News
Tesla Model Y production formally restarts at Giga Berlin-Brandenburg
Tesla Giga Berlin-Brandenburg is back. As per an announcement from the electric vehicle maker, the Grüheide-based electric vehicle factory has resumed the production of Tesla’s best-selling vehicle, the Model Y crossover.
Initial reports of Giga Berlin-Brandenburg’s return to vehicle production were related to German media outlets by the chairwoman of the works council, Michaela Schmitz, as noted in an rbb24 report. As per Schmitz, Model Y production resumed after Giga Berlin-Brandenburg’s machines were checked for safety.
“The machines were checked and started up safely so that the early shift can start again,” she said.
Thanks to the hard work of the Tesla Giga Berlin team and support from the community, the factory is back online! https://t.co/uXdIHdKo9r— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 13, 2024
Schmitz also noted that Tesla employees and company management behaved professionally after the suspected arson attack. Tesla also reportedly paid its Giga Berlin-Brandenburg employees’ full salary while the factory was offline due to the attack.
“In my opinion, that also went exemplary. In other companies, people might have already talked about short-time work,” the works council chairwoman said.
While Giga Berlin-Brandenburg is back to producing Model Y crossovers, the alleged arson attack did affect the facility’s employees. In a comment to German media, Giga Berlin-Brandenburg plant manager Andre Thierig noted that some employees have asked if it was “dangerous to wear Tesla clothing outside the factory.”
Kurzes Treffen mit @elonmusk. @Tesla steht zum Standort & die Landesregierung steht zu Tesla. Gemeinsam verurteilen wir den Anschlag, der rechtliche Folgen für die Attentäter haben muss. Danke an alle Beteiligten für den schnellen re-start! @rohanspatel @staatskanzleibb @AndrThie pic.twitter.com/l6W6pRKMWE— Jörg Steinbach (@joergstb) March 13, 2024
Thierig noted that CEO Elon Musk was also shocked about the situation. “He was shocked like us, offered his support, couldn’t believe it,” he said.
While Giga Berlin-Brandenburg has been reported to be using half as much water as an asparagus farm, anti-Tesla narratives in the area still depict the EV maker as an entity that would take away water from the area’s residents. Thierig, for his part, highlighted that Tesla uses less than a third of the water it is contractually permitted to use.
“We are in discussions with the water association about a possible reduction in the amount of water that has been agreed so far,” he noted.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has paid a visit to Giga Berlin-Brandenburg, where he was welcomed warmly by the facility’s employees. Media reports of Musk’s visit indicated that the CEO rallied the facility’s workers. “They can’t stop us,” Musk reportedly said. In a post on X, State Minister Jörg Steinbach also indicated that Musk had met with a number of government officials during his recent visit.
“Tesla stands by the location and the state government stands by Tesla. Together, we condemn the attack, which must have legal consequences for the attackers. Thanks to everyone involved for the quick restart!” Steinbach wrote.
Don’t hesitate to contact us with news tips. Just send a message to simon@teslarati.com to give us a heads up.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s X goes down as users report major outage Friday morning
Error messages and stalled loading screens quickly spread across the service, while outage trackers recorded a sharp spike in user reports.
Elon Musk’s X experienced an outage Friday morning, leaving large numbers of users unable to access the social media platform.
Error messages and stalled loading screens quickly spread across the service, while outage trackers recorded a sharp spike in user reports.
Downdetector reports
Users attempting to open X were met with messages such as “Something went wrong. Try reloading,” often followed by an endless spinning icon that prevented access, according to a report from Variety. Downdetector data showed that reports of problems surged rapidly throughout the morning.
As of 10:52 a.m. ET, more than 100,000 users had reported issues with X. The data indicated that 56% of complaints were tied to the mobile app, while 33% were related to the website and roughly 10% cited server connection problems. The disruption appeared to begin around 10:10 a.m. ET, briefly eased around 10:35 a.m., and then returned minutes later.

Previous disruptions
Friday’s outage was not an isolated incident. X has experienced multiple high-profile service interruptions over the past two years. In November, tens of thousands of users reported widespread errors, including “Internal server error / Error code 500” messages. Cloudflare-related error messages were also reported.
In March 2025, the platform endured several brief outages spanning roughly 45 minutes, with more than 21,000 reports in the U.S. and 10,800 in the U.K., according to Downdetector. Earlier disruptions included an outage in August 2024 and impairments to key platform features in July 2023.
