Lifestyle
Tesla leads the EV charge, but others are getting the credit
Tesla has an overwhelming amount of influence on the automotive sector, and for a company that has only been building cars for 12 years, that’s pretty impressive. Not only has the company shown that cars can be powered by batteries and still be cool, but it is changing other, more subtle details. For example, cars don’t need buttons and knobs for every function they hold. Other car companies are adopting minimalistic designs, simply because Tesla showed that they are just as, if not more, effective as all those annoying buttons that used to dominate car interiors.
In addition to those subtle details, the overall adoption of the EV sector by consumers can basically be attributed to Tesla’s mass appeal. While Elon Musk has always said that branding is dumb, Tesla has a great “brand.” Forever, people thought that EVs were these whining cars that could only go 80 miles before you’d have to plug it in again. But Tesla is different. Tesla has a mystique about it, a certain brand appeal. People look at $35,000 Teslas the same way they do a $200,000 Lamborghini.
But what might be more impressive about Tesla than its appeal to consumers is the fact that car companies that have been around for over 100 years are chasing after a 12-year-old car company run by a guy who loves video games, silly jokes, and is more interactive with followers than any other CEO on the planet.
The fact of the matter is, Tesla changed the game. While they might not have invented the first electric car, they made the idea better. While they may not be the first company to make a semi-autonomous car, they made the idea better. And while they may not have built the first battery that ever went into an EV, they made the idea better.
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Now, everyone is hopping on board. This is where I ask: Do you think that Volkswagen, GM, Ford, and others would be developing EV tech if Tesla never existed?
I don’t think so. I think this is where examining the influence on the automotive market as a whole that Tesla has had so far is worth noting. But when you have this influence, there come some negatives.
This week, Tesla news has been flooded by reviews and examples of the Full Self-Driving Beta. It’s been out for about a week and a half, and we’ve seen the self-driving tech in a variety of settings and environments. We all know that this is a rough draft of what will be released in a few months to more owners, and we know that there are going to be critiques and criticisms about what Tesla could have done differently.
However, there are already reviews, like the one from Consumer Reports, claiming that Tesla Autopilot is a “distant-second” to GM’s Super Cruise. Unbelievably, the Tesla community has come to expect that mainstream publications and journalism outlets will side with other companies. It is something that has not surprised anyone when it comes to Tesla and another carmaker.
Interestingly, Super Cruise was not widely talked about by media outlets until Tesla’s FSD Beta was released. Now, the idea that GM has this all-capable Super Cruise that is so much better than Autopilot is supposed to be accepted. If this was the case, why was nobody really mentioning Super Cruise before? All we heard about was Tesla Autopilot.
Another case of Tesla “leading the herd” and influencing other car companies, is batteries. When Tesla started talking about a million-mile battery a few months back, everyone outside the community was skeptical. Telling family and friends about their developments was like trying to convince them Santa Claus is real. They just weren’t buying it.
However, GM then said that they were closer to a million-mile battery than ever before. Did they outline their plan? No. Did they say where they were sourcing material from? No. They just said, “We have a battery. It’s better than Tesla’s.” That was that, and everyone outside the community bought it.
What does Tesla do? Has an entire day devoted to batteries and cell development. Showing the new 4680 cells, breaking down how it will be better but more affordable, and how it will be on par with gas car pricing was something to admire. However, after showing the cell, how they were building it, and outlining that it was already being produced right down the street from Fremont, people still didn’t believe it.
GM was all talk, and it was believable. Tesla showed it, and it was unbelievable.
GM watches Tesla go from “graveyard-bound” to inspiration in pursuit of million-mile battery
Media will go after what is familiar and side with the established and long-lasting carmakers before it will ever admit that what Tesla is doing is groundbreaking in every sense of the word. With FSD, we see that Tesla is head and shoulders above GM with Super Cruise. However, these MSM outlets continue to give GM credit, stating that Super Cruise is better than Autopilot, and it isn’t close.
I know that this is likely due to money. It usually has to do with that. But the fact is, Tesla made all of these topics relevant, and the company truly gets no credit. Tesla made EVs relevant, but other car companies are getting the hype, even if their tech doesn’t even exist yet. Tesla made battery cell development relevant, but other companies are getting the credit and the praise, even if they don’t have an EV in production. Tesla made self-driving cars a real possibility. While Waymo was around, GM’s Super Cruise is now being talked about all because Tesla released the FSD Beta.
