Lifestyle
How Tesla and Elon Musk subtly roasted ‘short’ sellers after Q3 Earnings
Tesla’s Elon Musk has a way of cleverly roasting those who are not on board with his company’s mission. Whether car companies are refusing to adopt any sort of EV plans for future vehicles, or hedge fund managers pump massive amounts of money into shorting Tesla’s stock, Musk always seems to come out with a witty Tweet, or a bright pair of perfectly priced short shorts, just to rub salt in the wound for good measure.
A week after his company reported its biggest quarter yet, which came paired with extending Tesla’s profitable quarter streak to five, the magical short shorts appeared once again. Those who weren’t lucky enough to receive the hilariously “short” jab at Tesla’s non-believers with the first truckload of S3XY shorts received their fulfillment earlier this week.
Priced at $69.420, which relates to Musk’s life in several ways, the S3XY short shorts were first available just before Tesla reported its fourth consecutive profitable quarter in Q2 2020.
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- Credit: James Locke | Twitter
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- Credit: James Locke | Twitter
If you wondered how those two childishly-funny digits relate to the Tesla CEO, they’re his favorite numbers. And coincidentally, his birthday is 69 days after 4/20, a day notorious for cannabis culture.
Somehow, when all the chips were stacked against Tesla, the automaker was able to pull through. Despite plant closures during the first half of 2020 in the U.S. and China, Tesla still was profitable. The company beat Wall Street estimates handily, which was a perfect segway into Q3, which would ultimately be Tesla’s biggest quarter to date. However, while Q2 saw more adversity than Q3, the well-timed second appearance of the S3XY short shorts complements another quarter where people said Tesla can’t and won’t. It was the exclamation point on top of its biggest three-month span in company history.
Bigger than a pair of shorts
Tesla has always been a little company with a big disadvantage. When the company decided to manufacture its first vehicle, the 2008 Roadster, it was entering a slumping automotive market that was being affected by the worst economic period since the Great Depression. Even still, the U.S. was recovering, and automotive jobs were attempting to regain some momentum as some of the car business’s biggest names were receiving government help to keep their doors open.
In arguably the worst time to start a company, Tesla was just putting its plan into place. It was battling in the worst economic time in the 21st century and attempting to completely change the tide of what was the “norm” for a car. Everyone knew that previous attempts at EVs went unsuccessful. So what was going to be different here?
Fast forward 12 years. Tesla is the big man on campus, even though it’s the youngest company in terms of “large-scale production” carmakers. Petrol-powered car companies are following Tesla’s lead in a desperate attempt to appear relevant. In a span of eight years, from the introduction of the Tesla Model S, legacy automakers have gone from “we’re not worried” to “full-blown panic mode,” all because people realized its better to pay for a charge than it is to pay for a tank of gas. Not only is it better for the environment, but it’s better for the wallet, too.
Tesla is proving that it is the most dominant company in the world that makes a car, and if you doubt the potential of its products, you’ll become apart of the inspiration for those short, red satin, gold-trimmed shorts.
Perfect time to wash the car with #Tesla short shorts 🤣 https://t.co/78mDTti3s7 pic.twitter.com/OtYeG8VQAS
— Sofiaan Fraval (@Sofiaan) October 28, 2020
Investors and analysts who have doubted Tesla since Day 1 are being proven wrong on what seems to be a daily basis. U.S. demand crumbling? No. European companies dominating Tesla in their own backyard? Not quite. No demand in China? Guess again.
Whether those short-shorts just so happened to become available after the company had its biggest earnings call will forever be a mystery, but the timing seems too good to be true. Whatever the case may be, people are getting their S3XY short shorts, and investors and analysts who have doubted Tesla are once again being taken for a whirl by automotive’s funniest man: Elon Reeve Musk.
Lifestyle
NTSB findings on fatal Tesla crash tell a very different story
The NTSB confirmed the driver, not Tesla’s FSD, caused the fatal Texas house crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board released preliminary findings Wednesday confirming that a Tesla driver, not the vehicle’s software, caused a fatal crash in Katy, Texas in June. The driver, 44-year-old Michael Butler, had engaged Full Self-Driving Supervised mode on Rose Hollow Lane, a residential street with a 30 mph speed limit, before manually overriding the system by pressing the accelerator pedal all the way to 100%. Data recovered from the 2025 Tesla Model 3 showed the vehicle was traveling over 70 miles per hour when it struck a home and killed 76-year-old Martha Avila, who was inside. Weather was clear, the road was dry, and it was daylight.
Texas man charged in fatal Tesla crash where he blamed Autopilot
Butler told authorities he had passed out at the wheel. But security camera footage obtained by the NTSB told a different story, and showed the car accelerating through an intersection before leaving the road entirely. Police also found that Butler’s phone had Google searches including the terms “Tesla FSD not aggressive enough 2026” and “Tesla FSD too timid,” raising serious questions about how he was using the system before the crash. Butler has since been charged with manslaughter. The victim’s family has filed a lawsuit against both Butler and Tesla, alleging negligence.
