Tesla has removed wording about having a “majority-minority” workforce in its latest 10-K filing, following recent statements from CEO Elon Musk opposing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives—and a history of allegations of racial discrimination at the automaker’s factories.
In Tesla’s 10-K filing released on Monday, the automaker has changed some of the wording alluding to DEI measures at the company, instead adding a few new paragraphs at the end. The omitted wording from the prior year’s annual report, which can be found near the end of the Item 1, Business section of Tesla’s 10-K filing last year, reads as follows:
“With a majority-minority workforce, empowering our employee resource groups to take charge in driving initiatives that attract, develop and retain our passionate workforce is vital to our continued success.”
Both this and last year’s filings include the same opening line for the section:
“At Tesla, our employees show up passionate about making a difference in the world and for each other.”
However, instead of the “minority-majority” workforce phrasing included in last year’s filing, the 10-K filed this week includes the following language:
“We remain unwavering in our demand that our factories, offices, stores and service centers are places where our employees feel respected and appreciated. Our policies are designed to promote fairness and respect for everyone. We hire, evaluate and promote employees based on their skills and performance. Everyone is expected to be trustworthy, demonstrate excellence in their performance and collaborate with others. With this in mind, we will not tolerate certain behaviors. These include harassment, retaliation, violence, intimidation and discrimination of any kind on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, disability or veteran status.”
The filing goes on to mention Tesla’s anti-harassment training and leadership development programs, encouraging employees to speak up about misconduct by contacting the company integrity line, human resources, and managers, or by submitting concerns through the Take Charge process.
You can see Tesla’s full 10-K filing for the fiscal year 2023 here, along with its 10-K released a year ago for the fiscal year 2022 here. Although the “majority-minority” workplace phrasing has been removed from the 10-K filing, Tesla still says this on its website, adding that underrepresented groups represent 67 percent of the company’s U.S. workforce.
Musk and Tesla have also continually emphasized their opposition to racism in the workplace in response to allegations of discrimination over the years. Musk has instead recently made several statements on X calling DEI initiatives racist, even noting in December that he thinks “DEI must DIE.”
“The point was to end discrimination, not replace it with different discrimination,” Musk added.
“Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” are propaganda words for racism, sexism and other -isms.
This is just as morally wrong as any other racism and sexism. Changing the target class doesn’t make it right!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 16, 2023
Earlier this month, Musk reiterated his opposition to these programs, saying that “DEI is just another word for racism.”
Discrimination on the basis of race, which DEI does, is literally the definition of racism
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 3, 2024
Musk has also opposed what he terms the “woke mind virus,” which he has criticized several times over the past few years.
Yeah, we have a lot to fix. The Internet is infested with the woke mind virus.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 11, 2024
Tesla has also faced multiple court cases alleging racial discrimination in the past, each of which the company and Musk have denied.
One such case included the high-profile trial of former contracted elevator operator Owen Diaz, who was denied his appeal by a judge in October for a third re-trial after being awarded $137 million by a jury in 2021. Diaz had worked at Tesla’s factory in Fremont, California, in 2015, and a second jury last April awarded him a $3.2 million verdict after he rejected a lowered settlement of $15 million from the first trial.
In a lawsuit in California in 2022, the Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) accused Tesla of operating a “racially segregated” workplace at the Fremont factory, to which the automaker responded by denying the claims and filing a formal complaint against the agency.
Earlier this month, Musk paid a visit to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and to a symposium opposing the rise of anti-semitism organized by the European Jewish Association (EJA), after X faced advertising boycotts and heavy criticism when Musk liked and replied to an anti-semitic post in November.
“I’m sorry for that post. It was foolish of me,” Musk said in an interview following the incident. “Of my 30,000 posts, it might literally be the worst and dumbest post I’ve ever done. I think over time it’ll be obvious that I’m far from anti-semitic.”
Tesla accused of race-based discrimination, retaliation by former HR manager
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Elon Musk has acknowledged that early discussions with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) could bring the company into his ambitious Terafab semiconductor project, signaling a possible partnership with the world’s leading contract chipmaker.
Musk confirmed that early talks are underway, but as of right now, they are “just discussions.” There is no confirmation of a deal nor dismissal of the possibility of one, leaving open the prospect of one of the largest advanced-chip collaborations under discussion in the U.S.
@wholemars Just discussions, but something may come of it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The report that speculated on potential discussions between Terafab and TSMC comes from Tim Culpan, who outlined a few ways the collaboration could operate. One is TSMC using the project as an “anchor customer” for future facilities in Texas, potentially contributing process expertise, operational know-how, or capacity while Terafab provides capital, long-term purchase commitments, or both.
Tesla and SpaceX jointly developed the Terafab project, with Intel already participating on the tech side. Elon Musk announced the project in March, and it intends to produce more than one terawatt of AI compute capacity annually once fully built.
Company statements place the first phase at approximately $16.8 billion in cost, with later filings pointing to a total that could reach well into the tens of billions across multiple stages.
Intel joined the effort in April 2026 and is expected to supply its 14A manufacturing process for the full-scale plant.
