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Lucid Air, NIO, Elon Musk capture big wins in Forbes’ 2020 Transportation Awards

(Credit: Lucid Motors/Instagram; NIO/Instagram; Tobias Lindh/YouTube)

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Forbes’ 2020 Transportation Awards gave the upcoming Lucid Air the title of “Best Product” of 2020, despite the vehicle not being in full production yet. The Air is shaping up into one of the most highly-anticipated electric vehicles in the market, thanks to its intense focus on luxury, allowing it to compete against vehicles like the Mercedes-Benz S-Class. The Air’s specs are no joke, either, as its range and power seem to rival even that of Tesla’s Model S.

“Arriving in 2021, the Lucid Air, an elegant battery-powered sedan from Newark, California-based Lucid Motors, promises to be the first true competitor to Elon Musk’s electric vehicle empire. Developed by Peter Rawlinson, the ex-Tesla chief engineer who was instrumental in creating the company’s breakthrough Model S, Lucid’s $77,000 luxury car may outperform Tesla’s best in range, power and amenities,” Forbes wrote.


It was not just the Lucid Air that caught a win in Forbes’ 2020 Transportation Awards. William Li, the 46-year-old founder and CEO of NIO and a man dubbed as the “Elon Musk of China,” was deemed by the publication as the “Most Intriguing Newcomer” of the year. Forbes cited Li’s thriving electric car business in China as a driver for his award. NIO stock, similar to Tesla shares last year, also saw a massive surge during the year, rising 1,000% since the start of 2020.

“Chinese entrepreneur William Li made a fortune with an online car-selling website. Now, NIO, his Shanghai-based electric vehicle startup, is making steady sales gains in China for its battery-powered crossovers and cars. NIO’s continued success in that market could undermine Tesla’s Middle Kingdom aspirations and elevate the Musk-admiring Li into a major rival. NIO’s shares, which are traded in the U.S., are up 1,000% since the start of 2020,” the publication noted.

A discussion about the transportation sector in 2020 would not be complete without mentioning Tesla, the world’s largest automaker by market cap, as well as Elon Musk, the man that led the company to where it is today. It was then unsurprising to see the publication giving Tesla CEO Elon Musk its “Forbes Person of the Year in Transportation” award for 2020. Such an award seems warranted considering Tesla’s dominance and sustained growth at a time when the automotive market was practically brought to its knees by the pandemic.

Amidst this growth, Elon Musk’s net worth also skyrocketed, allowing him to take his place just under Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the second-richest person in the world.

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“Love him or hate him, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk dominated transportation in 2020 in much the same way Donald Trump loomed over U.S. politics. Neither can stay out of the news cycle (or off social media) for long. But while Trump’s wealth slipped during the year, Musk’s skyrocketed to $143 billion, up 440% over just 12 months, as gains in Tesla’s surging share price and profitability unlocked a string of massive stock awards,” Forbes noted.

The full list of winners in Forbes’ 2020 Transportation Awards could be viewed here.

The Teslarati team would appreciate hearing from you. If you have any tips, email us at tips@teslarati.com or reach out to me at maria@teslarati.com.

Maria--aka "M"-- is an experienced writer and book editor. She's written about several topics including health, tech, and politics. As a book editor, she's worked with authors who write Sci-Fi, Romance, and Dark Fantasy. M loves hearing from TESLARATI readers. If you have any tips or article ideas, contact her at maria@teslarati.com or via X, @Writer_01001101.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet

Elon Musk hinted a Tesla-SpaceX merger could be coming, and Wall Street is taking notice.

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Elon Musk gave his clearest signal yet that Tesla and SpaceX could eventually combine, telling the All-In Summit in Los Angeles that the two companies’ deepening collaboration makes the question worth asking. Sawyer Merritt first surfaced the highlight on X Tuesday.

Asked directly why Tesla and SpaceX remain separate given how closely they already work together, Musk told hosts at the summit: “Great question there. With all this collaboration, on so many levels, who can imagine what action one might take when there’s so much close collaboration in so many areas.” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who joined Musk on stage, added that SpaceX personnel have already moved into xAI to fill leadership and engineering gaps, saying the businesses are integrating “faster than I thought,” though “not fully integrated yet,”

The comments landed on top of merger speculation that has been building on Wall Street for months. JPMorgan has called a tie-up “strategically coherent on paper,” pointing to overlapping ambitions in AI, robotics, energy, transportation and space. Jefferies went further, estimating Musk could retain roughly 55.3 percent voting control in a deal structured without a premium, a scenario that would still leave room for Tesla shareholders to come out ahead. On Kalshi, traders now put the odds of a merger before 2028 at 66 percent.

