News
Tesla Model S Plaid to make TV debut on ‘Jay Leno’s Garage’ on November 10
The Tesla Model S Plaid will make its television debut on an episode of “Jay Leno’s Garage” on November 10th. In the episode, the former late-night TV show host will get behind the wheel of the Model S Plaid at Famoso Raceway, where the all-electric flagship sedan from Tesla broke the 1/4-mile record for a production vehicle dethroning the Bugatti Chiron Sport.
CNBC recently confirmed to Teslarati that the episode, titled “Limited Edition,” featuring the Model S Plaid, would air on November 10th. The description episode from CNBC states:
“Get ready to regale yourself with rarities in this extremely Limited Edition of Jay Leno’s Garage. First up, Jay and talk show phenom Trevor Noah test-drive the lightning-fast, all-new, all-electric Mercedes EQS. Then Jay does his damnedest to demolish the already ludicrous world record for the fastest production vehicle ever in Tesla’s all-new Model S Plaid. After attempting to rewrite history, Jay squeezes Comedian Tom Segura into a bug-size Bugatti, lets loose in a one-of-a-kind Porsche Carrera Coupe, and rides off into the sunset with actor Balthazar Getty in a ridiculously rare Lamborghini Sian.”
Rumors of the Model S Plaid’s record time swirled through the EV community in May after reports indicated that the vehicle had turned a 9.247-second 1/4-mile at 152 miles per hour. Leno was evidently there and confirmed in early June on an episode of Spike’s Car Radio podcast that the record was set. Leno said:
“I’ll tell you what I did. I went up to Famoso Dragway in Bakersfield and the Tesla Plaid…I drove by, and the NHRA guy was there to make it official. It turned a 9.247, at 152 MPH.”
Leno stated that the NHRA official was there to confirm the time.
In mid-June, a trailer showed that Leno would drive the vehicle himself, attempting to better the already impressive record. This was before any deliveries of the vehicle had started. We know that Leno and Tesla CEO Elon Musk have had several interactions in the past and seem to have developed a friendship that gives Leno special access to some of Tesla’s most interesting designs, including the Cybertruck. Leno confirmed during an interview with Shepard Smith that the Model S Plaid is one of the best vehicles he’s ever driven. “It was a winner,” he said. “I mean, it is now the fastest production car you can buy. Faster than any Ferrari, faster than any $3.5 million Bugatti.”
The Model S Plaid is one of the automotive industry’s most impressive vehicles. The car has an acceleration rate of 1.99 seconds from 0-60 MPH with an impressive 390 miles per charge. The Model S Plaid is available for purchase on Tesla’s website for $129,990. This seems like a steep price, but for the performance, range, and the unbelievable 1,020 horsepower the vehicle offers, it’s likely somewhat of a bargain to some owners.
Check out Leno’s interview about the Model S Plaid with Shepard Smith below.
Tesla has expanded its Robotaxi program in Florida to include two new cities: Tampa and Orlando.
This marks the second and third cities to be added to the company’s available locations for autonomous ride-hailing in the Sunshine State, joining Miami, which was the first Florida city to offer Robotaxi rides.
Tesla announced the addition of Orlando and Tampa to the Robotaxi program on Tuesday morning. The cities now join Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, and the San Francisco Bay Area as locations where Tesla can operate its Robotaxi platform:
Robotaxi now in Tampa & Orlando! pic.twitter.com/fYtmXgJq3O
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) July 21, 2026
These rides are unsupervised, as AI Head Ashok Elluswamy confirmed the suite in Florida is operating without safety drivers or anyone within the cabin to assist with operation.
Orlando Tesla Robotaxi Operation
The geofence in Orlando covers a prominent irregular shaded zone on the map, roughly 4-6 miles across in key dimensions, so it likely measures somewhere between 25 and 45 square miles, which is comparable to other early Tesla launches in other cities.
It encompasses central and southern areas bounded by major highways including SR-417 and SR-528, including parts of the Orlando metro core, tourism-adjacent zones, and residential/commercial districts. This represents an initial targeted rollout in a tourist-heavy region, positioned for quick expansion via Tesla’s software updates.
Tampa Tesla Robotaxi Operation
In Tampa, the shape of the geofence is a shaded polygon covering key neighborhoods, explicitly including West Tampa, Tampa Heights, Hyde Park, and downtown Tampa proper, with boundaries along major roads and the Hillsborough River area.
This focuses on high-demand central zones and will offer tourists and citygoers rides without drivers.
Robotaxi Progress
Tesla has been operating Robotaxi since last June, when it launched in Austin. The geofences in most regions have already expanded several times since their launch last year, but the bigger complaint is vehicle availability. Tesla has been working to add more Robotaxi-enabled vehicles to its fleet.
