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
Elon Musk’s Boring Company lands a new Middle East deal, and Nashville is about to get faster
The Boring Company signs Abu Dhabi tunnel agreement while adding more Prufrock machines in Nashville.
The Boring Company has signed an agreement with Abu Dhabi to study underground transport and utility tunnels across the emirate, adding a second UAE city to its pipeline as it prepares to also scale up tunneling back home in Nashville.
The deal was signed Thursday at the Liveability and Investment Exhibition (LIVEX 2026) by Boring Company President Steve Davis and Maysarah Mahmoud Salim Eid, director general of the Abu Dhabi Projects and Infrastructure Centre (ADPIC), according to the Abu Dhabi Media Office. Mohamed Ali Al Shorafa, chairman of the emirate’s Department of Municipalities and Transport, attended the signing.
Under the agreement, the two sides will assess feasibility, delivery and operating models for tunnels that could carry passengers or utilities. They will also look at Abu Dhabi’s potential as a regional hub for tunneling work. The current phase is exploratory, and no construction commitment or project budget has been announced.
“Abu Dhabi provides an ideal environment to explore the next generation of underground infrastructure solutions, supported by its ambitious growth vision and strong commitment to advanced technologies,”
Davis said. He added that the company wants to assess how tunnels can “expand urban capacity more efficiently, and enable better use of available space.”
The timing lines up with the money, considering last month, The Boring Company closed a $3 billion Series D led by the UAE and affiliated investors, valuing the company at $23 billion, as Teslarati reported. That round came with a commitment to build more than 150 kilometers of tunnel across the UAE, separate from the Dubai Loop pilot already under contract with Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority. That pilot covers 6.4 kilometers and four stations linking DIFC and Dubai Mall at a cost of about $154 million.
Back home, The Boring Company projects in Nashville are also scaling up, with the company telling local NewsChannel 5 that a third Prufrock machine could start digging the Music City Loop in late October. A fourth is also targeted before the end of the year. Two machines are already mining Nashville limestone at the same time, and work is underway on a new launch site for the third.
The company said it has made more than 300 design and performance upgrades to its original Nashville machine. It is also working with property owners on more than 40 planned stations, with approvals in place for a future Nashville International Airport connection, a downtown station near the Music City Center, and stops at residential towers and the JW Marriott.
Construction on the Music City Loop began the same evening Tennessee and federal regulators approved the project’s lease in February, and the company targeted its first operational segment for late 2026. Back in Las Vegas, The Boring Company has said it plans to double its Vegas Loop station count by year’s end.
Lifestyle
Tesla FSD changed its mind mid-intersection, and it may have saved a life
Tesla shares dashcam footage of FSD Supervised stopping mid intersection to avoid a T-bone crash.
Tesla is putting another Full Self-Driving save in front of its 24.8 million followers on X.
On Tuesday morning, Tesla’s main account shared a dashcam clip with the caption “FSD Supervised preventing T-bone crash.” The footage came from an owner posting as TheNewGrid, who described what happened at a stop sign: “I looked at the car coming to the stop sign figured they would stop, my car went, then came to a stop mid intersection as they flew by. Had I been manually driving this would have resulted in a crash.”
The sequence is the notable part. FSD had already started crossing when the other driver ran the stop sign. Instead of pressing on, the car braked hard in the middle of the intersection and let the crossing vehicle pass in front of it. By the owner’s own account, they had made the same assumption the software initially made, that the other car would stop, and would not have corrected in time.
FSD Supervised preventing T-bone crash
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 6, 2026
The clip is the latest in a run of safety posts Tesla has amplified over the past several days. On Saturday, the company shared a video from Selling Sunset star Jason Oppenheim, who sold his Bentley for a Model Y and said he was buying Teslas with FSD for 10 of his employees. Ashok Elluswamy, who leads Tesla AI, followed up by writing that Tesla self-driving “reacts to other people cutting into your path with super-human response times.” On Monday, a Cybertruck owner posted footage of FSD moving across three lanes from a red light to clear a path for an ambulance approaching from behind.
