Tesla aims to start initial production of its much-anticipated Cybertruck by the end of the first quarter of 2023, pushing back its plan to begin production late this year.

Tesla delays initial production of Cybertruck to early 2023

Elon Musk is blaming ‘government challenges’ for Tesla’s delayed India launch. Musk wants import duties slashes before committing to local production. Palki Sharma decodes Tesla’s roadblock.

Gravitas: Elon Musk blames ‘government challenges’ for Tesla’s India delay

For much of last year, established automakers like General Motors and Ford Motor Co. operated in a different reality from Tesla, the electric car company.

GM and Ford closed one factory after another — sometimes for months on end — because of a shortage of computer chips, leaving dealer lots bare and sending car prices zooming. Yet Tesla racked up record sales quarter after quarter and ended the year having sold nearly twice as many vehicles as it did in 2020, unhindered by an industrywide crisis.

Tesla’s ability to conjure up critical components has a greater significance than one year’s car sales. It suggests that the company, and possibly other young electric car businesses, could threaten the dominance of giants like Volkswagen and GM sooner and more forcefully than most industry executives and policymakers realize. That would help the effort to reduce the emissions that are causing climate change by displacing more gasoline-powered cars sooner. But it could hurt the millions of workers, thousands of suppliers and numerous local and national governments that rely on traditional auto production for jobs, business and tax revenue.

Tesla and its enigmatic CEO, Elon Musk, have said little about how the carmaker ran circles around the rest of the auto industry. Now it’s becoming clear that the company simply had a superior command of technology and its own supply chain. Tesla appeared to better forecast demand than businesses that produce many more cars than it does. Other automakers were surprised by how quickly the car market recovered from a steep drop early in the pandemic and had simply not ordered enough chips and parts fast enough.

When Tesla couldn’t get the chips it had counted on, it took the ones that were available and rewrote the software that operated them to suit its needs. Larger auto companies couldn’t do that because they relied on outside suppliers for much of their software and computing expertise. In many cases, automakers also relied on these suppliers to deal with chip manufacturers. When the crisis hit, the automakers lacked bargaining clout.

Just a few years ago, analysts saw Musk’s insistence on having Tesla do more things on its own as one of the main reasons the company was struggling to increase production. Now, his strategy appears to have been vindicated.

Cars are becoming increasingly digital, defined by their software as much as their engines and transmissions. It’s a reality that some old-line car companies increasingly acknowledge. Many, including Ford and Mercedes-Benz, have said in recent months that they are hiring engineers and programmers to design their own chips and write their own software.

“Tesla, born in Silicon Valley, never outsourced their software. They write their own code,” said Morris Cohen, a professor emeritus at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in manufacturing and logistics. “They rewrote the software so they could replace chips in short supply with chips not in short supply. The other carmakers were not able to do that.”

“Tesla controlled its destiny,” Cohen added.

Tesla sold 936,000 cars globally in 2021, an 87% increase for the year. Ford, GM and Stellantis, the company formed from the merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot, all sold fewer cars in 2021 than they did in 2020.

Measured by vehicles delivered globally, Tesla vaulted past Volvo and Subaru in 2021, and some analysts predicted that it could sell 2 million cars this year, as factories in Berlin and Austin, Texas, come online and a plant in Shanghai ramps up production. That would put Tesla in the same league as BMW and Mercedes — something few in the industry thought possible just a couple of years ago.

GM and Ford, of course, sell many more cars and trucks. Both companies said last week that they sold around 2 million vehicles last year just in the United States.

Tesla, which rarely answers questions from reporters, did not respond to a request for comment for this article. It has said little publicly about how it managed to soar in a down market.

“We have used alternative parts and programmed software to mitigate the challenges caused by these shortages,” the company said in its third-quarter earnings report.

The performance is a stark turnaround from 2018, when Tesla’s production and supply problems made it an industry laughingstock. Many of the manufacturing snafus stemmed from Musk’s insistence that the company make many parts itself.

Other car companies have realized that they need to do some of what Musk and Tesla have been doing all along and are in the process of taking control of their onboard computer systems.

Mercedes, for example, plans to use fewer specialized chips in coming models and more standardized semiconductors, and to write its own software, said Markus Schäfer, a member of the German carmaker’s management board who oversees procurement.

In the future, Mercedes will “make sure we have customized, standardized chips in the car,” Schäfer said in an interview Wednesday. “Not 1,000 different chips.”

Mercedes will also design its own vehicle hardware, he said. Without mentioning Tesla, Schäfer added, “Probably some others were earlier going down this road.”

Doing more on its own also helps explain why Tesla avoided shortages of batteries, which have limited companies like Ford and GM from selling lots of electric cars. In 2014, when most carmakers were still debating whether electric vehicles would ever amount to anything, Tesla broke ground on what it called a gigafactory outside Reno, Nevada, to produce batteries with its partner, Panasonic. Now, that factory helps ensure a reliable supply.

“It was a big risk,” said Ryan Melsert, a former Tesla executive who was involved in construction of the Nevada plant. “But because they have made decisions early on to bring things in-house, they have much more control over their own fate.”

As Cohen of Wharton pointed out, Tesla’s approach is in many ways a throwback to the early days of the automobile, when Ford owned its own steel plants and rubber plantations. In recent decades, the conventional auto wisdom had it that manufacturers should concentrate on design and final assembly and farm out the rest to suppliers. That strategy helped reduce how much money big players tied up in factories but left them vulnerable to supply chain turmoil.

It also helps that Tesla is a much smaller company than Volkswagen and Toyota, which in a good year produce more than 10 million vehicles each. “It’s just a smaller supply chain to begin with,” said Melsert, who is now CEO of American Battery Technology Co., a recycling and mining firm.

The Tesla lineup is also more modest and easier to supply. The Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV accounted for almost all of the company’s sales in 2021. Tesla also offers fewer options than many of the traditional carmakers, which simplifies manufacturing.

“It’s a more streamlined approach,” said Phil Amsrud, a senior principal analyst who specializes in automotive semiconductors at IHS Markit, a research firm. “They are not trying to manage all these different configurations.”

Tesla software, which can be updated remotely, is considered the most sophisticated in the auto business. Even so, the company’s cars likely use fewer chips, analysts said, because the company controls functions like battery cooling and autonomous driving from a smaller number of centralized, onboard computers.

“Tesla has fewer boxes,” Amsrud said. “The fewer the components you need right now, the better.”

Of course, Tesla could still run into problems as it tries to replicate the growth it achieved in 2021 — it is aiming to increase sales about 50% a year for the next several years. The company acknowledged in its third-quarter report that its creative maneuvering around supply chain chaos might not work so well as it increased production and needed more chips and other parts.

The electric vehicle market is also becoming much more competitive as the traditional carmakers belatedly respond with models that people want to buy rather than the small electric vehicles typically made to appease regulators. Ford said this past week that it would nearly double production of the Lightning, an electric version of its popular F-150 pickup truck, because of strong demand. Tesla’s pickup truck won’t go on sale for at least another year.

The outlook for the traditional carmakers is likely to improve this year as shortages of semiconductors and other components ease, and as manufacturers get better at coping.

Tesla vehicles still suffer from quality problems. The company told regulators in December that it planned to recall more than 475,000 cars for two separate defects. One could cause the rearview camera to fail, and the other could cause the front hood to open unexpectedly. And federal regulators are investigating the safety of Tesla’s Autopilot system, which can accelerate, brake and steer a car on its own.

“Tesla will continue to grow,” said Stephen Beck, managing partner at cg42, a management consulting firm in New York. “But they are facing more competition than they ever have, and the competition is getting stronger.”

The carmaker’s fundamental advantage, which allowed it to sail through the chip crisis, will remain, however. Tesla builds nothing but electric vehicles and is unencumbered by habits and procedures that have been rendered obsolete by new technology. “Tesla started from a clean sheet of paper,” Amsrud said.

For much of last year, established automakers like General Motors and Ford Motor Co. operated in a different reality from Tesla, the electric car company. GM and Ford closed one factory after another — sometimes for months on end — because of a shortage of computer chips, leaving dealer lots bare and sending car prices zooming.

For much of last year, established automakers like General Motors and Ford Motor Co. operated in a different reality from Tesla, the electric car company. GM and Ford closed one factory after another — sometimes for months on end — because of a shortage of computer chips, leaving dealer lots bare and sending car prices zooming. Yet Tesla racked up record sales quarter after quarter and ended the year having sold nearly twice as many vehicles as it did in 2020, unhindered by an industrywide crisis. Tesla’s ability to conjure up critical components has a greater significance than one year’s car sales. It suggests that the company, and possibly other young electric car businesses, could threaten the dominance of giants like Volkswagen and GM sooner and more forcefully than most industry executives and policymakers realize. That would help the effort to reduce the emissions that are causing climate change by displacing more gasoline-powered cars sooner. But it could hurt the millions of workers, thousands of suppliers and numerous local and national governments that rely on traditional auto production for jobs, business and tax revenue. Tesla and its enigmatic CEO, Elon Musk, have said little about how the carmaker ran circles around the rest of the auto industry. Now it’s becoming clear that the company simply had a superior command of technology and its own supply chain. Tesla appeared to better forecast demand than businesses that produce many more cars than it does. Other automakers were surprised by how quickly the car market recovered from a steep drop early in the pandemic and had simply not ordered enough chips and parts fast enough. When Tesla couldn’t get the chips it had counted on, it took the ones that were available and rewrote the software that operated them to suit its needs. Larger auto companies couldn’t do that because they relied on outside suppliers for much of their software and computing expertise. In many cases, automakers also relied on these suppliers to deal with chip manufacturers. When the crisis hit, the automakers lacked bargaining clout. Just a few years ago, analysts saw Musk’s insistence on having Tesla do more things on its own as one of the main reasons the company was struggling to increase production. Now, his strategy appears to have been vindicated. Cars are becoming increasingly digital, defined by their software as much as their engines and transmissions. It’s a reality that some old-line car companies increasingly acknowledge. Many, including Ford and Mercedes-Benz, have said in recent months that they are hiring engineers and programmers to design their own chips and write their own software. “Tesla, born in Silicon Valley, never outsourced their software. They write their own code,” said Morris Cohen, a professor emeritus at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania who specializes in manufacturing and logistics. “They rewrote the software so they could replace chips in short supply with chips not in short supply. The other carmakers were not able to do that.” “Tesla controlled its destiny,” Cohen added. Tesla sold 936,000 cars globally in 2021, an 87% increase for the year. Ford, GM and Stellantis, the company formed from the merger of Fiat Chrysler and Peugeot, all sold fewer cars in 2021 than they did in 2020. Measured by vehicles delivered globally, Tesla vaulted past Volvo and Subaru in 2021, and some analysts predicted that it could sell 2 million cars this year, as factories in Berlin and Austin, Texas, come online and a plant in Shanghai ramps up production. That would put Tesla in the same league as BMW and Mercedes — something few in the industry thought possible just a couple of years ago. GM and Ford, of course, sell many more cars and trucks. Both companies said last week that they sold around 2 million vehicles last year just in the United States. Tesla, which rarely answers questions from reporters, did not respond to a request for comment for this article. It has said little publicly about how it managed to soar in a down market. “We have used alternative parts and programmed software to mitigate the challenges caused by these shortages,” the company said in its third-quarter earnings report. The performance is a stark turnaround from 2018, when Tesla’s production and supply problems made it an industry laughingstock. Many of the manufacturing snafus stemmed from Musk’s insistence that the company make many parts itself. Other car companies have realized that they need to do some of what Musk and Tesla have been doing all along and are in the process of taking control of their onboard computer systems. Mercedes, for example, plans to use fewer specialized chips in coming models and more standardized semiconductors, and to write its own software, said Markus Schäfer, a member of the German carmaker’s management board who oversees procurement. In the future, Mercedes will “make sure we have customized, standardized chips in the car,” Schäfer said in an interview Wednesday. “Not 1,000 different chips.” Mercedes will also design its own vehicle hardware, he said. Without mentioning Tesla, Schäfer added, “Probably some others were earlier going down this road.” Doing more on its own also helps explain why Tesla avoided shortages of batteries, which have limited companies like Ford and GM from selling lots of electric cars. In 2014, when most carmakers were still debating whether electric vehicles would ever amount to anything, Tesla broke ground on what it called a gigafactory outside Reno, Nevada, to produce batteries with its partner, Panasonic. Now, that factory helps ensure a reliable supply. “It was a big risk,” said Ryan Melsert, a former Tesla executive who was involved in construction of the Nevada plant. “But because they have made decisions early on to bring things in-house, they have much more control over their own fate.” As Cohen of Wharton pointed out, Tesla’s approach is in many ways a throwback to the early days of the automobile, when Ford owned its own steel plants and rubber plantations. In recent decades, the conventional auto wisdom had it that manufacturers should concentrate on design and final assembly and farm out the rest to suppliers. That strategy helped reduce how much money big players tied up in factories but left them vulnerable to supply chain turmoil. It also helps that Tesla is a much smaller company than Volkswagen and Toyota, which in a good year produce more than 10 million vehicles each. “It’s just a smaller supply chain to begin with,” said Melsert, who is now CEO of American Battery Technology Co., a recycling and mining firm. The Tesla lineup is also more modest and easier to supply. The Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV accounted for almost all of the company’s sales in 2021. Tesla also offers fewer options than many of the traditional carmakers, which simplifies manufacturing. “It’s a more streamlined approach,” said Phil Amsrud, a senior principal analyst who specializes in automotive semiconductors at IHS Markit, a research firm. “They are not trying to manage all these different configurations.” Tesla software, which can be updated remotely, is considered the most sophisticated in the auto business. Even so, the company’s cars likely use fewer chips, analysts said, because the company controls functions like battery cooling and autonomous driving from a smaller number of centralized, onboard computers. “Tesla has fewer boxes,” Amsrud said. “The fewer the components you need right now, the better.” Of course, Tesla could still run into problems as it tries to replicate the growth it achieved in 2021 — it is aiming to increase sales about 50% a year for the next several years. The company acknowledged in its third-quarter report that its creative maneuvering around supply chain chaos might not work so well as it increased production and needed more chips and other parts. The electric vehicle market is also becoming much more competitive as the traditional carmakers belatedly respond with models that people want to buy rather than the small electric vehicles typically made to appease regulators. Ford said this past week that it would nearly double production of the Lightning, an electric version of its popular F-150 pickup truck, because of strong demand. Tesla’s pickup truck won’t go on sale for at least another year. The outlook for the traditional carmakers is likely to improve this year as shortages of semiconductors and other components ease, and as manufacturers get better at coping. Tesla vehicles still suffer from quality problems. The company told regulators in December that it planned to recall more than 475,000 cars for two separate defects. One could cause the rearview camera to fail, and the other could cause the front hood to open unexpectedly. And federal regulators are investigating the safety of Tesla’s Autopilot system, which can accelerate, brake and steer a car on its own. “Tesla will continue to grow,” said Stephen Beck, managing partner at cg42, a management consulting firm in New York. “But they are facing more competition than they ever have, and the competition is getting stronger.” The carmaker’s fundamental advantage, which allowed it to sail through the chip crisis, will remain, however. Tesla builds nothing but electric vehicles and is unencumbered by habits and procedures that have been rendered obsolete by new technology. “Tesla started from a clean sheet of paper,” Amsrud said.

Why Tesla soared as other automakers struggled to make cars

Activists have criticised Tesla CEO Elon Musk for opening a new showroom in Xinjiang despite concerns about human rights abuse.

The South African billionaire took to micro-blogging platform Twitter to make the announcement and said, “Let’s start Xinjiang’s all-electric journey!”

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/gravitas-the-story-of-elon-musk-355489/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

"Elon Musk must close Tesla’s Xinjiang showroom," Council on American-Islamic Relations said on its official Twitter account.

“No American corporation should be doing business in a region that is the focal point of a campaign of genocide targeting a religious and ethnic minority,” said the group’s communications director, Ibrahim Hooper, said in a statement.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/stupidity-and-shorted-sightedness-china-warns-walmart-and-sams-club-over-removal-of-xinjiang-products-441501">Also read |&nbsp;'Stupidity and shorted-sightedness': China warns Walmart and Sam's Club over removal of Xinjiang products</a>

US trade group, the Alliance for American Manufacturing, and US senator Marco Rubio also condemned the decision.

Pressure on foreign companies to take positions on Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan and other politically charged issues has been rising.

Activists and foreign governments say some 1 million Uyghurs and members of other mostly Muslim minorities have been confined in detention camps in Xinjiang.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/intel-apologises-to-chinese-population-for-hurting-their-sentiments-over-xinjiang-comments-439553">Also read |&nbsp;Intel apologises to Chinese population for hurting their sentiments over Xinjiang comments</a>

China has rejected accusations of forced labour or any other abuses there, saying that the camps provide vocational training and that companies should respect its policies there.

The United States and a few other countries announced&nbsp;a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics in February over the issue.

