News
Tesla Model X easily tows Chevy Silverado 1500 from Supercharger in ‘De-ICE-ing’ feat
There is no denying that Tesla’s electric cars are bound to be polarizing for a long time to come. Operating independent of gasoline, the vehicles are practically a stand against the fossil fuel industry. Being sleek, powerful and quick, the cars also go against the notion that electric cars are boring and slow. Unfortunately, as Teslas become more commonplace with the ramp of the Model 3, the vehicles appear to be attracting more resistance from the anti-EV community as well.
Last month, several members of the Tesla community went online to share their experiences with a practice colloquially known as “ICE-ing,” which involves gasoline and diesel powered vehicles blocking access to a Supercharger. While some of these incidents might be the result of an honest mistake, some ICE-ing incidents are undoubtedly intentional. Noted TSLA short Mark Spiegel, for example, has proudly shown off his Porsche Boxster S blocking a Supercharger stall earlier this year. Tesla owners u/Leicina and u/BarcodeOfficial from the r/TeslaMotors subreddit uploaded photos of stations being intentionally blocked by pickup truck drivers as well. As noted by the Tesla owners, some of the truck drivers were even verbally harassing EV owners.
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- Pickup trucks ICE-ing a Tesla Supercharger. (Photo: BarcodeOfficial/Reddit)
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- Pickup trucks ICE-ing a Tesla Supercharger. (Photo: Leicina/Reddit)
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- Tesla short-seller Mark Spiegel blocking a Supercharger station. (Photo: Mark Spiegel/Twitter)
Amidst these annoying (and disturbing to a point) incidents, one thing that these pickup truck drivers could easily forget is that Tesla’s electric cars are actually loaded with a lot of power, and they have the weight to back it up. Being equipped with electric motors, Tesla’s vehicles have a lot of torque, and thanks to their massive battery packs, they are also very heavy. The Tesla Model X, for example, was at its lightest at 5,072 pounds, and that was when the company was still selling the 60D variant. Thus, in theory, a Tesla should be able to tow an offending vehicle out of a Supercharger station if needed, or as a last resort in the event of an emergency.
Such a theory was recently put to the test by Tesla Model X 90D owner Patrick Lawson. In a video posted on his Tesla Trip YouTube channel, Patrick opted to see if his all-electric SUV would be able to tow a full-sized pickup truck out of a Supercharger. Fortunately for the Model X owner, his sister recently acquired a 2014 Chevrolet 1500 Silverado, and she was more than willing to see if her 5,104-lb pickup could be towed by the electric vehicle. Patrick opted to conduct the experiment at an empty Supercharger in Loveland, CO, and to make the scenario even more challenging; he opted to engage the truck’s emergency brake, simulating a situation where a driver intentionally leaves a vehicle parked for an extended period of time.
In the video, Patrick could be seen hooking up his Model X to the Chevy Silverado 1500, then slowly driving away, pickup truck in tow. From what could be seen in the experiment, the entire ‘De-ICE-ing” process was effortless for the all-electric SUV, with Patrick noting in a conversation with Teslarati that he had to “show constraint” as he “gently pressed on the Model X’s accelerator” to ensure that both vehicles don’t get damaged. The Model X did not have to engage Slip Start before it towed the Silverado as well, and no warnings were present on the vehicle while it was pulling the full-sized pickup. Ultimately, Patrick noted that entire “De-ICE-ing” process only took around five minutes.
With the ramp of the Model 3, Tesla’s electric cars are becoming more prevalent. Unfortunately, acts like ICE-ing Superchargers would likely continue as well. And it’s not just ICE-ing either. Some Tesla owners, among them racecar driver Leilani Münter, have noted on Twitter that she had been “coal-rolled” multiple times while driving in her Tesla. In a tweet, Elon Musk described these situations as “bizarre.”
