Connect with us

Investor's Corner

No universal charging standards, Tesla wins

Published

on

After writing about industrial networking and device standardization in the manufacturing automation space for ten years, I feel quite confident in saying any universal agreement on charging standards are far, far away.

Why, you say? In the manufacturing world, devices and systems need to communicate control signals via fieldbus and ethernet networks in order to monitor many types of applications. Multiple networks standards have been present for twenty plus years, with big automation suppliers — Siemens and Honeywell— in different networking camps, and there’s no universal agreement on one single network.

Sound familiar? CHAdeMO, Tesla Supercharger network and, of course, SAE Combo – these connecting standard are all driven by separate groups of companies. Some companies, such as GM, have no interest in building out a charging network, while German car companies now know the need for a charging platform to sustain a long game strategy.

With so many late entrants into the electric car market, the clear winner for these so-called charging wars is Tesla — not a believer that there is.

Advertisement

Why? The company’s superior Supercharging rates and deployment strategy, including destination charging, will pay dividends for years. For example, a recent Kickstarter campaign started by Quick Charge Power LLC is trying to develop an adapter that allows any battery electric vehicle from North American or Japan to use Tesla’s HPWC. According to the page, the adapter “will only work with Tesla AC charging equipment: the UMC mobile connector or the HPWC (wall connector) and destination chargers”.

With many destination charging spot on the map, a

With so many destination charging spots, a JDapter could make Bolts and next-gen Leafs a reality for High-Power Wall Chargers.

The company calls it the JDapter, and the big get could be Tesla’s Destination Charging system. In two years from now, a Bolt may have a reservation for a charge session at a hotel ahead of a Tesla owner.

A recent Facebook discussion raised this issue:

“The sites — destination charging — where Tesla installed the HPWCs are the ones who pay for the power; it seems reasonable that they should decide who should charge there. Tesla is even willing to include a J1772 charger with every pair of HPWCs and pay for that installation too.”

Quick Charge Power states that each establishment can create its own policy and has the right to exclude non-Tesla automobiles. And, of course, the adapters can’t work on the Supercharger network.

As enthusiasts and owners, how do we view this development? I feel it’s a win-win for the Tesla brand and to Musk’s ultimate goal of mass electrification.

Advertisement

Tesla is supremely positioned as the most coveted technology and charging platform out there. This is a Silicon Valley company and Musk knows the importance of being THE electric vehicle platform…think Google. As mainstream consumers become aware of Tesla’s direct relationship with its Superchargers, a Bolt and Model 3 charging line issue at a hotel should be minimal. Most will choose Tesla for their first foray into electric cars, purely on a charging criteria.

Plus, non-Tesla charge stations plans are in the works. Recently, Volkswagen, BMW and ChargePoint announced plans to expand DC, fast-charging networks on the coasts.

Also, the Volkswagen diesel rigging scandal is costing them greatly. A portion of the $15 billion settlement goes to promote zero-emission vehicles. The settlement payout, back in the summer, was to be $2 billion and it could go hydrogen filling stations and electric-car charging stations in states like California.

This is good news for Tesla as more stations appear as a result of the company’s adapters. Earlier this year, Tesla applied for a new patent on a CHadeMO and SAE J1772 adapter earlier this year. In the near future, a Tesla owner could be traveling anywhere, not just on the Supercharger network.

Advertisement

The standardization movement is noble but will be bloody for years. Musk and Tesla knew this when it struck out on its electrification strategy and, for now, all roads lead back to Tesla.

"Grant Gerke wears his Model S on his sleeve and has been writing about Tesla for the last five years on numerous media sites. He has a bias towards plug-in vehicles and also writes about manufacturing software for Automation World magazine in Chicago. Find him at Teslarati

Advertisement
Comments

Investor's Corner

Tesla has its answer to auto growth, it just has to bring it to the U.S.: analyst

Published

on

Credit: Tesla China

Tesla has its answer to grow its automotive sales over the next few years, TD Cowen analyst Itay Michaeli says, but it just has to bring it to the U.S.

On Thursday, Michaeli reiterated his $490 price target and the ‘Buy’ rating he already held on Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA). However, its automotive division has struggled to show sequential growth over the past few years, mostly due to its focus on AI and Full Self-Driving. Tesla already axed two of its lower-volume vehicles with the Model S and Model X earlier this year.

