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Tesla Model S P100DL racing series Electric GT hits another delay

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Back in April, the Electric Production Car Series, better known as Electric GT, revealed an eight-round calendar for its inaugural season, which was expected to begin this November at Jerez, Spain. The organization later unveiled its first race-ready vehicle, a highly-modified Tesla Model S P100DL, that is optimized for the track. Unfortunately, recent updates from Electric GT indicates that the racing series would be delayed yet again. 

Electric GT was originally expected to begin in 2017, but delays forced the organization to push back the debut of the all-electric, Tesla-exclusive racing series. This time around, EGT noted that it was delaying the launch of the series since it is still seeking a lead investor. In a statement to Autosport, EGT CEO Mark Gemmell stated that almost everything is ready — from the series’ racing categories, FIA approval, and technical and broadcast partners. With an investor in the picture, Gemmell noted that the racing series could begin as early as the first half of 2019.

“Accelerating development in both electric mobility and sustainable energy means ‘The Age of Light’ will fast be with us. The Age of Light is a vision that has driven us for over three years to build an Electric Production Car Series that excites and inspires, and it is now close to final launch. Almost everything is ready: we’ve developed three fantastic race categories, received FIA approval and welcomed new technical and broadcast partners.

“The final ingredient is confirming a great lead investor who shares our vision of clean energy and transport, which is fundamental to launching the championship at the highest level possible. The championship start date will be set once this lead investor has been confirmed. As any start-up, we adapt and test our strategy to make sure the timing is right and the market ready. In creating an engaging and inclusive championship, we want to be open with our fans and supporters as we close in on this final step to bring the racing we all want to see.”

Last July, Electric GT showcased its first track-optimized Tesla Model S P100DL, where it was test-driven by veteran auto host Tiff Needell, who drove the vehicle around the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya in Barcelona. Needell, a former racing driver and presenter for programs such as Top Gear and Fifth Gear, was largely impressed with the track-optimized Model S P100DL, as the vehicle was powerful and it remained planted on the road despite performing aggressive maneuvers on the racetrack.

Unfortunately, Needell’s track session was cut short when Electric GT’s race-modified Model S P100DL exhibited heating issues after one lap and a half of hard driving, forcing the former racecar driver to head over to the pits, where the P100DL had to be cooled down. A spokesperson from EGT later issued a statement about the incident, explaining that the heating issue was caused by one of the vehicle’s outdoor temperature sensors from the air conditioning system being disconnected.  

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The Tesla Model S P100DL is a monster on straight-line races, but its limitations on the track are well documented. Electric GT is aware of this, and it has developed a system that could address the vehicles’ heating issues. The organization plans to introduce a system that would allow drivers to manage how much of the vehicle’s power they wish to use. Thus, to avoid overheating, drivers could opt to drive with a more manageable 470 hp, and only unleash the Model S P100DL’s full 778 hp when sprinting or overtaking. The Electric GT spokesperson noted that for the inaugural season, at least, the system will be “part of the strategy and part of the show.”

Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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Tesla shows off Roadster ‘kickflip’ over vehicle lineup in crazy new POV video

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Tesla’s new Roadster, upside down and trailing cold gas thruster smoke, flips over a lineup of Tesla vehicles at the Roadster unveiling near Waco, Texas on October 15, 2026. (Image: Tesla)
Tesla’s new Roadster, upside down and trailing cold gas thruster smoke, flips over a lineup of Tesla vehicles at the Roadster unveiling near Waco, Texas on October 15, 2026. (Image: Tesla)

Tesla has released a fresh point-of-view video capturing the next-generation Roadster’s headline stunt from its October 15 unveiling, giving fans a visceral look at the car as it jumps and rotates over its siblings within the company’s vehicle lineup.

Tesla posted the video on X today with the caption “POV you’re a flying car,” and the roughly 30-second clip reveals never-before-seen angles directly attached to the Roadster. It’s really unbelievable:

The sequence reveals the uncrewed prototype firing its cold-gas thrusters, lifting off the ground, and barrel-rolling fully inverted while sailing over a staged lineup that includes a Model 3, Model Y, Cybercab, Cybertruck, and Tesla Semi.

