A new study shows that only 26% of U.S. households are familiar with EVs but this is about to change. In the recent study by Parks Associates, it was noted that as Tesla became a household name, purchase intention for EVs has gone up 6%.
I wrote about this here, and Teslarati was invited to attend to the virtual session where Chris White, the senior analyst who conducted the study, led a virtual presentation.
According to the study,
“Only 26% of US broadband households report high familiarity with electric vehicles but that’s about to change. These sessions address the coming surge of EVs on the market, the potentially explosive EV growth in adoption, and the implications for consumers, the grid, and needed infrastructure.”
Electric Vehicles: A New Era for Consumers
During the virtual session, Chris White explained some of the findings of the study. Some of these include current EV owner demographics, EV owner interest in clean energy, EV owners’ high-tech affinity, lack of knowledge of EV features, and how other issues such as the chip shortage are affecting both EV and non-EV markets.
The report was based on data from Q4 2021.
Understanding Current EV Owners
Current EV owners are young affluent and have dual incomes. Many are from a multifamily environment and use their EVs for work and school.
They use their vehicles regularly. It’s important to highlight since EVs have the image of a rare or exotic car that doesn’t have enough range. This is changing.
-
As the EV market continues to grow, the demographics of the current EV owners will most likely change. For now, there’s a 16% high intention of purchasing EVs among non-owners. Previous that was 10%.
That number didn’t include the current EV owners who either want to add a new EV or replace an old one.
EV Owners 3x likely to use renewable energy
Chris White’s research showed that EV buyers are three times more likely to live in solar communities or have an interest in renewable energy powering their homes. They are also 2.5 to 5 times more willing to pay more for renewable energy.
The research shows that EV owners care about their carbon footprint and the impact on the environment.
EV owners are much more likely to own a security system or a smart home device than non-EV owners, according to the research
They xcare about technology and have a higher affinity for tech than non-EV owners.
Lack of familiarity with EV features.
One of the key points in the study shows that although EVs are more popular today, there is a lack of familiarity with their features.
Chris pointed out that 18% of the consumers polled indicated familiarity with EV features. That isn’t a lot.
Features that many aren’t familiar with include EV charging at home minimizing cost when automatically charging during off-peak hours, auto insurance savings for EV owners, second-life EV batteries reused as a power source in disaster areas, and available tax incentives.
-
Second-life EV batteries are expected to reach over $34 billion by 2027 according to Research and Markets. You can read more about this here.
EV Features that could persuade non-owners to buy an EV
The study included the top features that could persuade non-EV owners to switch to electricity. The number one feature was for an EV to run 400 miles or longer on a single charge.
During the session, Chris pointed out that this is still rare and that most EVs are in the 200-300 mile range.
Other features included widespread charging stations and electricity plans that make owning an EV more affordable than owning an ICE vehicle. These are coming and soon people will see for themselves that EVs meet the criteria they are looking for.
Purchase Inhibitors.
The number one purchase inhibitor that non-EV owners are concerned about are the cost of an EV and charging.
The research showed that 51% of the consumers who participated in the study cited charging-related issues.
Another issue was the lack of trust in the design of EVs,
Issues that impact both EV and non-EV purchases
We often see issues such as the semiconductor chip shortage and critical minerals for EV batteries impacting the EV market. However, something that impacts both markets includes the chip shortage, Putin invading Ukraine, and the national gas prices being on the rise.
The latter can create pain at the pump which is something that encourages people to make the switch to EVs. Last month, I wrote about Dobson who purchased a Tesla due to several factors but especially high gas prices.
-
EVs will be everywhere soon.
The research also revealed that soon, EVs will be everywhere.
Chris spoke about the Amazon and Rivian partnership, Walmart’s purchase of Canoo EVs, Revel’s fleet of Tesla taxis in New York, and the contract between NASA and Canoo.
And this is just on the commercial side. Other automakers are producing and marketing their own EVs to compete with Tesla.
Disclaimer: Johnna is long Tesla.
I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or see a typo, you can email me at johnna@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @JohnnaCrider1
SpaceX stock did the opposite of what most of Wall Street expected this week, when the day designed to be its most dangerous turned into a rally, and the rally kept going.
Thursday marked the first major lockup expiration since SpaceX’s June IPO, making roughly 911.5 million insider held shares eligible to trade for the first time, more than doubling the company’s public float. Analysts and short sellers had spent weeks bracing for a flood of selling, especially after the stock fell 13 percent following its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday. Instead, shares rose 6.1 percent Thursday to close at $114.92, and by Friday they were trading near $129, up more than another 12 percent on the day.
SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles
The setup made the outcome notable. Short interest had climbed to roughly 34 percent of the float heading into earnings, among the highest of any large cap stock, with about 95 percent of available shares to borrow already on loan. CEO Elon Musk warned short sellers twice in the weeks before the lockup, writing on X that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” then following up on the morning of earnings with “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
When the newly unlocked shares hit the market and the selloff never showed up, some of that short position appears to have started unwinding. TipRanks reported that options activity shifted toward bullish strategies like put selling and risk reversals following the rally, with roughly $600 million in options premium trading Thursday alone. Retail buyers also stepped in during the earnings dip, according to Vanda Research.
The fundamentals behind the stock have not changed much in a week. SpaceX’s revenue nearly doubled year over year to $7.8 billion, with Starlink subscribers doubling to 12 million and the company’s AI segment growing 247 percent. What spooked investors on Tuesday was the spending side. Capital expenditures jumped to more than $18 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion a year earlier, with AI investment alone rising from $749 million to $15.8 billion. Wall Street remains split on whether that spending is building infrastructure SpaceX needs or outrunning what the business can currently support, a debate Teslarati has tracked since shares first came under pressure.