Washington has banned imports of Xinjiang cotton and blacklists Chinese companies that it says have aided Beijing's policy there.

China's ruling Communist Party pushes companies to adopt its positions in their advertising and on websites. It has attacked clothing and other brands that express concern about reports of forced labour and other abuses in Xinjiang.

This includes Swedish fashion retailer H&amp;M, Intel Corp., the world’s biggest maker of computer chips and Walmart Inc. All of them had openly criticised China over Xinjiang and as a result had faced boycott campaigns in the country.

(With inputs from agencies)

Activists have criticised Tesla CEO Elon Musk for opening a new showroom in Xinjiang despite concerns about human rights abuse. The South African billionaire took to micro-blogging platform Twitter to make the announcement and said, “Let’s start Xinjiang’s all-electric journey!

Activists have criticised Tesla CEO Elon Musk for opening a new showroom in Xinjiang despite concerns about human rights abuse. The South African billionaire took to micro-blogging platform Twitter to make the announcement and said, “Let’s start Xinjiang’s all-electric journey!” "Elon Musk must close Tesla’s Xinjiang showroom," Council on American-Islamic Relations said on its official Twitter account. “No American corporation should be doing business in a region that is the focal point of a campaign of genocide targeting a religious and ethnic minority,” said the group’s communications director, Ibrahim Hooper, said in a statement. Also read | 'Stupidity and shorted-sightedness': China warns Walmart and Sam's Club over removal of Xinjiang products US trade group, the Alliance for American Manufacturing, and US senator Marco Rubio also condemned the decision. Pressure on foreign companies to take positions on Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan and other politically charged issues has been rising. Activists and foreign governments say some 1 million Uyghurs and members of other mostly Muslim minorities have been confined in detention camps in Xinjiang. Also read | Intel apologises to Chinese population for hurting their sentiments over Xinjiang comments China has rejected accusations of forced labour or any other abuses there, saying that the camps provide vocational training and that companies should respect its policies there. The United States and a few other countries announced a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics in February over the issue. Washington has banned imports of Xinjiang cotton and blacklists Chinese companies that it says have aided Beijing's policy there. China's ruling Communist Party pushes companies to adopt its positions in their advertising and on websites. It has attacked clothing and other brands that express concern about reports of forced labour and other abuses in Xinjiang. This includes Swedish fashion retailer H&M, Intel Corp., the world’s biggest maker of computer chips and Walmart Inc. All of them had openly criticised China over Xinjiang and as a result had faced boycott campaigns in the country. (With inputs from agencies)

Activists slam Elon Musk for opening showroom in 'focal point of genocide,' Xinjiang

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is going to pay a federal tax bill estimated at $11 billion from the money he collected after selling shares worth $15.4 billion of his company.

Not only this, Musk is supposed to pay $2 billion in additional income tax to the state of California, where Tesla was based for majority of last year.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/worlds-10-richest-men-add-402bn-to-their-net-worth-in-2021-take-a-look-who-gained-more-441730#elon-musk-441715">Also see |&nbsp;World's 10 richest men add $402bn to their net worth in 2021. Take a look who gained more</a>

He is going to invest the remaining money in his company SpaceX. Starlink, a division of the company, operates a constellation of close to 2,000 satellites that aims to provide internet access to most parts of Earth.

SpaceX is a private American company, independent of the US military and civilian space agency NASA.

Musk, who is the world's richest person, had polled Twitter users about offloading 10 per cent of his stake in the electric-car maker.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-believes-this-is-the-biggest-threat-to-modern-civilisation-438996">Also read |&nbsp;Tesla CEO Elon Musk believes this is the 'biggest threat' to modern civilisation</a>

His tweet followed a proposal by US Congressional Democrats to tax the super wealthy more heavily by targeting stocks, which are usually only taxed when sold.

According to the latest filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk still holds about 167 million Tesla shares.

Last year in October, Musk's electric car company's valuation soared above a trillion dollars, and SpaceX has teamed up with US space agency NASA to launch various missions including a test run of protecting Earth from an asteroid.

The brash South African-born 50-year-old has seen his wealth soar during the pandemic to over $250 billion, according to Forbes' real-time billionaires list.&nbsp;

(With inputs from agencies)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is going to pay a federal tax bill estimated at $11 billion from the money he collected after selling shares worth $15.4 billion of his company.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is going to pay a federal tax bill estimated at $11 billion from the money he collected after selling shares worth $15.4 billion of his company. Not only this, Musk is supposed to pay $2 billion in additional income tax to the state of California, where Tesla was based for majority of last year. Also see | World's 10 richest men add $402bn to their net worth in 2021. Take a look who gained more He is going to invest the remaining money in his company SpaceX. Starlink, a division of the company, operates a constellation of close to 2,000 satellites that aims to provide internet access to most parts of Earth. SpaceX is a private American company, independent of the US military and civilian space agency NASA. Musk, who is the world's richest person, had polled Twitter users about offloading 10 per cent of his stake in the electric-car maker. Also read | Tesla CEO Elon Musk believes this is the 'biggest threat' to modern civilisation His tweet followed a proposal by US Congressional Democrats to tax the super wealthy more heavily by targeting stocks, which are usually only taxed when sold. According to the latest filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk still holds about 167 million Tesla shares. Last year in October, Musk's electric car company's valuation soared above a trillion dollars, and SpaceX has teamed up with US space agency NASA to launch various missions including a test run of protecting Earth from an asteroid. The brash South African-born 50-year-old has seen his wealth soar during the pandemic to over $250 billion, according to Forbes' real-time billionaires list. (With inputs from agencies)

Elon Musk to pay tax bill worth $11 billion from money collected by selling Tesla shares

World's 10 richest men add $402bn to their net worth in 2021. Take a look who gained more

Amid a rise in criticism, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has denied all the claims that his Starlink satellite internet project is clogging the space in space.&nbsp;

While speaking to the &nbsp;Financial Times, Musk said that tens of billions of satellites can be accommodated in orbits close to Earth.

In an interview, Musk said, "Space is just extremely enormous, and satellites are very tiny. This is not some situation where we're effectively blocking others in any way. We've not blocked anyone from doing anything, nor do we expect to."&nbsp;

"A couple of thousand satellites is nothing. It's like, hey, here's a couple of thousand of cars on Earth, it's nothing," he added.&nbsp;

Recently, China accused the United States of irresponsible and unsafe conduct in space over two "close encounters" between the Chinese space station and satellites operated by Musk's SpaceX.

Tiangong, China's new space station, had to manoeuvre to avoid colliding with one Starlink satellite in July and with another in October, according to a note submitted by Beijing to the United Nations space agency this month.

The note said the incidents "constituted dangers to the life or health of astronauts aboard the China Space Station".

"The US... ignores its obligations under international treaties, posing a serious threat to the lives and safety of astronauts," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a routine briefing on Tuesday.

Starlink, a division of SpaceX, operates a constellation of close to 2,000 satellites that aims to provide internet access to most parts of Earth.

SpaceX is a private American company, independent of the US military and civilian space agency NASA.

(With inputs from agencies)

Amid a rise in criticism, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has denied all the claims that his Starlink satellite internet project is clogging the space in space. While speaking to the Financial Times, Musk said that tens of billions of satellites can be accommodated in orbits close to Earth.

Amid a rise in criticism, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has denied all the claims that his Starlink satellite internet project is clogging the space in space. While speaking to the Financial Times, Musk said that tens of billions of satellites can be accommodated in orbits close to Earth. In an interview, Musk said, "Space is just extremely enormous, and satellites are very tiny. This is not some situation where we're effectively blocking others in any way. We've not blocked anyone from doing anything, nor do we expect to." "A couple of thousand satellites is nothing. It's like, hey, here's a couple of thousand of cars on Earth, it's nothing," he added. Recently, China accused the United States of irresponsible and unsafe conduct in space over two "close encounters" between the Chinese space station and satellites operated by Musk's SpaceX. Tiangong, China's new space station, had to manoeuvre to avoid colliding with one Starlink satellite in July and with another in October, according to a note submitted by Beijing to the United Nations space agency this month. The note said the incidents "constituted dangers to the life or health of astronauts aboard the China Space Station". "The US... ignores its obligations under international treaties, posing a serious threat to the lives and safety of astronauts," Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a routine briefing on Tuesday. Starlink, a division of SpaceX, operates a constellation of close to 2,000 satellites that aims to provide internet access to most parts of Earth. SpaceX is a private American company, independent of the US military and civilian space agency NASA. (With inputs from agencies)

'Space is extremely enormous': Amid criticism, Elon Musk says his satellites are not clogging the space

China has complained to the UN about alleged near-misses with Elon Musk's StarLink satellites. After years of flouting international rules on Earth, why is China suddenly concerned about outer space protocols? Palki Sharma tells you.

Gravitas: China narrowly avoids collision with Elon Musk's satellites

After space satellites launched by tech mogul Elon Musk's aerospace business SpaceX almost crashed into its space station twice in the past year, Beijing has asked the United Nations to remind the US to abide by the treaty governing outer space.

Chinese residents also took to social media to criticise billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk's space ambitions.

In a recent report presented to the UN's Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space earlier this month, China stated its space station employed preventative collision avoidance control procedures in July and October to avoid colliding with Starlink satellites.

According to a statement provided by China earlier this month to the United Nations' space agency, satellites from Starlink Internet Services, a part of Musk's SpaceX aerospace business, had two "close encounters" with the Chinese space station on July 1 and October 21.

Scientists have urged governments to exchange data to lessen the possibility of catastrophic space collisions, with roughly 30,000 satellites and other junk believed to be orbiting the Earth.

SpaceX alone has roughly 1,900 satellites in orbit to operate its Starlink internet network, with more on the way.

NASA, the United States' space agency, was forced to cancel a spacewalk at the end of November due to threats posed by space debris. In response, Musk tweeted that the orbits of several Starlink satellites had been altered to lessen the risk of collisions.

With the launch of Tianhe, the largest of the space station's three modules, China began construction in April. After four crewed trips, the station is projected to be finished by the end of 2022.

At the Shanghai auto show in April, Musk has become a well-known figure in China, despite the fact that Tesla's electric-vehicle company has come under increasing scrutiny from regulators, particularly after a client protested bad customer service by climbing on top of a Tesla car.

(With inputs from agencies)

After space satellites launched by tech mogul Elon Musk's aerospace business SpaceX almost crashed into its space station twice in the past year, Beijing has asked the United Nations to remind the US to abide by the treaty governing outer space.

After space satellites launched by tech mogul Elon Musk's aerospace business SpaceX almost crashed into its space station twice in the past year, Beijing has asked the United Nations to remind the US to abide by the treaty governing outer space. Chinese residents also took to social media to criticise billionaire Tesla founder Elon Musk's space ambitions. In a recent report presented to the UN's Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space earlier this month, China stated its space station employed preventative collision avoidance control procedures in July and October to avoid colliding with Starlink satellites. According to a statement provided by China earlier this month to the United Nations' space agency, satellites from Starlink Internet Services, a part of Musk's SpaceX aerospace business, had two "close encounters" with the Chinese space station on July 1 and October 21. Scientists have urged governments to exchange data to lessen the possibility of catastrophic space collisions, with roughly 30,000 satellites and other junk believed to be orbiting the Earth. SpaceX alone has roughly 1,900 satellites in orbit to operate its Starlink internet network, with more on the way. NASA, the United States' space agency, was forced to cancel a spacewalk at the end of November due to threats posed by space debris. In response, Musk tweeted that the orbits of several Starlink satellites had been altered to lessen the risk of collisions. With the launch of Tianhe, the largest of the space station's three modules, China began construction in April. After four crewed trips, the station is projected to be finished by the end of 2022. At the Shanghai auto show in April, Musk has become a well-known figure in China, despite the fact that Tesla's electric-vehicle company has come under increasing scrutiny from regulators, particularly after a client protested bad customer service by climbing on top of a Tesla car. (With inputs from agencies)

Near-crash in space: Musk faces backlash after China complains to UN

Chinese citizens slammed Elon Musk's company SpaceX for its ''close encounter'' with the country's space station.

They took to Weibo, China's Twitter-like platform, and called the company "just a pile of space junk" while accusing America of "space warfare weapons."

A user called Chen Haiying said on Weibo "The risks of Starlink are being gradually exposed, the whole human race will pay for their business activities."

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/science/spacex-sends-detergent-to-space-to-help-astronauts-wash-clothes-439990" hreflang="en">SpaceX sends detergent to space to help astronauts wash clothes</a>

Some satellites under the Starlink programme of&nbsp;SpaceX nearly collided with China's space station&nbsp;on July 1 and October&nbsp;21.

The move reignites concerns about the growing space arms race, encompassing everything from the development of satellites capable of shunting others out of orbit to laser weapons.&nbsp;

According to a document submitted by China to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, "For safety reasons, the China Space Station implemented preventive collision avoidance control."

Also see |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/want-to-become-a-space-tourist-here-is-all-you-need-to-do-399437" hreflang="en">Want to become a space tourist? Here is all you need to do</a>

There are currently more than 4,500 satellites whizzing around Earth, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, with companies like SpaceX planning to launch up to tens of thousands more, as the private space industry experiences rapid growth.

With the launch of Tianhe, China had the construction of the space station in April and it is expected to be completed by 2022.

Citing risks posed by space debris, US space agency NASA was forced to abruptly call off a spacewalk at the end of November.

(With inputs from agencies)

Chinese citizens slammed Elon Musk's company SpaceX for its ''close encounter'' with the country's space station. They took to Weibo, China's Twitter-like platform, and called the company "just a pile of space junk" while accusing America of "space warfare weapons.

Chinese citizens slammed Elon Musk's company SpaceX for its ''close encounter'' with the country's space station. They took to Weibo, China's Twitter-like platform, and called the company "just a pile of space junk" while accusing America of "space warfare weapons." A user called Chen Haiying said on Weibo "The risks of Starlink are being gradually exposed, the whole human race will pay for their business activities." Also read | SpaceX sends detergent to space to help astronauts wash clothes Some satellites under the Starlink programme of SpaceX nearly collided with China's space station on July 1 and October 21. The move reignites concerns about the growing space arms race, encompassing everything from the development of satellites capable of shunting others out of orbit to laser weapons. According to a document submitted by China to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, "For safety reasons, the China Space Station implemented preventive collision avoidance control." Also see | Want to become a space tourist? Here is all you need to do There are currently more than 4,500 satellites whizzing around Earth, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, with companies like SpaceX planning to launch up to tens of thousands more, as the private space industry experiences rapid growth. With the launch of Tianhe, China had the construction of the space station in April and it is expected to be completed by 2022. Citing risks posed by space debris, US space agency NASA was forced to abruptly call off a spacewalk at the end of November. (With inputs from agencies)

'Pile of space junk': Chinese citizens lambast SpaceX after space station near-misses

2021 has been a defining year for space tourism for the first time a journey into space will no longer be restricted for just the trained astronauts but has been made possible for anyone who has deep enough pockets to pay to get a chance to go and experience weightlessness in space, our next report gets you all the details.

Age of space tourism has begun in 2021

A little after US launched a formal investigation about Tesla allowing drivers to play video games on the front centre touchscreen, the Elon Musk-owned company has decided to discontinue the idea.<o:p></o:p>

On Thursday, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration&nbsp;(NHTSA) opened a formal investigation for 580,000 electric vehicles of Tesla that were being sold since 2017.

<o:p>Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/us-initiates-probe-into-tesla-letting-people-play-video-games-while-driving-439256">US initiates probe into Tesla letting people play video games while driving</a></o:p>

In Tesla’s rare feature, drivers were allowed to play video games on the front center touchscreen while the vehicle was in motion. Experts of NHTSA believe that this feature of "Passenger Play" can distract the driver and put everyone’s lives in danger.<o:p></o:p>

NHTSA said it has "confirmed that this capability has been available since December 2020 in Tesla 'Passenger Play'-equipped vehicles."<o:p></o:p>

"The NHTSA constantly assesses how manufacturers identify and safeguard against distraction hazards that may arise due to faults, misuse, or intended use of convenience technologies, including infotainment screens," the agency said.

<o:p><a href="https://www.wionews.com/videos/tesla-to-stop-allowing-video-games-to-be-played-on-its-vehicle-screens-439493">WATCH |</a></o:p>

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/tesla-to-stop-allowing-video-games-to-be-played-on-its-vehicle-screens-439493/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

Experts believe this feature can distract drivers, especially in 'auto pilot' mode when the vehicle is operating in semi-autonomous mode, and lead to a deadly crash.<o:p></o:p>

Taking the warning in consideration, Tesla has decided to disable to option when the vehicle is in motion, and only allow people in car to access videos games through ‘Passenger Play’ when the vehicle is not moving.<o:p></o:p>

This investigation was supported by a case study in which a driver’s distraction due to a phone game caused a fatal crash of a Tesla car in 2018 in California; the car was operating in ‘auto pilot’ at that moment.

