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Tesla Project Loveday finalist Sonja Jasansky talks competition (video)

Source: Screen grab via Sonja Jasansky

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Beginning on March 4, Tesla announced it would be holding a competition to find the best homemade commercial. The contest came in response to a letter sent to Tesla CEO Elon Musk by 10-year-old Bria Loveday, suggesting the company hold a video contest. Musk responded in a tweet, and thus “Project Loveday” was born.

Tesla received hundreds of video submissions, but 10 stood above the rest, and later it was narrowed down to 3. One video to make the cut came from first-time YouTuber Sonja Jasansky of Minnesota. Jasansky’s super-quick and ultra-quirky video highlighting Model S specifications and debunking common misconceptions earned her a top-3 spot in the competition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7N3y_5GXXA&t=12s

YouTube channel Everything Tesla welcomed Jasansky on the show to talk about her experiences as a Tesla owner and how she got the idea to enter the competition.

“If I had to give my number one reason for driving a Tesla, I would say right now in my life because I have children, is safety,” Jasansky said. “It is the safest car you can drive.”

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The videos were judged by Tesla execs and also were voted on by Twitter users. Jasansky claims she was new to Twitter and didn’t have much experience using the app.

The contest was won by Marques Brownlee, a familiar YouTube sensation whose channel has nearly 5 million subscribers. Brownlee’s video garnered over 999k views, while Jasansky’s had 146k.

While Everything Tesla host Alex Guberman was not pleased with the voting or selection process and took to Twitter to express his feelings.

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Jasansky on the other hand was at peace with the selection process.

“I think using Twitter was great way to get people engaged in this contest,” Jasansky said. “As we all know voting is never a perfect process but they did work to make sure the voting process was accurate”

She was also extremely humbled by the outpouring of support she’s received since.

“It was an intense few days,” Jasansky said. “Everyone was thrilled and excited and it was amazing to see our video reach such a large audience. We’ve received so much love and support and congratulations, it’s been a really positive experience.”

Much to her fans pleasure and encouragement, Jasansky said she plans on creating more YouTube videos in the future, focused on Tesla and her experiences as an electric car owner, and also as she remodels her house to be 100% solar powered.

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You can watch Jasansky’s and MKBHD’s videos below.

East Coast reporter for Teslarati. Tips can be sent to pete@teslarati.com

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Elon Musk

Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab

Elon Musk told investors Semi self-driving should start working by early 2027, per today’s earnings.

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During Wednesday’s’ Tesla Q2 earnings call, an analyst asked Elon Musk when Tesla would look at autonomy for the Semi. His answer set a real timeline for the first time, noting that self-driving on the Tesla Semi is expected to start working “around the end of this year or early next year”.

Musk framed the delay as a matter of priority, not capability. Tesla’s self-driving team is currently focused on Model 3, Model Y, and Cybercab, the vehicles that make up the overwhelming majority of Tesla’s fleet. Since Semi trucks on the road remain a small fraction of that total even after the recent Nevada factory ramp, Musk said it made more sense to keep the software team’s attention on what he called “the march of nines of safety” for the higher volume vehicles first. Autonomous Semi development is “taking a bit of a backseat for the next six months or so,” he said, before adding that it “will definitely be working next year and in time for the scale-up to high production of the Tesla Semi.”

Tesla Semi’s official battery capacity leaked by California regulators

The timeline lines up with what’s already been showing up on public roads. In June, a Tesla Semi was spotted in Sunnyvale wearing a full validation rig, the same rooftop sensor array Tesla mounts on vehicles ahead of an FSD milestone.

A second unit was seen near Fremont days later with a matching camera suite and lens washers. Separately, Tesla analyst Nic Cruz Patane posted video this month of the production Semi’s exterior camera array, ten AI4 based units built directly into the truck rather than added later.

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Musk also gave the reason autonomy on the Semi matters in the first place, a persistent shortage of qualified truck drivers. “There is a really serious shortage of truckers,” he said on the call, framing a self-driving Semi as important both for addressing that shortage and for improving safety and comfort for the drivers running the truck today.

The timing also tracks with the Semi’s production reality. Tesla’s Q2 shareholder letter, dropped language promising the Semi would reach volume production this year. Musk pointed to 4680 battery cell output as the near-term constraint on Semi and Cybercab production. A software timeline landing in early 2027 gives Tesla’s autonomy team room to work while the hardware ramp catches up behind it.

It’s worth nothing that this isn’t necessarily a promise the Semi ships driverless next year. Musk’s own language, self-driving “working” by early 2027, describes internal validation catching up to hardware already riding on every production truck, not a public unsupervised rollout.

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Investor's Corner

Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.

The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.

This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.

Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results

  • Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
  • Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
  • Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
  • Profit -$ 4.751B

Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.

Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.

In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.

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Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.

You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.

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Elon Musk

Tesla is about to make parking in busy lots less stressful than ever

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Tesla FSD 14.3 [Credit: TESLARATI)
Tesla FSD 14.3 [Credit: TESLARATI)

Tesla is about to make parking in busy parking lots at businesses and other points of interest less stressful than ever by allowing drivers more control over where they park and how, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X.

Tesla has been working to improve the parking performance of vehicles utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite, but now it is looking to add more customization, allowing drivers to choose the specific space they park in, but also potentially the orientation the car pulls into the spot:

Musk has reiterated on X twice over the past several weeks that Tesla is working to make things with the FSD suite based more on the driver’s specific preferences and behaviors that were seen in past drives.

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Essentially, it sounds like if you tend to park away from a business to avoid other vehicles, Tesla FSD will soon recognize that preference of yours and start parking further away as well. Additionally, the prospect of assigned parking spaces has been something many owners have voiced concerns about.

Living in a community with assigned parking spaces makes using FSD incredibly difficult as it will rarely park in the correct spot when there are so many to choose from. This is also pertinent in work settings where there are sometimes assigned parking spaces.

The updates to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite in terms of listening to driver preferences with parking are also extending to routing. Tesla announced yesterday that with the release of its 2026 Summer Update, it was adding Automatic Navigation and Preferred Routes:

Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more

Tesla has always maintained the idea that any human input is bad input, and that, ideally, Tesla Full Self-Driving will always make the right decision. Of course, this is all in theory, but the issue is that so many of Tesla’s interventions have come because it does something that is not necessarily wrong, but perhaps not what the driver would prefer.

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Taking these preferences into account will help Tesla alleviate some of the potentially unnecessary interventions that drivers perform.

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