Tesla

Tesla plummets on the stock market, but the fault is not with the cars, but with the robots

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Tesla shares They have sunk this Thursday between 12% and 14%being one of its biggest collapses in recent years. The fall came after the publication of the second quarter results, worsening even more during the conference with investors, in which Elon Musk recognized that manufacturing their humanoid robots Optimus on a large scale it will be much more complicated than he had promised until now. According to data collected by different specialized media, the fall has erased more than $140 billion in market capitalization in a single day. What Wall Street didn’t like. Tesla has invoiced $28.24 billion this quarter, 26% more than a year before, and delivered a total of 480,126 vehicles, which are also record figures. However, operating profit has plummeted 57% to $398 million, and operating margin has fallen from 4.1% to 1.4%. On the other hand, adjusted earnings per share remained at 33 cents, well below the close to 51-53 cents that Wall Street analysts expected. Along with this, free cash flow was positioned in negative for the first time in more than two years, with a balance of around -1.1 billion dollars, while investment spending (capex) shot up 142%, to almost 5.8 billion, within an annual spending plan of 25 billion dollars, according to they detailed from The Next Web. Worry. More than the numbers, what sank the value even further during the call with investors itself was Musk’s tone when talking about Optimus. And the top person in charge of the company admitted openly that it is the most difficult manufacturing challenge the company has faced. “It’s going to be the most difficult product to scale into production that we’ve ever made at Tesla, because everything about the robot is new,” Musk said during the earnings call. The truth is that it was a rather strange conference, since he also stated that he was “sick.” ANDn problemyes. Musk himself listed several technical obstacles, including the wear and tear of parts, the difficulty of achieving dexterity similar to that of a human hand (which he described as “something incredible” that no robotics company has yet managed to replicate) and the risk of breakdowns. Also stressed that, unlike cars, for which Tesla already has a consolidated supply chain, Optimus has no previous supply chain and is made up of about 10,000 unique parts, many of them manufactured from scratch. In fact, Tesla removed from its second quarter earnings presentation references to Optimus mass production that it had included in its first quarter earnings report, according to they pointed from The Next Web. script twist. Musk’s tone has changed from previous results. Last year he claimed that he would be “surprised” if Tesla was not producing 100,000 Optimus units per month within five years, and in January 2025 he even projected between 50,000 and 100,000 robots by 2026, according to they remembered from the middle. However, in January of this year he had already recognized that no Optimus was still performing useful tasks in Tesla factories. And the more than a thousand Generation 3 robots deployed in Fremont and the Texas Gigafactory were dedicated solely to collecting training data. Musk also took advantage of the call to defend Optimus against rivals such as Figure or Boston Dynamics, insisting that demonstrations of other humanoid robots circulating on the Internet are “pre-programmed or teleoperated,” and that Optimus will be the first capable of performing general tasks autonomously. Robotaxis. Musk also had things to say about the launch of your robotaxis service, pointing that the vehicles have already exceeded 380,000 kilometers without supervision in six cities and “without notable incidents.” But, as they point Since Electrek, it is Tesla itself that decides what counts as “remarkable”, and that same number of kilometers is traveled by Waymo, its main competitor, in just one day. On the other hand, the company’s internal data shows that the growth of the service is stagnant. And the paid kilometers have remained flat, around 900,000, and the active fleet without supervision has been reduced to only 21 vehicles. Technological setback. It hasn’t been a good week for big tech this week. On the same Thursday, the Nasdaq fell more than 2% and the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones lost more than 1%, also dragged down by the results of Alphabet, which dropped 6.5% in the stock market after announcing a strong increase in spending and its first “burn” of cash. Together, the “magnificent seven” of the stock market lost $767 billion in value in a single day, according to Bloomberg. The VIX volatility index, Wall Street’s so-called “fear gauge,” rose to its highest level in almost a month. And now what. During the same call, investors asked Musk about the highly rumored merger between SpaceX and Tesla. The businessman did not rule it out, although he did not give many details either. “We cannot talk about merging companies at an earnings conference,” he said, adding that such a move “has to be done with the appropriate process.” The future of Optimus is also not a minor matter for Musk himself, as part of his compensation package as CEO is conditioned to the delivery of one million Optimus robots within a period of ten years, and things are not starting at the moment. For the moment, Tesla has converted part of its assembly lines in Fremont to manufacture Optimus and is building a specific plant next to the Texas Gigafactory, but it no longer dares to set a date for the start of volume production. Cover image | Flickr (Ministry of Communications), Unsplash (Priscilla Du Preez) In Xataka | Google has plenty of chips to sell. He prefers to keep them so as not to be left behind in the AGI race.

