Investor's Corner
How Tesla’s Semi will dramatically alter the trucking industry
The Tesla Semi offers something to the trucking industry that could drastically alter the entire freight moving sector. The trucking industry has seen major changes since it began roughly a century ago and has, despite the assumptions of many outsiders looking in, been one of the more technologically-advanced industries in our nation. Trucks themselves have seen huge changes in the past few decades while the freight industry as a whole has been reinvented and revamped multiple times over in that same time period.
Nasdaq.com contributor Martin Tillier mentions the impacts that the Tesla Semi and others with similar game-changing technologies will have on the trucking industry long-term. Most notably with autonomous trucks and their electric powertrains.
“The technological change that benefits trucking and delivery businesses has been widely reported, but in my experience most people that I ask about it focus on the potential negatives rather than looking for opportunities,” writes Tillier. “..they ignore the biggest beneficiary of all: trucking companies. They are looking at a future where two of their major costs, fuel and drivers, will be dramatically lower..”
Those salient points are much bigger-picture than most commenting on the Tesla Semi and other related vehicles would note. Just about every major manufacturer of commercial vehicles, including Class 8 trucks, is getting in on the electrification game and many are also building towards automation. The companies most often noted, like Tesla and Nikola, are actually side-players compared to the already-established heavy-duty builders like Paccar (Kenworth, Peterbilt), Daimler, Volvo, and the like. Even manufacturers like Cummins are working with alternatives to petroleum-burning drivetrains.
The stakes are huge. According to the American Trucking Associations, over 70 percent of the freight (by tonnage) moved in the United States is moved by truck. There are about ten and a half billion tons of freight moved around the U.S. annually and about 3.6 million Class 8 trucks on the road pulling that freight.
The electrification of trucks is a big step. It won’t happen really quickly, but it will happen eventually. How, exactly, that electrification comes will depend on a lot of things. It could be the battery-powered Tesla Semi or it could be the hydrogen fuel cell-run Toyota-Kenworth collaboration. Or any mixture of things, including the range-extending turbine proposed for the original Nikola design or that of Capstone. Whatever the solution or solutions are, freight-hauling trucks of all sizes are going to become electric. That’s a given.
Why? For the same reason they all went to diesel a few decades ago. It’s more efficient and thus cheaper. Before diesel, most trucks were powered by gasoline and were extremely inefficient, hauling less weight and getting worse fuel economy. Diesel itself saw many changes over time as the engines it powered improved and emissions fell. Currently, trucks use around 38 billion gallons of diesel fuel a year. At four dollars a gallon, that’s about $152 billion in fuel. With electricity, costs could be a fraction of diesel. Roughly a quarter of the cost, in fact, in worst-case assumptions. More optimistic numbers would put it in the 1/16th to 1/8th fractions.
Tesla Semi’s center seating position for drivers
The gains with autonomous self-driving or driving assist technology are even higher. In trucking, the highest cost to the trucking company is the driver behind the wheel, with wages and benefits–not to mention legalities and downtime–having the highest impact on the bottom line. A truck driver can legally drive for 11 hours per day and most drivers average about 600 miles daily. An autonomous truck could drive 24/7, stopping only to load/unload or refuel. Self-driving trucks would also solve a problem that’s long plagued the trucking industry: driver shortages.
Truck drivers will lose jobs, yes. Eventually. Remember, we’re talking decades here, not years. When (not if) automated big trucks take over as the bulk of the industry’s means of moving freight, most drivers will be required to find new careers. We must remember, however, that truck driving is essentially made up of a labor force which has little formal training and mostly on-the-job experience as their primary resume point. These drivers become more skilled with time and hence demand higher wages. The most skilled workers in truck driving tend also be those closest to retirement. Replacements for those skilled drivers are new drivers who’ve completed perhaps three weeks of trucking school and a month of over-the-road training with a slightly more skilled driver as a mentor. This doesn’t make trucking an easy job, but it does mean that those with the most skills are the least likely to lose their jobs when automation becomes the norm.
We can argue until our fingers bleed, typing about the feasibility of the Tesla Semi and Elon Musk’s promises for the truck’s capabilities. Whether Tesla delivers on those promises is moot; as we know that someone, somewhere, and sometime very soon will deliver on similar promises regardless. The trucking industry is going through another sea change. Those in technology, used to a new iPhone every year and who hashtag about cryptocurrencies, might consider a decade or two as a long time to wait. Those in manufacturing and transportation, however, see twenty years as a single generation and their version of 2.0 has huge economic impacts on the nation’s and world’s economies.
The trucking industry knows that electrification and automation are coming. Fast. The Tesla Semi may or may not physically bring that revolution, but it certainly does symbolize it.
Elon Musk
SpaceX just filed for the IPO everyone was waiting for
SpaceX filed its public S-1, revealing $18.7 billion in revenue and billions in losses.
SpaceX publicly filed its S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission on May 20, 2026, making its financial details available to the public for the first time ahead of what could be the largest IPO in history.
An S-1 is the formal document a company must submit to the SEC before going public. It includes audited financials, risk factors, business descriptions, and how the company plans to use the money it raises. Companies are required to file one before selling shares to the public, and it must be published at least 15 days before the investor roadshow begins. SpaceX had already submitted a confidential draft to the SEC in April, which allowed regulators to review the filing privately before it went public.
