Investor's Corner
Tesla Motors is More Like NASA than GM
5, 4, 3, 2, 1, We Have Liftoff
I never get too excited or depressed about Tesla’s stock price. Stock analysts worry, and a lot. I can’t imagine how they ever sleep at night knowing that during those hours they are completely off the influence grid. Because Tesla went public it made a new bed and as a consequence, has at least two major challenges it must constantly consider.
- Build a new kind of personal transportation that must compete with a 100+ year old industrial age vertical
- Fund itself through a traditional stock market model while not making what that model values as part of their mission
Disclaimer: I own a modest number of Tesla shares and have for years, but it’s not my retirement plan and never will be. For me the primary investment is the Mission of Tesla, which for now means the Model S. I’ve owned one since June 2013.
The idea that someone would have the courage (and smarts) to start a car company from scratch and be able to differentiate it from all other automakers, as well as their products in every way, was extremely attractive to me. Others have tried, Tucker, DeLorean, but they were trying to compete with essentially the same formula. That rarely works out. In this case we have disruption and not the bullying kind which is what we often see in tech sector firms.
Car Guys are Wired that Way
I was nearly born in a car. My mother used to regale me with the story of how she just barely made it to the hospital. Five more minutes and I would have emerged while in the back seat of a 1954 Chevrolet Delray. Growing up I was surrounded by relatives who raced cars, worked on automobile, both personal and commercial, and sold them to the public. I remember sitting in my Uncle’s Chevrolet sales room in Ohio while we were visiting one summer and seeing a sign that read, “A new Chevrolet is sold every minute.” Gasoline and oil ran through my veins and I inhaled more carbon monoxide helping my dad in the garage than was probably good for me. For the record, here’s a list of all the cars my father owned. I think it was all of them. The year column indicates when the car was manufactured, not when he purchased it.
[Image source: ModelScoil.com]
Yes, there’s a very big gap between 1969 and 1982. Completely unexplained. Maybe we both failed to make entries in the diary. Never mind, it’s more fun to call “slacker.” We lost my father to cancer in 1992. He would have been proud to say he preceded his latest car in death by a full year. I frequently imagine what it would be like to pull up in his driveway with my Model S and take him for a ride.
As you can see, my father’s list is heavily weighted toward U.S. carmakers, especially GeneralMotors.The recent stories about how GM covered up defective parts for decades was disturbing to me as someone who rode in, drove and owned them as an adult. The last time I owned a GM car was 1989. I switched because I couldn’t afford to pay the maintenance fees.
Mission Control, We are Go for Launch
When President John F. Kennedy challenged America to “land a man on the moon and return him safely” in 1961, it was the catalyst for a series of missions meticulously planned and executed by NASA. Most had doubts we could do it successfully. The ones who believed worked at NASA. They developed a phased approach with three programs; Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. Mercury set out to successfully orbit the earth, study the ability to operate in space and recover both the astronaut and his craft. Gemini’s role was to study the effects of long term space missions on astronauts, perfect re-entry procedures and give astronauts extended practice time in a weightless environment. Once these were accomplished, the third program could begin. Apollo was about landing a man on the moon and returning him safely. I was enthralled with the space program growing up. I held my breath at every launch, was glued to the television for each mission and wondered what would come next.
Palo Alto, We May Have a Problem
Tesla is on a similar path. They started with the Roadster as a commercial prototype that would tell them lots about the viability of an electric car. From that came the Model S, an amazing form of Personal Transportation that won Motor Trend’s Car of the Year in 2013 and was rated the safest automobile ever built in tests conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the same year. I view the forthcoming Model X, a SUV version of the Model S, together as a stepping stone to the third stage; the Model III. A smaller, much more affordable car within reach of a large number of U.S. households. Assuming they can progress, the Model E will bring them closer to accomplishing the Tesla mission:
To accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible.
The cost of the three NASA programs is hard to pin down, but many sources say that Mercury cost about cost $277 million in 1965 dollars, Gemini cost $1.3 Billion in 1967 dollars and Apollo $20.4 Billion in 1970 dollars. Obviously these number increase greatly when you convert them to today’s dollars. These missions were a stunning achievement and brought innovative technology to the private sector in numerous ways. In other words, we all gained benefit from these programs.
The point of quoting the cost figures is to bring perspective into the discussion. Today’s dollars always appear small when we look back a decade or two. The difference in these programs is that NASA was appropriated the funds from Congress, Tesla must navigate the murky waters of being a public company.
