Lifestyle
The New Emissions Rollback: The Worst Move at the Worst Time
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While many of us are dealing with the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that continues to sweep through countries across the world, the virus is, unfortunately, one of many things that humans are forced to deal with daily. While an invisible sickness rips through much of the world, the global climate crisis is an issue that people across the globe have been dealing with for years, even though it is a relatively “new” issue in the big picture of time.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama implemented a set of rules in 2012 that required automakers to improve fuel economy standards by at least 5% every year. This standard would have led to vehicles with the “2026” Model year averaging 54 miles per gallon.
However, this rule was recently revised and subjected to a rollback, making it 3.5% less than its intended, and environmentally-beneficial, 5% rating. This new standard brings the average rating for vehicles in 2026 to just around 40 miles per gallon, a result that will eventually burn more poisonous gas into the atmosphere. A far cry from what the previous emissions standards were, the rollback entails that a new and dangerous level of carbon emissions will be allowed to be released into the air. This amount of emissions being released into the atmosphere could set back massive amounts of environmental progress that our country has made. Meanwhile, the changes negatively affect the entire world, not just our country.
According to an article from the Verge, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) estimates the old standard of 5% improvement over fuel efficiency year-by-year has cut CO2 emissions by half a billion metric tons and saved drivers $86 billion dollars at the pump. These numbers are according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Meanwhile, the rollback is expected to release an additional billion metric tons of CO2 into the Earth’s atmosphere and increase oil consumption by 2 billion barrels, along with an extra 80 billion gallons of gasoline thanks to lower MPG standards.
The time to create less efficient fuel standards for our gas and petrol-powered vehicles is not now. In all honesty (and in my personal opinion), there is not a time to do it. Our Earth is at absolute an absolute crisis, or what Michael Scott would call “Threat Level Midnight.”
The arguments for the lower emissions standards: better fuel economy creates more expensive cars at purchase, which leads to many people sticking with their current vehicles or buying used cars. These older cars usually have lower safety standards, making them less safe to drive. Apparently, lowering the fuel standards will eliminate $1,000 from the cost of a new vehicle, making more cars on the road more reliable, while providing an added boost to the economy through vehicle purchases.
The problem is, a lower sticker price does not necessarily mean less money spent throughout the life of a vehicle. A Consumer Reports study showed that if gas prices were $1.50 for the next 30 years, the newly introduced rollback “would still increase new vehicle total cost of ownership for consumers.”
Here’s the thing: It is a great idea to make new cars cheaper. Sure, everyone loves the excitement (and smell) of a brand new vehicle. I think a new car is one of my favorite things, along with a high-quality sushi meal, Good Will Hunting on a low-key Friday evening, and a great workout. However, I also like living on Earth, and I appreciate the fact that my small, rural area of Southern York County, Pennsylvania does not have too many environmental issues. Of course, there is always the occasional “coal roll” I get from someone for driving an environmentally-friendly car.
The issue is the fact that no evidence suggests this new rollback will save money in the long term, and the new standards will hurt the environment. You would think analysts, or statisticians, or number crunchers would do some sort of research regarding the long-term economic effects on this subject. Just because someone is saving $1,000 upfront on the purchase of a car, it doesn’t necessarily mean things are going to be cheaper in the long run.
The responsibility of humans to do their part to decrease environmental damage at this point is absolutely imperative. There is no reason to continue the rollback of emissions standards when climate change is a scientifically proven issue. Vehicles need to become cleaner and cleaner, and to do this, automakers need to be held responsible. They’re making enough money, and it is an absolute necessity to begin transitioning to cleaner forms of transportation.
Join me next week as I go ‘Beyond the News’ and give you my take on the current state of the industry and beyond.
While many automakers have initiated this step into their future plans, the way to put pressure on some of the larger carmakers is to make emissions standards more strict. Eventually, it would be ideal to get all cars to run off of sustainable forms of energy. It would be best for the environment, and better for our pockets. After all, the amount of clean air that has come from gas-powered cars being off the road is evident. Skies are clear in Los Angeles, and water is cleaner in Italy.
