Tesla, led by Elon Musk, is known for electric vehicles, solar energy and AI-driven humanoid robots. However, recent viral videos on social media claim Tesla is entering the smartphone market.
“Elon Musk is expected to launch the Tesla Pi Phone,” this Facebook post says. Videos posted to TikTok, YouTube and X also appear to show a design of the phone. These Instagram and Facebook posts say the Tesla phone will be released this December.
VERIFY reader Elham asked us if Tesla really is coming out with a cell phone.
THE QUESTION
Has Tesla announced plans to create a new phone?
THE SOURCES
- Elon Musk on a Nov. 4 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience”
- Review of Elon Musk’s X account
- Review of Tesla’s social accounts and website
- RevEye, a reverse image search tool
THE ANSWER
No, Tesla hasn’t announced plans to create a new phone.
WHAT WE FOUND
Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk have not announced plans to create a cell phone, contrary to claims in viral posts. The designs shown in these videos appear to be fake, and Musk has denied such a project exists.
During the Nov. 4 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” podcast, Rogan asked Musk about YouTube videos suggesting Tesla was developing a phone. Musk debunked the rumors at around an hour and a half into the episode. Here is a transcript from that portion of the exchange:
Rogan: There’s always these rumors, and I’ve contacted you about it before, but there’s always these [expletive] YouTube videos where they’re talking about a Tesla phone, releasing a Tesla phone.
Musk: No, we’re not doing a phone.
Rogan: Have you ever thought about it?
Musk: We could do a phone … Like the operating system of Tesla, it’s Linux based, we’ve written a massive amount of software on top of that … Tesla is probably in a better position to create a new phone that’s not Android or iPhone than maybe any company in the world. But, it’s not something that we want to do, unless we have to or something.
Rogan: What would be the situation where you would have to?
Musk: I think if Apple or Google slash Android started doing really bad things, like I don’t know, censorship of apps or … Like just being like gatekeepers you know, in a really bad way, then I guess we would make a phone.
Musk went on to say making a phone would be a “huge pain in the [expletive]” and his “plate is full” with electric cars, humanoid robots and other projects.
A review of Tesla and Musk’s X accounts found no announcement Tesla was creating a phone. Tesla’s website also has no references to a phone product.
VERIFY also conducted reverse image searches of the phone models that appear in the social media posts. No reputable news sources have published images appearing to be of the phone, which is an indication they are fake or artificially generated.
VERIFY reached out to Tesla for comment but did not hear back at the time of publication.