News
Full autonomy will arrive sooner than expected, says Tesla CEO
During the Tesla Motors earnings call on Wednesday, Elon Musk told analysts and investors, “Full autonomy is going to come a hell of a lot faster than anyone thinks it will. And I think what we’ve got under development is going to blow people’s minds. Blows my mind.”
Full autonomy will reduce fatalities
He bemoaned the amount of attention being paid to the first fatality while using Autopilot. Even though there are more than 32,000 highway deaths a year in America — a number that has gone up recently as cheap gasoline has led to an increase in the number of miles driven — the media, regulators, and even Congress have been talking non-stop about the death of Joshua Brown on May 7.
“Tesla can’t sneeze without there being a national headline,” Musk said. He promised that work on full autonomous driving would continue with the intention of making it available as soon as possible. It will make the Tesla Minibus possible, an idea that was contained in Musk’s Master Plan Part Deux when it was revealed last month.
Tesla to make own inverter
Even though the Tesla/SolarCity merger is not yet a done deal, Musk is behaving as if it is inevitable. A critical piece of any solar power system is the inverter. It converts the direct current supplied by solar panels into the alternating current used by homes and businesses. It is essential to the Tesla Powerwall residential storage battery system.
“There’s no question Tesla’s going to do an integrated inverter. It’s the logical thing to do,” said Musk during the conference call. “Most people don’t even know what an inverter is.”
Until this point, Tesla has been using inverters supplied by third parties, but Musk has a preference for bringing as many components of his products in-house, where design and supplies can be tightly controlled.
Climbing out of “factory hell”
Musk told analysts on Wednesday that Tesla “just managed to climb out of hell” in June but now the “production line is humming.” The company reported weekly production stood at 2,000 cars by the end of the quarter. Musk expects that number to increase to 2,200 cars a week in Q3 and rise higher still to 2,400 cars a week by the end of the year.
Burned by persistent delays from suppliers for the Model X, he sent a warning to suppliers involved with the production of the Model 3, saying “suppliers who fall short will be cut out of the picture.”
EPS disappoint
Tesla reported a lost of $1.06 per share for Q2, which was considerably more than most analysts expected. The stock was down immediately after the earnings call but quickly rebounded in after hours trading. The stock reaction is “another lesson that Tesla’s stock doesn’t trade over earnings per share,” said analyst Ben Kallo of Robert W. Baird & Co. “Automotive gross margin improved, and the commentary about demand helps with the stock as well.”
As much as Elon dislikes the attention being paid to Tesla because of the death of Joshua Brown, his company gets more press attention than all other car makers combined — a critical part of Tesla’s plan to market its cars without the benefit of traditional advertising.
That flood of news about Tesla, which focuses mostly on the consistently buoyant projections from Musk himself, is what keeps the company’s stock price high. People aren’t buying today’s performance. They are buying the future. If you believe everything Elon Musk is saying, that future looks very bright indeed.
Source: Bloomberg, Photo credit: Electric Jen
Elon Musk
Brazil Supreme Court orders Elon Musk and X investigation closed
The decision was issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes following a recommendation from Brazil’s Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet.
Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court has ordered the closure of an investigation involving Elon Musk and social media platform X. The inquiry had been pending for about two years and examined whether the platform was used to coordinate attacks against members of the judiciary.
The decision was issued by Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes following a recommendation from Brazil’s Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet.
According to a report from Agencia Brasil, the investigation conducted by the Federal Police did not find evidence that X deliberately attempted to attack the judiciary or circumvent court orders.
Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet concluded that the irregularities identified during the probe did not indicate fraudulent intent.
Justice Moraes accepted the prosecutor’s recommendation and ruled that the investigation should be closed. Under the ruling, the case will remain closed unless new evidence emerges.
The inquiry stemmed from concerns that content on X may have enabled online attacks against Supreme Court justices or violated rulings requiring the suspension of certain accounts under investigation.
