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Anti-Elon Tesla sticker maker confirms some customers don’t disapprove of Musk
Some of Hiller’s customers may not necessarily disapprove of Elon Musk’s politics or his work with the Trump administration.
Amidst the ongoing controversies and campaigns against Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Hawaii-based entrepreneur Matthew Hiller has made a killing. Hiller is the man behind some of the most popular anti-Elon Musk stickers that have been spotted in Teslas over the past months.
But in a recent comment to NPR, Hiller shared something rather interesting—some of his customers are purchasing stickers even if they do not necessarily disapprove of Elon Musk.
Business Boom
In a comment to NPR, Hiller, who also works at an aquarium in Hawaii, noted that he listed his first anti-Musk sticker in his online shop MadPufferStickers in 2023. The sticker read, “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy.” At the time, Hiller noted that Musk was “sort of becoming a bully and sort of pushing disinformation.” While Hiller actually considered buying his own Tesla in the past, Musk’s actions ended up disillusioning him from the company.
“I thought they were very cool. I liked the tech. I liked the fact that they were good for the environment… I mean, some things are more important than just tech, you know, like, I just don’t want to support someone who is so against who I am and what I believe. It was a choice and I didn’t want to be just confused for someone who supported him or agreed with him,” Hiller stated.
The entrepreneur’s sticker business saw a notable boost in recent months, especially following the election of U.S. President Donald Trump. Hiller has since expanded his sticker lineup, with popular ones like “Anti Elon Tesla Club,” “Elon is a dogebag,” and “Elon killed my resale value.” Hiller has sold about 70,000 stickers, magnets, and clings across his online shops on Amazon, Etsy, Redbubble, and eBay so far.
Surprising Clientele
With his business rising, Hiller noted that he has received orders from across the globe, allowing him to reach sales of $100,000 in one month. This was no surprise as Musk has become a controversial figure, not just in the United States but in several countries across Europe as well. When Musk performed his controversial gesture in January alone, Hiller recorded 500 sales in one day.
Most surprisingly, however, some of Hiller’s customers may not necessarily disapprove of Elon Musk’s politics or his involvement with the Trump administration through his work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Hiller shared a transaction on his Etsy store to NPR, which involved a sticker that was ordered by a father to his son, who lived in Los Angeles.
“Occasionally, I get people on my Etsy store, they buy a sticker as a gift, and then they get to write a little note along with the gift to the recipient. And occasionally I read the notes and I see one that says like, ‘Happy birthday, from dad. This is to protect you on the mean streets of L.A.,’” Hiller noted.
The customer’s note is not surprising considering that Teslas have been subjected to a wave of vandalism attacks from people or activists who are critical of Elon Musk. The Tesla vandalism incidents, as well as Molotov and shooting attacks on Tesla stores, have been condemned by the Trump administration.
Not a Full-Time Gig
Despite his business boom, Hiller noted that he does not intend to leave his aquarium job yet, nor does he intend to sell stickers full-time. Thus, even if the Elon Musk controversies ended tomorrow, the entrepreneur noted that he would be fine.
“If it ended tomorrow, I’m totally fine. You know, I didn’t set out to do this. And it’s certainly not my business plan going forward. I mean, it’s not a really good business plan to bank on a billionaire just annoying people forever,” Hiller stated.
Elon Musk
SpaceX just combined Grok, Cursor, and X into one mega plan
SpaceXSI merges Grok, Cursor, and X Premium into one plan, raising questions for Tesla owners.
SpaceX Super Intelligence has rolled out The X Subscription, a single plan that combines Grok, Grok Bot, Cursor, and X Premium.
There are five levels, including a free plan that includes daily Grok access and a starter allowance for Cursor’s coding agents. Plus is $8 per month, Premium is $30, Super is $100, and Ultra is $200. Usage scales as you move up, with Premium offering four times the Plus allowance, Super 15 times, and Ultra 50 times. Annual billing brings the prices down a bit further, with Premium at $300 per year.
We’ve unified plans across Grok, Cursor, and X Premium.
Introducing The X Subscription. https://t.co/SvkrVvBa0p
— SpaceX Super Intelligence (@SpaceXSI) October 12, 2026
The $30 Premium tier is where SpaceXSI says it packs the benefits of SuperGrok, Cursor Pro, and X Premium+, which previously added up to $90 per month. Grok Bot, the agent that handles tasks like ordering food or managing a calendar, is included from Premium upward but not on Plus. Paid plans share one weekly usage pool across Grok and Cursor, and each plan includes at least twice the coding usage of the comparable Cursor plan. Third party models in Cursor remain available on Premium and above, but they are billed separately at API list prices.
That last detail matters because of what has happened around Cursor this year. SpaceX exercised its option to buy the company for $60 billion in June, and the deal closed in August. Weeks later, OpenAI said it will cut Cursor’s access to its models on November 12. Bundling Cursor with Grok usage gives SpaceXSI a reason to steer developers toward its own models.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
For Tesla owners, the connection is Grok Bot. Tesla brought it into its vehicles last month, and at that point access inside the car was limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers. Grok Bot is now enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y Robotaxi fleet. Neither SpaceXSI nor Tesla has said how the new plans change inside the car access for owners, or whether a $30 Premium subscription now covers Grok Bot in a personal Tesla. That is the question owners will want answered first.
