News
NTSB Prelim Report on fatal Tesla Model X crash: 8-seconds before impact
The National Transportation Safety Board has issued a preliminary report on the tragic Tesla Model X crash near Mountain View, CA in March. The NTSB’s preliminary report provided details about the circumstances leading up the accident, as well as observations about the all-electric SUV’s battery pack five days after the crash.
According to the NTSB, preliminary recorded data revealed that the Tesla Model X had its Autopilot engaged with Traffic-Aware Cruise Control set to 75 mph at the time of the accident. The vehicle collided into the crash attenuator, rotating it counterclockwise, removing the front part of the vehicle, and causing subsequent collisions with a 2010 Mazda 3 and a 2017 Audi A4. The NTSB noted that the vehicle’s performance data revealed the following.
The aftermath of the Tesla Model X’s fatal crash. [Credit: S. Engleman/NTSB]
- Autopilot was engaged on four separate occasions during the 32-minute trip. The driver-assist feature was engaged for the last 18 minutes 55 seconds before the collision.
- During the 18 minute, 55-second period, the Model X provided two visual and one auditory alert advising the driver to place his hands on the car’s steering wheel. The alerts were triggered more than 15 minutes prior to the accident.
- For the last 6 seconds before the collision, the Model X’s driver did not have his hands on the steering wheel.
- At 8 seconds before the crash, the Model X was following a lead vehicle at about 65 mph. At 7 seconds, the Model X began moving left while still following a lead vehicle. At 4 seconds, the Tesla was no longer following a car. At 3 seconds before the accident, the Model X’s speed increased from 62 mph to 70.8 mph. The vehicle’s emergency braking and evasive steering did not engage.
- During the collision sequence, the Model X’s lithium-ion battery was breached, causing a fire. The flames were extinguished after the Mountain View Fire Department applied about 200 gallons of water and foam during a period of fewer than 10 minutes. In the afternoon, the battery emanated smoke and audible venting was heard, though no flames were observed.
- On March 28, 5 days after the accident, the Model X’s battery pack reignited. The San Mateo Fire Department extinguished the fire.
The NTSB noted in its preliminary report that it is continuing work with the California Highway Patrol and the California Department of Transportation in investigating the accident. The NTSB stated that all aspects of the crash remain under investigation, and that it intends to issue safety recommendations to prevent similar incidents from taking place.
Tesla and the NTSB initially worked together in investigating the fatal Model X accident. The electric car company and the safety board eventually parted ways, however, due to Tesla’s decision to release crash data before the NTSB’s investigation was complete. Among the information Tesla released was that the driver did not have his hands on the wheel during the final 6 seconds leading up to the accident — information that has been reiterated in the NTSB’s preliminary report.
According to a Tesla, it opted to withdraw from its party agreement with the NTSB since collaboration with the safety board prevents the public release of safety information until the investigation was finished. People familiar with the matter, however, noted that the NTSB was the one which opted to terminate its collaboration with Tesla, according to a Bloomberg report.
In an update after the accident, Tesla highlighted that the absence of a crash attenuator — a highway safety device designed to absorb the impact of a collision — was already damaged when the Model X collided with the concrete barrier. In a statement to ABC7 News, Wil Huang, the brother of the ill-fated Model X driver, noted that a working crash attenuator would have saved his brother’s life. Later statements from CalTrans revealed that safety device had been left unrepaired for 11 days before the tragic Model X accident.
Energy
Taiwan power firm bets big on Tesla Megapacks as AI data center thirst grows
Taiwan’s Apollo Power orders 260 Tesla Megapacks, betting AI data centers will need more electricity.
A Taiwanese power company has ordered 260 Tesla Megapack 2XL units, roughly 1GWh of storage, betting that electricity rather than chips will decide how fast AI data centers come online. Apollo Power signed the contract with Tesla’s Taiwan energy arm on October 8, according to the company’s filing with the Taiwan stock exchange.
The filing says the units are meant for behind the meter storage and resilient grid projects, with delivery in batches from the end of 2027 and sites operating in 2028. Apollo and Tesla did not disclose a price, citing a confidentiality agreement. Apollo plans to pay for the equipment through a cash capital increase and bank financing, and it noted the purchase is not revenue and does not mean it holds firm orders from its partners.
Biggo reported that only about 33 units are under signed customer contracts, with roughly 150 more in negotiation. The same report put total project investment near NT$130 billion, but that figure includes installation work, with the equipment itself making up about 40 to 50 percent. In other words, a large share of this order is Apollo reserving supply ahead of demand. Apollo’s chairman told local media global large storage supply is tight, which is why the company locked in the units early, according to Yahoo Taiwan Finance.
Apollo also launched an AI data center and grid resilience alliance with Phison, Gigabyte and Shihlin Electric. The pitch rests on a pilot at Phison’s Zhunan plant, where Apollo and Tesla Energy Taiwan installed grid forming Megapack 2XLs in June. Tesla Energy Taiwan general manager Sun Hsiao-Han said the project went from demo to 1GWh in four months, and that Tesla Energy has deployed more than 50GWh worldwide.
Taiwan’s cabinet has approved amendments that would require large energy users to install their own generation and storage, which gives enterprise storage a regulatory tailwind.
