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Behind the Tesla and Elon Musk Attacks: Big Energy and Conservative Groups
Elon Musk and Tesla Motors have their share of detractors, some of whom have become more vicious than usual as of late. According to a recent article published by The Drive, focused attacks on Tesla and SpaceX emanate from conservative group Citizens for the Republic. CftR is an organization founded in 1977 by Ronald Reagan that calls itself ” a national organization dedicated to revitalizing the conservative movement.” Its stated mission is to “ferret out corruption that wastes taxpayer dollars and continually undermines the American people in favor of the powerful and profitable.” CftR lists its national chairman as Laura Ingraham, a right wing pundit and possible press secretary for Donald Trump.
Musk and his various companies are frequently singled out as examples of taxpayer waste. CftR’s recent activity focuses on a website called Stop Elon From Falling Again whose motto is, “The One Stop Database On Stopping Elon Musk.” It claims “Elon Musk has defrauded the American Taxpayer out of over $4.9 Billion in the form of subsidies, grants, and other favors.”
One of CftR’s regular themes is that incentives promoting solar power are wasteful. “The solar industry has been a pet-industry of the Obama Administration and those who claim to care about the environment. Washington has given Solar companies millions in federal tax credits and subsidies that are costing taxpayers millions, despite posting losses year after year. When Solyndra, Ener1, and others get government tax breaks, the American people need to know. The US government needs to stop meddling in industries and create an atmosphere that allows to prosper without pledging taxpayer support.”
The group fails to mention an article in the New York Times from earlier this year that alleges fossil fuel companies get $4 billion a year in subsidies from the federal government. Nor does it include a reference to the finding of the International Monetary Fund earlier this year that fossil fuel interests receive more than $5 trillion in direct and indirect subsidies from governments around the world each year. When it comes to ferreting out wasteful government spending, people tend to overlook benefits that flow to activities they approve of — or are paid to promote.
Can anyone uncover who is really writing these fake pieces? Can't be skankhunt42. His work is better than this. https://t.co/Qs69AFMGE5
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 22, 2016
Elon has good reason to be suspicious of his rivals. Earlier this year, the Koch Brothers whose total income from fossil fuel related business estimated at $115 billion let it be known they had created a special $10 million a year fund to induce media to run stories favorable to fossil fuels. It worked.
On March 7, Forbes ran a story entitled Forget The Gas Tax, Here’s How Policymakers Make Drivers Pay. The subtitle is, “CAFE standards are not an effective climate change policy; they are a meaningless gesture.” On the same day, Fortune ran a story entitled What Electric-Car Lovers Get Wrong About Fossil Fuels. On March 11, the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed entitled Voters Should Be Mad at Electric Cars, sensationalizing it with a subheading “If Trump and Sanders fans hate absurd handouts to elites, the Tesla economy is the place to look.”
Also on March 11, The Herald Scotland ran this story: Time to get off the back of fossil fuels and show support rather than back daft divestment campaigns. “Koch Industries does not oppose electric vehicles,” said Philip Ellender, a spokesman for the company. “What we oppose is government subsidizing and mandating a particular form of energy over another. We oppose all subsidies – even for those industries in which we participate.”
Does that sound oddly similar to CftR’s line about how “The US government needs to stop meddling in industries and create an atmosphere that allows to prosper without pledging taxpayer support?” How about this statement from Donald Trump during the campaign? Last May, as reported by CNN, he told the press, “The government should not pick winners and losers, instead it should remove obstacles to exploration.” From Charles’ and David’s mouth to Trump’s ear, perhaps?
Yahoo says, “Musk attracts an unusually large and varied number of shrouded online attacks, including phony op-ed pieces, websites with shadowy backers, and individuals who hide behind aliases.” For whatever reason, some people have it in for Elon Musk and are hoping against hope to see him fail. That may be the reason why Tesla Motors is one of the most shorted stocks on Wall Street. Even analysts are divided into separate camps. The Motley Fool generally looks favorably on the company and its prospects for success. Seeking Alpha often takes a more pessimistic view.
In the digital world, truth and fiction are intertwined in a way that makes it hard for people to glean accurate information. Fake news is everywhere and may even have played a key role in the recent election according to the Washington Post. How does anyone know who or what to believe?