<o:p></o:p>

(Inputs from agencies)

A little after US launched a formal investigation about Tesla allowing drivers to play video games on the front centre touchscreen, the Elon Musk-owned company has decided to discontinue the idea.

A little after US launched a formal investigation about Tesla allowing drivers to play video games on the front centre touchscreen, the Elon Musk-owned company has decided to discontinue the idea. On Thursday, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) opened a formal investigation for 580,000 electric vehicles of Tesla that were being sold since 2017. Also read | US initiates probe into Tesla letting people play video games while driving In Tesla’s rare feature, drivers were allowed to play video games on the front center touchscreen while the vehicle was in motion. Experts of NHTSA believe that this feature of "Passenger Play" can distract the driver and put everyone’s lives in danger. NHTSA said it has "confirmed that this capability has been available since December 2020 in Tesla 'Passenger Play'-equipped vehicles." "The NHTSA constantly assesses how manufacturers identify and safeguard against distraction hazards that may arise due to faults, misuse, or intended use of convenience technologies, including infotainment screens," the agency said. WATCH | Experts believe this feature can distract drivers, especially in 'auto pilot' mode when the vehicle is operating in semi-autonomous mode, and lead to a deadly crash. Taking the warning in consideration, Tesla has decided to disable to option when the vehicle is in motion, and only allow people in car to access videos games through ‘Passenger Play’ when the vehicle is not moving. This investigation was supported by a case study in which a driver’s distraction due to a phone game caused a fatal crash of a Tesla car in 2018 in California; the car was operating in ‘auto pilot’ at that moment. (Inputs from agencies)

No more 'Passenger Play' for Tesla drivers as company stops video games in cars

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that political correctness is the biggest threat to modern civilisation.

In an interview with comedian Dave Chappelle, Musk said ''At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary, and hateful.''

''It basically gives mean people… a shield to be mean and cruel, armored in false virtue,'' he added.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/in-fitting-reply-billionaire-elon-musk-vows-to-pay-over-11-bn-in-taxes-this-year-438306">Also read |&nbsp;In fitting reply, billionaire Elon Musk vows to pay over $11 bn in taxes this year</a>

The billionaire also defended his decision to sell his shares in Tesla. He said he wanted to reach his plan to sell 10 per cent&nbsp;of his shares in the world's most valuable car company.

"I sold enough stock to get to around 10 per cent&nbsp;plus the option exercise stuff and I tried to be extremely literal here," he said in the interview with satirical website Babylon Bee.

He asked ''Do we want a humorless society that is simply rife with condemnation and hate?'' and said ''Wokeness basically wants to make comedy illegal, which is not cool.''

Also read |&nbsp;Tesla CEO Elon Musk wealthier than Pakistan’s GDP

Talking about how it is "increasingly difficult to get things done" in California, Musk said, "California used to be the land of opportunity and now it is... becoming more so the land of sort of overregulation, overlitigation, overtaxation."

Musk also spoke ambitiously about his interest in colonising Mars, and plans orbital flights next year as part of SpaceX's planned American return to the Moon.

The brash South African-born 50-year-old has seen his wealth soar during the pandemic to over $250 billion, according to Forbes' real-time billionaires' list.&nbsp;

He became the world's wealthiest person after overtaking Amazon founder Jeff Bezos this year.

(With inputs from agencies)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that political correctness is the biggest threat to modern civilisation. In an interview with comedian Dave Chappelle, Musk said ''At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary, and hateful.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that political correctness is the biggest threat to modern civilisation. In an interview with comedian Dave Chappelle, Musk said ''At its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary, and hateful.'' ''It basically gives mean people… a shield to be mean and cruel, armored in false virtue,'' he added. Also read | In fitting reply, billionaire Elon Musk vows to pay over $11 bn in taxes this year The billionaire also defended his decision to sell his shares in Tesla. He said he wanted to reach his plan to sell 10 per cent of his shares in the world's most valuable car company. "I sold enough stock to get to around 10 per cent plus the option exercise stuff and I tried to be extremely literal here," he said in the interview with satirical website Babylon Bee. He asked ''Do we want a humorless society that is simply rife with condemnation and hate?'' and said ''Wokeness basically wants to make comedy illegal, which is not cool.'' Also read | Tesla CEO Elon Musk wealthier than Pakistan’s GDP Talking about how it is "increasingly difficult to get things done" in California, Musk said, "California used to be the land of opportunity and now it is... becoming more so the land of sort of overregulation, overlitigation, overtaxation." Musk also spoke ambitiously about his interest in colonising Mars, and plans orbital flights next year as part of SpaceX's planned American return to the Moon. The brash South African-born 50-year-old has seen his wealth soar during the pandemic to over $250 billion, according to Forbes' real-time billionaires' list. He became the world's wealthiest person after overtaking Amazon founder Jeff Bezos this year. (With inputs from agencies)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk believes this is the 'biggest threat' to modern civilisation

Giving a reply in the debate over paying more taxes, Tesla Inc's Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has announced on Sunday on Twitter that he will pay over $11 billion in taxes this year. &nbsp;

On Twitter, Democratic US Senator Elizabeth Warren had earlier said that Musk should pay taxes and stop "freeloading off everyone else". The remark had come after Time magazine named him its "Person of the Year". &nbsp;

Also Read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/in-miraculous-save-two-babies-in-us-survive-tornado-by-sheltering-in-bathtub-438260" hreflang="en">In miraculous save, two babies in US survive tornado by sheltering in bathtub</a>

In the reply, Musk had said that he "will pay more taxes than any American in history this year". &nbsp;

Earlier, Time magazine’s choice for 'Person of the Year' 2021 had not gone down well with several critics, who slammed the publication. It was being called ‘worst choice ever’ as billionaire Elon Musk was criticised for opposition to unions, attitude towards tax and playing down Covid dangers. &nbsp; &nbsp;

Time had described Musk as a “clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman” while talking about his achievements. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;

Also Read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/democrat-senators-elizabeth-warren-and-cory-booker-test-covid-positive-despite-booster-shots-438268" hreflang="en">Democrat senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker test Covid positive despite booster shots</a>

It was the “worst choice ever”, said Kurt Eichenwald, an author. &nbsp; &nbsp;

Musk had been opposing a “billionaires tax” floated by some lawmakers in US. He and some other super-wealthy people in the country paid tax at a very small rate in comparison to their significant rise in wealth from 2014 to 2018, said a probe by Propublica this year. Musk allegedly paid only a “real” rate of 3.27%. &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;

(With inputs from agencies)&nbsp;

Giving a reply in the debate over paying more taxes, Tesla Inc's Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has announced on Sunday on Twitter that he will pay over $11 billion in taxes this year.

Giving a reply in the debate over paying more taxes, Tesla Inc's Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has announced on Sunday on Twitter that he will pay over $11 billion in taxes this year. On Twitter, Democratic US Senator Elizabeth Warren had earlier said that Musk should pay taxes and stop "freeloading off everyone else". The remark had come after Time magazine named him its "Person of the Year". Also Read: In miraculous save, two babies in US survive tornado by sheltering in bathtub In the reply, Musk had said that he "will pay more taxes than any American in history this year". Earlier, Time magazine’s choice for 'Person of the Year' 2021 had not gone down well with several critics, who slammed the publication. It was being called ‘worst choice ever’ as billionaire Elon Musk was criticised for opposition to unions, attitude towards tax and playing down Covid dangers. Time had described Musk as a “clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman” while talking about his achievements. Also Read: Democrat senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker test Covid positive despite booster shots It was the “worst choice ever”, said Kurt Eichenwald, an author. Musk had been opposing a “billionaires tax” floated by some lawmakers in US. He and some other super-wealthy people in the country paid tax at a very small rate in comparison to their significant rise in wealth from 2014 to 2018, said a probe by Propublica this year. Musk allegedly paid only a “real” rate of 3.27%. (With inputs from agencies)

In fitting reply, billionaire Elon Musk vows to pay over $11 bn in taxes this year

Electric car producer Tesla has been hit by a lawsuit because of tweets by CEO Elon Musk.

Famous for making eye-popping statements on social media, Musk had asked in a poll on Twitter if people thought he should sell 10 percent of his stake in Tesla.&nbsp;

In the poll, almost 58 percent of the 3.5 million votes cast were in favor of him proceeding with the sale.

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/tesla-shares-continue-to-dip-after-elon-musks-tweet-429714/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

Now, Tesla investor David Wagner has accused Musk of violating an agreement with the US securities regulator.

He believes the company's board members failed to adhere to their fiduciary duties and has filed for access to internal documents to investigate the matter at the Delaware Court of Chancery.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-is-thinking-of-quitting-his-jobs-and-becoming-an-influencer-435797">Also read |&nbsp;Tesla CEO Elon Musk is thinking of quitting his jobs and becoming an influencer</a>

Under a September 2018 settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk was required to step down as chairman and pay $20 million to settle charges he defrauded investors with false claims on Twitter about the possible go-private transaction that was quickly aborted.

Musk, who is the world's richest person, has sold just over 934,000 shares in Tesla, according to documents filed with US stock regulators. They were worth about $14 billion.

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/south-asia/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-wealthier-than-pakistans-gdp-425852">Also read |&nbsp;Tesla CEO Elon Musk wealthier than Pakistan’s GDP</a>

Wagner alleges that Tesla shares, which had hovered near record-highs, lost their value by about a quarter after the irresponsible tweets made by Musk.

Analysts said the 50-year-old South African billionaire's stock sale will be liable for capital gains tax of at least $1.4 billion.

His tweets followed a proposal by US Congressional Democrats to tax the super-wealthy more heavily by targeting stocks, which are usually only taxed when sold.

(With inputs from agencies)

Electric car producer Tesla has been hit by a lawsuit because of tweets by CEO Elon Musk. Famous for making eye-popping statements on social media, Musk had asked in a poll on Twitter if people thought he should sell 10 percent of his stake in Tesla.

Electric car producer Tesla has been hit by a lawsuit because of tweets by CEO Elon Musk. Famous for making eye-popping statements on social media, Musk had asked in a poll on Twitter if people thought he should sell 10 percent of his stake in Tesla. In the poll, almost 58 percent of the 3.5 million votes cast were in favor of him proceeding with the sale. Now, Tesla investor David Wagner has accused Musk of violating an agreement with the US securities regulator. He believes the company's board members failed to adhere to their fiduciary duties and has filed for access to internal documents to investigate the matter at the Delaware Court of Chancery. Also read | Tesla CEO Elon Musk is thinking of quitting his jobs and becoming an influencer Under a September 2018 settlement with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk was required to step down as chairman and pay $20 million to settle charges he defrauded investors with false claims on Twitter about the possible go-private transaction that was quickly aborted. Musk, who is the world's richest person, has sold just over 934,000 shares in Tesla, according to documents filed with US stock regulators. They were worth about $14 billion. Also read | Tesla CEO Elon Musk wealthier than Pakistan’s GDP Wagner alleges that Tesla shares, which had hovered near record-highs, lost their value by about a quarter after the irresponsible tweets made by Musk. Analysts said the 50-year-old South African billionaire's stock sale will be liable for capital gains tax of at least $1.4 billion. His tweets followed a proposal by US Congressional Democrats to tax the super-wealthy more heavily by targeting stocks, which are usually only taxed when sold. (With inputs from agencies)

Electric car making company Tesla hit by lawsuit over tweets by CEO Elon Musk

Another fake account on Facebook, which is running scams related to cryptocurrency after impersonating Tesla owner Elon Musk has been identified. Surprisingly, the account has a blue tick, meaning it is verified and has a following of over 71k&nbsp;and follows 57 accounts.&nbsp;

The billionaire's name is used as the page's name with a little tweak in the spelling of Elon Musk - it is written as 'ellonnmusk'. However, the user name on the account appears as 'Elon Musk'.&nbsp;

A report on Web News Observer stated that a 25-year-old security researcher Ehraz Ahmed came across the Facebook page that is running a scam. Earlier, Ahmed had reported a similar scam.&nbsp;

ALSO READ | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/trending/spot-the-real-elon-musk-deepfake-or-doppelganger-netizens-cant-decide-437678">Spot the real Elon Musk: Deepfake or doppelganger? netizens can't decide</a>

After analysing the activity on the account, it appeared that the page was made active after the previous one was shut. The activity on the page pointed out that the page came into use on November 26.&nbsp;

As quoted by Web News Observer, Ahmed said, "Since Bitcoin scams are becoming frequent and common, I was once again busy researching about them. To my surprise, I came across another verified page of Elon Musk."

"By visiting the Page Transparency section, I noticed that this page, unlike the previous ones, was created back in May 2015. The location of the admins is, once again, Germany and Spain, which may mean that these scammers are the same people who were behind the previous similar scams," he added.&nbsp;

Ahmed also talked about the latest post by the scammer where they are announcing that Musk is all set to come up with a new digital currency named Musk Coin.&nbsp;

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
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&nbsp;

<img alt="Musk Coin" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="5a4ec2ed-9cb5-43dc-895b-df3a24c926d0" src="//cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/Musk%20Coin.jpg" />

Here's a grab of the fake Facebook profile, which is made using Elon Musk's name.&nbsp;

<img alt="Elon Musk" data-entity-type="file" data-entity-uuid="ab449bb1-d404-46bc-858c-864a821f9983" src="//cdn.wionews.com/sites/default/files/inline-images/elon%20musk.jpg" />

Here are some of the reactions on the post.

ALSO READ | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/worst-choice-ever-time-magazine-faces-backlash-for-naming-elon-musk-person-of-the-year-for-2021-436799">‘Worst choice ever’: Time magazine faces backlash for naming Elon Musk 'Person of the Year’ for 2021</a>

For the unversed, Elon Musk favours cryptocurrencies and has influenced the trading of digital currencies with his tweets. His post about crypto often sends the market prices soaring of the mentioned digital currency.&nbsp;

And it looks like the scammers are using cryptocurrencies and the buzz around them to fool people and investors.&nbsp;

At the time of filing this news article, the fake page was still active. The profile picture resembles the current display picture of Musk on his official Twitter handle. The scenario is quite alarming, although some people have pointed out that the account is not real.&nbsp;

Another fake account on Facebook, which is running scams related to cryptocurrency after impersonating Tesla owner Elon Musk has been identified. Surprisingly, the account has a blue tick, meaning it is verified and has a following of over 71k and follows 57 accounts.

Another fake account on Facebook, which is running scams related to cryptocurrency after impersonating Tesla owner Elon Musk has been identified. Surprisingly, the account has a blue tick, meaning it is verified and has a following of over 71k and follows 57 accounts. The billionaire's name is used as the page's name with a little tweak in the spelling of Elon Musk - it is written as 'ellonnmusk'. However, the user name on the account appears as 'Elon Musk'. A report on Web News Observer stated that a 25-year-old security researcher Ehraz Ahmed came across the Facebook page that is running a scam. Earlier, Ahmed had reported a similar scam. ALSO READ | Spot the real Elon Musk: Deepfake or doppelganger? netizens can't decide After analysing the activity on the account, it appeared that the page was made active after the previous one was shut. The activity on the page pointed out that the page came into use on November 26. As quoted by Web News Observer, Ahmed said, "Since Bitcoin scams are becoming frequent and common, I was once again busy researching about them. To my surprise, I came across another verified page of Elon Musk." "By visiting the Page Transparency section, I noticed that this page, unlike the previous ones, was created back in May 2015. The location of the admins is, once again, Germany and Spain, which may mean that these scammers are the same people who were behind the previous similar scams," he added. Ahmed also talked about the latest post by the scammer where they are announcing that Musk is all set to come up with a new digital currency named Musk Coin. × Here's a grab of the fake Facebook profile, which is made using Elon Musk's name. Here are some of the reactions on the post. ALSO READ | ‘Worst choice ever’: Time magazine faces backlash for naming Elon Musk 'Person of the Year’ for 2021 For the unversed, Elon Musk favours cryptocurrencies and has influenced the trading of digital currencies with his tweets. His post about crypto often sends the market prices soaring of the mentioned digital currency. And it looks like the scammers are using cryptocurrencies and the buzz around them to fool people and investors. At the time of filing this news article, the fake page was still active. The profile picture resembles the current display picture of Musk on his official Twitter handle. The scenario is quite alarming, although some people have pointed out that the account is not real.

Don't fall for the blue tick: This verified 'Elon Musk' page on Facebook is fake

A taxi firm in Paris recently announced that it will suspend the use of Model 3 Tesla cars in its fleet because of a fatal accident involving one of the mentioned cars.&nbsp;

As per the reports, the taxi company G7 pulled its 37 Tesla Model 3 cars from roads after one of the drivers, who was using a Model 3 taxi as a personal vehicle suddenly lost control of the vehicle and hit three pedestrians before hitting a van.&nbsp;

The accident took place last Saturday night in the southeastern 13th district of Paris, resulting in killing one and injuring several. An investigation has been opened by the Paris prosecutors over charges of manslaughter and unintentional injuries.&nbsp;

ALSO READ | <a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/dont-fall-for-the-blue-tick-this-verified-elon-musk-page-on-facebook-is-fake-437808">Don't fall for the blue tick: This verified 'Elon Musk' page on Facebook is fake</a>

AFP mentioned that there were initial suspicions of a malfunction such as a stuck accelerator considering the speed and the trajectory of the vehicle. &nbsp;

The G7 taxi company, which claims to be the biggest firm in Europe on its website, said 37 of its drivers used the Tesla Model 3, and other Tesla models would remain in service.