Elon Musk’s release of all of Tesla’s patents was a courageous move. He realizes that no single car company can deliver enough electric vehicles to make a real difference in the planet’s climate. The intellectual property is out there. Others can choose to assist or ignore.
BMW and Chevrolet have purchased, taken apart and reassembled the Model S in their war rooms. Why? Most likely to see how they can defeat Tesla. It’s a competitive game after all, including how Tesla sells its cars. A combined mission here, like the one NASA mounted would be an amazing feat of American collaborative engineering on a level never before achieved, this time on ground vehicles. Automakers coming together, including Tesla, could bring about a change much faster than we could even imagine. I know I’m describing a fantasy in the world of stocks and profits.
Can Tesla really do it? Well, they landed the real estate for the Gigafactory. A great start. I believe it can be done and am pulling for them to succeed. Actually more than pulling for them. I drive the car and and am an ambassador for the brand everyday. I wish them success, not just to disrupt, but to innovate on a grand scale. To change history. A chance like that doesn’t come along all that often.
Image Credits: NASA, Tesla Motors, ModelScoil.com
Originally posted on ModelScoil
Elon Musk
X changed how everyone gets paid, and this lawsuit shows why
X sued a Bitcoin account network over fake payouts as its creator pay model shifts
Elon Musk’s X has taken a Bitcoin-focused engagement ring to court, and the case doubles as a receipt for how differently the platform pays creators today. The company filed suit in the High Court of England and Wales against Vivek Kumar Sen and Zamyang Sherpa, alleging the pair ran six accounts, including @Vivek4real_, @Bitcoin_Teddy and @TrendingBitcoin, as one coordinated operation to fake the kind of engagement that used to translate directly into money.
According to the filing, first reported by Gizmodo, the accounts posted near identical “BREAKING” crypto headlines seconds apart, in one case 11 seconds, then had three more handles like, reply to and repost the material to manufacture what X called “a false appearance of genuine, human communication and interaction.” X says the scheme pulled in at least £207,384, about $278,000, and pegs its own investigation and remediation costs at another £75,000. The accounts were suspended August 18. X general counsel James Burnham announced the case on X last weekend, writing that the company “will act forcefully to protect our platform and the earnings of genuine creators.” Musk’s own reaction, posted shortly after, was three words: “Don’t mess with 𝕏.”
Don’t mess with 𝕏 https://t.co/HSmd5hL6aQ
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 21, 2026
The timing lines up with a a recent update to how X pays its creators. The program these accounts allegedly gamed, Creator Revenue Sharing, launched in mid 2023 and paid out based on how much a post got engaged with. Originality was never part of the formula, which is exactly how the platform ended up flooded with recycled clips, copy pasted “BREAKING” posts and replies engineered purely to farm reactions from paying subscribers.
X tried patching the model more than once, including an April cut to aggregator payouts and a March regional weighting change that Musk personally paused hours after it was announced. X retired Creator Revenue Sharing for good on September 7 and opened its replacement, Original Content Rewards, the next day.
Today, we’re launching Original Content Rewards.
The reality is that Revenue Sharing had reached a point where its incentives were misaligned. Creators should be focused on bringing net new content to the platform instead of maximizing payouts. We could have kept adding more… pic.twitter.com/VJIxqlPrjm
— Allegra Jacchia (@allegrajacchia) August 7, 2026
The new math is stricter. Payouts now come only from qualified impressions, meaning unique Home Timeline views from Premium subscribers where at least half the post is visible, and replies no longer count toward eligibility at all. Copied posts, reuploaded media and reposts without meaningful changes are explicitly excluded. Allegra Jacchia, senior product manager for Creators at SpaceXAI, which now runs X’s product and AI work following xAI’s acquisition of the platform, put it bluntly, saying the goal is to reward creators who bring original ideas and perspective, “not those who have become best at gaming the system.”
Read that way, the lawsuit isn’t really about six crypto accounts. It’s X putting a dollar figure on what the old incentive structure cost, then suing to collect it right as the new one goes live. For live updates on how the case and the new rewards program shake out, follow @Teslarati on X.
Elon Musk
Why automakers keep turning down Elon Musk’s Tesla Full Self-Driving offer
Elon Musk confirms no automaker has ever accepted Tesla’s offer to license Full Self-Driving software.
Elon Musk gave a brief answer on X Monday that confirmed that Tesla’s standing offer to license Full Self-Driving to other automakers still has zero takers. Sawyer Merritt wrote that “Tesla has for years openly invited other automakers to license FSD. None of them have accepted,” responding to a prediction from Boom Supersonic founder Blake Scholl that Tesla would eventually open FSD the way it opened its Supercharger network to rival brands. Musk’s reply to Merritt was one word: “Exactly.”
