Investor's Corner
Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s love-hate relationship with ‘the media’
Negative media coverage is a fact of life for any company, large or small. However, as it does in so many areas, Tesla approaches this problem quite differently than most firms do. Conventional wisdom has long been that companies shouldn’t respond to attacks in the media, but Elon Musk never got that memo. He responds quickly, bluntly and often colorfully.
Lately, the anti-Tesla stories have been spewing forth like fastballs from a pitching machine – so quickly that you might think poor Elon has time to do little else than bat them away.
When a media outlet offers constructive criticism, Tesla often responds in a constructive way. When Consumer Reports announced that it wouldn’t recommend Model 3 because of the new EV’s poor performance in a braking test, Elon Musk immediately promised to look into the matter. Within a week Tesla had improved Model 3’s braking via an over-the-air software update, and CR awarded the coveted Recommended rating.
On the other hand, the Iron Man has never been shy about calling BS when he feels Tesla has been portrayed unfairly. To take just one example, Business Insider has been a frequent purveyor of anti-Tesla pieces, including one that claimed Model 3 production was producing an “insane amount” of scrap at Gigafactory 1, and another that accused the company of cutting corners by skipping a “critical” braking test.
In the first case, inside information was provided to Business Insider by a Tesla employee, Martin Tripp, who is now being sued by Tesla for sabotaging the company’s manufacturing software and stealing trade secrets (Tripp claims he is not a saboteur, but a whistleblower).
Above: Track testing the Model 3 at Tesla’s Fremont factory (Source: @TeslaClubBE)
Both of these hit pieces were written by Business Insider’s Linette Lopez, whom Elon Musk has accused of acting “as an inside trading source for one of Tesla’s biggest short-sellers” (apparently a reference to super-Tesla bear Jim Chanos) and “bribing” Mr. Tripp. The Twitter exchanges between Musk and Lopez have now degenerated into an undignified flame war.
So, cui bono from the flinging of all this mud and FUD? Obviously, media outlets, of both the respectable and gutter varieties, profit from the huge appetite for Tesla news of any kind. However, it would be hard to deny that, despite the best efforts of its critics, Tesla benefits from the endless controversies in the form of “free publicity that just raises the company’s profile and drives demand for its cars,” as Brooke Crothers writes in a recent Forbes article.
Tesla has been turning media lemons into publicity lemonade since the beginning. A 2008 snarky review of the Roadster and a 2012 turd-in-the-punchbowl article in the New York Times both evolved into media coups for Tesla (in the first case, the publicity was far from free – Tesla laid out a huge sum in legal costs). Both stories are told in detail in a certain book about Tesla.
In fact, Mr Crothers thinks the frequent media clashes have become “pretty predictable and pretty boring.” The Musk vs media trope has now evolved into what you might call “meta-coverage” – that is, media coverage about media coverage, for example, recent articles in the Times and CNBC.
Above: CNBC’s “Fast Money” crew discuss Elon Musk taking on the media (Youtube: CNBC Television)
Journalists who engage in sketchy reporting don’t damage Tesla’s brand, says Crothers. “In the end, it serves Musk’s cause to expose the media as hacks out to get him.”
When the custom-forged monoblock aluminum wheels hit the road, what matters is not the scare stories about fires, Autopilot crashes, cobalt, production problems, red ink, union-busting (we could go on, but you get the idea), but rather the quality of Tesla’s vehicles, and here even the company’s most ardent critics have little to say. The evil media, from mainstream car mags to amateur offerings on YouTube, overflows with rave reviews. The real winners in this battle would seem to be car buyers.
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Note: Article originally published on evannex.com by Charles Morris
Elon Musk
Elon Musk calls Earth’s data centers “peanuts” next to what SpaceX is planning in orbit
Elon Musk says SpaceX capex efficiency is underestimated as orbital data centers loom by 2028.
