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Tesla China shares rendering of Compact EV smaller than Model 3 in job posting

Chinese-Style Tesla Vehicles (Source: Tesla China WeChat)

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced during the recent Gigafactory 3 event in Shanghai that the company plans to create a design and R&D center in the country and it appears the carmaker is now looking for designers to help come up with “China-style” Tesla vehicles.

China-focused news website Abacus first spotted the announcement of Tesla on its official WeChat account on Wednesday. Roughly translated, the ad says, “Tesla is waiting for you. Chinese-Style Tesla will sweep the world.”

The post stated that Tesla is looking for outstanding design talents to create original Chine-style Teslas. The company is encouraging those with bold ideas and welcomes even non-car designers since according to Tesla China, the new designers will not just design ordinary cars. Interested parties can email designer@tesla.com  until Feb. 1, 2020.

“Let the most beautiful Chinese art be integrated into the future-oriented Tesla,” the Tesla WeChat post read.

The latest move of Tesla in China is another big step to dominate the local market and preparation to conquer the rest of Asia. No one might have thought that hiring for car designers to make Chinese-style Teslas will come this soon, but Elon Musk believes in the concept that speed solves everything. The design and R&D center in China will not only create vehicles for the local market but for the rest of the globe as well.

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Perhaps the comparison of Musk to renowned military general and The Art of War author Sun Tzu by venture capitalist Paul Holland holds water since Tesla has been pushing the right buttons to get a share of the pie in the largest automotive market in the world. It is doing things right and it’s striking with rapidity as the Chinese philosopher advised.

Tesla recently delivered its first batch of Made-in-China Model 3 to the public and Musk also formally launched the Model Y program in the country during the Gigafactory 3 event.  It also lowered the price of the locally-made electric sedans the resulted in a surge of orders in the country. If the local market already loves the Model 3, introducing  variants of Teslas that’s focused on the China market will definitely generate more interest and help increase sales even more.

As analysts from China-based equity firm Chuancai Securities put it, the Model 3 is a potential cash cow for the electric carmaker as it can localize the sourcing of parts that will lead to better margins and better conditions to even stimulate sales of its vehicles in China.

The story of Tesla in China has been amazing so far. Its Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai rose from a muddy field and produced its first vehicles in just 10 months and delivered its first vehicles to its employees in less than a year. At present, its production has hit a run rate of 3,000 units per week and plans to consistently ramp up production as more workers are added to the production frontline.

Tesla will likely get some market share from local EV manufacturers but the competition is welcomed in a car market that has slowed down in the last year or so. The Chinese government, who’s looking to improve the quality of air in the country, is also pouring support that will help Tesla entice more consumers to buy its new energy vehicles.

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A curious soul who keeps wondering how Elon Musk, Tesla, electric cars, and clean energy technologies will shape the future, or do we really need to escape to Mars.

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Elon Musk takes aim at Bill Gates’ Microsoft with new AI venture “Macrohard”

It is quite an appropriate name for a company that’s designed to rival Microsoft.

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Credit: xAI/X

Elon Musk has set his sights on Microsoft with a new company called “Macrohard,” a software venture tied to his AI startup, xAI. 

Musk described the project as a “purely AI software company” that’s designed to generate hundreds of specialized coding and generative AI agents that could one day simulate products from companies like Microsoft entirely through artificial intelligence.

Macrohard‘s Purpose

Musk announced Macrohard on Friday, though xAI had already registered the trademark with the US Patent Office a few weeks ago, as noted in a PC Mag report. Interestingly enough, this is not the first time that Musk has mentioned such an initiative.

Just last month, he stated that xAI was “creating a multi-agent AI software company, where Grok spawns hundreds of specialized coding and image/video generation/understanding agents all working together and then emulates humans interacting with the software in virtual machines until the result is excellent.”

At the time, Musk stated that “This is a macro challenge and a hard problem with stiff competition,” hinting at the venture’s “Macrohard” moniker. A few years ago, Musk also posted “Macrohard >> Microsoft” on X. 