Justice Moraes had previously taken several enforcement actions related to the platform during the broader dispute involving social media regulation in Brazil.
These included ordering a nationwide block of the platform, freezing Starlink accounts, and imposing fines on X totaling about $5.2 million. Authorities also froze financial assets linked to X and SpaceX through Starlink to collect unpaid penalties and seized roughly $3.3 million from the companies’ accounts.
Moraes also imposed daily fines of up to R$5 million, about $920,000, for alleged evasion of the X ban and established penalties of R$50,000 per day for VPN users who attempted to bypass the restriction.
Brazil remains an important market for X, with roughly 17 million users, making it one of the platform’s larger user bases globally.
The country is also a major market for Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, which has surpassed one million subscribers in Brazil.
Elon Musk
FCC chair criticizes Amazon over opposition to SpaceX satellite plan
Carr made the remarks in a post on social media platform X.
U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr criticized Amazon after the company opposed SpaceX’s proposal to launch a large satellite constellation that could function as an orbital data center network.
Carr made the remarks in a post on social media platform X.
Amazon recently urged the FCC to reject SpaceX’s application to deploy a constellation of up to 1 million low Earth orbit satellites that could serve as artificial intelligence data centers in space.
The company described the proposal as a “lofty ambition rather than a real plan,” arguing that SpaceX had not provided sufficient details about how the system would operate.
Carr responded by pointing to Amazon’s own satellite deployment progress.
“Amazon should focus on the fact that it will fall roughly 1,000 satellites short of meeting its upcoming deployment milestone, rather than spending their time and resources filing petitions against companies that are putting thousands of satellites in orbit,” Carr wrote on X.
Amazon has declined to comment on the statement.
Amazon has been working to deploy its Project Kuiper satellite network, which is intended to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink service. The company has invested more than $10 billion in the program and has launched more than 200 satellites since April of last year.
Amazon has also asked the FCC for a 24-month extension, until July 2028, to meet a requirement to deploy roughly 1,600 satellites by July 2026, as noted in a CNBC report.
SpaceX’s Starlink network currently has nearly 10,000 satellites in orbit and serves roughly 10 million customers. The FCC has also authorized SpaceX to deploy 7,500 additional satellites as the company continues expanding its global satellite internet network.
Energy
Tesla Energy gains UK license to sell electricity to homes and businesses
The license was granted to Tesla Energy Ventures Ltd. by UK energy regulator Ofgem after a seven-month review process.
Tesla Energy has received a license to supply electricity in the United Kingdom, opening the door for the company to serve homes and businesses in the country.
The license was granted to Tesla Energy Ventures Ltd. by UK energy regulator Ofgem after a seven-month review process.
According to Ofgem, the license took effect at 6 p.m. local time on Wednesday and applies to Great Britain.
The approval allows Tesla’s energy business to sell electricity directly to customers in the region, as noted in a Bloomberg News report.
Tesla has already expanded similar services in the United States. In Texas, the company offers electricity plans that allow Tesla owners to charge their vehicles at a lower cost while also feeding excess electricity back into the grid.
Tesla already has a sizable presence in the UK market. According to price comparison website U-switch, there are more than 250,000 Tesla electric vehicles in the country and thousands of Tesla home energy storage systems.
Ofgem also noted that Tesla Motors Ltd., a separate entity incorporated in England and Wales, received an electricity generation license in June 2020.
The new UK license arrives as Tesla continues expanding its global energy business.
Last year, Tesla Energy retained the top position in the global battery energy storage system (BESS) integrator market for the second consecutive year. According to Wood Mackenzie’s latest rankings, Tesla held about 15% of global market share in 2024.
The company also maintained a dominant position in North America, where it captured roughly 39% market share in the region.
At the same time, competition in the energy storage sector is increasing. Chinese companies such as Sungrow have been expanding their presence globally, particularly in Europe.
Brazil Supreme Court orders Elon Musk and X investigation closed
FCC chair criticizes Amazon over opposition to SpaceX satellite plan