The company still plans to utilize its Cybercab, a new vehicle that is being produced at Gigafactory Texas, for the Robotaxi suite alongside the Model Y, which has been the vehicle of choice for Tesla with early operations.
News
Tesla’s AI Chief just hinted at something big for FSD v14 lite owners
Tesla’s AI chief suggests the newest FSD v14 Lite build may finally go wide release.
Tesla’s head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, noted on Sunday that the newest FSD v14 Lite build rolling out to Hardware 3 cars is likely the version that goes to wide release, the strongest signal yet that Tesla is near to closing out an early access phase that Hardware 3 owners have waited more than a year for.
Elluswamy made the comment in response to an extensive review from Tesla owner Zack, known on X as @BLKMDL3, who tested software version 2026.20.6.10 and detailed the changes in a lengthy post. “FSD v14 Lite (for Tesla AI3 hardware vehicles) review.
The update restarts a rollout that had stalled after its initial release. Tesla began pushing FSD v14 Lite to Hardware 3 early access drivers on June 29, bringing driving behavior learned on the newer Hardware 4 computer down to the more limited chip that has powered Tesla vehicles built between 2019 and early 2023. That release, as we covered in detail, gave roughly 4 million HW3 vehicles their first meaningful update since being frozen on version 12.6 in early 2025.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ Release Notes: new capabilities and features
The latest build adds features that bring Hardware 3 closer in line with what Hardware 4 owners already have. FSD can now start directly from park without a brake pedal confirmation, a change Zack called a small but meaningful quality of life improvement. The interface also picks up the blue “P” park icon, approaching destination alerts, and a dedicated Self-Driving app with streak tracking, all details previously exclusive to the AI4 branch of v14, as outlined in Tesla’s original release notes.
The stakes around Hardware 3 go beyond software polish. Tesla sold the Full Self-Driving package for years on the promise that every vehicle equipped with it had the hardware needed to eventually drive itself without supervision. That promise broke down during Tesla’s Q1 2026 earnings call, when Musk acknowledged HW3 cars could not run unsupervised FSD, prompting Tesla to offer trade-in discounts and hardware retrofits alongside the Lite software track.
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla has continued to frame v14 Lite as the primary path forward for the HW3 fleet, telling owners in April that international markets would follow the U.S. rollout once regulatory approvals came through. For now, HW3 owners in the early access group are the only ones running the new build. A broader rollout would mark the second major software delivery to the legacy fleet since Tesla first released FSD v14 to Hardware 4 vehicles, and the first sign since June that the Lite program is still moving rather than stuck in early access limbo.
In a pointed message on X, Elon Musk warned that firms maintaining significant short positions in SpaceX over time face “very low” survival probability.
The statement comes amid post-IPO volatility for the rocket company, now trading under the ticker $SPCX.
The survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 17, 2026
Five weeks after what was described as the largest IPO in history, the stock had fallen roughly 30% from its peak above $2.6 trillion, briefly surpassing Microsoft and Amazon in market value. Short sellers celebrated gains of about $8.7 billion, but Musk’s reply underscores his long-term conviction.
The warning directly echoes a detailed bullish analysis arguing that Starship’s cost reductions could unlock a multi-trillion-dollar space economy. Projects ranging from solar power beamed from orbit and asteroid mining to orbital data centers and Mars terraforming were projected to create over $100 trillion in new market capitalization.
In this vision, SpaceX acts as the essential infrastructure provider, akin to AWS for cloud computing, capturing monopoly-like revenues from launches, crew transport, and data traffic across a rapidly expanding frontier.
This is far from the first time Musk has targeted short sellers. With Tesla, he has repeatedly framed persistent bears as destined for major losses. In July 2024, Musk declared that once Tesla achieves full autonomy and volume production of Optimus robots, “anyone still holding a short position will be obliterated. Even Gates,” referencing Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ reported short bets.
Elon Musk reveals what Tesla stock surge could do to Bill Gates
Earlier, in 2018, he taunted shorts that they had “about three weeks before their short position explodes,” a remark followed by sharp stock gains. Musk has also called short selling “value destroying” and once suggested it “should be illegal,” viewing it as betting against innovation and progress.
Critics often dismiss Musk’s optimism as hype, especially when near-term metrics like quarterly deliveries or stock fluctuations disappoint.
Yet his pattern remains consistent: framing short positions against his companies as fundamentally misjudging exponential technological leaps. For SpaceX shorts, the message is clear: betting against multi-planetary ambitions and the infrastructure monopoly they enable carries existential risk for the firms involved.
As Musk and supporters see it, the space economy’s upside dwarfs Earth-bound valuation models, making today’s dips temporary in a decades-long ascent.
Tesla Robotaxi program expands in Florida to two new cities
Tesla’s AI Chief just hinted at something big for FSD v14 lite owners