None of that resolves the bigger question hanging over the stock. Thursday’s release was only the first of nine staggered lockup tranches, with roughly $800 billion worth of additional shares scheduled to become eligible through October, and Musk’s own stake stays locked until next June. If this week is any indication, the market is treating that supply as something it can absorb rather than something to fear, at least for now.
-
News
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station, joining an exclusive two resort transit club.
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station Thursday, giving The Boring Company’s underground transit system its northernmost stop yet on the Strip. The station sits at Sahara’s Paradise Road entrance, on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, and connects riders to the Las Vegas Convention Center, other Strip resorts on the network and, eventually, Harry Reid International Airport.
The addition makes Sahara the second resort, after Fontainebleau opened its own station in January, to get a stop built at street level rather than tucked into the property itself. Sahara now joins Westgate as the only two Strip resorts offering both a Vegas Loop station and a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail, giving guests two separate ways to get around without leaving the property.
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The bigger news buried in Thursday’s announcement is what comes next. Boring Company has already secured its first permit to tunnel north of Sahara Avenue, extending the network beyond where it currently ends, even though permits to push the Loop toward downtown Las Vegas still haven’t been granted. Crews are also working on a two mile dual tunnel line running from Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, just north of Tropicana Avenue, that Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill has said the company hopes to open in time for November’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Ridership has grown alongside the buildout. The Loop moved roughly 82,000 passengers during CONEXPO in early March, a total the company highlighted on its own X account at the time, and the system has now carried more than 4 million passengers through 11 open stations since it began running in 2021. The airport connector tunnels, meant to give the Loop a direct link to Harry Reid, have slipped past their original first quarter target and remain under construction, with Boring Company director Mike Baier saying that a full opening is still a few months out.
For Sahara, the calculation is straightforward. Convention traffic drives a large share of Loop ridership, and a station at the property’s front door gives conventiongoers one more reason to book rooms on the Strip’s north end instead of closer to the convention center itself.
-
Elon Musk
Tesla’s mysterious Robovan makes a sneak peek with Optimus in Terafab video
Elon Musk shared a new Terafab video showing Optimus, Robovans, and a stunningly futuristic campus.
Elon Musk posted a new video of Terafab on X Thursday morning, and the most eye-catching details in it were not the building itself, but two products still awaiting production: Optimus and the Robovan.
The concept render, credited to SpaceX, shows Optimus robots working the grounds of the roughly 2.5-mile-long facility planned for the Gibbons Creek site in Grimes County, while a Robovan glides along an elevated roadway cutting through the building itself, sharing the frame with a Tesla Semi and a Cybercab.
Robovan is the boxy, driverless people and cargo mover Musk unveiled alongside Cybercab at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024. He pitched it as a way to move up to 20 passengers at once, or handle freight instead, at a target cost he claimed could fall under a dollar a mile, with no steering wheel or pedals, the same layout as Cybercab. Nearly two years later, Robovan still has no confirmed production timeline and has not shown up in any factory footage, which makes Thursday’s render one of the only recent looks at the vehicle in any form.
Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far.
And it will be stunningly beautiful. pic.twitter.com/4NweOqTL7y
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2026
Optimus has moved further along. Tesla began converting Fremont’s old Model S and Model X assembly line into a Gen 3 Optimus production line earlier this year, and Musk visited the site on July 1 to mark the changeover. A second, larger Optimus plant is under construction at Giga Texas, targeting volume production in summer 2027 and eventual capacity of 10 million units a year. Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy said this month the robot has “big shoes to fill” in replacing the S and X line, while Musk has repeatedly called Optimus the company’s biggest product of any kind, with a long-term price he has pegged between $20,000 and $30,000.
-
Check out the “Robovan” from @Tesla
📸: @Teslarati pic.twitter.com/D4es2i9NUe
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 11, 2024
“Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far,” Musk wrote alongside the clip. “And it will be stunningly beautiful.”
One quote post summed up the reaction: “Futuristic scene with RoboVan + Cybercab + Tesla Semi + Optimus.”
Beyond the vehicles, the architecture wrapped around them stands out too. The building’s facade is canted at sharp angles, with illuminated horizontal bands running through what appears to be a multi level interior visible from outside. Below the elevated roadway, pedestrians walk along a plaza next to a reflecting pool, and the skyline behind the campus is dotted with angular spires that read more like sculpture than infrastructure, a departure from the strictly utilitarian look of Gigafactory Texas or Starbase.
The timing tracks with what Terafab representative Riley Trennell told Grimes County residents on Wednesday, when he said renderings of the facility would be released “within days.” Musk’s post followed less than 24 hours later, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office sent out its own release Thursday confirming the project. As Teslarati reported this morning, Terafab’s tax abatement agreements with Grimes County are now signed and active, and SpaceX has sent the county its first $10 million payment under that deal. The dollar figure tied to this phase of construction, per Reuters, is $16.8 billion, one of the first hard capital expenditure numbers attached to Terafab since Musk unveiled the joint Tesla-SpaceX-xAI venture in March.Reaction on X ranged from enthusiastic to skeptical. “God Bless Texas! Everything is bigger and better in Texas!” one reply read. Another was more measured: “Terafab in a decade…..”
Whether the finished building matches the render is a separate question from whether Musk wanted people talking about the render itself. Less than a day after posting, the video had already crossed 5.5 million views.
-
Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
