Lifestyle
Does the Tesla Network have any serious self-driving competitors?
Elon Musk has made it clear that the Tesla Network’s potential is no joke.
“The fundamental utility of your vehicle will increase by a factor of 5,” he told the audience during Tesla’s Investor Autonomy Day earlier this year. Then, during a broad investor call in May, he reportedly said that self-driving would give Tesla a $500 billion dollar market cap with vehicles worth up to $250,000 in the next few years thanks to their Robotaxi capabilities. Each car will be capable of doing about 100 hours of self-driving hours of work per week to their owners’ benefit. Musk’s even more astounding prediction was that Tesla’s Full Self-Driving chip and real-time development data being fed by current vehicles on the road will lead to some 1 million Robotaxi-capable Tesla cars by next year.
Of course, Tesla isn’t the only company vying for autonomous taxi riders. Is there anything Tesla Network competitors are supposed to do that gives them a competitive edge? I’ve become curious recently and decided to have a look. These kinds of questions can’t be left unanswered, you know!
Waymo is probably one of the most well known Robotaxi companies making headway in the self-driving arena. Their vehicle program aims to “help…people run errands, commute to work…[and]…drop off kids at school,” among other things shown on the company’s website. I’m seeing lots of family focus in their marketing, and Waymo’s pitch even includes giving elderly and disabled people more mobility options. It’s all very ‘feel good’ and great, but not quite distinct from what Tesla aims to do with the Robotaxi. I mean, just owning a Tesla will provide those capabilities, and if you don’t own one, you can rent one to do all those tasks just the same.
Next, there’s Uber, whose self-driving cars are part of the company’s ultimate goal of becoming the “one-stop shop for the movement of people and powering local commerce around the world,” according to its CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. Actually, Uber is totally banking on the Robotaxi concept for survival. Former CEO Travis Kalanick made some comments to that effect in 2016. “What would happen if…we weren’t part of the autonomy thing? Then the future passes us by, basically, in a very expeditious and efficient way,” he told Business Insider in an interview.
Uber is definitely taking aim at a similar audience as the Tesla Network, or the ride-hailers anyway. The biggest difference between the two companies, however, is the assumption by Uber that people will gradually move away from vehicle ownership altogether, including the people it currently pays to drive other people around. Drivers are expensive! So, Uber hopes to get rid of them in favor of a fleet of company-owned autonomous vehicles.
Elon Musk has argued that this semi-traditional one owner, one gazillion cars approach is unwieldy. Also, if a certain percentage of those riders are financially capable of owning an autonomous car, why would they pay Uber to constantly hitch rides when their own car could do the same thing and earn that money for themselves? Well, that’s the point of the Tesla Network. If people are taking privately-owned self-driving cars from place to place via a company like Uber, why wouldn’t they be a private owner themselves if given access to a connective network?
Lyft is more or less in the same boat as Uber on this, but with a twist. They’ve recently begun offering Waymo rides via their app in Phoenix, Arizona, which is a pretty cool development for the future of Robotaxis. It does have a similarity with the Tesla Network in that Waymo’s vehicles are privately owned by someone other than the ride sharing app provider. If, say, Tesla owners could put their cars onto the Lyft app for service, there would be a one-to-one similarity with the Tesla Network. That doesn’t look like it’s Lyft’s preferred approach, though, as the company is developing its own self-driving system. Perhaps there will be a mixed approach? I’m sure Tesla will take note of competing connectivity apps and have incentives to purchase a Tesla for Robotaxi duties over other self-driving cars.
Tesla does, of course, intend to compete directly with Uber and Lyft in ways outside of private owners on its network. “Tesla will for sure operate its own ride-hailing service. We’ll compete directly with Uber and Lyft, obviously. There will be a company-owned fleet where there aren’t enough customer cars to be rented out. So if we find in a particular metro (where) there aren’t enough customers who are willing to add their car to the shared fleet, that’s where we’d supplant with the company-owned fleet,” Elon Musk said during the company’s Q3 call in 2018.
Waymo’s fully self-driving Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivan on public roads. | Image: WaymoGM Cruise might be building vehicles that could be competitive in something akin to the Tesla Network. Their cars are purpose-built to be self-driven, similar to how Tesla’s cars are built electric from the ground up, and it looks like there could be individual ownership instead of only company ownership. There’s a big disadvantage for GM Cruise, though. They’re not Tesla.
Musk’s famous goal with the company was to build an amazing car that just happened to be electric, and he’s succeeded on an incredible scale which has been recognized by test agencies and auto publications time and time again. I’d argue that GM will have to have something either much more appealing or much less expensive than a Tesla if they want to eventually compete with a future Tesla Network of private owners. Otherwise, they’re in the boat with Uber and Lyft and competing with millions of Robotaxi-capable… Teslas.
What about chip companies that are developing self-driving solutions? Any good ideas there?
NVIDIA looks to be developing super amazing computing hardware and software for automotive brands to license for their own vehicles rather than developing in-house. Considering the expenditure a self-made system requires, this isn’t surprising, and even Tesla (i.e., Musk) was criticized for deciding to go this route for the Full Self-Driving computer. NVIDIA’s partners, however, look to be interested in owner-initiated self-driving rather than a money making capability in and of itself, i.e., regular drivers using their cars for regular things. Aurora, too, is developing their own autonomous driving system with the intention of licensing it to other partners in the hopes that their product will become the “nerve center” of self-driving vehicles, but nothing that gives their Robotaxi capabilities a nudge over Tesla.
It goes without saying that the software and technology needs to build a successful AI are significant, and a car maker will probably save a lot of money using someone else’s system initially. Perhaps those companies could use Aurora’s or NVIDIA’s system to keep themselves in the running or catch them up for a while where they’ve fallen behind consumer demand. There’s just one problem, though, for legacy auto companies doing the catching up – they’re not all electric.
In his Autonomy Day remarks, Musk wasn’t very kind about Tesla’s gas-guzzling brethren and their Robotaxi hopes. Any non-electric venture will not be competitive, he said flatly. Considering Tesla’s battery upgrades giving them a 1 million mile life cycle and the lower cost of plugging in for juice vs. filling up, this makes sense even without a deep analysis (although Musk has done plenty of that for sure).
Between Robotaxi competitors not making the case for single-party ownership of self-driving fleets and the low cost of electric vehicle taxis, Musk certainly seems to be right about the whole “buying any car besides a Tesla is like buying a horse” thing. I’m not seeing the case for another brand’s strategy having more benefit than the Tesla Network for those who own Tesla vehicles.
How about you?
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.”
Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO
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.
Tesla Model Y driver who drove off cliff with family attempts to avoid criminal conviction
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla stuns with another FSD approval in Europe, its second in two days
