

News
Volkswagen Scout brand comeback teased as part of its US expansion plans
Volkswagen plans to revive the Scout off-road vehicle brand. The Scout brand’s resurrection will help Volkswagen in its bid to expand in the United States.
People familiar with the matter told the The Wall Street Journal that VW’s board of directors is expected to approve the revival of the Scout brand on Wednesday, May 11, 2022. After the approval, Scout would operate as a subsidiary of Volkswagen in the United States.
Scout will reportedly help VW break into the highly profitable big SUV and pickup truck market in the United States. Volkswagen’s biggest competitors in the big SUV and pickup truck market would be Ford and General Motors.
According to VW officials, EV startups like Rivian have created an opening for new brands in the US truck and SUV markets. With that in mind, VW might release electrified pickup trucks and SUVs under the Scout brand in the United States.
A Scout EV pickup truck would likely go up against the Ford F-150 Lightning, Rivian R1T, the Tesla Cybertruck. However, each pickup truck has a specified niche and may attract different buyers.
For instance, the Ford F-150 Lightning might appeal more to people looking for a work truck. Meanwhile, the Rivian R1T seems more suitable for buyers who want to explore and camp out in nature.
Last month, Volkswagen Group of America CEO Scott Keogh noted that VW was “actively looking at” developing all-electric trucks. Before the end of April, VW teased an ID.Buzz pickup truck concept, asking people if they liked the design or not.
Volkswagen has a good chance of successfully breaking into the US pickup truck and big SUV EV market. The European automaker has made strides in the global EV market with its ID lineup. Even Tesla CEO Elon Musk recognized Volkswagen’s firm stance in the global EV market.
“Well, I think the company the most progress besides Tesla is actually VW, which is not a startup but could be viewed in some ways as a startup from an electric vehicle standpoint. So, VW is doing the most on the electric vehicle front,” Musk said during a recent interview with the Financial Times.
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Elon Musk
Jim Cramer chimes in on Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s pay package
“Don’t be small-minded: Tesla is about robots, Full Self-Driving, the future. Give him his package.”

Investor and host of Mad Money on MSNBC , Jim Cramer, has chimed in on Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s pay package and whether it should be rewarded to the frontman or not.
Cramer has drawn a lot of attention regarding his sentiments on Tesla, as investors have routinely given him a pretty hard time over what he’s said about the company.
For the past few years, we have covered his comments on Tesla when he has something to say, mostly because his opinion on the stock seems to change pretty frequently; at a minimum, he has something different to say about it every few months.
However, Cramer knows Musk’s value to Tesla, and said on Thursday that he believes the CEO deserves his pay package:
“Don’t be small-minded: Tesla is about robots, Full Self-Driving, the future. Give him his package.”
Don’t be small-minded: tesla is about robots, full self driving, the future. Give him his package
— Jim Cramer (@jimcramer) October 23, 2025
Cramer’s comments come just one day after Tesla’s Q3 2025 Earnings Call, where Musk took several opportunities to call out the importance of the pay package and how it could impact the company’s future — with or without him.
Musk said at one point that he would not feel comfortable continuing to develop the company’s massive fleet of Optimus bots without having appropriate control of the company from a voting perspective.
He said he does not want so much power that if he “were to lose his mind,” he could not be removed. However, he does feel he needs to be protected from “activist shareholders,” or “corporate terrorists” like proxy groups Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) and Glass Lewis:
“My fundamental concern with regard to how much voting control I have at Tesla is if I go ahead and build this enormous robot army, can I just be ousted at some point in the future? …It’s just, if we build this robot army, do I have at least a strong influence over that robot army, not current control, but a strong influence? That’s what it comes down to in a nutshell. I don’t feel comfortable wielding that robot army if I don’t have at least a strong influence.”
At the end of the call, Musk said:
“Like I said, I just don’t feel comfortable building a robot army here and then being ousted because of some asinine recommendations from ISS and Glass Lewis, who have no freaking clue. I mean, those guys are corporate terrorists.”
Cramer is one of many who realize Musk’s importance to Tesla, and how the company would likely lack the guidance and prowess it does without his planning and drive. However, Tesla shareholders will have the ultimate say on November 6 when they vote on Musk’s compensation plan.
Elon Musk
Tesla is stumped on how to engineer this Optimus part, but they’re close

