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Hey, Toyota: Tesla may not have a ‘Chef,’ but at least their food doesn’t suck
At some point or another, most of us have cooked a meal for others. If you did a reasonably good job making a meal, someone may say: “You should have been a Chef.” Whether it is a hobby in your spare time or you spent multiple years at a culinary institute, cooking is one of the few things in life that everyone has to experience at some point or another. It could be stovetop ramen or a fine piece of beef with a slice of foie gras. Whatever it is, you do it to your liking, and you usually think you did it well.
However, having the title of “Chef” does not insinuate that someone is good at cooking. Some people study things for several years, and they unfortunately just do not have a knack for it. Most of us have gone to fine dining restaurants at some point or another in our lives, and we prepare ourselves to fully commit and make ourselves vulnerable to the culinary works of whoever is commanding the kitchen that evening. But sometimes, the food simply isn’t to our liking, and you say to yourself, “How could this person ever be considered a Chef?”
Toyota seems to forget that “Chef” doesn’t mean you can cook. In this case, being the head of an automotive company doesn’t mean you’re innovative, good for the job, or even right for the job.
Yet, Akio Toyoda, the President of Toyota, runs his grandfather’s business and was bold enough to cast some stones at Tesla and Elon Musk.
Toyota CEO attempts Tesla analogy and fails: ‘They aren’t really making something that’s real’
“We are losing when it comes to the share price. But when it comes to products, we have a full menu that will be chosen by customers,” Toyoda said. “They aren’t really making something that’s real, people are just buying the recipe. We have the kitchen and chef, and we make real food.”
As if comparing cooking to automotive wasn’t confusing enough, Toyoda actually thinks that Tesla is inferior to his company, even though they don’t have a pure EV in their lineup. They do have a Plug-In Hybrid EV with the Prius PHEV. Still, the company didn’t make any pure EVs because it believes hybrids are “a better bridge between ICE vehicles and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles,” according to a 2019 article from Car and Driver.
Even still, Toyoda’s apparent attempt to derail and discredit Tesla’s automotive domination through 2020 was weak.
Your meal this evening will be prepared by Chef Elon Musk
Elon Musk probably doesn’t cook very often for the family. He’s spending his many waking hours trying to figure out what moves will take Tesla to the next level. He likely doesn’t have time to whip up a full dinner for his kids or his partner, Grimes.
Instead, Musk’s full focus is on Tesla. Because of his full-fledged obsession with “accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy,” Musk has often said that Tesla’s real competitors are those who refuse to adapt to electrification, and not entities who are embracing the EV revolution, like Volkswagen, for example. Even still, Musk hasn’t gone out of his way to attack CEOs or Presidents of automotive companies that are not willing to build an EV, or a lineup of them, for that matter. Instead, his efforts are solving manufacturing, making cars more affordable, and ensuring the company’s customers that his products are fun to operate.
The Appetizer
Toyota once had an electric car: The RAV4 EV, but it was discontinued in 2014, according to its website. However, the brand has stated that it will produce six new EV models that will launch over the next five years, citing “global demand” as the reason for the embrace of sustainable transportation. However, unveiling three vehicles that are eerily similar to the Smart Car wasn’t exactly what consumers had planned. Therefore, the company will begin to go after the U.S., Europe, and China: three locations with an unquenchable thirst for electric transportation. They will likely enter China before any other market.
The thing is, Toyota doesn’t seem to have a plan, as of now, to transition to a fully electric lineup. Perhaps this is what Toyoda meant by “we have a full menu.”
Like the fiery and passionate Gordon Ramsay, some chefs would say having a “full menu” is not necessarily a good thing. Having a concentration and focusing on one style of food is advantageous for not only the chefs but also for the customers.
Cars are no different. Trying to build a lineup of ICE cars, PHEVs, Hybrids, EVs, and Hydrogen Fuel Cell vehicles will have Toyota in a scenario where they are trying to balance so many different power sources. If Toyota plans to attack each subsection of a vehicle with 5-7 models, there is going to be a lot of different strategies going on, and it could spell confusion. Floyd Mayweather once used this to insult SportsCenter anchor Brian Kenny, stating he was “a Man of many traits, but a Master of Nothing.”
It might be easier to focus on one style of car, maybe two. Not five, Toyota.
