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Elon Musk not attending Tesla Earnings Calls is not a bad thing

Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveils futuristic Cybertruck in Los Angeles, Nov. 21, 2019 (Photo: Teslarati)

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk joined the likes of Apple’s Steve Jobs and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos as CEOs who will not regularly attend their company’s Quarterly Earnings Calls. While it came as a shock and disappointment to many, it is not necessarily a bad thing, especially considering Musk has more than secured himself as a CEO that is vastly different from his counterparts. A revolutionary in his own way, Musk will attend some Tesla Earnings Calls in the future, but only if matters are extremely pressing and important announcements or updates need to be made.

“This is the last time I’ll do earnings calls, but this is the…I will no longer speak, default, during Earnings Calls. So obviously, I’ll have to do the Annual Shareholder Meeting, but I think going forward, I will most likely not be on Earnings Calls unless there’s something really important that I need to say,” Musk said shortly into the company’s 2021 Second Quarter Earnings Call last evening.

Musk has been a key part of the Earnings Calls since Tesla’s early days. Of course, holding the position of CEO, Musk has regularly updated stockholders, investors, fans, and enthusiasts on the Earnings Calls for years. But the question must have arisen while sitting in his office in Fremont, Los Angeles, or Austin: “What am I getting from being on these calls?”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced he would no longer join his team of executives on Quarterly Earnings Calls. (Credit: Tesla)

While the Tesla CEO adds a bit of comedy to the monotonous Earnings Calls, preceded by the same classical music soundtrack for as many quarters as I can remember, there is definitely a more efficient way, and it sits at Musk’s fingertips through Twitter. Unlike many CEOs and billionaires alike, Musk has updated investors and owners alike with new developments in the Tesla product line, new factories, features, and other things that have to do with any of the entities that he controls through almost daily tweets. Whether trivial or important, Musk has been on Twitter nearly every day to check news, give updates, and keep the community in the loop about what is going on in the Tesla world.

While the Earnings Calls provide more in-depth responses from Tesla’s executives regarding financial questions or upcoming developments, many of the additions to Tesla’s product line can be found on Elon’s Twitter feed. When it comes to the Retail Investor and Financial Analyst questions asked during the Earnings Calls, the responses are usually handled by Tesla’s Master of Coin/Moneyman, Zachary Kirkhorn. Andrew Baglino handles any inquiries about Powertrain and Energy Engineering. With the recent addition of Lars Moravy to the Earnings Calls starting with Q1 ’21, the three Tesla execs are more than capable of handling themselves and any questions that anyone may have to ask. The finer points regarding future developments will likely come in the Update Letter just before the Call, or Musk will Tweet them directly.

Musk is one of the few CEOs globally that contributes to the development and manufacturing of his company’s product. Not afraid to get his hands dirty, Musk joined assembly techs on the Fremont lines last year as Tesla reopened the factory following a closure due to COVID-19. Evidently, if Musk can spend 30 seconds answering questions from Investors or Analysts on Twitter, there is not much of a need for him to join the Earnings Calls. A more appropriate usage of his time would benefit Tesla and its customers greatly.

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Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Tesla Semi lands the biggest electric truck deal in U.S. history

Tesla leads a record 2,500 truck order, but not every truck will be a Semi.

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Tesla has landed the largest electric truck order in U.S. history. ZET SCALE, a new alliance of shippers and carriers, named Tesla its primary manufacturer on Tuesday for an initial order of 2,500 electric Class 8 trucks. The deal alone would nearly double the number of electric heavy trucks operating in the country.

According to the press release from Catalyst Mobility, the nonprofit formerly known as CALSTART, Kenworth, RIDE and Volvo were also selected as secondary manufacturers that carriers can pick if their operations call for it. No split between the four brands has been published, so the exact number of Semis in the order is not yet known.

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Tesla won the top slot through a competitive request for proposals. The alliance, which Catalyst Mobility runs with the Smart Freight Centre, scored bidders on price, range, charging capability and production capacity. Pooling freight demand from founding shippers, including Microsoft and PepsiCo, let every truck maker bid lower than it would for a single fleet. “The Tesla Semi is designed for lower cost per mile operations than diesel,” said Dan Priestley, director of the Tesla Semi program, as noted in the press release.

The financing is built to pull in carriers who have avoided electric trucks. ZET Financial is issuing the purchase order for all 2,500 units and will place them with fleets through a fair market value lease. The trucks will be deployed over the next few years across 10 freight hubs in Los Angeles, Stockton, Bakersfield, Seattle and Tacoma, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Chicago, Atlanta, and the Newark and New York area. ZET SCALE says the first order is only the opening round, with a longer term goal of 10,000 trucks or more.

Even if Tesla ends up with only a majority share, it would still be the biggest Semi deal to date. Einride’s 500 unit order in August was the previous record, and WattEV’s 370 truck order in May was the largest California deal at the time. Einride’s CEO has since said he expects all 500 trucks delivered by the end of 2027.