copy Tesla. And that is why we are going to have 1,500 kW chargers in 2027

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Just a year ago I was in China and I was overcome with skepticism, I won’t deny it. BYD presented us with the 1 MW chargers. Chargers capable of 1,000 kW that seemed to come from the future. Then I already said that the experience had changed my mind. Now BYD has made another promise on which an important part of its future strategy is based. Skepticism. I’m glad I was wrong. It is something that one learns if one wants to be minimally critical of companies. And the companies and their communication teams, doing their job, flood us with promises that do not always come to fruition but that fill headlines. The 1 MW load was not one of them. It is one thing that, although it may seem silly to see an electric car (simply) charging, one has to experience for oneself. And it is amazing to see how the battery graph fills up at a devilish rate and, indeed, we have hundreds of kilometers again just after five minutes. Personally, it’s something I assumed would be full of asterisks and fine print. A “always complies except in this specific case.” But the truth is that it worked. The new promise. What BYD assures now is that the company will have ready between 300 1,500 kW charging posts by the end of 2027 in our country. That is, the 1 MW, 1,000 kW charger is a thing of the past. BYD will increase its power until it becomes almost ridiculous. The company has given a demonstration these days in Madrid. When we tested the 1,000 kW recharge we confirmed that the power dropped after 80% filling. With the 1,500 kW chargers, the battery goes from 10 to 97% in nine minutes. Nine minutes. It is faster (or there is hardly any difference) than filling the gas tank and paying at the cashier. How is it possible? With cars prepared for it, of course. And this expansion of ultra-fast chargers comes with the landing of Denza. The company already has a sports sedan for sale called Denza Z9 GT in plug-in hybrid and electric format. The latter is capable of assimilating the burst of power from these chargers. It is, in fact, the only car on the market in our country that can get the most out of BYD chargers. The great incentive to pay just over 100,000 euros For this car it is precisely that: that traveling in an electric car at a good pace is no different from doing so with a gasoline car. In terms of infrastructure, the charger has its own backup station. A few meters from the cable there are batteries stored stacked in a kind of small warehouse that support the electricity supply when it does not have enough power on its own. Is there much difference? It depends on the point of view. If we go to the purely technical, yes, there is a lot of difference. Right now, the vast majority of the most powerful chargers in Spain move around 350 kW of power. The cars that can get the most out of it move around these figures or, in the best of cases, assimilate 500 kW of power. That is to say, The Denza Z9 GT and the BYD chargers multiply these figures by several magnitudes. However, charging a car with a huge 100 kW battery at 350 kW means going from 10 to 80% of the available range in about 15 minutes. That is, if the car can travel 500 kilometers with said battery (assuming a consumption of 20 kWh/100 km) we will go from having 50 kilometers to 400 kilometers available in a quarter of an hour. It doesn’t seem like too much and on long trips they are recommended breaks. And does it make sense? Much more than the data says. For several reasons: BYD is positioned as a leader in this technology in our country. Only if you buy a BYD can you carry this power. This generates a feeling of belonging and improves the brand image. BYD presents a technology that, in reality, overestimates our needs but gives security to the electric car skeptic. The customer may never use it but knows it is available. And it will go further. Much of what changed my opinion about these chargers was the performance that could be obtained from the company. BYD assures that it will maintain a price of 0.50 euros/kWh loaded. That is, a 100 kW charge will cost 50 euros. It seems like a lot but it means that traveling 100 kilometers will cost about 10 euros. Compared to a gasoline car that consumes 6 l/100 kilometers on the road, there is hardly any difference. But, above all, it is interesting because these charges promise to be key when it comes to recharge electric trucks that need enormous charging powers if they want to reduce downtime. There, BYD is gaining ground and is positioning itself as one of the companies that will already be there when this type of vehicles multiply. Copying Tesla. BYD’s strategy is very similar to the one Tesla deployed in its day. The American company put cars on the market with very green technology and that used their own chargers to operate. This allowed them to position themselves as the leading company and create a brand image and community. They still receive the fruits of that today.. BYD is doing something very similar when the market is already more mature. If you want these charging powers, only the Chinese company offers them to you right now. It is a smart move to gain brand image and trust among skeptics of electric cars and Chinese cars. And, for the same price, they can position themselves as a key company in the deployment of heavy electric vehicles. Photo | Hector Ares for Motorpassion In Xataka | Spain has been filled with charging points for electric cars. The problem is that we … Read more

Tesla wanted to have its autonomous driving system throughout Europe this summer. Sweden just made it very difficult for them