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Powered by xAI and Colossus

Macrohard appears to be closely linked to xAI’s Colossus 2 supercomputer project in Memphis. Musk has confirmed plans to acquire millions of Nvidia GPUs, joining rivals such as OpenAI and Meta in a high-stakes race for AI computing power. Colossus is already one of the most powerful supercomputer clusters in the world, and it is still being expanded.

xAI is only a couple of years old, having been founded in March 2023. During its Engineering Open House event in San Francisco, Elon Musk highlighted that the company’s speed will be its primary competitive edge. “No SR-71 Blackbird was ever shot down and it only had one strategy: to accelerate,” Musk said.

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Elon Musk confirms he’s still in wartime CEO mode

He is still locked in.

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Wcamp9, CC BY 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk tends to use social media platform X as his personal platform to express himself, so much so that critics tend to allege that the CEO is no longer serious about his numerous companies. 

As per Musk, he is still very much in wartime CEO mode, despite all the jokes and fun posts about Ani on X. 

Elon Musk leads several prolific companies, much more than the average CEO. And while Tesla is the only publicly traded entity that he currently leads, Musk is so visible that everyone across the internet pretty much has a strong opinion of him one way or another. For his longtime supporters and followers, however, what truly matters is if Musk is locked in.

Considering that Elon Musk’s feed on X has recently been filled with AI imagery, a good portion of which involve AI-rendered women, some X users have expressed concerns that the CEO may be losing focus once more. Musk responded to one such user by highlighting his very busy schedule and his numerous active projects. 

Needless to say, Elon Musk is still locked in. He is still in “wartime CEO” mode.

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As per the CEO, even his recent AI posts about AI are “part of a broader vision and strategy.” He also highlighted that SpaceX’s Starship Flight 10 is launching in a few days, xAI’s Grok 5 is starting its training next month, and Tesla’s Autopilot V14 is also coming next month. As per Musk, “long-term strategy is compelling.”

Elon Musk’s comments are quite accurate. While he may seem to spend all his time on X, after all, he is very much still neck-deep in all his companies’ projects. There is a reason why Musk became known as a visionary, and a lot of it is because he really is intimately involved in all of his companies’ projects. 

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Tesla watchers spot mysterious castings at Fremont Factory

The castings seem to be quite new, as they do not seem to match any of the castings that are currently being used for the Model Y.

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Credit: @metgodinwilderness7130/YouTube

A recent flyover of the Fremont Factory has triggered speculations about Tesla’s ongoing initiatives that are yet to be unveiled publicly. This was hinted at by the sighting of some apparent vehicle castings around the factory that have never really been observed before.

A Fremont Factory flyover

In a recent update, drone operator Met God in Wilderness, who has been chronicling the progress and developments of the Fremont Factory for years, shared some footage from his August 14, 2025 flyover. Based on the video, the Fremont Factory seemed very much alive. Vehicles were being pumped out of the factory, and a rather interestingly covered car could be seen going around the test track.

What is quite fascinating about the footage from the Fremont Factory is the fact that the vehicles that were moving from the production line to the outbound logistics lot are not driven manually anymore. As per Tesla in previous updates, vehicles produced at the Fremont Factory navigate to the outbound logistics lot on their own using Unsupervised FSD

Mysterious castings

Perhaps most interestingly, the drone operator also managed to capture some footage of some castings that were being gathered just outside one of the facility’s sprung structures. These castings seem to be quite new, as they do not seem to match any of the castings that are currently being used for the Model Y. This has brought speculations suggesting that the new components, which seem smaller than standard Model Y megacasts, may be for a different, perhaps more compact, vehicle. 

As per Tesla in its second quarter earnings call, the company actually started the initial production of more affordable models sometime in June. These vehicles, as per Elon Musk, will be made available for consumers in the fourth quarter. “Given that we started in North America and that our goal is to maximize production with higher rates by the end of Q3, we’re going to keep pushing hard on our current models to avoid complexity… We’ll be running with the more affordable models available for everyone in Q4,” Musk said.

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Watch the recent drone footage of the Fremont Factory in the video below.

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