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Tesla will launch pop up showroom inside Australia’s largest retailer
Companies that want to disrupt customer expectations are now turning to Tesla to create positive brand association and appeal.
Peek into the Myer department store in Melbourne’s Central Business District (CBD) this Friday and you’ll see a mini Tesla showroom with Model X set as the centerpiece. The Australian department store chain, with its familiar merchandise lines of designer clothing, cosmetics, homewares, toys, food, travel goods, and the like, will launch Tesla’s pilot store on the sixth floor. It’s all part of the retailer’s drive to integrate new and innovative brands into Myer merchandise selections. Brand association with Tesla is part of the company’s “New Myer” marketing strategy.
The images and symbols that come to mind when thinking about the Tesla brand have related, perceived qualities that translate to the known Myer name. That kind of acquaintance and differentiation just isn’t replicable from within the Myer line of products or even outside Myer to another carmaker. And it may help the retailer to reinvent itself and attract back customers who have not visited a Myer store for some time.
Myer will host a launch event scheduled for tomorrow evening where models will arrive in the underground car park of Melbourne University in Tesla Model X vehicles. The launch will also be broadcast live on Periscope, allowing people at home to have a 360-degree view of the showcase.
Tesla has special implicit and explicit meanings to which a consumer relates. At least that’s the conceptual framework that Mike Scott, head of Myer brand and marketing, has in mind. Scott joined the company in June 2016 after jobs with Virgin Australia, Nike, and McDonald’s. Scott said he is confident that the open-ended deal between Myer and Tesla will succeed. “We want to disrupt;, we want to innovate. We need to act like a contemporary brand.” The Tesla brand will offer that allure. Myer has introduced 850 or so new brands in the past 18 months, but none have quite the panache of Tesla.
Scott acknowledged that a “magnetic brand” like Tesla offers Myer a kind of halo effect, a mirror reflection, from customers who recognize and respect the Tesla product class. Through working with a disruptor like Tesla, Myer will be able to offer visitors a “what they want, when they want it” customer experience, added Myer chief executive Richard Umbers.
Tesla, too, will benefit from having access to a customer base that may not ordinarily visit a Tesla showroom. And although this is Tesla’s first official entrance into the Australian department store world, it isn’t the company’s first partnership with a large retail chain. Last June, the Silicon Valley electric carmaker announced a partnership with Nordstrom that allowed interested parties to test drive vehicles and speak with Tesla employees, directly from a showroom gallery set up within the company’s upscale retail store.
Brand association trend is all part of competing on a global stage, according to Scott. “Technology has shortened the supply chain, so we’re competing with the biggest and best.”
According to a report from the Sydney Morning Herald, the deal between Myer and Tesla is set as “open-ended”. We’ve reached out to Tesla for confirmation on the relationship, and will report back with updates.
Updated: A Tesla spokesperson has confirmed with Teslarati that plans for a retail pop up store in Myer is underway.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk and Tesla AI Director share insights after empty driver seat Robotaxi rides
The executives’ unoccupied tests hint at the rapid progress of Tesla’s unsupervised Robotaxi efforts.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and AI Director Ashok Elluswamy celebrated Christmas Eve by sharing personal experiences with Robotaxi vehicles that had no safety monitor or occupant in the driver’s seat. Musk described the system’s “perfect driving” around Austin, while Elluswamy posted video from the back seat, calling it “an amazing experience.”
The executives’ unoccupied tests hint at the rapid progress of Tesla’s unsupervised Robotaxi efforts.
Elon and Ashok’s firsthand Robotaxi insights
Prior to Musk and the Tesla AI Director’s posts, sightings of unmanned Teslas navigating public roads were widely shared on social media. One such vehicle was spotted in Austin, Texas, which Elon Musk acknowleged by stating that “Testing is underway with no occupants in the car.”
Based on his Christmas Eve post, Musk seemed to have tested an unmanned Tesla himself. “A Tesla with no safety monitor in the car and me sitting in the passenger seat took me all around Austin on Sunday with perfect driving,” Musk wrote in his post.
Elluswamy responded with a 2-minute video showing himself in the rear of an unmanned Tesla. The video featured the vehicle’s empty front seats, as well as its smooth handling through real-world traffic. He captioned his video with the words, “It’s an amazing experience!”
