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Tesla Model S Plaid track testing at Laguna Seca Raceway (May 14 2021, Credit: The Kilowatts) Tesla Model S Plaid track testing at Laguna Seca Raceway (May 14 2021, Credit: The Kilowatts)

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Tesla Model S Plaid broke the 1/4-mile record, Jay Leno says

Tesla Model S Plaid track testing at Laguna Seca Raceway (May 14 2021, Credit: The Kilowatts)

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The Tesla Model S Plaid’s rumored record-setting performance at the Famoso Raceway in Bakersfield, California, was confirmed by Jay Leno, who was in attendance that day.

On May 13th, it was reported by DriveTeslaCanada that the Model S Plaid had broken the quarter-mile record that the Bugatti Chiron Sport set in 2018. The Bugatti completed the 1/4-mile in 9.4 seconds with a speed of 158 MPH.

According to the report, the Model S Plaid successfully completed the 1/4-mile at Famoso Raceway in 9.247 seconds at 152.09 MPH, Jay Leno said during the Spike’s Car Radio podcast.

“I’ll tell you what I did. I went up to Famoso Dragway in Bakersfield,” Leno said on the podcast. “And the Tesla Plaid…I drove by, and the NHRA guy was there to make it official. It turned a 9.247, at 152 MPH.”

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Tesla lists the Model S Plaid’s top speed at 200 MPH and a 0-60 MPH time of just 1.99 seconds. Interestingly, the Model S Plaid also has a listed 1/4*mile time of 9.23 seconds at 155 MPH, basically confirming that the company’s projections are nearly spot-on.

The podcast was uncovered by EV enthusiast site The Kilowatts, who captured video of the Model S Plaid running spirited laps at the Laguna Seca Raceway in Northern California just days after the 1/4-mile record was set at Famoso Raceway.

The Model S has always been Tesla’s highest-performance vehicle. After the Ludicrous Mode available on Performance Model S vehicles didn’t seem to be what CEO Elon Musk’s highest expectations were, he took it a step further by introducing Plaid Mode in late 2019. The vehicle first was spotted at the Nürburgring in Germany, where Tesla enthusiasts feasted their eyes on a massive rear diffuser, wide body style, and noticeably quicker powertrain.

Tesla Model S Plaid hits Nürburgring in refreshed widebody with massive rear diffuser

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In January 2021, Musk and Tesla announced that the Plaid and Plaid+ Model S sedans would be available for ordering. While the Model S Plaid+ won’t hit production until next year, the Model S Plaid is set to begin deliveries on June 10th with a dedicated delivery event at the Tesla Fremont factory.

Leno has been involved with Tesla and Elon Musk on several occasions. The two first met when the original Tesla Roadster was a subject of a Jay Leno segment, and, most recently, Musk took Leno in a ride in the Tesla Cybertruck for an episode of the MSNBC show “Jay Leno’s Garage.

The podcast is available here, and Leno’s segment on the Model S Plaid occurs at around 13:50.

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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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SpaceX (SPCX) IPO is live today at $135: Here’s exactly what you need to know

SpaceX priced its historic IPO at $135 per share today, raising a record $75 billion.

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SpaceX officially priced its initial public offering at $135 per share, offering 555,555,555 shares of Class A common stock and raising $75 billion in what is the largest IPO in stock market history. Shares are set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market on Friday, June 12, under the ticker symbol SPCX. The previous record holder was Saudi Aramco’s 2019 offering at $29 billion, followed by Alibaba’s $22 billion offering in 2014.

At $135 per share and roughly 555.6 million shares, the implied valuation sits near $1.75 trillion, which would make SpaceX roughly the seventh largest company in the United States, just above Tesla’s current market cap. Regular investors can request shares at the IPO price through Robinhood, Fidelity, Charles Schwab, SoFi, and E*TRADE, though the deal is heavily oversubscribed and most retail allocations will be partial or unfilled. Once trading opens June 12, anyone with a brokerage account can buy SPCX on the open market.

SpaceX’s amended S-1 is sparking a major Tesla merger conversation

 

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The valuation is anchored primarily by Starlink. Starlink crossed 10 million subscribers as of February 2026 and is adding 750,000 to 1.5 million new users per month, with the connectivity segment already posting a $1.19 billion profit last quarter. The offering also bundles in xAI following SpaceX’s all-stock merger earlier this year, adding Grok and the Colossus supercomputer to the investment thesis. As Teslarati reported, Starlink ended 2025 with $10 billion in revenue, a figure analysts project could reach $24 billion by end of 2026.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has been vocal in his support. “I think the time is right,” Ives said, adding that the offering expands the Elon Musk ecosystem rather than competing with Tesla. An average 12-month price target of $165 per share represents roughly 22% upside from the IPO price. Not everyone agrees – Motley Fool noted xAI is spending $1 billion per month playing catch-up to OpenAI and Anthropic.

Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 with a single stated purpose. “Elon founded SpaceX with a goal to change humanity, to make us a multi-planet species,” CFO Bret Johnsen said in the company’s retail roadshow video this week. Musk himself has been more direct: “We are building the systems and technologies necessary to provide global connectivity on Earth and beyond, to understand the true nature of the universe, and to extend the light of consciousness to the stars.”

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Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”

Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.

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Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.

While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure

The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.

Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet

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Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.

Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.

As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.

Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.

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Tesla stuns with another FSD approval in Europe, its second in two days

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Tesla has stunned by gaining yet another approval for its Full Self-Driving suite in Europe, its second in two days and its fifth overall.

Belgium will be the latest country to allow Tesla owners to utilize FSD on public roads in Europe, joining a quickly growing list that started with the Netherlands, Lithuania, and Estonia.

On Tuesday, Denmark announced its approval of the FSD suite, which has now been followed by Belgium just one day later.

The country’s Minister of Mobility, Annick De Ridder, announced the approval on her X account, stating that she had just signed the approval of Tesla FSD. It now goes to the country’s homologation department for the last step of the approval process.

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The Belgian approval is one of mighty importance because it truly shows how quickly countries in Europe could greenlight the FSD suite consecutively. Approvals are already coming in relatively quickly, which is a great sign.

Perhaps the next big development that could come from FSD approvals in Europe is an approval from a country like England, Italy, France, Spain, or Germany. It would be something to see how FSD would perform in a major European metro, such as London, Barcelona, Madrid, Paris, Rome, or Berlin.

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Full Self-Driving does an excellent job of roaming around major U.S. cities like New York and Los Angeles, but other high-profile international cities of significance would truly mark a line in the sand for Tesla, which can simply enable any vehicle in its customer-owned fleet to run FSD with the correct approvals.

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