A Facebook (FB) page based in the Philippines speculated that a smartphone called Tesla Phone Pi will be launched this December. This is false.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has not tweeted about launching a new phone. He denied such rumors during a November podcast episode and an October town hall meeting in Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
An international audience, Filipinos among them, reshared and reacted to the erroneous post.
On Nov. 23, FB page Science and Technology claimed that Tesla’s upcoming smartphone could be charged using a light source, connect directly to Musk’s satellite-based internet called Starlink, and carry an “Earth-Moon-Mars connection.” It read in part:
TESLA PHONE PI to be released in December 2024 ?
Charged with solar energy
Willing to unpack an iPhone
Tesla’s Pi phone is coming and everyone will rejoice at the end of 2024
Asked by American podcaster Joe Rogan about a rumored Tesla Phone, Musk replied:
“No, we’re not doing a phone… Probably Tesla is in a better position to create a new phone that’s not Android or iPhone than maybe any other country in the world, but it’s not something we wanna do unless we have to…. You know, if Apple and Google / Android started doing really bad things like censorship of apps or just being like, gatekeepers in a really bad way, then I guess we’re gonna make a phone.”
Source: YouTube channel PowerfulJRE, Joe Rogan Experience #2223 – Elon Musk (time code 01:33:20 to 01:34:10, Nov. 5, 2024
In a town hall meeting conducted in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Oct. 18, an elderly American man asked when the X phone would come. Musk, who also owns the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), replied:
“Man, I sure hope we don’t have to make a phone. That’s a real, that’s a lot of work. The idea of making a phone makes me want to die.”
Source: X user @ElonClipsX, Elon Musk: We don’t aspire to make a phone, but if we have to, we’ll do it, Oct. 18, 2024
FB page Science and Technology, created on May 17, 2019, garnered over 42,213 likes, 7,135 comments, and 6,112 shares for its erroneous post.
The false claim, which was also debunked by Politifact, appeared a day after website Techopedia published an article to disprove the Tesla Phone Pi rumors.