After checking the crashed vehicle's data remotely, Tesla denied any technical problem with the car. Although they agreed to share all necessary information is required. &nbsp;

ALSO READ |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/trending/spot-the-real-elon-musk-deepfake-or-doppelganger-netizens-cant-decide-437678">Spot the real Elon Musk: Deepfake or doppelganger? netizens can't decide</a>

Tesla cars have been questioned every now and then, even by the federal regulators over the Autopilot System and Full Self-Driving features. Safety-related concerns have been raised by people.&nbsp;

The French transport minister, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, told Djebbari told RMC radio, said, "There are no elements that would lead one to believe it was tied to a technical problem." &nbsp;The minister said he had spoken with the chief executive of Tesla Europe who told him there had been no safety alerts about the model involved in the crash.

A taxi firm in Paris recently announced that it will suspend the use of Model 3 Tesla cars in its fleet because of a fatal accident involving one of the mentioned cars.

A taxi firm in Paris recently announced that it will suspend the use of Model 3 Tesla cars in its fleet because of a fatal accident involving one of the mentioned cars. As per the reports, the taxi company G7 pulled its 37 Tesla Model 3 cars from roads after one of the drivers, who was using a Model 3 taxi as a personal vehicle suddenly lost control of the vehicle and hit three pedestrians before hitting a van. The accident took place last Saturday night in the southeastern 13th district of Paris, resulting in killing one and injuring several. An investigation has been opened by the Paris prosecutors over charges of manslaughter and unintentional injuries. ALSO READ | Don't fall for the blue tick: This verified 'Elon Musk' page on Facebook is fake AFP mentioned that there were initial suspicions of a malfunction such as a stuck accelerator considering the speed and the trajectory of the vehicle. The G7 taxi company, which claims to be the biggest firm in Europe on its website, said 37 of its drivers used the Tesla Model 3, and other Tesla models would remain in service. After checking the crashed vehicle's data remotely, Tesla denied any technical problem with the car. Although they agreed to share all necessary information is required. ALSO READ | Spot the real Elon Musk: Deepfake or doppelganger? netizens can't decide Tesla cars have been questioned every now and then, even by the federal regulators over the Autopilot System and Full Self-Driving features. Safety-related concerns have been raised by people. The French transport minister, Jean-Baptiste Djebbari, told Djebbari told RMC radio, said, "There are no elements that would lead one to believe it was tied to a technical problem." The minister said he had spoken with the chief executive of Tesla Europe who told him there had been no safety alerts about the model involved in the crash.

Why did a taxi firm in Paris suspend use of Tesla Model 3 cars?

Tesla chief Elon Musk has hit the headlines once again but this time over however it is over the doppelganger of the SpaceX chief which has gone viral.

A Tik-Tok video on social media shows a person who resembles Elon Musk. The video has divided netizens who say it is an example of deepfake technology.

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The 2021 'Person Of The Year' Elon Musk's doppelganger is going viral on social media...seriously, these pics will make you see double! 
 
&gt; <a href="https://t.co/vx93AEI0UM">https://t.co/vx93AEI0UM</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/StaceyJSbuOnECR?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#StaceyJSbuOnECR</a> | <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ElonMusk?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ElonMusk</a> <a href="https://t.co/92EQjWf8ME">pic.twitter.com/92EQjWf8ME</a>
— Stacey &amp; J Sbu (@StaceyandJSbu) <a href="https://twitter.com/StaceyandJSbu/status/1471748246158647297?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 17, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Really? 
Elon Musk's doppelganger found in China<a href="https://t.co/HflvaybYKl">https://t.co/HflvaybYKl</a>
— EVisioneering (@EVisioneer2020) <a href="https://twitter.com/EVisioneer2020/status/1470765168456089603?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 14, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Elon Musk Doppelganger Or Deepfake? Viral Video Divides Opinion <a href="https://t.co/wTYtDDPmov">https://t.co/wTYtDDPmov</a> <a href="https://t.co/leL3F5az8o">pic.twitter.com/leL3F5az8o</a>
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In the video, the "doppelganger" mimicks the Tesla chief. The video was also shared by a Chinese user on Facebook and it has gone viral racking up thousands of likes and shares.

However, many people have said the video is digitally altered since a subtle difference can be between the real Elon Musk and the person shown in the video.

These kinds of videos are not new,&nbsp;recently a deepfake video of Hollywood star Tom Cruise had gone viral.

Former US President Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg had also become victims of deep fake videos. In the Obama video, the former US president was heard using crass language against Trump&nbsp;which was identified as a deep fake video.

(With inputs from Agencies)

Tesla chief Elon Musk has hit the headlines once again but this time over however it is over the doppelganger of the SpaceX chief which has gone viral. A Tik-Tok video on social media shows a person who resembles Elon Musk.

Tesla chief Elon Musk has hit the headlines once again but this time over however it is over the doppelganger of the SpaceX chief which has gone viral. A Tik-Tok video on social media shows a person who resembles Elon Musk. The video has divided netizens who say it is an example of deepfake technology. The 2021 'Person Of The Year' Elon Musk's doppelganger is going viral on social media...seriously, these pics will make you see double! > https://t.co/vx93AEI0UM#StaceyJSbuOnECR | #ElonMusk pic.twitter.com/92EQjWf8ME — Stacey & J Sbu (@StaceyandJSbu) December 17, 2021 × Really? Elon Musk's doppelganger found in Chinahttps://t.co/HflvaybYKl — EVisioneering (@EVisioneer2020) December 14, 2021 × Elon Musk Doppelganger Or Deepfake? Viral Video Divides Opinion https://t.co/wTYtDDPmov pic.twitter.com/leL3F5az8o — Zyite.news (@ZyiteGadgets) December 17, 2021 × In the video, the "doppelganger" mimicks the Tesla chief. The video was also shared by a Chinese user on Facebook and it has gone viral racking up thousands of likes and shares. However, many people have said the video is digitally altered since a subtle difference can be between the real Elon Musk and the person shown in the video. These kinds of videos are not new, recently a deepfake video of Hollywood star Tom Cruise had gone viral. Former US President Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg had also become victims of deep fake videos. In the Obama video, the former US president was heard using crass language against Trump which was identified as a deep fake video. (With inputs from Agencies)

Spot the real Elon Musk: Deepfake or doppelganger? netizens can't decide

TIME magazine has named Elon Musk as their Person of the Year. Was he the best choice in a year marked by death and hardships? Palki Sharma gets you her pick for Person of the Year.

Gravitas: Who is your Person of The Year 2021?

According to a report from The Washington Post, six more women who work at Tesla's Fremont, California plant and service centre have filed complaints against the firm.

Each woman has filed a separate action in Alameda County Superior Court, saying that she is subjected to a workplace culture of sexual harassment.&nbsp;

Elon Musk, Time's 'person of the year,' has been accused of tweeting a "lewd statement about women's bodies or a taunt toward colleagues who report wrongdoing," according to reports.&nbsp;

These latest complaints were filed less than a month after two other women brought similar claims against the corporation.&nbsp;

The women said that they work in an environment where there is a culture of sexual harassment. 
 
<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-is-thinking-of-quitting-his-jobs-and-becoming-an-influencer-435797">Also read | Tesla CEO Elon Musk is thinking of quitting his jobs and becoming an influencer</a>

In the claims, they said their male coworkers routinely make sexual comments about their bodies or attire, as well as engage in abusive behaviours like catcalling and unwanted touching.

One of the six women, Eden Mederos, told The Washington Post that after the Model Y was released, "things became worse," and Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted "S3XY," an acronym referring to the Model S, 3, X, and Y.

Musk is also frequently seen tweeting jokes about "69" or "420" and other immature things, according to the source, which "triggered the technicians to be even worse."

(With inputs from agencies)&nbsp;

According to a report from The Washington Post, six more women who work at Tesla's Fremont, California plant and service centre have filed complaints against the firm.

According to a report from The Washington Post, six more women who work at Tesla's Fremont, California plant and service centre have filed complaints against the firm. Each woman has filed a separate action in Alameda County Superior Court, saying that she is subjected to a workplace culture of sexual harassment. Elon Musk, Time's 'person of the year,' has been accused of tweeting a "lewd statement about women's bodies or a taunt toward colleagues who report wrongdoing," according to reports. These latest complaints were filed less than a month after two other women brought similar claims against the corporation. The women said that they work in an environment where there is a culture of sexual harassment. Also read | Tesla CEO Elon Musk is thinking of quitting his jobs and becoming an influencer In the claims, they said their male coworkers routinely make sexual comments about their bodies or attire, as well as engage in abusive behaviours like catcalling and unwanted touching. One of the six women, Eden Mederos, told The Washington Post that after the Model Y was released, "things became worse," and Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted "S3XY," an acronym referring to the Model S, 3, X, and Y. Musk is also frequently seen tweeting jokes about "69" or "420" and other immature things, according to the source, which "triggered the technicians to be even worse." (With inputs from agencies)

Tesla hit by string of sexual harassment lawsuits: 6 women file complaints

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who is also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Tesla, has been named Time magazine's 'Person of the Year' for 2021. &nbsp;

This seems to be a golden year for Musk as the billionaire’s electric car company became the most valuable carmaker in the world this year. &nbsp;

Also Read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/trending/elon-musk-makes-fun-of-finlands-prime-minister-with-a-memeheres-why-436504" hreflang="en">Elon Musk makes fun of Finland's Prime Minister with a meme. Here's why&nbsp;</a>

Not just this, the rocket company headed by Musk also soared to the edge of space with an all-civilian crew. &nbsp;

Musk is on cloud nine as his shares also witnessed a huge jump. The Tesla CEO has also asked for advice on social media platforms for doing several things this year. &nbsp;

In a nutshell, the billionaire has been in the news for one or the other reasons. &nbsp;

Also Read:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/hong-kong-media-tycoon-jimmy-lai-sentenced-to-13-months-in-prison-436531">Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai sentenced to 13 months in prison</a>

"For creating solutions to an existential crisis, for embodying the possibilities and the perils of the age of tech titans, for driving society's most daring and disruptive transformations, Elon Musk is TIME's 2021 Person of the Year," said Edward Felsenthal, editor-in-chief of the magazine. &nbsp;

"Even Elon Musk's spacefaring adventures are a direct line from the very first Person of the Year, Charles Lindbergh, whom the editors selected in 1927 to commemorate his historic first solo transatlantic airplane flight over the Atlantic," Felsenthal added. &nbsp;

(With inputs from agencies)&nbsp;

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who is also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Tesla, has been named Time magazine's 'Person of the Year' for 2021. This seems to be a golden year for Musk as the billionaire’s electric car company became the most valuable carmaker in the world this year.

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who is also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Tesla, has been named Time magazine's 'Person of the Year' for 2021. This seems to be a golden year for Musk as the billionaire’s electric car company became the most valuable carmaker in the world this year. Also Read: Elon Musk makes fun of Finland's Prime Minister with a meme. Here's why Not just this, the rocket company headed by Musk also soared to the edge of space with an all-civilian crew. Musk is on cloud nine as his shares also witnessed a huge jump. The Tesla CEO has also asked for advice on social media platforms for doing several things this year. In a nutshell, the billionaire has been in the news for one or the other reasons. Also Read: Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai sentenced to 13 months in prison "For creating solutions to an existential crisis, for embodying the possibilities and the perils of the age of tech titans, for driving society's most daring and disruptive transformations, Elon Musk is TIME's 2021 Person of the Year," said Edward Felsenthal, editor-in-chief of the magazine. "Even Elon Musk's spacefaring adventures are a direct line from the very first Person of the Year, Charles Lindbergh, whom the editors selected in 1927 to commemorate his historic first solo transatlantic airplane flight over the Atlantic," Felsenthal added. (With inputs from agencies)

Billionaire Elon Musk bags title of Time magazine's 'Person of the Year' for 2021

Billionaire Elon Musk, who frequently uses memes to make a point on Twitter, used the platform to poke fun at Finland's Prime Minister, who recently came under fire for staying out dancing at a club despite being exposed to COVID-19.&nbsp;

Sanna Marin, 36, apologised last Monday after a gossip magazine released images of her partying till nearly 4 AM in a Helsinki nightclub, only hours after her Foreign Minister was diagnosed with coronavirus.

Musk published a joke on Sunday in which a man in a bar asks a woman, "What do you do?"

"I'm the Prime Minister of Finland," the woman in the meme responds.

This is met with a "What?" from the man.

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On Saturday night, Marin was pictured partying at a nightclub in Helsinki, only hours after her foreign minister tested positive for COVID-19.

PM Marin, on the other hand, apologised for her slip in judgement in a Facebook post, saying she was sorry for not realising she needed to socially remove herself. 
 
Watch | Gravitas: Why is Elon Musk selling whistles?

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/gravitas-why-is-elon-musk-selling-whistles-433365/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

She said in her blog post that she was initially informed she didn't need to isolate because she was completely vaccinated.

She did, however, miss a later message with instructions to avoid making touch.

She further stated that she went for a test as soon as she received the information about isolating on Sunday, and the findings were negative.&nbsp; 
 
(With inputs from agencies)

Billionaire Elon Musk, who frequently uses memes to make a point on Twitter, used the platform to poke fun at Finland's Prime Minister, who recently came under fire for staying out dancing at a club despite being exposed to COVID-19.

Billionaire Elon Musk, who frequently uses memes to make a point on Twitter, used the platform to poke fun at Finland's Prime Minister, who recently came under fire for staying out dancing at a club despite being exposed to COVID-19. Sanna Marin, 36, apologised last Monday after a gossip magazine released images of her partying till nearly 4 AM in a Helsinki nightclub, only hours after her Foreign Minister was diagnosed with coronavirus. Musk published a joke on Sunday in which a man in a bar asks a woman, "What do you do?" "I'm the Prime Minister of Finland," the woman in the meme responds. This is met with a "What?" from the man. pic.twitter.com/5LE1PjFwgS — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 12, 2021 × On Saturday night, Marin was pictured partying at a nightclub in Helsinki, only hours after her foreign minister tested positive for COVID-19. PM Marin, on the other hand, apologised for her slip in judgement in a Facebook post, saying she was sorry for not realising she needed to socially remove herself. Watch | Gravitas: Why is Elon Musk selling whistles? She said in her blog post that she was initially informed she didn't need to isolate because she was completely vaccinated. She did, however, miss a later message with instructions to avoid making touch. She further stated that she went for a test as soon as she received the information about isolating on Sunday, and the findings were negative. (With inputs from agencies)

Elon Musk makes fun of Finland's Prime Minister with a meme.Here's why 

The richest people on earth typically devote a share of their vast resources to charity. That is the bargain and the expectation, anyway.

Jeff Bezos, until very recently the world’s richest human, has been applying himself dutifully if a bit cautiously to the task, giving money to food banks and homeless families while pledging $10 billion of the fortune he earned through the online retailer Amazon to fight climate change.

The latest richest human, Elon Musk, has taken a rather different tack. There was the public spat with the director of the World Food Programme on Twitter, for instance, announcing, “If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it.”

There was the online poll asking whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla shares in order to pay taxes on at least part of his wealth, like most people do without running a survey first. And, of course, there is the ongoing insistence that his moneymaking efforts, running both the electric carmaker Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX are already bettering humankind, thank you very much.

Musk is practicing “troll philanthropy.”

That’s what Benjamin Soskis, senior research associate in the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute, has called it, noting that Musk seems to be having fun with this novel approach.

“He doesn’t seem to care much about using his philanthropy to curry public favor,” Soskis said. “In fact, he seems to enjoy using his identity as a philanthropist in part to antagonize the public.” Before this year, one estimate put his giving at $100 million, a lot by almost any standard, except for multibillionaires like Musk.

Most wealthy people do the opposite. They use philanthropy to burnish their image or distract the public from the business practices that earned them their enormous wealth in the first place.

When, how and why the ultrarich choose to give their fortunes away matters more than ever because so much money is concentrated in their hands and so little of it is taxable under current rules. Society is to some extent presently stuck relying on voluntary disbursements from those with the greatest means.

“The idea that philanthropy, that any single individual, has enough money to affect something at a global scale is a very new phenomenon,” said Homi Kharas, a senior fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Most billionaires have “accumulated their wealth because the world economy is now globalized, but to sustain a globalized world economy we need to have more inclusive growth.”

There are many different kinds of givers, like Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, who has focused her billions on diversity and equity. There are the self-declared “effective altruists,” like the Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna, part of a movement searching for evidence-based approaches to find causes where their money does the most good. And there are the traditionalists, like Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, who have built institutions to handle their funding.

