Some would say that the Tesla Model 3 has opened doors for the EV industry in the mainstream passenger car market. To an experienced professional driver like John Chambers, the Tesla Model 3 might be more than just a good passenger car.
“I do think, if you want to take a car on track, I think the Model 3 is the best car,” Tevo Solutions founder John Chambers told Teslarati.
Chambers explained that the size of the Model 3 was a good fit for the track. “Because the Model 3 now is easily the match of any car of that size when we take it on track. There’s nothing that could stay with it,” he said. And that’s including gas or petrol cars.
Chambers is a long-time car enthusiast who can remember the days when there were no track barriers between the spectators and the cars on the racecourse. He’s been behind the wheel of some successful track runs, under the hood optimizing race cars, and even mentored the next generation of racers throughout his career thus far. Now, he wants to help people understand Tesla and other EVs better, too.
He is excited to see a Model 3 with a Taycan on the track during Tevo Solutions’ EV-only track day at the Llandow Circuit in the United Kingdom. Chambers believes it would be an excellent chance to compare the two EVs along with the opportunity to see and experience other electric vehicles, too.
Although, he did distinguish that a track day in the UK is not competitive. It is a day for drivers to learn more about their vehicles and learn slightly more advanced driving skills.
As more car owners transition to electric cars, events like Tevo Solutions’ track day may become common in the automotive industry. Rivian, for instance, plans to hold a 4-month Demonstration Driving Program for new R1T owners so they can familiarize themselves with their new electric pickup truck.
The EV-only track day, scheduled for August 18, 2021, was exclusively created with electric vehicle owners in mind. As per Tevo Solutions’ press release: “Hybrids, PHEVs, and vehicles with range extenders will not be accepted.”
In his talk with Teslarati, Chambers shared that not many tracks or organizers in the UK would consider opening their tracks to EVs, let alone hold an EV-only track day.
“When I got my Model 3 [Performance], there was nothing I could enter that was competitive. At the time, the rules didn’t allow EVs because they were still worried about fire and safety,” he said.
As with many things related to Tesla, there have been some forms of FUD (fear, uncertainty, or doubt) about Tesla vehicles or electric cars in the UK. But Chambers believes the country is overcoming the FUD surrounding EVs or, at least, more people are trying to understand electric vehicles better.
As for Chambers, he ended up joining non-competitive track days, which most Tesla owners participated in at the time. “But there was no track or organizer that was going to do an EV-only day. And, I thought, it’s the obvious next step. But nobody decided to do it, so I decided I’d do it myself.”
TEVO Solutions is working with a list of top-class driving instructors for the event, including a coach responsible for training drivers seen in popular car scenes in films including Mission Impossible and some James Bond movies.
Tesla Model 3 SR Plus sold out in UK for Q2 despite zero EV purchase incentives
Tevo will inform event participants of charging locations near the Llandow Circuit. The company is also trying to bring portable chargers into the track grounds for more convenient charging. Chambers noted that charging is one of the stopgaps that make circuits hesitant about organizing an EV track day.
Chambers hopes that the event will be inclusive. At the time of the interview, he shared that at least two Taycans, a VW Golf-e, and possibly even a VW Beetle converted to electric would be coming to the event. So when Tevo Solutions said all EVs are invited, it really meant all electric vehicles.
Learn more about the UK’s first-ever EV-only track day, here.
Tesla engineers deflected calls from Apple on a daily basis while the tech giant was developing its now-defunct electric vehicle program, which was known as “Project Titan.”
Back in 2022 and 2023, Apple was developing an EV in a top-secret internal fashion, hoping to launch it by 2028 with a fully autonomous driving suite.
However, Apple bailed on the project in early 2024, as Project Titan abandoned the project in an email to over 2,000 employees. The company had backtracked its expectations for the vehicle on several occasions, initially hoping to launch it with no human driving controls and only with an autonomous driving suite.
Apple canceling its EV has drawn a wide array of reactions across tech
It then planned for a 2028 launch with “limited autonomous driving.” But it seemed to be a bit of a concession at that point; Apple was not prepared to take on industry giants like Tesla.
Wedbush’s Dan Ives noted in a communication to investors that, “The writing was on the wall for Apple with a much different EV landscape forming that would have made this an uphill battle. Most of these Project Titan engineers are now all focused on AI at Apple, which is the right move.”
Apple did all it could to develop a competitive EV that would attract car buyers, including attempting to poach top talent from Tesla.
In a new podcast interview with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, it was revealed that Apple had been calling Tesla engineers nonstop during its development of the now-defunct project. Musk said the engineers “just unplugged their phones.”
Musk said in full:
“They were carpet bombing Tesla with recruiting calls. Engineers just unplugged their phones. Their opening offer without any interview would be double the compensation at Tesla.”
Interestingly, Apple had acquired some ex-Tesla employees for its project, like Senior Director of Engineering Dr. Michael Schwekutsch, who eventually left for Archer Aviation.
Tesla took no legal action against Apple for attempting to poach its employees, as it has with other companies. It came after EV rival Rivian in mid-2020, after stating an “alarming pattern” of poaching employees was noticed.
