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Stellantis RAM 1500 Revolution vs Tesla Cybertruck, Rivian R1T & the Ford F-150 Lightning 

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Stellantis’ Ram Truck brand revealed its RAM 1500 Revolution battery electric vehicle concept during CES 2023 in Las Vegas. The all-electric RAM pickup has already generated some buzz in the market for its exciting features and next-gen design. With the growing electrified pickup truck market, RAM has developed a strong contender with the 1500 Revolution BEV.

RAM 1500 Revolution BEV Details

The RAM 1500 Revolution BEV will be built on Stellantis’ STLA Frame EV platform, designed to deliver a range of up to 500 miles (800 km). Unlike other STLA platforms—which are unibody—the STLA Frame platform is a body-on-frame. In the past, Stellantis planned to use 2 battery cell chemistries to ensure affordability in its electric vehicles. The company will have to carefully consider the RAM 1500 Revolution’s starting price if it wants the pickup to qualify for tax incentives under the Inflation Reduction Act.

The electrified RAM 1500 Revolution concept includes some nifty tech innovations, including digital side-view mirrors. The rearview mirror alone is packed with tech, like a smart backup camera with 360-degree views, plus speakers and receivers compatible with voice assistants like Alexa and Siri. The review mirror is connected to biometric cameras, which observe the RAM 1500 Revolution’s surrounding environment.

With its EV pickup concept, RAM plans to take advantage of the most useful tech innovations on the market. For instance, the biometric cameras appear connected to the EV pickup truck’s biometric identity recognition and two-factor authentication. The RAM 1500 BEV also utilizes augmented reality (AR) for a see-through heads-up display (HUD). Other features RAM plans for the 1500 Revolution BEV are Shadow Mode and an exterior projector.

RAM vs. Tesla Cybertruck, Rivian R1T & the Ford F-150 Lightning

RAM aims to redefine the pickup truck segment, demonstrating its position in the EV pickup truck market along the way. It is one of North America’s top pickup truck brands, alongside Ford and Chevrolet. The Ram pickup, Ford F-Series pickup, and Chevy Silverado have long held the top three positions in the pickup truck market in the United States. Still, the advent of electric vehicles has opened up the pickup segment to other legacy competitors and EV startups.

Tesla Cybertruck

Tesla unveiled its Cybertruck concept in 2019 and has yet to deliver the futuristic pickup truck. However, Giga Texas has started preparing for Cybertruck production in 2023. Tesla plans to deliver its first batch of Cybertruck units to customers this year. 

When the electric truck concept was first revealed, it generated a lot of buzz for its unique design and technology. But other EV trucks have started selling on the market since 2019, so Tesla has improved the Cybertruck’s design and introduced up-to-date technology to the pickup truck. Due to the Cybertruck’s design changes, its prices might also change

“I worry more about like how do we the Cybertruck affordable despite having awesome technology. That’s the thing that will really set the rate,” Elon Musk said back in the Q4 2021 earnings call.

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Rivian R1T

The Rivian R1T has generated some buzz of its own since hitting the market. Rivian’s electric pickup truck appeals to a niche customer base who live for adventure and fun. Rivian literally threw everything into the R1T that an explorer would need—including the kitchen sink. 

In preparation for 2023, Rivian has tweaked its R1T configuration options. For instance, the Rivian R1T Quad-Motor with Max battery pack is unavailable this year. However, the company strives to improve its vehicle. Last month, Rivian announced that the 2023 R1T with 21-inch wheels received the highest EPA range estimate for an electric truck in the market. 

Ford F-150 Lightning

If Rivian was made for fun and adventure, Ford designed the F-150 Lightning for heavy-duty work. Ford’s all-electric pickup won Motor Trend’s 2023 Pickup Truck of the Year. It was the first electric pickup to win the award with a unanimous vote from the judges. 

Ford is steadily ramping up F-150 Lightning production at its Dearborn Truck Plant and Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Michigan. The legacy automaker initially targeted an annual manufacturing capacity of 40,000 units for the F-150 Lightning. However, demand for the electric pickup seems to be strong since Ford doubled its manufacturing capacity for the Lightning to 80,000 vehicles annually by 2024

With the RAM 1500 Revolution, Rivian R1T, Ford F-150 Lightning, and Tesla Cybertruck, the electric pickup truck market is starting to take shape. More competitors are likely to come in the future—like Volkswagen’s Scout pickup—making the EV pickup truck market something to watch in the coming years. 

The Teslarati team would appreciate hearing from you. If you have any tips, contact me at maria@teslarati.com or via Twitter @Writer_01001101.

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Maria--aka "M"-- is an experienced writer and book editor. She's written about several topics including health, tech, and politics. As a book editor, she's worked with authors who write Sci-Fi, Romance, and Dark Fantasy. M loves hearing from TESLARATI readers. If you have any tips or article ideas, contact her at maria@teslarati.com or via X, @Writer_01001101.

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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.

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

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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