Elon Musk is pushing back on one of the biggest worries hanging over SpaceX stock. In a reply on X on Sunday, Musk said the company’s capital expenditure efficiency is severely underestimated. He was responding to a Milk Road Stocks post citing analyst Kyle Reidhead, who estimates SpaceX will need to spend roughly $470 billion over the next five quarters.
Reidhead built that figure around the target SpaceX set on its third quarter earnings call: 13 gigawatts or more of compute by the end of 2027. In his breakdown, Nvidia captures 83 to 89 percent of the spending. SpaceX ended the quarter with 1.7 GW of nameplate compute and guided to $35 billion to $40 billion in fourth quarter capex, as Teslarati reported.
Musk did not attach a number to his claim, but the earnings call shows the argument. CFO Bret Johnsen said new compute currently pays for itself in under a year at today’s pricing, and Musk said that window could shrink to six months next year. Using that pace, Reidhead argues about $230 billion of the $470 billion could come from operating cash flow and about $60 billion from SpaceX’s roughly $90 billion cash pile, leaving around $180 billion to borrow. Musk confirmed last week that SpaceX had already closed a new $40 billion debt raise to buy GPUs.
The ground buildout is not the end goal. It is what is meant to pay for the move to orbit. Replying on Friday to charts built from Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire’s SpaceX model, Musk wrote that “Terrestrial compute will be peanuts compared to orbital compute,” adding that orbital compute deployed per month “probably exceeds terrestrial around the end of 2028 and then far exceeds it in 2029.”
Maguire’s model shows how steep that path is. It has capex climbing from $88 billion this year to $290 billion in 2027 and $369 billion in 2028, with SpaceX burning $77.8 billion in cash this year and $122.6 billion next year before turning $114.9 billion cash positive in 2028. Musk’s response to the model was, “I think we can do better.”
The orbital half runs through Starmind. SpaceX plans to operate up to 1 million AI satellites flying in clusters of about 10, linked by roughly 10 terabits of bandwidth, with deployment of thousands of units starting as soon as late 2027 out of its Gigasat factory in Bastrop, Texas, according to SpaceX’s space safety page. Musk has said each Starmind spacecraft will carry more than 250 kW of solar power.
Getting there depends on launch volume. Maguire’s model assumes 250 Starship flights in 2028, up from two this year and 38 next year. The nearer test is financial: SpaceX guided to $33 billion to $37 billion in first quarter 2027 revenue, more than double the $14.58 billion it booked in Q3, and Musk reposted that guidance again on Sunday morning.
Elon Musk
SpaceX President to gift Trump Accounts her SpaceX stock
Gwynne Shotwell’s 2 million SpaceX shares are headed to children’s Trump Accounts starting this December.
SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said Friday that more than 2 million SpaceX shares belonging to her and her husband, Robert, will be distributed to children’s Trump Accounts in December, turning a pledge she made over the summer into an actual transfer. “Robert and I are thrilled that our gift of over 2 million shares of SpaceX stock will be distributed to children’s Trump accounts in December!” Shotwell wrote on X, adding that the shares are “transferring to escrow as we speak.”
The first round goes to children aged 11 to 17 who live in ZIP codes where the median family income is $57,000 or less, along with kids in ZIP codes with too few residents for the Census to report that figure. Shotwell said those families should receive a notice by Monday, Reuters reported.
A second gift is expected to be finalized in the next few weeks. That round will cover eligible children in military families serving overseas, children in foster care, and more kids in Texas counties near the Shotwells’ home where median family income is $90,000 or less. Elon Musk replied to the announcement with “Cool” and a heart emoji.
Shotwell first announced the donation on July 6, less than a month after SpaceX priced its record IPO at $135 per share on the Nasdaq. IPO filings showed Shotwell owned about 12.6 million SpaceX shares, Quartz reported at the time, which makes the gift roughly one sixth of her stake. At the roughly $146 per share used to value Musk’s own pledge earlier this month, 2 million shares are worth about $290 million.