Inasmuch as ICE-ing, or coal-rolling for that matter, is an annoyance that could escalate into something more dangerous, there is very little that the anti-EV crowd can do to stop the spread of electric cars. Countries across the globe such as China, which are large markets for the auto industry, are shifting to electric vehicles, and so are regions like Europe. Thanks to cars like the Model 3, electric vehicles are becoming more and more attainable as well. Coupled with a grid that is shifting towards cleaner energy, it would only be a matter of time before the auto industry shifts completely to electric.
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Watch Patrick Lawson’s video of his Tesla Model X “de-ICE-ing” a Supercharger below.
SpaceX stock did the opposite of what most of Wall Street expected this week, when the day designed to be its most dangerous turned into a rally, and the rally kept going.
Thursday marked the first major lockup expiration since SpaceX’s June IPO, making roughly 911.5 million insider held shares eligible to trade for the first time, more than doubling the company’s public float. Analysts and short sellers had spent weeks bracing for a flood of selling, especially after the stock fell 13 percent following its first earnings report as a public company on Tuesday. Instead, shares rose 6.1 percent Thursday to close at $114.92, and by Friday they were trading near $129, up more than another 12 percent on the day.
SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles
The setup made the outcome notable. Short interest had climbed to roughly 34 percent of the float heading into earnings, among the highest of any large cap stock, with about 95 percent of available shares to borrow already on loan. CEO Elon Musk warned short sellers twice in the weeks before the lockup, writing on X that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” then following up on the morning of earnings with “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
When the newly unlocked shares hit the market and the selloff never showed up, some of that short position appears to have started unwinding. TipRanks reported that options activity shifted toward bullish strategies like put selling and risk reversals following the rally, with roughly $600 million in options premium trading Thursday alone. Retail buyers also stepped in during the earnings dip, according to Vanda Research.
The fundamentals behind the stock have not changed much in a week. SpaceX’s revenue nearly doubled year over year to $7.8 billion, with Starlink subscribers doubling to 12 million and the company’s AI segment growing 247 percent. What spooked investors on Tuesday was the spending side. Capital expenditures jumped to more than $18 billion for the quarter, up from $2.8 billion a year earlier, with AI investment alone rising from $749 million to $15.8 billion. Wall Street remains split on whether that spending is building infrastructure SpaceX needs or outrunning what the business can currently support, a debate Teslarati has tracked since shares first came under pressure.
None of that resolves the bigger question hanging over the stock. Thursday’s release was only the first of nine staggered lockup tranches, with roughly $800 billion worth of additional shares scheduled to become eligible through October, and Musk’s own stake stays locked until next June. If this week is any indication, the market is treating that supply as something it can absorb rather than something to fear, at least for now.
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News
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station, joining an exclusive two resort transit club.
Sahara Las Vegas opened a new Vegas Loop station Thursday, giving The Boring Company’s underground transit system its northernmost stop yet on the Strip. The station sits at Sahara’s Paradise Road entrance, on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Sahara Avenue, and connects riders to the Las Vegas Convention Center, other Strip resorts on the network and, eventually, Harry Reid International Airport.
The addition makes Sahara the second resort, after Fontainebleau opened its own station in January, to get a stop built at street level rather than tucked into the property itself. Sahara now joins Westgate as the only two Strip resorts offering both a Vegas Loop station and a stop on the Las Vegas Monorail, giving guests two separate ways to get around without leaving the property.
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The bigger news buried in Thursday’s announcement is what comes next. Boring Company has already secured its first permit to tunnel north of Sahara Avenue, extending the network beyond where it currently ends, even though permits to push the Loop toward downtown Las Vegas still haven’t been granted. Crews are also working on a two mile dual tunnel line running from Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, just north of Tropicana Avenue, that Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority CEO Steve Hill has said the company hopes to open in time for November’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Ridership has grown alongside the buildout. The Loop moved roughly 82,000 passengers during CONEXPO in early March, a total the company highlighted on its own X account at the time, and the system has now carried more than 4 million passengers through 11 open stations since it began running in 2021. The airport connector tunnels, meant to give the Loop a direct link to Harry Reid, have slipped past their original first quarter target and remain under construction, with Boring Company director Mike Baier saying that a full opening is still a few months out.