This recent clip also lands a few weeks after Tesla began shipping Automatic Collision Evasion with FSD v14.3.9, a feature that can activate FSD on the driver’s behalf when a frontal collision is imminent or the driver appears distracted. Elluswamy said in September that “even earlier prediction of hazards, even faster reaction time and overall significantly better safety and collision avoidance” are coming with v15, the release Tesla has tied to round the clock Robotaxi operation.
The safety messaging matters beyond social media. Tesla has said FSD Supervised was 4.1 times less likely to crash than manual driving across 100 million kilometers on European roads, and it has been putting those figures in front of regulators. Eight EU countries have now approved FSD Supervised, with Croatia the most recent, but the EU’s bloc-wide vote originally set for October 6 has been pushed to December at the earliest.
FSD Supervised is still a Level 2 system, and the driver remains responsible at all times. Even heavy users find reasons to step in. Teslarati’s Joey Klender, who uses FSD for about 76 percent of his driving, laid out five recurring issues on Tuesday that still prompt him to intervene. Clips like this one show the other column of that ledger: moments where the software caught a mistake a human was about to make.
Lifestyle
Tesla wins over Netflix’s Selling Sunset star, who’s now ditching his Bentley
Selling Sunset’s Jason Oppenheim swapped his Bentley for a Tesla and promised ten for employees.
Jason Oppenheim, the luxury real estate broker best known as the star of Netflix’s Selling Sunset, has parked his Bentley for good and moved into a Tesla Model Y, and he says Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is the reason.
Oppenheim, who founded The Oppenheim Group, the Los Angeles brokerage at the center of the show, posted a video to X on Saturday evening that he called “the most important video I’ve ever posted.” In it, he rides from Newport Beach to his firm’s Los Angeles office, a trip he put at roughly an hour and 15 minutes, while FSD handles the drive and parks the car without him touching the wheel or the accelerator. He said he handed the Bentley to his father because he no longer has any use for it.
Tesla shared the clip from its main account on X about two hours later, pulling out the quote that has since spread well beyond the Tesla community:
“[FSD Supervised] is life-changing. I was on the phone with my brother last night, and I made him buy one. He literally bought one while we were talking. I’m buying 10 of my employees a Tesla with FSD. It’s 8x safer than the average driver. There’s nothing more important than the safety of you and your loved ones.”
Oppenheim was candid about why the safety pitch landed with him. He admitted in the video that he is a distracted driver who answers emails and texts behind the wheel, and framed the employee purchases as a way to keep his team off their phones while driving. Elon Musk posted “Tesla FSD feels like magic” less than half an hour after the video went live.
The endorsement lands at a convenient moment for Tesla. The company delivered 486,532 vehicles in Q3, beating Wall Street’s estimates and marking its best quarter ever without the $7,500 federal EV tax credit.
A public service announcement. https://t.co/NYa1IpKwBX
— Jason Oppenheim (@OppenheimJason) October 4, 2026
Tesla FSD has been subscription only in the U.S. since February at $99 per month, and Tesla said in its Q2 update that active subscriptions hit 1.48 million, up 56 percent year over year, with more than 55 percent of new North American deliveries leaving with FSD attached. That attach rate is the figure Ron Baron cited last month when he told CNBC “the time to buy the stock is now.” At current pricing, Oppenheim’s 10 employee cars alone would add $990 a month, or about $11,880 a year, in FSD revenue.
Tesla AI head Ashok Elluswamy said in July that FSD had logged more than 12 billion miles while going roughly twice as far between collisions as manual driving. FSD also remains a supervised system, so Oppenheim and his employees are still required to watch the road, even as Tesla rolls out v14.3.10 with Automatic Collision Evasion, which can steer or brake on its own to avoid a frontal crash.
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