How the stock would actually reach the accounts had been an open question since July. Treasury guidance acknowledged that stock donations could flow into Trump Accounts, but it did not explain the mechanics for a program whose contributions default into an S&P 500 index fund. Shotwell thanked the Treasury, the IRS, the Dell Foundation, Greater Horizons, Invest America and the law firms Morgan Lewis and Gibson Dunn for “working over the past few months to make this happen.”
The transfer also works as a dry run for a far larger gift. On October 19, Musk said he would give one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America next year and called it “the first of many.” With roughly 72 million children in the country, that pledge is worth about $10.5 billion. President Donald Trump thanked Musk the same day and said the shares would go through Trump Accounts, though neither SpaceX nor the Treasury has published how or when that distribution will happen.
Shotwell’s recipients also fill a gap in the program itself. Trump Accounts launched on July 4, and the $1,000 Treasury deposit only goes to babies born between 2025 and 2028. Teenagers aged 11 to 17 receive no government seed money, so for many of the families getting a notice on Monday, SpaceX stock will be the first asset in the account. The accounts convert into retirement accounts when the child turns 18.
Investor's Corner
Tesla has a Cybercab problem nobody saw coming
Tesla’s Cybercab line now builds robotaxis faster than Tesla can deploy them, Lars Moravy says.
Tesla’s Cybercab line in Texas can now build the two seat robotaxi faster than the company can put it into service, according to Lars Moravy, Tesla’s Vice President of Vehicle Engineering. “We don’t run every day because the line can run so fast. It’s currently outpacing our deployments,” Moravy said in a new Cybercab deep dive from Munro Live. “So, it’s a bit of a race right now. Who’s going to go faster? Right now the manufacturing line’s ahead.”
Tesla’s official Robotaxi account shared a Cybercab analysis video on X on Monday, calling it a “Cybercab engineering deep dive.” Moravy’s comments go further than what he told analysts on the Q3 earnings call last week, when he said the Cybercab line’s listed capacity of more than 125,000 units a year undersells what it can actually run.
The tour shows where that speed comes from. Tesla’s unboxed process splits the Cybercab into front, rear, side and center modules that are built and tested on their own before they meet on a short final line. That final line has just 25 fully automated stations, which Tesla’s team estimated is a fifth to a tenth of what a Model Y needs. The full line is about 78% automated, the framing line is already at 100%, and the layout uses roughly 50% less floor space per vehicle. The stated goal is “100% automation in 10 second cycle time,” or one finished Cybercab every 10 seconds.
Tesla also deleted the paint shop. Only the side modules are coated, and the exterior panels get their color inside the molding machine. Engineers said the car is designed to run at least 500,000 miles, which matters for a vehicle that will spend most of its day carrying riders.
The battery got the same treatment. The Cybercab uses an 88S6P pack of 4680 cells in a steel enclosure, a first for Tesla, with each module potted separately so a single failed module can be swapped instead of the whole pack. Wireless battery management boards replace a wiring harness, and new contactors are fast enough to drop the pyro fuse entirely. Tesla’s battery director graded the pack an A minus, compared with a D for the Model Y structural pack and a B minus for Cybertruck. Up front, the drive unit runs an 11:1 gear ratio versus roughly 9:1 on most Teslas, since the Cybercab does not need a high top speed.
Cybercab engineering deep dive — Robotaxi (@robotaxi) October 26, 2026
The deployment side is now the bottleneck Moravy described. Tesla had more than 50 Cybercabs working the Formula 1 weekend in Austin, and Texas records show 463 Cybercabs registered. Tesla said on its earnings call that Cybercab service will launch in Dallas next month, and Moravy said the company is aiming to get Cybercabs to customers by the end of 2026. Every unit built so far has gone into Tesla’s own fleet since the line moved into volume production in April.
Munro Live also asked when it could get a Cybercab to tear down. Tesla’s answer: “Not yet.”
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