Here’s an image of it that Tesla shared right after the unveiling event for a better perspective of what you’re looking at:

Credit: Tesla

There are also some other cool takeaways from the video, including the shift to the inverted-ramp demonstration. The Roadster uses its underbody suction-fan system to climb, then lock itself upside down on the ramp.

This generates multiple Gs of downforce, which then translates into the Roadster releasing these systems to enable a mid-air roll. The car then settles on its wheels gently as thruster vapor provides a perfect cushion.

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All of the runs at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas, test site, which is where the unveiling took place, were autonomous. Elon Musk stated this was a safety measure.

Tesla shows what Roadster drivers will see on screen before thruster activation

Tesla’s vehicle-engineering chief Lars Moravy dubbed the mid-air roll the “kickflip,” prompting Musk to quip that Tony Hawk would be proud and that the car could clear even more of the fleet. The thrusters, which use high-pressure compressed air and fast electric actuators, provide the precise, short-duration force needed for both the launch and the controlled rotation; the same hardware is intended for production versions of the higher-end Thrust and Rocket trims.

The second-generation Roadster, first teased in 2017, has been delayed repeatedly. Musk has indicated production is targeted for 2028.

While the company has yet to publish full pricing or independent performance verification, the combination of extreme acceleration, ground-effect suction, and limited flight capability has already positioned the car as one of the most theatrical EV reveals in years.

Musk has also said Tesla plans a dedicated Texas test track so future owners can experience the maneuvers themselves, far from public roads. The new POV clip simply lets everyone else feel a fraction of that experience from the car’s own cameras.

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SpaceX’s Starfall just went from secret to storefront

SpaceX now pitches Starfall missions with 1,000 kg payloads, weeks of microgravity, and Starlink connectivity.

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An artist’s illustration of a SpaceX Starfall capsule reentering Earth’s atmosphere. (Image: SpaceX)

SpaceX has put up a dedicated commercial page for Starfall, its disk shaped reentry capsule, laying out for the first time what customers actually get when they book a flight. The page, live at spacex.com/starfall, pitches “affordable, routine access to microgravity” and invites companies to get in touch about flying manufacturing, research or testing payloads.

The specs are short and specific. Each Starfall mission carries up to 1,000 kg of payload, supplies 1 kW of power and connects through an Ethernet interface. Mission length is tailored to the customer, and the payload stays online the entire time through Starlink, which means researchers can pull data from an experiment while it is still in orbit instead of waiting for splashdown.

SpaceX is launching a secret spacecraft that could change how things are made in space

SpaceX is aiming the service at three markets. Biomedical customers are told they can grow stem cell organoids, replacement tissue and layered biomaterials. Pharmaceutical companies are pitched on protein and small molecule drug crystals, which form smaller and more uniform shapes without gravity driven convection. Materials science rounds out the list, with semiconductors and other next generation materials grown in vacuum and microgravity.

The page also makes clear which rocket SpaceX is counting on. “By launching on Starship, Starfall brings a reliable and scalable cadence previously unavailable to the market,” the company wrote, contrasting weeks of continuous microgravity with the seconds offered by drop towers and parabolic flights. No price or first operational flight date is listed.

The commercial push is a sharp turn from how Starfall started. SpaceX said almost nothing about the capsule ahead of its first flight in June, and nearly everything known came from FAA and FCC filings describing a disk about 10.2 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall that can return 2,200 pounds of cargo. By its second flight on the Bandwagon-5 rideshare in October, Starfall was listed by name on the mission page, though SpaceX still did not say what it carried.

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Customers appear to be lining up. SpaceX said in its third quarter results that it signed three commercial Starfall missions during the quarter. On the earnings call, President Gwynne Shotwell described the capsule as providing “routine relatively low cost access to microgravity environments for scientific research, including improving our understanding of diseases like cancer and diabetes,” and said the three new missions would fly on Starship.

The branding effort extends past the website. SpaceX added a Starfall T-shirt to its online store on Monday as part of a batch of new merchandise, giving the program a place next to Starship, Starlink and Starshield in the company’s lineup.

