Lifestyle
Politics aside, EVs will be — must be — the future of transportation
President-elect Donald Trump hardly professed to be a friend of clean renewable energy during his campaign, that’s for sure. The forces of change toward a sustainable energy future for the U.S. and world, however, are so powerful and dynamic that a Trump presidency may not be able to stop them. The momentum inspired by Tesla’s Elon Musk, MIT’s Electric Vehicle Team, the Google Self-Driving Car Project, Panasonic batteries, “Last Mile” transportation, The Route electric refuse trucks, and so many other electric vehicles is too strong and too ingrained in our culture to be stymied now.
As Rebecca Solnit wrote in her classic book, Hope in the Dark, “You possess the power to change the world to some degree, the current state of affairs is not inevitable, and all trajectories are not downhill.” With activism and advocacy, as well as technological innovations that emerge regardless of political times, clean renewable energy sources will continue to expand. They must, for the sake of our planet.
For example, some things just have not changed in Americans’ relationships to their cars. Over the past 50 years, automobiles have been our freedom machines, a means of both transportation and personal identity expression. In the same way that Henry Ford matched a youthful and euphoric generation to the combustion-engine automobile, so, too, will tomorrow’s automakers continue to design strategic moves to shape the industry’s evolution.
Electric vehicles (EVs) are at the heart of that vision for tomorrow’s consumer domestic transportation. Here are some reasons why EVs will continue to flourish and change the way automakers in the U.S. and abroad have conducted business as usual.
Automakers will continue to know what the customer wants and provide it
Consumer acceptance has already established a formidable EV market. EVs include a large portion of hybrid electrics, which means that, even beyond 2030, the internal-combustion engine will remain — at least partially — relevant. Yet we’ll likely encounter a common culture of electrified vehicles –hybrid, plug-in, battery electric, and fuel cell — in the years to come. But only an iconoclastic automaker will offer consumers a combustion engine without the electric perks.
Consumers just want to be connected
The capacity to be able to consume novel forms of media and other technology applications while driving will only become more prevalent among commuters. This will be possible, in part, through enhanced levels of automotive software competence. It’s an immediate gratification world already, and, with the emergence of new forms of infotainment technologies and virtual realities, consumers are only going to yearn for more connectivity. Traditional automakers will give their customers what they want in connectivity, inching every so much closer to comprehensive EV technologies.
Suite of “apps” found within EVE for Tesla
Improvements in battery technology and costs
Through continuous improvements in battery technology and cost, electrified vehicles will become more “normal” and more likely to be found in the average American’s garage. As a result, EVs will increasingly grab market share from conventional vehicles. With battery costs potentially decreasing by $150 to $200 per kilowatt-hour over the next decade, electrified vehicles will be able to compete more heartily and broadly with conventional vehicles. Automakers will migrate to this new battery technology because it will make obvious financial sense.
A more widely available charging infrastructure
Increasingly, many retailers are seeing the benefit of customers who browse inventories deeply and purchase more intensely as they wait for their EVs to charge outside in the parking lot. This collaboration between EV drivers and retailers will certainly expand the demand for and number of corridor-based charging stations. Shopping centers, entertainment stops, and EV charging may require charging station standardization, of course, for the gestalt to be fully pervasive. That will take consensus-building with other charging station manufacturers.
A local restaurant advertising to Tesla owners at the Las Vegas Supercharger.
Autonomous technology
Advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), with their associated active safety precautions, will quickly allow the automobile to become a platform for drivers and passengers to choose how to use their transit time. EVs and ADAS are so interwoven already that the future must continue those marriages. Yes, there’s still lots of progress that needs to be done around technological and regulatory issues fronts, but is it excessive to think that around 15 percent of new cars sold in 2030 could be fully autonomous? Not really.
Diverse mobility solutions are coming
Traditional business models of car sales will be complemented by a range of diverse, on-demand mobility options. These are sometimes called “last mile” solutions and are particularly necessary in dense urban environments that limit private car entrance. Think central London. EVs are certain to be integral to the trend to increase and diversify on-demand mobility and data-driven services.
Stricter emission regulations
We’re not really sure that a Trump presidency will speed federal regulations toward greater fuel efficiency, if some comments he made on the campaign trail can actually find their way into governance. But, if the U.S. holds to its pledges to further the goals of the Paris Climate Conference (also known as COP21), automakers will scramble to balance out their catalogs. Their gas guzzling behemoths in the full-sized truck category will need their siblings, fuel-efficient EVs. Traditional automakers may have no other recourse than to adopt an EV line of offerings in order to offset those nasty truck MPGs.
The push for traditional automakers to become more capital efficient
Like any business, traditional automakers are under constant pressure from stockholders, who want to see lower overheads, improved fuel efficiency, and reduced emissions. Even if incentives toward purchases of EVs expire, stockholder influences may propel a shift of automaker perspectives, based on little more than the bottom line. This push toward greater capital efficiency will necessarily lead to new business relationships between automakers and technologists.
Competition from abroad
Always on the (pun intended) horizon is the looming threat of other countries and their automotive innovations. It seems unlikely that a Trump administration can foster the political power to exclude car imports, and, anyways, U.S. automakers would like nothing more than to transform their models for the global marketplace. For example, China’s emergence as the world’s largest automotive market can only expand in the coming years and, with that need to supply an enormous consumer base, will be trends toward EVs. U.S. automakers may find themselves outside the marketplace if they don’t keep up with their counterparts abroad.
Conclusion
A white paper titled “Automotive revolution — Perspective toward 2030” describes how the coming generations should see the share of electrified vehicles range from 10 percent to 50 percent of new-vehicle sales. Adoption rates will be highest in developed dense cities with strict emission regulations and consumer incentives. These include tax breaks, special parking and driving privileges, or discounted electricity pricing. Sales may be less robust in small towns and rural areas with lower levels of charging infrastructure and higher dependency on driving range.