Musk and Bezos are, with $268 billion and $202 billion respectively, the two richest Americans for the time being, drawing sharper contrasts between their approaches to giving back.

Earlier this year, Bezos took the stage with United Nations Deputy Secretary General Amina J. Mohammed and listened as former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sang his praises, saying, “He is stepping up in a way that an awful lot of people who have the wherewithal do not step up.”

Musk, meanwhile, replied to a tweet by Sen. Bernie Sanders demanding “that the extremely wealthy pay their share,” by replying, “I keep forgetting that you’re still alive.”

Musk’s nontraditional approach to giving doesn’t stop people who need his donations, like David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme, from seeking his help. “The resources at his disposal are so vast and potentially consequential that we have to engage him, and accept some of that trolling, if we want to try to exert some pressure on him and shape his somewhat inchoate philanthropic priorities,” Soskis said.

Musk did not respond to an email asking him to discuss his philanthropic giving.

The notion that rich people have a moral obligation to give is an ancient one. Soskis, a historian of philanthropy, notes that wealthy citizens in ancient Rome tried to outdo one another paying for public baths and theaters. The inscriptions on those edifices could count as a form of early donor lists.

The idea that the richest might need charity to improve their public relations is also longstanding, driven home in the Gilded Age by the 1882 outburst by railway magnate William Henry Vanderbilt, “The public be damned!” that shadowed him to the end of his days.

Efforts to track the charitable giving of the very wealthy in the United States date to the late 19th century, when the ranks of millionaires exploded. Before long, newspapers were running front-page lists of who had made the biggest gifts. The original duo to capture public attention were John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, whose feelings on publicizing philanthropy were diametrically opposed.

Cartoons from the era showed Carnegie, often dressed in a kilt to reference his Scottish origin, showering coins from enormous bags of money. “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced,” Carnegie wrote in “The Gospel of Wealth,” his treatise on giving. Rockefeller preferred to keep his giving more private and had to be convinced to announce his gifts.

To those who think the trolling started on Twitter, philanthropy was never quite as polite as we imagine today. George Eastman, one of the founders of Eastman-Kodak, called those who did not give their money away during their lifetimes “pie-faced mutts.” Julius Rosenwald, the chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Co. and a major philanthropist in his day, insisted that the accumulation of wealth had nothing to do with smarts, adding, “Some very rich men who made their own fortunes have been among the stupidest men I have ever met in my life.”

But the idea that giving helps the reputation is at best only partially true. Givers are celebrated at times but just as often the higher profile means their motives and choices are picked apart. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are each worth over $120 billion, per Forbes, but none of them receives the level of scrutiny that Gates does, for instance.

“If you put your head above the philanthropic parapet and say, ‘I’m interested in the environment,’ or whatever cause area, people can start to question it,” said Beth Breeze, author of the recent book “In Defence of Philanthropy.” Breeze has pushed back against the recent trend of criticizing philanthropists, who, she says, are regularly described as “tax dodging, egotistical, irritating” — criticism they may earn, but not comments that she views as useful to the greater good.

“My concern is not for the thin skins of the rich people. They can take care of themselves. My concern is if the money dries up,” said Breeze, who was a fundraiser for a youth homeless center before becoming an academic and identifies as a left-wing Labour Party supporter in Britain.

A troll philanthropist might be an easy target for criticism. But donating money in all the usual ways is no break from critical rebukes.

There are several different schools of criticism deployed for different kinds of givers. There is the structural argument that philanthropy serves as another means of using wealth to cement power and influence. Large grants are often compared with the giver’s total net worth to show that as a percentage of their wealth the gifts are much smaller than they appear in absolute terms. Gifts to cultural institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Ivy League schools are now regularly assailed for reinforcing the status quo. Even gifts to rebuild the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris after it caught fire earned significant blowback.

Technocratic institutions that set exacting benchmarks for gifts and place strict limits on how their money can be spent are tagged as controlling and hierarchical. In contrast, general operating support without guidance on how the money can be used has been applauded by many lately as the best approach.

Bezos was named by the Chronicle of Philanthropy this past February to the top spot on its 2020 “Philanthropy 50” list, even though most of that was for his $10 billion pledge to his own Bezos Earth Fund, which had barely gotten up and running. It was a bit like Barack Obama’s surprise Nobel Peace Prize less than a year into his presidency in the way that it seemed to sharpen critiques rather than dull them.

But after a slow start to his giving, Bezos has begun to look like the good pupil. He gave $100 million to the Feeding America food bank network and another $100 million to Obama’s presidential center. The money has been flowing more quickly out of the Bezos Earth Fund as well. Just this past week he announced another 44 grants worth a total of $443 million to groups working on issues including climate justice and conservation, part of that $10 billion pledge.

“You need to have a pretty sharp pencil of analysis in order to allocate funds well,” said Andrew Steer, president of the Bezos Earth Fund, in an interview.

Musk himself started out with what seemed like a somewhat conventional approach to giving. He created the Musk Foundation in 2002 and signed the nonbinding Giving Pledge to give away half his wealth in 2012. (The Musk Foundation website could, itself, be considered a bit of a troll, with its 33 words in black text on a white background.)

For the fiscal year ending June 2020, the Musk Foundation made donations of a little less than $3 million to nine groups, mostly related to education, and gave $20 million to Fidelity Charitable, which operates the kind of donor-advised funds that critics say can function as a parking lot for charitable dollars. That was out of nearly $1 billion available in the Musk Foundation coffers by the end of the fiscal year.

Since then he has announced $150 million in gifts, including a $100 million innovation prize for carbon removal and $30 million to nonprofits in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. Those may have been at least as much about a legal requirement as a newfound sense of munificence. Tax laws require private foundations to pay out roughly 5% of their endowments annually.

“The particular barrier for donors from a tech background is they don’t just think their genius has made them good at what they do, they also think what they do commercially also makes society better,” said Rhodri Davies, a philanthropy commentator who wrote a piece on Musk called “The Edgelord Giveth.”

Musk, for instance, has said that getting humankind to Mars through SpaceX is an important contribution and has written and spoken acerbically about what he calls “anti-billionaire BS,” including attempts to target taxes at billionaires.

“It does not make sense to take the job of capital allocation away from people who have demonstrated great skill in capital allocation and give it to an entity that has demonstrated very poor skill in capital allocation, which is the government,” Musk said Monday at an event hosted by The Wall Street Journal.

At the same time, Kharas said a more charitable reading of Musk’s exchange with the World Food Programme is possible. He could just genuinely want to know how the money will be spent and is putting in public, on Twitter, the due diligence work that institutional giving does behind closed doors.

“I think this idea that he was willing to engage was really good,” Kharas of the Brookings Institution said of Musk. “I think his response was extremely sensible. It was basically, ‘Show me what you can do. Demonstrate it. Provide me with some evidence. I’ll do it.’” The WFP published a breakdown of how they would spend the $6.6 billion, but there’s no word yet on whether Musk will make a donation.

MacKenzie Scott’s latest letter about her giving included a lot of philosophical musings most billionaires do not routinely share. But she left out precisely the details everyone was waiting for — how many billion dollars went to which groups? Instead she said, stop paying so much attention to billionaires and think about what you can give.

In a winking gesture to everyone waiting for the latest cash tally, she wrote the whole thing without using a single dollar sign. Classic troll move.

The richest people on earth typically devote a share of their vast resources to charity. That is the bargain and the expectation, anyway. Jeff Bezos, until very recently the world’s richest human, has been applying himself dutifully if a bit cautiously to the task, giving money to food banks and homeless families while pledging $10 billion of the fortune he earned through the online retailer Amazon to fight climate change.

The richest people on earth typically devote a share of their vast resources to charity. That is the bargain and the expectation, anyway. Jeff Bezos, until very recently the world’s richest human, has been applying himself dutifully if a bit cautiously to the task, giving money to food banks and homeless families while pledging $10 billion of the fortune he earned through the online retailer Amazon to fight climate change. The latest richest human, Elon Musk, has taken a rather different tack. There was the public spat with the director of the World Food Programme on Twitter, for instance, announcing, “If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it.” There was the online poll asking whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla shares in order to pay taxes on at least part of his wealth, like most people do without running a survey first. And, of course, there is the ongoing insistence that his moneymaking efforts, running both the electric carmaker Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX are already bettering humankind, thank you very much. Musk is practicing “troll philanthropy.” That’s what Benjamin Soskis, senior research associate in the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute, has called it, noting that Musk seems to be having fun with this novel approach. “He doesn’t seem to care much about using his philanthropy to curry public favor,” Soskis said. “In fact, he seems to enjoy using his identity as a philanthropist in part to antagonize the public.” Before this year, one estimate put his giving at $100 million, a lot by almost any standard, except for multibillionaires like Musk. Most wealthy people do the opposite. They use philanthropy to burnish their image or distract the public from the business practices that earned them their enormous wealth in the first place. When, how and why the ultrarich choose to give their fortunes away matters more than ever because so much money is concentrated in their hands and so little of it is taxable under current rules. Society is to some extent presently stuck relying on voluntary disbursements from those with the greatest means. “The idea that philanthropy, that any single individual, has enough money to affect something at a global scale is a very new phenomenon,” said Homi Kharas, a senior fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Most billionaires have “accumulated their wealth because the world economy is now globalized, but to sustain a globalized world economy we need to have more inclusive growth.” There are many different kinds of givers, like Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, who has focused her billions on diversity and equity. There are the self-declared “effective altruists,” like the Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and his wife, Cari Tuna, part of a movement searching for evidence-based approaches to find causes where their money does the most good. And there are the traditionalists, like Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, who have built institutions to handle their funding. Musk and Bezos are, with $268 billion and $202 billion respectively, the two richest Americans for the time being, drawing sharper contrasts between their approaches to giving back. Earlier this year, Bezos took the stage with United Nations Deputy Secretary General Amina J. Mohammed and listened as former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sang his praises, saying, “He is stepping up in a way that an awful lot of people who have the wherewithal do not step up.” Musk, meanwhile, replied to a tweet by Sen. Bernie Sanders demanding “that the extremely wealthy pay their share,” by replying, “I keep forgetting that you’re still alive.” Musk’s nontraditional approach to giving doesn’t stop people who need his donations, like David Beasley, executive director of the World Food Programme, from seeking his help. “The resources at his disposal are so vast and potentially consequential that we have to engage him, and accept some of that trolling, if we want to try to exert some pressure on him and shape his somewhat inchoate philanthropic priorities,” Soskis said. Musk did not respond to an email asking him to discuss his philanthropic giving. The notion that rich people have a moral obligation to give is an ancient one. Soskis, a historian of philanthropy, notes that wealthy citizens in ancient Rome tried to outdo one another paying for public baths and theaters. The inscriptions on those edifices could count as a form of early donor lists. The idea that the richest might need charity to improve their public relations is also longstanding, driven home in the Gilded Age by the 1882 outburst by railway magnate William Henry Vanderbilt, “The public be damned!” that shadowed him to the end of his days. Efforts to track the charitable giving of the very wealthy in the United States date to the late 19th century, when the ranks of millionaires exploded. Before long, newspapers were running front-page lists of who had made the biggest gifts. The original duo to capture public attention were John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, whose feelings on publicizing philanthropy were diametrically opposed. Cartoons from the era showed Carnegie, often dressed in a kilt to reference his Scottish origin, showering coins from enormous bags of money. “The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced,” Carnegie wrote in “The Gospel of Wealth,” his treatise on giving. Rockefeller preferred to keep his giving more private and had to be convinced to announce his gifts. To those who think the trolling started on Twitter, philanthropy was never quite as polite as we imagine today. George Eastman, one of the founders of Eastman-Kodak, called those who did not give their money away during their lifetimes “pie-faced mutts.” Julius Rosenwald, the chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Co. and a major philanthropist in his day, insisted that the accumulation of wealth had nothing to do with smarts, adding, “Some very rich men who made their own fortunes have been among the stupidest men I have ever met in my life.” But the idea that giving helps the reputation is at best only partially true. Givers are celebrated at times but just as often the higher profile means their motives and choices are picked apart. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are each worth over $120 billion, per Forbes, but none of them receives the level of scrutiny that Gates does, for instance. “If you put your head above the philanthropic parapet and say, ‘I’m interested in the environment,’ or whatever cause area, people can start to question it,” said Beth Breeze, author of the recent book “In Defence of Philanthropy.” Breeze has pushed back against the recent trend of criticizing philanthropists, who, she says, are regularly described as “tax dodging, egotistical, irritating” — criticism they may earn, but not comments that she views as useful to the greater good. “My concern is not for the thin skins of the rich people. They can take care of themselves. My concern is if the money dries up,” said Breeze, who was a fundraiser for a youth homeless center before becoming an academic and identifies as a left-wing Labour Party supporter in Britain. A troll philanthropist might be an easy target for criticism. But donating money in all the usual ways is no break from critical rebukes. There are several different schools of criticism deployed for different kinds of givers. There is the structural argument that philanthropy serves as another means of using wealth to cement power and influence. Large grants are often compared with the giver’s total net worth to show that as a percentage of their wealth the gifts are much smaller than they appear in absolute terms. Gifts to cultural institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Ivy League schools are now regularly assailed for reinforcing the status quo. Even gifts to rebuild the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris after it caught fire earned significant blowback. Technocratic institutions that set exacting benchmarks for gifts and place strict limits on how their money can be spent are tagged as controlling and hierarchical. In contrast, general operating support without guidance on how the money can be used has been applauded by many lately as the best approach. Bezos was named by the Chronicle of Philanthropy this past February to the top spot on its 2020 “Philanthropy 50” list, even though most of that was for his $10 billion pledge to his own Bezos Earth Fund, which had barely gotten up and running. It was a bit like Barack Obama’s surprise Nobel Peace Prize less than a year into his presidency in the way that it seemed to sharpen critiques rather than dull them. But after a slow start to his giving, Bezos has begun to look like the good pupil. He gave $100 million to the Feeding America food bank network and another $100 million to Obama’s presidential center. The money has been flowing more quickly out of the Bezos Earth Fund as well. Just this past week he announced another 44 grants worth a total of $443 million to groups working on issues including climate justice and conservation, part of that $10 billion pledge. “You need to have a pretty sharp pencil of analysis in order to allocate funds well,” said Andrew Steer, president of the Bezos Earth Fund, in an interview. Musk himself started out with what seemed like a somewhat conventional approach to giving. He created the Musk Foundation in 2002 and signed the nonbinding Giving Pledge to give away half his wealth in 2012. (The Musk Foundation website could, itself, be considered a bit of a troll, with its 33 words in black text on a white background.) For the fiscal year ending June 2020, the Musk Foundation made donations of a little less than $3 million to nine groups, mostly related to education, and gave $20 million to Fidelity Charitable, which operates the kind of donor-advised funds that critics say can function as a parking lot for charitable dollars. That was out of nearly $1 billion available in the Musk Foundation coffers by the end of the fiscal year. Since then he has announced $150 million in gifts, including a $100 million innovation prize for carbon removal and $30 million to nonprofits in the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. Those may have been at least as much about a legal requirement as a newfound sense of munificence. Tax laws require private foundations to pay out roughly 5% of their endowments annually. “The particular barrier for donors from a tech background is they don’t just think their genius has made them good at what they do, they also think what they do commercially also makes society better,” said Rhodri Davies, a philanthropy commentator who wrote a piece on Musk called “The Edgelord Giveth.” Musk, for instance, has said that getting humankind to Mars through SpaceX is an important contribution and has written and spoken acerbically about what he calls “anti-billionaire BS,” including attempts to target taxes at billionaires. “It does not make sense to take the job of capital allocation away from people who have demonstrated great skill in capital allocation and give it to an entity that has demonstrated very poor skill in capital allocation, which is the government,” Musk said Monday at an event hosted by The Wall Street Journal. At the same time, Kharas said a more charitable reading of Musk’s exchange with the World Food Programme is possible. He could just genuinely want to know how the money will be spent and is putting in public, on Twitter, the due diligence work that institutional giving does behind closed doors. “I think this idea that he was willing to engage was really good,” Kharas of the Brookings Institution said of Musk. “I think his response was extremely sensible. It was basically, ‘Show me what you can do. Demonstrate it. Provide me with some evidence. I’ll do it.’” The WFP published a breakdown of how they would spend the $6.6 billion, but there’s no word yet on whether Musk will make a donation. MacKenzie Scott’s latest letter about her giving included a lot of philosophical musings most billionaires do not routinely share. But she left out precisely the details everyone was waiting for — how many billion dollars went to which groups? Instead she said, stop paying so much attention to billionaires and think about what you can give. In a winking gesture to everyone waiting for the latest cash tally, she wrote the whole thing without using a single dollar sign. Classic troll move.