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The famous supervised autonomous driving system of Tesla (FSD) has crossed the Atlantic and is already preparing to circulate on European roads. However, the strategy does not seem to be going as well as the company would have liked, since it has run into regulators again. In this case, Sweden and its speed limits. Below these lines we tell you all the details. Arrival in Europe. It all started last April, when the Dutch traffic authority (RDW) approved the use of FSD in the Netherlandsbecoming the first European country to give the green light to the system. Since then, Belgium, Denmark, Lithuania and Estonia have followed suit with national approvals of their own. Tesla needed to gain traction in this way in its first European countries and that is what it has done. Now the next step is to obtain approval valid for the entire European bloc. And that’s more complicated than it seems. For FSD to circulate legally throughout the EU, the Technical Committee for Motor Vehicles (TCMV) you should vote for it with a qualified majority, with at least 15 of the 27 member states representing 65% of the community population. The committee is scheduled to meet June 30 to discuss the matter before a formal vote. Speed ​​limit. FSD includes a function called “Speed ​​Offset” that allows the driver to set a margin above the legal speed limit, so that the system itself drives exceeding that limit. In the United States, Tesla offered this under names like ‘Sloth’ or ‘Mad Max’. In Europe, those profiles have disappearedbut the possibility of exceeding the limit is still there under another name. Who says no, and why. The Swedish Transport Administration (TRV) sent a letter to the TCMV in April recommending voting against the FSD expansion if Tesla does not remove that feature. According to the document, obtained by Reuters“allowing automated systems to systematically exceed legal speed limits poses risks that undermine both the legal framework and the expected benefits of vehicle automation.” Finland and Norway have also been skeptical of the introduction of the system in their countries, although they have not yet formalized their position before the committee. What Tesla answers. The company has not commented publicly on the matter, but its user manual points out that drivers should not rely solely on the system to comply with speed limits and that they should drive “at a safe speed based on traffic and road conditions.” Their implicit argument is that FSD is a supervised system, as the driver remains responsible and can take control at any time. For Estonia, this reasoning has been sufficient to approve the system at the national levelalthough the country has not yet defined its vote in the TCMV. There is more at stake than speed. Various regulators have questioned also the performance of the system in extreme conditions with heavy snow (something common in Nordic countries) and the name “Full Self-Driving” itself, which could be misleading about the real level of autonomy of the vehicle. In fact, the European version already shows “FSD (Supervised)” on the screen instead of the full name, precisely to reduce that ambiguity. Additionally, Reuters public A few days ago, Tesla reportedly presented questionable safety data to European regulators, including the claim that FSD could have “saved 32,000 lives,” something that has not caught on, at least according to share Electrek. What is at stake Tesla. Tesla sales in Europe have plummeted significantly since 2025partly due to the impact of Elon Musk’s fleeting political activity, and the flood of new Chinese brands that have disrupted the sector. In fact, BYD has been outperforming him in registrations for several consecutive months. Tesla needs new arguments to regain ground, and FSD was one of them. Musk even publicly predicted that It would be available throughout the EU this summer. At the moment it seems difficult to achieve. In Xataka | Ferrari wants your car to charge itself in the sun while parked. One of his patents explains how

Five years ago, they said that Volkswagen was “the new Nokia.” Today it is the leader in electric vehicles in Europe while Tesla stagnates

