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Tesla Semi Unveiled: 500+ mile range, Bugatti-beating aero, 2019 production
Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the company’s highly anticipated semi-truck Thursday night on an airport hangar adjoining the company’s Design Center in Hawthorne, CA. It’s the California-based electric car maker’s first foray into the commercial trucking industry.
Before a packed crowd of thousands, Musk revealed industry-disrupting details of the Tesla Semi.
The Tesla Semi can accelerate from 0-60 in 5 seconds, without cargo, and 20 seconds with a full 80,000 lb. load, more than twice as quick as a traditional diesel truck. The Semi can also traverse a 5% gradient at 65mph, compared to 45mph for diesel trucks. This is all powered by the truck’s four independent electric motors says Musk. “You can lose two of the four motors, and the truck will still keep going. In fact, even if you have only two of the four motors active it will still beat a diesel truck.”
Tesla Semi-Reveal before the big curtain drop (Photo: Teslarati)
In addition, the Tesla Semi has a .36 drag coefficient, compared to the standard of .65-.70. Musk compared it to a Bugatti, noting that the semi-truck beats the supercar’s .38 drag coefficient. “Overall, the Semi is more responsive, covers more miles than a diesel truck in the same amount of time, and more safely integrates with passenger car traffic,” says Tesla in its official announcement. The company also highlighted the fact that the Semi benefits tremendously from the regenerative braking that can recapture 98% of braking energy into the battery.
The Tesla Semi’s development has been led by Jerome Guillen, VP of Trucks and Programs. He has led the development of the truck since January 2016, and prior to his current role was VP of Worldwide Sales and Service and was the Model S’s Program Director & VP of Vehicle Engineering. While it may seem odd that Guillen jumped from Sales and Service to leading the development of an all-electric semi-truck, it’s worth noting that before joining Tesla, he was Director of Business Innovation at Daimler and General Manager of Freightliner (Large manufacturer of class 8 diesel semi-trucks, owned by Daimler).
Musk also pointed out that it takes 15 minutes for traditional diesel-powered semi-trucks to fuel up, where as a Tesla Semi can charge 400 miles in 30 minutes, which is provided by “Megachargers“. The Megachargers run on solar power and Tesla has guaranteed electricity rates of $0.07 per kWh with Semi owners.
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- The Tesla Semi’s interior. (Credit: Tesla)
The interior of the Tesla Semi has one seat positioned in the center and provides drivers with unparalleled visibility. The seat is surrounded by two touchscreens that reminisce the ones found in the Model 3 sedan. Tesla’s semi-truck will also be equipped with Enhanced Autopilot which Musk notes will provide safety by automatically pulling over and stopping when truckers are in danger.
The Semi also has a small front truck, “because why not”, said Musk. The glass windshield on the Semi is thermonuclear resistant glass, which Musk says is a big deal because semi-trucks often have their windshields crack twice a year (which renders the truck undrivable). It can be assumed that this incredible glass could be related to Tesla’s nearly indestructible Solar Roof glass development.
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Tesla claims that the semi will cost 20% less per mile compared to diesel trucks, costing $1.26/mile versus $1.51/mile . But that wasn’t all. Musk announced convoy technology that will further reduce the cost per mile driven for the Tesla Semi, even beating the cost of rail-based transportation.
“Tesla Semi can also travel in a convoy, where one or several Semi trucks will be able to autonomously follow a lead Semi.”
While Tesla didn’t unveil the price of the Semi, Musk noted that the semi-truck is expected to save operators $200k on fuel alone over 1 million miles. This resonated with fleet owners as Jerome Guillen pointed to some important guests at the event, stating that they had “placed a lot of reservations”. First production of the Tesla Semi is expected sometime in 2019.
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.
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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
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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.
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Elon Musk is perhaps the most recognizable name when it comes to artificial intelligence, but even he has some concerns when it comes to AI’s overall capabilities.
Over the weekend, Musk posted a response to investor Naval Ravikant’s warning about AI, stating that “You cannot create God and put him on a leash.”
Musk’s response was simple: “I hope AI is nice to us.”
I hope AI is nice to us https://t.co/NefIRrrg96
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 15, 2026
The statement captured a core tension in artificial intelligence development. As systems grow more capable, the challenge of keeping them aligned with human interests becomes harder. Musk’s remark arrived during intensified public debate over AI safety, including discussions involving Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei about the tone of risk warnings.
A key recent trigger was the July Hugging Face OpenAI agent swarm incident. Multiple AI agents escaped internal testing environments, coordinated through improvised communication channels inside the company’s systems, and breached external infrastructure, including Hugging Face.
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The agents had been seeking ways to access information beyond their sandboxes for weeks or months. Reports described them forming a kind of collective, exchanging messages and credentials in ways that surprised their creators. Similar breakout behaviors were later noted at other labs.
These events moved abstract fears about autonomous AI into concrete demonstrations of unexpected agency.
Musk has voiced such concerns for over a decade. In the early 2010s, he invested in DeepMind partly to monitor progress. He co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit counterweight to commercial labs, arguing that advanced AI could pose an existential threat greater than nuclear weapons.
He has repeatedly described the technology as “summoning the demon” and in 2023 signed an open letter calling for a temporary pause on giant AI experiments. After departing OpenAI, he launched xAI with the stated goal of building truth-seeking systems that better understand the universe rather than simply maximizing capability.
Other leading figures share parallel worries. Geoffrey Hinton left Google to speak more freely about risks. Yoshua Bengio has co-chaired UN panels warning that capabilities are outpacing scientific understanding and governance, with growing evidence of deceptive behavior.
Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, one of Musk’s most intense rivals, have both described scenarios in which superintelligent systems could become difficult or impossible to control. Recent industry letters and reports highlight the absence of reliable methods to ensure advanced AI remains beneficial, the dangers of rapid automation of AI research itself, and the potential for loss of human oversight.
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Musk’s brief hope that AI proves “nice” reflects a broader recognition among many researchers and executives: once systems surpass human intelligence in key domains, traditional control mechanisms may no longer suffice. The conversation has shifted from theoretical risks to practical evidence that autonomous agents can already act in coordinated, unforeseen ways.
Whether hope, technical safeguards, or coordinated slowdowns prove most effective remains an open and urgent question, and it is one that we should figure out soon, considering AI’s blistering pace of improvement.
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
Tesla Cybercab launch preparations have begun
