Investor's Corner
Tesla “ecosystem” of product and services are redefining the auto business
Tesla’s original mission was to electrify the world’s transportation system. Along the way, that expanded into a reboot of the entire automotive industry. By the time it’s all over, Tesla will have redefined not just the way cars are fueled, but the way they are designed, manufactured, marketed and sold.
From the company’s emphasis on self-driving capabilities to its treatment of the vehicle as a computer system, with a unified operating system and over-the-air software updates, Tesla has made important advances, and the lessons have not been entirely lost on the legacy automakers. There are already signs that the Tesla way of doing things is starting to influence the global giants in several areas.
Like other tech pioneers such as Apple, Tesla sees the automobile as part of an “ecosystem” of products and services, and forward-looking execs at other automakers are beginning to see things this way too. The electric vehicle will not be simply a plug-in replacement for the legacy gas-burner, but rather a part of a new paradigm that includes charging infrastructure, vehicle autonomy, new ownership models and renewable energy. Automakers around the world are investing in charging networks, makers of self-driving tech and transportation service providers like Uber and Lyft. Some have explored partnering with solar installers to offer package deals to customers.
Also like Apple, Tesla understands that it isn’t selling just a product, but rather an “ownership experience.” When you look at automobile ownership as an overall experience, you’re bound to come to the conclusion that there are certain parts of the experience that people really dislike, and smarmy car salesmen are near the top of the list. Another obvious conclusion is that the car buying experience is hopelessly outdated.
We’ve been banking online for decades and buying consumer goods without setting foot in a store. Even the process of buying and selling real estate has moved online to a great extent. When it comes to buying a car, however, we still have to drive all the way out to the airport road and endure a long and tedious sales ritual that hasn’t changed much since the 1960s.
Tesla’s efforts to make car-buying more pleasant date all the way back to the Roadster days, as former Tesla VP George Blankenship explained in depth in a recent talk. The company’s direct-to-consumer sales model is loved by auto buyers, hated by politically powerful auto dealers, and surely envied by the legacy automakers who, for better or for worse, are firmly bonded both legally and financially to their existing system of independent dealerships.
The Tesla sales model saves money by cutting out the middleman, it gives the company near-total control over the way its vehicles are presented to buyers, and it gives buyers a direct relationship with the automaker. As a recent article in Fortune points out, it also delivers another unprecedented benefit: it brings buyers (and their money) into the car-buying process before the company builds a single vehicle.
“They managed to sell so many Model 3s, even before the Model 3 was in its final design stages,” says Tim Huntzinger, an automotive designer who teaches at the ArtCenter College of Design in California. “It was almost like they were doing Kickstarter for cars. They were able to bring in hundreds of millions in revenue before actually creating final tooling for the vehicle.”
“That’s huge for the automotive industry,” said Huntzinger. “For the entire history of the automotive industry, you had to spend millions or hundreds of millions to even turn a cent. Many companies have gone out of business that way.”
And the benefits of this system don’t just flow one way – Huntzinger believes that buyers are empowered by being involved in the process earlier. “To get feedback from customers early in the process – that’s totally new and totally different. The purchasing experience is so different [from what] we’ve all been forced into with the dealership model. It’s super-refreshing to see the customer being put first.”
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Note: Article originally published on evannex.com, by Charles Morris
Elon Musk
Elon Musk handed Grok something no other AI company can get their hands on
Elon Musk says SpaceX will feed engineering data into Grok’s next model, avoiding restricted material.
Elon Musk said Tuesday that SpaceX will feed its internal engineering data into the next major training run for Grok, the AI model now folded into SpaceX following February’s merger. In a post on X, Musk wrote that SpaceX’s “massive corpus of world-class engineering data,” excluding anything restricted under U.S. arms export law, will be added during supplemental training of what he called the “2T run,” a reference to a roughly two trillion parameter model that would nearly double the parameters behind the latest Grok 4.5 that’s rolling out.
SpaceX’s massive corpus of world-class engineering data (excluding material blocked by ITAR) will be added during supplemental training of the 2T run.
This will dramatically improve Grok’s engineering capabilities. https://t.co/BbQEViFByn
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
The excluded material that Musk is referring to would fall under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which restricts export of technical data tied to defense and space hardware. That likely rules out propulsion specifics for Merlin and Raptor engines along with guidance and control details for SpaceX’s launch vehicles, but leaves manufacturing knowledge, materials science, and Starlink hardware design on the table.
The announcement extends a pattern that has been building since SpaceX’s Nasdaq debut in June, when the company went public with Grok and xAI’s Colossus supercomputer folded into the pitch to investors.
Days after that listing, SpaceX closed its $60 billion all stock acquisition of coding startup Cursor, giving xAI both enterprise software distribution and a stream of real world developer data to train on. Grok 4.5 launched July 8 running partly on that Cursor training data, with Musk describing it as roughly comparable to Anthropic’s Opus 4.7 but faster and cheaper to run.
