to say that Tesla is perfect, and it isn’t to say that they won’t eventually fall off of their pedestal. Tesla has plenty of issues. They’re dealing with supply constraints, timing inaccuracies, production bottlenecks, and delays in permissions (especially in Berlin). The company also has major issues with customer service and communication, something that has been a complaint in more recent memory. However, Tesla rarely misses when it comes to its cars. Yes, some come later than the company says, but there’s no denying that many of the specs it releases for its vehicles are accurate. No matter how astronomical or outlandish some specs may seem, Tesla usually makes good on its promises.
This is something that other automakers that have been deemed “Tesla Killers” simply haven’t done. They may put fancy names, specs, and features on their cars, but they either fall short and aren’t as effective as they say the car will be, or the car just gets delayed for several years until the companies have put in the correct infrastructure for adequate production.
“Tesla Killers” do not exist. They never have, and they never will. There will never be a car that comes along and makes a Tesla completely obsolete in the EV market. Besides, all of these companies producing “Tesla Killers” wouldn’t even plan to manufacture EVs if it wasn’t for Tesla. Let’s face it; these cars are really “Saviors” to whatever manufacturer they belong to because if they weren’t being planned or produced, these companies would be obsolete in a few years, especially as the EV sector continues to gain momentum and take market share away from petrol-powered machines.
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-Joey
Elon Musk
SpaceX makes history, catching Starship from orbit for the first time
SpaceX caught Starship’s upper stage with its launch tower for the first time on Saturday.
SpaceX caught a Starship upper stage with its launch tower for the first time on Saturday, bringing Ship 42 back to Starbase after roughly 22 and a half hours in orbit on Flight 15. No company has ever returned the upper stage of an orbital rocket to its launch site and caught it.
Ship 42 lifted off Friday evening on top of Booster 22, reached orbit and deployed all 26 of its Starlink V3 satellites. Three of those satellites carried cameras to photograph the ship’s heat shield, and SpaceX said the imagery showed it was in good shape for reentry, allowing controllers to pass on a backup splashdown option overnight. By Saturday morning, SpaceX posted on X that “Pad and tower systems are go for catch.” After about 14 orbits, the ship fired its engines to leave orbit, came back through the atmosphere and was caught by the tower’s chopstick arms.
IT HAPPENED https://t.co/KHITqHUWOf — TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 14, 2026
The catch salvages a flight that started with a setback. Super Heavy did not make it back to the tower on Friday. “We were initially go for a catch, but in the later stages of the coast, the booster aborted itself for a GNC issue that it detected and that put it into its landing offshore,” SpaceX’s Dan Huot said. The booster hovered over the Gulf of Mexico before its flight termination system triggered and it came down in the water.
Elon Musk said Saturday that the booster ran short on propellant because its engines slightly underperformed. The fix, he wrote, is better engine consistency with Raptor V3.2 and a flight software change to cut the engines “about one second earlier” so enough fuel is left for the return. “This booster loss does not change our timeline to reach high volume, fully reusable Starship flights,” Musk added.
The ship is the harder half of that goal, and the one SpaceX had never recovered. Super Heavy has now been caught three times, most recently in March 2025, while every previous ship ended in the ocean or was lost. Falcon 9 lands its boosters routinely but throws its upper stage away on every launch. Musk described a full Starship recovery on SpaceX’s third quarter earnings call as a “profound technology milestone,” and Saturday’s catch shows the hardest piece of it can work.
That piece matters for nearly everything SpaceX is planning. Reusable ships are what make the economics of launching Starlink V3 satellites at scale work, along with the Starmind orbital compute constellation. NASA’s Artemis lunar lander also depends on refilling Starships in orbit with repeated tanker flights, which requires vehicles that can fly again quickly. Musk has said he expects Starship to reach a weekly launch cadence in the first half of 2027.
Flight 15 also improved on the last Starship mission in September, which reached orbit but ended after about three hours with a Pacific splashdown when some engines shut down. Before this flight, SpaceX had shown an animation of the ship catch during its earnings webcast, and Musk put the odds of pulling it off on the first try at “more likely than not,” as Teslarati reported.
Tesla’s long-promised Cybercab is finally available for personal purchase, at least for a select few in the Austin area. But it’s far from a straightforward ownership experience.
The $29,990 price tag comes with a stack of restrictions that redefine what “owning” the vehicle actually means. The two-seat, steering-wheel-free Robotaxi, previously limited to Tesla’s own fleet, now carries contractual terms that limit where it can go, how it can be used, and whether it can even move without an active paid subscription.
Opening Night of Orders
Late on November 13, Tesla announced that select customers were being invited to order a Cybercab for personal use.
Tesla Cybercab goes on sale for $29,990, slated for December deliveries
The estimated purchase price is $29,990 before taxes, paired with a non-refundable $1,000 deposit and an estimated December 2026 delivery in Austin, Texas. The first month of the required :Autonomy Subscription,” priced at $299 per month is included.
After that, the vehicle needs an active subscription to operate at all. The announcement confirmed that customer sales had begun, albeit on an invite-only basis rather than a public order page.
The Fine Print for Buyers
BREAKING: Tesla’s Cybercab Autonomy Subscription terms are now live. A paid monthly subscription is required.
1/12 Tesla: “Your Cybercab will not operate without an active Autonomy Subscription. 🧵 https://t.co/umVk6DJE2x— Spencer (@scotsrule08) November 13, 2026
For those invited to order, the agreements (Cybercab Order Agreement, Terms of Use, and Autonomy Subscription Agreement) impose significant constraints. Major points include:
- A mandatory Autonomy Subscription (currently listed at $299 per month on the order screen, first month included) is required; without it, the Cybercab will not operate.