News
Tesla wins top loyalty and conquest honors in S&P Global Mobility 2025 awards
The electric vehicle maker secured this year’s “Overall Loyalty to Make,” “Highest Conquest Percentage,” and “Ethnic Loyalty to Make” awards.
Tesla emerged as one of the standout winners in the 2025 S&P Global Mobility Automotive Loyalty Awards, capturing top honors for customer retention and market conquest.
The electric vehicle maker secured this year’s “Overall Loyalty to Make,” “Highest Conquest Percentage,” and “Ethnic Loyalty to Make” awards.
Tesla claims loyalty crown
According to S&P Global Mobility, Tesla secured its 2025 “Overall Loyalty to Make” award following a late-year shift in consumer buying patterns. This marked the fourth consecutive year Tesla has received the honor. S&P Global Mobility’s annual analysis reviewed 13.6 million new retail vehicle registrations in the U.S. from October 2024 through September 2025, as noted in a press release.
In addition to overall loyalty, Tesla also earned the “Highest Conquest Percentage” award for the sixth consecutive year, highlighting the company’s continued ability to attract customers away from competing brands. This achievement is particularly notable given Tesla’s relatively small vehicle lineup, which is largely dominated by just two models: the Model 3 and Model Y.
Ethnic market strength and conquest
Tesla also captured top honors for “Ethnic Market Loyalty to Make,” a category that highlighted especially strong retention among Asian and Hispanic households. According to the analysis, Tesla achieved loyalty rates of 63.6% among Asian households and 61.9% among Hispanic households. These figures exceeded national averages.
S&P Global Mobility executives noted that loyalty margins across categories were exceptionally narrow in 2025, underscoring the significance of Tesla’s wins in an increasingly competitive market. Joe LaFeir, President of Mobility Business Solutions at S&P Global Mobility, shared his perspective on this year’s results.
“For 30 years, this analysis has provided a fact-based measure of brand health, and this year’s results are particularly telling. The data shows the market is not rewarding just one type of strategy. Instead, we see sustained, high-level performance from manufacturers with broad portfolios. In the current market, retaining customers remains a critical performance indicator for the industry,” LaFeir said.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft is heading to jury trial
The ruling keeps alive claims that OpenAI misled the Tesla CEO about its charitable purpose while accepting billions of dollars in funding.
OpenAI Inc. and Microsoft will face a jury trial this spring after a federal judge rejected their efforts to dismiss Elon Musk’s lawsuit, which accuses the artificial intelligence startup of abandoning its original nonprofit mission. The ruling keeps alive claims that OpenAI misled the Tesla CEO about its charitable purpose while accepting billions of dollars in funding.
As noted in a report from Bloomberg News, a federal judge in Oakland, California, ruled that OpenAI Inc. and Microsoft failed to show that Musk’s claims should be dismissed. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers stated that while the evidence remains unclear, Musk has maintained that OpenAI “had a specific charitable purpose and that he attached two fundamental terms to it: that OpenAI be open source and that it would remain a nonprofit — purposes consistent with OpenAI’s charter and mission.”
Judge Gonzalez Rogers also rejected an argument by OpenAI suggesting that Musk’s use of an intermediary to donate $38 million in seed money to the company stripped him of legal standing. “Holding otherwise would significantly reduce the enforcement of a large swath of charitable trusts, contrary to the modern trend,” Judge Gonzalez Rogers wrote.
The judge also declined to dismiss Musk’s fraud allegations, citing internal OpenAI communications from 2017 involving co-founder Greg Brockman. In an email cited by the judge, fellow OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis informed Musk that Brockman would “like to continue with the non-profit structure.”
Just two months later, however, Brockman wrote in a private note that he “cannot say that we are committed to the non-profit. don’t want to say that we’re committed. if three months later we’re doing b-corp then it was a lie.”
Marc Toberoff, a member of Musk’s legal team, said Judge Gonzalez Rogers’s ruling confirms that “there is substantial evidence that OpenAI’s leadership made knowingly false assurances to Mr. Musk about its charitable mission that they never honored in favor of their personal self-enrichment.”
OpenAI, for its part, maintained that Musk’s legal efforts are baseless. In a statement, the AI startup said it is looking forward to the upcoming trial. “Mr. Musk’s lawsuit continues to be baseless and a part of his ongoing pattern of harassment, and we look forward to demonstrating this at trial. We remain focused on empowering the OpenAI Foundation, which is already one of the best-resourced nonprofits ever,” OpenAI stated.