The Main Course
Tesla and Toyota both have a track record of success. While Toyota’s is longer and more reputable than Tesla’s, just because of a longer existence, Tesla has influenced an entire industry to transition from what they are familiar with. Many car companies focused on creating fast, efficient, and affordable passenger cars powered by fossil fuels. Now that Tesla has come along and proven that EVs are fun, affordable, and good for the environment, massive brands like Ford and Volkswagen are committing themselves to electrification in the future. While some have more ambitious plans than others, there is nothing wrong with taking your time. As long as a company plans to transition away from gas and diesel and into EVs, it will have some backing from sustainability supporters.
The Dessert
Unlike most desserts, this one isn’t going to be very sweet.
Listening to the head of one of the largest car companies in the world cast stones at Tesla and Elon Musk is quite shocking. “They wanna see you do good, but never better than them” comes to mind here. At one point, Toyoda may have been hoping Tesla could introduce an EV that would give the company some inspiration. In fact, as a company, Toyota may have wanted someone else to dive into EVs so that it could learn from someone else’s mistakes. However, Tesla has had plenty of those mistakes, but its resiliency, which was highlighted by Elon Musk in a series of Tweets earlier this week, has made it the most valuable car company in the world.
Who is Number 2? Toyota.
Check, please.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Boring Company lands a new Middle East deal, and Nashville is about to get faster
The Boring Company signs Abu Dhabi tunnel agreement while adding more Prufrock machines in Nashville.
The Boring Company has signed an agreement with Abu Dhabi to study underground transport and utility tunnels across the emirate, adding a second UAE city to its pipeline as it prepares to also scale up tunneling back home in Nashville.
The deal was signed Thursday at the Liveability and Investment Exhibition (LIVEX 2026) by Boring Company President Steve Davis and Maysarah Mahmoud Salim Eid, director general of the Abu Dhabi Projects and Infrastructure Centre (ADPIC), according to the Abu Dhabi Media Office. Mohamed Ali Al Shorafa, chairman of the emirate’s Department of Municipalities and Transport, attended the signing.
Under the agreement, the two sides will assess feasibility, delivery and operating models for tunnels that could carry passengers or utilities. They will also look at Abu Dhabi’s potential as a regional hub for tunneling work. The current phase is exploratory, and no construction commitment or project budget has been announced.
“Abu Dhabi provides an ideal environment to explore the next generation of underground infrastructure solutions, supported by its ambitious growth vision and strong commitment to advanced technologies,”
Davis said. He added that the company wants to assess how tunnels can “expand urban capacity more efficiently, and enable better use of available space.”
The timing lines up with the money, considering last month, The Boring Company closed a $3 billion Series D led by the UAE and affiliated investors, valuing the company at $23 billion, as Teslarati reported. That round came with a commitment to build more than 150 kilometers of tunnel across the UAE, separate from the Dubai Loop pilot already under contract with Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority. That pilot covers 6.4 kilometers and four stations linking DIFC and Dubai Mall at a cost of about $154 million.
Back home, The Boring Company projects in Nashville are also scaling up, with the company telling local NewsChannel 5 that a third Prufrock machine could start digging the Music City Loop in late October. A fourth is also targeted before the end of the year. Two machines are already mining Nashville limestone at the same time, and work is underway on a new launch site for the third.
The company said it has made more than 300 design and performance upgrades to its original Nashville machine. It is also working with property owners on more than 40 planned stations, with approvals in place for a future Nashville International Airport connection, a downtown station near the Music City Center, and stops at residential towers and the JW Marriott.
Construction on the Music City Loop began the same evening Tennessee and federal regulators approved the project’s lease in February, and the company targeted its first operational segment for late 2026. Back in Las Vegas, The Boring Company has said it plans to double its Vegas Loop station count by year’s end.
News
SpaceX brings four astronauts home after 8 months in space, and the return was flawless
SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom returned four Crew-12 astronauts home after 237 days aboard the station.
Four Crew-12 members are back on Earth after 237 days at the International Space Station. SpaceX’s Crew Dragon Freedom splashed down in the Pacific Ocean about 50 miles west of Los Angeles at 11:34 a.m. ET on Thursday.
NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, ESA astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev landed one day after undocking from the station’s Harmony module at 8:05 a.m. ET on Wednesday. NASA confirmed the splashdown minutes later. SpaceX had flagged the 27.5 hour trip home on X while Dragon was still firing its departure burns away from the station.
The descent ran on schedule when Freedom started a nine minute deorbit burn at 10:46 a.m. ET, then hit the thicker atmosphere about 36 minutes later at nearly five miles per second. Chutes deployed at around 18,000 feet, and four main parachutes brought the capsule down to roughly 15 mph at splashdown.