- Personal, non-commercial use only; ride-hailing, Robotaxi network participation, delivery, or rental requires separate written authorization or product enablement from Tesla.
- Operation restricted to Tesla-enabled Robotaxi geofences and supported service areas, which the company can expand, shrink, or alter; the vehicle may be technologically prevented from operating outside them.
- No unauthorized modifications (including wraps, window tint, or wheel changes) without Tesla or an authorized provider.
- Restricted resale and transfer: written permission required, with contractual damages of at least $50,000 (or full transaction value if higher) for unauthorized sales; Tesla also reserves repurchase rights at a company-determined fair market value, with the owner covering return costs.
- Safety or improper-use “strikeouts” (three or more) can trigger a one-week suspension of autonomous features without prorated refund.
- Owners remain responsible for insurance, registration, charging, parking, and general cleaning; the subscription covers certain maintenance items such as tires, windshields, filters, and camera cleaning, plus limited towing.
- Manual controls on the touchscreen allow only short-distance movement up to about 2 mph and require a valid driver’s license; they are not for public-road driving.
Why These Terms Might Exist
Tesla’s approach prioritizes control over a vehicle designed without traditional human controls and intended primarily as transport-as-a-service, something that Musk has hinted toward for some time now. Restricting commercial use and modifications could be as much of a software integrity, safety, and data collection effort as it is a safety effort.
Fleet consistency could also be in regulatory scrutiny early on in the Cybercab’s days of public operation.
The subscription model generates ongoing revenue beyond the low vehicle price and ensures the car remains connected and updatable, something that will keep the Cybercab as safe as possible as new updates roll out.
Buyback and resale limits reduce the risk of vehicles circulating outside Tesla’s operational and service ecosystem.
It apperas that personal ownership is secondary to the broader Robotaxi network strategy, as Musk has previously stated that the vast majority of Cybercabs would remain Tesla-owned.
Pickup Locations and Musk’s Pricing View
Initial deliveries are estimated for Austin, but personal vehicles are able to operate in any of Tesla’s Robotaxi geofences:
It’ll work unsupervised inside all the same geo locations as @robotaxi, just serving the owners’ needs.
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) November 14, 2026
Those who have been invited to order can also have their personal Cybercab delivered to numerous locations in Texas, including:
- Austin
- Dallas
- Houston
- San Antonio
- Fort Worth
Interesting that you can choose a delivery city https://t.co/SknDz9rFzo
— Whole Mars Catalog (@wholemars) November 14, 2026
As far as the monthly “Autonomy Subscription,” it appears Musk already wants it to be low. He acknowledged last night on X that the subscription price is too high. Along with detailing that the Cybercab will be available nationwide as regulatory approval is received, Musk said the monthly fee should match the cost of FSD and Premium Connectivity, which is about $115 per month.
The launch marks a milestone for unsupervised personal autonomous vehicles, but the fine print makes clear that buyers are purchasing a highly constrained asset whose usefulness is tightly bound to Tesla’s software, service network, and geographic approvals.
Tesla has officially put the Cybercab up for sale, revealing a bargain price and a $299 per month “Autonomy Subscription” that could hit customer hands as soon as December.
The offer requires a $299 monthly Autonomy Subscription, with the first month included in the purchase price, along with a $1,000 non-refundable order deposit. Tesla’s ordering interface shows deliveries targeted for Austin, Texas.
Tesla says that the Cybercab is making transportation more efficient, affordable and accessible than ever before, and that buyers can order their own Cybercab for personal use.
🚨🚨🚨 BREAKING: Tesla Cybercab is officially on sale for $29,990 with a $299/mo “Autonomy Subscription”
Delivery slotted for December! HUGE!
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) November 13, 2026
The Cybercab is Tesla’s dedicated robotaxi, a gold-finished, two-passenger vehicle without a steering wheel or pedals, designed from the outset for unsupervised autonomous operation. It has been in limited Robotaxi service in Austin since September 2026, operating alongside Tesla’s larger fleet of Model Y vehicles.
Production takes place at Gigafactory Texas, which launched earlier this year. Tesla has stated for some time that it planned to put Cybercabs on sale by the end of the year, and it looks like they will come through on that promise if everything goes according to plan.
The Autonomy Subscription is mandatory for the vehicle to operate because it is void of a steering wheel and pedals. Tesla notes that the subscription and regular vehicle maintenance are required, indicating that personal owners will depend on the company’s software and service infrastructure rather than traditional ownership models.
One month of the subscription is included with purchase and subsequent months are billed separately until canceled.
This limited personal-sales opening marks a shift from Tesla’s earlier emphasis on fleet and transport-as-a-service operations. During the Q3 2026 Earnings Call, executives indicated that the vast majority of Cybercabs would remain Tesla-owned and used for rideshare service, while still aiming to place some vehicles with customers by year-end.
Elon Musk has previously targeted a price below $30,000, which was a huge point of emphasis for the Cybercab being the central point of Tesla’s “transportation-as-a-service” model.
Availability remains restricted to invited customers rather than a public order page, and the initial deliveries are expected only in the Austin area where unsupervised Robotaxi operations are already active. Buyers will need to accept the geographic and operational constraints of current autonomous deployment, as the vehicle cannot be driven manually outside supported zones.
The move gives a small number of early buyers the chance to own Tesla’s dedicated autonomous vehicle at the long-discussed sub-$30,000 price point, while the bulk of production continues to support the company’s expanding Robotaxi network.
SpaceX makes history, catching Starship from orbit for the first time
Tesla Cybercab ownership will come with plenty of strings attached