Let the trolls launch their slings and arrows Elon’s way. They will not deter him from moving towards his goal — a world where fossil fuels stay in the ground and abundant renewable electricity from the sun is the order of the day.
Elon Musk
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
SpaceX priced its historic IPO at $135 per share today, raising a record $75 billion.
SpaceX officially priced its initial public offering at $135 per share, offering 555,555,555 shares of Class A common stock and raising $75 billion in what is the largest IPO in stock market history. Shares are set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Friday, June 12, under the ticker symbol SPCX. The previous record holder was Saudi Aramco’s 2019 offering at $29 billion, followed by Alibaba’s $22 billion offering in 2014.
At $135 per share and roughly 555.6 million shares, the implied valuation sits near $1.75 trillion, which would make SpaceX roughly the seventh largest company in the United States, just above Tesla’s current market cap. Regular investors can request shares at the IPO price through Robinhood, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, SoFi, and E*TRADE, though the deal is heavily oversubscribed and most retail allocations will be partial or unfilled. Once trading opens June 12, anyone with a brokerage account can buy SPCX on the open market.
SpaceX’s amended S-1 is sparking a major Tesla merger conversation
The valuation is anchored primarily by Starlink. Starlink crossed 10 million subscribers as of February 2026 and is adding 750,000 to 1.5 million new users per month, with the connectivity segment already posting a $1.19 billion profit last quarter. The offering also bundles in xAI following SpaceX’s all-stock merger earlier this year, adding Grok and the Colossus supercomputer to the investment thesis. As Teslarati reported, Starlink ended 2025 with $10 billion in revenue, a figure analysts project could reach $24 billion by end of 2026.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has been vocal in his support. “I think the time is right,” Ives said, adding that the offering expands the Elon Musk ecosystem rather than competing with Tesla. An average 12-month price target of $165 per share represents roughly 22% upside from the IPO price. Not everyone agrees – Motley Fool noted xAI is spending $1 billion per month playing catch-up to OpenAI and Anthropic.
Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a single stated purpose. “Elon founded SpaceX with a goal to change humanity, to make us a multi-planet species,” CFO Bret Johnsen said in the company’s retail roadshow video this week. Musk himself has been more direct: “We are building the systems and technologies necessary to provide global connectivity on Earth and beyond, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”
Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
Tesla has stunned by gaining yet another approval for its Full Self-Driving suite in Europe, its second in two days and its fifth overall.
Belgium will be the latest country to allow Tesla owners to utilize FSD on public roads in Europe, joining a quickly growing list that started with the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Estonia.
On Tuesday, Denmark announced its approval of the FSD suite, which has now been followed by Belgium just one day later.
The country’s Minister of Mobility, Annick De Ridder, announced the approval on her X account, stating that she had just signed the approval of Tesla FSD. It now goes to the country’s homologation department for the last step of the approval process.
De @Tesla community houdt hier al geruime tijd de vinger aan de pols over de toelating voor de FSD-technologie op onze Vlaamse en Belgische wegen.
Uit waardering voor jullie niet-aflatende interesse (en aanmoediging 😉), krijgen jullie hierbij de primeur: ik heb net de toelating… pic.twitter.com/Yrps4OHTj8— Annick De Ridder (@AnnickDeRidder) June 10, 2026
The Belgian approval is one of mighty importance because it truly shows how quickly countries in Europe could greenlight the FSD suite consecutively. Approvals are already coming in relatively quickly, which is a great sign.
Perhaps the next big development that could come from FSD approvals in Europe is an approval from a country like England, Italy, France, Spain, or Germany. It would be something to see how FSD would perform in a major European metro, such as London, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Rome, or Berlin.
Getting Full Self-Driving in Spain and England will be such huge milestones for Tesla. I am so excited to see how FSD performs in Madrid, Barcelona, and London, specifically.
The ultimate test will always be Mumbai or New Delhi. Excited for India’s eventual approval! https://t.co/paw9Ch1qmL pic.twitter.com/9RdDERVSSJ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 9, 2026
Full Self-Driving does an excellent job of roaming around major U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles, but other high-profile international cities of significance would truly mark a line in the sand for Tesla, which can simply enable any vehicle in its customer-owned fleet to run FSD with the correct approvals.
SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
