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Texas Governor Snubs Tesla …. Again
Texas governor Greg Abbott is gloating, now that Tesla has failed to make progress toward changing dealer franchise laws in his state – at least for now.
Texas governor Greg Abbott told Bloomberg radio recently that Tesla shouldn’t expect to open Lone Star state sales outlets any time soon. “Texas has a very robust, very open, very effective automobile sector that seems like it’s working quite well the way that it is. If you’re going to have a breakdown in a car, you need to have a car dealership there to make sure that the vehicle is going to be taken care of. We haven’t seen that from Tesla.”
According to a report in Automotive News, Tesla has four maintenance centers in Texas. It wants to sell its cars directly to consumers in Texas but has been stymied by a powerful dealership lobby. Currently, Texans who wish to buy a Tesla can visit one of three “galleries” in major cities to view the cars, but they can’t test drive one or discuss price. Instead, they must go to another state or order online and have a car shipped to them.
Tesla has been challenging dealer franchise laws around the country, claiming they constitute an unfair monopoly that costs consumers billions. Auto dealers counter that the practice protects family owned businesses and their customers. In 2015, Tesla scored important victories in New Jersey, Georgia and Maryland but lost legislative battles in Michigan, Connecticut and Texas.
>>>>> [Infographic] Tesla Stores vs Franchise Auto Dealerships
Texas is an important market for Tesla because it is the second largest car market in the United States with $81 billion in annual sales. Only Californians buy more cars. This year, CEO Elon Musk visited state lawmakers in Austin when the legislative session began in January. He also hired 20 lobbyists and spent more than $150,000 on campaign contributions. But those efforts came to naught. Bills the company sponsored gained little traction, failing to make it out of committees for a full vote in either the House or Senate. The Texas legislature will not meet again until 2017.
If the Tea Party movement has a spiritual home anywhere, it is in Texas, where local politicians from the governor on down extol the virtues of free enterprise unfettered by the heavy hand of government. But the shabby treatment accorded to Tesla gives the lie to those vaunted core principals. Clearly, many of those alleged Tea Party adherents are for sale to the highest bidder, despite their protestations of ideological purity.
One Texas resident put the spotlight directly on this pattern of hypocrisy in a comment online:
Texans like me have to buy their Tesla elsewhere – kind of like the colonists did with tea. Tea Partiers have the revolt backwards. Today, Tesla is playing the part of the Americans. Franchise dealers are the Tories. Americans will eventually win. I’d like to throw the franchise dealers and their paid lobbyists into a big pot of hot tea. A government telling me I can’t buy a car directly from a company just because that company will not adhere to an archaic franchise dealer system is tyranny.
The unofficial motto for the Lone Star state is, “Don’t mess with Texas.” But don’t count Elon Musk and his minions out. This battle isn’t over yet. In fact, governor Abbott and his cronies may be gloating now, but anyone who has followed the trajectory of Musk’s career may think the wiser motto would be, “Don’t mess with Tesla.”
Source: Automotive News
Elon Musk
Tesla owners surpass 8 billion miles driven on FSD Supervised
Tesla shared the milestone as adoption of the system accelerates across several markets.
Tesla owners have now driven more than 8 billion miles using Full Self-Driving Supervised, as per a new update from the electric vehicle maker’s official X account.
Tesla shared the milestone as adoption of the system accelerates across several markets.
“Tesla owners have now driven >8 billion miles on FSD Supervised,” the company wrote in its post on X. Tesla also included a graphic showing FSD Supervised’s miles driven before a collision, which far exceeds that of the United States average.
The growth curve of FSD Supervised’s cumulative miles over the past five years has been notable. As noted in data shared by Tesla watcher Sawyer Merritt, annual FSD (Supervised) miles have increased from roughly 6 million in 2021 to 80 million in 2022, 670 million in 2023, 2.25 billion in 2024, and 4.25 billion in 2025. In just the first 50 days of 2026, Tesla owners logged another 1 billion miles.
At the current pace, the fleet is trending towards hitting about 10 billion FSD Supervised miles this year. The increase has been driven by Tesla’s growing vehicle fleet, periodic free trials, and expanding Robotaxi operations, among others.
Tesla also recently updated the safety data for FSD Supervised on its website, covering North America across all road types over the latest 12-month period.
As per Tesla’s figures, vehicles operating with FSD Supervised engaged recorded one major collision every 5,300,676 miles. In comparison, Teslas driven manually with Active Safety systems recorded one major collision every 2,175,763 miles, while Teslas driven manually without Active Safety recorded one major collision every 855,132 miles. The U.S. average during the same period was one major collision every 660,164 miles.
