Lifestyle
Despite Tesla’s success, VCs remain slow to invest into electric vehicle startups
This post was originally published on NextMobility.co
As investors continue to become more interested in the future of mobility, electric vehicle startups are commanding significant investment money to disrupt the 120-year-old automotive market. But are Venture Capitalists forking over enough money to move the industry forward in a meaningful way? A new report by tech intelligence platform CB Insights reveals that EV tech startups received $2.2B in funding in 2016. While the amount may seem large, it pales in comparison to the ride-sharing industry, which fetched $10.8B in funding. So the real question is, why are investors still so hesitant to fund the emerging mobility industry?
An Industry Hurt by the Past
Justin Kan, from Y Combinator, on stage during the 2014 TechCrunch Disrupt Europe/London at The Old Billingsgate on October 20, 2014 in London, England. (Photo by Anthony Harvey)
To really understand why VCs are still hesitant to fund electric car startups, it’s important to hear from leaders in the VC space. I reached out to famed startup guru, Justin Kan, to understand why the industry is still hesitant. Kan was the founder of Twitch, sold to Amazon for nearly $1B in 2014, and the brother of Daniel Kan, who is the co-founder of Cruise Automation, which was sold to GM for $1B last year. Kan responded on his new video Q&A platform, Whale, that, “It’s super, super hard to build a car. I think lots of people think that Elon Musk is a unique individual, uniquely capable of building an electric car. But there are many examples of people who have tried and failed, for example, Fisker.”
Kan isn’t wrong; the industry was riddled with very public failures, of which CB Insights highlights in their report. The history of very costly failures could be scaring many investors away from the sector, but when will the public perception change?
Tesla Inc. is arguably the most successful EV startup to date, as the company has now grown to employ over 30,000 workers worldwide and become the most valuable US automaker. Tesla had several VC firms backing the company before they went public in 2010, including DFJ, Capricorn Investment Group, Daimler, Google, DFJ Growth. But most notably, the company saw tens of millions of capital injected by its founder Elon Musk while the company was starting up.
Graphic from CB Insights’ report
While investors are still fighting to get their money in ride-sharing and autonomous vehicle technology companies, it has been clear that electric vehicles hold the best platform for the future of mobility companies. In the report from CB Insights, they highlight the synergies that electric vehicles and autonomous vehicles share. Electric vehicles have fewer components, enabling autonomous electric vehicles to travel nearly 18x more miles than internal-combustion engine vehicles without repairs or expensive operational costs.
Graphic from CB Insights Report
“What would happen if a whole city converted all at once to self-driving cars? … people will be like, ‘This is paradise.’ You just push a button and a car pop ups and takes you wherever you want to go. You have more pedestrian space, and the air smells better.” – Chris Dixon, Partner at Andreessen Horowitz
Investors are certainly taking another look at the industry as more EV startups emerge on the scene with highly qualified engineers, and serious product and production plans underway. Lucid Motors is a prime example of an electric car startup that is emerging as a leading contender within the premium electric vehicle space. The Silicon Valley-based startup is currently looking for funding on its initial factory construction, to the tune of $240M. The company has raised $131M to date, led by CTO Peter Rawlinson, who also led the development of Tesla’s Model S sedan.
Only time will tell if investors have forgotten about failed EV startups from the past, and willing to make bets on the industry. After all, VCs did invest $120M in Juicero, an in-home juicing machine, that turns out to be completely useless.
Read the CB Insights complete report here.
Lifestyle
NTSB findings on fatal Tesla crash tell a very different story
The NTSB confirmed the driver, not Tesla’s FSD, caused the fatal Texas house crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board released preliminary findings Wednesday confirming that a Tesla driver, not the vehicle’s software, caused a fatal crash in Katy, Texas in June. The driver, 44-year-old Michael Butler, had engaged Full Self-Driving Supervised mode on Rose Hollow Lane, a residential street with a 30 mph speed limit, before manually overriding the system by pressing the accelerator pedal all the way to 100%. Data recovered from the 2025 Tesla Model 3 showed the vehicle was traveling over 70 miles per hour when it struck a home and killed 76-year-old Martha Avila, who was inside. Weather was clear, the road was dry, and it was daylight.
Texas man charged in fatal Tesla crash where he blamed Autopilot
Butler told authorities he had passed out at the wheel. But security camera footage obtained by the NTSB told a different story, and showed the car accelerating through an intersection before leaving the road entirely. Police also found that Butler’s phone had Google searches including the terms “Tesla FSD not aggressive enough 2026” and “Tesla FSD too timid,” raising serious questions about how he was using the system before the crash. Butler has since been charged with manslaughter. The victim’s family has filed a lawsuit against both Butler and Tesla, alleging negligence.