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The era of traditional car manufacturers is over. We have to avoid being a new Nokia It was January 2020 and we were not very aware of what was coming our way when Herbert Diess, then CEO of the Volkswagen Group, pointed to another apocalypse. Specifically, that of traditional manufacturers in the face of the emergence of the electric car. Tesla was the reference when the top leader of the German firm spoke about his own company as if it were about to fall into ostracism. Today, six years later, the Volkswagen Group sells one in four electric cars in Europe. Two other companies have already passed Tesla. And a China looms on the horizon. How we have changed. IF you want to understand how much and how the electric car has grown in Europe you just have to take a look at how was the market five years ago. In 2020the best-selling electric car was the Renault Zoe, which reached close to 100,000 units on the market. It was followed by the Tesla Model 3, which was close to 88,000 units and already had a 6% market share. By then, the Tesla Model Y, which would soon become the best-selling electric car in Europe and the world (even including combustion ones), had not yet arrived. Of the 10 best-selling electric vehicles, the Volkswagen Group had three classifieds that barely added up 9% market share. In those days, Tesla seemed like the benchmark. A brand with a single model had managed to sneak into the top 10 best-selling electric cars. The first large mass electric SUV had not arrived. And even the leaders of Volkswagen feared for the future of their own company. The new Nokia. “The era of the classic car manufacturers is over. This is probably the most difficult challenge that Volkswagen has ever faced,” said Herbert Diess in January 2020 in statements reported by Reuters. And he put the finishing touch, if Volkswagen did not advance quickly it would become “the new Nokia.” The company embarked on a launch plan to put electric cars on the market at full speed. Along the way he started a questionable plan in which it was reached develop a single platform for two cars that arrived with enormous delay. And Cariad, which should have been a company of key software development for the brand, was unable to give them software up to par. In the years to come, Tesla ate up much of the European market although its relevance plummeted since last year. In 2022 Its market share among electric vehicles remained at 13%. In 2023 shot up to 18% and in 2024 it remained at 17%. The big fall came with 2025 in which it remained at just 8%. And things aren’t looking better this year. Overcome. In the first quarter of 2026, Tesla appears to have remained somewhat stagnant as more and more companies begin to add electric vehicles to the market. The Tesla Model Y continues to lead sales and the Tesla Model 3 is the third best-selling electric car in Europe. But electric sales have skyrocketed in Europe and Elon Musk’s people are not taking full advantage. In the first quarter of the year, have been sold in the European Union 546,937 electric cars, 32% more than in the same period in 2025. And the market share now almost reaches 20%, some four points above the figures from twelve months ago. In that period, Tesla has increased its overall market share from 1.3% to 2.0% and among electrics it has risen to just above 10%. However, traditional companies are pushing hard. The Volkswagen Group, which has added the arrival of more affordable cars like the Skoda Elroq (among the three best sellers in Europe) and has renewed a large part of the fleet it already had under its own brand sales have skyrocketed. And Stellantis or Hyundai/Kia threaten to overtake Tesla. BYD is also among the best sellers in Europe. Carefully. When taking European sales data, some care must be taken and it is preferable to make readings by quarter. And Tesla continues to have an enormous dependence on registrations in the last month of each quarter. The transition from March to April is a good example of this. And, as we said, in March Tesla marked a 10% market share among electric vehicles but in April there are already records (in the absence of those from ACEA) that lThey leave you at 8.9%. These fluctuations are more than common but they show that Tesla continues to be irregular in its month-to-month growth. The same as almost always. Despite the fluctuations, the truth is that Tesla has not managed to capitalize on the increase in electric sales as expected. Elon Musk himself anticipated global sales of 20 million units impossible things that seem very difficult to achieve, if not impossible. The company has been working to put smaller and more accessible models of the Model Y and Model 3 on the market with which to face the arrival of new launches from traditional brands. That has not happened and along the way they are being eaten up by those companies that were said to be “the new Nokia.” Furthermore, they have to face the arrival of a BYD that has burst in force. The Chinese company is already among the 10 manufacturers that sell the most electric vehicles in Europe and its deployment is in full takeoff ramp. Additionally, their success with plug-in hybrids is helping them raise awareness of the brand. For example (and although their plug-in hybrids are taken into account here), in the first quarter they sold 50,646 units in Europe, compared to 18,782 units in the same period of 2025. Photo | Carter Baran and Aidan Hancock In Xataka | Tesla wanted to make 20 million cars in 2030. The reality in 2025 is that Tesla has crashed and BYD is already leading

After a catastrophic 2025, Tesla sales continue to decline in China. The solution is an old acquaintance