For Sahara, the calculation is straightforward. Convention traffic drives a large share of Loop ridership, and a station at the property’s front door gives conventiongoers one more reason to book rooms on the Strip’s north end instead of closer to the convention center itself.
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Elon Musk
Tesla’s mysterious Robovan makes a sneak peek with Optimus in Terafab video
Elon Musk shared a new Terafab video showing Optimus, Robovans, and a stunningly futuristic campus.
Elon Musk posted a new video of Terafab on X Thursday morning, and the most eye-catching details in it were not the building itself, but two products still awaiting production: Optimus and the Robovan.
The concept render, credited to SpaceX, shows Optimus robots working the grounds of the roughly 2.5-mile-long facility planned for the Gibbons Creek site in Grimes County, while a Robovan glides along an elevated roadway cutting through the building itself, sharing the frame with a Tesla Semi and a Cybercab.
Robovan is the boxy, driverless people and cargo mover Musk unveiled alongside Cybercab at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024. He pitched it as a way to move up to 20 passengers at once, or handle freight instead, at a target cost he claimed could fall under a dollar a mile, with no steering wheel or pedals, the same layout as Cybercab. Nearly two years later, Robovan still has no confirmed production timeline and has not shown up in any factory footage, which makes Thursday’s render one of the only recent looks at the vehicle in any form.
Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far.
And it will be stunningly beautiful. pic.twitter.com/4NweOqTL7y
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2026
Optimus has moved further along. Tesla began converting Fremont’s old Model S and Model X assembly line into a Gen 3 Optimus production line earlier this year, and Musk visited the site on July 1 to mark the changeover. A second, larger Optimus plant is under construction at Giga Texas, targeting volume production in summer 2027 and eventual capacity of 10 million units a year. Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy said this month the robot has “big shoes to fill” in replacing the S and X line, while Musk has repeatedly called Optimus the company’s biggest product of any kind, with a long-term price he has pegged between $20,000 and $30,000.
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Check out the “Robovan” from @Tesla
📸: @Teslarati pic.twitter.com/D4es2i9NUe
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) October 11, 2024
“Terafab Texas will be the largest and most valuable building on Earth by far,” Musk wrote alongside the clip. “And it will be stunningly beautiful.”
One quote post summed up the reaction: “Futuristic scene with RoboVan + Cybercab + Tesla Semi + Optimus.”
Beyond the vehicles, the architecture wrapped around them stands out too. The building’s facade is canted at sharp angles, with illuminated horizontal bands running through what appears to be a multi level interior visible from outside. Below the elevated roadway, pedestrians walk along a plaza next to a reflecting pool, and the skyline behind the campus is dotted with angular spires that read more like sculpture than infrastructure, a departure from the strictly utilitarian look of Gigafactory Texas or Starbase.
The timing tracks with what Terafab representative Riley Trennell told Grimes County residents on Wednesday, when he said renderings of the facility would be released “within days.” Musk’s post followed less than 24 hours later, and Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office sent out its own release Thursday confirming the project. As Teslarati reported this morning, Terafab’s tax abatement agreements with Grimes County are now signed and active, and SpaceX has sent the county its first $10 million payment under that deal. The dollar figure tied to this phase of construction, per Reuters, is $16.8 billion, one of the first hard capital expenditure numbers attached to Terafab since Musk unveiled the joint Tesla-SpaceX-xAI venture in March.Reaction on X ranged from enthusiastic to skeptical. “God Bless Texas! Everything is bigger and better in Texas!” one reply read. Another was more measured: “Terafab in a decade…..”
Whether the finished building matches the render is a separate question from whether Musk wanted people talking about the render itself. Less than a day after posting, the video had already crossed 5.5 million views.
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Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
