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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 X will start using a Tesla-like software update strategy
The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.
Elon Musk’s social media platform X will adopt a Tesla-esque approach to software updates for its algorithm.
The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.
X’s updates to its updates
As per Musk in a post on X, the social media company will be making a new algorithm to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users. These updates would then be repeated every four weeks.
“We will make the new 𝕏 algorithm, including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users, open source in 7 days. This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed,” Musk wrote in his post.
The initiative somewhat mirrors Tesla’s over-the-air update model, where vehicle software is regularly refined and pushed to users with detailed release notes. This should allow users to better understand the details of X’s every update and foster a healthy feedback loop for the social media platform.
xAI and X
X, formerly Twitter, has been acquired by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI last year. Since then, xAI has seen a rapid rise in valuation. Following the company’s the company’s upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, estimates now suggest that xAI is worth tens about $230 to $235 billion. That’s several times larger than Tesla when Elon Musk received his controversial 2018 CEO Performance Award.
As per xAI, the Series E funding round attracted a diverse group of investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group, among others. Strategic partners NVIDIA and Cisco Investments also continued support for building the world’s largest GPU clusters.
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Tesla FSD Supervised wins MotorTrend’s Best Driver Assistance Award
The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system has been named the best driver-assistance technology on the market, earning top honors at the 2026 MotorTrend Best Tech Awards.
The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system. And it wasn’t even close.
MotorTrend reverses course
MotorTrend awarded Tesla FSD (Supervised) its 2026 Best Tech Driver Assistance title after extensive testing of the latest v14 software. The publication acknowledged that it had previously criticized earlier versions of FSD for erratic behavior and near-miss incidents, ultimately favoring rivals such as GM’s Super Cruise in earlier evaluations.
According to MotorTrend, the newest iteration of FSD resolved many of those shortcomings. Testers said v14 showed far smoother behavior in complex urban scenarios, including unprotected left turns, traffic circles, emergency vehicles, and dense city streets. While the system still requires constant driver supervision, judges concluded that no other advanced driver-assistance system currently matches its breadth of capability.
Unlike rival systems that rely on combinations of cameras, radar, lidar, and mapped highways, Tesla’s FSD operates using a camera-only approach and is capable of driving on city streets, rural roads, and freeways. MotorTrend stated that pure utility, the ability to handle nearly all road types, ultimately separated FSD from competitors like Ford BlueCruise, GM Super Cruise, and BMW’s Highway Assistant.
High cost and high capability
MotorTrend also addressed FSD’s pricing, which remains significantly higher than rival systems. Tesla currently charges $8,000 for a one-time purchase or $99 per month for a subscription, compared with far lower upfront and subscription costs from other automakers. The publication noted that the premium is justified given FSD’s unmatched scope and continuous software evolution.
Safety remained a central focus of the evaluation. While testers reported collision-free operation over thousands of miles, they noted ongoing concerns around FSD’s configurable driving modes, including options that allow aggressive driving and speeds beyond posted limits. MotorTrend emphasized that, like all Level 2 systems, FSD still depends on a fully attentive human driver at all times.
Despite those caveats, the publication concluded that Tesla’s rapid software progress fundamentally reshaped the competitive landscape. For drivers seeking the most capable hands-on driver-assistance system available today, MotorTrend concluded Tesla FSD (Supervised) now stands alone at the top.
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Elon Musk’s Grokipedia surges to 5.6M articles, almost 79% of English Wikipedia
The explosive growth marks a major milestone for the AI-powered online encyclopedia, which was launched by Elon Musk’s xAI just months ago.
Elon Musk’s Grokipedia has grown to an impressive 5,615,201 articles as of today, closing in on 79% of the English Wikipedia’s current total of 7,119,376 articles.
The explosive growth marks a major milestone for the AI-powered online encyclopedia, which was launched by Elon Musk’s xAI just months ago. Needless to say, it would only be a matter of time before Grokipedia exceeds English Wikipedia in sheer volume.
Grokipedia’s rapid growth
xAI’s vision for Grokipedia emphasizes neutrality, while Grok’s reasoning capabilities allow for fast drafting and fact-checking. When Elon Musk announced the initiative in late September 2025, he noted that Grokipedia would be an improvement to Wikipedia because it would be designed to avoid bias.
At the time, Musk noted that Grokipedia “is a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.”
Grokipedia was launched in late October, and while xAI was careful to list it only as Version 0.1 at the time, the online encyclopedia immediately earned praise. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger highlighted the project’s innovative approach, noting how it leverages AI to fill knowledge gaps and enable rapid updates. Netizens also observed how Grokipedia tends to present articles in a more objective manner compared to Wikipedia, which is edited by humans.
Elon Musk’s ambitious plans
With 5,615,201 total articles, Grokipedia has now grown to almost 79% of English Wikipedia’s article base. This is incredibly quick, though Grokipedia remains text-only for now. xAI, for its part, has now updated the online encyclopedia’s iteration to v0.2.
Elon Musk has shared bold ideas for Grokipedia, including sending a record of the entire knowledge base to space as part of xAI’s mission to preserve and expand human understanding. At some point, Musk stated that Grokipedia will be renamed to Encyclopedia Galactica, and it will be sent to the cosmos.
“When Grokipedia is good enough (long way to go), we will change the name to Encyclopedia Galactica. It will be an open source distillation of all knowledge, including audio, images and video. Join xAI to help build the sci-fi version of the Library of Alexandria!” Musk wrote, adding in a later post that “Copies will be etched in stone and sent to the Moon, Mars and beyond. This time, it will not be lost.”
Elon Musk’s X will start using a Tesla-like software update strategy
Tesla FSD Supervised wins MotorTrend’s Best Driver Assistance Award
