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Mercedes-Benz unveils its new 7-seater EQS SUV

Credit: Mercedes

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Mercedes-Benz has unveiled its new EQS SUV variant that will go on sale later this year.

Mercedes has expanded their EQ line of electric vehicles with the new EQS SUV. The 7-seater luxury SUV starts at $130,000, features an optional all-wheel-drive system capable of 536 horsepower, has an estimated range of up to 410 miles, and can charge at a rate of 200kW via fast charger (10%-80% in 30min).

Mercedes were looking to take the fight of the luxury sedan to the likes of Tesla and Lucid with their EQS sedan, but now they hope to challenge the likes of the Tesla Model X with their EQS SUV. The relatively sparse 7-seater EV market makes the Mercedes an early contender, but they are bringing a great option to the table.

Much like the EQS sedan the SUV is based on, the vehicle is capable of incredible range, 410 miles, when equipped with the single motor rear-wheel drive option. The SUV also offers similar luxury features. An optional cross-dash display system with three screens; driver, center console, and passenger. Optional rear-wheel steering and all-wheel drive system boosts horsepower to 536, up from 355 in the single motor. And a 200kW capable charging system means that Mercedes can charge the EQS SUV’s enormous 107.8kWh battery in just 30min to 80%.

In a similar trend to other legacy car makers like Cadillac, Mercedes has made the new EQS SUV enormous. The vast SUV stretches over 16.5 feet long and weighs an earth-shattering 7716 pounds. But with that size comes all of the luxury interior features you can expect from a vehicle with a starting price over $100,000. Massaging and heated seats for all passengers, displays available for every Gen Z-er being taken to soccer practice, and Mercedes’ iconic interior lighting system draping over the interior.

It is clear the target of the Mercedes EQS SUV, the Tesla Model X, and the vehicle certainly does its best to outshine its American counterpart. The EQS SUV has more range, more passenger space (especially in the third row), and more comfort amenities for passengers. However, it is substantially less powerful than the comparably priced Tesla Model X Plaid. At the same time, Mercedes is undoubtedly working on an AMG variant that will go toe-to-toe with Tesla’s monster.

However, they will not be the only manufacturer looking to enter the 7-seater market. Tesla is likely looking to update their long-in-the-tooth vehicle lineup, Hyundai/Kia are both looking to bring a large 7-seater option to market, BMW is likely working on an iX7 to compliment its current 5-seater option, and Lucid’s Project Gravity is in the works as well. Not to forget Ford and GM, who have long dominated the gargantuan SUV market with the likes of the Ford Expedition, Lincoln Navigator, Chevy Suburban, and Cadillac Escalade. This will be an exciting market to watch in the coming years.

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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!

Will is an auto enthusiast, a gear head, and an EV enthusiast above all. From racing, to industry data, to the most advanced EV tech on earth, he now covers it at Teslarati.

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Elon Musk

The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it

The Boring Company’s new tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units.

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The Boring Company just introduced a new piece of hardware, and it runs on parts pulled straight from a Tesla showroom. Liner Truck 3, unveiled in a post from the tunneling company’s official X account, is an all electric vehicle built around Tesla Model 3 battery packs and drive units, purpose built to move concrete tunnel segments to the boring machine face without a single person underground.

The job itself is unglamorous but critical. Each precast segment run weighs more than 22,000 pounds, roughly the load of a full cement mixer, and Liner Truck 3 hauls that weight repeatedly between the surface staging area and wherever the Prufrock machine happens to be cutting.

The Boring Company said Liner Truck 3 is piloted remotely out of its Global Operations Control Center in Texas, extending the Zero-People-In-Tunnel approach the company has spent years building toward. An earlier version of a ZPIT liner truck was already tested at the company’s Bastrop, Texas research tunnels, and a factory tour released last month showed an employee flying a fully loaded liner truck with a PlayStation controller. Liner Truck 3 looks like the production version of that same idea, cleaned up and pushed into daily use.

The timing lines up with a company digging in more places than it ever has before. The Boring Company now has multiple Prufrock machines active or arriving in Nashville, where Music City Loop construction has been accelerating since February, and its Vegas Loop network keeps adding tunnel mileage on a near monthly basis. Every one of those projects depends on getting concrete segments to the cutting face fast enough to keep the boring machine from idling, which is exactly the bottleneck Liner Truck 3 is designed to remove.