Tesla’s stake in SpaceX, still under one percent, traces back to its earlier investment in xAI, which converted to SpaceX equity after SpaceX absorbed the AI company. The two are also jointly building Terafab, a chip facility in Austin meant to serve both Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s satellite ambitions. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has stood by a 2027 merger timeline for months, and Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest recently floated a similar case, an idea Musk pushed back on directly at the time.

Another Tesla SpaceX merger prediction by ARK Invest has Elon Musk talking

The timing adds another layer. Tesla has scheduled an October 1 unveiling for its next generation Roadster at a venue near SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas test site, using the phrase “Go for launch” in its promotional material. Both stocks dipped roughly 2 percent Monday before recovering slightly in premarket trading Tuesday, with SpaceX shares up about 0.4 percent and Tesla essentially flat.

Musk stopped short of confirming anything is in motion. But unlike his past denials of a corporate restructuring, this response didn’t rule one out, and it came with Shotwell sitting next to him describing an integration that’s already underway.

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Tesla Roadster unveiling is getting hyped up by Elon Musk

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tesla roadster
Credit: Petersen Auto Museum

The Tesla Roadster unveiling is getting hyped up by the company’s CEO Elon Musk, who has been a big reason the product has such high expectations due to delayed timelines and a constant need to make it even more insane than before.

Tesla announced on September 12 that it would officially unveil the Roadster in Waco, Texas, on October 1, ending years of patience for fans and reservation holders who have waited for the all-electric supercar to enter production since 2017.

Musk has said that this event will be well worth the wait on several occasions, and last year on the Joe Rogan Experience, he said that there should be a closing chapter to supercars- the end of cars that aren’t focused on safety.

He said:

“Whether it’s good or bad, it will be unforgettable. My friend Peter Thiel once reflected that the future was supposed to have flying cars, but we don’t have flying cars. I think if Peter wants a flying car, he should be able to buy one. I think it has a shot at being the most memorable product unveil ever. This is some crazy technology in this car. Let’s just put it this way: if you took all the James Bond cars and combined them, it’s crazier than that.”

Musk’s teases have continued, and now that the event is roughly two weeks away, it seems like Roadster is finally going to show up and blow some minds:

Tesla has definitely dragged out the development of the Roadster, but there is a good reason for it.

Tesla has been working on many other projects, most notably self-driving efforts to increase passenger safety, and those simply took priority over the Roadster, a low-volume, high-performance sports car that has a lightning-fast acceleration rate of 0-60 MPH in just 1.1 seconds, could potentially fly, and contributes very little to the company’s mission.

However, many people have the Roadster on pre-order through the referral program or with their own money, and it is time that Tesla delivers on that.

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Elon Musk’s Boring Company has big plans for Las Vegas by year’s end

Elon Musk’s Boring Company says Vegas Loop stations will double by year end once again.

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the boring company's vegas loop entrance

The Boring Company says the Vegas Loop’s station count will double by the end of the year, tying the target to a hiring push for drivers and operations managers in Las Vegas. “Vegas Loop is getting bigger – the station count will double by end of year!” the company wrote in a post on X, attaching listings for a Loop driver and a senior Loop operations manager.

The number checks out against what’s already public, with the Vegas Loop currently running 14 operational stations, while the Boring Company’s own project page lists 28 as the target for the end of 2026.

Much of that growth is tied to tunnels that are already built and waiting on an opening date. A roughly two-mile dual tunnel system under Paradise Road, connecting Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, is expected to open in stages over the coming weeks, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority chief executive Steve Hill told the Review-Journal last week. New stations at 4744 Paradise, Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, and the former Gordon Biersch site would come online with it, several of them built to speed up rides to Harry Reid International Airport ahead of Formula 1’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Clark County entitled Vegas Loop for 123 stations after approving 19 more in August, as Teslarati reported at the time. Entitlement and construction move at different speeds on this project, so county approval alone does not guarantee a station opens on any particular schedule.

Clark County approved 18 additional stations back in 2023, part of a plan that pushed the system’s target to 69 stations across 65 miles, doubling the network on paper for the first time. The target kept climbing after that, to roughly 93 stations by the end of that year and 104 by last year, before August’s vote pushed it to 123. This week’s announcement is the first time that doubling language has been attached to stations actually running rather than stations merely approved on a county map.

Ridership gives some sense of what a denser network could carry. Boring Company executive Mike Baier said in July that the Vegas Loop already moves around 40,000 passengers on busy convention days, a total that tops most light rail systems in the country despite the system running on a fraction of its planned tunnel mileage. Company leadership has projected ridership could triple or quadruple once the airport connector tunnels fully open.

Boring Company did not say which stations beyond those already under construction would open by year end, or whether the hiring push points to a fleet expansion alongside the new stops.

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