

News
Mercedes Benz, Stellantis part of huge JV for European battery production
Mercedes Benz, Stellantis, Siemens, and TotalEnergies have agreed to a joint venture to construct three gigafactories in Europe to aid electric vehicle manufacturing.
Since the recent European energy crisis, electric vehicles have grown in demand from consumers, corporations, and even governments. And this deal, worth roughly 7 billion euros ($6.79 billion), looks to address that. According to Reuters, the joint venture called Automotive Cells Company (ACC) will construct three gigafactories and is currently looking at locations in Billy-Berclau Douvrin, France, Kaiserslautern, Germany, and Termoli, Italy.
For automakers such as Mercedes Benz and Stellantis, domestic European batteries are hard to come by. But with the creation of ACC, automakers will have a new source to address the demand. Each proposed gigafactory has a planned capacity of 40GWh annually by 2030. This is roughly the same capacity as Tesla’s Giga-Nevada facility.
ACC would also create more competition in the battery market, long dominated by Chinese and South Korean battery options, but they aren’t the only ones looking to do so. Northvolt has made a name for itself by partnering with Volkswagen Group, BMW Group, and others. And Northvolt already operates two production facilities with a combined output of 48GWh, with more planned for the future.
The real challenge will be in differentiating itself in the ever more crowded battery market. Northvolt has found success in recent years by using super low-cost power sources near their gigafactories to produce batteries while also priding themselves on their sustainability efforts generally.
This is where Siemens comes into the deal. Siemens explained in a comment to Reuters that ACC will use its cloud-based services and software offerings to help maximize efficiencies. “ACC uses virtually the entire spectrum of Xcelerator – from factory construction to production automation to building services,” Siemens managing board member Cedrik Neike told Reuters.
ACC has a long time before they are up and running. Still, the question of differentiation and specialization will make or break the new joint venture in the ever more competitive battery manufacturing business.
What do you think of the article? Do you have any comments, questions, or concerns? Shoot me an email at william@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @WilliamWritin. If you have news tips, email us at tips@teslarati.com!
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship Flight 10: What to expect
SpaceX implemented hardware and operational changes aimed at improving Starship’s reliability.

SpaceX is preparing to launch the tenth test flight of its Starship vehicle as early as Sunday, August 24, with the launch window opening at 6:30 p.m. CT.
The mission follows investigations into anomalies from earlier flights, including the loss of Starship on its ninth test and a Ship 36 static fire issue. SpaceX has since implemented hardware and operational changes aimed at improving Starship’s reliability.
Booster landing burns and flight experiments
The upcoming Starship Flight 10 will expand Super Heavy’s flight envelope with multiple landing burn trials. Following stage separation, the booster will attempt a controlled flip and boostback burn before heading to an offshore splashdown in the Gulf of America. One of the three center engines typically used for landing will be intentionally disabled, allowing engineers to evaluate whether a backup engine can complete the maneuver, according to a post from SpaceX.
The booster will also transition to a two-engine configuration for the final phase, hovering briefly above the water before shutdown and drop. These experiments are designed to simulate off-nominal scenarios and generate real-world data on performance under varying conditions, while maximizing propellant use during ascent to enable heavier payloads.
Starship upper stage reentry tests
The Starship upper stage will attempt multiple in-space objectives, including deployment of eight Starlink simulators and a planned Raptor engine relight. SpaceX will also continue testing reentry systems with several modifications. A section of thermal protection tiles has been removed to expose vulnerable areas, while new metallic tile designs, including one with active cooling, will be trialed.
Catch fittings have been installed to evaluate their thermal and structural performance, and adjustments to the tile line will address hot spots observed on Flight 6. The reentry profile is expected to push the structural limits of Starship’s rear flaps at maximum entry pressure.
SpaceX says lessons from these tests are critical to refining the next-generation Starship and Super Heavy vehicles. With Starfactory production ramping in Texas and new launch infrastructure under development in Florida, the company is pushing to hit its goal of achieving a fully reusable orbital launch system.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk takes aim at Bill Gates’ Microsoft with new AI venture “Macrohard”
It is quite an appropriate name for a company that’s designed to rival Microsoft.

Elon Musk has set his sights on Microsoft with a new company called “Macrohard,” a software venture tied to his AI startup, xAI.
Musk described the project as a “purely AI software company” that’s designed to generate hundreds of specialized coding and generative AI agents that could one day simulate products from companies like Microsoft entirely through artificial intelligence.
Macrohard‘s Purpose
Musk announced Macrohard on Friday, though xAI had already registered the trademark with the US Patent Office a few weeks ago, as noted in a PC Mag report. Interestingly enough, this is not the first time that Musk has mentioned such an initiative.
Just last month, he stated that xAI was “creating a multi-agent AI software company, where Grok spawns hundreds of specialized coding and image/video generation/understanding agents all working together and then emulates humans interacting with the software in virtual machines until the result is excellent.”
At the time, Musk stated that “This is a macro challenge and a hard problem with stiff competition,” hinting at the venture’s “Macrohard” moniker. A few years ago, Musk also posted “Macrohard >> Microsoft” on X.
Powered by xAI and Colossus
Macrohard appears to be closely linked to xAI’s Colossus 2 supercomputer project in Memphis. Musk has confirmed plans to acquire millions of Nvidia GPUs, joining rivals such as OpenAI and Meta in a high-stakes race for AI computing power. Colossus is already one of the most powerful supercomputer clusters in the world, and it is still being expanded.
xAI is only a couple of years old, having been founded in March 2023. During its Engineering Open House event in San Francisco, Elon Musk highlighted that the company’s speed will be its primary competitive edge. “No SR-71 Blackbird was ever shot down and it only had one strategy: to accelerate,” Musk said.

Elon Musk tends to use social media platform X as his personal platform to express himself, so much so that critics tend to allege that the CEO is no longer serious about his numerous companies.
As per Musk, he is still very much in wartime CEO mode, despite all the jokes and fun posts about Ani on X.
Elon Musk leads several prolific companies, much more than the average CEO. And while Tesla is the only publicly traded entity that he currently leads, Musk is so visible that everyone across the internet pretty much has a strong opinion of him one way or another. For his longtime supporters and followers, however, what truly matters is if Musk is locked in.
Considering that Elon Musk’s feed on X has recently been filled with AI imagery, a good portion of which involve AI-rendered women, some X users have expressed concerns that the CEO may be losing focus once more. Musk responded to one such user by highlighting his very busy schedule and his numerous active projects.
Needless to say, Elon Musk is still locked in. He is still in “wartime CEO” mode.
As per the CEO, even his recent AI posts about AI are “part of a broader vision and strategy.” He also highlighted that SpaceX’s Starship Flight 10 is launching in a few days, xAI’s Grok 5 is starting its training next month, and Tesla’s Autopilot V14 is also coming next month. As per Musk, “long-term strategy is compelling.”
Elon Musk’s comments are quite accurate. While he may seem to spend all his time on X, after all, he is very much still neck-deep in all his companies’ projects. There is a reason why Musk became known as a visionary, and a lot of it is because he really is intimately involved in all of his companies’ projects.
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