News
Automobili Pininfarina teases electric hypercar, credits Tesla’s Elon Musk for “electric vehicle movement”
Automobili Pininfarina, the Munich-based carmaker with deep roots in both the luxury market and Formula E recently teased its upcoming electric hypercar, code-named PF0 (Pininfarina Zero), set to debut in August at the exclusive Pebble Beach Concours in Monterey, California.
Its sister company Pininfarina is the legendary design house responsible for revered supercars like the Ferrari Testarossa, GT 250, and Enzo. In fact, the only street legal Ferrari’s not designed by them are the 1973 Dino 308 GT4 and 2013’s LaFerrari. They’ve also designed cars for Fiat, Alfa Romeo, BMW, Maserati, among others, and manufactured cars for GM, Mitsubishi, and Volvo. Another fun fact -Pininfarina had their own full-sized wind tunnel in 1972, eight years before GM had one.
Automobili Pininfarina has also assembled some impressive talent from across the automotive world. Their executive group includes former Jaguar / Land Rover, Bugatti, Volvo, and Audi employees, to name a few. Their lead designer, Luca Borgogno, previously led Lamborghini’s Turin design studio for Pininfarina, while Formula E driver Nick Heildfeld will be joining the team next year to help deliver a ‘race-bred’ hypercar.
The venture into manufacturing their own car is a sort of rebirth for Pininfarina. The company had fallen on hard times with debt restructuring in the late 2000’s and reductions in their workforce. Then in 2015 Mahindra & Mahindra stepped in to purchase a majority holding. If you aren’t familiar with M&M, they are manufacturer based out of India and one of the founding ten members of Formula E. They are India’s leading electric vehicle manufacturer.
Mahindra Racing
I spoke with Automobili Pininfarina’s CEO Michael Perschke, Chief Brand Officer Dan Connell, and Design Director Luca Borgogno from their July 12th North American brand launch event in New York. My first question was why they chose to go fully electric, with so many established luxury automakers tepidly looking to hybrids for their first venture into electrification.
Michael was quick to give credit to Tesla and Elon Musk. “We wouldn’t be sitting here today if Elon hadn’t started the electric vehicle movement”. He said that to put both technologies on board means you are not committed to either and you don’t start designing a brand new high tech hypercar based on technology that’s over 100 years old. “You don’t want to get stuck with combustion engines,” he said. “The point of no return has been crossed, combustion engines are aging. They can be further improved but they are not a leapfrog technology”. These comments are important to take note of, as someone who has spent his career with companies like Audi and Mercedes, Mr. Perschke’s views on where the industry needs to go are telling.
Manufacturers and the oil industry often claim higher efficiencies are possible with combustion, but to achieve that requires greater complexity and expense, with depreciating returns – all while electric vehicles are making a big gain in performance and cost.
“If you want a brand that’s relevant in 2050, you don’t start with a drivetrain that’s been used since 1890” – Michael Perschke, Automobili Pininfarina.
Automobili Pininfarina North American Brand Launch – New York July 12th, 2018
The car industry has seen several EV startups, with bold claims, but I think this one is legit. They have the right mix of experience, innovation, talent, and financial support. They are certainly targeting some impressive performance figures:
Release Date: 2020
0 – 100 km/h (62 mph): < 2 seconds
0 – 300 km/h (186 mph): < 12 seconds
Top speed: > 400 km/h (250 mph)
Range: > 500 km (310 miles)
You’ll notice that both the timing and the performance figures are conspicuously similar to Tesla’s coming Roadster, but any speculation of competition with Tesla was quickly shot down. “We are complimenting the offering that Elon has launched…. with a focus more on the European supercar design styling heritage”. On the raw specifications, this vehicle seems an obviously competitor but that’s oversimplifying the market. With a reported price tag exceeding $2 million dollars, they are obviously targeting a different segment of the market – it’s a European hypercar after all. And while that may seem to limit its direct impact, I’m excited to see what it can do and how it will influence the performance luxury vehicle segment. As Elon has noted, we still need to fully remove the “performance halo” surrounding high-end combustion cars. That’s Tesla’s goal with the new Roadster and I hope Automobili Pininfarina can help do that for Italian supercars as well. How many posters and computer desktop backgrounds still depict gas burning supercars? It’s time they were replaced.
Luca Borgogno, their design director, shared some of his insights into the design with me.
“We have two key words,” he said “purity and beauty”. He said it was important that all design elements serve a purpose, that form and function must be joined together for a purity of design. Their intent is for the PFO to convey both the legacy of European sports cars and link it to the modern technology that’s behind it.
For the exterior, he said, low drag was obviously important for a vehicle capable of going over 250mph. Keeping the middle of the car as a clean, unobstructed line improves the aerodynamics he said. To do this the rear of the vehicle will have a split rear wing, with each side capable of individually articulating for improved downforce and even provide for air braking. It certainly has a sleek looking profile.