Elon Musk's latest innovation: Troll philanthropy

The new design of Tesla's new Cybertruck has been captured by a drone. The electric-car maker's much-anticipated Cybertruck would come with a high-end four-motor variant.

Known for making eye-popping statements on social media, Musk said the truck's “wiper is what troubles [him] most” as they are “comically large.”

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BREAKING: New Tesla Cybertruck design spotted at Fremont test track!!! 
 
Source: <a href="https://t.co/OeVhsaq71h">https://t.co/OeVhsaq71h</a> <a href="https://t.co/VyyYpuZ48U">pic.twitter.com/VyyYpuZ48U</a>
— Sawyer Merritt 📈🚀 (@SawyerMerritt) <a href="https://twitter.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1469353138893250570?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 10, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Calling the electric pick-up truck "insane technology bandwagon," Musk said the Cybertruck would have both front and rear-wheel steer that would "not just (turn) like a tank – it can drive diagonally like a crab."

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CGI IRL
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1469360749629911045?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 10, 2021</a></blockquote>
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The vehicle would compete with pickup trucks such as GMC's Hummer EV, Ford's F-150 Lightning, and Rivian's R1T.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/elon-musks-latest-innovation-troll-philanthropy-435952" hreflang="en">Elon Musk's latest innovation: Troll philanthropy</a>

Of those, R1T is driven by four individual motors powering all four wheels and GMC's Hummer can drive diagonally.

During its previous launch, the truck's supposedly unbreakable window glass splintered twice when hit with a large metal ball.

The failure overshadowed the truck’s slick unveiling, with some analysts panning its looks. The truck, a stainless-steel-covered triangle, resembles the much-derided Pontiac Aztek SUV sold by General Motors in the early 2000s.

With the truck, Tesla is gunning for buyers with fierce brand loyalty.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-is-thinking-of-quitting-his-jobs-and-becoming-an-influencer-435797" hreflang="en">Tesla CEO Elon Musk is thinking of quitting his jobs and becoming an influencer</a>

Tesla's pick-up truck, first announced in 2019, is made of stainless steel used in rockets and Musk has touted receiving several hundred thousand orders for the Cybertruck when preorders were opened.

Tesla’s pickup is more likely to appeal to weekend warriors who want an electric vehicle that can handle some outdoor adventure. And it could end up cutting into Tesla’s electric vehicle sedan sales instead of winning over traditional pickup truck drivers.

Musk said he would give updates on the product roadmap on the next earnings call. Cybertruck production is expected to begin next year and reach volume production in 2023.

Tesla has struggled to meet delivery targets for its sedans, and some fear the new vehicle will shift the company’s attention away from the goal of more consistently meeting its targets.

The company has so far avoided a major crisis from supply-chain woes and the global semiconductor shortage, issues that have hurt legacy automakers.

Musk is the world's richest person, worth $294 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

(With inputs from agencies) 
&nbsp;

The new design of Tesla's new Cybertruck has been captured by a drone. The electric-car maker's much-anticipated Cybertruck would come with a high-end four-motor variant.

The new design of Tesla's new Cybertruck has been captured by a drone. The electric-car maker's much-anticipated Cybertruck would come with a high-end four-motor variant. Known for making eye-popping statements on social media, Musk said the truck's “wiper is what troubles [him] most” as they are “comically large.” BREAKING: New Tesla Cybertruck design spotted at Fremont test track!!! Source: https://t.co/OeVhsaq71h pic.twitter.com/VyyYpuZ48U — Sawyer Merritt 📈🚀 (@SawyerMerritt) December 10, 2021 × Calling the electric pick-up truck "insane technology bandwagon," Musk said the Cybertruck would have both front and rear-wheel steer that would "not just (turn) like a tank – it can drive diagonally like a crab." CGI IRL — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2021 × The vehicle would compete with pickup trucks such as GMC's Hummer EV, Ford's F-150 Lightning, and Rivian's R1T. Also read | Elon Musk's latest innovation: Troll philanthropy Of those, R1T is driven by four individual motors powering all four wheels and GMC's Hummer can drive diagonally. During its previous launch, the truck's supposedly unbreakable window glass splintered twice when hit with a large metal ball. The failure overshadowed the truck’s slick unveiling, with some analysts panning its looks. The truck, a stainless-steel-covered triangle, resembles the much-derided Pontiac Aztek SUV sold by General Motors in the early 2000s. With the truck, Tesla is gunning for buyers with fierce brand loyalty. Also read | Tesla CEO Elon Musk is thinking of quitting his jobs and becoming an influencer Tesla's pick-up truck, first announced in 2019, is made of stainless steel used in rockets and Musk has touted receiving several hundred thousand orders for the Cybertruck when preorders were opened. Tesla’s pickup is more likely to appeal to weekend warriors who want an electric vehicle that can handle some outdoor adventure. And it could end up cutting into Tesla’s electric vehicle sedan sales instead of winning over traditional pickup truck drivers. Musk said he would give updates on the product roadmap on the next earnings call. Cybertruck production is expected to begin next year and reach volume production in 2023. Tesla has struggled to meet delivery targets for its sedans, and some fear the new vehicle will shift the company’s attention away from the goal of more consistently meeting its targets. The company has so far avoided a major crisis from supply-chain woes and the global semiconductor shortage, issues that have hurt legacy automakers. Musk is the world's richest person, worth $294 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. (With inputs from agencies)

Drone captures first look of Tesla Cybertruck; Elon Musk reveals biggest concern about it

Social media erupted after Tesla CEO said he thinking of quitting his jobs and becoming a full-time influencer.

When the billionaire, who is also the founder of SpaceX, asked Twitter users what do they think about the move, they had some interesting suggestions.

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thinking of quitting my jobs &amp; becoming an influencer full-time wdyt
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1469153995428085762?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 10, 2021</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://www.wionews.com/world/man-of-his-word-musk-again-fulfils-promise-owns-no-home-in-us-state-now-434970">Also read |&nbsp;Man of his word? Musk again fulfils promise, ‘owns no home’ in US state now</a>

One netizen told him ''I’ll be your first subscriber if you make an onlyfans.''

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I’ll be your first subscriber if you make an onlyfans
— Albi (SideArms) (@Albi_SideArms) <a href="https://twitter.com/Albi_SideArms/status/1469161000142262280?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 10, 2021</a></blockquote>
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In response, Musk, a prolific user of the social media platform,&nbsp;said ''maybe i will.''

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maybe i will …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1469205428227784711?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 10, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Another Twitter user recommended he become a YouTuber and start his own channel.

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Start a YouTube channel
— Toby Li (@tobyliiiiiiiiii) <a href="https://twitter.com/tobyliiiiiiiiii/status/1469154349125234689?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 10, 2021</a></blockquote>
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To which Musk replied ''noobtoob.'' It refers to a person who is inexperienced in a particular sphere or activity, especially computing or the use of the internet.

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noobtoob
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1469154683113676802?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 10, 2021</a></blockquote>
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I’ll coach u on how to get YouTube views!
— MrBeast (@MrBeast) <a href="https://twitter.com/MrBeast/status/1469158006445256715?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 10, 2021</a></blockquote>
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Earlier, Musk had said "It would be nice to have a bit more free time on my hands as opposed to just working day and night, from when I wake up to when I go to sleep 7 days a week. Pretty intense."

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/technology/elon-musk-loses-record-50-billion-in-2-days-as-tesla-shares-fall-428184">Also read |&nbsp;Elon Musk loses record $50 billion in 2 days as Tesla shares fall</a>

It comes after Musk had tweeted and asked Twitter users if should sell his shares in Tesla worth $12 billion in a poll. He had followed through his commitment and sold his shares thrice in November.

However, several critics had pointed out that he had done so to evade taxes under a bill introduced by US President Joe Biden.

Musk also leads brain-chip startup Neuralink and infrastructure firm The Boring Company.

(With inputs from agencies)

Social media erupted after Tesla CEO said he thinking of quitting his jobs and becoming a full-time influencer. When the billionaire, who is also the founder of SpaceX, asked Twitter users what do they think about the move, they had some interesting suggestions.

Social media erupted after Tesla CEO said he thinking of quitting his jobs and becoming a full-time influencer. When the billionaire, who is also the founder of SpaceX, asked Twitter users what do they think about the move, they had some interesting suggestions. thinking of quitting my jobs & becoming an influencer full-time wdyt — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2021 × Also read | Man of his word? Musk again fulfils promise, ‘owns no home’ in US state now One netizen told him ''I’ll be your first subscriber if you make an onlyfans.'' I’ll be your first subscriber if you make an onlyfans — Albi (SideArms) (@Albi_SideArms) December 10, 2021 × In response, Musk, a prolific user of the social media platform, said ''maybe i will.'' maybe i will … — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2021 × Another Twitter user recommended he become a YouTuber and start his own channel. Start a YouTube channel — Toby Li (@tobyliiiiiiiiii) December 10, 2021 × To which Musk replied ''noobtoob.'' It refers to a person who is inexperienced in a particular sphere or activity, especially computing or the use of the internet. noobtoob — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 10, 2021 × I’ll coach u on how to get YouTube views! — MrBeast (@MrBeast) December 10, 2021 × Earlier, Musk had said "It would be nice to have a bit more free time on my hands as opposed to just working day and night, from when I wake up to when I go to sleep 7 days a week. Pretty intense." Also read | Elon Musk loses record $50 billion in 2 days as Tesla shares fall It comes after Musk had tweeted and asked Twitter users if should sell his shares in Tesla worth $12 billion in a poll. He had followed through his commitment and sold his shares thrice in November. However, several critics had pointed out that he had done so to evade taxes under a bill introduced by US President Joe Biden. Musk also leads brain-chip startup Neuralink and infrastructure firm The Boring Company. (With inputs from agencies)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is thinking of quitting his jobs and becoming an influencer

Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has become the first Japanese tourist to visit the International Space Station.

The 46-year-old fashion magnate and art collector blasted off in a Soyuz spacecraft from the Russia-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

He took to Twitter and tweeted&nbsp;"Dream come true."

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これ以降は地上ではスマホできないので、次のツイートは宇宙からになります。それでは、行ってきます🚀
— 前澤友作┃12/8から宇宙旅行 (@yousuck2020) <a href="https://twitter.com/yousuck2020/status/1468382665196060675?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 8, 2021</a></blockquote>
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He will spend 12 days in space along with his assistant Yozo Hirano. During this time period, he will complete 100 tasks including hosting a badminton tournament in orbit.

Also see |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/who-is-winning-space-tourism-race-between-bezos-branson-and-musk-396420" hreflang="en">Who is winning space tourism race between Bezos, Branson and Musk?</a>

Before Maezawa's spacecraft blasted, he said “I would like to look at the Earth from space. I would like to experience the opportunity to feel weightlessness.”

“And I also have a personal expectation: I’m curious how the space will change me, how I will change after this space flight.”

His voyage is being seen as a dry-run for his planned trip around the moon with Elon Musk's SpaceX in 2023.

Also see |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/photos/want-to-become-a-space-tourist-here-is-all-you-need-to-do-399437" hreflang="en">Want to become a space tourist? Here is all you need to do</a>

This will make him the first private passenger on the SpaceX moon trip.

US-based company Space Adventures has said the cost of tickets to space for tourists ranges from $50-60 million.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin and billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic are also vying to usher in a new era of commercial space tourism.

Moscow had stopped sending tourists to space after NASA retired the Space Shuttle in 2011, which left Russia with a monopoly on supplying the ISS.

NASA bought up all Soyuz launch seats for a reported $90 million per spot,&nbsp;effectively ending tourist flights.

(With inputs from agencies)

Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has become the first Japanese tourist to visit the International Space Station. The 46-year-old fashion magnate and art collector blasted off in a Soyuz spacecraft from the Russia-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has become the first Japanese tourist to visit the International Space Station. The 46-year-old fashion magnate and art collector blasted off in a Soyuz spacecraft from the Russia-leased Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. He took to Twitter and tweeted "Dream come true." これ以降は地上ではスマホできないので、次のツイートは宇宙からになります。それでは、行ってきます🚀 — 前澤友作┃12/8から宇宙旅行 (@yousuck2020) December 8, 2021 × He will spend 12 days in space along with his assistant Yozo Hirano. During this time period, he will complete 100 tasks including hosting a badminton tournament in orbit. Also see | Who is winning space tourism race between Bezos, Branson and Musk? Before Maezawa's spacecraft blasted, he said “I would like to look at the Earth from space. I would like to experience the opportunity to feel weightlessness.” “And I also have a personal expectation: I’m curious how the space will change me, how I will change after this space flight.” His voyage is being seen as a dry-run for his planned trip around the moon with Elon Musk's SpaceX in 2023. Also see | Want to become a space tourist? Here is all you need to do This will make him the first private passenger on the SpaceX moon trip. US-based company Space Adventures has said the cost of tickets to space for tourists ranges from $50-60 million. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin and billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic are also vying to usher in a new era of commercial space tourism. Moscow had stopped sending tourists to space after NASA retired the Space Shuttle in 2011, which left Russia with a monopoly on supplying the ISS. NASA bought up all Soyuz launch seats for a reported $90 million per spot, effectively ending tourist flights. (With inputs from agencies)

Billionaire Yusaku Maezawa becomes first Japanese tourist to visit International Space Station

Elon Musk built his electric car company, Tesla, around the promise that it represented the future of driving — a phrase emblazoned on the automaker’s website.

Much of that promise was centered on Autopilot, a system of features that could steer, brake and accelerate the company’s sleek electric vehicles on highways. Over and over, Musk declared that truly autonomous driving was nearly at hand — the day when a Tesla could drive itself — and that the capability would be whisked to drivers over the air in software updates.

Unlike technologists at almost every other company working on self-driving vehicles, Musk insisted that autonomy could be achieved solely with cameras tracking their surroundings. But many Tesla engineers questioned whether it was safe enough to rely on cameras without the benefit of other sensing devices — and whether Musk was promising drivers too much about Autopilot’s capabilities.

Now those questions are at the heart of an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration after at least 12 accidents in which Teslas using Autopilot drove into parked firetrucks, police cars and other emergency vehicles, killing one person and injuring 17 others.

Families are suing Tesla over fatal crashes, and Tesla customers are suing the company for misrepresenting Autopilot and a set of sister services called Full Self Driving, or FSD.

As the guiding force behind Autopilot, Musk pushed it in directions other automakers were unwilling to take this kind of technology, interviews with 19 people who worked on the project over the past decade show. Musk repeatedly misled buyers about the services’ abilities, many of those people say. All spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation from Musk and Tesla.

Musk and a top Tesla lawyer did not respond to multiple email requests for comment for this article over several weeks, including a detailed list of questions. But the company has consistently said that the onus is on drivers to stay alert and take control of their cars should Autopilot malfunction.

Since the start of Tesla’s work on Autopilot, there has been a tension between safety and Musk’s desire to market Tesla cars as technological marvels.

For years, Musk has said Tesla cars were on the verge of complete autonomy. “The basic news is that all Tesla vehicles leaving the factory have all the hardware necessary for Level 5 autonomy,” he declared in 2016. The statement surprised and concerned some working on the project, since the Society of Automotive Engineers defines Level 5 as full driving automation.

More recently, he has said that new software — currently part of a beta test by a limited number of Tesla owners who have bought the FSD package — will allow cars to drive themselves on city streets as well as highways. But as with Autopilot, Tesla documentation says drivers must keep their hands on the wheel, ready to take control of the car at any time.

Regulators have warned that Tesla and Musk have exaggerated the sophistication of Autopilot, encouraging some people to misuse it.

“Where I get concerned is the language that’s used to describe the capabilities of the vehicle,” said Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, which has investigated accidents involving Autopilot and criticized the system’s design. “It can be very dangerous.”

In addition, some who have long worked on autonomous vehicles for other companies — as well as seven former members of the Autopilot team — have questioned Tesla’s practice of constant modifications to Autopilot and FSD, pushed out to drivers through software updates, saying it can be hazardous because buyers are never quite sure what the system can and cannot do.

Hardware choices have also raised safety questions. Within Tesla, some argued for pairing cameras with radar and other sensors that worked better in heavy rain and snow, bright sunshine and other difficult conditions. For several years, Autopilot incorporated radar, and for a time Tesla worked on developing its own radar technology. But three people who worked on the project said Musk had repeatedly told members of the Autopilot team that humans could drive with only two eyes and that this meant cars should be able to drive with cameras alone.

They said he saw this as “returning to first principles” — a term Musk and others in the technology industry have long used to refer to sweeping aside standard practices and rethinking problems from scratch.

In May, Musk said on Twitter that Tesla was no longer putting radar on new cars. He said the company had tested the safety implications of not using radar but provided no details.

Some people have applauded Musk, saying a certain amount of compromise and risk was justified as he strove to reach mass production and ultimately change the automobile industry.

But recently, even Musk has expressed some doubts about Tesla’s technology. After repeatedly describing FSD in speeches, in interviews and on social media as a system on the verge of full autonomy, Musk in August called it “not great.” The team working on it, he said on Twitter, “is rallying to improve as fast as possible.”

