Lifestyle
Why do people compare Fisker to Tesla?
On my way back from a great Memorial Day weekend trip to Mystic, CT for some “lobstah”, we played tag with a Fisker Karma with NY plates. We got to see the front, back and sides of the car in all it’s glory, and I must say it’s a pretty smart looking car aside from the plain backside. I knew that Fisker had gone bankrupt and the defunct battery startup A123 which supplies batteries to the car had been bought by a Chinese billionaire, but other than that I didn’t know much about the car or the company. So, while driving back my wife started started googling and reading the information to me. 
The Fisker
The first question we had while peering at the car through our peripheral visions was how the Fisker driver managed to make its way up here from NY? The answer is that while wikipedia calls the Fisker Karma an electric vehicle, it’s really a hybrid. There’s a whole area of research and writing on hybrids that I won’t get into. The interesting part is around terminology. If you run only on electric and use gas to power an electric generator, then how can you get by calling the vehicle an EV when you’re burning gas most of the time. Who are they fooling?
Sometimes EVs are actually hybrids.
There are two “fill” ports on the Fisker, one for electric and one for gas which we saw on both sides of the car. With gas the Karma gets about 20 MPG, and with electric the EPA rates it at a relatively-low 52 MPGe. The electric range according to the EPA is a paltry 32 miles (the Model S EPA rating is almost 10x that at 300 miles). Also, unless you’re a a bit nuts you can’t achieve EPA ranges which require driving on perfectly flat roads at 55 MPH. With these kinds of specs I’d call the Fisker “barely electric”. When you combine both the gas and electric range of the car the full range was 230 miles. So even though you’re burning gas you’re going to have to stop every 100 miles or so to fill up. The Karma is neither a very efficient gas car, nor a particularly good “EV”. What ultimately turned me off from purchasing a hybrid is the fact that the cargo/interior room is compromised by having to support two power systems. On the Fisker this was so pronounced that it got rated as a subcompact by the EPA. The Fisker’s interior was modern and different but more alone the lines of an evolution rather than a radical departure of technological advances and innovation like the Model S.
ASLO SEE: Is Tesla Motors disruptive or disturbing?
The Fisker had a solar panel on its roof which they claimed could gain up to 4-5 miles of extra range a week (if it was really sunny, all the time). Of course they gave up things like a panoramic sunroof for that benefit and the Tesla forums are full of people doing math showing that adding solar to the roof of a car just doesn’t make sense given the small return you can get. But, when you only have 32 miles of EV range, 4-5 extra miles is a huge percentage improvement.
I think the solar roof was really just a sales gimmick to make people think the car was green.
The Fisker had a sound generator that triggered automatically at speeds less than 25 MPH when running in pure EV mode to warn pedestrians of its approach. There are times in the Model S where it would be great to have some button you could trigger to make an obvious-but-not-rude sound. I’ve already been stranded behind slowly walking pedestrians that didn’t know I was following them in my Model S with the only option being a rude horn. Reports say the Fisker Karma can go from 0-60 in 5.9 seconds putting it in the same performance category as the Tesla Model S 60 and slower than the 85 and P85 versions. The Karma was also expensive with a starting price around $102K and going up to $116K, putting it in the class of the Porsche Panamera and the Tesla Model S.
Fisker The Company
Fisker, like Tesla, was a high tech startup company, but unlike Tesla, they chose to use another startup’s battery technology to power the vehicle instead of going with a dominant brand in battery technology.
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Tesla chose to put 7,000+ time-proven Panasonic batteries in their Model S and upcoming Model X. I’m a big believer in startup companies that innovate and don’t bet their success on the success of another startup. That rarely ever works out well. It should be mentioned that early in the life of Tesla Motors the founder of Fisker actually worked for Tesla and later split off to start Fisker Automative amid lawsuits and controversy. Both Fisker and Tesla took green-energy loans from the government. Fisker borrowed $529M and never paid it back. Tesla borrowed $465M and repaid it in full and ahead of schedule. Fisker started shipping cars to customers in 2011 and got to just south of 2,500 cars before going out of business in 2013. During that time they were plagued with battery problems, reports of car fires and other issues. Tesla has shipped over 40,000 cars so far, admittedly not without their own exciting events along the way. Both Fisker and A123 have been purchased by a Chinese billionaire who hopes to revive the two companies, but given all the compromises above it seems unlikely that it will go well, but alas, there’s no stock to short there.