The announcement lands two days before Tesla formally inaugurates its Semi factory in Nevada on September 24. The 1.7 million square foot plant sits next to Gigafactory Nevada’s 4680 cell lines and is designed for 50,000 trucks a year.

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Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant

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Credit: Grok

Tesla has expanded Grok from an in-car chatbot into a hands-free work assistant. On September 22, Tesla officially launched Grok Bot capability, confirming that drivers can now manage email, calendars, files, chats, and tasks by voice and then hand more ambitious errands to the AI-fueled productivity cheat code.

Grok itself is built by xAI. The new car features split into two layers: Connectors link Grok to outside accounts. Grok Bot, currently limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers, can complete multi-step tasks such as placing a usual coffee order, booking a reservation, or scheduling an appointment. It truly puts the driver in a nearly complete hands-free driving and productivity setting, with ironically the only task truly requiring your hands being to touch the “Start Self-Driving” button.

We were granted access to Grok Bot’s Tesla integration a few weeks back, and we’ve been able to do a handful of things with it. On a handful of occasions, we’ve used it to order food and have it ready for pickup slightly later into the evening; we’ve managed to pick up groceries after a day of errands with Grok Bot, and outside of the car, it’s helped with budgeting and even my fantasy football draft.

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Tesla shows another way to utilize it: in their demo, a driver says “Hey Grok,” asks the assistant to check an inbox, and hears that a message concerns a weekend reservation. Grok then scans the calendar, reports no conflicts, and confirms the Tahoe trip is clear. It can also add check-in details to a road-trip itinerary. The point is not novelty chat. It is keeping eyes on the road, or on Full Self-Driving, while the car handles the paperwork of a trip:

This Grok rollout is not a gadget add-on as much as it is Tesla’s thesis in software form: the car should stop being a machine you operate and start being a room you occupy.

Connectors and Grok Bot treat the cabin as an office that happens to move, and that has truly been Tesla’s intention for years now. The car has slowly become an extension of a home more than a vehicle. Inbox, calendar, groceries, takeout, and reservations become voice work, not dashboard chores that you need to do before you get in your car.

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Responsibility shifts from the driver to the stack, and as many Tesla owners rely on FSD for travel, Grok Bot now handles the monotony of dinner reservations or appointments.

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X changed how everyone gets paid, and this lawsuit shows why

X sued a Bitcoin account network over fake payouts as its creator pay model shifts

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Elon Musk’s X has taken a Bitcoin-focused engagement ring to court, and the case doubles as a receipt for how differently the platform pays creators today. The company filed suit in the High Court of England and Wales against Vivek Kumar Sen and Zamyang Sherpa, alleging the pair ran six accounts, including @Vivek4real_, @Bitcoin_Teddy and @TrendingBitcoin, as one coordinated operation to fake the kind of engagement that used to translate directly into money.

According to the filing, first reported by Gizmodo, the accounts posted near identical “BREAKING” crypto headlines seconds apart, in one case 11 seconds, then had three more handles like, reply to and repost the material to manufacture what X called “a false appearance of genuine, human communication and interaction.” X says the scheme pulled in at least £207,384, about $278,000, and pegs its own investigation and remediation costs at another £75,000. The accounts were suspended August 18. X general counsel James Burnham announced the case on X last weekend, writing that the company “will act forcefully to protect our platform and the earnings of genuine creators.” Musk’s own reaction, posted shortly after, was three words: “Don’t mess with 𝕏.”

The timing lines up with a a recent update to how X pays its creators. The program these accounts allegedly gamed, Creator Revenue Sharing, launched in mid 2023 and paid out based on how much a post got engaged with. Originality was never part of the formula, which is exactly how the platform ended up flooded with recycled clips, copy pasted “BREAKING” posts and replies engineered purely to farm reactions from paying subscribers.

X tried patching the model more than once, including an April cut to aggregator payouts and a March regional weighting change that Musk personally paused hours after it was announced. X retired Creator Revenue Sharing for good on September 7 and opened its replacement, Original Content Rewards, the next day.

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The new math is stricter. Payouts now come only from qualified impressions, meaning unique Home Timeline views from Premium subscribers where at least half the post is visible, and replies no longer count toward eligibility at all. Copied posts, reuploaded media and reposts without meaningful changes are explicitly excluded. Allegra Jacchia, senior product manager for Creators at SpaceXAI, which now runs X’s product and AI work following xAI’s acquisition of the platform, put it bluntly, saying the goal is to reward creators who bring original ideas and perspective, “not those who have become best at gaming the system.”

Read that way, the lawsuit isn’t really about six crypto accounts. It’s X putting a dollar figure on what the old incentive structure cost, then suing to collect it right as the new one goes live. For live updates on how the case and the new rewards program shake out, follow @Teslarati on X.

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