During the measured period, Tesla reported 830 total major collisions with FSD (Supervised) engaged, compared to 16,131 collisions for Teslas driven manually with Active Safety and 250 collisions for Teslas driven manually without Active Safety. Total miles logged exceeded 4.39 billion miles for FSD (Supervised) during the same timeframe.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s Music City Loop gains unanimous approval
After eight months of negotiations, MNAA board members voted unanimously on Feb. 18 to move forward with the project.
The Metro Nashville Airport Authority (MNAA) has approved a 40-year agreement with Elon Musk’s The Boring Company to build the Music City Loop, a tunnel system linking Nashville International Airport to downtown.
After eight months of negotiations, MNAA board members voted unanimously on Feb. 18 to move forward with the project. Under the terms, The Boring Company will pay the airport authority an annual $300,000 licensing fee for the use of roughly 933,000 square feet of airport property, with a 3% annual increase.
Over 40 years, that totals to approximately $34 million, with two optional five-year extensions that could extend the term to 50 years, as per a report from The Tennesean.
The Boring Company celebrated the Music City Loop’s approval in a post on its official X account. “The Metropolitan Nashville Airport Authority has unanimously (7-0) approved a Music City Loop connection/station. Thanks so much to @Fly_Nashville for the great partnership,” the tunneling startup wrote in its post.
Once operational, the Music City Loop is expected to generate a $5 fee per airport pickup and drop-off, similar to rideshare charges. Airport officials estimate more than $300 million in operational revenue over the agreement’s duration, though this projection is deemed conservative.
“This is a significant benefit to the airport authority because we’re receiving a new way for our passengers to arrive downtown at zero capital investment from us. We don’t have to fund the operations and maintenance of that. TBC, The Boring Co., will do that for us,” MNAA President and CEO Doug Kreulen said.
The project has drawn both backing and criticism. Business leaders cited economic benefits and improved mobility between downtown and the airport. “Hospitality isn’t just an amenity. It’s an economic engine,” Strategic Hospitality’s Max Goldberg said.
Opponents, including state lawmakers, raised questions about environmental impacts, worker safety, and long-term risks. Sen. Heidi Campbell said, “Safety depends on rules applied evenly without exception… You’re not just evaluating a tunnel. You’re evaluating a risk, structural risk, legal risk, reputational risk and financial risk.”
Elon Musk
Tesla announces crazy new Full Self-Driving milestone
The number of miles traveled has contextual significance for two reasons: one being the milestone itself, and another being Tesla’s continuing progress toward 10 billion miles of training data to achieve what CEO Elon Musk says will be the threshold needed to achieve unsupervised self-driving.
Tesla has announced a crazy new Full Self-Driving milestone, as it has officially confirmed drivers have surpassed over 8 billion miles traveled using the Full Self-Driving (Supervised) suite for semi-autonomous travel.
The FSD (Supervised) suite is one of the most robust on the market, and is among the safest from a data perspective available to the public.
On Wednesday, Tesla confirmed in a post on X that it has officially surpassed the 8 billion-mile mark, just a few months after reaching 7 billion cumulative miles, which was announced on December 27, 2025.
Tesla owners have now driven >8 billion miles on FSD Supervisedhttps://t.co/0d66ihRQTa pic.twitter.com/TXz9DqOQ8q
— Tesla (@Tesla) February 18, 2026
The number of miles traveled has contextual significance for two reasons: one being the milestone itself, and another being Tesla’s continuing progress toward 10 billion miles of training data to achieve what CEO Elon Musk says will be the threshold needed to achieve unsupervised self-driving.
The milestone itself is significant, especially considering Tesla has continued to gain valuable data from every mile traveled. However, the pace at which it is gathering these miles is getting faster.
Secondly, in January, Musk said the company would need “roughly 10 billion miles of training data” to achieve safe and unsupervised self-driving. “Reality has a super long tail of complexity,” Musk said.
Training data primarily means the fleet’s accumulated real-world miles that Tesla uses to train and improve its end-to-end AI models. This data captures the “long tail” — extremely rare, complex, or unpredictable situations that simulations alone cannot fully replicate at scale.
This is not the same as the total miles driven on Full Self-Driving, which is the 8 billion miles milestone that is being celebrated here.
The FSD-supervised miles contribute heavily to the training data, but the 10 billion figure is an estimate of the cumulative real-world exposure needed overall to push the system to human-level reliability.
Tesla owners surpass 8 billion miles driven on FSD Supervised
The Boring Company’s Music City Loop gains unanimous approval