Cameras as Eyes

Tesla began developing Autopilot more than seven years ago as an effort to meet new safety standards in Europe, which required technology such as automatic braking, according to three people familiar with the origins of the project.

The company originally called this an “advanced driver assistance” project, but was soon exploring a new name. Executives led by Musk decided on “Autopilot,” although some Tesla engineers objected to the name as misleading, favoring “Copilot” and other options, these three people said.

The name was borrowed from the aviation systems that allow planes to fly themselves in ideal conditions with limited pilot input.

At Autopilot’s official announcement in October 2014, Tesla said that the system would brake automatically and keep the car in a lane but added that “the driver is still responsible for, and ultimately in control of, the car.” It said that self-driving cars were “still years away from becoming a reality.”

At the beginning, Autopilot used cameras, radar and sound-wave sensors. But Musk told engineers that the system should eventually be able to drive autonomously from door to door — and it should do so solely with cameras, according to three people who worked on the project.

They said the Autopilot team continued to develop the system using radar and even planned to expand the number of radar sensors on each car, as well as exploring lidar — “light detection and ranging” devices that measure distances using laser pulses.

But Musk insisted that his two-eyes metaphor was the way forward and questioned whether radar was ultimately worth the headache and expense of buying and integrating radar technology from third parties, four people who worked on the Autopilot team said.

Over time, the company and the team moved closer to his way of thinking, placing more emphasis on camera technology, these people said.

Other companies developing driver-assistance systems and fully autonomous cars thought cameras were not enough. Google, for example, outfitted its self-driving test cars with expensive lidar devices as big as buckets mounted on the roof.

Cameras, by contrast, were cheap and small, which made them appealing to Tesla for its sleek cars. Radar, which uses radio waves and has been around for decades, was cheaper than lidar, a less-common technology. But according to three people who worked on the project, some engineers backed Musk’s cameras-only approach, arguing that radar was not always accurate and that it was difficult to reconcile radar data with information from cameras.

Autonomous driving experts said Musk’s cameras-as-eyes analogy was deeply flawed, as did eight former Autopilot engineers interviewed for this article, although some said there were colleagues who supported Musk’s view.

Aesthetics also influenced decisions about radar.

In late 2014, Tesla began installing radar on its Model S sedans as it prepared to roll out the first version of Autopilot. But Musk did not like the way the radar looked inside an open hole in the front of the cars and told his engineers to install a rubber seal, according to two people who worked on the project at the time, even though some employees warned that the seal could trap snow and ice and prevent the system from working properly.

These people said the company went ahead with Musk’s instructions without testing the design in winter weather — but resolved the situation after customers complained that the radar stopped working in winter.

In mid-2015, Musk met with a group of Tesla engineering managers to discuss their plans for the second version of Autopilot. One manager, an auto industry veteran named Hal Ockerse, told Musk he wanted to include a computer chip and other hardware that could monitor the physical components of Autopilot and provide backup if parts of the system suddenly stopped working, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting.

But Musk slapped down the idea, they said, arguing it would slow the progress of the project as Tesla worked to build a system that could drive cars by themselves. Already angry after Autopilot malfunctioned on his morning drive that day, Musk berated Ockerse for even suggesting the idea. Ockerse soon left the company.

By the end of 2015, Musk was publicly saying that Teslas would drive themselves within about two years. “I think we have all the pieces, and it’s just about refining those pieces, putting them in place, and making sure they work across a huge number of environments — and then we’re done,” he told Fortune magazine.

Other companies such as Google, Toyota and Nissan exploring autonomous driving were not nearly as optimistic in their public statements.

A Fatal Accident

In May 2016, about six months after Musk’s remarks appeared in Fortune, a Model S owner, Joshua Brown, was killed in Florida when Autopilot failed to recognize a tractor-trailer crossing in front of him. His car had radar and a camera.

Musk held a short meeting with the Autopilot team and briefly addressed the accident. He did not delve into the details of what went wrong but told the team that the company must work to ensure that its cars did not hit anything, according to two people who were part of the meeting.

Tesla later said that during the crash, Autopilot’s camera could not distinguish between the white truck and the bright sky. Tesla has never publicly explained why the radar did not prevent the accident. Radar technology, like cameras and lidar, is not flawless. But most in the industry believe that this means you need as many types of sensors as possible.

Less than a month after the crash, Musk said at an event hosted by Recode, a tech publication, that autonomous driving was “basically a solved problem” and that Teslas could already drive more safely than humans. He made no mention of the accident in which Brown was killed, although Tesla said in a blog post a few weeks later — headlined “A Tragic Loss” — that it had immediately reported the episode to federal regulators.

Although it is not clear that they were influenced by the fatal accident, Musk and Tesla soon showed a renewed interest in radar, according to three engineers who worked on Autopilot. The company began an effort to build its own radar technology, rather than using sensors built by other suppliers. The company hired Duc Vu, an expert in the field, in October 2016 from the auto parts company Delphi.

But 16 months later, Vu suddenly parted ways with the company after a disagreement he had with another executive over a new wiring system in Tesla’s cars, the three people said. In the weeks and months that followed, other members of the radar team left as well.

Over several months after those departures, Tesla reclassified the radar effort as a research undertaking rather than one actively aimed at production, the three people said.

The Quest for Fully Autonomous Cars

As Tesla approached the introduction of Autopilot 2.0, most of the Autopilot team dropped their normal duties to work on a video meant to show just how autonomous the system could be. But the final video did not provide a full picture of how the car operated during the filming.

The route taken by the car had been charted ahead of time by software that created a 3D digital map, a feature unavailable to drivers using the commercial version of Autopilot, according to two former members of the Autopilot team. At one point during the filming of the video, the car hit a roadside barrier on Tesla property while using Autopilot and had to be repaired, three people who worked on the video said.

The video was later used to promote Autopilot’s capabilities, and it is still on Tesla’s website.

When Musk unveiled Autopilot 2.0 in October 2016, he said at the news conference that all new Tesla cars now included the cameras, computing power and all other hardware they would need for “full self driving” — not a technical term, but one that suggested truly autonomous operation.

His statements took the engineering team by surprise, and some felt that Musk was promising something that was not possible, according to two people who worked on the project.

Sterling Anderson, who led the project at the time and later started an autonomous driving company called Aurora, told Tesla’s sales and marketing teams that they should not refer to the company’s technology as “autonomous” or “self-driving” because this would mislead the public, according to two former employees.

Some in the company may have heeded the advice, but Tesla was soon using the term “full self driving” as a standard way of describing its technology.

By 2017, Tesla began selling a set of services that the company has described as a more advanced version of Autopilot, calling the package Full Self Driving. Its features include responding to traffic lights and stop signs — and changing lanes without being prompted to by the driver. The company sold the package for up to $10,000.

Engineers who have worked on the technology acknowledge that these services have yet to reach the full autonomy implied in its name and promised by Musk in public statements. “I’m highly confident the car will drive itself for the reliability in excess of a human this year,” he said during an earnings call in January. “This is a very big deal.”

In early November, Tesla recalled nearly 12,000 vehicles that were part of the beta test of new FSD features, after deploying a software update that the company said might cause crashes because of unexpected activation of the cars’ emergency braking system.

Schuyler Cullen, who oversaw a team that explored autonomous-driving possibilities at the South Korean tech giant Samsung, said in an interview that Musk’s cameras-only approach was fundamentally flawed. “Cameras are not eyes! Pixels are not retinal ganglia! The FSD computer is nothing like the visual cortex!” said Cullen, a computer-vision specialist who now runs a startup that is building a new kind of camera-based sensor.

Amnon Shashua, CEO of Mobileye, a former Tesla supplier that has been testing technology that is similar to the electric-car maker’s, said Musk’s idea of using only cameras in a self-driving system could ultimately work, although other sensors may be needed in the short term. He added that Musk might exaggerate the capabilities of the company’s technology, but that those statements shouldn’t be taken too seriously.

“One should not be hung up on what Tesla says,” Shashua said. “Truth is not necessarily their end goal. The end goal is to build a business.”

Elon Musk built his electric car company, Tesla, around the promise that it represented the future of driving — a phrase emblazoned on the automaker’s website. Much of that promise was centered on Autopilot, a system of features that could steer, brake and accelerate the company’s sleek electric vehicles on highways.

Elon Musk built his electric car company, Tesla, around the promise that it represented the future of driving — a phrase emblazoned on the automaker’s website. Much of that promise was centered on Autopilot, a system of features that could steer, brake and accelerate the company’s sleek electric vehicles on highways. Over and over, Musk declared that truly autonomous driving was nearly at hand — the day when a Tesla could drive itself — and that the capability would be whisked to drivers over the air in software updates. Unlike technologists at almost every other company working on self-driving vehicles, Musk insisted that autonomy could be achieved solely with cameras tracking their surroundings. But many Tesla engineers questioned whether it was safe enough to rely on cameras without the benefit of other sensing devices — and whether Musk was promising drivers too much about Autopilot’s capabilities. Now those questions are at the heart of an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration after at least 12 accidents in which Teslas using Autopilot drove into parked firetrucks, police cars and other emergency vehicles, killing one person and injuring 17 others. Families are suing Tesla over fatal crashes, and Tesla customers are suing the company for misrepresenting Autopilot and a set of sister services called Full Self Driving, or FSD. As the guiding force behind Autopilot, Musk pushed it in directions other automakers were unwilling to take this kind of technology, interviews with 19 people who worked on the project over the past decade show. Musk repeatedly misled buyers about the services’ abilities, many of those people say. All spoke on the condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation from Musk and Tesla. Musk and a top Tesla lawyer did not respond to multiple email requests for comment for this article over several weeks, including a detailed list of questions. But the company has consistently said that the onus is on drivers to stay alert and take control of their cars should Autopilot malfunction. Since the start of Tesla’s work on Autopilot, there has been a tension between safety and Musk’s desire to market Tesla cars as technological marvels. For years, Musk has said Tesla cars were on the verge of complete autonomy. “The basic news is that all Tesla vehicles leaving the factory have all the hardware necessary for Level 5 autonomy,” he declared in 2016. The statement surprised and concerned some working on the project, since the Society of Automotive Engineers defines Level 5 as full driving automation. More recently, he has said that new software — currently part of a beta test by a limited number of Tesla owners who have bought the FSD package — will allow cars to drive themselves on city streets as well as highways. But as with Autopilot, Tesla documentation says drivers must keep their hands on the wheel, ready to take control of the car at any time. Regulators have warned that Tesla and Musk have exaggerated the sophistication of Autopilot, encouraging some people to misuse it. “Where I get concerned is the language that’s used to describe the capabilities of the vehicle,” said Jennifer Homendy, chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, which has investigated accidents involving Autopilot and criticized the system’s design. “It can be very dangerous.” In addition, some who have long worked on autonomous vehicles for other companies — as well as seven former members of the Autopilot team — have questioned Tesla’s practice of constant modifications to Autopilot and FSD, pushed out to drivers through software updates, saying it can be hazardous because buyers are never quite sure what the system can and cannot do. Hardware choices have also raised safety questions. Within Tesla, some argued for pairing cameras with radar and other sensors that worked better in heavy rain and snow, bright sunshine and other difficult conditions. For several years, Autopilot incorporated radar, and for a time Tesla worked on developing its own radar technology. But three people who worked on the project said Musk had repeatedly told members of the Autopilot team that humans could drive with only two eyes and that this meant cars should be able to drive with cameras alone. They said he saw this as “returning to first principles” — a term Musk and others in the technology industry have long used to refer to sweeping aside standard practices and rethinking problems from scratch. In May, Musk said on Twitter that Tesla was no longer putting radar on new cars. He said the company had tested the safety implications of not using radar but provided no details. Some people have applauded Musk, saying a certain amount of compromise and risk was justified as he strove to reach mass production and ultimately change the automobile industry. But recently, even Musk has expressed some doubts about Tesla’s technology. After repeatedly describing FSD in speeches, in interviews and on social media as a system on the verge of full autonomy, Musk in August called it “not great.” The team working on it, he said on Twitter, “is rallying to improve as fast as possible.” Cameras as Eyes Tesla began developing Autopilot more than seven years ago as an effort to meet new safety standards in Europe, which required technology such as automatic braking, according to three people familiar with the origins of the project. The company originally called this an “advanced driver assistance” project, but was soon exploring a new name. Executives led by Musk decided on “Autopilot,” although some Tesla engineers objected to the name as misleading, favoring “Copilot” and other options, these three people said. The name was borrowed from the aviation systems that allow planes to fly themselves in ideal conditions with limited pilot input. At Autopilot’s official announcement in October 2014, Tesla said that the system would brake automatically and keep the car in a lane but added that “the driver is still responsible for, and ultimately in control of, the car.” It said that self-driving cars were “still years away from becoming a reality.” At the beginning, Autopilot used cameras, radar and sound-wave sensors. But Musk told engineers that the system should eventually be able to drive autonomously from door to door — and it should do so solely with cameras, according to three people who worked on the project. They said the Autopilot team continued to develop the system using radar and even planned to expand the number of radar sensors on each car, as well as exploring lidar — “light detection and ranging” devices that measure distances using laser pulses. But Musk insisted that his two-eyes metaphor was the way forward and questioned whether radar was ultimately worth the headache and expense of buying and integrating radar technology from third parties, four people who worked on the Autopilot team said. Over time, the company and the team moved closer to his way of thinking, placing more emphasis on camera technology, these people said. Other companies developing driver-assistance systems and fully autonomous cars thought cameras were not enough. Google, for example, outfitted its self-driving test cars with expensive lidar devices as big as buckets mounted on the roof. Cameras, by contrast, were cheap and small, which made them appealing to Tesla for its sleek cars. Radar, which uses radio waves and has been around for decades, was cheaper than lidar, a less-common technology. But according to three people who worked on the project, some engineers backed Musk’s cameras-only approach, arguing that radar was not always accurate and that it was difficult to reconcile radar data with information from cameras. Autonomous driving experts said Musk’s cameras-as-eyes analogy was deeply flawed, as did eight former Autopilot engineers interviewed for this article, although some said there were colleagues who supported Musk’s view. Aesthetics also influenced decisions about radar. In late 2014, Tesla began installing radar on its Model S sedans as it prepared to roll out the first version of Autopilot. But Musk did not like the way the radar looked inside an open hole in the front of the cars and told his engineers to install a rubber seal, according to two people who worked on the project at the time, even though some employees warned that the seal could trap snow and ice and prevent the system from working properly. These people said the company went ahead with Musk’s instructions without testing the design in winter weather — but resolved the situation after customers complained that the radar stopped working in winter. In mid-2015, Musk met with a group of Tesla engineering managers to discuss their plans for the second version of Autopilot. One manager, an auto industry veteran named Hal Ockerse, told Musk he wanted to include a computer chip and other hardware that could monitor the physical components of Autopilot and provide backup if parts of the system suddenly stopped working, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting. But Musk slapped down the idea, they said, arguing it would slow the progress of the project as Tesla worked to build a system that could drive cars by themselves. Already angry after Autopilot malfunctioned on his morning drive that day, Musk berated Ockerse for even suggesting the idea. Ockerse soon left the company. By the end of 2015, Musk was publicly saying that Teslas would drive themselves within about two years. “I think we have all the pieces, and it’s just about refining those pieces, putting them in place, and making sure they work across a huge number of environments — and then we’re done,” he told Fortune magazine. Other companies such as Google, Toyota and Nissan exploring autonomous driving were not nearly as optimistic in their public statements. A Fatal Accident In May 2016, about six months after Musk’s remarks appeared in Fortune, a Model S owner, Joshua Brown, was killed in Florida when Autopilot failed to recognize a tractor-trailer crossing in front of him. His car had radar and a camera. Musk held a short meeting with the Autopilot team and briefly addressed the accident. He did not delve into the details of what went wrong but told the team that the company must work to ensure that its cars did not hit anything, according to two people who were part of the meeting. Tesla later said that during the crash, Autopilot’s camera could not distinguish between the white truck and the bright sky. Tesla has never publicly explained why the radar did not prevent the accident. Radar technology, like cameras and lidar, is not flawless. But most in the industry believe that this means you need as many types of sensors as possible. Less than a month after the crash, Musk said at an event hosted by Recode, a tech publication, that autonomous driving was “basically a solved problem” and that Teslas could already drive more safely than humans. He made no mention of the accident in which Brown was killed, although Tesla said in a blog post a few weeks later — headlined “A Tragic Loss” — that it had immediately reported the episode to federal regulators. Although it is not clear that they were influenced by the fatal accident, Musk and Tesla soon showed a renewed interest in radar, according to three engineers who worked on Autopilot. The company began an effort to build its own radar technology, rather than using sensors built by other suppliers. The company hired Duc Vu, an expert in the field, in October 2016 from the auto parts company Delphi. But 16 months later, Vu suddenly parted ways with the company after a disagreement he had with another executive over a new wiring system in Tesla’s cars, the three people said. In the weeks and months that followed, other members of the radar team left as well. Over several months after those departures, Tesla reclassified the radar effort as a research undertaking rather than one actively aimed at production, the three people said. The Quest for Fully Autonomous Cars As Tesla approached the introduction of Autopilot 2.0, most of the Autopilot team dropped their normal duties to work on a video meant to show just how autonomous the system could be. But the final video did not provide a full picture of how the car operated during the filming. The route taken by the car had been charted ahead of time by software that created a 3D digital map, a feature unavailable to drivers using the commercial version of Autopilot, according to two former members of the Autopilot team. At one point during the filming of the video, the car hit a roadside barrier on Tesla property while using Autopilot and had to be repaired, three people who worked on the video said. The video was later used to promote Autopilot’s capabilities, and it is still on Tesla’s website. When Musk unveiled Autopilot 2.0 in October 2016, he said at the news conference that all new Tesla cars now included the cameras, computing power and all other hardware they would need for “full self driving” — not a technical term, but one that suggested truly autonomous operation. His statements took the engineering team by surprise, and some felt that Musk was promising something that was not possible, according to two people who worked on the project. Sterling Anderson, who led the project at the time and later started an autonomous driving company called Aurora, told Tesla’s sales and marketing teams that they should not refer to the company’s technology as “autonomous” or “self-driving” because this would mislead the public, according to two former employees. Some in the company may have heeded the advice, but Tesla was soon using the term “full self driving” as a standard way of describing its technology. By 2017, Tesla began selling a set of services that the company has described as a more advanced version of Autopilot, calling the package Full Self Driving. Its features include responding to traffic lights and stop signs — and changing lanes without being prompted to by the driver. The company sold the package for up to $10,000. Engineers who have worked on the technology acknowledge that these services have yet to reach the full autonomy implied in its name and promised by Musk in public statements. “I’m highly confident the car will drive itself for the reliability in excess of a human this year,” he said during an earnings call in January. “This is a very big deal.” In early November, Tesla recalled nearly 12,000 vehicles that were part of the beta test of new FSD features, after deploying a software update that the company said might cause crashes because of unexpected activation of the cars’ emergency braking system. Schuyler Cullen, who oversaw a team that explored autonomous-driving possibilities at the South Korean tech giant Samsung, said in an interview that Musk’s cameras-only approach was fundamentally flawed. “Cameras are not eyes! Pixels are not retinal ganglia! The FSD computer is nothing like the visual cortex!” said Cullen, a computer-vision specialist who now runs a startup that is building a new kind of camera-based sensor. Amnon Shashua, CEO of Mobileye, a former Tesla supplier that has been testing technology that is similar to the electric-car maker’s, said Musk’s idea of using only cameras in a self-driving system could ultimately work, although other sensors may be needed in the short term. He added that Musk might exaggerate the capabilities of the company’s technology, but that those statements shouldn’t be taken too seriously. “One should not be hung up on what Tesla says,” Shashua said. “Truth is not necessarily their end goal. The end goal is to build a business.”