The deal fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked. Tesla’s Megablock targets 1GWh commissioned in 20 business days, a pitch aimed squarely at fast moving data center builds. Megapacks already back xAI’s Colossus in Memphis and a 400MW AI campus in Brazil. Sun Media adds that Megapack 2XL was named among the first products in Nvidia’s DSX Ready qualification for battery storage in AI factories.
Deliveries are more than a year away, so the real test is how much of that 260 unit order turns into signed customer contracts.
For a century, the car has asked the same thing of its owner, which is basically to pay attention. Even the best ride-hailing app like Uber or Lyft only moved the problem into someone else’s hands. You stopped driving, but you still sat in a stranger’s car, while half listening, and wondering whether to take a phone call in the car without being rude. The Cybercab has no wheel, no pedals and no driver. With Grok @bot now live inside it, it becomes something else entirely, and I think that matters more than the fleet count that everyone is tracking.
Grok @bot is an agent, not a voice assistant. A rider signs in once, and from then on can say what they need and watch it happen. Order dinner from a favorite restaurant. Fill the grocery cart. Move money, answer email, adjust a calendar, push a work project forward. Tesla engineer Yun-Ta Tsai confirmed it is enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y fleet, and Tesla’s own pitch is that Full Self-Driving handles the commute while Grok handles the errands.
Think about what that does to a thirty minute ride. Uber sells you a trip, while Waymo sells you the same trip in a more private setting. Tesla is selling the thirty minutes themselves, returned to you with an assistant attached. Errands that used to eat a Saturday get done between pickup and drop off. The ride stops being dead time between two places and becomes a place of its own.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
Best of all, your Bots follow you into any Cybercab, and presumably your own Tesla, then logs you out automatically when you step out. Anyone can bolt a chatbot onto a screen, but much harder to own the vehicle, the autonomy stack and the assistant at once. It also quietly ties SpaceX’s Super Intelligence business to Tesla’s fleet, after Tesla converted its xAI stake into SpaceX equity. The relationship between those two companies is getting harder to describe as separate.
This is also where the hard questions start, because an agent that can spend your money in a vehicle other people also ride in needs some answers. How does it handle a voice it shouldn’t trust? What gets recorded, who can see it, and for how long? What happens when a rider leaves halfway through a task?
If Tesla gets those answers right, the scoreboard changes. We have been counting Cybercabs and wait times. The more telling number may be what riders accomplish per trip. That is data almost no one else will ever have, and it is the real reason to watch Grok @bot.
What do you think? Leave me a comment.
News
Why Elon Musk’s target date for buying an Optimus robot is harder than it sounds
Musk says China’s magnet export ban cost Optimus months, and robot hands remain shockingly hard.
Elon Musk says China’s export curbs on magnets used in electric motors set back Tesla’s Optimus program by two to three months, and that the robot’s hands remain the hardest part of the project. He made the comments Saturday during a live interview with Tesla Owners Silicon Valley at the X Takeover event at Giga Texas, in front of roughly 2,000 attendees. The Optimus discussion begins around the 49 minute mark of the stream.
On the hands, Musk was blunt and noted that a general purpose humanoid needs fine motor skills that are “incredibly difficult to get right. Shockingly difficult,” he said in the interview. He pointed to a problem he says no one has demonstrated yet: “One of the hardest things also generally is to do precision and force at the same time,” such as driving a small self tapping screw into wood. Touch sensors add another layer, since it is “actually kind of hard to get touch sensors that elastically deform and can handle high cycle life and it won’t just break after a few thousand cycles.”
He also took aim at rival robot videos. “Any complicated looking robot demo, it’s a canned demo. It’s not real,” Musk said, adding that real AI means showing a robot something it has never seen and watching it still cope, the way FSD handles a city it has never driven.
Musk expects the Optimus ramp to be slower than a new vehicle production ramp. “The initial part of that S curve of production ramp is going to be very slow at the beginning,” Musk said, partly because “unlike cars, there’s no pre existing supply chain for robot stuff.” That echoes his July reply on X that Optimus production “will be extremely slow at first, as everything is new.”
The magnet disclosure puts a number on a problem Musk first raised in 2025. He said China “prevented the export of magnets for use in electric motors” and that it “set back the Optimus program by like two or three months.” Then he added: “We had robots with no arms.” Tesla’s fix is to bring the supply chain home. “You’ve got to be able to make all the parts domestically,” he said. Teslarati reported in April 2025 that Musk tied the issue to permanent magnets in the arm actuators, where motors have to be as small as possible.
Tesla Optimus V3 hand and arm details revealed in new patents
Production is moving regardless, with a reported internal goal of more than 1,000 a week by the end of 2026. Teslarati recently covered how Tesla is certifying supply partners in China for Optimus parts, while the company’s hand design has been the subject of new patent filings.
Musk has said he wants Optimus available to the public by late 2027, though Tesla has not confirmed that date or published updated production figures.
Taiwan power firm bets big on Tesla Megapacks as AI data center thirst grows
Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi’s real advantage won’t be the ride service
Why Elon Musk’s target date for buying an Optimus robot is harder than it sounds
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
Tesla Roadster’s new patent preps white-knuckle speeds, keeping it grounded
