Tesla’s Phantom Home: How a Fake News Story About an $8 Smart Home Blown Up the Internet
‘08.11.2025’ Author: Lyudmila ZagladaSubscribe to ForumDaily on Google News
Forget about mortgages, rent, and utilities! Elon Musk announced the Tesla Tiny House project, which will launch next year. The 76 m² (26 m², according to other sources) home will be available for $7789. But as it turns out, it’s all too good to be true.
Musk’s first videos about his smart home appeared in March of this year. And in October, they literally took the internet by storm. And the stories told in these videos are truly inspiring. There’s just one problem: they’re AI-generated, and real people can fall victim to scams.
The Sweet Tale of the Tesla Tiny House
The homes are equipped with innovative Tesla solar panels, an intelligent climate control system, and a built-in Powerwall energy storage system, according to the videos and news reports based on them. Rainwater harvesting systems are also included. All of this makes the home completely autonomous and independent of traditional utility grids.
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The Tiny House’s design is based on reinforced steel and composite materials, ensuring exceptional resilience to harsh environmental conditions. This dwelling can withstand hurricanes, earthquakes, and heavy snowfalls, and is also flood-resistant. Its high structural strength is achieved through the use of advanced engineering solutions based on technologies originally developed for the SpaceX space program.
And best of all, you can order a house online, like a new smartphone, and a truck will arrive in a couple of weeks. It will unload a compact container, which in two hours will be transformed into a fully functional mini-home with a kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom.
The house weighs only 2,5 tons, making it easy to transport in a regular truck or even a Tesla Semi. It unfolds like a construction kit: the walls rise, the roof snaps into place, the utilities are connected, and it’s ready to go.
Inside, everything is thoughtfully designed down to the last detail: a living room/bedroom with a fold-out sofa bed and linen storage, a kitchen with an induction hob, oven, refrigerator, and even a mini-dishwasher, and a bathroom with a rain shower and smart mirror. Huge double-glazed windows with smart blinds, controlled via the Tesla app.
All lighting is LED, ventilation eliminates odors, and the air is automatically purified. The house is divided into four zones, but thanks to the high ceilings and light materials, you won’t feel trapped in a box.
Energy and water are free. There’s virtually no waste: everything is sealed and eco-friendly. According to Tesla’s calculations, the house consumes 10 times less energy than a standard apartment and reduces its carbon footprint by 90%.
The base version costs $7999, including the house itself, U.S. shipping, and two years of free land lease in Tesla’s special communities. There are no construction taxes, and orders can be placed at tesla.com/house, where you can choose the color and additional modules. For $5000, you can purchase a second unit and combine them to create a 52-square-meter home or stack them one on top of the other to create a two-story home for a family of five.
The first houses have allegedly already been shipped to California and Texas, where they are used as starter homes by young couples, as summer cottages by retirees, or rented out for $1500 a month. (A reasonable question: why rent a house for $1,500 a month when you can buy your own for $8,000? But we’ll answer that later.)
One Austin owner noted that he lives in a 26-square-meter home, but feels like he’s in a penthouse because everything is smart, everything is his, and the electricity bill is zero, according to one video. Elon Musk allegedly lives in a similar $40,000 home near his Texas factory, and now he’s made that lifestyle accessible to everyone. The Tesla Tiny House solves three problems at once: high housing costs, environmental impact, and lack of mobility—the house can be transported anywhere.
One of the main advantages of the Tesla Tiny House is that you don’t need any building permits. The house is officially classified as a “mobile home on wheels” (RV + folding module), so it can be built on any lot where trailers or campers are allowed. You can build it in your parents’ backyard or on leased land in the “Tesla Community.” No architects, inspectors, or lines at the city hall. Just deliver, install, hook up, and you’re ready to go. The comparison to a mortgage is devastating. The average 30-year mortgage in California is $450,000 for a modest 1970s house, plus $3000 per month in payments. Over 20 years, you’ll pay the bank almost a million.
That’s why many buyers are supposedly paying off their old mortgage and moving into a Tesla house: selling their big house, paying off the loan, and using the rest to buy a Cybertruck, with enough left over for a trip around the world. A certain “guy from Texas” wrote: “I paid off my mortgage in 27 years, and now I live in an $8000 house and drive a Tesla. I feel like a system hacker.” So, “A Tesla Tiny House isn’t just a roof over your head. It’s a ticket to financial freedom: no debt, no bills, and no government approval.”
That’s the end of the fairy tale
The videos about the smart mini-home are certainly captivatingly interesting.
But three things immediately alerted me. First, different sources gave different house sizes.
Secondly, the houses themselves in the videos looked too different: there were futuristic round pavilions and practical box-like houses of various shapes and sizes. This somehow didn’t fit with standard production, technical specifications, and other boring things.