The S-1 reveals that SpaceX generated $18.7 billion in consolidated revenue in 2025, driven largely by its Starlink satellite internet division, which posted $11.4 billion in revenue, growing nearly 50% year over year. Despite that growth, the company lost about $4.9 billion in 2025 and has burned through more than $37 billion since its founding.
SpaceX just forced Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to team up for the first time in history
A significant portion of those losses trace back to xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, which was recently merged into SpaceX. SpaceX directed roughly 60% of its capital spending in 2025 to its AI division, totaling around $20 billion, yet that division lost billions and grew revenue by only about 22%.
SpaceX plans to list its Class A common stock on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX, with Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America leading the offering. The dual-class share structure means going public will not meaningfully reduce Musk’s control, as Class B shares he holds carry 10 votes per share compared to one vote for public Class A shares.
The company is targeting a raise of around $75 billion at a valuation of roughly $1.75 trillion, which would make it the largest IPO ever. The investor roadshow is reportedly planned for June 5.
Elon Musk
Tesla ditches India after years of broken promises
Tesla has ditched its plans to build a factory in India after years of failed negotiations.
Tesla’s long-running effort to establish a manufacturing presence in India is officially over. India’s Minister of Heavy Industries H.D. Kumaraswamy confirmed on May 19, 2026 that Tesla has informed authorities it will not proceed with a manufacturing facility in the country.
Tesla first signaled serious interest in India around 2021, when it began hiring local staff and lobbying the Indian government for lower import tariffs. The ask was straightforward: reduce duties enough for Tesla to test the market with imported vehicles before committing capital to a local factory. India’s position was equally firm, with an ask of Tesla to commit to manufacturing first, then receive tariff relief. Neither side moved, and the talks quietly collapsed.
Tesla to open first India experience center in Mumbai on July 15
India had offered a policy that would reduce import duties from 110% down to 15% on EVs priced above $35,000, provided companies committed at least $500 million toward local manufacturing investment within three years. Tesla declined to participate. The tariff standoff was only part of the problem. Analysts pointed to significant gaps in India’s local supply chain, inadequate industrial infrastructure, and a mismatch between Tesla’s premium pricing and the purchasing power of India’s automotive market as additional factors that made the investment difficult to justify.
First signs of an unraveling relationship came in April 2024, when Musk abruptly cancelled a planned trip to India where he was set to meet Prime Minister Modi and announce Tesla’s market entry. By July 2024, Fortune reported that Tesla executives had stopped contacting Indian government officials entirely. The government at that point understood Tesla had capital constraints and no plans to invest.
The more fundamental issue is that Tesla’s existing factories are currently operating at approximately 60% capacity, making a commitment to building new manufacturing capacity in a new market difficult to defend to investors. Tesla will continue selling imported Model Y vehicles through its existing showrooms in Mumbai, Delhi, Gurugram, and Bengaluru, but local production is no longer part of the plan.
Elon Musk
SpaceX just forced Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile to team up for the first time in history
AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon just joined forces for one reason: Starlink is winning.
America’s three largest wireless carriers, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, announced on On May 14, 2026 that they had agreed in principle to form a joint venture aimed at pooling their spectrum resources to expand satellite-based direct-to-device (D2D) connectivity across the United States in what can be seen as a direct response to SpaceX’s Starlink initiative. D2D, in plain terms, is technology that lets a standard smartphone connect directly to a satellite in orbit, the same way it connects to a cell tower, with no extra hardware required.
The alliance is widely seen as a means to slow Starlink’s rapid expansion in the satellite internet and mobile markets. SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile service launched commercially in July 2025 through a partnership with T-Mobile, starting with messaging before expanding to broadband data. SpaceX secured access to valuable wireless spectrum through its $17 billion deal with EchoStar, paving the way for significantly faster satellite-to-phone speeds.
SpaceX was not shy about its reaction. SpaceX president and COO Gwynne Shotwell responded on X: “Weeeelllll, I guess Starlink Mobile is doing something right! It’s David and Goliath (X3) all over again — I’m bettin’ on David.” SpaceX’s VP of Satellite Policy David Goldman went further, flagging potential antitrust concerns and asking whether the DOJ would even allow three dominant competitors to coordinate in a market where a new rival is actively entering.
Weeeelllll, I guess @Starlink Mobile is doing something right! It’s David and Goliath (X3) all over again — I’m bettin’ on David 🙂 https://t.co/5GzS752mxL
— Gwynne Shotwell (@Gwynne_Shotwell) May 14, 2026
Financial analysts at LightShed Partners were blunt, saying the announcement showed the three carriers are “nervous,” and pointed to the timing: “You announce an agreement in principle when the point is the announcement, not the deal. The timing, weeks ahead of the SpaceX roadshow, was the point.”
As Teslarati reported, SpaceX’s next generation Starlink V2 satellites will deliver up to 100 times the data density of the current system, with custom silicon and phased array antennas enabling around 20 times the throughput of the first generation. The carriers’ JV, which has no definitive agreement, no financial structure, and no deployment timeline yet, will need to move quickly to matter.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX is targeting a Nasdaq listing as early as June 12, aiming for what would be the largest IPO in history. With Starlink now serving over 9 million subscribers across 155 countries, holding 59 carrier partnerships globally, and now powering Air Force One, the carriers’ joint venture announcement landed at exactly the wrong time to look like anything other than a defensive move.
SpaceX just filed for the IPO everyone was waiting for
Tesla scales back driver monitoring with latest Full Self-Driving release