The NTSB findings aligned directly with what Tesla VP of AI Software Ashok Elluswamy had already stated publicly on X in the weeks after the crash, writing that “the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100%.” The data confirmed his account.
Yup. In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area. They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash.
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 22, 2026
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Texas ranch to showcase the lifelong work that changed the world
Elon Musk is building a product gallery at his Texas ranch spanning his lifelong inventions.
Elon Musk took to X earlier today, noting “Am putting together a product gallery at my ranch in Texas.” in response to a resurfaced famous quote from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s wherein he draw parallels of the Tesla CEO to legendary physicist Albert Einstein.
Dimon made the remark at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland back in January 2025, telling CNBC at the time, “SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, I mean, the guy is our Einstein.” The remark seemingly ended a long-time feud between the two high profile execs.
While details are thin about the exact location of Elon Musk’s Texas ranch and any pending projects that would serve as a gallery and homage to his portfolio of revolutionary product inventions spanning from 1984 to 2025, land acquisition records point to roughly a location of several thousand acres in Bastrop County, east of Austin near the Colorado River and held through an LLC called Horse Ranch LLC that’s managed by Musk’s longtime personal friend and family wealth manager Jared Birchall. Birchall also serves as the CEO of Neuralink.
Tesla’s “ecological paradise” in Giga Texas may be larger than expected
The broader Bastrop County footprint surrounding the ranch has grown significantly. Entities tied to Musk have accumulated approximately 2,000 acres in Bastrop County as of mid-2026, up from 700 acres earlier in the year, with possibly as much as 6,000 acres acquired in total across Bastrop and Travis counties based on deed records.
No completion date for the gallery has been announced and Musk has not confirmed whether it will be open to the public. As Teslarati has reported, SpaceX just completed the largest IPO in history raising $75 billion, a milestone that makes this particular moment in Musk’s career a natural inflection point for looking back at what he has built through the years.
Am putting together a product gallery at my ranch in Texas https://t.co/xQf5FRy4uz
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2026
Starting with Blastar, a simple space shooter game Musk coded at 12 years old and sold to a South African magazine for $500. From there the timeline moves through a commercial career that started with Zip2 in 1995, a city guide software company sold to Compaq for roughly $300 million in 1999. That was followed by X.com in 1999, which merged with Confinity to become PayPal, acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. SpaceX came in 2002, Tesla in 2003, SolarCity in 2006, the Supercharger network in 2012, Neuralink in 2016, The Boring Company in 2016, OpenAI co-founded in 2015, X acquired in 2022, xAI in 2023, Optimus in 2024, the Cybercab in 2026, and most recently SpaceXAI following the SpaceX and xAI merger. The gallery will also likely include items that blur the line between product and cultural artifact, among them The Boring Company’s Not-a-Flamethrower from 2018, Tesla Short Shorts from 2020, and Burnt Hair perfume released under X in 2022.
Lifestyle
Tesla makes the cut on California’s newest EV Rebate program
California just signed a $270 million EV rebate into law and it starts this summer.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 168 into law on Monday, July 13, 2026, creating a $270 million EV rebate program that delivers money directly at the dealership rather than as a tax credit applied months later. The program, called MyFirstEV, is funded equally by California’s state budget and participating automakers, with each contributing $135.5 million to make the math work.
The timing is directly tied to the loss of federal support when the $7,500 federal EV tax credit ended, removing the most significant consumer incentive that had driven EV adoption in the U.S. California, which accounts for roughly one-third of all EVs sold nationally, moved to fill that gap with a state-level replacement.
The rebate structure is straightforward. First-time EV buyers can receive $3,500 off any new battery-electric vehicle with an MSRP up to $50,000. Used EVs priced at $25,000 or below qualify for a $1,750 rebate. The credit is applied at the point of sale, which removes the friction of the old federal system where buyers had to wait for tax season to see the benefit. The program goes live later this summer, with the California Air Resources Board expected to release full participation details next month.
California hits Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi driverless cars with new law
For Tesla buyers, the implications are mixed. The Tesla Model 3 RWD at $42,490 and the Model 3 Long Range at $47,490 both fall under the $50,000 cap and would qualify for the full $3,500 rebate for first-time buyers. The Model Y, which starts at $44,990 after Tesla’s recent price adjustment, also qualifies. The Model X, Model S, and Cybertruck all exceed the cap and receive no benefit. As Teslarati has reported, the program also includes a carve-out exempting California-based automakers like Rivian and Lucid from the price cap entirely, a provision that puts Tesla at a disadvantage since it relocated its headquarters to Texas in 2021.
Other qualifying vehicles include the Chevrolet Equinox EV, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, and Volkswagen ID.4.
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