Tesla has been stumped on how to engineer one crucial part of the Optimus bot, but CEO Elon Musk says the company is “on the cusp” of achieving something great with the project.
During the Q3 2025 Earnings Call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed the company is moving closer to a major breakthrough with the Optimus project, and said they are “on the cusp of something really tremendous.”
However, it seems there is one specific portion of the robot that has truly stumped engineers at the company: the hand, fingers, and forearm.
Musk went into great detail about how incredibly complex and amazing the human hand is, highlighting its dexterity and capability, as its ability to perform a wide variety of tasks is especially impressive:
“I don’t want to downplay the difficulty, but it’s an incredibly difficult thing, especially to create a hand that is as dexterous and capable as the human hand, which is incredible. The human hand is an incredible thing. The more you study the human hand, the more incredible you realize it is, and why you need four fingers and a thumb, why the fingers have certain degrees of freedom, why the various muscles are of different strengths, and fingers are of different lengths. It turns out that those are all there for a reason.”
It’s been pretty apparent that Tesla has made massive strides in the Optimus project, especially considering it has been able to walk down hills, learn things like Kung Fu, and even perform service tasks like serving food and drinks.
However, a recent look at a Gen 2.5 version of Optimus posted by Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, showed that Tesla was likely using mannequin hands until it developed something that was both useful and aesthetically pleasing:
Very likely that these are non-functional to not give away any major details about next-gen Optimus
The hands are amongst the most complex and important parts of the entire project https://t.co/YgoeNjamvI
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) September 3, 2025
Musk continued on the call last night that the Tesla team was confronted with an “incredibly difficult” challenge from an engineering perspective, and the hands and actuators for that specific part were tough to figure out:
“Making the hand and forearm, because most of the actuators, just like the human hand, the muscles that control your hand are actually primarily in your forearm. The Optimus hand and forearm is an incredibly difficult engineering challenge. I’d say it’s more difficult than the rest of the robot from an electromechanical standpoint. The forearm and hand are more difficult than the entire rest of the robot. But really, in order to have a useful generalized robot, you do need an incredible hand.”
The CEO continued that developing a useful and effective robot was “crucial to the future of the company,” and that he works with Optimus’s design team each Friday night.
News
Elon Musk sets definitive Tesla Cybercab production date and puts a rumor to rest
“The single biggest expansion in production will be the Cybercab, which starts production in Q2 next year.” -Elon Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk finally set a definitive date for Tesla Cybercab production and, at the same time, put a substantial rumor regarding the vehicle that has been circulating within the community to rest.
Tesla’s Cybercab was unveiled last October as the company’s two-seater, affordable option that would ultimately be the car used for autonomous travel. It was initially slated for production in late 2025 or early 2026.
Tesla is ramping up its hiring for the Cybercab production team
However, Tesla has finally said it will start production of the Cybercab in Q2 2026, a more concrete date for the company, as it has moved the entire project forward in recent weeks by testing it at the Fremont Test Track and conducting crash safety assessments.
Musk said on the Q3 2025 Earnings Call:
“The single biggest expansion in production will be the Cybercab, which starts production in Q2 next year. That’s really a vehicle that’s optimized for full autonomy. It, in fact, does not have a steering wheel or pedals and is really an enduring optimization on minimizing cost per mile for fully considered cost per mile of operation.”
In that quote, Musk also put a rumor that has been circulating within the community to rest. Some started to speculate whether Cybercab would be sold with a steering wheel and pedals, as many of the elements of the car seemed to hint toward not being exclusively autonomous, including side mirrors being equipped, among other things.
🚨 The 🐐 @JoeTegtmeyer caught this Tesla Cybercab strolling around Giga Texas —
— with a steering wheel?! pic.twitter.com/PUvmpFp3Re
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) February 24, 2025
It has been interesting to see some consider whether Tesla would sell the vehicle with the elements that would enable human control, especially as there have been a handful of images of the vehicle on company property with a steering wheel spotted.
However, Musk doubled down on the autonomous nature of the Cybercab with this confirmation during the earnings call, something that many investors likely wanted to hear because it was, in a way, a vote of confidence for the company’s path to autonomy.
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