They aren’t releasing any images of the interior yet but he says it again follows the same purity ethos, with clean simplicity and a high degree of seamless digitization. It seems this is a new approach Tesla has pioneered. To add beauty to the interior through simplification. I’m certainly supportive, the interior of my Model 3 is beautiful and immediately relaxing. Automobili Pininfarina seems to be embracing the idea as well.
Luca also noted that purity wasn’t just about interior design but also in the materials they use. That means using as much sustainable and natural materials as possible.
It became apparent that they were designing this car, not just because they loved cars, but because they see where society is going and that we need a more sustainable approach. “Sustainability should not be a buzzword,” Michael said. “For us, it will be the full 360 degree approach. It starts at the tailpipe… but we must also look at the manufacturing, the battery second life, and using renewable energy”. They are currently working on their roadmap to full sustainability and will have explicit targets for it, with more information coming this fall. They complimented Tesla as leaders in this area as well, including their solar installation at the Gigafactory.
The technology to make this car possible seems to be right around the corner. Tesla already has their prototype driving around and reportedly “breaking the laws of physics”. If Automobili Pininfarina can integrate some of their parent companies Formula E tech, then there’s no reason to think this car won’t meet their goals. They are producing the car in small volumes, so mass production “hell” isn’t a concern, but they did note more vehicle models will come, specifically that SUVs are in their future. Is this the start of a new all-electric luxury brand in Europe? One can hope.
It seems they have the right mix to be successful and I hope we see them soon.
Afterword:
At the end of the interview, I asked them if they drive electric cars or which ones they particularly enjoy. Michael quickly noted test driving the Tesla P100D with ludicrous mode was his favorite so far and that’s probably the one he’s going to buy. He also said he’d look at the Volvo XC90 plug-in hybrid as a family car. A Ferrari, he said, would also likely be needed – although I assume that’s at least until their PF0 is available.
Elon Musk
Tesla and SpaceX merger talks hit a new stage, and one hurdle remains
Tesla and SpaceX merger talks are reportedly advancing, and a deal could arrive by December.
Tesla and SpaceX are moving closer to a combination, with a deal announcement possible as soon as December, Bloomberg reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The companies have also discussed a scenario in which the announcement slips into early 2027.
Boards and advisers on both sides are now working through the terms of the deal and the governance structure of the combined company, according to the report. One open item is how many SpaceX shares Tesla investors would receive. Bloomberg had previously reported that the two companies were aiming to announce a deal in the first half of next year and close it before the end of President Donald Trump’s term, so a December announcement would pull that schedule forward by months.
Tesla shares rose as much as 1.9% to $398.35 after the report, while SpaceX gained 0.6% to $140.63. SpaceX carries a market value of about $1.9 trillion following its June IPO, and Tesla is valued at about $1.55 trillion, which would make a combination the largest corporate deal on record. Neither company responded to requests for comment.
The talks became official on October 20, when Elon Musk said on SpaceX’s third quarter earnings call that both companies had formed special committees of independent directors to study a merger, as Teslarati reported. Musk said he could not take part because he is “a conflicted party” and called the process “an odd kabuki dance.” He also noted that Tesla would need approval from 50 percent of all outstanding shares, a bar the company missed in 2025 when a board declassification proposal won support from only 39.4 percent.
China remains the biggest structural problem. Bloomberg’s sources said the companies still need to work out how to isolate Tesla’s large and profitable manufacturing business in China from SpaceX’s U.S. government and defense contracts. JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta described those two factors last month as “key dynamics that are at odds with each other” for regulatory and shareholder approval. Musk has repeatedly said Tesla has no plans to separate its China business, a position he restated in August after ARK Invest predicted a merger announcement before the end of the year.
Washington adds another layer. Democrats took control of Congress in this month’s midterms and have pledged to investigate Musk’s business and political activities, which could bring added scrutiny to a deal involving one of the Pentagon’s most important launch and satellite contractors.
The report also lands three weeks before Tesla’s December 3 annual meeting at Giga Texas. That ballot has only three items, led by the re-election of Musk, board chair Robyn Denholm and JB Straubel, and includes no merger proposal. Any deal announced in December would likely require a separate special meeting for Tesla shareholders to vote on it.
The two companies already share a growing list of projects, including the Terafab semiconductor plant in Texas. Tesla’s next generation Roadster, which uses cold gas thrusters built on SpaceX hardware, turned up on display at SpaceX headquarters last month and has become one of the clearest public examples of that overlap.
News
SpaceX hid behind another name in the Arizona desert, and now it’s going big
SpaceX puts a $50 billion price on its Arizona supercompute campus ahead of December’s hearing.
SpaceX has put a price tag on the supercomputer campus it wants to build in the southern Arizona desert. In a statement Thursday, the company said it is pursuing a roughly $50 billion supercompute campus in Cochise County, about 80 miles east of Tucson. Together with a separate facility planned at Starbase, Texas, the two projects add up to more than $74 billion in planned investment.
