Investor's Corner
HyperLoop Test Track Coming To California
HyperLoop Transportation Technologies has purchased land in central California to build HyperLoop test track to see if the this nutty idea actually works.
HyperLoop Transportation Technologies has struck a deal to buy enough land near Interstate 5 in central California to build a 5 mile long HyperLoop test track, reports Navigant Research. It will cost about $100,000,000 and serve as a “proof of concept” facility for the HyperLoop idea proposed by Elon Musk in 2013. The money to pay for it is expected to come from an IPO later this year, with construction beginning in 2016.
If you’re not familiar with the HyperLoop, think of it as one of those pneumatic tubes that connect drivers and tellers at drive-thru banks, only hundreds of miles long and big enough to carry people. Musk thinks such a system could whisk passengers from LA to San Francisco in about 35 minutes at speeds up to 800 mph.
If that seems a little fantastic to you, remember this is the man who thought it was possible to build a rocket ship for a fraction of what it costs other companies — and then did it. Today, his SpaceX company has years of business worth billions of dollars booked, while those others are crying for customers. Saying “It can’t be done,” to Musk is like telling Congress to stop spending your money.
For all his genius, not even Elon Musk can overturn the laws of physics. All transportation devices have to deal with friction losses and wind resistance. As speeds increase, so does friction, but the real enemy of high speed travel is wind resistance. Aerodynamic loads increase with the square of speed. That’s why it takes 4 times as much power to punch a hole in the air at 100 mph than it does at 50 mph.
Source: ET3
The HyperLoop doesn’t repeal the laws of physics; it finds new ways to minimize their effects. It’s one of those “Don’t raise the bridge, lower the river,” kind of things and it’s brilliant. Let’s start with wind resistance. The HyperLoop will consist of a steel tube hundreds of miles long that has a partial vacuum inside. Less air means less wind resistance. Less wind resistance means higher speeds with less power.
Part two of the plan eliminates all the wheels, axles and motors that cause friction in regular vehicles. Instead, the transportation modules inside the HyperLoop tube will “float” on a thin layer of air, slashing friction to nearly zero. Instead of motors, the train will be propelled by electrically powered linear accelerators installed along its entire length. Once again, the idea is brilliant. But will it work?
Musk says passengers in his HyperLoop will be whisked along in complete comfort. But skeptics point out that they will be sealed inside windowless pods during the journey. Those who suffer from claustrophobia shouldn’t buy a ticket. There will be no beverage service, no restrooms and no possibility of moving around during the journey. Furthermore, they will be bombarded by the sound of what little air is left inside the tube rushing by at near supersonic speeds.
While Musk assumes the ride will be serenely smooth, in reality the alignment of the tube will have to be virtually perfect over its entire length for that to happen. Hello? We are talking about California here, a state known for its frequent seismic activity. Then there are considerations like how to keep the HyperLink tube sealed against air leaks and safe from vandalism.
The test track is designed to answer all those questions and win over the doubters. If the idea is validated, Musk says a Hyperloop along the heavily traveled I 5 corridor could be built for about $8 billion. Contrast that with the $64 billion the Amtrak high speed rail line scheduled to begin construction soon is supposed to cost. When was the last time a government project came in on time and under budget? Of course, Musk’s numbers don’t include the costs of developing his idea and making it a reality.
Elon Musk’s greatest gift is spinning wondrous tales about what could be and convincing people to invest today in his promise of tomorrow. Then he uses the funds raised to make tomorrow happen. So far, more people have made money investing in Musk and his dreams than have lost it. When the HyperLoop Transportation Technologies IPO takes place, will you be on the phone to your broker, placing a “buy” order? Or do you think the HyperLoop is mostly hype and hyperbole?
The problem with predicting the future is the future is so stubbornly unpredictable.
Elon Musk
Tesla Cybercabs narrowly miss deadly Amazon cargo plane crash
An Amazon cargo plane crash near Miami’s airport stopped feet from dozens of Tesla Cybercabs.
An Amazon Prime Air Boeing 767 cargo jet overran the runway at Miami International Airport on Sunday afternoon, killing five people and injuring five more. The jet, operated by North Carolina based carrier 21 Air as Flight 7598, touched down around 2 p.m. after arriving from San Juan, Puerto Rico, then crossed the airport perimeter, plowed across NW 67th Avenue and struck multiple vehicles before catching fire, according to the Associated Press.
Photos and video from the scene show the aircraft’s nose stopped within meters of a fenced staging lot holding dozens of gold painted Tesla Cybercabs, the steering wheel free robotaxi Tesla began putting on public roads in Austin last week. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue has confirmed the plane struck “multiple vehicles” but has not said whether any Cybercabs were among them, and neither Tesla nor airport officials have addressed the fleet directly.
The Cybercabs had not yet entered commercial service in Miami. Tesla’s existing Robotaxi operation there runs on modified Model Y vehicles and has been unsupervised since Ashok Elluswamy confirmed the detail on X in July.
Footage of the plane crash from earlier today | #ONLYinDADE pic.twitter.com/iGoOtnd6cD
— ONLY in DADE (@ONLYinDADE) September 6, 2026
Elon Musk offered the briefest of reactions. Replying to a Zero Hedge post about the Cybercabs sitting so close to the wreckage, he wrote a single word: “Weird.” He has not commented further, and Tesla has not issued a statement.
