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Tesla and Rivian are poised to battle Ford and GM for the US’ electric truck market
The US pickup truck market is a hefty prize for any automaker. In the second quarter alone, pickup trucks accounted for 33% of sales from Ford, GM, and Fiat Chrysler, up from 30% the previous year. Full-size trucks, such as the F-150, Silverado and RAM, continue to see growth as well, with the average price of such vehicles hitting $47,255 per unit.
Tyson Jominy, an analyst at research firm J.D. Power, explained in a statement to The Wall Street Journal that the US car industry’s interest in pickup trucks continues to be strong. “Trucks are the one sure bet for all three. They’re trying to take every cent off the table and use it to fund their research and development,” he said.
Yet, just like the passenger car sector, the pickup truck segment is about to feel the disruption from dedicated all-electric vehicles. Elon Musk has announced that Tesla will be releasing its own pickup truck later this year, and that it would be a vehicle so loaded with tech that it would not look out of place in the Blade Runner franchise. Rivian, itself a Detroit-based company, is poised to start producing its R1T pickup truck soon. The R1T is critically acclaimed, being a true off-roader that exudes luxury.
Both Tesla’s pickup truck and Rivian’s R1T will likely enter the market as quickly as their respective automakers are able. The pickup market is ripe for disruption after all, and any company that breaches the segment first with a truck that is both capable and reasonable in price would likely enjoy momentum for years to come. Quite surprisingly, neither Ford nor GM seem to be in any hurry to launch their own pickup trucks to the market.
This is quite surprising considering that both companies have immense experience in truck building. Each company has also stated that it will be releasing its own electric truck. Ford provided a teaser of its F-150 EV last June, which involved an impressive demonstration featuring the truck pulling over a million pounds of cargo. Back in April, GM CEO Mary Barra stated that General Motors will be releasing a “complete range of EVs, including full-size pickups.”
Ford, for its part, stated after its impressive F-150 EV demonstration that the vehicle is not slated for production anytime soon. Ford Chief Product Development Officer Hau Thai-Tang explained in an interview with Yahoo Finance that while a hybrid F-150 will be introduced next year, a battery-electric variant similar to the unit used in the 1-million-pound demonstration is still “a couple years out.” GM is equally vague, if not more. FCA is even less committal, not even confirming its plans for an electric pickup truck.
Considering the coming competition from younger companies such as Tesla and Rivian, both of whom are still hungry and aggressive, Ford, and GM’s decision to adopt a deliberate pace in their EV truck initiatives might prove to be a miscalculation. Such wait-and-see strategies, after all, could easily be remembered in the future as the stuff of hubris, if they are not careful.
This is especially true if one were to look at what the Tesla Truck and the Rivian R1T are both set to offer. Elon Musk has spoken a lot about Tesla’s pickup truck, from its “cyberpunk” appearance, Porsche 911-esque performace, and its $49,000 starting price. Rivian’s R1T, on the other hand, is so steeped in luxury amenities and nifty features that it almost seems like a full suite of Patagonia outdoor gear with wheels.
Granted, both Tesla and Rivian lack the experience in truck-building enjoyed by Ford and GM. That being said, Tesla has extensive experience in developing electric vehicles, and its battery tech is second to none. Rivian, on the other hand, is backed by what could very well be the deepest pocket in the tech industry today: Amazon. With this in mind, veteran automakers might be well advised to expedite the release of their own electric pickups, or risk being outperformed and outmaneuvered by upstart electric vehicle makers that are a fraction of their age.
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Tesla got its largest order for the all-electric Class 8 Semi yet, a 500-unit order from Einride AB, a Swedish trucking company.
Einride made the announcement this morning following its second-quarter earnings call. The company said it plans to use 500 Tesla Semi units on its fleet intelligence platform, called Saga AI. The deployments will serve large companies like Amazon and will extend Einride’s electric freight network across logistics routes in California, New Jersey, Texas, Illinois, and Georgia.
🚨 Tesla has received a MASSIVE order from Swedish freight company Einride AB, which placed an order for 500 Tesla Semi trucks
Tesla’s biggest order for the Semi yet! pic.twitter.com/PrtLp5yzvh
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 18, 2026
The deployment is being carried out in several phases over the next two years as Tesla ramps production of the Semi at its dedicated production facility in Sparks, Nevada. Einride will receive its first Semi units in September.
Saga AI
Saga AI is Einride’s dedicated fleet intelligence platform. It enables scaled adoption of electric trucks for freight use and allows shippers to integrate electric capacity without the operational burden or capital risks of managing a fleet. This helps integrate cost-efficient logistics and makes budgeting and forecasting much more accurate.
Tesla Semi’s Adoption
The Tesla Semi is now gathering large-scale clients past those who have helped the company operate a Pilot Program to gain initial information and feedback from real-world drivers.
Perhaps the biggest and most notable is that of Frito-Lay and PepsiCo., who have worked with Tesla for the past several years to dial in the finer details of the truck, including its efficiency and operation-related components.
Tesla Semi gets strange-but-understandable comparison from Jay Leno
There has been tremendous progress in that time, and it even catalyzed Tesla to make some design changes, which were unveiled earlier this year.
