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Tesla Model S and X owners face discrimination at dealer-run auto show
A number of Tesla owners are calling foul on the organizers of the 2019 Kansas City Auto Show after the event’s organizers, the Automobile Dealers Association of Greater Kansas City (ADAKC), showed discrimination against a Model S and Model X by forcing the electric cars out of the event.
The annual exhibition is being held at the Bartle Hall convention center, and since the auto show itself did not fill the entire venue, the ADAKC allocated the south end of the exhibit hall to the Kansas City Auto Museum. The museum reached out to the local auto enthusiast community to look for volunteers who wish to display their vehicles as part of the event. Numerous locals answered the call, bringing their cars over to be part of the show. Among these vehicles were a Tesla Model S and Model X.
Tesla enthusiast James Ransom prepared the two electric cars for the auto show, dropping them off at the exhibition’s location. The next day, he received a call from the event’s organizers informing him that the Teslas are not welcome in the event. Ransom explained the circumstances in a statement to The Drive.
“I was called on Wednesday evening and asked to remove the Teslas. I was told that the cars were not allowed to stay because they were not part of the Dealers Association. Something about a higher-up in the association who said that the Teslas could not be at the show due to the manufacturer not using dealerships for their sales,” Ransom said.
Fellow Tesla owner and prominent Kansas-based auto enthusiast Ken Smiley, whose 1956 Jaguar XK140 and 2016 Porsche GT4 are on display at the show, noted in an email to Teslarati that the ADAKC’s excuse for the removal of the two electric cars was questionable at best. Smiley mentioned in an email that there were several other vehicles on display from manufacturers who were not part of the ADAKC, such as Noble, Pontiac, Ariel, and Lamborghini. All these vehicles were welcomed and allowed to remain.
To address the situation, Ken sent an email to the organizers, calling them out on the discriminatory practice. Below is the Tesla owner’s email in full.
Dear Larry and Natalie,
It has come to my attention that a particular make of automobile is being singled out for unfair discrimination at the KC Auto Show this year and that the owners of these cars were asked to remove them from Bartle Hall. The vehicles in question were two used Tesla automobiles owned by private individuals and put on display as part of the KC Auto Museum’s variety of cars display at the KC Auto Show. As an officer/member in multiple car clubs in Kansas City (Porsche, Jaguar, All British, Tesla) I find this action reprehensible and urge you to immediately reconsider your actions before something like this goes viral and brings negative publicity to the car show.
I understand that with regard to NEW cars that Tesla does not have a dealer network and does not participate in the Automobile Dealer Association of Greater Kansas City. I would understand if your association told Tesla that they could not bring new cars down and could not be represented at the show unless they joined the organization. However, this is NOT what is happening in this instance. These two cars are privately owned used cars brought by their enthusiastic owners to help support the KC Auto Museum display at the auto show. There were owners who brought Pontiacs, a Noble, a couple of Ariel Atoms and Lamborghinis ALL of which are NOT members of the ADAKC. So if you are going to discriminate against non-members, then you need to do it equally and ask that ALL non-member cars leave the show, not simply single out Tesla.
Please let me know whether or not the Teslas are welcome to come back or if the unfair discrimination against these owners and their vehicles is going to continue. Speaking of the owners, the people you are hurting are automotive enthusiasts, not the audience you want to hurt. These individuals took their time to clean up their cars and transport them down to Bartle Hall only to be told a few hours later that they had to take them back out. While I currently have two cars on display at the show (1956 Jaguar XK140 and 2016 Porsche GT4) I am not sure that I will be willing to support a show in the future that unfairly discriminates against a certain model car. I hesitate to think how Marion Battaglia would react if I told him that either my Jag or Porsche was being discriminated against and being asked to leave the show. As I mentioned, this unfair discrimination isn’t hurting Tesla the car company, which the association may have an issue with, but rather hurting individual automotive enthusiasts.