It is not the first time Musk has made this point. He said something similar in November, when he called legacy automakers reluctance to adopt FSD “crazy,” and Tesla has floated the offer publicly since at least 2021. Scholl’s prediction touches on something real. Once NACS became the de facto charging standard, adoption from Ford, GM, Rivian and others followed within about a year. FSD licensing was supposed to work the same way once Tesla built enough of a lead that switching made sense for everyone.
Tesla has for years openly invited other automakers to license FSD. None of them have accepted. https://t.co/kgz4idpoUM
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) September 22, 2026
The case for licensing now is stronger than it was two years ago. Waymo and Zoox are logging hundreds of thousands of unsupervised autonomous miles, along with Tesla’s own Robotaxi fleet. Every automaker still selling driver assist systems that lag FSD has given the robotaxi conversation to Tesla, Waymo and Zoox by default. Licensing FSD would let a GM or a Ford compete on the same field without spending a decade and billions of dollars building a stack from scratch, the same argument Tesla made when it opened the Supercharger network to bring more EVs onto its chargers.
But FSD is not a connector standard. As one reply to Musk’s post pointed out, licensing FSD is not a software license the way NACS was a plug spec. It requires adopting Tesla’s eight camera layout and its onboard compute architecture, meaning a licensee’s cars would effectively become Tesla hardware wearing someone else’s badge. That is the visible obstacle. The less visible one is data. A licensed FSD stack would report back the same telemetry Tesla collects from its own fleet, giving Tesla a continuous read on how a competitor’s cars are actually driven, where they struggle, and how often drivers intervene. For an automaker trying to build its own autonomy program, or simply trying to keep its build quality and safety record private, handing Tesla that visibility could be a bigger cost than the hardware bill. It is the reason the Supercharger comparison only goes so far. Opening a charging plug cost Tesla very little. Opening FSD would cost a rival something it cannot get back.
Elon Musk
Tesla eyes supply partners for Optimus mass production
Tesla certified three Chinese suppliers for Optimus mass production, signaling its robot timeline is accelerating.
Tesla’s robotics team traveled to Ningbo, in China’s Zhejiang province, on September 16 and spent the following day auditing component suppliers for Optimus, according to a Bloomberg report cited by RobotAIGeek. The visit moved three manufacturers from provisional status to certified mass production partners: Tuopu Group, which handles actuators and chassis components, Ningbo Joyson Electronic, a sensor supplier, and Zhejiang Sanhua Intelligent Controls, which builds thermal management systems. All three already supply parts to Tesla’s electric vehicles, and the audit reportedly came with fresh orders that supply chain reports put at an initial batch of roughly 5,000 units.
Tuopu, Joyson, and Sanhua built their manufacturing base serving the automotive industry, where tolerances and volume requirements are already close to what a mass produced humanoid robot demands. Sanhua in particular has history here. Teslarati reported last October that the company had received a roughly $685 million order for linear actuators tied to Optimus, a volume industry watchers estimated could cover around 180,000 robots once production ramped.
Supply chain reports tied to this week’s audit put Tesla’s near term production goal at about 1,000 Optimus units a week by late September, rising to 2,000 to 2,500 units a week by the end of the year. That pace would put real weight behind the timeline Tesla has been building toward since May, when it wound down Model S and Model X production at Fremont to convert that floor space into a dedicated Optimus line targeting one million units annually. JPMorgan analysts who toured the factory in August confirmed the conversion took roughly four months, a pace Musk has called unprecedented for a facility that size.
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
Fremont is only the first phase. A second, larger Optimus plant is rising at Gigafactory Texas, where drone footage shared by Joe Tegtmeyer last week showed the structural steel nearing completion on the north end of the building. Tesla has said that facility is meant to eventually support production of up to 10 million units a year, though volume output there is not expected before 2027.
Commercial sales of Optimus are still targeted for the second half of 2027, but production is expected to start well before then. JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta has said Tesla’s “Optimus Academy” program, which uses early units to collect real world training data inside Tesla’s own facilities, is expected to be running later this year. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Ian Ma described the Ningbo audits as “a positive commercialization signal for China’s humanoid supply chain,” noting that sentiment could improve further if the visit leads to confirmed supplier nominations and larger orders. The Solactive China Humanoid Robotics Index rose about 1.4% on the news, though it remains down roughly 30% for the year.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
X changed how everyone gets paid, and this lawsuit shows why
