Elon Musk
Anti-Musk protests at Tesla store in New York lead to arrests
Authorities say there were hundreds of demonstrators at the scene.
An anti-Elon Musk protest outside a Tesla store in New York over the weekend has led to as many as nine arrests, along with some protestors attempting to prevent some customers from entering the location.
Tesla’s Manhattan store was the target of anti-Musk protests on Saturday, and a report from Reuters notes that police went on to arrest nine demonstrators from the scene. Authorities say there were hundreds of protestors at the site, and crowds of them can be seen in footage from the Tesla location.
The Saturday protests were captured on camera and widely shared on X, showing many demonstrators attempting to stop customers from entering the store. One such customer, Angelo Martinez, can be seen being barred from entering as he attempted to make it to a test drive of the new Model Y, which he had scheduled for Saturday at 1:00 p.m.
The video also shows at least a few protestors who made it all the way inside the store, and certain angles show that some of the glass in front of the store had been shattered.
The event comes amidst broader protests hitting Tesla’s stores around the world over Musk’s recent involvement with U.S. President Donald Trump’s government efficiency department, a re-branded agency the administration has used to slash federal agency workforces in recent weeks.
Last weekend, protestors could be seen at several Tesla stores including those in San Francisco, Washington D.C., two sites in Pennsylvania, and in Sweden, amongst others still.
You can see Martinez arguing with the demonstrators below.
??? BREAKING: TESLA DEALERSHIP OCCUPIED IN MANHATTAN
One agreeable participant even asked why anyone thinks they have a right to stop him from forcefully entering the building, with some reference to the ‘United States of America.’
Source: https://t.co/VH9KOxReAM pic.twitter.com/5nY4fw2B6i
— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) March 1, 2025
READ MORE ON ANTI-TESLA PROTESTS: Suspect linked to four Tesla store attacks arrested with incendiary devices
Eventually, Martinez says he did manage to get into the Tesla store by roughly 2:15 p.m. with the help of authorities, and he was still able to complete his test drive, though later than planned.
“The new model Y is going to blow people’s minds,” Martinez wrote in a follow-up post on X.
Amidst some misunderstandings about whether he actually had an appointment for the demo drive or not, Martinez also shared a screenshot from the booking, along with providing a full statement as to what happened to him at the demonstration. You can read the full account from Martinez below, as detailed in a post on X on Saturday afternoon.
CONTEXT: MY POV OF WHAT HAPPENED!!
I had an appointment at the Tesla dealership in Manhattan today at 1:00 PM to test drive the new model Y.
Unfortunately I was met by protesters immediately coming down the street in my own Tesla as I was going to park in the parking garage down the street.
I had an appointment at 1 PM but didn’t get to go into the Tesla dealership until around 2:15 PM. As I tried to approach the entrance doors, I realized that there were people laying out in front, blocking the entrance along with MSM to take photos and videos.
There was broken glass from the protestors trying to breach. The tensions were high, people were screaming, yelling, and cursing with huge signs in protest of Elon.
As I approached the entrance to see what was occurring I was met by protestors chanting and yelling over me as I tried to figure out the whole situation. I became frustrated from the situation and pleaded to the protestors to please stop impeding on day to day life.
Once I realized I wouldn’t be able to come through the front, I approached NYPD and asked them what I should do. They had me stand off to the side as they tried to control the situation. I ended up being able to get in contact with the Tesla dealership and they allowed me to come in through the garage where the vehicles were being let out.
I will post the footage of the test drive separately as I want to show the context of what I experienced. These people were sick, mentally ill and didn’t care who they were going to bother in order to make their point.
Attached, you’ll find the email for confirmation of my reservation to test drive the new Model Y.
I hope this gives context to what occurred, and also shows how unhinged these psychopaths are. @elonmusk
Tesla’s Giga Berlin and police are still dealing with a protestor problem
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update turns Grok from a talking companion into a true in-car controller, with considerably expanded capabilities. Where the assistant once answered questions and handled navigation, it can now operate hardware and software through ordinary speech, including several requests at the same time.
Grok has become incredibly robust over the past few quarters, and this new ability that Tesla has included with its Summer Update is perhaps the clearest sign of just how capable it has become.
You can issue many commands to Grok at once, and each will be taken care of: anything from headlight control to climate adjustments to mirror folding can now all be taken care of with a simple sentence spoken toward Grok:
This is cool, you can now give Grok a ton of commands at once in your Tesla and it’ll do them all together.
