Elon Musk recently joined a Twitter Spaces talk covering Tesla on Thursday and spoke on several topics such as the lithium refining factory in Corpus Christi, Texas, the recession, his goal of not selling any more Tesla stock for another 18-24 months, and more. The Spaces were hosted by @StockMKTNewz, @WholeMarsBlog, and @StockTalkWeekly.
Elon is currently in here join up https://t.co/wDQnUnM0vr
— Evan (@StockMKTNewz) December 22, 2022
Although you can go back and listen to the recording, Elon Musk gave a lot of detailed information and reassured Tesla shareholders that he wasn’t; he is still at Tesla. Here are five key takeaways from the live Twitter Spaces.
1. Elon Musk isn’t MIA at Tesla.
Several shareholders have been worried that Elon Musk’s focus on Twitter has been taking him away from Tesla. Elon Musk told Ross Gerber that he hasn’t missed a single important Tesla meeting.
“I was back in Austin just last week. There is literally not a single important Tesla meeting I have missed this entire time. I’m not MIA.”
He also told Gerber that he doesn’t have plants to sell any more Tesla stock until around 2025.
“I’m not selling any stock for another 18-24 months. Not until around 2025. I needed to sell. I’m not selling any stock until probably two years from now… I’m somewhat paranoid after going through two recessions.”
2. Tesla will weather any economic storms.
Regarding any upcoming economic issues, Elon Musk said he believed Tesla would weather it better than any company.
“I think Tesla will weather an upcoming economic storm better than any company. Unless the company is making bread.”
“If you are a ship in the storm, even if you have a great ship, you are still going to be hit. There is latency in the supply chain.”
3. Tesla’s lithium refinery.
In November, Tesla began negotiating for a battery-grade lithium refinery in Texas and discussed details of its planned $365 million plant with Nueces County commissioners. Elon Musk spoke briefly of the refinery during the Twitter Spaces.
“Tesla is building a lithium refinery in Texas to relieve the lithium refining choke point.”
“Seven years to build a refinery is insane. We are aiming to have meaningful volume out the factory in 2 years.”
“We are also cathode refining at Giga Texas for nickel-based cathodes.”
4. Next Gigafactory, recession & demand
Elon Musk added that the total automotive demand, especially the demand in China, will cause a reduction in the cost of battery materials. He added that Tesla is deploying capital at the fasted rate possible without being wasteful and then shared a bit of Gigafactory news.
“Deploying capital at the fastest rate we can without being wasteful. We are making investments, and can’t say too much, but we are close to picking a location for the next Gigafactory. We are being careful and deliberate about that. We are coming into recession in a strong position.”
5. Tesla Electric in Texas & Master Plan Part 3
Tesla recently launched Tesla Electric in Texas, which allows Powerwall owners to participate in virtual power plants (VPPs). This was a major milestone for both Tesla and Texas. Elon Musk said:
“The overarching purpose is to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy. Energy generation, storage of that energy, and electric transport. We are working on all three. The demand for large batteries is quasi-infinite. So long a Tesla battery pack is cheaper than a peaker plant, there will be insatiable demand.”
“1000+ GWh battery packs a year, if not 2000, is the goal. Master plan part 3 is really about scale. One should think of things in terms of tonnage. The fundamental rate limiter is how many gigawatt hours per year of battery packs can we make?”
“300 TWh of installed capacity for fully sustainable energy globally.”
Elon Musk also pointed out that the Tesla team is doing a phenomenal job and stands by his prediction that Tesla will be the most valuable company in the world.
Disclosure: Johnna is a $TSLA shareholder and believes in Tesla’s mission.
Your feedback is welcome. If you have any comments or concerns or see a typo, you can email me at johnna@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter at @JohnnaCrider1.
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s X goes down as users report major outage Friday morning
Error messages and stalled loading screens quickly spread across the service, while outage trackers recorded a sharp spike in user reports.
Elon Musk’s X experienced an outage Friday morning, leaving large numbers of users unable to access the social media platform.
Error messages and stalled loading screens quickly spread across the service, while outage trackers recorded a sharp spike in user reports.
Downdetector reports
Users attempting to open X were met with messages such as “Something went wrong. Try reloading,” often followed by an endless spinning icon that prevented access, according to a report from Variety. Downdetector data showed that reports of problems surged rapidly throughout the morning.
As of 10:52 a.m. ET, more than 100,000 users had reported issues with X. The data indicated that 56% of complaints were tied to the mobile app, while 33% were related to the website and roughly 10% cited server connection problems. The disruption appeared to begin around 10:10 a.m. ET, briefly eased around 10:35 a.m., and then returned minutes later.

Previous disruptions
Friday’s outage was not an isolated incident. X has experienced multiple high-profile service interruptions over the past two years. In November, tens of thousands of users reported widespread errors, including “Internal server error / Error code 500” messages. Cloudflare-related error messages were also reported.
