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Tesla won’t be ‘king of the hill’ forever, but it will be for the foreseeable future
Tesla is the “king of the hill” in the electric vehicle sector, former company board member Steve Westly said on CNBC’s Power Lunch yesterday. However, Westly, who joined Tesla in 2007 and left several years later, doesn’t believe the automaker will remain at the helm of the EV industry forever. Driven by growing competition from both low-end and high-end automakers, Westly says Tesla’s time at the top is dependent on its competition, because other markets, like Europe, have pushed Tesla to the wayside in favor of other companies.
While it is safe to say Tesla won’t be at the top of the EV industry “forever,” it is certainly also safe to say that they will lead the sector for a considerable amount of time. With legacy automakers dragging their feet and releasing electric vehicle models for the first time in 2021 and beyond, they sit years behind Tesla, whose only focus is building sustainable, high-performance battery electric vehicles. Meanwhile, companies like Ford and GM continue to drag their feet in the mission of developing a lineup of EVs, and European car companies face issues related to production, transitioning away from ICE, and software. Volkswagen is the automaker that comes to mind with the latter issue.
Westly cited GM going all-electric by 2035, Volkswagen indicating that they’re “all in” on EVs, and Volvo, who announced an all-EV lineup by 2030, as indicators that Tesla won’t be the king forever.
But what have any of these car companies done to prove that Tesla won’t be on the top in 2030? 2035? 2050, even?
It is true that Tesla has fallen a tad in terms of European EV sales figures, but it’s not for no reason. Tesla has not yet started the operation of Giga Berlin, its introductory European production facility that could bring at least 500,000 cars to the market every year. Refusing to export Model Y variants from the United States or China, Europe is stuck with the Model S, Model X, and the Model 3, but only for a few months as Giga Berlin is set to begin production during Summer 2021.
While it is true that Tesla is facing competition from both economical EV brands and luxury manufacturers, this fact alone is a testament to the wide range of EVs that the company is able to offer. Not only is Tesla manufacturing the Model 3 and Model Y, which are more than affordable to many families across the world, but it is also making a point to continue the production and sale of its two, more luxurious models: the Model S and Model X. Not necessarily a huge contributor to the company’s yearly production and delivery targets, both of the vehicles were put off as “sentimental” projects by Elon Musk several years ago. However, a recent refresh to both of these cars seems to indicate that the flagship Tesla vehicles are not going anywhere anytime soon.
In the United States, Tesla reigns supreme with the Model 3 and Model Y. In China, the only car to dethrone the Model 3 is an inexpensive, low-range GM project known as the Wuling HongGuang Mini EV that boasts between 80 and 110 miles of range per charge. In Europe, Tesla was once the “King of the Hill.” But, the lack of a production facility ultimately dethroned the company’s title as the highest-selling EV brand on the continent most thirsty for electric powertrains. When Giga Berlin begins production, this will likely change, and Tesla will reopen its potential to compete with the brands that have ruled the European EV sector for the last few years.
Tesla has continued to grow and expand its footprint through a few challenging years, which indicates that, despite the proven adversity that will likely always exist, the company is robust enough to deflect most of the challenges that come its way. Despite production bottlenecks in 2017 with the Model 3, continued issues in 2018, and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Tesla has sustained a growth pattern that most automotive startups can only dream about. The point that Westly made about Tesla not being “King of the Hill” forever is true, but the foreseeable future belongs to Tesla. Until a company comes along and proves otherwise, Elon Musk’s EV company will remain at the helm, as long as it continues to develop a series of mind-blowing EV products that offer range, performance, and aesthetics that are unmatched by any car company within the last decade.
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https://youtu.be/eeizzrlFaZM
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SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
SpaceX launched the classified USSF-385 mission from Vandenberg, landing its booster on a tenth flight.
SpaceX launched another classified mission for the U.S. Space Force from California early Saturday morning, and the Falcon 9 booster that carried it landed on a drone ship in the Pacific for the tenth time. The USSF-385 mission lifted off from Space Launch Complex 4E at Vandenberg Space Force Base at 7:00 a.m. PT.
Booster B1100 touched down on Of Course I Still Love You roughly eight and a half minutes after liftoff. It was the booster’s tenth flight and tenth successful landing, following the NROL-95 national security mission and eight Starlink launches. Its previous flight, a Starlink Group 15 mission on August 22, came just 35 days earlier. SpaceX ended its livestream shortly after the landing, which is standard for classified payloads, and neither the company nor the Space Force has said what the rocket carried.
Watch Falcon 9 launch the USSF-385 mission from pad 4E in California https://t.co/CAdbx85Ydy
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 26, 2026
USSF-385 is the fourth Space Force launch from the same Vandenberg pad in roughly six weeks, following USSF-366 on August 15, USSF-153 on September 10, and USSF-259 on September 17. When SpaceX flew USSF-366 in August, independent trackers noted that the rocket’s stage drop zones matched SpaceX’s Starlink Group 15 missions, pointing to Starshield, the government version of the Starlink satellite bus. The Space Force later cataloged 23 satellites after both USSF-366 and USSF-153, while USSF-259 placed 17 satellites into a different orbital plane, per KeepTrack. Launch databases describe USSF-385 the same way, though the payload remains officially unidentified.
The cadence lines up with the contracts, because in July, the Space Force awarded SpaceX $1.6 billion in task orders for 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg through the end of 2027. SpaceX also holds contracts to build pieces of that same network, which pushed its Pentagon contract total for 2026 past $8 billion.