The timing puts Tesla’s newest vehicle near an unrelated but highly visible tragedy just days after its Austin debut, a launch that had already drawn scrutiny from federal regulators. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an audit how Tesla certified the Cybercab as compliant with federal vehicle safety standards, a process Teslarati covered after the vehicle’s September 3 launch event. That inquiry concerns the car’s lack of a steering wheel and pedals, not the Miami crash.
Investigators from the FAA and NTSB are focused on the plane, not the parking lot beside it. Flight data reviewed by outlets including Simple Flying show the 767 touched down around 170 knots, well above the 135 to 140 knot range typical for the aircraft, though investigators have not determined a cause. Amazon said it is working with authorities and that its priority is the safety of everyone affected.
Whether any Cybercabs were damaged, and what Tesla plans for the fleet parked near one of the country’s busiest airports, remain open questions.
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Tesla Cybercab is coming to Asia this month as US service officially begins
Tesla Asia says Cybercab will be on display in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai this month.
Tesla’s Cybercab is heading to Asia. The official Tesla Asia account posted on X Thursday, inviting Cybercab fans to “Come experience the future of autonomy in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing & Shanghai.” The post went up within hours of Tesla’s own Cybercab milestone in Texas, where the company said Thursday it had begun offering rides in across Austin.
Exact dates and venues for the Asia tour haven’t been released yet, though Tesla Hong Kong replied to the announcement with “Cybercab will be on display in Hong Kong soon,” while Tesla Japan’s response pointed fans to a sign up page for updates. Neither post mentions test rides or a service area, and nothing so far suggests Tesla is launching Robotaxi operations in any of the four cities. Based on how Tesla has run past Cybercab tours, in Europe in late 2024 and at US shopping centers that same December, the Asia stops are almost certainly static displays at Tesla stores or public venues as a means to stimulate buzz for its future driverless ride-hailing service in the big cities.
Cybercab will be on display in Asia this month!
Come experience the future of autonomy in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing & Shanghai. pic.twitter.com/wGmmEastfX— Tesla Asia (@Tesla_Asia) September 4, 2026
The timing lines up with Tesla’s only prior Cybercab appearance in the region, a booth at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai last November, which Teslarati covered at the time. At that event, Tesla’s regional general manager for Shanghai framed the car as evidence of the company’s broader mission, a message Tesla has since formalized in its Master Plan Part IV, which states that “autonomous vehicles have the capacity to dramatically improve the affordability, availability and safety of transportation while reducing pollution, particularly in our increasingly dense global cities.” The same document is where Tesla lays out its “sustainable abundance” framing for Cybercab and Optimus alike, describing the two as the hardware behind an AI driven push to cut the cost of transportation and labor at scale.
Whether Cybercab actually operates as a robotaxi anywhere in Asia remains an open question, considering China has already pushed an autonomous ride-hailing market that’s run on homegrown players like Baidu’s Apollo Go and Pony AI. For now, the four city tour reads as a marketing push timed to Austin’s momentum.
Elon Musk
OpenAI cites distrust of SpaceX in decision to drop Cursor partnership
OpenAI will cut SpaceX-owned Cursor’s model access in November, citing Musk’s history of broken contracts.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced late Friday that it is ending its partnership with Cursor, cutting off the coding tool’s access to its models on November 12. The move comes two weeks after SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor’s parent company, Anysphere, folding the popular AI coding assistant into Elon Musk’s growing SpaceXAI division.
In a post on its website, OpenAI said the decision came down to trust, not technology. “We cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk’s companies violating contracts,” the company wrote. OpenAI pointed to two specific incidents: X, now part of SpaceX, allegedly breaking the terms of an existing OpenAI contract after Musk bought Twitter.
That lawsuit is the backdrop for all of this. Musk cofounded OpenAI in 2015, left the board in 2018, and sued Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2024, arguing they abandoned the company’s nonprofit mission for profit. A federal jury sided with OpenAI in May, finding Musk waited too long to sue rather than ruling on the merits of his claims. Musk said at the time he would appeal to the Ninth Circuit, calling the outcome a “calendar technicality” rather than a real judgment.
SpaceX’s interest in Cursor predates that verdict by weeks. The company first struck a deal with Cursor in April, securing an option to acquire it for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for joint development work instead. As Teslarati reported at the time, the logic was straightforward: Cursor was paying retail prices to Anthropic and OpenAI, two of its most direct competitors, every time a developer used its product, while SpaceX had idle capacity on its Colossus supercomputer, roughly the equivalent of a million Nvidia H100 GPUs, that Cursor could use to train its own models instead. SpaceX exercised the option in June, days after its own IPO, and the deal closed in mid-August.
Once it closed, Musk moved fast. On an all-hands call with more than 1,000 Cursor employees, he reportedly told staff that SpaceXAI’s Grok was playing catchup in the AI race, unlike Tesla and SpaceX in their own markets, and singled out Anthropic as the company to catch. Cursor CEO Michael Truell now reports directly to Musk inside SpaceXAI.
Losing OpenAI’s models leaves Cursor leaning harder on Anthropic’s Claude, which has its own compute agreement with SpaceX, and on Cursor’s in-house Composer model, the one SpaceX’s compute was supposed to accelerate in the first place. OpenAI framed the November deadline as maximum notice under its contract, and said it wants to “go above and beyond” to help developers through the transition. Whether Anthropic makes the same call is now the open question in AI coding.
Tesla Cybercabs narrowly miss deadly Amazon cargo plane crash
Tesla crosses major Unsupervised Self-Driving milestone