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Sales of electric cars have fallen in China. Although the loss is not as high as that of pure combustion vehicles, the decline in the market is producing very bad results for Tesla. And Elon Musk’s company has brought out one of its traditional tools to boost sales again. An obvious fall. Sales of electric cars in China are not reaping the best results although, everything must be said, recent weeks are beginning to give some hope to companies. At the moment, if global sales are not suffering a setback it is because the accelerator has been put into exportswith record numbers and growth of more than 70% compared to last year. But in the domestic market, sales of “new energy” cars (plug-in hybrids and electric) have fallen 21%reaching 2.92 million cars sold compared to 3.66 million last year. In recent weeks, the Hormuz crisis has served to begin to ground the decline of this type of car. Without state aidits sales had fallen but in recent days we have seen how the savings compared to gasoline have turned the situation around, to the point of break record in plug-in penetrations in the market. Damaged. The context so far this year has not been easy for brands that only sell plug-in vehicles. Much less, therefore, to those who only sell electric vehicles, like Tesla. Without state aid at the beginning of the year and a Chinese New Year longer than usual, sales of this technology fell in a market accustomed to growing year after year. This situation rewarded those who have the most diversified business. In January and FebruaryGeely, which has a portfolio where electric, plug-in hybrids and pure combustion cars are intertwined managed to surpass BYD whose leadership seemed untouchable. Tesla has been through a similar situation. So far this year, Its sales from January to April 2026 have fallen by 15%. It is a bad figure considering all the difficulties the company went through last year. This has led it to lose more market share and remain at just over 3%. Interests. Among the sales of its cars in China, The company has a huge dependence on the Model Ywhich represents around 75% of sales so far this year. But in April, where the Model 3 had a year-on-year drop of 66.09%, the sedan barely accounted for 11% of sales. The fastest solution has been through an old tool: loans. The company has an active campaign in China to defer payments for its cars at 0.99% interest in the case of the Model 3 and 0.92% in the Model Y. The idea is simple, aiming to reward the customer in the long term because it is increasingly difficult for them to compete at the starting price. Right now, in Spain it gives loans above 3% which, however, remains relatively low for our country’s market. However, the company has been offering similar loans before and, right now, In Germany a 0% interest offer is available. Other solutions. Very low interest loans are not Tesla’s only move in China. Aware that the Model 3 has little sales at the moment, GigaShanghai’s exports have skyrocketed so far this year. So much so that global sales, internal sales and those outside Chinese borders, they have grown 36% last April. This means that, clearly, Tesla is trying to move the focus of its target audience. The company has encountered the problem that in China the customer has turned to the local product that usually offers more for less money. The solution is to push the European market, which is now receiving the first units of the Basic Tesla Model 3. less margin. The problem for the company is that it can no longer push the price as hard as before. Before the massive embrace of the Chinese car in its local market and new models began to arrive in the European market, Tesla played as it wanted with demand rising and falling prices. Today those days are over and, what is worse for the company, Your profit margins cannot respond as before. As the price has fallen, the margin has narrowed, losing ability to continue moving in the market. This explains why the voices calling for smaller and more affordable versions of their cars are heard louder. A ship that, given what has been seen, Elon Musk’s company has not been able to bring to fruition. Photo | Priscilla Du Preez and Sou Jest In Xataka | Elon Musk called the $25,000 Tesla an “absurd idea.” Now you need it to compete in China

For the CEO of Ford, the reference for the electric car is no longer Tesla, it is China

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The head of Ford has been studying Chinese manufacturers in depth for months and is clear about one thing: that to understand where the electric car is going, we must pay close attention to China. For some years now the country is leading a historic transition in the automobile, and the perfect proof of this reality is the fixation that brands as historic as Ford have with the Chinese electric car. And for Jim Farley, CEO of the company, Tesla is no longer the benchmark. China, not Tesla. The automobile industry has been at a crossroads for some time. Electric sales are not growing at the expected rate in the West, large manufacturers have had to rethink their strategies and convert their factories (energy storage for data centers), and in the United States the elimination of federal tax incentive It has made the purchase of a new electric car even more expensive. In this context, Ford CEO Jim Farley explained in the Rapid Response podcast that Tesla is no longer the benchmark, and that it is now China. Change of sight. In the interview, Farley explained why he has been testing a Xiaomi SU7 instead of an American vehicle. “If you’re an American and you want us to beat the Chinese in the car business, you’re going to want to pay attention, not necessarily to Tesla. Nothing against Tesla, they’re doing well, but they don’t really have an up-to-date vehicle,” he said. And his reference for Ford is not Elon Musk, but BYD: “The best thing in the business for us in cost, supply chain, manufacturing experience and innovation is BYD,” Farley said. in the same podcast. Concerning. BYD was born in 1995 as a battery manufacturer and today is the largest electric car manufacturer in the world by volume. having surpassed Tesla in global sales in 2025. In 2022 it was the first manufacturer to completely abandon pure gasoline cars. For Farley, what is relevant is not the market capitalization of each company, but rather who is defining what the consumer will want to buy in the next decade. TOGod to the expensive electric ones. Ford has learned its lesson through million-dollar losses. The company became the second brand that sold the most electric cars in the US after Tesla, but its models were, according to Farley himself, “designed in the wrong way.” In December 2025, Ford took over a $19.5 billion correction having to reformulate its entire electric strategy. He F-150 Lightningwhich was presented as the flagship of its electrical commitment, is converted into an EREV vehicle (with a small combustion engine that acts as a generator) because, as admitted Farley himself in December, “the $70,000 electric cars were not selling.” The new roadmap involves launching an electric pickup at $30,000 before 2027. The key is in the second-hand market. Farley has an unconventional way of reading the market. And it is that prefer look at the sales of used cars before those of new ones, because “the second-hand market is twice that of new ones, and since they are all sold at lower prices, they are a better predictor of consumer behavior.” And of course, in this market, affordable electric and hybrid vehicles are the ones that move the most compared to those in the premium segment. China is not just price. Farley recognize that each Chinese car incorporates about 4,000 or 5,000 dollars in government subsidies, direct and indirect. He is also aware that these vehicles incorporate up to ten cameras and advanced connectivity systems that, in his opinion, “should be reviewed by the US Department of Defense for reasons of national security.” However, Farley concludes that the correct response is not to ignore them, but to learn from them. “That is the gift that China has given us: that we are respectful enough of its progress not to settle for business as usual,” he said in the interview. Cover image | Hans and Rapid Response In Xataka | The longest straight road in the world is a mental challenge: 240 km without curves, in the middle of the desert and with truck traffic