Sincerely,
Ken
The auto enthusiast notes that the ADAKC has not responded to his email yet. Due to the incident and the blatant act of discrimination, Ken notes that numerous car fans and Tesla owners are boycotting the event to show their frustration at the organizers. An ADAKC spokesperson did issue a statement to The Drive, but based on the organization’s stance, it appears that they are putting the blame on the offended Tesla enthusiasts.
“This is a non-story. Ken Smiley is simply bringing this up because he seems to be angry and wants to stir the pot,” the spokesperson said, adding that the two Teslas do not fit the “Classic Car” theme of the exhibition. When pressed by the publication why other modern vehicles from non-ADAKC members, such as Ariel Atoms and Lamborghini Huracans, were allowed to remain, the spokesperson was less certain, stating that they “had to talk to the show’s producer.”
The 2019 Kansas City Auto Show was held from March 6-10, 2019.
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Tesla’s surprise Roadster video hints the 2017 design is gone
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.
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SpaceX readies Starship Flight 14 for a historic journey into uncharted territory
SpaceX finished Starship’s Flight 14 rehearsal, clearing the way for its first orbital flight Monday.
SpaceX has cleared one of the last hurdles before Starship’s first trip to orbit. The company posted on X Thursday afternoon that its launch rehearsal for Flight 14 was complete, keeping the mission on track for Monday, September 28. The launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. CT at Starbase, Texas, and runs for 75 minutes.
A wet dress rehearsal is essentially launch day without the launch. Crews fill Booster 21 and Ship 41 with thousands of tons of extremely cold propellant, run the countdown nearly to ignition, then drain everything back out. It lets engineers catch leaks or equipment problems before anything leaves the pad. SpaceX still needs a launch license from the FAA before the stack, which stands 407 feet tall, can fly.
Flight 14 matters because of where it is going. All 13 previous Starship flights followed a suborbital path, which works like throwing a ball extremely high and far: the vehicle reaches space, but it is always on a course that brings it back down within about an hour. This time, Ship 41 will perform a short engine firing called an orbital insertion burn roughly 25 minutes after liftoff, giving it enough speed to keep falling around Earth instead of back into it. SpaceX plans about six laps at an altitude near 275 kilometers (171 miles) over nearly 10 hours, as Teslarati detailed when the mission was first announced.
Launch rehearsal complete ahead of Starship Flight 14 pic.twitter.com/h5LBYyBqi4
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 24, 2026
Getting into orbit also means Starship has to prove it can get back out. The ship must relight a single Raptor engine in space to slow down for reentry. SpaceX says it will only attempt the orbital insertion burn after flight controllers confirm the hardware needed for that return burn has enough backup, and its flight plan includes health checks that could shorten the mission to two or five orbits.
Flight 14 is also the first to put working satellites into service. Flight 13 carried 20 Starlink V3 satellites in July, but they came back down with the ship because that mission never reached orbit. This time, 26 V3 satellites are meant to stay up and join the constellation within a few weeks. Together they add about 26 terabits per second of network capacity, which SpaceX says is roughly 10 times what a single Falcon 9 launch of older V2 Mini satellites adds. Three of them carry cameras that will photograph Starship’s heat shield in orbit to check for tile damage before reentry.
The hardware has changed too. Ship 41 flies with extra fasteners on tiles in the most vulnerable areas, fixes for gaps where superheated plasma slipped behind tiles, and curved tiles designed to reduce heating between them. Two tiles recovered from Ship 40 will fly again, the first reuse of any part of a Starship heat shield. Booster 21 carries better engine filtering and new relight software after ice clogged three center engines on the previous booster, leaving only eight of 13 engines to restart for its landing burn.
Ship 41 is targeting a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile, a new recovery zone after several Indian Ocean landings, while Booster 21 aims for the Gulf. Neither will be caught by the tower on this flight. Elon Musk said in August that a ship catch was likely “in a few months.”
Tesla’s surprise Roadster video hints the 2017 design is gone
Tesla Full Self-Driving release in the EU gets delayed