The company is also changing its name along the way. The rollout follows the rebrand Musk announced on October 4, when he said SpaceXAI would become SpaceXSI, and the plan page now carries that branding.
The X Subscription is available to new customers starting now, and SpaceXSI says it will reach everyone globally over the next few days. Existing SuperGrok, Cursor, and X Premium subscribers do not have to switch. The option to move will appear gradually in billing settings, with a prorated refund for the unused time on the old plan. Switching is permanent once the accounts are unified, and old plans are closed to new sign ups.
Energy
Taiwan power firm bets big on Tesla Megapacks as AI data center thirst grows
Taiwan’s Apollo Power orders 260 Tesla Megapacks, betting AI data centers will need more electricity.
A Taiwanese power company has ordered 260 Tesla Megapack 2XL units, roughly 1GWh of storage, betting that electricity rather than chips will decide how fast AI data centers come online. Apollo Power signed the contract with Tesla’s Taiwan energy arm on October 8, according to the company’s filing with the Taiwan stock exchange.
The filing says the units are meant for behind the meter storage and resilient grid projects, with delivery in batches from the end of 2027 and sites operating in 2028. Apollo and Tesla did not disclose a price, citing a confidentiality agreement. Apollo plans to pay for the equipment through a cash capital increase and bank financing, and it noted the purchase is not revenue and does not mean it holds firm orders from its partners.
Biggo reported that only about 33 units are under signed customer contracts, with roughly 150 more in negotiation. The same report put total project investment near NT$130 billion, but that figure includes installation work, with the equipment itself making up about 40 to 50 percent. In other words, a large share of this order is Apollo reserving supply ahead of demand. Apollo’s chairman told local media global large storage supply is tight, which is why the company locked in the units early, according to Yahoo Taiwan Finance.
Apollo also launched an AI data center and grid resilience alliance with Phison, Gigabyte and Shihlin Electric. The pitch rests on a pilot at Phison’s Zhunan plant, where Apollo and Tesla Energy Taiwan installed grid forming Megapack 2XLs in June. Tesla Energy Taiwan general manager Sun Hsiao-Han said the project went from demo to 1GWh in four months, and that Tesla Energy has deployed more than 50GWh worldwide.
Taiwan’s cabinet has approved amendments that would require large energy users to install their own generation and storage, which gives enterprise storage a regulatory tailwind.
The deal fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked. Tesla’s Megablock targets 1GWh commissioned in 20 business days, a pitch aimed squarely at fast moving data center builds. Megapacks already back xAI’s Colossus in Memphis and a 400MW AI campus in Brazil. Sun Media adds that Megapack 2XL was named among the first products in Nvidia’s DSX Ready qualification for battery storage in AI factories.
Deliveries are more than a year away, so the real test is how much of that 260 unit order turns into signed customer contracts.
For a century, the car has asked the same thing of its owner, which is basically to pay attention. Even the best ride-hailing app like Uber or Lyft only moved the problem into someone else’s hands. You stopped driving, but you still sat in a stranger’s car, while half listening, and wondering whether to take a phone call in the car without being rude. The Cybercab has no wheel, no pedals and no driver. With Grok @bot now live inside it, it becomes something else entirely, and I think that matters more than the fleet count that everyone is tracking.
Grok @bot is an agent, not a voice assistant. A rider signs in once, and from then on can say what they need and watch it happen. Order dinner from a favorite restaurant. Fill the grocery cart. Move money, answer email, adjust a calendar, push a work project forward. Tesla engineer Yun-Ta Tsai confirmed it is enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y fleet, and Tesla’s own pitch is that Full Self-Driving handles the commute while Grok handles the errands.
Think about what that does to a thirty minute ride. Uber sells you a trip, while Waymo sells you the same trip in a more private setting. Tesla is selling the thirty minutes themselves, returned to you with an assistant attached. Errands that used to eat a Saturday get done between pickup and drop off. The ride stops being dead time between two places and becomes a place of its own.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
Best of all, your Bots follow you into any Cybercab, and presumably your own Tesla, then logs you out automatically when you step out. Anyone can bolt a chatbot onto a screen, but much harder to own the vehicle, the autonomy stack and the assistant at once. It also quietly ties SpaceX’s Super Intelligence business to Tesla’s fleet, after Tesla converted its xAI stake into SpaceX equity. The relationship between those two companies is getting harder to describe as separate.
This is also where the hard questions start, because an agent that can spend your money in a vehicle other people also ride in needs some answers. How does it handle a voice it shouldn’t trust? What gets recorded, who can see it, and for how long? What happens when a rider leaves halfway through a task?
If Tesla gets those answers right, the scoreboard changes. We have been counting Cybercabs and wait times. The more telling number may be what riders accomplish per trip. That is data almost no one else will ever have, and it is the real reason to watch Grok @bot.
What do you think? Leave me a comment.
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