buy a new Tesla

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In April 2019 Tesla launched its platform “Hardware 3” (HW3) with an apparently blunt message: all cars leaving the factory would have, thanks to this platform, the necessary hardware for complete autonomous driving. There were many customers who trusted that promise and They spent between 8,000 and 15,000 dollars to enjoy itbut they have just found themselves in a huge bucket of cold water: HW3 is not powerful enough for unattended FSD, Elon Musk has assured. The technical reason. The HW3 bottleneck that Musk alluded to is memory bandwidth: this platform has only one eighth of the memory bandwidth that HW4 has. The FSD system is based on so-called autoregressive transformers and to be able to work with them a specific bandwidth is necessary that cars with HW3 cannot reach. There is no easy way to fix it. You cannot optimize the software or the AI ​​model: it is the chip itself that is physically limited and no OTA update can fix the problem. Elon Musk made it clear in the investor conference after the presentation of quarterly results: “I wish it were different,” he explained, “but Hardware 3 simply does not have the capacity to achieve FSD without supervision.” Millions of vehicles affected. There are an estimated four million Tesla vehicles active and on the road that are based on HW3. Of those, around 285,000 bought the FSD package. Investor Ross Gerber indicated in X that Tesla’s financial liability could amount to several billion dollars. Better buy a new Tesla. The firm has not announced refunds or compensation to those affected. What it does offer are two alternatives. The first, a trade-in (deliver your car and buy a Tesla with HW4) without giving specific financial details. The second, a free update they have called “V14-lite”, which will reach owners of cars with HW3 in June. Theoretically, this version will offer the FSD v14 options adapted to that older hardware. It is an improvement, yes, but not what was promised for users who have been stuck on FSD v12.6 for a long time. Complex modification. Musk too speak They will offer the ability to upgrade the car to replace the HW3, but the cameras will also need to be replaced. “To do this efficiently, we will have to create microfactories in big cities to do it efficiently. Everything is done in the technical service. It is extremely slow and inefficient to do it. I think over time what makes sense for us is to convert all the HW3 cars to HW4, because that is what will allow them to enter the robotaxis fleet and have unsupervised FSD.” Versions for some, versions for others. While these models were progressively left behind in the support of FSD versions, the new models equipped with HW4 have been able to enjoy FSD v13 and FSD v14, the most recent and powerful versions of this driving assistance software. In fact, we were able to test FSD (Supervised) a few days ago, an FSD v14 version of this system. In Europe there are also affected. In Europe there were also users who purchased Tesla’s FSD package even without being able to use it legally on European roads. One of those users, Mischa Sigtermans, is a Dutchman who bought his model 3 in 2019 waiting for FSD’s promise to be fulfilled and paid 6,400 euros for it. Seven years later he finds that the FSD (Supervised) mode has finally been approved in his country, but he cannot use it because his car is HW3. has created a website for Europeans affected by the problem and has received 3,000 registrations, which represents six million euros in FSD purchases. In Xataka | Elon Musk knows that TSMC is overwhelmed: Terafab is his idea to completely change the global chip industry

A bakery accepted an order for 2,000 cakes for Tesla. Elon Musk had to mediate to avoid bankruptcy