The move also puts SpaceX in more direct competition with companies it launches. Varda Space Industries, which has built much of the in-space manufacturing market so far, flew its W-Series 7 capsule on the same Bandwagon-5 mission as Starfall in October. Varda’s capsules are roughly three times smaller than Starfall, and SpaceX controls the ride to orbit for both.

Starfall’s near term cadence depends on Starship. SpaceX is preparing for Flight 15 after completing static fires of Ship 42 and its Super Heavy booster in late October, and is aiming to catch both stages with the launch tower on that flight.

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Grok Bot users hit with weekly limits early, Elon Musk explains what happened

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Credit: Grok Bot

Elon Musk said weeks ago during SpaceX’s third-quarter earnings call that the company’s Grok Bot, its autonomous AI Agent platform, was showing “the fastest growth of a product” that he’d ever seen in his life.

Now, SpaceXSI is scaling back Grok Bot users’ weekly limits, much to the surprise of those who have relied on it to take away monotonous tasks in their lives.

Elon Musk’s terse November 1 reply on X captured a sharp tension in the early days of agentic AI. Responding to a user who asked for a Grok Bot usage reset after hitting 100 percent with four days still left on the weekly cycle, Musk wrote: “The cost of serving Grok Bot was unsustainably high relative to revenue.”

The post arrived amid a wave of similar complaints from paying subscribers whose meters had jumped unexpectedly toward or to the limit, sometimes overnight and with little corresponding activity. It also stood in clear contrast to statements Musk had made only days and weeks earlier.

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On the SpaceX third-quarter earnings call in mid-to-late October, Musk had described Grok Bot in almost the opposite terms. He called it “the fastest growth of a product that I’ve ever seen in my life” and said he had “never seen anything grow this fast.”

Company figures put paid weekly users at roughly 800,000 earlier in the month, more than doubling over the prior period. Daily active users had climbed from under 100,000 in early September to over 600,000 by late October.

Musk emphasized that the product has no free tier and that users appear to be getting real value beyond what they pay. In other remarks, he noted that usage per user was rising rather than declining, the opposite of the usual decay pattern for new software.

Grok Bot, launched around August, functions as an always-available agent with its own persistent cloud computer; it can schedule, research, shop, browse, and execute multi-step workflows even after the user steps away. Access is bundled into X subscription tiers (roughly $30, $100, and $200 per month) and certain Cursor plans, drawing from shared weekly usage pools whose exact sizes have not been publicly detailed.

The economics of that model are what Musk’s November 1 post put in the spotlight. Agentic systems burn far more compute than ordinary chatbot exchanges. Each task can trigger repeated model calls, tool use, web actions, and sustained background work.

When growth is as rapid as Musk celebrated, the absolute compute bill scales quickly even if average revenue per user stays fixed under flat monthly subscriptions. Industry observers noted the opportunity cost as well: the same GPUs can be rented to other AI labs at higher rates.

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A simple back-of-the-envelope comparison circulating after the post illustrated the gap: if every reported daily user paid the top tier, annualized subscription revenue would still be modest relative to the scale of compute infrastructure SpaceX is building and leasing to companies like Anthropic.

Some users also reported possible dashboard anomalies around the same period, though Musk’s framing treated the underlying cost-revenue imbalance as the core issue rather than a pure metering glitch.

The juxtaposition is the core of this exchange. Within roughly two weeks of publicly framing Grok Bot as an unprecedented success with strong unit economics and no free tier, Musk acknowledged that serving the same product had become unsustainable relative to the revenue it generates.

For the broader industry, the episode underscores a structural challenge of the agent era: demand is real and growing faster than many expected, yet the cost of fulfilling that demand through always-on, multi-step agents can outrun subscription pricing before companies can adjust limits, introduce metered billing, or raise prices.

Musk’s reply did not promise an immediate reset or higher allowances; it simply stated the constraint. In doing so, it supplied a rare, explicit public data point on the unit economics of a high-profile AI agent just as adoption numbers were still being celebrated as the fastest in Musk’s experience.

The tension between rapid, paid growth and the compute required to deliver it is now on the record.

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