Tesla and Fisker Similarities?
The Tesla Model S and the Fisker Karma were both built by high tech startups in California but the companies took very different paths to producing green vehicles. Fisker focussed on design with an award-winning exterior but joined it with a mediocre powertrain configuration plagued by supplier and design issues. Tesla focussed on the engineering aspects of the car, using proven technology and making it better while still holding to a clean exterior design. The Fisker Karma is overly complex. It’s also slower and more expensive than the Model S. It has less range than the Model S, even with a gas-powered generator onboard. It is full of compromises like interior space and is not surprisingly no longer produced. It does however have a noise maker and better cup holders.
Summary
As Toyota has proven, hybrid vehicles can be tremendously successful if done right. The challenge is understanding the mission and staying true to that mission. Toyota set out to improve MPG for the masses by using hybrid technology in reaction to rising gas prices. Fisker set out to make a great looking car and only really thought cleanly on aesthetics but made a lot of compromises in execution. Tesla set out to make a true electric vehicle with no compromises and they are accomplishing that mission. Tesla has yet to reach the mass-market level of their aspirations but they are well on their way and already have a true electric vehicle that makes no compromises. For what it’s worth we made the 150 mile round trip to Mystic, CT with 100 miles of range left at the end. While we passed the only Supercharger nearby on the way down and back in Rhode Island, there was no reason to stop and it’s a lot more convenient to charge at home. I’ve made no compromises with my Model S.
Lifestyle
Tesla Cybertruck targets job site crews with new Tailgate Utility Track and Bed Gear Box accessory
Tesla launched a $350 tailgate track and a $985 lockable Bed Gear Box for Cybertruck.
Tesla’s Cybertruck team added two more items to the Tesla Shop, targeting job site crews and owners who use the truck bed for actual work rather than just showing it off. The official Cybertruck X account posted the Tailgate Utility Track and the Bed Gear Box within minutes of each other, part of a five item batch that also included a reflective jacket, a spray paint hat and an updated reflective tee.
The Tailgate Utility Track runs $350 and turns the folded down tailgate into another mounting surface. It’s a single aluminum track with a T-slot for sliding accessories and two L-track attachment points, plus two load stops included in the box. The pitch is straightforward: strap down oversized cargo, like lumber or a cooler, that hangs off the back of the bed without it sliding out mid-drive. It bolts onto the existing tailgate and works on every Cybertruck trim.
Tailgate Utility Trackhttps://t.co/PCAYXlFBvS pic.twitter.com/sCV2NVxf1W
— Cybertruck (@cybertruck) September 3, 2026
The Bed Gear Box costs $985 and is a different kind of accessory. It’s a lockable aluminum storage box, 55.78 inches long, 19.8 inches wide and 7.79 inches tall, that mounts to the bed’s L-track rails and comes with two internal bins for smaller items. According to Tesla, at just over 57 pounds empty, it’s meant to stay in place rather than come in and out with each trip, giving owners a factory-fit alternative to loose totes for tools, recovery gear or emergency supplies. Tesla’s listing notes that Long Range and Dual Motor AWD Cybertrucks need the L-Tracks accessory installed separately before the Gear Box will mount, since L-tracks come standard only on certain configurations.
Tesla Cybertruck bed gear box accessory
Both accessories lean on the idea Tesla has been building toward since Elon Musk first described the Cybertruck’s third-party attachment strategy at the 2023 shareholder meeting, when he said the truck would ship with mounting points so outside companies, and Tesla itself, could keep adding gear without redesigning the bed. That’s the same L-track backbone underneath the tailgate shield and jumpseats Tesla launched last year, and the off-road armor package that arrived through the same X account in 2025.