Towards Unsupervised operations
During an xAI Hackathon earlier this month, Elon Musk mentioned that Tesla owed be removing Safety Monitors from its Robotaxis in Austin in just three weeks. “Unsupervised is pretty much solved at this point. So there will be Tesla Robotaxis operating in Austin with no one in them. Not even anyone in the passenger seat in about three weeks,” he said. Musk echoed similar estimates at the 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting and the Q3 2025 earnings call.
Considering the insights that were posted Musk and Elluswamy, it does appear that Tesla is working hard towards operating its Robotaxis with no safety monitors. This is quite impressive considering that the service was launched just earlier this year.
Elon Musk
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service has continued its rapid global expansion, surpassing 9 million active customers just weeks after crossing the 8 million mark.
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
9 million customers
In a post on X, SpaceX stated that Starlink now serves over 9 million active users across 155 countries, territories, and markets. The company reached 8 million customers in early November, meaning it added roughly 1 million subscribers in under seven weeks, or about 21,275 new users on average per day.
“Starlink is connecting more than 9M active customers with high-speed internet across 155 countries, territories, and many other markets,” Starlink wrote in a post on its official X account. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell also celebrated the milestone on X. “A huge thank you to all of our customers and congrats to the Starlink team for such an incredible product,” she wrote.
That growth rate reflects both rising demand for broadband in underserved regions and Starlink’s expanding satellite constellation, which now includes more than 9,000 low-Earth-orbit satellites designed to deliver high-speed, low-latency internet worldwide.
Starlink’s momentum
Starlink’s momentum has been building up. SpaceX reported 4.6 million Starlink customers in December 2024, followed by 7 million by August 2025, and 8 million customers in November. Independent data also suggests Starlink usage is rising sharply, with Cloudflare reporting that global web traffic from Starlink users more than doubled in 2025, as noted in an Insider report.
Starlink’s momentum is increasingly tied to SpaceX’s broader financial outlook. Elon Musk has said the satellite network is “by far” the company’s largest revenue driver, and reports suggest SpaceX may be positioning itself for an initial public offering as soon as next year, with valuations estimated as high as $1.5 trillion. Musk has also suggested in the past that Starlink could have its own IPO in the future.
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NVIDIA Director of Robotics: Tesla FSD v14 is the first AI to pass the “Physical Turing Test”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine.
NVIDIA Director of Robotics Jim Fan has praised Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14 as the first AI to pass what he described as a “Physical Turing Test.”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine. And just like smartphones today, removing it now would “actively hurt.”
Jim Fan’s hands-on FSD v14 impressions
Fan, a leading researcher in embodied AI who is currently solving Physical AI at NVIDIA and spearheading the company’s Project GR00T initiative, noted that he actually was late to the Tesla game. He was, however, one of the first to try out FSD v14.
“I was very late to own a Tesla but among the earliest to try out FSD v14. It’s perhaps the first time I experience an AI that passes the Physical Turing Test: after a long day at work, you press a button, lay back, and couldn’t tell if a neural net or a human drove you home,” Fan wrote in a post on X.
Fan added: “Despite knowing exactly how robot learning works, I still find it magical watching the steering wheel turn by itself. First it feels surreal, next it becomes routine. Then, like the smartphone, taking it away actively hurts. This is how humanity gets rewired and glued to god-like technologies.”
The Physical Turing Test
The original Turing Test was conceived by Alan Turing in 1950, and it was aimed at determining if a machine could exhibit behavior that is equivalent to or indistinguishable from a human. By focusing on text-based conversations, the original Turing Test set a high bar for natural language processing and machine learning.
This test has been passed by today’s large language models. However, the capability to converse in a humanlike manner is a completely different challenge from performing real-world problem-solving or physical interactions. Thus, Fan introduced the Physical Turing Test, which challenges AI systems to demonstrate intelligence through physical actions.
Based on Fan’s comments, Tesla has demonstrated these intelligent physical actions with FSD v14. Elon Musk agreed with the NVIDIA executive, stating in a post on X that with FSD v14, “you can sense the sentience maturing.” Musk also praised Tesla AI, calling it the best “real-world AI” today.
Elon Musk and Tesla AI Director share insights after empty driver seat Robotaxi rides
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
