Connect with us

News

Mattel creates the perfect Tesla Cybertruck build LEGO never released

(Credit: Mattel Creations)

Published

on

Mattel Creations announced MEGA would be dropping a Tesla Cybertruck build on October 15, 2021, at 9 a.m. Pacific Time. Similar to the Hot Wheels Cybertruck Mattel dropped previously, the MEGA version will feature some specific, unique details that can only be found on Tesla’s electric pickup truck.

Mattel’s MEGA brand produced building block toys for children. MEGA has teamed up with many well-known brands on some of its build sets, including Pokemon, Masters of the Universe, Borderlands, and Halo. According to Mattel’s announcement, MEGA loves the Cybertruck which may be why it decided to drop a MEGA x Cybertruck build.

“Inspired by the original designs from Tesla’s upcoming release, we created a MEGA X Cybertruck you can build brick by brick and customize to reveal different hidden features that can only be discovered while you build it,” wrote Mattel.

“The MEGA designers are committed—even obsessed—with making this model as true to form as possible. With over 3,000 pieces in this building set, you will be able to discover all the details like the sharp-angled exoskeleton, adjustable air suspension, armor glass windows, and even more Easter eggs while you put this brick model together. This buildable MEGA X Cybertruck is the pinnacle of our devotion and literally puts the future in your hands,” read the announcement.

(Credit: Mattel Creations)

Based on pictures of MEGA’s Cybertruck build, designers appear to be focusing on the Cybertruck displayed during the unveiling event. It will also feature the Armor Glass windows of Tesla’s futuristic pickup truck. The MEGA X Cybertruck build is priced at $250.00. Anyone interested in purchasing the set can explore the Cybertruck build with MEGA’s interactive and immersive AR experience through the QR code in the picture above.

More information may come out about the MEGA x Cybertruck build set in the future. Hopefully, the set’s production does not run into the same challenges as the Hot Wheels Cybertruck models. The Hot Wheels Cybertruck entered its own production hell, leading to delivery delays, similar to the Tesla’s Model 3 production hell in 2018.

Tesla Cybertruck fans would likely appreciate Mattel’s LEGO-esque version of the all-electric pickup truck. Tesla fans have previously petitioned LEGO to release a Cybertruck build as part of its “Ideas” program. Even after garnering enough votes to be reviewed by LEGO, however, the toy-maker decided to deny the proposed Cybertruck kit. Mattel’s more detailed Cybertruck kit could then be seen as validation of sorts, as it shows just how cool the all-electric pickup truck could be.

“Our team has thoroughly considered the possibility of releasing this project as a LEGO set according to the criteria of the LEGO Review. Unfortunately the LEGO Review Board has decided that we will not produce this project as a set,” LEGO noted.

At the 2021 Shareholders Meeting, Elon Musk estimated that Tesla Cybertruck production could start by 2023. He mentioned that Tesla is facing supply chain challenges that make production difficult. The pandemic has affected the global supply chain, affecting many different industries, including automakers and tech companies.

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

Advertisement
-
-

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.

Advertisement
Comments

Elon Musk

The real reason Elon Musk wants every car connected to space

Elon Musk says all cars will eventually need Starlink to handle massive AI bandwidth demand.

Published

on

By

Elon Musk is making the case that satellite internet, not fiber or cellular towers, will end up wired into every car on the road. In a string of posts on X, the SpaceX CEO wrote that all cars will have Starlink in the future and called satellite connectivity the only way to get super high bandwidth to billions of vehicles.

The posts started with Musk endorsing a Cloudflare forecast that traffic generated by autonomous AI agents will soon dwarf traffic generated by humans browsing the internet, a shift he described as not a close call at all. From there he narrowed the argument to infrastructure, writing that the only system that can support the insanely fast bandwidth growth needed by AI is Starlink, before extending the logic to cars specifically.


The timing lines up with Tesla’s own hardware decisions. On July 20, Tesla confirmed the Cybercab would ship with a Starlink V5 terminal built into its roof, the first time the company had put satellite hardware in a production vehicle. A day later, Tesla’s head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, explained the connection wasn’t there for safety and that Cybercab’s driving stack runs entirely on onboard cameras and compute, while the satellite link exists for navigation, customer service, and fleet management instead. Musk followed with his own post about the feature, saying riders would be able to watch 4K streaming video during rides.

By July 22, Musk had already said Starlink would extend beyond Cybercab to Tesla’s full lineup. Sunday’s posts push that same logic outward again, this time framed as a requirement across the industry rather than a feature specific to Tesla, and tied directly to the bandwidth AI systems are expected to consume.

SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete

The AI argument has been building on SpaceX’s side for months. The company has an FCC filing pending for a third generation Starlink constellation, and it has separately proposed Starmind, a constellation of up to a million satellites designed to run AI computation directly in orbit rather than just relay data. Musk has said he expects space to become the cheapest place to deploy AI compute within two to three years. Starlink and Starmind serve different jobs inside that vision, one moving data and the other processing it, but Sunday’s posts treat vehicles as one more category of hardware that will eventually need both.

None of this changes anything for Tesla owners today. Cars already on the road keep running on LTE and Wi-Fi, and Tesla hasn’t outlined a retrofit path for existing vehicles. The July 22 commitment applies to future production, not the fleet already delivered. What Musk added on Sunday is the reasoning: satellite connectivity isn’t a Cybercab novelty, it’s a bet that ground based networks won’t keep up with how much data cars, robots, and AI systems are about to generate.

Continue Reading

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.

Published

on

By

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.

Continue Reading

Elon Musk

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

Published

on

By

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.

Continue Reading