News
10,000 Toyota drivers sign petition urging company to commit to EVs: ‘Put our future before your profits’
Over 10,000 Toyota drivers have signed a petition with over 110,000 signatures urging the Japanese car maker to embrace electrification efforts and stop “lobbying to prevent electric vehicle mandates and clean air laws.”
10,500 of the 110,000 signatures come from current Toyota customers who are displeased with the company’s lack of commitment to developing sustainable powertrains. Toyota, which pushed against mandates for zero-emissions guidelines by 2035 in the past, committed to a 100 CO2 reduction in Europe by 2035. However, InfluenceMap analysts have stated Toyota is working harder than any other automotive company to stagnate progress on electric vehicles. It plans for only 14 percent of its total production to be electrified by the end of the decade. Toyota would miss its commitments to the Paris Agreement.
In November, InfluenceMap listed Toyota as the third-most negative and influential company against climate policies, following only ExxonMobil and Chevron. A month later, Toyota announced its plans to transition a minimum of 50 percent of its vehicles in Western Europe to zero-emissions by 2030:
“Moving beyond 2030, we expect to see further ZEV demand acceleration, and Toyota will be ready to achieve 100% CO2 reduction in all new vehicles by 2035 in Western Europe, assuming that sufficient electric charging and hydrogen refueling infrastructures are in place by then, together with the renewable energy capacity increases that will be required.” – Matt Harrison, President & CEO Toyota Motor Europe.
It is not up for much debate whether Toyota was committed to EVs a year ago because their plans simply did not include a dedicated lineup of sustainable vehicles. Instead, Toyota focused on hydrogen fuel cell powertrains.
Despite Toyota making changes to its EV plans and even unveiling the new bZ4X in mid-April, owners are still not wholly convinced of the company’s commitments and are urging the automaker to take a more serious tone when it comes to electrified options.
Toyota officially launches the bZ4X, its first full EV in nearly a decade
On a petition titled “Toyota is Fueling the Climate Crisis,” 110,044 people have signed as a recognition of their discontent with the company’s EV commitments. InfluenceMap’s latest review still has Toyota as the top carmaker lobbying against ambitious climate and clean air laws.
“Laggard automakers, such as Toyota (D) and Nissan (D+), which are forecast to have the lowest percentage of zero-emissions fleet-wide vehicle production in 2029 (14% and 22% respectively), also have the most negative climate policy engagement,” the report said.
Amongst the signees, comments regarding the company’s relatively lackluster plans have catalyzed a number of owners to consider axing the company altogether if it doesn’t make a more solidified commitment to sustainability. “We own a Prius and a Corolla and are loyal Toyota customers, however, we are disappointed and upset that Toyota is not supporting a zero-emissions target in the EU,” one person who signed the petition said. “Please put our future before your profits and support the EU emissions goals. Otherwise, many loyal customers like us will stop buying Toyotas and move to other brands that are more environmentally responsible.”
“I drive a Prius, and I am telling you to stop lobbying against extending our use of fossil fuels…You must realize you are ruining the future of our children. I will sell your car if you persist in this idiocy,” another comment said.
Toyota continues to put out EV production projections, which are lofty and, as the world’s largest car manufacturer, seem to be considerable. However, Toyota still maintains the fastest way to reduce CO2 emissions is through hybrid vehicles and not rapid electrification. Toyota has massive plans to expand to around 70 electrified models by 2025, but only 15 of these will be fully electric.
Seven of the fifteen will feature the bZ brand moniker. “his diverse portfolio of electrified products will help propel Toyota toward its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050,” the company said in April. “Globally, Toyota has put more than 20 million electrified models on the road – with a CO2 emissions reduction effect equivalent to the CO2 emissions reduction of over 5.5 million BEVs. Over the next nine years, Toyota will invest $70+ billion in electrified vehicles as a whole with the target to launch 3.5 million BEVs globally in 2030.”
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s next Uranium in Uranus merch is Boring Company’s weirdest tease yet
Elon Musk teased a glowing new Boring Company merch idea, complete with a Geiger counter.
Elon Musk teased the next piece of Boring Company merchandise on X Saturday, and it is exactly as unserious as fans of the company’s product history have come to expect. “The next @boringcompany merch will put Uranium in Uranus,” Musk wrote in a thread posted early Saturday morning. He followed up by explaining that the item would glow in the dark, “because otherwise how could you find it,” and that a Geiger counter would be sold separately as “an optional strap-on.”
Musk closed the thread with a line that doubles as a mission statement for the tunneling company’s merchandise arm: “It’s not easy coming up with something that is both outrageously unsellable and yet extremely popular.”
The Boring Company has built a small but consistent side business out of novelty items that start as jokes and end up selling out. The company’s Not-a-Flamethrower raised roughly $10 million in a few days back in 2018, moving all 20,000 units it produced. Its Burnt Hair perfume, priced around $100 a bottle, sold out fast enough that scalpers were flipping units on eBay for ten times the retail price. Boring Bricks, made from tunneling spoil, followed the same playbook of teasing a product on X months before it became real.
Musk has not said what the actual item will be, only that it involves uranium and glows in the dark. Given the pattern, that vagueness is probably intentional. Past merch announcements have started as one-line jokes and taken weeks or months to turn into an actual product listing on the company’s site, and there is no guarantee this one follows through at all.