Owners looking to round out the rest of the L-track ecosystem, cargo dividers, MOLLE panels, bed racks and similar gear, can find a wider range of options through our Cybertruck accessories collection.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk says he knows how to save Earth for a billion years
Elon Musk says sentient AI satellites launched from the Moon could keep Earth livable forever.
Elon Musk spent part of his weekend describing a plan to keep the planet livable for roughly a billion years, and it starts with satellites that can think for themselves.
In a post on X, Musk argued that swapping fossil fuels for solar and wind power will not be enough to protect humanity from what he called extremely severe extinction events, the kind that occur roughly every 100 million years. His fix is what he called sentient satellites, or solar-powered satellites, controlled by AI, that would sit in a fixed spot between Earth and the Sun after being launched off the Moon using a giant electromagnetic catapult instead of rockets.
The satellites’ onboard AI would make continuous, small adjustments rather than waiting on human instructions. The mass driver is Musk’s proposed way of getting the raw material there cheaply by using an electromagnetic launch track built on the Moon, where lower gravity and no atmosphere make it far easier to fling cargo into space than it is from Earth.
But we do need to act much faster than that if people still want to live where the beach is today. We have about 50 years or so to take action, which should be more than enough time for the space satellites to solve any heating problems. https://t.co/xhrVQALwQw
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 30, 2026
Musk shared a Grok generated estimate suggesting roughly 5 percent of Florida’s land, or about 1.68 million acres, could face regular flooding by 2070 under a high sea level rise scenario, and said humanity has about 50 years to act before coastal living looks very different than it does today.
This is not the first time Musk has floated the idea. He raised a similar concept in November, describing a solar powered AI satellite constellation that could make tiny adjustments to incoming sunlight to fine tune Earth’s temperature. Musk has also tied planetary risk to his broader vision at SpaceX, where his compensation package is explicitly linked to establishing a self-sustaining Mars colony, one he has described as an insurance policy against the kind of extinction event he referenced this weekend, and where he has said humans could set foot within five to seven years.
A former Vancouver police sergeant with ALS accounts his journey to become a patient for Elon Musk’s Neuralink wireless brain-computer interface technology.
“I’m texting you from my brain right now.” That was the first message Lee Marten sent after waking up from Neuralink surgery, five hours and one migraine after dozens of threads were stitched into his motor cortex.
Marten, a former Vancouver police sergeant, is one of the first Canadian ALS patients to receive Neuralink’s N1 brain implant, and the 26th recipient overall. He tells his story in a first-person account published by Maclean’s.
Marten recounts how he was a healthy, athletic Vancouver police sergeant until April 2022 when symptoms of muscle twitching and balance loss, were followed by a bad fall that broke his leg. He would eventually be diagnosed with ALS in early 2025 at the age of 47. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that progressively destroys the motor neurons controlling voluntary muscle movement, eventually taking away a patient’s ability to walk, speak, swallow and breathe. There’s no cure, and most patients live two to five years after diagnosis.
He describes the devastation of the diagnosis and how he began preparing for it while connecting with other young ALS patients through a WhatsApp group called Young Guns. Through that group he learned about a Neuralink clinical trial at Toronto Western Hospital and, after a roughly seven-month vetting process (physical assessments, psychiatric evaluation, a final interview with the Neuralink team), was accepted this past April as the trial’s 26th recipient and the first Canadian ALS patient to get the N1 implant. He recounts the May surgery in detail, including the robotic system that stitched 64 threads into his brain, and describes the app, Link, translating his neural signals into cursor control, which he was using within hours of waking up.
Marten walks through what daily use looks like, including weekly “brain training” exercises, a real-time neural-activity display, charging the implant via a beanie-mounted MagSafe charger, and using the implant for emailing, texting, social media, and gaming via a “Magic Box” that connects it to other devices. He also gives brief context on brain-computer interface history and quite candid about Musk, calling him “divisive” but saying he found him “easy to admire.
The piece closes on a heavier note, with Marten seeking to pursue medical assistance in dying as his symptoms progressed, noting that he’ll be able to communicate his final words to his family through Neuralink rather than facing a silent decline. He expresses hope the data from his case will help future ALS patients, even without a cure in his own lifetime.
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