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A Norwegian Teslarati’s ownership experience

Norway sees the first delivery glitches.

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Tesla Model S Winter Driving

Tesla-Model-S-Winter-Driving-NorwayTesla Motors is entering the Norwegian market, which has given a strong boost to its global sales in the past few months. The country, not only boasts very serious green credentials, but also has taken to electric vehicles (EV). However, not everything is peachy in Norway with Tesla, according to our Teslarati tipster.

So far, Tesla sold over 2,200 Tesla S the first 3 months of entering the market in Norway. This makes Norway the second largest market for Tesla, and an important part of its bottom line. Tesla Motors is a new company and entering a new market is already difficult for an established carmaker, let alone for a startup. If we rave about the ways it conducts its business in the U.S., things are not as perfect in that new market. Methinks, there is something fishy in Norway!

Norwegian Teslaratipster

Our Teslaratipster found three other individuals who have the same problem, he has in a few forums in Norway. Many have to wait a very long time for the delivery of their Model S. How long? It can last 4 to 6 months. Does it remind you of anything, you early Roadster owners?

Discontent is already brewing with a few who were promised priority delivery and often get theirs later than non-priority customers. The rest, you can finger out. There is much frustration in Norway with Tesla, which is not a good thing to have for its second largest market.

To make things worse, the warranty service wildly fluctuates from customer to customer, blurring the experience even further. Some are helped right away, while others can sometime wait up to 2 months to fix problems. It gets even more complicated when you consider some buy their Model S directly, while others take out a loan, with no guarantee of having anything fixed in a timely manner. They still have to pay interest on the car that either does not work, or has faulty parts. In short, Tesla could be facing its first real, full-blown media catastrophe in Norway by not providing an equal service to all of its brand new customers and giving them the experience we rave about here in the U.S. It needs to act very fast to avert a disaster.

Warranty and quality

Tesla-Model-S-Winter-Driving-Norway-Superchargers

Image source: Bjorn Nyland

Norway, like many other countries, has the same problem EVs face anywhere else. Where do you charge your brand new beautiful Tesla Model S? For the majority of users, this is a huge problem and home charging on a 240 V plug can take a log time… a very long time. We know Tesla is working as quickly as it can to install Superchargers around the country. Unfortunately, the first batches of the Model S came with a few problems, such as water leaking from the panoramic roof, which makes it way in the lamps and fills cracks. This is not what you want to see in a brand new car, let alone, an electric one from a foreign startup.

Our Teslaratipster says he sent a letter to his local representative, who has to contact management in the Netherlands before any help can be received through the U.S.. This is nowhere near what we are accustomed to in the U.S.

We want to see Tesla Motors succeed, and so far, the company has done almost everything right. But is it stretching itself too thin by not having thoroughly thought out its customer service in its second largest and new market in a new country? One thing is for sure, Tesla cannot afford big mistakes. The news will be all over this and pressure will be applied in every direction. Tesla must nip this in the bud quickly.

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Elon Musk

The Boring Company’s latest Tesla tunnel truck mod “fits like a glove”

The Boring Company has modified a Tesla powered tunnel truck to carry freight containers underground.

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The Boring Company has found a second job for the Tesla hardware it already runs underground. In a post on X, Elon Musk’s tunneling company showed its latest Prufrock Liner Truck modified to carry a standard 20 foot shipping container. “Using TBC tunnels to transport freight,” the company wrote. “The latest Prufrock Liner Truck (using Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units) has been modified to carry a standard 20′ shipping container. Fits like a glove!”

The photo shows a red container sitting on a long, low white chassis parked outside, with drive hardware visible at one end. The Boring Company did not say where or when freight hauling would start, which customers it has in mind, or how many trucks it is converting.

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Until now, the liner trucks have hauled concrete. Teslarati reported in August on Liner Truck 3, which uses Model 3 battery packs and drive units to move more than 22,000 pounds of precast tunnel segments to the boring machine. It has 28 miles of range, tops out at 12 mph, and is piloted remotely from the company’s operations center in Texas. The freight version appears to be the same platform with a different bed, and The Boring Company has not said whether it will also be remotely piloted.