Did Elon Musk sacrifice safety in his push for self-driving cars?

Singer-songwriter Grimes isn't holding back. Her new song 'Player Of Games' takes ample digs at her ex Elon Musk.&nbsp; 
 
The 33-year-old Canadian singer, whose real name is Claire Elise Boucher, split from the billionaire Tesla founder in September after three years together. They share one son together, named as X AE A-Xii or 'Baby X'. 
 
In the song, she sings, "I'm in love with the greatest gamer. But he'll always love the game more than he loves me." 
 
Before starting the electric vehicle company, Musk developed video games and considers himself an avid gamer who still loves to play. 
 
In another bit in the song, Grimes sings, "Sail away to the cold expanse of space, even love couldn't keep you in your place."Musk also founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transportation company, in the hopes of colonizing Mars one day. 
 
When the couple split three months ago, Musk told Page Six at the time, "We are semi-separated but still love each other, see each other frequently, and are on great terms." 
 
He said, "It's mostly that my work at SpaceX and Tesla requires me to be primarily in Texas or travelling overseas and her work is primarily in LA. She's staying with me now and Baby X is in the adjacent room." 
 
The couple was last seen together at the 2021 Met Gala in New York City. Grimes walked the red carpet solo and met up with Musk later inside the event. After the fashion party, they threw a star-studded after-party at the private club Zero Bond. 
 
Musk was previously married to author Justine Wilson from 2000 to 2008, and they share twin sons Griffin and Xavier and triplet sons Damian, Saxon and Kai. They also had a sixth son, Nevada, who died at just 10 weeks old. After Wilson, Musk married and divorced actor Talulah Riley twice. The first time was from 2010 to 2012 and then again from 2013 to 2016. 
 
Meanwhile, Grimes was in a previous relationship with electronic musician Jaime Brooks from 2012 to 2018.&nbsp; 
&nbsp;

Singer-songwriter Grimes isn't holding back. Her new song 'Player Of Games' takes ample digs at her ex Elon Musk. The 33-year-old Canadian singer, whose real name is Claire Elise Boucher, split from the billionaire Tesla founder in September after three years together.

Singer-songwriter Grimes isn't holding back. Her new song 'Player Of Games' takes ample digs at her ex Elon Musk. The 33-year-old Canadian singer, whose real name is Claire Elise Boucher, split from the billionaire Tesla founder in September after three years together. They share one son together, named as X AE A-Xii or 'Baby X'. In the song, she sings, "I'm in love with the greatest gamer. But he'll always love the game more than he loves me." Before starting the electric vehicle company, Musk developed video games and considers himself an avid gamer who still loves to play. In another bit in the song, Grimes sings, "Sail away to the cold expanse of space, even love couldn't keep you in your place."Musk also founded SpaceX, an aerospace manufacturer and space transportation company, in the hopes of colonizing Mars one day. When the couple split three months ago, Musk told Page Six at the time, "We are semi-separated but still love each other, see each other frequently, and are on great terms." He said, "It's mostly that my work at SpaceX and Tesla requires me to be primarily in Texas or travelling overseas and her work is primarily in LA. She's staying with me now and Baby X is in the adjacent room." The couple was last seen together at the 2021 Met Gala in New York City. Grimes walked the red carpet solo and met up with Musk later inside the event. After the fashion party, they threw a star-studded after-party at the private club Zero Bond. Musk was previously married to author Justine Wilson from 2000 to 2008, and they share twin sons Griffin and Xavier and triplet sons Damian, Saxon and Kai. They also had a sixth son, Nevada, who died at just 10 weeks old. After Wilson, Musk married and divorced actor Talulah Riley twice. The first time was from 2010 to 2012 and then again from 2013 to 2016. Meanwhile, Grimes was in a previous relationship with electronic musician Jaime Brooks from 2012 to 2018.

Grimes takes a dig at ex Elon Musk in her new song 'Player of Games'

As stated on the company's website, Tesla, Elon Musk's electric car firm, was created on the idea that it represented the future of driving.

At the core of much of that promise was Autopilot, a combination of features that could steer, brake, and accelerate the company's sleek electric vehicles on highways.&nbsp;

Elon Musk, according to Tesla whistleblowers, deceived customers and compromised safety with the Autopilot driving system, which was previously blamed for deadly fatalities, according to a report in DailyMail.co.uk. 
 
Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/trending/elon-musk-takes-a-dig-at-parag-agrawal-shares-a-photoshopped-image-comparing-him-with-joseph-stalin-433508" hreflang="en">Elon Musk takes a dig at Parag Agrawal, shares a photoshopped image comparing him with Joseph Stalin</a>

Former employees have come up with damaging charges that Musk, the world's second richest man, contributed to the hazards presented by the Autopilot system deaths by refusing to deploy sensors in favour of cameras. 
 
Watch | Gravitas: Why is Elon Musk selling whistles?

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/gravitas-why-is-elon-musk-selling-whistles-433365/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

According to statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, at least ten individuals have died in eight accidents involving Tesla's Autopilot since 2016.&nbsp;

Separately, the US Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Tesla for allegedly failing to fully inform shareholders and the general public about the risk of its solar panels catching fire.

Tesla customers are suing the business for misrepresenting Autopilot and a suite of sister services known as Full Self Driving, or F.S.D., and families are suing Tesla for deadly collisions.&nbsp;

(With inputs from agencies)

As stated on the company's website, Tesla, Elon Musk's electric car firm, was created on the idea that it represented the future of driving. At the core of much of that promise was Autopilot, a combination of features that could steer, brake, and accelerate the company's sleek electric vehicles on highways.

As stated on the company's website, Tesla, Elon Musk's electric car firm, was created on the idea that it represented the future of driving. At the core of much of that promise was Autopilot, a combination of features that could steer, brake, and accelerate the company's sleek electric vehicles on highways. Elon Musk, according to Tesla whistleblowers, deceived customers and compromised safety with the Autopilot driving system, which was previously blamed for deadly fatalities, according to a report in DailyMail.co.uk. Also read | Elon Musk takes a dig at Parag Agrawal, shares a photoshopped image comparing him with Joseph Stalin Former employees have come up with damaging charges that Musk, the world's second richest man, contributed to the hazards presented by the Autopilot system deaths by refusing to deploy sensors in favour of cameras. Watch | Gravitas: Why is Elon Musk selling whistles? According to statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, at least ten individuals have died in eight accidents involving Tesla's Autopilot since 2016. Separately, the US Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating Tesla for allegedly failing to fully inform shareholders and the general public about the risk of its solar panels catching fire. Tesla customers are suing the business for misrepresenting Autopilot and a suite of sister services known as Full Self Driving, or F.S.D., and families are suing Tesla for deadly collisions. (With inputs from agencies)

Elon Musk misled buyers with Autopilot driving system: Tesla whistleblowers

Following the Indian government’s warning, Starlink, the satellite internet division of Elon Musk-led SpaceX, has said that it will apply for a commercial licence early next year to provide broadband and other services.

“We hope to have applied for a commercial licence on or before 31st January 2022 (unless we hit some major roadblock),” Sanjay Bhargava, Starlink Country Director, India at SpaceX said in a LinkedIn post.

If the company can roll out its services by April, it aims to have 200,000 Starlink devices in India by December 2022, it said in a presentation posted by Bhargava. The company has previously said it expects 80 per cent of these devices to be in rural areas.

On November 27, the Indian government had issued a missive after the company started taking pre-bookings for satellite broadband services.

The Department of Telecom (DoT) had said that Starlink Internet Services is not licensed to offer satellite-based internet services in India, and advised the public to refrain from subscribing to its services.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/india-news/dont-subscribe-elon-musk-backed-starlink-services-till-it-gets-licence-indian-government-tells-public-432309">Don’t subscribe Elon Musk-backed Starlink services till it gets licence, Indian government tells public</a>

DoT made it clear that the company should “get licence before offering Satellite-based services”.

While Starlink has already received over 5,000 pre-orders for its devices in India, it has not begun any services.

Starlink is one of a growing number of companies launching small satellites as part of a low-Earth orbit network to provide low-latency broadband internet services around the world, with a particular focus on remote areas that terrestrial internet infrastructure struggles to reach.

Its competitors include Amazon.com's Kuiper and OneWeb which is co-owned by the British government and India's Bharti Enterprises.

(With inputs from agencies)

Following the Indian government’s warning, Starlink, the satellite internet division of Elon Musk-led SpaceX, has said that it will apply for a commercial licence early next year to provide broadband and other services.

Following the Indian government’s warning, Starlink, the satellite internet division of Elon Musk-led SpaceX, has said that it will apply for a commercial licence early next year to provide broadband and other services. “We hope to have applied for a commercial licence on or before 31st January 2022 (unless we hit some major roadblock),” Sanjay Bhargava, Starlink Country Director, India at SpaceX said in a LinkedIn post. If the company can roll out its services by April, it aims to have 200,000 Starlink devices in India by December 2022, it said in a presentation posted by Bhargava. The company has previously said it expects 80 per cent of these devices to be in rural areas. On November 27, the Indian government had issued a missive after the company started taking pre-bookings for satellite broadband services. The Department of Telecom (DoT) had said that Starlink Internet Services is not licensed to offer satellite-based internet services in India, and advised the public to refrain from subscribing to its services. Also read | Don’t subscribe Elon Musk-backed Starlink services till it gets licence, Indian government tells public DoT made it clear that the company should “get licence before offering Satellite-based services”. While Starlink has already received over 5,000 pre-orders for its devices in India, it has not begun any services. Starlink is one of a growing number of companies launching small satellites as part of a low-Earth orbit network to provide low-latency broadband internet services around the world, with a particular focus on remote areas that terrestrial internet infrastructure struggles to reach. Its competitors include Amazon.com's Kuiper and OneWeb which is co-owned by the British government and India's Bharti Enterprises. (With inputs from agencies)

Elon Musk’s Starlink caves in to Indian govt’s warning, to apply for licence by Jan 2022

Elon Musk's recent tweet is being perceived as an attempt at joke the billionaire appears to crack at whistleblowers. He has posted picture of a Tesla whistle and in an attempt to promote the Tesla-branded merchandise, has asked his Twitter followers to 'Blow the whistle on Tesla'.

<div class="ui-state-default" contenteditable="false">
<div class="twitter-block" draggable="false">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Blow the whistle on Tesla!<a href="https://t.co/c86hLA0iQK">https://t.co/c86hLA0iQK</a>
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1465838829370228737?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 1, 2021</a></blockquote>
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When the link is clicked, the resultant webpage does not show any link to buy the USD 50&nbsp;whistle.

<div class="videoWrapper trancodeVideo"><iframe allowfullscreen="" autoplay="1" class="includeVideo" frameborder="0" height="350" src="https://www.wionews.com/videos/gravitas-why-is-elon-musk-selling-whistles-433365/embed" style="width:100%;max-width:560px;" width="560"></iframe></div>

In his next tweet, Musk says "Don't waste your money on that silly Apple Cloth, buy our whistle instead!"

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Don’t waste your money on that silly Apple Cloth, buy our whistle instead!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) <a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1465842137392680963?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 1, 2021</a></blockquote>
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This is a reference to Apple's microfiber polishing cloth that costs USD 19. The cloth has already gone on sale in some markets.

Elon Musk is known for his witty tweets which are at time sarcastic and poke fun at something. But how this new tweet should be interpreted is something that is being thought especially considering whistleblowers who have drawn attention to alleged toxic work culture and racist abuse and even sexual harassment at Tesla.

Tesla has even faced lawsuits over these issues.

Also read |&nbsp;<a href="https://www.wionews.com/trending/elon-musk-takes-a-dig-at-parag-agrawal-shares-a-photoshopped-image-comparing-him-with-joseph-stalin-433508" hreflang="en">Elon Musk takes a dig at Parag Agrawal, shares a photoshopped image comparing him with Joseph Stalin</a>

A female worker sued Tesla last month over sexual harassment she said she faced in company's California factory.

In the month of October this year. Tesla was ordered to pay USD 137 million to Owen Diaz an African-American employee who faced racist behaviour.

The whistle Musk tweeted about is being called Cyberwhistle and it has been modelled on Cybertruck, pick-up truck manufactured by Tesla.

Elon Musk's recent tweet is being perceived as an attempt at joke the billionaire appears to crack at whistleblowers. He has posted picture of a Tesla whistle and in an attempt to promote the Tesla-branded merchandise, has asked his Twitter followers to 'Blow the whistle on Tesla'.

Elon Musk's recent tweet is being perceived as an attempt at joke the billionaire appears to crack at whistleblowers. He has posted picture of a Tesla whistle and in an attempt to promote the Tesla-branded merchandise, has asked his Twitter followers to 'Blow the whistle on Tesla'. Blow the whistle on Tesla!https://t.co/c86hLA0iQK — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 1, 2021 × When the link is clicked, the resultant webpage does not show any link to buy the USD 50 whistle. In his next tweet, Musk says "Don't waste your money on that silly Apple Cloth, buy our whistle instead!" Don’t waste your money on that silly Apple Cloth, buy our whistle instead! — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 1, 2021 × This is a reference to Apple's microfiber polishing cloth that costs USD 19. The cloth has already gone on sale in some markets. Elon Musk is known for his witty tweets which are at time sarcastic and poke fun at something. But how this new tweet should be interpreted is something that is being thought especially considering whistleblowers who have drawn attention to alleged toxic work culture and racist abuse and even sexual harassment at Tesla. Tesla has even faced lawsuits over these issues. Also read | Elon Musk takes a dig at Parag Agrawal, shares a photoshopped image comparing him with Joseph Stalin A female worker sued Tesla last month over sexual harassment she said she faced in company's California factory. In the month of October this year. Tesla was ordered to pay USD 137 million to Owen Diaz an African-American employee who faced racist behaviour. The whistle Musk tweeted about is being called Cyberwhistle and it has been modelled on Cybertruck, pick-up truck manufactured by Tesla.

Elon Musk's tweet on Tesla whistle gets associated with whistleblowers

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