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How other industries see Tesla Motors

This what industry players are having a hard time seeing, how a startup focuses on vision instead of cash flow profit and the mundane.

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Elon Musk's Roadster

I caught my second glimpse of Elon’s Roadster at a car event where I saw the charging cord daisy chain here.

The latest wild swings in the Tesla news fueled by New Jersey’s infamous closing of its doors on allowing the company to sell directly, has had greater repercussions than anticipated. Our original $5B Gigafactory and how Tesla will disrupt more than carmakers article, written on March 4th on how disruptive its Gigafactory will be, has gained a lot of traction. Since then, the investment world seems to take Tesla Motors a little more seriously, even the articles on Seeking Alpha are becoming favorable to the company. We are happy to see the specialized press also acknowledging the potential Tesla is, not just as a cheerleader for electric cars, with GreenCarReports writing about how much more than a carmaker the company is. And yes, Panasonic is not the only battery maker wondering where this whole Gigafactory is going and what it means to their business model. I wrote a similar article on CarNewsCafe.

Tesla Motors is.. a lifestyle statement!

Tesla Motors really boils down to two fundamental trends. It is part of the answer many want to see, a different future than the one presented by most companies and what mainstream carmakers are satisfied with. It’s also about one entrepreneur’s vision of wanting a fun electric car to drive, Elon Musk. Doing only what an entrepreneur does best with a startup, it begins with a clean slate. It is extremely nimble and capable of tackling far greater changes than an established company. Tesla Motors has never been, will never be and can never be defined as a carmaker. It is much more than that with Superchargers, soon a battery factory, an indirect solar energy company, and much more. This is what traditional carmakers and investors were having a hard time understanding, the whole picture and how out of the box the Tesla business model is.

Tesla Awe

This is the day my gearhead friend finally saw the light with EVs

If we are blessed and cursed with ADD and always wanting more, this can be a great fuel for innovations, but it can also frighten companies focused on keeping a steady cash flow. Startups need to continuously innovate and at some point, they too become established companies, see Apple and Google, for example. Certain established companies rekindled their original drive and unique DNA, such as IBM going back to consulting, dropping manufacturing out of the equation. That is the only way for a startup to survive in the long run, leaving the rest to linger.

Tesla will continue to innovate, as long as it keeps focusing on what matters. What matters is what we all want, a change, a real change away from the mundane. Tesla answers this and will continue to disrupt more than carmakers, as we noted in our March 4th article.

Solar City and the challenges it faces

Solar City is one of the outlets where Tesla Motors can surprise us the next few years. The company made solar panels a household name, but it faces the entrepreneur’s dilemma, how to go forward and continue innovating.

Solar City is good at one thing, leasing photovoltaic (PV) panels with a promise to cut your electric bill by at least $25. Since then, it has done little more than that. Today, Solar City virtually sits on most rooftops, making it one of the biggest energy maker in the U.S. It will need to move beyond the leasing model, which really isn’t that economical for the long term. Solar City, through Elon Musk’s vision should be where the next Tesla Motors saga will reveal its next strategic move. The Gigafactory will use solar energy and should indirectly motivate Solar City to move beyond simply leasing. It could morph into an energy management company. This is what happened to Coulomb Technology as it spun off its manufacturing process to ChargePoint and got into the management aspects of the business, much like IBM. Solar City is the last company Elon Musk hasn’t reworked yet. It is fully poised to reap the benefits of its energy management before the government runs out of patience with it. With the Superchargers in place, this juggernaut has a complete portfolio for energy management.

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These Tesla, X, and xAI engineers were just poached by OpenAI

The news is the latest in an ongoing feud between Elon Musk and the Sam Altman-run firm OpenAI.

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Credit: OpenAI | YouTube

OpenAI, the xAI competitor for which Elon Musk previously served as a boardmember and helped to co-found, has reportedly poached high-level engineers from Tesla, along with others from xAI, X, and still others.

On Tuesday, Wired reported that OpenAI hired four high-level engineers from Tesla, xAI, and X, as seen in an internal Slack message sent by co-founder Greg Brockman. The engineers include Tesla Vice President of Software Engineering David Lau, X and xAI’s head of infrastructure engineering Uday Ruddarraju, and fellow xAI infrastructure engineer Mike Dalton. The hiring spree also included Angela Fan, an AI researcher from Meta.

“We’re excited to welcome these new members to our scaling team,” said Hannah Wong, an OpenAI spokesperson. “Our approach is to continue building and bringing together world-class infrastructure, research, and product teams to accelerate our mission and deliver the benefits of AI to hundreds of millions of people.”

