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Tesla owners unite in Austria for epic Black Mountain meetup
Tesla owners from eight countries took electric vehicles to new heights as they drove to the top of the highest mountain in Austria. The Großglockner or ‘black mountain’ towers 3,798 meters above the surrounding mountains. According to legends, a black crystal concentrates the energy of the mountain and is hidden somewhere inside the Glockner.
Today with @TeslaClubAT we climbed the highest mountain in Austria with 60 Teslas from 8 countries 🇺🇸🇸🇪🇫🇮🇳🇴🇨🇭🇩🇪🇦🇹 and 🇺🇦
Supporting Peace, Love & Tesla @elonmusk #silencerallye @Tesla pic.twitter.com/DlnPgtxFR4— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) July 3, 2022
The Tesla Owners Club of Austria brought together 60 Tesla vehicles with owners from eight nations to share a powerful message. “Let’s work hard to preserve this and all other treasures on this planet,” they shared on Twitter.
The message is a symbol of peace. The club president of Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley represented the United States which had just celebrated its 246th Independence Day. The Tesla owners came together to support peace, love, and Tesla.
Austria is such an amazing, beautiful and S3XY country. It was a great honor to show it to 60 tesla drivers from 8 nations. Let’s work hard to preserve this and all other treasures on this planet 💪✌️🇦🇹😍 @elonmusk @teslaclubfin @OwnersWest @TeslaClubNorway @teslaownersSV pic.twitter.com/QjDtwmaWnH
— Tesla Club Austria (@TeslaClubAT) July 4, 2022
I reached out to the Tesla Owners Club of Austria and asked them to share how the experience was for them. They told me,
“I almost cried because in this time of crisis everywhere it felt so good to experience so much fun and love together with the Tesla community. We had 60 Teslas from 8 nations (including one team from Ukraine and club presidents from Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Silicon Valley), perfect weather, and great fun.”
“The Großglockner is the highest mountain in Austria and there are 300.000 cars every year driving the world-famous road. We wanted to show that you can do that without emissions, sexy and silent. You get so much energy back during regenerative braking while driving down so that was no problem at all charging all the 60 cars. And you get so many good feelings back when you participate in such events.”
Why They Chose The Peace Sign
It’s about building something new at events. The Tesla Owners Club of Austria participated in the Silence Rallye and chose the peace sign for a reason. The Rallye, they told me, is the club’s largest annual event.
“It is our biggest event and we organize it every year in a different region in Austria. There are fun competitions, amazing road trips, and good food for three days. This year we tried to bring some Sound of Music Style into it with a special VIP tour through Salzburg city and the Vintage Party. Großglockner is also in the Salzburg area so it was a Must that we had to climb this mountain.”
“We always try to build something new at our bigger events. After a Tesla Logo and a heart shape, it just felt right to do this sign. The theme of this Silence Rallye was Sound of Music because we visited Salzburg. We organized a vintage disco with Dresscode. Some people came as hippies so setting up the peace sign on one of the highest mountains in the Alps was a perfect way, to sum up, our Rallye.”
Supporting Ukraine
There was one team from Ukraine and the club wanted to show support. They also raised donations and helped Tesla drivers from Ukraine that were traveling to safer locations. The majority of the teams were from Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. Several club presidents from West Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Silicon Valley were also there.
John Stringer, the president of the Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley told me that the Austria club spent an extensive amount of time mapping out each car to get it perfect. He added,
“It was super cool to meet the owners of Austria and be able to take a Sound of Music tour and take 60 Teslas to the highest peak in Austria.”
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:
Wow just wow!
It’s 8:30PM, 29° out ice storm hailing & Tesla Robotaxi service has turned back on!
Waymo is offline & vast majority of humans are home in the storm
Ride 38 was still supervised but by far most impressive yet pic.twitter.com/1aUnJkcYm8
— David Moss (@DavidMoss) January 25, 2026
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.
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.”
FSD now shows a new message when approaching an international border crossing.
Stayed engaged the whole way as we crossed the border and worked great in Mexico! pic.twitter.com/bDzyLnyq0g
— Zack (@BLKMDL3) January 26, 2026
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.
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.
Elon Musk
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.
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.
Tesla Robotaxi ride-hailing without a Safety Monitor proves to be difficult
Tesla gives its biggest hint that Full Self-Driving in Europe is imminent
