Tesla’s next four years could be decided during Election Day as voters make their way to the polls. Both Presidential candidates have their own distinct advantages and disadvantages in terms of what they could offer Tesla and the entire EV manufacturing sector as a whole within the next few years. However, it comes down to which candidate is more believable. We all know that politicians are a lot of talk and relatively abysmal amounts of what they say actually happens.
For starters, I am completely undecided about this year’s election. Personally, I wouldn’t say I like talking about politics because I feel that people get incredibly ugly when talking about this subject in particular. However, I also think it is essential as a writer who focuses on electric vehicles to highlight what each candidate could offer Tesla. It is not a cookie-cutter scenario here, and quite frankly, both candidates offer substantial benefits.
It seems that Donald Trump’s advantages lean more toward Tesla’s growth in the United States through manufacturing and job creation. Everyone knows “Make America Great Again” and how Trump wanted to recreate the American manufacturing surge that was so dominant in the 20th century. With Tesla planning Giga Texas and what seems to be a few more production plants in the United States within the next few years, there is a chance that Tesla could widely benefit from the views of the current president. While that may be a stretch for some, it is the truth.
FactCheck.com estimates that the Trump campaign has created 6,688,000 jobs so far through his term. That’s a lot of new employment opportunities for people. However, in terms of sustainability, Trump lost 62,000 jobs because of solar tariffs, which is a significant loss for the Earth-friendly energy sector, and it has been a needle in my side in terms of giving him my vote. You can’t say you’re going to create jobs, then lose 62,000 of them because of a Chinese tariff. On top of it, he’s a big supporter of “clean coal,” which isn’t real, because coal isn’t clean.
Additionally, I’m not wholly convinced that Trump would be a great benefactor to the movement of sustainable energy. While I know he’s supported Tesla and Musk in the past, and he also pushed for the Fremont facility to reopen amid the pandemic, which is arguable, there are a lot of jobs in Natural Gas, Coal, and Oil. They bring a lot of money in, and they create employment opportunities. However, they’re not great for the environment, and that’s something that I have a big problem with, personally.
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Biden, indeed, is the more environmentally-friendly choice between the two candidates. He has a laid-out plan for climate change, and he is a supporter of clean energy. One thing I like about him is that he is not denying that climate change is a threat to human existence, and I feel that whoever gets into office over the next two terms is going to have a real problem on their hands if they do not confront this issue head-on. I like that Biden has a specific plan to penalize the big polluters and hold them accountable for the environmental issues they have laid upon the Earth for revenue.
Biden also has a net-zero carbon goal by 2050, which many automotive companies have adopted in 2020. The big key with this is holding companies accountable and doing annual or even bi-annual check-ins to make sure they’re taking steps to work toward becoming cleaner.
Biden also has a plan to create 10 million clean energy jobs in the U.S. over the course of his term. This is an astounding number, but it will take a lot of work to create that many jobs in one sector in four years. So I have a little bit of trouble believing it.
One thing I found sort of humorous about Biden is the video clip he uploaded to Twitter in early August. While sitting in a Stingray, he says that EVs are the future of transportation and that he hopes they make an all-electric version of the Corvette variant. I found this sort of counterproductive, and I got a good chuckle out of it. Nothing says you love sustainability like sitting in a car that gets 12 MPG!
Either way the cookie crumbles in November, both candidates have their own advantages in terms of what they can do for EVs. Tesla being an American-based EV maker, holds to gain, or lose, the most from the election in terms of the potential of the sector in the coming years. Depending on who you ask, both candidates are the “best” for the job. Still, whichever party really ends up helping Tesla and sustainability could hold the Presidency for years to come, as environmentalism is growing and becoming a more critical issue every year.
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Lifestyle
Tesla wins over Netflix’s Selling Sunset star, who’s now ditching his Bentley
Selling Sunset’s Jason Oppenheim swapped his Bentley for a Tesla and promised ten for employees.
Jason Oppenheim, the luxury real estate broker best known as the star of Netflix’s Selling Sunset, has parked his Bentley for good and moved into a Tesla Model Y, and he says Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is the reason.
Oppenheim, who founded The Oppenheim Group, the Los Angeles brokerage at the center of the show, posted a video to X on Saturday evening that he called “the most important video I’ve ever posted.” In it, he rides from Newport Beach to his firm’s Los Angeles office, a trip he put at roughly an hour and 15 minutes, while FSD handles the drive and parks the car without him touching the wheel or the accelerator. He said he handed the Bentley to his father because he no longer has any use for it.
Tesla shared the clip from its main account on X about two hours later, pulling out the quote that has since spread well beyond the Tesla community:
“[FSD Supervised] is life-changing. I was on the phone with my brother last night, and I made him buy one. He literally bought one while we were talking. I’m buying 10 of my employees a Tesla with FSD. It’s 8x safer than the average driver. There’s nothing more important than the safety of you and your loved ones.”
Oppenheim was candid about why the safety pitch landed with him. He admitted in the video that he is a distracted driver who answers emails and texts behind the wheel, and framed the employee purchases as a way to keep his team off their phones while driving. Elon Musk posted “Tesla FSD feels like magic” less than half an hour after the video went live.
The endorsement lands at a convenient moment for Tesla. The company delivered 486,532 vehicles in Q3, beating Wall Street’s estimates and marking its best quarter ever without the $7,500 federal EV tax credit.
