On this week's episode of Ride the Lightning, the Tesla and EV podcast, Tesla's more luxurious,

longer wheelbase six-seat model YL looks set to enter another new region, setting it up for a

potential global rollout sooner rather than later. Plus, Cybertruck earns a top safety rating,

Ford sadly discontinues the fantastic F-150 lightning and more. What's happening, friends, welcome to Ride the Lightning.

It is your weekly Tesla and EV podcast, episode 542, publishing on December 21st, 2025, recording as usual on the previous

Friday evening, December 19th, 2025. Both dogs to my left, chilling on the couch. Great to be

with you here. The work year has unofficially ended. I've still got a few things I'm going to be

wrapping up in the early part of next week, but a lot of emails slowing down, not a lot of slacks.

So now I've got to start wrapping gifts for my family. There's a lot to do over the next week.

But for now, I am so happy to be with you here

for another week of Tesla and EV talk. And I'll start here. If you're wondering why your

Tesla stock popped earlier this past week, it's because completely driverless, meaning fully

autonomous, Model Y robotaxies have begun running around Austin for final validation.

And, you know, this is right on schedule.

I mean, not, hey, I'm not looking the gift Tesla stock pop in the eye.

The CEO, of course, Elon Musk had previously guided that this would happen right towards the end

of this year slash beginning of 2026 that was when Tesla had said that they were going to be

removing the safety monitor and going fully driverless for the robo taxi fleet in Austin we're still

we've still got a ways to wait in other markets, but Austin is, is leading

the way here.

And this week, Elon did confirm on X that, quote, testing is underway with no occupants

in the car.

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