#Tesla

Electric-vehicle startup Lucid has sued the state of Texas, saying that the rules around selling cars in the Lone Star state are so restrictive they amount to "economic protectionism."

Tesla is once again claiming a delivery date for the Cybertruck. We're once again rolling our eyes.

When I posted Friday's QOTD, I was wondering if perhaps I was overthinking things. I wondered how Tesla boss Elon Musk owning Twitter -- a social-media platform used by Tesla's competitors -- would affect the automotive industry and the automotive press.

Apparently, I am not the only one with concerns.

It's official. Tesla boss Elon Musk now owns Twitter, one of the most influential social media platforms.

News broke Wednesday that Tesla was under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice, regarding the company’s claims about the self-driving nature of its vehicles. The DOJ has been working on the investigation for some time, as it was launched in 2021 but was not disclosed at that time. Turns out it might be time for a government evaluation of whether “Full Self-Driving” Teslas are misleading.

Tesla executive Martin Viecha has reportedly shared some of the automaker’s short-term goals with investors during an invite-only Goldman Sachs tech conference held in San Francisco on Monday. As the company rarely engages in any form of public outreach and scrubbed its PR department in 2020, leaks from the event immediately became newsworthy.

Not to be outdone by the likes of BMW and Volkswagen Group, Tesla has decided to begin linking its connected services to a subscription-based payment plan. German automakers may be careening headlong into an era where you have to pay a monthly fee just to activate already installed hardware like heated seats. Though Tesla remains the master at conning customers into overpaying for nebulous features and we need only look at the Full-Self Driving suite, that has yet to manifest into genuine vehicular autonomy and just keeps getting more expensive, for an example.

While the standard connectivity package has always been free for the vehicle's lifespan, Big T is now saying that's only going to be true for the first eight years of ownership. The rationale here is that automotive companies have to continue supporting connectivity services and that there needs to be something to help offset that ongoing financial investment.

Tesla is opening its supercharger network of electric-vehicle chargers up to non-Tesla EVs.

What’s more, the news about this was scooped by the White House.

Shivon Zilis, a top executive at Neuralink, gave birth to twins last year. The father was Neuralink — and Tesla — boss Elon Musk.

This happened in November, just weeks before Musk and singer Claire Boucher, who performs under the name Grimes, announced the birth of their second child.

As you likely know, Tesla doesn’t do traditional advertising for its vehicles. Or much in the way of social-media advertising, either. That’s because Tesla is often considered “cool” and partly because of the cult of personality cultivated by boss Elon Musk.

That might be about to change, according to one report.

Continuing a nationwide & industry trend towards more electric vehicles, more Americans are registering EVs.

Elon Musk has sold an estimated $4 billion worth of Tesla stock days this week after reaching a $44 billion deal to purchase Twitter. Regulatory filing show the CEO offloading nearly 4.5 million shares of the automaker between April 26th and the 27th.

The timing of the transaction makes the why of the situation fairly obvious. Despite the resulting political hubbub, Musk reached an agreement on April 25th to acquire Twitter. The deal was tied up with tens of billions of dollars worth of his Tesla shares to support margin loans after the executive said he could come up with $21 billion in equity. While some questioned where the funding would come from, others claimed it was obvious.

By now, save for only the least informed gearheads, almost everyone has heard Elon Musk has been successful, at least to this point, in his quest to buy Twitter. This development has caused no shortage of natterings in all corners of the internet, with tech blogs suddenly discovering the unpredictable and sometime unfathomable morass that is Musk’s social media presence. Auto journalists have been dealing with such issues for years.

One surprising result of the Twitter buyout? Henrik Fisker, boss of an EV company which ostensibly competes with Tesla, has packed up camp and disappeared.

Dan O’Dowd, the billionaire founder and CEO of Green Hills Software, has announced he’s running for the U.S. Senate and his campaign has a single platform — destroy Tesla Inc.

“Today I launched my campaign for U.S. Senate to make computers safe for humanity. The first danger I am tackling is @ElonMusk‘s reckless deployment of unsafe @Tesla Full Self-Driving cars on our roads,” O’Dowd tweeted on April 19th.

The tweet was accompanied by a 60-second advertisement that showed clips of various Tesla vehicles equipped with the contentious software nearly striking pedestrians and making other mistakes in traffic while a disembodied voice explains does its utmost to make you feel like Tesla is an evil company that wants its cars to kill people.

When Tesla boss Elon Musk expressed a desire to buy Twitter last week, citing an absolutist vision of free speech as at least one reason behind his motivations, one had to wonder if his running afoul of the Securities and Exchange Commission over one of his tweets played a part.

To be sure, even if Twitter had no regulations moderating speech on the platform, Musk (or anyone in a similar position) could violate SEC regulations via tweet — a platform’s rules don’t protect someone from the Feds’ regs.