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Large companies are not only a pole of job creation or direct wealth for those who work in them, but, indirectly, they are also a driver of indirect development for other companies in the area. Sometimes, they can also be your downfall. In early 2024, a small artisan bakery in San Jose, California, nearly went bankrupt when it tried to fill a huge order for cakes for Tesla’s offices. A last-minute change of heart left the small business on the brink of bankruptcy and in debt. As and how they counted in The Guardian, Elon Musk had to intervene. Laura’s sweet request Voahangy Rasetarinera, owner of the Giving Pies bakery, was challenged to handle an order of 2,000 mini pies for a Tesla employee event. This request represented a great economic opportunity for small businessbut it also represented a significant logistical challenge given its magnitude and the bakery’s limited resources. Rasetarinera consulted his staff and they agreed to accept the order by sending the invoice to Tesla. Delivery dates would be Tuesday and Thursday of the following week. Elon Musk’s company diverted payment for the cakes to a third-party supplier called City Flavor, which did not respond to payment requests after delivering the first round of cakes. “I remained optimistic as I waited for the payment on Thursday. However, when it didn’t materialize, I became concerned.” That same day, Laura, Rasetarinera’s contact at Tesla, called the bakery to apologize for the delay in payment for the first round, citing the inexperience of the suppliers. On that same call, Laura requested to double the cake order. In total, the bill already amounted to $16,000 for 4,000 cupcakes that Giving Pies was to deliver. The bakery was forced to redouble its efforts paying overtime to staff, purchasing more ingredients that he had not yet charged for, and, most importantly, rejecting other orders to meet Tesla’s enormous demand. After consulting with the employees again, everyone agreed to go ahead, so Rasetarinera sent a new expanded invoice to Tesla with the new amount and they got into trouble with the new shipment, but not before sending a message to Laura, to demand payment for the first batch of cakes. “I’m sorry to bother you again, but I’m a small business. I don’t have the luxury of infinite resources, so I really need to get paid to insure my staff,” the businesswoman wrote to Tesla, as published the local media Kron4. Tap on the image to go to the original message However, the joy was short-lived. Just a week before the delivery date, Tesla canceled the order without notice. Just like Rasetarinera explained on the bakery’s Instagram account, “we received an email saying they were canceling the order. There was no explanation. Just a message saying, ‘Hey, I’m so sorry, I don’t think we’re going to need this order anymore.’” Unpaid bills and 2,000 cupcakes in the oven The cancellation of the order had serious consequences for Giving Pies. The pastry shop He had already invested in ingredients, increased his staff and rejected other orders in order to fulfill Tesla’s order. What was shaping up to be a great opportunity to work with a great company had turned into a nightmare of unpaid bills. Rasetarinera explained on his social networks that “we had to buy additional ingredients, hire extra staff and schedule overtime.” All of this represented a considerable expense for a small business. “I had invested time, resources and effort based on Tesla’s guarantees, only to be left in the lurch,” declared the owner to Guardian. The news spread quickly on social networks and local media that echoed the bad trick that Tesla had done to this small merchant, generating outrage among users due to Tesla’s lack of consideration for a local business. The word spread through social networks, even reaching the ears of Elon Musk himself. Elon Musk and the unexpected solution When Elon Musk found out about the situation, he decided to take matters into his own hands. From your X accountMusk apologized for what happened to the bakery and promised to resolve the problem. “I just found out about this. We are fixing it immediately,” the billionaire wrote. Tap on the image to go to the original message Musk’s solution was simple but effective: Tesla would buy all the pies Giving Pies could produce, and he also invited the owner on a tour of the factory. “People should always be able to count on Tesla to do its best,” Elon Musk wrote in his X message. A Tesla representative would later confirm to KGO-TV that there had been a communication problem and that Laura did not have the capacity to authorize payments. For Giving Pies, this experience ended up being positive. Not only did they overcome the financial hardship due to the investment made in the order, but they also gained publicity and support from the community. As shown on your websitetoday, Giving Pies sweetens the holidays for some of Silicon Valley’s biggest tech companies. In Xataka | An Englishman named his restaurant “Tesla.” He was immediately left without a name and with a fine of 14,000 euros thanks to Musk In Xataka | Tesla has been suing buyers and journalists for criticizing its cars in China for some time. And he’s winning Image | DVIDS (Justin Pacheco), Giving Pie A version of this article was published in February 2025