Saturday’s flight was also the sixth and final Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg in September, according to Spaceflight Now, while only one Falcon 9 flew from the East Coast this month as SpaceX shifts its Florida infrastructure toward Starship. Launch trackers list it as SpaceX’s 112th mission of 2026 and the 108th Falcon 9 flight of the year, with SLC-4E turned around about six and a half days after its previous launch.
The West Coast pad will not stay quiet for long, considering SpaceX has another Starlink mission scheduled from SLC-4E on September 30. Meanwhile, in Texas, the company is two days away from Starship Flight 14, which is targeting Monday at 7:15 a.m. CT for the vehicle’s first attempt to reach orbit.
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Tesla hints at new Roadster design in surprise clip
Tesla ended its Semi event with a Roadster teaser revealing a new front light bar.
Tesla closed out its Semi event in Nevada on Thursday night with a nod to its own history, dropping a short Roadster teaser that suggests the production car will look noticeably different from the prototype first shown in 2017.
“We can’t have a Semi event without the Roadster,” Tesla engineering executive Lars Moravy told the crowd before the clip played. The line was a deliberate callback. Tesla first revealed the next generation Roadster in November 2017 by driving it out of the back of a Semi trailer at the truck’s original unveiling in Hawthorne, California.
The new video opens on trailer doors swinging apart in the dark. A thin white light bar glows across what appears to be the nose of the car, Tesla and SpaceX logos flash over the frame, and the Roadster name appears before the clip ends on “See you next week.” Tesla posted the nine second clip on X after the livestream wrapped.
See you next week pic.twitter.com/BT52bGVxFu
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 25, 2026
The light bar is the most concrete design detail so far. The 2017 prototype used two separate curved headlamp pods, while a connected front light strip would bring the Roadster in line with the Cybertruck, Cybercab, Semi, and refreshed Model Y. Sawyer Merritt was among the first to point out what looked like part of a SpaceX logo in the video, something Tesla has not addressed.
That logo fits the buildup around the optional SpaceX Package, which Elon Musk has long said would use cold gas thrusters to improve acceleration and possibly allow the car to briefly leave the ground. Tesla’s “Go for launch” post on September 12 set the October 1 date, and invitations sent to reservation holders place the event in Waco, Texas, at 8:30 p.m. Eastern. Waco sits roughly 20 minutes from SpaceX’s McGregor rocket test site, where the FAA has put a temporary flight restriction in place from September 18 through October 2, covering a 1.5 nautical mile radius from the surface up to 10,000 feet.
Tesla is also taking money ahead of the reveal. The company reopened Roadster reservations earlier this week with a $5,000 refundable card payment, followed by a $45,000 wire transfer due within 10 days. That puts buyers at $50,000 committed before Tesla has published a price.
The original pitch set a high bar: 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds before any upgrades, 620 miles of range, a top speed above 250 mph, and production in 2020. That timeline has slipped repeatedly, and Tesla has since pointed to production at Gigafactory Texas no earlier than 2027. The company has said next Thursday’s event will include pricing, specifications, and production targets, the three details original reservation holders have been waiting on for nearly nine years.
Tesla Full Self-Driving’s release in Europe is set to be delayed by at least a few months.
The European Union will not vote on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) on October 6. The draft agenda for the 119th meeting of the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles lists only a 25-minute “continuation of discussions” on the Netherlands’ Article 39 request, not a decision. The next scheduled TCMV session is in December, which is now the earliest date a bloc-wide vote could occur.
Tesla Europe had pointed to October 6 as a possible EU-wide vote after the Dutch vehicle authority RDW granted the first European type approval on April 10.
That approval, under UN Regulation 171 plus an Article 39 exemption in EU Regulation 2018/858, is the legal file other member states have been recognizing one by one. The same committee has already discussed the request twice without voting.
Elon Musk’s reply to the delay was a single word: “Sigh.”
Sigh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 25, 2026
Seven EU countries have now cleared FSD Supervised on their own roads: the Netherlands, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Belgium, Slovenia, and Czechia. Those seven states represent about 53 million people, or roughly 12 percent of the EU population. An EU-wide authorization still needs a qualified majority: at least 15 of 27 member states representing 65 percent of the bloc’s population, about 292 million people.
Germany, France, Italy, and Spain remain the decisive markets. France has already rejected the current system; several other governments have flagged speed-limit compliance as the main sticking point.
The safety case Tesla is putting in front of those governments is now public. On September 1, Tesla Europe said FSD Supervised was in use by more than 70,000 customers, covering over 1 million kilometers a day, and was 4.1 times less likely to be involved in a crash than manual driving across 100 million kilometers on EU public roads.
An earlier mid-year cut of the same fleet data, covering 65 million kilometers in five approved countries, put the collision advantage at 5.2 times, with zero highway collisions over 41.9 million kilometers. Tesla also reported far fewer automatic emergency braking events, harsh accelerations, and hard swerves than in comparable manual Tesla driving. Those figures are company-reported, not independently audited.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is taking over Europe: fourth country gets FSD approval
The public-health backdrop is harder to dispute. European countries recorded about 19,400 road deaths in 2025, or roughly 53 a day, most of them attributed to human error. FSD Supervised is not unsupervised autonomy; the driver remains legally responsible. But the software is already legal and in daily use across seven member states.
Until TCMV votes, the rest of the EU remains a patchwork: available in Prague and Amsterdam, locked behind review in Paris and Berlin. December is now the next chance to close that gap.
SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
Tesla hints at new Roadster design in surprise clip
