Method

How these cards are graded

The Record is an independent editorial site. It is not affiliated with Tesla, Inc., SpaceX, xAI, or Elon Musk.

Each card starts from a claim that actually circulates — search results, cable news, forums, dinner tables — not a straw man invented to be knocked down.

Where a criticism still holds — Autopilot naming, FSD dates, Boca Chica habitat, renter charging, panel gaps on ramp-year cars — it stays on the card. A source of truth that cannot say “yes, that part” is just another myth.

Sources are primary or close: Tesla’s own fire and safety reports, EPA myth pages, Carbon Brief’s EV factcheck, NASA commercial-crew material, World Bank and Our World in Data poverty series, contemporaneous reporting on the 2021 tax bill and the 2025 inauguration gesture. Click through. If a figure moves, the card should move.

Where a language has real reporting that speaks to the card — Spiegel, ADEME, El País — it sits above the original sources. If it does not, the English sources stay.