There are a lot of Tesla bulls out there who have astronomical expectations for the company, especially as its arm of reach has gone well past automotive and energy and entered artificial intelligence and robotics.
However, some of the most bullish Tesla investors believe the company could become worth $100 trillion, and CEO Elon Musk does not believe that number is completely out of the question, even if it sounds almost ridiculous.
To put that number into perspective, the top ten most valuable companies in the world — NVIDIA, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, TSMC, Meta, Saudi Aramco, Broadcom, and Tesla — are worth roughly $26 trillion.
Will Tesla join the fold? Predicting a triple merger with SpaceX and xAI
Cathie Wood of ARK Invest believes the number is reasonable considering Tesla’s long-reaching industry ambitions:
“…in the world of AI, what do you have to have to win? You have to have proprietary data, and think about all the proprietary data he has, different kinds of proprietary data. Tesla, the language of the road; Neuralink, multiomics data; nobody else has that data. X, nobody else has that data either. I could see $100 trillion. I think it’s going to happen because of convergence. I think Tesla is the leading candidate [for $100 trillion] for the reason I just said.”
Musk said late last year that all of his companies seem to be “heading toward convergence,” and it’s started to come to fruition. Tesla invested in xAI, as revealed in its Q4 Earnings Shareholder Deck, and SpaceX recently acquired xAI, marking the first step in the potential for a massive umbrella of companies under Musk’s watch.
SpaceX officially acquires xAI, merging rockets with AI expertise
Now that it is happening, it seems Musk is even more enthusiastic about a massive valuation that would swell to nearly four-times the value of the top ten most valuable companies in the world currently, as he said on X, the idea of a $100 trillion valuation is “not impossible.”
It’s not impossible
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2026
Tesla is not just a car company. With its many projects, including the launch of Robotaxi, the progress of the Optimus robot, and its AI ambitions, it has the potential to continue gaining value at an accelerating rate.
Musk’s comments show his confidence in Tesla’s numerous projects, especially as some begin to mature and some head toward their initial stages.
Elon Musk
Celebrating SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy Tesla Roadster launch, seven years later (Op-Ed)
Seven years later, the question is no longer “What if this works?” It’s “How far does this go?”
When Falcon Heavy lifted off in February 2018 with Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster as its payload, SpaceX was at a much different place. So was Tesla. It was unclear whether Falcon Heavy was feasible at all, and Tesla was in the depths of Model 3 production hell.
At the time, Tesla’s market capitalization hovered around $55–60 billion, an amount critics argued was already grossly overvalued. SpaceX, on the other hand, was an aggressive private launch provider known for taking risks that traditional aerospace companies avoided.
The Roadster launch was bold by design. Falcon Heavy’s maiden mission carried no paying payload, no government satellite, just a car drifting past Earth with David Bowie playing in the background. To many, it looked like a stunt. For Elon Musk and the SpaceX team, it was a bold statement: there should be some things in the world that simply inspire people.
Inspire it did, and seven years later, SpaceX and Tesla’s results speak for themselves.
Today, Tesla is the world’s most valuable automaker, with a market capitalization of roughly $1.54 trillion. The Model Y has become the best-selling car in the world by volume for three consecutive years, a scenario that would have sounded insane in 2018. Tesla has also pushed autonomy to a point where its vehicles can navigate complex real-world environments using vision alone.
And then there is Optimus. What began as a literal man in a suit has evolved into a humanoid robot program that Musk now describes as potential Von Neumann machines: systems capable of building civilizations beyond Earth. Whether that vision takes decades or less, one thing is evident: Tesla is no longer just a car company. It is positioning itself at the intersection of AI, robotics, and manufacturing.
SpaceX’s trajectory has been just as dramatic.
The Falcon 9 has become the undisputed workhorse of the global launch industry, having completed more than 600 missions to date. Of those, SpaceX has successfully landed a Falcon booster more than 560 times. The Falcon 9 flies more often than all other active launch vehicles combined, routinely lifting off multiple times per week.
Falcon 9 has ferried astronauts to and from the International Space Station via Crew Dragon, restored U.S. human spaceflight capability, and even stepped in to safely return NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams when circumstances demanded it.
Starlink, once a controversial idea, now dominates the satellite communications industry, providing broadband connectivity across the globe and reshaping how space-based networks are deployed. SpaceX itself, following its merger with xAI, is now valued at roughly $1.25 trillion and is widely expected to pursue what could become the largest IPO in history.
And then there is Starship, Elon Musk’s fully reusable launch system designed not just to reach orbit, but to make humans multiplanetary. In 2018, the idea was still aspirational. Today, it is under active development, flight-tested in public view, and central to NASA’s future lunar plans.
In hindsight, Falcon Heavy’s maiden flight with Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster was never really about a car in space. It was a signal that SpaceX and Tesla were willing to think bigger, move faster, and accept risks others wouldn’t.
The Roadster is still out there, orbiting the Sun. Seven years later, the question is no longer “What if this works?” It’s “How far does this go?”
Tesla engineers deflected calls from this tech giant’s now-defunct EV project
Tesla to a $100T market cap? Elon Musk’s response may shock you