As Hillary Clinton said in her concession speech, “Never stop believing that fighting for what’s right is worth it.” Changing consumer preferences, tightening regulation, and technological breakthroughs, among myriad other factors, point to the dominance of EVs in the decades to come. We’ve got to use this moment in political time to rise up and speak out for the future of electric vehicles.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The Boring Company’s Prufrock MB2 is commissioned and ready to mine beneath Nashville’s streets.
The Boring Company’s second tunnel boring machine, Prufrock MB2, is officially ready to dig in Nashville. The company confirmed the news on X, posting: “Prufrock-MB2 is ready to mine in Nashville! MB2 commissioning is complete, including the brief 11 rpm rotation shown here. Will MB2 catch up to MB1, who had quite the head start? And Prufrock-MB3 ships in August!”
MB2 arrives with meaningful improvements over its predecessor. Lessons learned from the launch and operation of MB1 have already been applied to MB2 to improve efficiency and prepare the machine for launch.
Traditional tunnel boring machines operate in a stop-and-go cycle, digging roughly five feet, halt, erect precast concrete segments to line the tunnel wall, then resume. That repeated interruption is one of the main reasons conventional tunneling is slow and expensive. Prufrock is designed to install the tunnel liner simultaneously with mining, eliminating the need to stop every five feet. The machine also skips the need for excavated launch pits. Prufrock arrives on a truck, tilts down, and launches into the ground within 24 hours. And when the tunnel is complete, it emerges from the ground and drives to its next launch site on a trailer, eliminating the need for expensive cranes or pit excavation. The machine is also fully electric and runs with zero people in the tunnel during normal operations, controlled remotely from a surface operations center.
Prufrock-MB2 is ready to mine in Nashville! MB2 commissioning is complete, including the brief 11 rpm rotation shown here.
Will MB2 catch up to MB1, who had quite the head start?
And Prufrock-MB3 ships in August! pic.twitter.com/TTrMql2aRg
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) June 17, 2026
It won’t be long before we hear of another major update on The Boring Company’s Music City Loop project – a planned underground transit network beneath Nashville that would move passengers in electric vehicles through a series of tunnels at highway speeds, and bypassing surface traffic entirely. Nashville was selected in part because of its strong rock conditions that suits the Prufrock machines well, and relatively less regulatory hurdles.
Progress has been steady on multiple fronts. All 37 permits and approvals required ahead of tunneling have been obtained, out of 45 total. Key wins include a fully executed TDOT tunnel permit authorizing 25 miles of tunnel, unanimous airport authority approval for a Nashville International Airport station, and the city’s first residential station agreement serving downtown tower residents.
With MB1 already tunneling, MB2 now commissioned, and MB3 shipping in August, Nashville is becoming something of a live proving ground for scaled tunnel boring. The broader ambition is not limited to one city. The Boring Company’s stated goal is to make underground transportation a practical alternative to surface roads across major metro areas. Nashville is one of many cities, including a successful Las Vegas tunnel system, where that idea is being put to the test at real speed.
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
Elon Musk
SpaceXAI just launched into your kitchen with their new app
SpaceXAI just powered its first consumer app and it predicts what you want to buy.
SpaceXAI just made its first move into consumer AI, and it involves your grocery cart. On June 3, 2026, Gopuff and SpaceXAI announced the launch of Go, a Grok-powered shopping assistant built directly into the Gopuff app that predicts what you need before you even start searching for it.
Gopuff is an instant delivery platform that operates more than 400 micro-fulfillment centers across the U.S., delivering everyday essentials, snacks, drinks, and household items in as little as 15 minutes. It is not a restaurant delivery app or a marketplace. It owns its inventory, controls its warehouses, and handles its own logistics, which means it has built one of the most detailed consumer behavior datasets in retail over its 13-year history.
Go combines SpaceXAI’s advanced reasoning, voice, and image generation models with Gopuff’s dataset of hundreds of millions of orders and real-time cultural signals from X to prepare a suggested cart the moment a customer opens the app. It learns each shopper’s habits and automatically builds a personalized cart based on time of day, location, order history, and real-time indicators. Returning customers can check out with a single tap.
Rather than searching for specific items, users can describe a situation like a game-day party or the desire for a healthy breakfast and Go will assemble a cart automatically. It can also predict when shoppers are running low on items like coffee or paper towels and have them packed and delivered in under 15 minutes. Grok voice integration lets users talk to the app in plain conversational language and check out completely hands-free.
Gopuff co-founder and co-CEO Yakir Gola said: “Today, we believe the greatest friction left in commerce is not delivery or instantaneous access to the essentials customers need. It’s the moment before: the thinking, the deciding, the remembering. We’re combining Gopuff’s demand intelligence with xAI’s frontier reasoning to create an everyday shopping experience that feels like a true extension of you.”
Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO
The timing carries context beyond the product launch. SpaceXAI was formed after SpaceX completed an all-stock merger with Elon Musk’s xAI earlier this year, folding one of the most advanced AI labs in the world into the same corporate structure as the company preparing what could be the largest IPO in history. SpaceXAI is dipping into consumer-focused AI just as it prepares for its public debut, and while Musk has openly discussed building an everything app, this launch uses Grok to power another company’s product rather than launching a standalone consumer platform. Every consumer-facing deployment of Grok ahead of the IPO roadshow adds tangible evidence that SpaceXAI is not just an infrastructure play but a direct competitor in the AI application layer where OpenAI and Google are already fighting for dominance.
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