Lau has been in his position as Tesla’s VP of Software Engineering since 2017, after previously working for the company’s firmware, platforms, and system integration divisions.

“It has become incredibly clear to me that accelerating progress towards safe, well-aligned artificial general intelligence is the most rewarding mission I could imagine for the next chapter of my career,” Lau said in a statement to Wired.

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At xAI, Ruddarraju and Dalton both played a large role in developing the Colossus supercomputer, which is comprised of over 200,000 GPUs. One of the major ongoing projects at OpenAI is the company’s Stargate program,

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“Infrastructure is where research meets reality, and OpenAI has already demonstrated this successfully,” Ruddarraju told Wired in another statement. “Stargate, in particular, is an infrastructure moonshot that perfectly matches the ambitious, systems-level challenges I love taking on.”

Elon Musk is currently in the process of suing OpenAI for shifting toward a for-profit model, as well as for accepting an investment of billions of dollars from Microsoft. OpenAI retaliated with a counterlawsuit, in which it alleges that Musk is interfering with the company’s business and engaging in unfair competition practices.

Elon Musk confirms Grok 4 launch on July 9 with livestream event

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SpaceX share sale expected to back $400 billion valuation

The new SpaceX valuation would represent yet another record-high as far as privately-held companies in the U.S. go.

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A new report this week suggests that Elon Musk-led rocket company SpaceX is considering an insider share sale that would value the company at $400 billion.

SpaceX is set to launch a primary fundraising round and sell a small number of new shares to investors, according to the report from Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter who asked to remain anonymous due to the information not yet being public. Additionally, the company would sell shares from employees and early investors in a follow-up round, while the primary round would determine the price for the secondary round.

The valuation would represent the largest in history from a privately-owned company in the U.S., surpassing SpaceX’s previous record of $350 billion after a share buyback in December. Rivaling company valuations include ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, as well as OpenAI.

Bloomberg went on to say that a SpaceX representative didn’t respond to a request for comment at the time of publishing. The publication also notes that the details of such a deal could still change, especially depending on interest from the insider sellers and share buyers.

READ MORE ON SPACEX: SpaceX to decommission Dragon spacecraft in response to Pres. Trump war of words with Elon Musk

SpaceX’s valuation comes from a few different key factors, especially including the continued expansion of the company’s Starlink satellite internet company. According to the report, Starlink accounts for over half of the company’s yearly revenue. Meanwhile, the company produced its 10 millionth Starlink kit last month.

The company also continues to develop its Starship reusable rocket program, despite the company experiencing an explosion of the rocket on the test stand in Texas last month.

The company has also launched payloads for a number of companies and government contracts. In recent weeks, SpaceX launched Axiom’s Ax-4 mission, sending four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) for a 14-day stay to work on around 60 scientific experiments. The mission was launched using the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and a new Crew Dragon capsule, while the research is expected to span a range of fields including biology, material and physical sciences, and demonstrations of specialized technology.

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Tesla Giga Texas continues to pile up with Cybercab castings

Tesla sure is gathering a lot of Cybercab components around the Giga Texas complex.

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Credit: @JoeTegtmeyer/X

Tesla may be extremely tight-lipped about the new affordable models that it was expected to start producing in the first half of the year, but the company sure is gathering a lot of Cybercab castings around the Giga Texas complex. This is, at least, as per recent images taken of the facility. 

Cybercab castings galore

As per longtime drone operator Joe Tegtmeyer, who has been chronicling the developments around the Giga Texas complex for several years now, the electric vehicle maker seems to be gathering hundreds of Cybercab castings around the factory. 

Based on observations from industry watchers, the drone operator appears to have captured images of about 180 front and 180 rear Cybercab castings in his recent photos.

Considering the number of castings that were spotted around Giga Texas, it would appear that Tesla may indeed be preparing for the vehicle’s start of trial production sometime later this year. Interestingly enough, large numbers of Cybercab castings have been spotted around the Giga Texas complex in the past few months.

Cybercab production

The Cybercab is expected to be Tesla’s first vehicle that will adopt the company’s “unboxed” process. As per Tesla’s previous update letters, volume production of the Cybercab should start in 2026. So far, prototypes of the Cybercab have been spotted testing around Giga Texas, and expectations are high that the vehicle’s initial trial production should start this year. 

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With the start of Tesla’s dedicated Robotaxi service around Austin, it might only be a matter of time before the Cybercab starts being tested on public roads as well. When this happens, it would be very difficult to deny the fact that Tesla really does have a safe, working autonomous driving system, and it has the perfect vehicle for it, too.

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