The reality is, legacy automakers are becoming relevant off of Tesla’s name because they’re following whatever Tesla does. None of these car companies would have changed their strategies if Tesla didn’t exist. This is all proof that Tesla is the most powerful car company on the planet, and everyone is chasing them.
The influence is more than just consumers. It is about an industry as a whole, which is now being controlled by a company that was “graveyard bound,” according to a former GM executive. Now, GM, along with the rest of the automotive world, is chasing after the little guy.
I use this newsletter to share my thoughts on what is going on in the Tesla world. If you want to talk to me directly, you can email me or reach me on Twitter. I don’t bite, be sure to reach out!
Elon Musk
The Boring Company clears final Nashville hurdle: Music City loop is full speed ahead
The Boring Company has cleared its final Nashville hurdles, putting the Music City Loop on track for 2026.
The Boring Company has cleared one of its most significant regulatory milestones yet, securing a key easement from the Music City Center in Nashville just days ago, the latest in a series of approvals that have pushed the Music City Loop project firmly into construction reality.
On March 24, 2026, the Convention Center Authority voted to grant The Boring Company access to an easement along the west side of the Music City Center property, allowing tunneling beneath the privately owned venue. The move follows a unanimous 7-0 vote by the Metro Nashville Airport Authority on February 18, and a joint state and federal approval from the Tennessee Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration on February 25. Together, these green lights have cleared the path for a roughly 10-mile underground tunnel connecting downtown Nashville to Nashville International Airport, with potential extensions into midtown along West End Avenue.
Music City Loop could highlight The Boring Company’s real disruption
Nashville was selected by The Boring Company largely because of its rapid population growth and the strain that growth has placed on surface infrastructure. Traffic has become a persistent problem for residents, convention visitors, and airport travelers alike. The Music City Loop promises an approximately 8-minute underground transit time between downtown and the Nashville International Airport (BNA), removing thousands of vehicles from surface roads daily while operating as a fully electric, zero-emissions system at no cost to taxpayers.
The project fits squarely within a broader vision Musk has championed for years. In responding to a breakdown of the Loop’s construction costs, Musk posted on X: “Tunnels are so underrated.” The comment reflected a longstanding belief that underground transit represents one of the most cost-effective and scalable infrastructure solutions available. The Boring Company has claimed it can build 13 miles of twin tunnels in Nashville for between $240 million and $300 million total, a fraction of what comparable projects cost elsewhere in the country.
Image Credit: The Boring Company/Twitter
The Las Vegas Loop, The Boring Company’s first operational system, has served as a proof of concept. During the CONEXPO trade show in March 2026, the Vegas Loop transported approximately 82,000 passengers over five days at the Las Vegas Convention Center, demonstrating the system’s capacity during large-scale events. Nashville draws millions of convention visitors and tourists each year, and local business leaders have pointed to that same capacity as a major draw for supporting the project.
The Music City Loop was first announced in July 2025. Construction began within hours of the February 25 state approval, with The Boring Company’s Prufrock tunneling machine already in the ground the same evening. The first operational segment is targeted for late 2026, with the full route expected to be complete by 2029. The project represents one of the largest privately funded infrastructure efforts currently underway in the United States.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s $10 Trillion robot: Inside Tesla’s push to mass produce Optimus
Tesla’s surging Optimus job listings reveal a company sprinting from prototype to one million robot production.
Tesla is accelerating its push to bring the Optimus humanoid robot to high volume production, and its recent job listings tells the story as clearly as any earnings call.
With well over 100 Optimus related job openings now posted across its U.S. facilities, Tesla is signaling a critical pivot for the program, moving it from a captivating tech demo to a serious manufacturing endeavor. Roles span the full spectrum of the product lifecycle, from Robotics Software Engineers and Manufacturing Engineers to Mechanical Integration Engineers and AI Engineers focused on world modeling and video generation. One active listing for a Software Engineer on the Optimus team asks candidates to build scalable and reliable data pipelines for Optimus manufacturing lines and develop automation tools that accelerate analysis and visualization for mass manufacturing.
