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Elon Musk is not getting White House invites because advisors fear he might embarrass Biden: report

Credit: Wall Street Journal/YouTube

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Recent reports have indicated that there might be a reason why Tesla CEO Elon Musk is not being invited to electric vehicle-focused White House events. As it turns out, Biden’s advisors are quite hesitant to invite the Tesla CEO since they are concerned that Musk might do or say something that might embarrass the US President and his administration. 

The insights were recently shared by CNBC, which was able to get comments from both Elon Musk and people reportedly familiar with the Biden administration’s stance on the CEO. Citing over half a dozen people who are familiar with the matter — all of which opted remain anonymous — the publication noted that Biden’s advisors are privately pushing back against inviting Musk to future industry events. 

When asked about the administration’s concerns, Musk reportedly sent CNBC an initial reply featuring two “rolling on the floor laughing” emojis. Following this classic Musk response, the Tesla CEO noted that the Biden administration’s concerns are largely unfounded. “They have nothing to worry about. I would do the right thing,” Musk wrote. 

While Musk maintained that the idea of a feud between him and Biden is not really that accurate, the US President’s hesitation in mentioning Tesla when discussing America’s EVs — at least until recently — was very notable. This became quite evident when General Motors, a company that Biden deemed as a leader in EVs, delivered a measly 26 electric cars in the fourth quarter of 2021. Tesla delivered over 300,000. 

“The notion of a feud is not quite right. Biden has pointedly ignored Tesla at every turn and falsely stated to the public that GM leads the electric car industry, when in fact Tesla produced over 300,000 electric vehicles last quarter and GM produced 26… It got to the point, hilariously, where no one in the administration was even allowed to say the word ‘Tesla’! The public outrage and media pressure about that statement forced him to admit that Tesla does, in fact, lead the EV industry. I wouldn’t exactly call that ‘praise,’” Musk wrote in an email to the publication. 

Overall, the White House’s hesitation in inviting Elon Musk to White House events seems to stem from a place of misinformation. Musk, after all, is assertive and bold on Twitter, but he has attended numerous high-profile events in the past without making a fool of himself. In a way, this is the problem when a constant stream of negativity is directed towards a person. Eventually, a picture is painted that depicts the individual as a cartoon villain that is out of control. This is a narrative that, to a point, has been directed at Musk over the years. Coupled with Tesla’s tendency to mostly stay silent when criticized, such a narrative has allowed a vastly misinformed take on Musk to become the norm. 

Interestingly enough, Musk actually has supported the president in the past. Prior to Biden taking office as the new US President, Musk noted that he was optimistic about the upcoming administration’s focus on climate change. Musk also lobbied for a carbon tax, though he later noted that he was informed by Biden and his team that a carbon tax was “too politically difficult” to implement. It took some time before Musk admitted that the Biden administration was “not the friendliest administration,” and it took even more time before the CEO’s sharp comments on Twitter against the President started. This, unfortunately, is something that has been lost in the Musk vs. Biden mainstream narrative. 

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Ultimately, however, the Biden administration is changing. The US President actually mentioned Tesla recently, showing that he at least publicly acknowledges the company’s efforts. A White House spokesperson also praised the EV maker in an email to CNBC, noting that “Tesla has done extraordinary things for electric vehicles, and that’s a big part of why the whole industry now knows EVs are the future.” Comments such as these seemed almost impossible to secure just a few months ago. 

Don’t hesitate to contact us with news tips. Just send a message to simon@teslarati.com to give us a heads up.

Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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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 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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