Tesla robotaxis are autonomous, except when driven by a man from Texas

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Taking a trip in an autonomous taxi is an unsettling feeling of a future that is already here. However, even if the driver’s seat is empty, we now know that sometimes there is a person at the controls who is controlling it remotely. It happened recently with Waymo and now we have learned that Tesla does it too. Self-employed, sometimes. They count in Futurism that Tesla has recognized (after being required by the US Senate) that it has human operators who can take complete control of the vehicle in certain situations. These operators are located at the headquarters in Austin, Texas, or Palo Alto, California. Exceptional situations. As explained in the letter sent to the Senate, this is “As a security measure in exceptional cases (…) as a last resort once all other available intervention actions have been exhausted.” When this remote mode is activated, the operator cannot exceed 16 kilometers per hour. For example, it is used if the vehicle is stuck on a road. Why is it important. Self-driving taxi companies like Waymo and, now, Tesla, have gone to great lengths to hide these types of remote interventions because it is a way of admitting that we are far from 100% autonomous driving. At the beginning of the year, Elon Musk boasted that their robotaxis were circulating without a safety monitor, but shortly after we learned that what they had really done was converting that safety monitor into a vehicle with a driver that followed each robotaxi. The Waymo case. The leading robotaxis company in the US was the first to recognize human intervention in driving their cars. It also happened as a result of authorities’ scrutiny of its technology. However, unlike Tesla’s system in which the human takes full control of the vehicle, in Waymo the human intervenes to guide the stuck vehicle, but does not drive it directly. The workers who carry out these interventions do so from the Philippines. Risks and criticisms. Tesla speaks of “exceptional cases”, but refused to give details about the frequency of these interventions, which for the Senate was insufficient since remote driving entails significant risks. If, for example, there is latency in the network, it would cause a delay in the remote driver’s orders and may have consequences. Tesla defends itself by arguing that revealing that information would “reveal highly sensitive trade secrets and confidential business practices” that Tesla needs to maintain its “competitive position in the autonomous vehicle industry.” Image | Xataka In Xataka | The robotaxis did not need a driver, but Waymo has ended up paying delivery drivers to close ajar doors

The problem for the US is not that China is mass-producing a new hypersonic missile. It costs the same as a Tesla

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The most advanced military systems have had something in common: exorbitant prices and limited production, with weapons that can take years to manufacture and cost millions per unit. It happens that there is a less known fact that is beginning to change everything: today it is possible to build technology capable of traveling more than 1,000 kilometers in minutes using components derived from the civil industry. And China is in the lead. What a car costs. It we count in November of last year. China has introduced a quiet but profound change in modern warfare: a hypersonic missile, the YKJ-1000capable of reaching speeds of up to Mach 7 and traveling more than 1,000 kilometers for a price around at $99,000that is, equivalent to that of a high-end car like a Tesla Model It is not a trivial fact, although it may seem anecdotal, it is actually the core of the problem you have right now. United States in Iranbecause it completely breaks the traditional logic of military balance: for the first time, an extremely advanced weapon allows to be exclusive and expensive to become something potentially massive, accessible and replicable on a large scale. It’s not the technology, it’s the cost. Because the challenge for the United States is not that China has developed a new hypersonic missile, but that it has done so extremely cheap. While intercepting a threat can cost millions per attempt (with systems like Patriot, SM-6 or THAAD), destroying that missile costs dozens of times more to manufacture it. This creates a brutal asymmetry where the attacker always wins financially, forcing the defender to spend disproportionate amounts just to stay safe. In this scenario, defending yourself is no longer sustainable, especially in the face of massive attacks. Mass production. Unlike traditional programs, this missile is not a limited or experimental piece, but rather a product designed to be manufactured in large quantities. using civil materialscommercial supply chains and components already available on the market. China has not only reduced the cost, but has industrialized productionallowing us to imagine scenarios where hundreds or thousands of these systems can be rapidly deployed, saturating any existing defense without the need for absolute precision. Invisible launchers. The change is not limited to the missile itself, but how it unfolds– Can be launched from platforms hidden in shipping containers, trucks or common industrial facilities, integrating into global civil infrastructures. This virtually eliminates any predictability on the origin of the attack, expanding the scope of the threat to any point within its operational radius. In other words, war no longer has defined fronts and begins to depend more on a diffuse network where the attacker can appear anywhere without prior notice. The swarm effect. Added to this logic is the parallel development of advanced drones like the TM-300capable of flying at high speed, with stealth capacity and also designed for mass production. In that light, the combination of cheap missiles and swarming drones creates a scenario in which even sophisticated defenses can be overcome. simply by volumenot because of technological superiority. It is not necessary for all attacks to be successful: it is enough for some to do so to generate a disproportionate strategic impact. Change of era. If you like, all this points to a structural transformation: one where the advantage is no longer in having the most advanced weapons, but in being able to produce them faster and cheaper that the opponent can defend himself. The central idea, as we saw in Ukraine and now in Iranis clearly imposed: the problem for the United States is not that China is mass manufacturing a new hypersonic missile, but that it is doing so at a ridiculously low costaltering the balance between attack and defense and opening the door to a war where quantity and price can prevail over technology and sophistication. Image | x In Xataka | China is sending drones to an island 100 km from Taiwan. The problem is that Japan and the US are filling it with missiles In Xataka | China has drawn a very clear red line to Japan: being an ally of the United States is good, supporting Taiwan is bad.

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