The timing lines up with a period of real momentum for the Boring Company outside of the joke merchandise. The company said last week it plans to double the number of operational stations on its Vegas Loop by the end of the year, a target tied to a hiring push for drivers and operations managers. Prufrock-5, one of the company’s tunnel boring machines, also just wrapped a test tunnel in Bastrop, Texas, and is expected to relaunch on its next assignment in November.
Whether the uranium joke turns into an actual product remains to be seen. Musk’s post did not include a price, a shipping date, or even a name for the item, which has historically meant a Boring Company website page goes up quietly, password protected, sometime before an announcement.
News
NASA taps SpaceX for more astronaut missions as Boeing Starliner remains grounded
NASA just gave SpaceX a $946 million contract for three more astronaut missions through 2030.
NASA has awarded SpaceX a $946 million contract modification covering three more astronaut missions to the International Space Station, according to an announcement the agency published Friday. The award adds Crew-15, Crew-16, and Crew-17 to SpaceX’s existing Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract, bringing the agreement’s total value to $5.92 billion across 17 flights.
SpaceX confirmed the award on X, writing that it was excited for Falcon 9 and Dragon to launch NASA’s Crew-15, 16, and 17 missions to the Space Station from Florida. The new missions cover ground, launch, in orbit, and return operations, along with cargo transport and a lifeboat capability while docked at the station, and the period of performance runs through 2030.
We’re excited for Falcon 9 and Dragon to launch @NASA’s Crew-15, 16, and 17 missions to the @Space_Station from Florida https://t.co/Qm16vVK9F3 pic.twitter.com/drg3s7GtuM
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) September 18, 2026
The award follows a notice of intent NASA issued in May, when the agency first signaled it would purchase up to six additional post certification missions from SpaceX. Teslarati covered that filing at the time, noting NASA cited technical issues and schedule delays encountered by Boeing as a driving factor. Friday’s contract modification locks in three of those six missions, with the remaining three left open for NASA to award later, potentially to Boeing if Starliner clears certification.
Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner has still not flown an operational crew rotation mission for NASA. The spacecraft’s most recent crewed test flight in 2024 ended without the astronauts returning aboard Starliner, and the company has spent the time since working through thruster problems. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said this week that SpaceX is not retiring Crew Dragon today, for sure, while stopping short of committing to fly it past 2030.
Crew-12 is currently docked at the space station, and NASA has said Crew-13 is targeting a launch in the coming weeks. The newly awarded Crew-15 through Crew-17 missions extend SpaceX’s role as NASA’s primary way of getting astronauts to and from orbit well into the back half of the decade, regardless of what happens with Starliner or Starship in the meantime.
Investor's Corner
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
New drone footage shows Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory steel frame nearing completion at Giga Texas.
Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory at Gigafactory Texas is closing in on a finished steel frame, according to drone footage posted Thursday afternoon by longtime site observer Joe Tegtmeyer. In the video, Tegtmeyer said structural steel assembly is now about five column grids away from reaching the building’s north perimeter beam, putting the primary skeleton in its final stretch roughly six months after Tesla broke ground on the North Campus site in late March.
The Giga Texas Optimus Factory latest update … construction keeps moving fast!
Steel assembly is now only about 5 column grids from the north perimeter beam. Concrete is going in on the three upper floors, rebar is still being laid for more pours, and footing / grade-beam work… pic.twitter.com/qvFPvwnYzW
— Joe Tegtmeyer 🚀 🤠🛸😎 (@JoeTegtmeyer) September 17, 2026
Tegtmeyer’s footage shows concrete already going in on three upper floors while crews continue laying rebar and pouring grade beam footings at ground level. That kind of parallel work, steel rising at one end of the site while concrete sets at the other, is a scheduling approach Tesla used at the original Giga Texas building and appears to be repeating here to save time before the plant’s targeted 2027 production start.
Teslarati has tracked the building’s progress since Tesla confirmed construction was officially underway in May, when the first steel structure went up on what was then bare, reclaimed land. The facility is part of a more than 5.2 million square foot expansion of Giga Texas’s North Campus that Tesla has said will eventually run nearly the length of the existing vehicle factory, over 4,000 feet, while sitting somewhat narrower. Musk has pegged the long term output target at 10 million Optimus units a year once the line is running at full capacity, a volume that would dwarf the one million unit pilot line Tesla is standing up separately at its Fremont, California factory.
Tesla Giga Texas to feature massive Optimus V4 production line
The Texas facility sits alongside another major buildout on the same campus. Terafab, the joint Tesla and SpaceX chip fabrication plant that will eventually supply the silicon running Optimus units in the field. Housing robot assembly and chip production on the same grounds is a deliberate supply chain decision, cutting down on the shipping and lead time that would otherwise sit between the two.
Tesla has not given an updated timeline beyond its previously stated goal of bringing high volume Optimus production online at the site in the summer of 2027. Fremont’s smaller pilot line began mass producing the current Gen 3 robot in January, with that plant expected to build tens of thousands of units this year primarily to generate the real world data Tesla needs to refine the robot’s software before Giga Texas ramps up. Six months of visible construction progress, tracked almost entirely through Tegtmeyer’s recurring drone flights, gives the clearest outside look yet at how seriously Tesla is treating that 2027 deadline.
Elon Musk’s next Uranium in Uranus merch is Boring Company’s weirdest tease yet
NASA taps SpaceX for more astronaut missions as Boeing Starliner remains grounded