Finally, the third and most important issue is price. Unfortunately, many people know that $8,000 won’t buy you, say, a real Tesla Powerwall with solar panels. That would cost at least $15,000–$20,000. And here’s a house packed with modern appliances, furniture, and other rather expensive features, including plumbing fixtures, double-glazed windows, and other amenities.
The authors made another clumsy mistake: Musk appears in the videos as a kind of dummy, an image. But they could have easily created an “interview excerpt”—modern AI advances make this entirely possible.
Well, there is practically no doubt that this fairy tale was concocted with the help of AI.
Fake news about Tesla mini-homes for $8000 (or $7566, $7999, $7997—the numbers vary slightly) appeared in March 2025 in two or three AI-powered YouTube videos. Each garnered 5–7 million views and spread worldwide within eight months.
A search of Google, X, and fact-checking sites (which I did using Grok, which is also owned by Musk, by the way) showed that at least 42 YouTube videos have received more than 500 views each, and combined, they have been viewed over 120 million times.
Dozens of websites, from Kazakhstan to Malaysia, republished the same article, 12 of which were major regional portals like Kazinform, EADaily, and PezziniLuxuryHomes. On Facebook, 27 content farms like Knowledge of Technology and Military Aviation posted over 180 posts, 11 of which garnered between 100 and 400 shares. On X, around 1200 tweets were posted, 14 of which went viral with over 10 likes, mostly in Russian, Spanish, and Arabic.
On Reddit, nine subreddits, including r/Futurology, r/tinyhomes, and r/FirstTimeHomeBuyer, have accumulated 2,5 million views. On TikTok, 63 clips have garnered 28 million views. In total, approximately 250–300 different media outlets and platforms picked up and reposted the news over the course of eight months.
Tellingly, major publications like CNN, BBC, or The New York Times didn’t mention it at all. The biggest surge occurred in October 2025 after a video from the TeslaCarWorld channel, which had seven million views, reached the top of Google News in 14 countries. If you count smaller blogs and forums, the number of shares reaches 500. A perfect example of how one successful fake news story can turn into 500 “news stories” worldwide in six months.
What really
In fact, there’s no official “Tesla Tiny House” product from Tesla. In 2017, Tesla did build a single mobile showroom on a trailer. It measured approximately 20 square meters (6 x 2,2 x 4 meters). Inside, it contained a Powerwall and solar panels to demonstrate how autonomous power works.
The house was driven around Australia behind a Model X to promote solar energy. After the tour, it was simply put away in a warehouse. Tesla has never done anything like it since. The company’s website makes no mention of mobile homes.
How much does a real autonomous mini-house cost?
Popular Boxable Casita – 35 m², $50,000–60,000.
Tesla Powerwall + solar panels – another $15,000–20,000.
Incidentally, Musk does own a Boxable Casita near his Texas factory. But the “Tesla communities with free land” are 100% fiction, as is the $8000 price tag. Anyone offering to “sign up for a Tesla village” is a scam.
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Who calls the tune?
So why make and distribute videos like “Tesla Tiny House for $8000”? Who benefits?
Firstly, YouTube farms.
Channels like TESLA CAR WORLD or Future Unity aren’t fanatics, but content aggregators. A single person with a $30 monthly subscription to Kling AI and ElevenLabs produces 5-10 videos a week. Each video brings in $5,000-$15,000 in advertising (CPM in the US is $15-$25 per thousand views). Over eight months, one channel earns $50,000-$150,000 net. Their goal is maximum clicks, not truth.
Small “news” sites generate roughly the same profit. Dozens of portals from Kazakhstan to Malaysia copy each other’s text. They use AdSense (Google advertising) and earn $1-3 per thousand clicks. One post generates $500-2000 in passive income. They also sell banners for cryptocurrency or courses on “how to buy a house in the US.”
Thirdly, it’s profitable for scammers. Links to the “official Tesla House website” (teslahome-order.com, tesla-village.net) appear in comments and descriptions. They ask for a $500-$1000 advance payment “for reservation.” The money goes to crypto wallets, and the house isn’t delivered. According to ScamAdvisor, there are already more than 60 such websites, and they’ve collected at least $2-3 million.
Fourth, Tesla’s competitors—Boxabl, Nestron, and Chinese manufacturers—indirectly benefit from this. People search for “Tesla house,” find real folding houses for $50, and buy them. Boxabl saw a 40% increase in sales after the wave of fakes—people think, “Tesla isn’t selling, I’ll just buy a knockoff.”
Tesla itself prefers to remain silent: lawsuits are more expensive than the loss of reputation from fakes.