But Einride CEO Roozbeh Charli says his company’s partnership with Tesla will continue to push those things forward:
“This deployment is yet another proof point that we can execute at the scale our customers demand. Working closely with Tesla to bring next-generation Semis into active operations quickly and at scale is a testament to the strength of that partnership, and how quickly this technology is maturing from promise to daily operations.”
Additionally, Dan Priestley, the Director of the Semi Program at Tesla, said the partnership is ideal due to Einride’s focus on sustainable transport:
“Einride is at the forefront of sustainable freight, and we are thrilled to deepen our relationship with them through this order of 500 Semis. EV heavy trucks provide lower costs per mile from fuel savings, reduced maintenance, and better uptime over diesel trucks. These savings increase further through operational efficiency when deploying EV trucks at scale, and we are excited that Einride recognizes this and look forward to supporting their deployments.”
Elon Musk
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
Elon Musk says X now exposes government censorship, but India’s secrecy laws complicate that promise.
Elon Musk’s promise to make government censorship requests on X “clearly visible” is running into a wall in India, where the law forbids the very disclosure Musk is promising.
On August 15, Musk responded to an update from X’s open-source algorithm team by writing “Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible.” The claim referred to a change X pushed two days earlier to its public xai-org/x-algorithm repository, which now includes a controversial filter written directly into the code. The filter suppresses posts from 665 accounts flagged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court from appearing in the For You feed of any viewer located in Brazil, unless the viewer already follows the account. The election tied to the filter is scheduled for October 4.
India’s government wasn’t as impressed, and responded on Monday that “X will have to follow the law of the land,” in response to Musk’s transparency push covered by the Times of India. The problem is structural rather than political. India issues content blocking orders under Section 69A of its IT Act, and Rule 16 of the accompanying 2009 Blocking Rules requires those orders to stay confidential. Publishing an India equivalent of the Brazil filter, naming specific accounts and citing specific government orders, would itself violate Indian law. Government use of Section 69A has grown from roughly 6,000 orders a year between 2018 and 2023 to about 24,300 in 2025, according to a Tech Times report.
The contrast puts Musk’s transparency pledge in an odd spot. It works largely as advertised in Brazil, where electoral law requires disclosure and X can point to specific account IDs and a specific court order in public code. It cannot work the same way in India, where the law requires the opposite. X users in India will keep seeing content disappear from search and their feeds without any public accounting of why, even as X tells the rest of the world that its censorship compliance is now inspectable.
This isn’t the first time X’s fights with a national government have shaped how the platform operates. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to suspend the accounts of sitting lawmakers and journalists in 2024, a standoff that cost X its Brazilian revenue for months and froze Starlink’s local accounts before the investigation into Musk and X was closed in March with no evidence of wrongdoing found. X also sued California over a state law requiring moderation disclosures, arguing the mandate itself violated the First Amendment.
Whether India’s government pursues anything beyond a public statement remains to be seen. For now, the mismatch between what X can legally publish and what different governments legally allow it to publish is the real story behind Musk’s seven word claim.
Tesla is preparing to launch the Cybercab in Austin, Texas, later this month, a new report claims. Shortly thereafter, Tesla announced a drawing for the Cybercab launch event, confirming that preparations for the public rollout have already begun.
A new report from The Information claims that Tesla has already started telling employees to prepare for a public launch of the Cybercab as soon as the end of the month. The vehicle will launch publicly to riders in Austin initially.
The two-seater has no pedals or steering wheel, and will rely completely on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software to operate.
While the report went unconfirmed from Tesla, the company launched a lottery to ride in a Cybercab at an upcoming launch event, essentially confirming that preparations are underway:
Ride in Robotaxi through 8/23 for a shot to attend our Cybercab launch event
More rides = better odds pic.twitter.com/NxA4H9sWF2
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) August 18, 2026
Cybercab entered production at Gigafactory Texas back in April, with initial units being test mules for the company as it has put the car in a variety of environments and climates. Tesla has sent Cybercab to many states, including Texas, California, Nevada, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, Washington, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
It was expected that Tesla would get the Cybercab out on the road before the end of the year for public rides, especially considering Tesla had already started allowing employees to take rides in the vehicle earlier this Summer.
Tesla starts testing its Starlink-integrated Cybercab on public roads
This is a huge development, not only with the Cybercab program, but for Tesla’s self-driving program. Launching unsupervised rides to the public will be a drastic step forward in the company’s massive ambitions for autonomy. It is a long time coming, too. Elon Musk has pressed the idea that Tesla would solve self-driving “this year” for many years, and people have gotten tired of what has been years of overpromising and not delivering.
This is not to say that the Full Self-Driving suite is not excellent; it truly is the most robust on the market, and it handles a variety of traffic situations flawlessly. It definitely has its faults, but generally, it is fantastic.
Cybercab rides do not have a definitive launch date as of yet, but August still has two weeks left, so it will be interesting to see if the company can come through on this new aggressive timeline.
Tesla Semi gets its largest order yet
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
