Lifestyle
Tesla Network could bring radical change to the way we own cars
Just one tap on your phone could summon a Tesla right to your house as you enjoy your morning coffee. Not a morning person? Don’t worry about needing to make small talk with your driver—this car is driving itself. Take your coffee with you, hop in, and travel in comfort and style wherever you want to go. All that, and your trip costs less than a bus ticket.
That is the future according to Elon Musk with his proposed autonomous ride-sharing “Tesla Network.”
The ambitious Tesla CEO expects all new cars to be fully autonomous within the next 10 years and that owning a “regular” non-self-driving car will be akin to owning a horse. According to Musk’s “Master Plan, Part Deux”— which he released in summer 2016 as a follow up to his 2006 “Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan”— Tesla’s objectives include the official development of “a self-driving capability that is 10X safer than manual via massive fleet learning” and the ability of “car to make money for you when you aren’t using it.” Given that the typical car owner only uses their vehicle during about 5 to 10 percent of the day, having your car make money for the other 90 to 95 percent of the day could be a pretty sweet deal. While you’re at work, asleep, or even on vacation, your Tesla could be driving around the city, picking up and dropping off passengers without any extra effort on your part.
Tesla ride-sharing
The Tesla Network has the potential to upset the established ride-hailing giants, like Uber, in significant ways. Yet, it also has the potential to simply never materialize. Which road the Tesla Network ends up driving down depends on how quickly Tesla can develop its autonomous technology— and how quickly people can begin to trust it with their lives.
Tesla Model S owner tests human detection capabilities of Autopilot 2.0
All Tesla vehicles currently in production are equipped with the hardware necessary to support full autonomous driving in the future. For now, while Autopilot is impressive— it can change lanes, navigate traffic jams, and brake for obstacles with no human guidance needed—, it is far from perfect. The program is still technically in “public beta” testing, and rated by the National Transportation Safety Board as a 2 out of 5 on its scale of autonomy. To make up an effective fleet of self-driving vehicles riding around town while their owners are at work, Autopilot needs to be rated as a Level 5 on the NTSB’s scale. Musk predicts that Autopilot will be at true Level 5 autonomy within just two years. Even more ambitiously, he has announced that a Tesla will be able to drive completely autonomously from California to New York City by the end of this year.
Having this fleet could radically change the way that people get around each day. In a recent TED Talk, Musk said that the Tesla Network will provide cheaper transportation than public transport. This outcome would require both a large number of autonomous vehicles to be available to the public and would also require a large number of the public to use those vehicles. If both of these conditions are met, costs would plummet, potentially enough that Musk’s claim that riding on the Network “would cost less than a bus ticket” will come true. The owners of the Tesla Network fleet may have even more to benefit from the enterprise. By capitalizing on the average 95% of time their cars are simply parked in a garage or lot, Tesla hopes owners will be able to offset the relatively high cost of their vehicles or even exceed the cost and actually make profit.
However, just because one can own a Tesla with “Full Self-Driving Capability,” does not mean that they’re given free rein over the way they use that facility. Included in their order is a short, but important, disclaimer to sign: “Please note that using a self-driving Tesla for car sharing and ride hailing for friends and family is fine, but doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible on the Tesla Network.”
The Competition
Musk is set on ensuring that the Tesla Network and its reputation grows in a controlled and organized fashion— and that the owner can’t use their car to support other competitors, like Uber or Lyft.
For those competitors, the Tesla Network threatens to disrupt their established leadership of the ride-hailing industry. Uber and Lyft, as well as automakers such as Cadillac, Audi, and Volvo, are furiously working to release their own Level 5 self-driving fleets of vehicles first, to take control of the market before anyone else can.
In a Business Insider interview, the president of GM, Dan Ammann, said most people won’t have their first autonomous vehicle experience in a car they actually own. Rather, he believes “it’s very clear that the first application of autonomous vehicles is in a ride-sharing setting.” GM has recently partnered with Lyft to develop autonomous vehicles. Tesla, meanwhile, is effectively locking Uber, Lyft, and other similar enterprises out of its Autopilot technology with its prohibition on using Tesla self-driving tech for revenue outside of the Network. Musk has implied that Tesla is not looking to be a direct competitor of Uber, saying, “It’s not Tesla versus Uber, it’s the people versus Uber.” On the other hand, Tesla rebuffed an offer last year by Uber’s former-CEO Travis Kalanick to partner in self-driving projects, as reported by Bloomberg.
Many people will use the Tesla Network to simply have experience riding in a Tesla that they may not be able to afford on their own. But for those who do own the coveted cars, how many will be willing to let others use their Teslas without supervision? Matthew DeBord of Business Insider notes, “Musk and his team are clearly thinking economically when they think about the Tesla Network. But they might not be thinking about how people really own cars — especially Teslas, which have around them a Ferrari-like halo of desirability.” Musk’s idea rests on the assumption that people’s desire to make extra money will outweigh their protective instincts of their Tesla. Of course, the advent of the mass-market Model 3, with a lower sticker price and higher availability, could affect this protectionism.
Safety First
The extent to which people are comfortable loaning their Teslas out will also depend on the degree to which the company is prepared to protect them from financial loss. When asked who bears the responsibility in a crash of a self-driving Tesla on the Tesla Network, Musk placed the majority of the burden on the owner of the vehicle. “I think it would be up to the individual’s insurance,” said Musk. “If it’s something endemic to our design, certainly we would take responsibility for that.” Uber and Lyft expanded their insurance coverage in 2015 to include liability insurance for drivers while they are “on duty.” It’s unclear whether Tesla owners would have a similar, if limited, safety net.