The commands I gave:
• Fold mirrors
• Turn on wipers to fastest setting
• Change temp to 65°
• Open self-driving app
• Open gloveboxComes with Tesla’s 2026 Summer… pic.twitter.com/drZxoHrknv
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 26, 2026
Here’s another example I used in my Model Y:
🚨 Using Grok to control the cabin temperature and turn on headlights in 2026 Model Y on FSD v14.3.8 and 2026.26.6.5 pic.twitter.com/7clgQkGABk
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 27, 2026
Tesla’s official Release Notes list the core powers of Grok’s new capabilities: Grok can place phone calls from a paired phone, search a streaming service and queue music, adjust climate, and search the Controls panel. Drivers can also ask it questions about the vehicle or the latest features included in a recent software update.
It can also take care of driving settings, dynamics, and other relevant preferences that deal with how the car operates and handles.
Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features
It’s also more of a use case than a novelty feature. Grok was great for learning about something that was being pondered while Full Self-Driving was taking care of the major automotive responsibilities, but it did have some useful functionality when it came to navigation.
Another less-noted improvement is the swift transition that Grok has from thinking of its answer to giving you one. In the past, it would take a few seconds for Grok to truly come up with a valuable response. It now seems that it is improving, at least slightly.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is set to get a major fix with pothole avoidance, a feature that CEO Elon Musk said recently was “coming soon.” The feature has been included within the FSD v14 release notes for some time as an upcoming improvement.
Potholes come in all shapes and sizes, but one thing is universal about them, and that is the fact that every driver wants to avoid them. Driving into or over a pothole can cause tire and wheel damage, alignment issues, and even, in some more severe instances, injury to occupants or major damage to a vehicle in despair.
Tesla Cybercab uses a unique strategy for picking up the right rider
Musk said late last night in a post that pothole avoidance while utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite is “coming soon.”
Coming soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 31, 2026
Full Self-Driving, even in its most recent and robust forms, still has its shortcomings. While the suite has performed exceptionally well with avoiding on-road obstacles like cardboard boxes, horse droppings, car parts, and other debris, it still seems to struggle with recognizing certain things.
Potholes and other abrupt changes in a road’s layout are things that FSD still tends to struggle with. Perhaps the suite’s 3D modeling is still in need of some additional data or some sort of script that will help it to avoid a potentially destructive pothole or bump in the road that would be easily recognizable by the human eye.
Musk has mentioned pothole avoidance for some time, with the initial idea coming in April 2019 when an owner first requested the feature. Musk said that Tesla would “definitely” develop pothole avoidance.
In August 2020, Musk said Tesla was in the process of labeling bumps and potholes so cars can either slow down or steer around them altogether.
Tesla to utilize micro maps for pothole-detection in future update
Avoiding major disturbances in the road is a necessary feature for Full Self-Driving to have, especially as Tesla is working toward a fully autonomous program that will eventually allow every occupant in the vehicle to sleep, work, or enjoy leisure time while traveling.
That truly begins this week with the launch of Cybercab on Thursday.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk says he knows how to save Earth for a billion years
Elon Musk says sentient AI satellites launched from the Moon could keep Earth livable forever.
Elon Musk spent part of his weekend describing a plan to keep the planet livable for roughly a billion years, and it starts with satellites that can think for themselves.
In a post on X, Musk argued that swapping fossil fuels for solar and wind power will not be enough to protect humanity from what he called extremely severe extinction events, the kind that occur roughly every 100 million years. His fix is what he called sentient satellites, or solar-powered satellites, controlled by AI, that would sit in a fixed spot between Earth and the Sun after being launched off the Moon using a giant electromagnetic catapult instead of rockets.
The satellites’ onboard AI would make continuous, small adjustments rather than waiting on human instructions. The mass driver is Musk’s proposed way of getting the raw material there cheaply by using an electromagnetic launch track built on the Moon, where lower gravity and no atmosphere make it far easier to fling cargo into space than it is from Earth.
But we do need to act much faster than that if people still want to live where the beach is today. We have about 50 years or so to take action, which should be more than enough time for the space satellites to solve any heating problems. https://t.co/xhrVQALwQw
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 30, 2026
Musk shared a Grok generated estimate suggesting roughly 5 percent of Florida’s land, or about 1.68 million acres, could face regular flooding by 2070 under a high sea level rise scenario, and said humanity has about 50 years to act before coastal living looks very different than it does today.
This is not the first time Musk has floated the idea. He raised a similar concept in November, describing a solar powered AI satellite constellation that could make tiny adjustments to incoming sunlight to fine tune Earth’s temperature. Musk has also tied planetary risk to his broader vision at SpaceX, where his compensation package is explicitly linked to establishing a self-sustaining Mars colony, one he has described as an insurance policy against the kind of extinction event he referenced this weekend, and where he has said humans could set foot within five to seven years.
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