Tesla is racing toward a one million unit annual production target. The clearest signal yet that Tesla is treating Optimus as its primary business came on January 28, 2026, during the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call. Musk announced that Tesla is ending production of the Model S and Model X, and will repurpose those lines at its Fremont, California factory to build Optimus humanoid robots.
A production intent prototype of Optimus Version 3 is planned to be ready in early 2026, after which Tesla intends to build a one million unit production line with a targeted production start by the end of 2026. To support that ramp, Tesla broke ground on a massive new Optimus manufacturing facility at Gigafactory Texas in late 2025, with ambitions to eventually reach 10 million units per year.
Tesla Giga Texas to feature massive Optimus V4 production line
The business case for scaling this aggressively is rooted in labor economics. Musk has stated that “Optimus has the potential to be the biggest product of all time,” reasoning that if Tesla can produce capable humanoid robots at scale and reasonable cost, every task currently performed by human labor becomes a potential application. In a separate statement, Musk framed Optimus’s long term importance even more bluntly, saying it could surpass Tesla’s vehicle business in scale with the potential to generate $10 trillion in revenue.
The industries Tesla is targeting first are those most burdened by repetitive physical labor. Early applications include manufacturing assembly, material handling and quality inspection, as well as logistics tasks like loading, unloading, sorting, and transporting goods in warehouses and distribution centers. Longer term, Tesla’s vision is for Optimus to penetrate household, medical, and logistics scenarios at the scale of a smartphone rollout.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Boring Co. Tunnel Vision Challenge ends with a surprise for Louisiana, Maryland and Dallas
The Boring Company stunned three cities today, awarding New Orleans, Baltimore, and Dallas free underground Loop tunnels.
Elon Musk’s The Boring Company (TBC) announced today that it is building free underground Loop tunnels in three American cities: New Orleans, Louisiana; Baltimore, Maryland; and Dallas, Texas. The company had promised one winner when it launched the Tunnel Vision Challenge in January. After receiving 487 submissions, it selected three, committing to fund and construct all of them pending a feasibility review, entirely at its own expense. For a company that has faced years of skepticism over the gap between its promises and its delivered projects, choosing to expand its commitment rather than narrow it is a notable shift in both scale and accountability.
All three projects will now enter a rigorous, fully funded diligence phase that includes meetings with elected officials, regulators, community and business leaders, geotechnical borings, and a complete investigation of subsurface utilities and infrastructure. TBC confirmed that all costs associated with this diligence process are 100% funded by the company. If all three projects pass feasibility, all three get built. If only one clears the bar, that one gets built. The company’s willingness to fund the due diligence regardless of outcome removes one of the most common early-stage barriers that kills promising infrastructure proposals before they leave a spreadsheet.
Beyond the three winners, TBC announced it will continue working with two additional entrants it found compelling enough to pursue independently: the Hendersonville Utility Tunnel in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and the Morgan’s Wonderland Tunnel in San Antonio, Texas, which would notably serve one of the nation’s premier theme parks built specifically for guests with special needs.
The challenge also coincides with TBC’s most active construction period to date. The company recently began drilling on the Music City Loop near the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville, and in February it broke ground on a Loop in Dubai. Musk has long argued that the fundamental problem with urban infrastructure is cost and bureaucratic inertia, not engineering. “The key to solving traffic is making going 3D either up or down,” he said in 2018, a conviction now reflected in a company structure built to absorb the financial risk that typically stalls public projects for years.
Music City Loop could highlight The Boring Company’s real disruption
The Tunnel Vision Challenge’s most underappreciated element may be what it produced beyond three winners. Submissions came from individuals, companies, and governments across states including Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, and Texas, as well as from international entrants. Musk captured the underlying logic years ago when he said, “Traffic is driving me nuts. I’m going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging.” Today, three American cities are counting on exactly that.
Tunnel Vision Challenge results!
We’ve been overwhelmed with the amazing submissions…so we are announcing three winners!
The Thrilling Three are:
– NOLA Loop (New Orleans, LA)
– Ravens Loop (Baltimore, MD)
– University Hills Loop (Dallas, TX)What happens next? TBC and the… https://t.co/cY2ULftfiK
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) March 24, 2026
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