Legacy auto still leaves many things to be desired in terms of electric vehicles
Not a Tesla App / Dilbert
Tesla's CEO Elon Musk has frequently referred to the popular Dilbert cartoon. In a memo to employees in 2018, he wrote: "In general, use common sense as your guide. If following a 'company rule' is obviously ridiculous in a particular situation, such that it would make for a great Dilbert cartoon, then the rule should change."
Only Tesla could be penalized for being too environmentally friendly, too efficient and too far ahead of the competition, but that is what the Inflation Reduction Act is doing. Twitter user @farzyness tweeted a very Dilbert-like post, but it's not a cartoon.
The tweet reads: The car on the left (hybrid Jeep) has a gas engine and gets 20 MPG. It has 21 miles of electric range. It gets a $7,500 EV Tax Credit. The car on the right (Tesla Model Y) is electric only and gets 113 MPEe. It has 330 miles of range. It does not get a $7,500 EV tax credit.
Brett Winston, the chief Futurist with ARK Invest, added more layers to this already Dilbert classic. He tweeted: A recipe for misaligned incentives: Take 1 ICE SUV Add $2,500 of batteries (for a whopping 21 miles of electric range) Get a $7,500 subsidy (Meanwhile a true EV SUV with 15x the range and more cargo capacity doesn't qualify because it's not "SUV enough").
Tesla's Dilbert Cartoon Moment - Penalized for Being too Efficient
Not a Tesla App
Farzad Mesbahi has started a Change.org petition to right this obvious wrong. His petition, Fix the Inflation Reduction Act EV Tax Credit, has some harsh words for those who wrote the legislation. He states, "At best, this is a pretty severe lack of negligence by the IRS to properly categorize vehicles. At worst, it's corruption against companies like Tesla in order to benefit a dying legacy auto industry by giving them EV tax credits for vehicles that are anything but EVs. Instead of funding the next generation of the American economy, tax payers are now funding old technology in large, inefficient gas vehicle auto makers. This is a gross miss use of taxpayer dollars."
But not all hope is lost — yet. The IRS allows public input on the "Qualified Plug-in Electric Drive Motor Vehicle Credit." Americans have until February 28, 2023, to provide comments. There is even an email address to make it easier: pra.comments@irs.gov. Make sure to include "OMB Control No. 1545-2137" in the subject line.
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Following yesterday’s news that the Tesla Robotaxi network is ahead of schedule and set to launch on June 12th, overnight, Elon confirmed that the Robotaxi network is far ahead of expectations.
With Elon back and working full-time at Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, we’ll likely receive a lot more updates on what these companies are working on. In this case, Elon confirmed that Tesla has been running autonomous Model Ys with no one in the driver’s seat on Austin’s public seats, with no incidents. According to yesterday’s report, there is still someone in the passenger seat just in case something comes up, but essentially “driverless.”
Elon also confirmed that Tesla’s ambitious plans to have a Model Y deliver itself directly from the factory to a customer, presumably in Austin, will also occur next month.
For the past several days, Tesla has been testing self-driving Model Y cars (no one in driver’s seat) on Austin public streets with no incidents.
A month ahead of schedule.
Next month, first self-delivery from factory to customer.
While this will likely be geographically limited to the areas around Giga Texas, and potentially, Tesla’s Fremont factory in the future, it is still a great step toward reducing the cost of vehicles.
Public Access by End of June
In a reply, Elon also confirmed that anyone would be able to test out the Robotaxi network by the end of June. While in typical Elon fashion, he didn’t answer the question of whether the network will be invite-only at first, we expect this will likely be the case and it won’t just be anyone who can open the Tesla app and summon a robotaxi.
At the Q1 2025 Earnings Call, Elon stated that the Robotaxi service would only be available to the public in late June or early July, giving Tesla enough time to test with internal audiences, as well as invited testers. This timeline seems to be fairly concrete, but if you’re planning a trip to Austin to check out Robotaxi, we suggest looking at early July, as timelines can still shift.
Tesla’s Optimus X account recently dropped another video, following up on its previous dance routines. Previously, Optimus demonstrated impressive footwork, along with a level of agility and balance that has improved immensely since Optimus was first unveiled.
In a new video posted to X, Optimus is seen doing actual work. While it’s still in the early days, Tesla shows off how the robot is learning to perform small tasks.
The real focus of the video isn’t on the tasks Optimus is performing but on how it’s learning to perform these tasks. Optimus is learning by watching humans perform the work through a first-person view.
The video demonstrates Optimus tackling daily tasks that require a good degree of dexterity and environmental awareness, including vacuuming, cooking, and even taking out the trash. While the previous demonstrations were more of a showcase of Optimus’ physical capabilities, this one is more about the learning process.
The key breakthrough, which was emphasized by members of Tesla’s Optimus AI team, is the robot’s new ability to learn complex, bi-manual tasks largely from watching videos of humans performing them. This results in a reduction in direct teleoperation, where real humans control Optimus remotely to generate training data.
Murtaza Dalal, a member of Tesla’s Optimus AI team, shared his excitement about the development - and noted that while teleoperation doesn’t scale, training by watching video does scale — extremely fast.
First-Person Perspective
The ability to learn from human video (while currently focused on a first-person perspective) means Optimus can bootstrap new tasks much faster than before and with less human interaction required. Milan Kovac, an Optimus Engineering team member, elaborated on this, stating:
“We recently had a significant breakthrough along that journey, and can now transfer a big chunk of the learning directly from human videos to the bots... Many new skills are emerging through this process, are called for via natural language (voice/text), and are run by a single neural network on the bot (multi-tasking).”
What’s Next for Optimus?
The road doesn’t stop here. The Optimus team is already looking to see where they can push the barriers of learning, and is looking at having Optimus learn directly from internet videos of humans doing tasks. This means learning from third-person views rather than the more optimized first-person views that it is currently learning from today.
Once Optimus can translate the third-person perspective to the first-person, much like humans do, then it opens up a whole new world of training data. Optimus will be able to learn simply by watching the world around him.
All this rapid advancement is critical for Tesla. Elon has doubled down on Optimus being Tesla’s key to unlocking the biggest market in the world, and it is key to pushing Tesla’s new vision of sustainable abundance.
This is just the first step in a long process - we’re still years away from Optimus making its way to customer homes, but the journey has to start somewhere. For now, it’ll be working hard in Tesla’s labs and factories, and we expect to hear more about Optimus later this year once the production line is up and running.
![Tesla’s Optimus Is Now Learning by Watching — First Person Today, Third Person Tomorrow [VIDEO]](https://www.notateslaapp.com/img/containers/article_images/2025/optimus_cleaning.png/bd519f7f31d9c3e7e25c2736ee284efb/optimus_cleaning.jpg)