Feeding SpaceX’s own engineering data into the next AI model follows the same logic Musk has applied across xAI’s sister companies. Tesla supplies real world driving data and manufacturing expertise, X supplies conversational data, and now SpaceX supplies aerospace engineering data built up since 2002.
Musk did not give a release date for the upcoming AI model, referred to elsewhere as Grok 4.6. He has said the two trillion parameter run is in its final training phase and expected to wrap this week.
In a pointed message on X, Elon Musk warned that firms maintaining significant short positions in SpaceX over time face “very low” survival probability.
The statement comes amid post-IPO volatility for the rocket company, now trading under the ticker $SPCX.
The survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 17, 2026
Five weeks after what was described as the largest IPO in history, the stock had fallen roughly 30% from its peak above $2.6 trillion, briefly surpassing Microsoft and Amazon in market value. Short sellers celebrated gains of about $8.7 billion, but Musk’s reply underscores his long-term conviction.
The warning directly echoes a detailed bullish analysis arguing that Starship’s cost reductions could unlock a multi-trillion-dollar space economy. Projects ranging from solar power beamed from orbit and asteroid mining to orbital data centers and Mars terraforming were projected to create over $100 trillion in new market capitalization.
In this vision, SpaceX acts as the essential infrastructure provider, akin to AWS for cloud computing, capturing monopoly-like revenues from launches, crew transport, and data traffic across a rapidly expanding frontier.
This is far from the first time Musk has targeted short sellers. With Tesla, he has repeatedly framed persistent bears as destined for major losses. In July 2024, Musk declared that once Tesla achieves full autonomy and volume production of Optimus robots, “anyone still holding a short position will be obliterated. Even Gates,” referencing Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ reported short bets.
Elon Musk reveals what Tesla stock surge could do to Bill Gates
Earlier, in 2018, he taunted shorts that they had “about three weeks before their short position explodes,” a remark followed by sharp stock gains. Musk has also called short selling “value destroying” and once suggested it “should be illegal,” viewing it as betting against innovation and progress.
Critics often dismiss Musk’s optimism as hype, especially when near-term metrics like quarterly deliveries or stock fluctuations disappoint.
Yet his pattern remains consistent: framing short positions against his companies as fundamentally misjudging exponential technological leaps. For SpaceX shorts, the message is clear: betting against multi-planetary ambitions and the infrastructure monopoly they enable carries existential risk for the firms involved.
As Musk and supporters see it, the space economy’s upside dwarfs Earth-bound valuation models, making today’s dips temporary in a decades-long ascent.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship Flight 13 aborted at Zero and Musk just told us what broke
Four Raptor engines failed to ignite at T-zero, forcing SpaceX to scrub Starship Flight 13 Thursday.
SpaceX scrubbed the Starship Flight 13 launch attempt Thursday evening at the last possible moment, after four of the Super Heavy booster’s 33 Raptor 3 engines failed to ignite during the startup sequence. The 90-minute window had opened at 6:45 p.m. EDT from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, and the countdown had proceeded without issue all day, with more than 11.5 million pounds of liquid methane and liquid oxygen being fully loaded into the rocket before the automated abort triggered. SpaceX’s launch directors posted on X, “Standing down from today’s flight test attempt,” and shut down the livestream shortly after.
Musk confirmed the root cause within hours. “Some of the engines didn’t start, triggering an automatic launch abort,” he wrote on X. “To be confident of a good flight, 2 Raptors will be removed and replaced. Most probable launch timing is early next week.” SpaceX engineers began draining propellant tanks immediately and Booster 20 was rolled back to its hangar for inspection.
The timing adds a layer of significance that did not exist during any of the previous 12 Starship flights. This is the first time SpaceX has attempted to launch Starship since the company made its stock market debut in June, listing under ticker SPCX at $135 per share. Public investors are now watching every Starship outcome in real time, and a last-second abort carries more visibility than it would have six months ago.
Flight 13 was designed to be one of the most consequential tests in the program’s history. It was set to carry 20 Starlink V3 satellites, the first operational payload Starship has ever attempted to deploy. Six of those satellites carried external cameras to photograph Starship’s heat shield from the outside during flight, which would act as a self-inspection approach SpaceX has never attempted before. The mission also needed to complete a Raptor engine relight in space, a step SpaceX skipped on Flight 12 in May after losing an engine during ascent. That Flight 12 booster also flipped 90 degrees off course during its boostback burn when five engines failed to reignite.
SpaceX has not announced an official next launch date. Musk’s “early next week” window points to July 21 or 22 at the earliest, pending the engine swap and a return to the pad.
Elon Musk handed Grok something no other AI company can get their hands on
Tesla expands ridesharing service in California to new hotspot