However, Tesla does not need to engineer an entire new vehicle to trigger an upward tick in sales; it just has to bring it from China to the U.S., Michaeli said.

He is talking about the Model Y L, a slightly larger version of the all-electric crossover that is already available in China. U.S. customers have been pleading with CEO Elon Musk to bring it to the country since its launch in Asia last year, but he’s not convinced of it because of the advent of self-driving and its importance in this particular market.

Advertisement

The problem is that Tesla owners have been requesting something larger that could fit a typical American family. The Model Y L is slightly larger than the standard Model Y, but some are concerned that it could still be too small to fit what most people might need.

Instead, they have asked for a full-size SUV from Tesla.

Tesla gives big hint that it will build Cyber SUV, smaller Cybertruck

Nevertheless, the Model Y L still presents a great opportunity for Tesla in the U.S., and Michaeli says that there is an additional sales opportunity of about 100,000 units, with demand potential falling somewhere between 60,000 and 135,000 units.

Advertisement

TD Cowen’s note to investors also analyzed that Tesla’s growth could come from a stock perspective as well, positively impacting the stock price, as it has been widely reliant on vehicle sales, even though Tesla has truly phased itself away from that being an important metric.

Tesla stands to gain greatly from the introduction of the Model Y L in the U.S., but only if Elon Musk sees it as a viable fit for the market. Families may need to see Tesla bring something larger to the U.S., or they might be forced to buy from another automaker that offers something that fits is needs for more interior space to haul around the kids.

Continue Reading

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.

Published

on

By

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.

Advertisement

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.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Elon Musk

SpaceX’s amended S-1 is sparking a major Tesla merger conversation

A single line in SpaceX’s amended S-1 just sent Tesla stock down 5% in one day.

Published

on

By

A single line buried in SpaceX’s amended S-1 filing is doing more to move Tesla’s stock price than anything Tesla itself has announced in months. The clause, disclosed as SpaceX prepares for what could be the largest IPO in Wall Street history, states that the company “may issue a significant amount of equity in connection with future transactions.” While this may be seen as boilerplate language in S-1 filings, the historical ties between SpaceX and Tesla, and with Elon Musk reportedly discussing a possible merger with close colleagues, investors are interpreting it as something closer to a signal.

The concern among institutional investors like Gary Black, managing director of The Future Fund, pointed directly to the amended filing on X, saying it “strongly suggests more SPCX equity will be issued,” which could potentially be used to acquire Tesla. He estimated such a deal could be 28% dilutive to Tesla shareholders since SpaceX would likely command a significantly higher valuation multiple. Black added that institutional investors he knows hate the idea of a combination because they prefer pure plays over conglomerates, which he said “nearly always gravitate to the lowest common multiple.”

The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building

The bull case runs the math differently. Tesla influencer and retail shareholder advocate AleXandra Merz pushed back on what she called a widespread misunderstanding of how merger-of-equals deals actually work. Rather than simply splitting the difference between two market caps, a merger exchange ratio is negotiated based on relative fair market values, meaning the lower valued company typically sees its stock reprice upward toward the deal value.

Advertisement

Under her model, SpaceX enters at a $2.5 trillion valuation and Tesla at $1.6 trillion, producing a combined entity worth $4.1 trillion split evenly between both shareholder groups. That implies Tesla’s side of the deal would be valued at $2.05 trillion, a gain of roughly $450 billion from its current market cap. She cited Dow-DuPont and CBS-Viacom as historical examples of how markets reprice both companies toward the announced exchange ratio after a deal is unveiled.


The SpaceX S-1 amendments also revealed just how much financial infrastructure already binds the two companies together. As Teslarati has reported, SpaceX purchased $697 million in Tesla Megapacks, $131 million in Cybertrucks, and the two companies have shared supply chain resources, and semiconductor fabrication plans since well before any merger conversation became public. A retail poll by Tesla influencer Sawyer Merritt is finding that 36% of respondents do not plan to buy SpaceX shares at IPO and 15.3% saying their decision depends on the valuation.


Whether the merger happens or not, the amended filing is seemingly moving markets and sharpened a debate that is no longer theoretical. SpaceX is weeks away from trading publicly, and Tesla shareholders are now watching every word of every filing for clues about what Musk plans to do next.

Advertisement
Continue Reading