Musk has said existing suppliers, including Samsung and TSMC, remain important for near-term needs; Tesla already has production arrangements with Samsung for AI5 and AI6 chips, but that future demand from Optimus robots, Cybercab vehicles, and planned space-based data centers will eventually exceed what the global industry can currently deliver.
Terafab is positioned as the long-term answer to that projected shortfall, and Tesla did something similar during COVID to avoid a chip shortage. This is just a much larger-scale solution.
If the partnership were to materialize, it would add TSMC’s industry-leading strategies to a project that already combines Tesla’s and SpaceX’s capital and offtake with Intel’s process technology. For now, the only public confirmation is Musk’s brief acknowledgement that conversations are occurring.
Tesla’s early strategy for charging units operating within its Robotaxi fleet reveals that the company surely has not lost any of that scrappy DNA that took it from an unlikely success story to the most valuable carmaker in the world.
An observer at a Tesla Supercharger in Austin spotted ten total Robotaxi vehicles arrive: one Cybercab and nine Model Y units. A Tesla employee was waiting at the lot and allowed each unit to park itself; every car that arrived had nobody in it.
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The Tesla employee would walk around and plug each car in, adjusting the parking if needed:
So look at what I found. This is how Tesla charges unsupervised robotaxis at a public supercharger. Here is a driverless Cybercab showing up with no one in it. There are 9 other Model Ys that showed up too. A Tesla employee is walking around and plugging each of them in. She also moves the cars if they are not positioned well enough to charge. I love this process. One person charges multiple robotaxis at once
— Abhimanyu Yadav (@WorldlyReviewer) October 3, 2026
It’s a very interesting strategy, but extremely understandable at this early point in the Robotaxi program. It’s only been out for about 15 months, and Cybercab just entered the fleet in early September.
On top of that, Tesla is still working tirelessly on its wireless charging apparatus, and a new patent was just published regarding that product last week.
However, this is just another example of how Tesla still has plenty of that scrappy DNA leftover from the “production hell” days, when CEO Elon Musk slept on the floor of the factory, employees were working crazy hours, Tesla was building Sprung Structures to build cars in, and the company was tiptoeing on the brink of bankruptcy.
@Teslarati Sheer magnitude of the entire production system is hard to appreciate. Almost every element of production is >75% automated. Only wire harnesses & general assembly, which are <10% of production costs, are primarily manual.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 12, 2020
For now, Tesla is utilizing a simple system for recharging its ride-hailing vehicles, and that is a Tesla employee doing it manually until another solution presents itself. Sure, it’s not the most high-tech thing, and it certainly is not what people might have expected at this point in time, but it works, and it’s keeping the entire suite running.
Tesla is expanding its Robotaxi service hours by pushing the time back by one hour, keeping the ride-hailing service operational until 11 p.m., one hour later than previously.
CEO Elon Musk confirmed the change and offered a specific reason the expansion has been gradual: the system still needs to reliably avoid small pets that are difficult to see after dark, as they commonly blend into the color of the road, especially when they’re grey.
The latest adjustment restores only a fraction of the operating window the service once held. When paid Robotaxi rides began in Austin on June 22, 2025, vehicles ran from 6 a.m. to midnight.
In September 2025, Tesla lengthened the day to a 2 a.m. close, producing a 20-hour window that stayed in place for most of the following year. By early August of this year, the cutoff had already been pulled back; an August 26 update formalized hours of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. across Austin and several other markets.
The October move to 11 p.m. therefore leaves the Austin day one hour shorter than the original launch schedule and three hours shorter than the 2025 peak.
Musk addressed the constraint directly after the announcement. “The main thing we’re trying to solve is making sure that we don’t run over pets when they’re hard to see at night,” he wrote. “Literally trying to avoid grey kittens on grey tarmac in the dark.”
Robotaxi operating hours moved from 10pm to 11pm.
The main thing we’re trying to solve is making sure that we don’t run over pets when they’re hard to see at night. Literally trying to avoid grey kittens on grey tarmac in the dark.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The example points to a low-contrast perception problem in which a small animal can blend into the road surface under limited lighting.
Tesla’s vehicles rely on cameras and neural-network processing rather than lidar; Musk has previously argued that advanced vision software can extract useful information even in low light by analyzing photon counts, but the pet-detection case remains the stated limiter in later hours.
The modest schedule change arrives alongside faster growth in the purpose-built Cybercab fleet. Texas registration data tracked by observers showed the Austin Cybercab count rising sharply in recent weeks, reaching 169 vehicles after more than 100 were added in a short span.
Tesla has indicated that a broader shift toward 24-hour operation is tied to the upcoming FSD v15 software release expected this month on Robotaxi vehicles. Until that capability is validated for the edge cases Musk described, the company continues to add service time incrementally rather than jumping straight to overnight coverage.
The one-hour extension gives Austin riders a later option for evening trips while the underlying detection work continues.
Elon Musk teases TSMC as potential Terafab partner
Tesla reveals early Robotaxi charging strategy, showing scrappy DNA