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It also reinforces something Tesla owners have watched happen gradually across Musk’s companies: passenger car hardware finding a second life in heavy equipment. Model 3 drive units already move people through the Vegas Loop, and now the same components are hauling concrete underground in Nashville and wherever The Boring Company digs next. Whether that kind of component reuse extends further into TBC’s equipment lineup, or into other Musk owned industrial hardware, is the next thing worth watching.

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Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most

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Rendering of Elon Musk overlooking a Starship fleet (Credit: Grok)

SpaceX stock did the opposite of what most of Wall Street expected this week, when the day designed to be its most dangerous turned into a rally, and the rally kept going.

Thursday marked the first major lockup expiration since SpaceX’s June IPO, making roughly 911.5 million insider held shares eligible to trade for the first time, more than doubling the company’s public float. Analysts and short sellers had spent weeks bracing for a flood of selling, especially after the stock fell 13 percent following its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday. Instead, shares rose 6.1 percent Thursday to close at $114.92, and by Friday they were trading near $129, up more than another 12 percent on the day.

SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles

The setup made the outcome notable. Short interest had climbed to roughly 34 percent of the float heading into earnings, among the highest of any large cap stock, with about 95 percent of available shares to borrow already on loan. CEO Elon Musk warned short sellers twice in the weeks before the lockup, writing on X that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” then following up on the morning of earnings with “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”

When the newly unlocked shares hit the market and the selloff never showed up, some of that short position appears to have started unwinding. TipRanks reported that options activity shifted toward bullish strategies like put selling and risk reversals following the rally, with roughly $600 million in options premium trading Thursday alone. Retail buyers also stepped in during the earnings dip, according to Vanda Research.

The fundamentals behind the stock have not changed much in a week. SpaceX’s revenue nearly doubled year over year to $7.8 billion, with Starlink subscribers doubling to 12 million and the company’s AI segment growing 247 percent. What spooked investors on Tuesday was the spending side. Capital expenditures jumped to more than $18 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion a year earlier, with AI investment alone rising from $749 million to $15.8 billion. Wall Street remains split on whether that spending is building infrastructure SpaceX needs or outrunning what the business can currently support, a debate Teslarati has tracked since shares first came under pressure.

None of that resolves the bigger question hanging over the stock. Thursday’s release was only the first of nine staggered lockup tranches, with roughly $800 billion worth of additional shares scheduled to become eligible through October, and Musk’s own stake stays locked until next June. If this week is any indication, the market is treating that supply as something it can absorb rather than something to fear, at least for now.

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The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it

Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station, joining an exclusive two resort transit club.

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Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station Thursday, giving The Boring Company’s underground transit system its northernmost stop yet on the Strip. The station sits at Sahara’s Paradise Road entrance, on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, and connects riders to the Las Vegas Convention Center, other Strip resorts on the network and, eventually, Harry Reid International Airport.

The addition makes Sahara the second resort, after Fontainebleau opened its own station in January, to get a stop built at street level rather than tucked into the property itself. Sahara now joins Westgate as the only two Strip resorts offering both a Vegas Loop station and a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail, giving guests two separate ways to get around without leaving the property.

The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville

The bigger news buried in Thursday’s announcement is what comes next. Boring Company has already secured its first permit to tunnel north of Sahara Avenue, extending the network beyond where it currently ends, even though permits to push the Loop toward downtown Las Vegas still haven’t been granted. Crews are also working on a two mile dual tunnel line running from Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, just north of Tropicana Avenue, that Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill has said the company hopes to open in time for November’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.

Ridership has grown alongside the buildout. The Loop moved roughly 82,000 passengers during CONEXPO in early March, a total the company highlighted on its own X account at the time, and the system has now carried more than 4 million passengers through 11 open stations since it began running in 2021. The airport connector tunnels, meant to give the Loop a direct link to Harry Reid, have slipped past their original first quarter target and remain under construction, with Boring Company director Mike Baier saying that a full opening is still a few months out.

For Sahara, the calculation is straightforward. Convention traffic drives a large share of Loop ridership, and a station at the property’s front door gives conventiongoers one more reason to book rooms on the Strip’s north end instead of closer to the convention center itself.

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