Of course, questions of insurance, liability, and use all depend on states giving permission to Tesla and others to use widespread self-driving technology first. Only a few states have any semblance of laws guiding self-driving cars’ testing and application, but Capitol Hill seems to be finally exploring the issue. A new bill being circulated in Washington would give federal regulators the power over self-driving tech, taking that authority from the states. Moving away from the patchwork of regulations, bans, and limitations between cities and states into a cohesive federal policy will help Musk’s Tesla Network grow in an organized and connected manner.
And even if regulators figure out how they want to control autonomous vehicles, Tesla still has to win the public’s trust to make the Tesla Network a widespread success. A 2017 Deloitte study shows that 74 percent of Americans don’t currently trust self-driving cars. Whether this is an easy fear to overcome or not is yet to be seen. But Musk’s ventures have consistently seen success in innovating first and asking questions second. The electric car, the reusable rocket, the solar roof, and the Tesla Network. The future is coming for us whether we’re ready or not.
Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
Elon Musk
SpaceXAI just launched into your kitchen with their new app
SpaceXAI just powered its first consumer app and it predicts what you want to buy.
SpaceXAI just made its first move into consumer AI, and it involves your grocery cart. On June 3, 2026, Gopuff and SpaceXAI announced the launch of Go, a Grok-powered shopping assistant built directly into the Gopuff app that predicts what you need before you even start searching for it.
Gopuff is an instant delivery platform that operates more than 400 micro-fulfillment centers across the U.S., delivering everyday essentials, snacks, drinks, and household items in as little as 15 minutes. It is not a restaurant delivery app or a marketplace. It owns its inventory, controls its warehouses, and handles its own logistics, which means it has built one of the most detailed consumer behavior datasets in retail over its 13-year history.
Go combines SpaceXAI’s advanced reasoning, voice, and image generation models with Gopuff’s dataset of hundreds of millions of orders and real-time cultural signals from X to prepare a suggested cart the moment a customer opens the app. It learns each shopper’s habits and automatically builds a personalized cart based on time of day, location, order history, and real-time indicators. Returning customers can check out with a single tap.
Rather than searching for specific items, users can describe a situation like a game-day party or the desire for a healthy breakfast and Go will assemble a cart automatically. It can also predict when shoppers are running low on items like coffee or paper towels and have them packed and delivered in under 15 minutes. Grok voice integration lets users talk to the app in plain conversational language and check out completely hands-free.
Gopuff co-founder and co-CEO Yakir Gola said: “Today, we believe the greatest friction left in commerce is not delivery or instantaneous access to the essentials customers need. It’s the moment before: the thinking, the deciding, the remembering. We’re combining Gopuff’s demand intelligence with xAI’s frontier reasoning to create an everyday shopping experience that feels like a true extension of you.”
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The timing carries context beyond the product launch. SpaceXAI was formed after SpaceX completed an all-stock merger with Elon Musk’s xAI earlier this year, folding one of the most advanced AI labs in the world into the same corporate structure as the company preparing what could be the largest IPO in history. SpaceXAI is dipping into consumer-focused AI just as it prepares for its public debut, and while Musk has openly discussed building an everything app, this launch uses Grok to power another company’s product rather than launching a standalone consumer platform. Every consumer-facing deployment of Grok ahead of the IPO roadshow adds tangible evidence that SpaceXAI is not just an infrastructure play but a direct competitor in the AI application layer where OpenAI and Google are already fighting for dominance.
Lifestyle
Tesla saves its passengers again – This time after a 300-foot cliff fall in Malibu
A Tesla Model 3 fell 300 feet off a Malibu cliff and both passengers survived.
A Tesla Model 3 plunged roughly 300 feet off a cliff on Mulholland Highway in Malibu on Friday morning, May 29, 2026, and both occupants survived. The crash was reported at approximately 7:30 a.m. near the 2500 block of Mulholland Highway, triggering a multi-agency rescue operation involving Malibu Search and Rescue, the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the California Highway Patrol, and McCormick Ambulance.
When first responders arrived, the male driver was outside the vehicle shouting for help while the female passenger remained pinned inside the Tesla. Rescue crews rappelled down the cliffside on ropes to reach the wreckage. A flight medic was lowered by helicopter to begin treating both victims, and the driver was hoisted up to the roadway before crews used the Jaws of Life to free the trapped passenger. Both were airlifted to a local trauma center with moderate injuries despite a remarkable result for a fall that steep.
The outcome is not surprising, considering Model 3 earned an overall 5-star rating from NHTSA in every category and sub-category, and recorded the lowest probability of injury of any car ever evaluated by the U.S. New Car Assessment Program. The absence of a traditional engine in the front of the vehicle creates a longer crumple zone that absorbs impact energy before it reaches occupants, and the battery pack running along the floor gives the car an unusually low center of gravity that reinforces structural rigidity.
This is not the first time a Tesla has kept passengers alive after going off a cliff. A Tesla Model Y carrying a family of four survived a plunge off a cliff at Devil’s Slide near San Francisco in January 2023, with two adults and two children walking away from a 250-foot fall. That incident drew widespread attention to how the structural integrity of Tesla’s electric platform performs in extreme crash scenarios that most vehicles would not survive.
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Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