Freight has been on the company’s menu for years. When TBC updated its product lineup in 2021, its freight tunnel was described as sized to fit a standard shipping container, “barely.” The company later used the idea at Tesla’s own factory, where Prufrock 3 dug a tunnel to Giga Texas that now moves finished Cybertrucks away from the production line.

The Boring Company closed a $3 billion Series D in September at a $23 billion valuation, and Teslarati has covered how that money is tied to a UAE tunneling push and a faster Nashville build. In Nashville, Prufrock MB1 and MB2 are mining at the same time, and a third machine is expected to launch in late October. Each machine needs a steady supply of liner trucks, so any design that works for segments and containers alike gives the company more use out of the same Tesla parts.

The Vegas Loop remains the only Boring Company system open to the public, and it moves passengers in Tesla vehicles. A freight service would be a separate product, and the post gave no indication that one is close to launch. For now, it is a truck, a container and a short caption saying they fit together.

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Elon Musk will give ‘every kid in America’ a SpaceX share in 2027

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Credit: Grok Imagine

Elon Musk said he is planning to give “every one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America” in 2027, stating that “this will be the first of many.”

SpaceX went public earlier this year, and its stock price has been relatively stable since leveling off shortly after its IPO. Based on its current price, it’s a gift of just over $10 billion to children across the United States.

It appears to be closely related to President Donald Trump’s bank accounts for children, which were set up earlier this year as Trump Accounts.

Just hours earlier, Anthropic had announced the establishment of its Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, “a new wholly-owned entity dedicated entirely to public benefit.” Musk responded by stating he recommended “giving the shares directly to the public,” and that he would be doing it that way.

Just a little bit later, Musk said children across the U.S. would be getting a share from him:

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There are roughly 70 million children, meaning someone under the age of 18, in the United States, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Musk’s ownership of SpaceX stock shows he has around 849 million Class A shares of SpaceX stock, according to filings with the SEC.

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Elon Musk reveals why Boring Co’s biggest East Coast project never happened

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(Credit: The Boring Company)

Elon Musk revealed in a post on X that “Permits were impossible to get,” explaining the fate of The Boring Company’s most ambitious East Coast proposal.

The comment responded to a query about what became of his July 20, 2017 announcement that he had “just received verbal govt approval” for an underground Hyperloop connecting New York City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., capable of carrying passengers from the Big Apple to the Nation’s Capital in just 29 minutes.

The Boring Company receives verbal ‘approval’ to build NY to DC Hyperloop tunnel

The 2017 post, which envisioned city-center stations and multiple elevators in each city, sparked immediate scrutiny. Local and state officials in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and D.C. said they had no knowledge of any approval. A White House spokesperson confirmed only “promising conversations” about the transformative infrastructure.

Musk clarified shortly after that there was “still a lot of work” to do for formal approvals.

Limited progress followed, as Maryland Governor Larry Hogan’s administration issued a conditional utility permit and supported work near Fort Meade. In 2018, Washington, D.C., granted a preliminary permit for site preparation and excavation on a vacant lot at 53 New York Ave. NE in the NoMa neighborhood, which The Boring Company said could become a station.

A draft environmental assessment for a D.C.-Baltimore segment was released in 2019. Yet, by April 2021, the company had removed the project from its website, and the Federal Highway Administration reported receiving no indication of further interest. Communication with Maryland officials had ceased.

The full corridor would have required coordination among the District of Columbia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, the Federal Highway Administration, the Army Corps of Engineers, the National Park Service, and other agencies.

Environmental reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, utility clearances, and approvals for novel infrastructure added to the overall complexity of the project and its approval.

Speculation on the permitting barriers centers around a few factors, but a multi-state, multi-level route involving unproven high-speed vacuum-tube technology inherently triggers exhaustive safety, environmental, and engineering reviews that can stretch for years, even for conventional projects.

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There are also other elements, of course, like officials who may face political exposure if a privately funded, untested system encountered anything such as cost overruns, delays, or safety issues. On the outset of this project, there were limited things such as engineering plans or demonstrated technology maturity, which also added to the potential skepticism.

The East Coast vision for Boring Co., once framed as a privately funded revolution that could reshape Northeast travel, quietly ended without construction of the promised network. Musk’s recent statement frames the outcome as a regulatory impasse, unfortunate but not unexpected.

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