A public service announcement. https://t.co/NYa1IpKwBX
— Jason Oppenheim (@OppenheimJason) October 4, 2026
Tesla FSD has been subscription only in the U.S. since February at $99 per month, and Tesla said in its Q2 update that active subscriptions hit 1.48 million, up 56 percent year over year, with more than 55 percent of new North American deliveries leaving with FSD attached. That attach rate is the figure Ron Baron cited last month when he told CNBC “the time to buy the stock is now.” At current pricing, Oppenheim’s 10 employee cars alone would add $990 a month, or about $11,880 a year, in FSD revenue.
Tesla AI head Ashok Elluswamy said in July that FSD had logged more than 12 billion miles while going roughly twice as far between collisions as manual driving. FSD also remains a supervised system, so Oppenheim and his employees are still required to watch the road, even as Tesla rolls out v14.3.10 with Automatic Collision Evasion, which can steer or brake on its own to avoid a frontal crash.
Lifestyle
Tesla teases “Halloween Mode” update with Optimus rising from a graveyard
Tesla’s Halloween teaser hides a covered vehicle and an Optimus hand rising from the ground.
Tesla has started teasing a Halloween software update for its vehicles, with a short clip on X that reads, “Halloween is coming.” The clip opens on a glowing pumpkin before pulling back to the car’s center touchscreen, where the usual parked visualization has been replaced by a graveyard scene, and the vehicle draped with a white sheet so it reads as a cartoon ghost.
Halloween is coming pic.twitter.com/lM3ASUeOqX
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 1, 2026
The second detail is a robotic hand clawing its way out of the dirt like a zombie, which looks to be the hand of Tesla’s latest Optimus V3 humanoid robot. While Tesla still has not formally shown Optimus Gen 3 walking around in service, renders pulled from Tesla’s Android app last month gave the clearest look yet, including far more refined hands that Tesla has said carry 22 degrees of freedom. The hand has been the hardest part of the program. Musk has called it the majority of the robot’s engineering difficulty, and Tesla’s patents describe a design driven by tendons with the actuators moved into the forearm.
Tesla Optimus V3 hand and arm details revealed in new patents
Optimus also has a Halloween track record. Last October the robot handed out candy in Times Square, and a costumed “zombie” Optimus shuffled around the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles on Halloween night.
On the software side, Tesla’s 2025 Holiday Update expanded Santa Mode with a Santa sleigh, snowmen, snow effects, and a festive lock chime, so it wouldn’t be too far fetched if we saw something similar but themed for a Halloween Mode.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s newest feature lets you floor it out of a Supercharger while plugged in
Tesla’s new Emergency Drive Away feature lets owners flee a Supercharger while still plugged in.
Tesla has given drivers a way to escape while a vehicle is plugged-in at a Supercharger, in the event of an emergency. The company’s charging team announced a new feature on X called Emergency Drive Away, which lets a driver shift into Drive and pull away while the charging cable is still connected to the car.
Until now, a Tesla would not leave Park with a charge cable plugged in. Drivers had to release the latch from the touchscreen, the Tesla app, or the button on the charge handle, then wait for the port to let go. Emergency Drive Away removes that lockout, but Tesla is clear that it comes at a cost. “Use of this feature will damage your vehicle and the Supercharger,” the company wrote, adding that the function is meant for emergencies only and that deliberate misuse will lead to “additional penalties.” Tesla did not say what those penalties are.
Emergency Drive Away lets you shift into Drive while still plugged into a Supercharger pic.twitter.com/40GSzyP4lG
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) October 1, 2026
The in-car prompt is just as direct, with the warning reading: “Driving with the cable connected will cause damage to your vehicle and the Supercharger. Short camera recordings will be shared with Tesla.” That footage gives Tesla a way to separate a real emergency from someone who simply did not want to wait for the latch.
The feature requires software update 2026.38.3, and Tesla said in replies to owners that it works at every Supercharger in the United States without new stall hardware. Model S and Model X vehicles built before 2021 are not supported, and the company says the feature applies to U.S. Superchargers “for now,” leaving Canada and other markets out at launch.
Tesla Supercharger argument leads to tragic shooting incident
Tesla did not tie the announcement to any specific event, but it arrives two months after a gunman opened fire at an In-N-Out in Twin Falls, Idaho, on August 1, targeting three people in two Teslas at the neighboring Supercharger. One of them, a 66 year old man from Salt Lake City, was killed. Superchargers have been the scene of violence before, including a fatal shooting at a station near Denver in 2023.
In the weeks after Twin Falls, owners pushed Tesla for a native way to escape a stall, and many pointed back to EVject, the aftermarket breakaway connector Tesla sued in 2024 over claims it lacked overtemperature protection. The two companies later reached an agreement that led EVject to recall its earlier connectors in favor of a version with thermal sensors.
Our mission has always been about providing peace of mind and eliminating sitting duck scenarios.
We patented the built-in breakaway charger tip on Feb 15, 2023. Awarded Jan 30, 2024. Then shared the designs with @TeslaCharging
Thank you @Tesla for rolling out a solution. This… https://t.co/djOzswLw9N
— EVject (@EVject) October 2, 2026
SpaceX just locked up a NASA record no other U.S. spacecraft can touch
Elon Musk teases TSMC as potential Terafab partner