SpaceX fast boats secured Dragon before the recovery ship Shannon hoisted it onto the deck with the crew still inside. Flight surgeons on board ran initial medical checks. All four crew members will be flown ashore by helicopter and then head to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston for rehabilitation.
Splashdown of Dragon confirmed! https://t.co/P2o7A3Gytf
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 8, 2026
Crew-12 launched on February 13 from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral, a flight that also marked the first Falcon 9 booster landing at SpaceX’s new LZ-40 pad. Over the mission, the crew completed 3,792 orbits, covered nearly 101 million miles, and carried out four spacewalks to maintain and upgrade the station.
Meir now has 440 cumulative days in space, which places her in NASA’s top 10. This was the first spaceflight for Hathaway and for Adenot, a French Air Force colonel and former helicopter pilot. Fedyaev, who spent 186 days in orbit on Crew-6 in 2023, has now flown two long duration Dragon missions.
The return closes out a busy stretch of Dragon traffic. Crew-13 arrived on October 1 aboard Crew Dragon Grace, which docked just 7 hours and 55 minutes after liftoff, the fastest launch to docking of any U.S. spacecraft in ISS history. Commander Jessica Watkins, pilot Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov remain aboard alongside the three person Soyuz MS-29 crew.
With Crew-12 gone, the port is clear for CRS-35, a cargo Dragon carrying the final pair of ISS Roll-Out Solar Arrays. NASA is holding a post-splashdown teleconference at 1:15 p.m. ET covering both the crew’s return and the upcoming cargo launch.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk shuts down talk of TSMC taking over Terafab
Musk says Tesla and SpaceX will build and run Terafab, with TSMC limited to renting.
Elon Musk has drawn a firm line around who will be in charge of Terafab, the giant chip factory Tesla and SpaceX are planning in Texas.
Musk replied to a post on X arguing that Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) would most likely end up owning and operating the plant. “No, we will build and run the fab. Let there be ZERO doubt about that,” Musk wrote. “Maybe TSMC subleases part of the Terafab if they want, but nothing more than that.”
In plain terms, a sublease means TSMC could rent a section of the complex to make chips, similar to a tenant renting one floor of an office tower. The building, the equipment decisions and the daily operation would stay with Tesla and SpaceX.
@herbertong @thejefflutz No, we will build and run the fab. Let there be ZERO doubt about that.
Maybe TSMC subleases part of the Terafab if they want, but nothing more than that.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 7, 2026
The comment shuts down speculation that started last week. On October 2, tech journalist Tim Culpan reported that TSMC was exploring ways to help run Terafab’s factories. Musk responded the next day that it was “just discussions, but something may come of it,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That left room for a scenario where the world’s largest contract chipmaker took the wheel. Musk’s latest post closes that door.
Some background helps explain why this matters. Tesla designs its own AI chips today but pays outside companies like TSMC and Samsung to manufacture them. Musk unveiled Terafab in March as a joint project between Tesla, SpaceX and xAI, arguing that existing suppliers cannot expand fast enough to meet his companies’ future demand. The goal is to produce enough chips each year to supply one terawatt of computing power, roughly 50 times what the entire global AI chip industry produces now.
Those chips are meant for Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robots, the Cybercab and Full Self-Driving computers, along with chips for SpaceX’s planned data centers in orbit. Owning the factory means Musk’s companies would not have to compete with every other chip customer for time on someone else’s production lines.
Intel is still part of the picture. The company signed on in April to help design, build and package chips for the project, and CEO Lip-Bu Tan told Bloomberg this week that Intel will keep working on Terafab despite the TSMC chatter.
The project moved from concept to construction planning over the summer. In August, SpaceX confirmed the Grimes County site about an hour from Houston, sent the county a $10 million payment under its tax abatement deal and said civil work would begin shortly. The first phase carries a $16.8 billion price tag, and total spending across all phases could reach as much as $119 billion.
TSMC chairman C.C. Wei has said a new fab typically takes two to three years to build and another one to two years to reach full output. Tesla and SpaceX have never run one, which is why TSMC’s expertise drew so much attention. Musk’s answer suggests he would rather learn that process in house than hand control of a project this central to Tesla’s robotics and autonomy plans to an outside company.
Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far.
And it will be stunningly beautiful. https://t.co/4NweOqTL7y
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2026
Elon Musk’s Boring Company lands a new Middle East deal, and Nashville is about to get faster
SpaceX brings four astronauts home after 8 months in space, and the return was flawless
Elon Musk shuts down talk of TSMC taking over Terafab
The Pentagon taps Elon Musk to design the battlefield of the future
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