The Arizona figure had not been disclosed before. SpaceX’s involvement only became public on November 4, when company representatives hosted a packed town hall at Cochise Elementary School for an application filed under the name Tombstone Resources LLC. A SpaceX representative told residents the filing used another name because putting SpaceX on it “draws attention” from outside the county, local station KVOA reported.
The application describes a 747-acre site near the Willcox Playa with up to nine buildings of about 493,000 square feet each. SpaceX plans to bring the campus online in four phases of roughly 1.5 GW, reaching 6 GW at full build, backed by a 24 GWh battery system and about $3.6 billion in grid upgrades. At that size, it would draw about 2.5 times more power than every data center in Maricopa County combined, according to an Arizona Republic analysis.
SpaceX says the project will create about 5,500 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs, and that it could cut electricity bills for members of the local cooperatives by up to 20 percent. The campus would use dry cooling with no industrial groundwater use. Its application estimates ongoing water needs of 7 to 10 acre-feet a year, roughly what 20 to 30 homes consume.
Power is the bigger question. The site sits next to the Apache Generating Station, a coal and natural gas plant with about 1 GW of capacity that had been slated to retire by 2028. SpaceX told residents its investment could expand the station to more than 6 GW.
Local opposition is organized. A petition asking the county to deny the permit has gathered about 2,400 signatures, and the nearby playa is a landing spot for federally protected sandhill cranes, which SpaceX says its design accounts for. The Cochise County Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing on December 9 in Bisbee, with written comments due November 27. If approved, construction could start in March 2027.
The Texas project faces a vote the same day. The Starbase City Commission will consider a property tax abatement for SpaceX’s $24 billion gas plant and supercompute facility at its own December 9 hearing, as Teslarati reported. SpaceX said Thursday the Starbase site has already generated more than 3,000 construction jobs, and it committed $220 million to Brownsville’s water and wastewater systems, $40 million of which has been paid.
Both campuses would expand a footprint still centered on the Memphis area, where SpaceX’s Colossus data centers run largely on gas turbines and the company won a permit for a power plant in Southaven, Mississippi earlier this year. SpaceX ended the third quarter with 1.7 GW of nameplate compute. The Arizona campus alone, at full build, would be more than three times that size.
Elon Musk
Nvidia’s board meets on Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk already has an answer
Elon Musk says it would be an honor to hire Jensen Huang amid Nvidia turmoil.
Elon Musk says he would welcome Jensen Huang at one of his companies if Nvidia’s board decides to push out its longtime chief executive.
On Wednesday evening, the financial account ZeroHedge posted “Elon please hire Jensen” on X. Musk replied roughly two hours later: “That would be an honor.” Neither Huang nor Nvidia had responded publicly as of Wednesday night.
Musk’s reply came as Nvidia’s board met to decide Huang’s future. The Wall Street Journal reported that directors were preparing to oust him following reports of two extramarital relationships. One involves Alice Huang, a Singapore-based businesswoman whom U.S. intelligence officials reportedly believe was working for China’s Ministry of State Security. The New York Times separately reported a relationship with Kimberly Powell, Nvidia’s vice president of health care. Huang acknowledged being unfaithful in a memo to employees on Sunday but gave no details.
@zerohedge That would be an honor
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 12, 2026
Under Nvidia’s bylaws, a majority of its 11 directors can remove the CEO with or without cause. Bloomberg reported that the board has been working with an outside firm on possible replacements and may name an interim chief, with CFO Colette Kress seen as the likely pick. Nvidia shares fell more than 8 percent in extended trading, according to CNBC, and the company is scheduled to report quarterly earnings on November 17.
Musk has more riding on Nvidia’s leadership than most tech executives. In August, he told investors on SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company that it would build its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware, calling Vera Rubin “the best architecture.” SpaceX is also working with Nvidia on the compute payload for Starmind, its planned orbital AI constellation. In October, SpaceX said it had a binding commitment for a roughly $40 billion lease of Vera Rubin GPUs and related equipment, with the leases expected to begin in the first half of 2027.
The scale of that dependence is already enormous. On its Q3 call, SpaceX said it was bringing roughly 200,000 to 220,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs online each month and expects 2.5 to 3 GW of nameplate compute by the end of the year. That buildout is now reaching new sites like the proposed $24 billion power plant and supercomputer campus at Starbase.
The relationship between the two executives also goes back nearly a decade. Huang has often told the story of personally delivering Nvidia’s first DGX-1 AI supercomputer to Musk in 2016, when no other customer wanted one. “Nobody wanted to be part of it, except for Elon,” Huang said on the Joe Rogan Experience last December.
Musk did not say what role Huang might fill, and his reply stops short of a formal offer. Huang co-founded Nvidia in 1993 and still owns about 3.6 percent of its stock, so any move to a Musk company would depend on whether, and how, he leaves the chipmaker he has run for more than three decades.
Tesla and SpaceX merger talks hit a new stage, and one hurdle remains
SpaceX hid behind another name in the Arizona desert, and now it’s going big
