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Tesla Model Y goes up for grabs in new climate action raffle

The Tesla Model Y crossover. (Credit: Tesla)

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There is something extra special about being one of the first owners of a vehicle that has the potential to change the auto industry as we know it. The Tesla Model Y is such a vehicle, and you can be one of the first owners of this all-electric crossover thanks to an initiative by a leading voice in the ongoing and escalating fight against climate change.

The CCAN Action Fund is a nonprofit created to inspire climate-friendly changes in public policy at the local, state, and national levels to directly address the ever-prevalent threat of global warming. The group’s activities span several programs, from voter education, lobbying, and direct participation in the electoral process.

Among the issues that concern the nonprofit is the electrification of the transportation sector. Cars, trucks, and other forms of transport account for almost 30% of the United States’ climate pollution. Thus, electric vehicles like Teslas, which only get cleaner over time, contribute to lowering the overall emissions of the transportation sector. For the CCNA Action Fund, it only makes sense to hold a fundraising raffle and give away one of the most highly-anticipated all-electric cars today: the Tesla Model Y.

Support climate change and enter in a chance to win a Tesla Model Y via CCAN Action Fund, the advocacy arm of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network

Following last year’s fundraising success, helped by the Tesla community’s efforts to raffle off a new Tesla Model 3, the CCAN Action Fund is back this year looking to raise another round in its fight against climate change.

In partnership with Teslarati, CCAN supporters have a chance to take home a rare Tesla Model Y Dual Motor AWD! Winners of the raffle will have the option to customize their Model Y according to their preference, with the nonprofit allotting its prize money for the purchase of a Dual Motor AWD vehicle with 19″ Gemini Wheels, all-black interior, and blue, silver, black, or white paint. CCAN will also cover the federal tax payments associated with the prize.

Credit: Teslarati

The Tesla Model Y Dual Motor AWD is expected to be one of the most important electric cars that will be released in recent years. Priced aggressively like its Model 3 sedan sibling and equipped with bleeding-edge tech and a range of 315 miles per charge, the Model Y has the potential to disrupt the crossover industry, which just happens to be one of the market’s fastest-growing segments today. Based on sightings from the Tesla community, Model Y deliveries are likely to start very soon.

Tickets for the CCAN Action Fund’s Tesla Model Y raffle are worth $100 each, and only 3,000 will be allocated before being sold out. Because this is a fundraising effort for climate action, the Tesla Model Y will be raffled off regardless of the number of tickets sold, making the odds of winning anywhere from an incredible 1 in hundreds chance of winning to an amazing 1 in 3000 chance.  

The Tesla Model Y drawing will be held on May 1, 2020 at 4:54 EST, regardless of the number of tickets that are purchased.

Interested participants in the CCAN Action Fund’s Tesla Model Y raffle could click here.

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Some of our teammates have been friends with members of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network over the past few years. In support of their cause and through a sponsorship with their climate action fund, Teslarati has been helping our friends raise much-needed funds that will help their mission to institute climate policies with local governments. 

Please consider helping. Entering in a raffle with amazing odds to take home a Tesla Model Y doesn’t hurt either 🙂

Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk has a crazy prediction about AI in two years

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Daniel Oberhaus, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk is, in many respects, one of the biggest and most influential figures in modern-day artificial intelligence.

Given that Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI are all looked at in their respective fields as leaders to an extent, each of them has a heavy influence on the future of AI, even though two of them are not thought of, at face value, as AI companies.

Musk has grand expectations for what is to come with AI, not only as a form of assistance to make human lives easier, but to make humans multiplanetary and solve some of the biggest issues that face us today. But even he is astounded by AI’s pace of progress.

He believes that in two years, AI will be so mind-blowing it might be unrecognizable.

This progress can be seen in a variety of ways, but perhaps the most popular way people have shown AI’s progress, especially on social media, is through an incredibly arbitrary way of watching Will Smith eat spaghetti:

This is a great way to show people how AI is improving, especially from a perspective that examines how it can manufacture images and video from prompts. AI is an incredibly complex concept, however, and it goes much deeper than Will Smith eating Italian food.

Musk’s most widely adopted method of AI is likely Tesla Full Self-Driving, which impacts millions of people as they utilize it to increase safety with their travel. Musk has routinely pushed incredibly aggressive timelines for self-driving, especially unsupervised.

Perhaps this perspective is why he feels that things will be solved in a timeframe that is much more aggressive than most of us would think. Regardless, the progress of AI is moving fast, and it seems that Musk’s expectations for it could be high.

But if it can actually achieve full-length motion pictures and even more realistic production value, it will be hard to distinguish between reality and AI very soon.

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Tesla just built it 10 millionth car

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla just officially confirmed it has built its 10 millionth car, a major milestone for the company that started producing sustainable electric powertrains less than two decades ago.

In that time, Tesla has truly revolutionized the automotive industry, disrupting the idea of what a car should be, how it should be fueled, and how it truly impacts day-to-day life.

Tesla achieved this feat across four production facilities: the Fremont Factory in Fremont, California, Gigafactory Shanghai in China, Gigafactory Berlin in Germany, and Gigafactory Texas in Austin, Texas.

The 10 millionth vehicle was a Diamond Black Model Y.

Over the course of the past roughly 18 years, Tesla has evolved its lineup from a sporty sedan built on a Lotus body to a lineup of various body styles, performance metrics, and other characteristics that make each one unique.

This is an incredible achievement for a company that is young compared to what it goes up against. When Tesla entered the automotive market, Ford, GM, and Stellantis widely dominated the playing field. Since then, Tesla has caused such a disruption that these three massive brands had to scramble to create EV projects of their own.

Despite their best efforts, they have not been able to match the prowess or the effectiveness of Tesla. They are all reliant on Tesla’s charging infrastructure, their software is inferior, and their self-driving projects are elementary in comparison.

Tesla felt its fair share of growing pains over the years as well. As recent at 2019, there were complaints about build quality, paint quality, and overall luxuriousness. These things have all been improved upon through the company’s maturity, and these strides in quality have led to this 10 million vehicle production achievement, something that other small-and-scrappy EV makers will hope to accomplish one day.

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SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites

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SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.

The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.

SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters

Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.

SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.

With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.

Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.

Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.

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