In March 2025, the platform endured several brief outages spanning roughly 45 minutes, with more than 21,000 reports in the U.S. and 10,800 in the U.K., according to Downdetector. Earlier disruptions included an outage in August 2024 and impairments to key platform features in July 2023.
News
Tesla wins top loyalty and conquest honors in S&P Global Mobility 2025 awards
The electric vehicle maker secured this year’s “Overall Loyalty to Make,” “Highest Conquest Percentage,” and “Ethnic Loyalty to Make” awards.
Tesla emerged as one of the standout winners in the 2025 S&P Global Mobility Automotive Loyalty Awards, capturing top honors for customer retention and market conquest.
The electric vehicle maker secured this year’s “Overall Loyalty to Make,” “Highest Conquest Percentage,” and “Ethnic Loyalty to Make” awards.
Tesla claims loyalty crown
According to S&P Global Mobility, Tesla secured its 2025 “Overall Loyalty to Make” award following a late-year shift in consumer buying patterns. This marked the fourth consecutive year Tesla has received the honor. S&P Global Mobility’s annual analysis reviewed 13.6 million new retail vehicle registrations in the U.S. from October 2024 through September 2025, as noted in a press release.
In addition to overall loyalty, Tesla also earned the “Highest Conquest Percentage” award for the sixth consecutive year, highlighting the company’s continued ability to attract customers away from competing brands. This achievement is particularly notable given Tesla’s relatively small vehicle lineup, which is largely dominated by just two models: the Model 3 and Model Y.
Ethnic market strength and conquest
Tesla also captured top honors for “Ethnic Market Loyalty to Make,” a category that highlighted especially strong retention among Asian and Hispanic households. According to the analysis, Tesla achieved loyalty rates of 63.6% among Asian households and 61.9% among Hispanic households. These figures exceeded national averages.
S&P Global Mobility executives noted that loyalty margins across categories were exceptionally narrow in 2025, underscoring the significance of Tesla’s wins in an increasingly competitive market. Joe LaFeir, President of Mobility Business Solutions at S&P Global Mobility, shared his perspective on this year’s results.
“For 30 years, this analysis has provided a fact-based measure of brand health, and this year’s results are particularly telling. The data shows the market is not rewarding just one type of strategy. Instead, we see sustained, high-level performance from manufacturers with broad portfolios. In the current market, retaining customers remains a critical performance indicator for the industry,” LaFeir said.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft is heading to jury trial
The ruling keeps alive claims that OpenAI misled the Tesla CEO about its charitable purpose while accepting billions of dollars in funding.
OpenAI Inc. and Microsoft will face a jury trial this spring after a federal judge rejected their efforts to dismiss Elon Musk’s lawsuit, which accuses the artificial intelligence startup of abandoning its original nonprofit mission. The ruling keeps alive claims that OpenAI misled the Tesla CEO about its charitable purpose while accepting billions of dollars in funding.
As noted in a report from Bloomberg News, a federal judge in Oakland, California, ruled that OpenAI Inc. and Microsoft failed to show that Musk’s claims should be dismissed. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers stated that while the evidence remains unclear, Musk has maintained that OpenAI “had a specific charitable purpose and that he attached two fundamental terms to it: that OpenAI be open source and that it would remain a nonprofit — purposes consistent with OpenAI’s charter and mission.”
Judge Gonzalez Rogers also rejected an argument by OpenAI suggesting that Musk’s use of an intermediary to donate $38 million in seed money to the company stripped him of legal standing. “Holding otherwise would significantly reduce the enforcement of a large swath of charitable trusts, contrary to the modern trend,” Judge Gonzalez Rogers wrote.
The judge also declined to dismiss Musk’s fraud allegations, citing internal OpenAI communications from 2017 involving co-founder Greg Brockman. In an email cited by the judge, fellow OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis informed Musk that Brockman would “like to continue with the non-profit structure.”
Just two months later, however, Brockman wrote in a private note that he “cannot say that we are committed to the non-profit. don’t want to say that we’re committed. if three months later we’re doing b-corp then it was a lie.”
Marc Toberoff, a member of Musk’s legal team, said Judge Gonzalez Rogers’s ruling confirms that “there is substantial evidence that OpenAI’s leadership made knowingly false assurances to Mr. Musk about its charitable mission that they never honored in favor of their personal self-enrichment.”
OpenAI, for its part, maintained that Musk’s legal efforts are baseless. In a statement, the AI startup said it is looking forward to the upcoming trial. “Mr. Musk’s lawsuit continues to be baseless and a part of his ongoing pattern of harassment, and we look forward to demonstrating this at trial. We remain focused on empowering the OpenAI Foundation, which is already one of the best-resourced nonprofits ever,” OpenAI stated.