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Tesla direct sales in New Mexico gains ground as “Tesla Bill” gets approved
A piece of New Mexico state legislation to amend local automotive franchise laws through a “Tesla Bill”, specifically allowing vehicle manufacturers like Tesla to operate as a dealer and sell direct, was approved by the Public Affairs Committee last Thursday.
Similar to other states with dealership protections, car makers wanting to do business in the “Land of Enchantment” must sell their vehicles through a franchise dealership network, and efforts to amend those requirements are always met with significant resistance from lobbyist groups whose members stand to be impacted most. After facing a party-line vote, Democrats ‘for’ and Republicans ‘against’, the law (Senate Bill 243) passed the state’s Public Affairs Committee and advanced to the Corporations and Transportation Committee. After another review and vote, the bill will advance to the Senate floor for a final vote if successful. Given the state’s balance of power – Democrats are in the majority in both houses of the state’s legislature as well as the governorship – Tesla may be well on its way to a full victory in New Mexico.
Prior to the Public Affairs Committee vote, a panel was held wherein advocates both for and against amending the state franchise laws voiced their positions. Overall, supporters (particularly those focused on Tesla’s desire to do business in the state) argued that the bill in question aims to work within the dealership model, not eliminate it. According to Meredith Roberts, senior policy adviser and counsel representing Tesla, “We’re not here to upset (the franchise model)…It’s only additive,” she said in the panel hearing. The language of the bill supports this position via its narrow applicability, allowing direct sales only if the following conditions apply:
- The business does not have any existing franchises in the state.
- The business sells and services only vehicles that it manufactures.
- The vehicles sold must be electric and powered by batteries or fuel cells.
Despite the estimated $4800 tax income New Mexico would gain per average electric vehicle sold, 15-50 new jobs per store opened, and $1 million dollars local economic impact gain from a direct-sales manufacturer like Tesla would bring to the state, those in opposition to the bill maintained that changes to the existing franchise laws would not be beneficial. During the hearing, Charles Henson, president of the New Mexico Automotive Dealers Association, cited the millions of dollars already invested by dealerships, arguing that Tesla’s sales model would create unfair direct manufacturer competition. Another state senator, Jacob Candelaria (D-Albuquerque), likened EV manufacturers’ direct-sales models to giant tech company monopolies. To be fair, with the popularity of the direct-sales model increasing, as all-electric fleets come into being (a stated goal of many current ICE vehicle makers), franchises may end up becoming a thing of the past as the future of clean energy transportation sets in.
While the hand-off from one committee to another is a good step towards the end goal of in-state, brick-and-mortar sales presence for EV manufacturers, the bill still may face an uphill battle despite the political leanings of the state’s legislative majority for reasons outside lobbyist efforts. Specifically, some legislators are a bit put-off by Tesla’s history in New Mexico. A manufacturing plant was announced in 2007 (to be succeeded by the current Fremont factory) and a Gigafactory was teased in 2014 (to be succeeded by the current Sparks, Nevada factory). Since neither of those projects came to fruition within the state, it seems there may be some leftover sour grapes. However, given Tesla’s current inability to do normal sales business in New Mexico, it’s understandable that the all-electric car maker may have based part of their location decisions on their customers’ purchasing abilities in the states where they set up shop, thereby limiting potential liabilities and run-ins with dealership groups. This is something Volvo USA is already experiencing with its company-directed vehicle subscription service.
At this juncture, Tesla is all too familiar with the franchise vs. direct-sales fight. In December last year, a Connecticut judge ruled in favor of Connecticut’s Department of Motor Vehicles on a motion prompted by the Connecticut Automotive Retailers Trade Association (CARA), finding that Tesla’s business activities within the state violated the states automotive franchise law system. The EV company only had one location in the state – a gallery located in Greenwich to inform interested parties about its products, not sell them – but even that was determined to constitute competition and thus banned activity. Legislative efforts to amend Connecticut’s laws by state representatives in favor of Tesla’s sales approach have, thus far, failed. Ironically, Connecticut is also controlled by Democrats in both the legislature and governorship.
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These Tesla, X, and xAI engineers were just poached by OpenAI
The news is the latest in an ongoing feud between Elon Musk and the Sam Altman-run firm OpenAI.
OpenAI, the xAI competitor for which Elon Musk previously served as a boardmember and helped to co-found, has reportedly poached high-level engineers from Tesla, along with others from xAI, X, and still others.
