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Ride the Lightning: Tesla and EV Podcast

Episode 547: A Wild Week of FSD News

Ride the Lightning: Tesla and EV Podcast

Ryan McCaffrey

Business News, News, Automotive, Leisure

4.71K Ratings

🗓️ 25 January 2026

⏱️ 95 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It's been a wild week of FSD news, from Tesla discontinuing basic Autopilot on new car purchases to Tesla's CEO saying the price of FSD will go up as unsupervised arrives to unsupervised actually arriving – for the first couple of test cars in the Austin robotaxi fleet, at least. Plus: one insurance company wants to drastically lower the rates of Tesla owners who make frequent use of FSD, the Cybercab gets a camera-related upgrade that Tesla customers have wanted for a while now, and more!

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Transcript

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0:00.0

On this week's episode of Ride the Lightning, the Tesla and EV podcast, it has been a wild week of FSD news from Tesla discontinuing basic autopilot on new car purchases to Tesla's CEO saying the price of FSD will go up as unsupervised arrives to unsupervised actually arriving for the first couple of

0:23.2

test cars in the Austin Robotaxi fleet at least.

0:26.8

Plus, one insurance company wants to drastically lower the rates of Tesla owners who make

0:32.3

frequent use of FSD, the cyber cab gets a camera-related upgrade that Tesla customers have wanted for a while now and more. What's happening, friends, Ryan McCaffrey joining you for episode 547 of Ride the Lightning,

1:07.2

the weekly Tesla and EV podcast, publishing on January 25th, 2026. I'm recording as

1:14.4

usual on Friday evening here on January 23rd. And boy, I sure hope no other FSD related news

1:21.6

happens between the time I record this and the time that I publish it and the time that you hear

1:27.4

it, because there has

1:28.3

been so much, so much FSD related news this week. We've got a super busy episode plan for you.

1:35.6

Next week, by the way, will be the earnings call, the Q4 earnings call for Tesla, which means I'll be

1:42.9

doing my usual thing of giving you all the highlight

1:46.5

clips, the analysis from the call itself, as well as the shareholder letter. So stay tuned for that

1:53.3

on next week's episode. But I do want to start before I get to all the FSD-related stuff

1:59.6

with a spicy tip that was sent my way, I do want to

2:04.4

preface this one by saying that this is a secondhand source. I have firsthand sources that

2:10.9

sometimes slip me bits of information that I feel really confident in reporting to you

2:16.8

and passing along.

2:18.5

This one being a secondhand source that I'm not, that I don't already have an established

2:25.1

relationship with, you know, I can't 100% say this is absolutely going to happen.

2:32.2

So I can't vouch for this one yet, but I'm going to pass it along

2:36.2

with that caveat, and then we'll see if this source proves themselves to be reliable. So,

2:42.2

the tip is this. This source told me that the Model YL will go on sale in the United States next month, meaning in February, and that Tesla's

...

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