What do you think about the new emissions rollbacks? Do you agree with the new standards, or do you think they should have been left the way they were? Let me know on Twitter or through email!
I use this newsletter to share my thoughts on what is going on in the Tesla world. If you want to talk to me directly, you can email me or reach me on Twitter. Reach out!
-Joey
Elon Musk
The Boring Company clears final Nashville hurdle: Music City loop is full speed ahead
The Boring Company has cleared its final Nashville hurdles, putting the Music City Loop on track for 2026.
The Boring Company has cleared one of its most significant regulatory milestones yet, securing a key easement from the Music City Center in Nashville just days ago, the latest in a series of approvals that have pushed the Music City Loop project firmly into construction reality.
On March 24, 2026, the Convention Center Authority voted to grant The Boring Company access to an easement along the west side of the Music City Center property, allowing tunneling beneath the privately owned venue. The move follows a unanimous 7-0 vote by the Metro Nashville Airport Authority on February 18, and a joint state and federal approval from the Tennessee Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration on February 25. Together, these green lights have cleared the path for a roughly 10-mile underground tunnel connecting downtown Nashville to Nashville International Airport, with potential extensions into midtown along West End Avenue.
Music City Loop could highlight The Boring Company’s real disruption
Nashville was selected by The Boring Company largely because of its rapid population growth and the strain that growth has placed on surface infrastructure. Traffic has become a persistent problem for residents, convention visitors, and airport travelers alike. The Music City Loop promises an approximately 8-minute underground transit time between downtown and the Nashville International Airport (BNA), removing thousands of vehicles from surface roads daily while operating as a fully electric, zero-emissions system at no cost to taxpayers.
The project fits squarely within a broader vision Musk has championed for years. In responding to a breakdown of the Loop’s construction costs, Musk posted on X: “Tunnels are so underrated.” The comment reflected a longstanding belief that underground transit represents one of the most cost-effective and scalable infrastructure solutions available. The Boring Company has claimed it can build 13 miles of twin tunnels in Nashville for between $240 million and $300 million total, a fraction of what comparable projects cost elsewhere in the country.
Image Credit: The Boring Company/Twitter
The Las Vegas Loop, The Boring Company’s first operational system, has served as a proof of concept. During the CONEXPO trade show in March 2026, the Vegas Loop transported approximately 82,000 passengers over five days at the Las Vegas Convention Center, demonstrating the system’s capacity during large-scale events. Nashville draws millions of convention visitors and tourists each year, and local business leaders have pointed to that same capacity as a major draw for supporting the project.
The Music City Loop was first announced in July 2025. Construction began within hours of the February 25 state approval, with The Boring Company’s Prufrock tunneling machine already in the ground the same evening. The first operational segment is targeted for late 2026, with the full route expected to be complete by 2029. The project represents one of the largest privately funded infrastructure efforts currently underway in the United States.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s $10 Trillion robot: Inside Tesla’s push to mass produce Optimus
Tesla’s surging Optimus job listings reveal a company sprinting from prototype to one million robot production.
Tesla is accelerating its push to bring the Optimus humanoid robot to high volume production, and its recent job listings tells the story as clearly as any earnings call.
With well over 100 Optimus related job openings now posted across its U.S. facilities, Tesla is signaling a critical pivot for the program, moving it from a captivating tech demo to a serious manufacturing endeavor. Roles span the full spectrum of the product lifecycle, from Robotics Software Engineers and Manufacturing Engineers to Mechanical Integration Engineers and AI Engineers focused on world modeling and video generation. One active listing for a Software Engineer on the Optimus team asks candidates to build scalable and reliable data pipelines for Optimus manufacturing lines and develop automation tools that accelerate analysis and visualization for mass manufacturing.
Tesla is racing toward a one million unit annual production target. The clearest signal yet that Tesla is treating Optimus as its primary business came on January 28, 2026, during the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call. Musk announced that Tesla is ending production of the Model S and Model X, and will repurpose those lines at its Fremont, California factory to build Optimus humanoid robots.