The NTSB findings aligned directly with what Tesla VP of AI Software Ashok Elluswamy had already stated publicly on X in the weeks after the crash, writing that “the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100%.” The data confirmed his account.
Yup. In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area. They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash.
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 22, 2026
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Texas ranch to showcase the lifelong work that changed the world
Elon Musk is building a product gallery at his Texas ranch spanning his lifelong inventions.
Elon Musk took to X earlier today, noting “Am putting together a product gallery at my ranch in Texas.” in response to a resurfaced famous quote from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s wherein he draw parallels of the Tesla CEO to legendary physicist Albert Einstein.
Dimon made the remark at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland back in January 2025, telling CNBC at the time, “SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, I mean, the guy is our Einstein.” The remark seemingly ended a long-time feud between the two high profile execs.
While details are thin about the exact location of Elon Musk’s Texas ranch and any pending projects that would serve as a gallery and homage to his portfolio of revolutionary product inventions spanning from 1984 to 2025, land acquisition records point to roughly a location of several thousand acres in Bastrop County, east of Austin near the Colorado River and held through an LLC called Horse Ranch LLC that’s managed by Musk’s longtime personal friend and family wealth manager Jared Birchall. Birchall also serves as the CEO of Neuralink.
Tesla’s “ecological paradise” in Giga Texas may be larger than expected
The broader Bastrop County footprint surrounding the ranch has grown significantly. Entities tied to Musk have accumulated approximately 2,000 acres in Bastrop County as of mid-2026, up from 700 acres earlier in the year, with possibly as much as 6,000 acres acquired in total across Bastrop and Travis counties based on deed records.
No completion date for the gallery has been announced and Musk has not confirmed whether it will be open to the public. As Teslarati has reported, SpaceX just completed the largest IPO in history raising $75 billion, a milestone that makes this particular moment in Musk’s career a natural inflection point for looking back at what he has built through the years.
Am putting together a product gallery at my ranch in Texas https://t.co/xQf5FRy4uz
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2026
Starting with Blastar, a simple space shooter game Musk coded at 12 years old and sold to a South African magazine for $500. From there the timeline moves through a commercial career that started with Zip2 in 1995, a city guide software company sold to Compaq for roughly $300 million in 1999. That was followed by X.com in 1999, which merged with Confinity to become PayPal, acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. SpaceX came in 2002, Tesla in 2003, SolarCity in 2006, the Supercharger network in 2012, Neuralink in 2016, The Boring Company in 2016, OpenAI co-founded in 2015, X acquired in 2022, xAI in 2023, Optimus in 2024, the Cybercab in 2026, and most recently SpaceXAI following the SpaceX and xAI merger. The gallery will also likely include items that blur the line between product and cultural artifact, among them The Boring Company’s Not-a-Flamethrower from 2018, Tesla Short Shorts from 2020, and Burnt Hair perfume released under X in 2022.
Lifestyle
Tesla makes the cut on California’s newest EV Rebate program
California just signed a $270 million EV rebate into law and it starts this summer.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 168 into law on Monday, July 13, 2026, creating a $270 million EV rebate program that delivers money directly at the dealership rather than as a tax credit applied months later. The program, called MyFirstEV, is funded equally by California’s state budget and participating automakers, with each contributing $135.5 million to make the math work.
The timing is directly tied to the loss of federal support when the $7,500 federal EV tax credit ended, removing the most significant consumer incentive that had driven EV adoption in the U.S. California, which accounts for roughly one-third of all EVs sold nationally, moved to fill that gap with a state-level replacement.
The rebate structure is straightforward. First-time EV buyers can receive $3,500 off any new battery-electric vehicle with an MSRP up to $50,000. Used EVs priced at $25,000 or below qualify for a $1,750 rebate. The credit is applied at the point of sale, which removes the friction of the old federal system where buyers had to wait for tax season to see the benefit. The program goes live later this summer, with the California Air Resources Board expected to release full participation details next month.
California hits Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi driverless cars with new law
For Tesla buyers, the implications are mixed. The Tesla Model 3 RWD at $42,490 and the Model 3 Long Range at $47,490 both fall under the $50,000 cap and would qualify for the full $3,500 rebate for first-time buyers. The Model Y, which starts at $44,990 after Tesla’s recent price adjustment, also qualifies. The Model X, Model S, and Cybertruck all exceed the cap and receive no benefit. As Teslarati has reported, the program also includes a carve-out exempting California-based automakers like Rivian and Lucid from the price cap entirely, a provision that puts Tesla at a disadvantage since it relocated its headquarters to Texas in 2021.
Other qualifying vehicles include the Chevrolet Equinox EV, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, and Volkswagen ID.4.
SpaceX announces new Starship 13 test flight target date
SpaceX Starship Flight 13 aborted at Zero and Musk just told us what broke
