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Tesla Model Y becomes a hotel amenity thanks to ride-sharing platform Envoy

Credit: Tesla

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Update 2:45 PM ET 4/20/2022: Paragraph 3 updated with CEO comments.

Envoy Technologies has made the Tesla Model Y an official amenity for visitors of the Mondrian South Beach hotel in Miami. The ride-sharing platform announced this morning that it has entered the hospitality market by making the Model Y available to hotel guests without the hassle and expense of traditional rental services.

For the first time, Envoy is launching at a hotel, previously building its EV share offering in multifamily housing communities and office buildings. Public car share options continue to decline, and rental options become more expensive and less available, leaving travelers with few options that are both affordable and convenient. Envoy cuts through these two shortcomings, making on-site EV sharing options a property amenity, it said.

Credit: Envoy

“The mission of Envoy is to provide EV access and education to people where they live, work and stay. Our goal is to meet our members at their doorstep including where they travel, like guests staying at the Mondrian. Powered by our smart e-mobility travel becomes more convenient and it creates a network effect helping to make our world a cleaner place,” Ori Sagie, CEO and co-founder of Envoy Technologies, said.

“We are thrilled with the launch of our first electric car share at a luxury hotel, the Mondrian South Beach,” Aric Ohana, President and Co-Founder of Envoy, said. “This is our first entry into the hospitality market and, as a busy traveler myself, I know first hand how hard it can be to find reliable transportation in a new city.”

The first Model Y will be available at the Mondrian South Beach in Miami, Florida. Visitors at the Mondrian luxury hotel will be able to book the Model Y through the Envoy Mobility app, giving them easy access to an electric vehicle without hefty fees.

“Mondrian South Beach is delighted to be the first hotel to offer Envoy, electric car sharing. Our guests will appreciate the ease of dedicated, immediate transportation right out of the lobby,” Director of Marketing for the Mondrian South Beach, Christina Gil, said. “The versatile Tesla Model Y crossover will offer plenty of space for guest parties to zip around Miami in comfort with all the innovative tech bells and whistles.”

Rental companies have also ventured into the market of electric vehicles recently. Hertz purchased Model 3 and Model Y units from Tesla last year and added vehicles from Polestar this year. As sustainable options for passenger transportation become more popular around the country, car rental companies are continuing to expand their lineup of electric options to align with customer needs.

Envoy has deployed over 300 EVs at more than 150 multifamily properties and offices since its inception in 2017. It has also installed more than 150 charging stations for vehicles. Envoy is available across the U.S. including FloridaCaliforniaOregonWashingtonNew York, and Illinois.

I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please email me at joey@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.

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Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Tesla Robotaxi ride-hailing without a Safety Monitor proves to be difficult

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Credit: Grok Imagine

Tesla Robotaxi ride-hailing without a Safety Monitor is proving to be a difficult task, according to some riders who made the journey to Austin to attempt to ride in one of its vehicles that has zero supervision.

Last week, Tesla officially removed Safety Monitors from some — not all — of its Robotaxi vehicles in Austin, Texas, answering skeptics who said the vehicles still needed supervision to operate safely and efficiently.

BREAKING: Tesla launches public Robotaxi rides in Austin with no Safety Monitor

Tesla aimed to remove Safety Monitors before the end of 2025, and it did, but only to company employees. It made the move last week to open the rides to the public, just a couple of weeks late to its original goal, but the accomplishment was impressive, nonetheless.

However, the small number of Robotaxis that are operating without Safety Monitors has proven difficult to hail for a ride. David Moss, who has gained notoriety recently as the person who has traveled over 10,000 miles in his Tesla on Full Self-Driving v14 without any interventions, made it to Austin last week.

He has tried to get a ride in a Safety Monitor-less Robotaxi for the better part of four days, and after 38 attempts, he still has yet to grab one:

Tesla said last week that it was rolling out a controlled test of the Safety Monitor-less Robotaxis. Ashok Elluswamy, who heads the AI program at Tesla, confirmed that the company was “starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader Robotaxi fleet with Safety Monitors,” and that “the ratio will increase over time.”

This is a good strategy that prioritizes safety and keeps the company’s controlled rollout at the forefront of the Robotaxi rollout.

However, it will be interesting to see how quickly the company can scale these completely monitor-less rides. It has proven to be extremely difficult to get one, but that is understandable considering only a handful of the cars in the entire Austin fleet are operating with no supervision within the vehicle.

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Tesla gives its biggest hint that Full Self-Driving in Europe is imminent

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Credit: BLKMDL3 | X

Tesla has given its biggest hint that Full Self-Driving in Europe is imminent, as a new feature seems to show that the company is preparing for frequent border crossings.

Tesla owner and influencer BLKMDL3, also known as Zack, recently took his Tesla to the border of California and Mexico at Tijuana, and at the international crossing, Full Self-Driving showed an interesting message: “Upcoming country border — FSD (Supervised) will become unavailable.”

Due to regulatory approvals, once a Tesla operating on Full Self-Driving enters a new country, it is required to comply with the laws and regulations that are applicable to that territory. Even if legal, it seems Tesla will shut off FSD temporarily, confirming it is in a location where operation is approved.

This is something that will be extremely important in Europe, as crossing borders there is like crossing states in the U.S.; it’s pretty frequent compared to life in America, Canada, and Mexico.

Tesla has been working to get FSD approved in Europe for several years, and it has been getting close to being able to offer it to owners on the continent. However, it is still working through a lot of the red tape that is necessary for European regulators to approve use of the system on their continent.

This feature seems to be one that would be extremely useful in Europe, considering the fact that crossing borders into other countries is much more frequent than here in the U.S., and would cater to an area where approvals would differ.

Tesla has been testing FSD in Spain, France, England, and other European countries, and plans to continue expanding this effort. European owners have been fighting for a very long time to utilize the functionality, but the red tape has been the biggest bottleneck in the process.

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Tesla Europe builds momentum with expanding FSD demos and regional launches

Tesla operates Full Self-Driving in the United States, China, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea.

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SpaceX Starship V3 gets launch date update from Elon Musk

The first flight of Starship Version 3 and its new Raptor V3 engines could happen as early as March.

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Credit: SpaceX/X

Elon Musk has announced that SpaceX’s next Starship launch, Flight 12, is expected in about six weeks. This suggests that the first flight of Starship Version 3 and its new Raptor V3 engines could happen as early as March.

In a post on X, Elon Musk stated that the next Starship launch is in six weeks. He accompanied his announcement with a photo that seemed to have been taken when Starship’s upper stage was just about to separate from the Super Heavy Booster. Musk did not state whether SpaceX will attempt to catch the Super Heavy Booster during the upcoming flight.

The upcoming flight will mark the debut of Starship V3. The upgraded design includes the new Raptor V3 engine, which is expected to have nearly twice the thrust of the original Raptor 1, at a fraction of the cost and with significantly reduced weight. The Starship V3 platform is also expected to be optimized for manufacturability. 

The Starship V3 Flight 12 launch timeline comes as SpaceX pursues an aggressive development cadence for the fully reusable launch system. Previous iterations of Starship have racked up a mixed but notable string of test flights, including multiple integrated flight tests in 2025.

Interestingly enough, SpaceX has teased an aggressive timeframe for Starship V3’s first flight. Way back in late November, SpaceX noted on X that it will be aiming to launch Starship V3’s maiden flight in the first quarter of 2026. This was despite setbacks like a structural anomaly on the first V3 booster during ground testing.

“Starship’s twelfth flight test remains targeted for the first quarter of 2026,” the company wrote in its post on X. 

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