A production intent prototype of Optimus Version 3 is planned to be ready in early 2026, after which Tesla intends to build a one million unit production line with a targeted production start by the end of 2026. To support that ramp, Tesla broke ground on a massive new Optimus manufacturing facility at Gigafactory Texas in late 2025, with ambitions to eventually reach 10 million units per year.
Tesla Giga Texas to feature massive Optimus V4 production line
The business case for scaling this aggressively is rooted in labor economics. Musk has stated that “Optimus has the potential to be the biggest product of all time,” reasoning that if Tesla can produce capable humanoid robots at scale and reasonable cost, every task currently performed by human labor becomes a potential application. In a separate statement, Musk framed Optimus’s long term importance even more bluntly, saying it could surpass Tesla’s vehicle business in scale with the potential to generate $10 trillion in revenue.
The industries Tesla is targeting first are those most burdened by repetitive physical labor. Early applications include manufacturing assembly, material handling and quality inspection, as well as logistics tasks like loading, unloading, sorting, and transporting goods in warehouses and distribution centers. Longer term, Tesla’s vision is for Optimus to penetrate household, medical, and logistics scenarios at the scale of a smartphone rollout.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Boring Co. Tunnel Vision Challenge ends with a surprise for Louisiana, Maryland and Dallas
The Boring Company stunned three cities today, awarding New Orleans, Baltimore, and Dallas free underground Loop tunnels.
Elon Musk’s The Boring Company (TBC) announced today that it is building free underground Loop tunnels in three American cities: New Orleans, Louisiana; Baltimore, Maryland; and Dallas, Texas. The company had promised one winner when it launched the Tunnel Vision Challenge in January. After receiving 487 submissions, it selected three, committing to fund and construct all of them pending a feasibility review, entirely at its own expense. For a company that has faced years of skepticism over the gap between its promises and its delivered projects, choosing to expand its commitment rather than narrow it is a notable shift in both scale and accountability.
All three projects will now enter a rigorous, fully funded diligence phase that includes meetings with elected officials, regulators, community and business leaders, geotechnical borings, and a complete investigation of subsurface utilities and infrastructure. TBC confirmed that all costs associated with this diligence process are 100% funded by the company. If all three projects pass feasibility, all three get built. If only one clears the bar, that one gets built. The company’s willingness to fund the due diligence regardless of outcome removes one of the most common early-stage barriers that kills promising infrastructure proposals before they leave a spreadsheet.
Beyond the three winners, TBC announced it will continue working with two additional entrants it found compelling enough to pursue independently: the Hendersonville Utility Tunnel in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and the Morgan’s Wonderland Tunnel in San Antonio, Texas, which would notably serve one of the nation’s premier theme parks built specifically for guests with special needs.
The challenge also coincides with TBC’s most active construction period to date. The company recently began drilling on the Music City Loop near the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville, and in February it broke ground on a Loop in Dubai. Musk has long argued that the fundamental problem with urban infrastructure is cost and bureaucratic inertia, not engineering. “The key to solving traffic is making going 3D either up or down,” he said in 2018, a conviction now reflected in a company structure built to absorb the financial risk that typically stalls public projects for years.
Music City Loop could highlight The Boring Company’s real disruption
The Tunnel Vision Challenge’s most underappreciated element may be what it produced beyond three winners. Submissions came from individuals, companies, and governments across states including Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, and Texas, as well as from international entrants. Musk captured the underlying logic years ago when he said, “Traffic is driving me nuts. I’m going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging.” Today, three American cities are counting on exactly that.
Tunnel Vision Challenge results!
We’ve been overwhelmed with the amazing submissions…so we are announcing three winners!
The Thrilling Three are:
– NOLA Loop (New Orleans, LA)
– Ravens Loop (Baltimore, MD)
– University Hills Loop (Dallas, TX)What happens next? TBC and the… https://t.co/cY2ULftfiK
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) March 24, 2026
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