On Tuesday, Wired reported that OpenAI hired four high-level engineers from Tesla, xAI, and X, as seen in an internal Slack message sent by co-founder Greg Brockman. The engineers include Tesla Vice President of Software Engineering David Lau, X and xAI’s head of infrastructure engineering Uday Ruddarraju, and fellow xAI infrastructure engineer Mike Dalton. The hiring spree also included Angela Fan, an AI researcher from Meta.
“We’re excited to welcome these new members to our scaling team,” said Hannah Wong, an OpenAI spokesperson. “Our approach is to continue building and bringing together world-class infrastructure, research, and product teams to accelerate our mission and deliver the benefits of AI to hundreds of millions of people.”
Lau has been in his position as Tesla’s VP of Software Engineering since 2017, after previously working for the company’s firmware, platforms, and system integration divisions.
“It has become incredibly clear to me that accelerating progress towards safe, well-aligned artificial general intelligence is the most rewarding mission I could imagine for the next chapter of my career,” Lau said in a statement to Wired.
🚨Optimistic projections point to xAI possibly attaining profitability by 2027, according to Bloomberg's sources.
If accurate, this would be quite a feat for xAI. OpenAI, its biggest rival, is still looking at 2029 as the year it could become cash flow positive.💰 https://t.co/pE5Z9daez8
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 18, 2025
READ MORE ON OPENAI: Elon Musk’s OpenAI lawsuit clears hurdle as trial looms
At xAI, Ruddarraju and Dalton both played a large role in developing the Colossus supercomputer, which is comprised of over 200,000 GPUs. One of the major ongoing projects at OpenAI is the company’s Stargate program,
“Infrastructure is where research meets reality, and OpenAI has already demonstrated this successfully,” Ruddarraju told Wired in another statement. “Stargate, in particular, is an infrastructure moonshot that perfectly matches the ambitious, systems-level challenges I love taking on.”
Elon Musk is currently in the process of suing OpenAI for shifting toward a for-profit model, as well as for accepting an investment of billions of dollars from Microsoft. OpenAI retaliated with a counterlawsuit, in which it alleges that Musk is interfering with the company’s business and engaging in unfair competition practices.
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SpaceX share sale expected to back $400 billion valuation
The new SpaceX valuation would represent yet another record-high as far as privately-held companies in the U.S. go.
A new report this week suggests that Elon Musk-led rocket company SpaceX is considering an insider share sale that would value the company at $400 billion.
SpaceX is set to launch a primary fundraising round and sell a small number of new shares to investors, according to the report from Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter who asked to remain anonymous due to the information not yet being public. Additionally, the company would sell shares from employees and early investors in a follow-up round, while the primary round would determine the price for the secondary round.
The valuation would represent the largest in history from a privately-owned company in the U.S., surpassing SpaceX’s previous record of $350 billion after a share buyback in December. Rivaling company valuations include ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, as well as OpenAI.
Bloomberg went on to say that a SpaceX representative didn’t respond to a request for comment at the time of publishing. The publication also notes that the details of such a deal could still change, especially depending on interest from the insider sellers and share buyers.
Axiom’s Ax-4 astronauts arriving to the ISS! https://t.co/WQtTODaYfj
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 26, 2025
READ MORE ON SPACEX: SpaceX to decommission Dragon spacecraft in response to Pres. Trump war of words with Elon Musk
SpaceX’s valuation comes from a few different key factors, especially including the continued expansion of the company’s Starlink satellite internet company. According to the report, Starlink accounts for over half of the company’s yearly revenue. Meanwhile, the company produced its 10 millionth Starlink kit last month.
The company also continues to develop its Starship reusable rocket program, despite the company experiencing an explosion of the rocket on the test stand in Texas last month.
The company has also launched payloads for a number of companies and government contracts. In recent weeks, SpaceX launched Axiom’s Ax-4 mission, sending four astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) for a 14-day stay to work on around 60 scientific experiments. The mission was launched using the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and a new Crew Dragon capsule, while the research is expected to span a range of fields including biology, material and physical sciences, and demonstrations of specialized technology.
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Tesla Giga Texas continues to pile up with Cybercab castings
Tesla sure is gathering a lot of Cybercab components around the Giga Texas complex.
Tesla may be extremely tight-lipped about the new affordable models that it was expected to start producing in the first half of the year, but the company sure is gathering a lot of Cybercab castings around the Giga Texas complex. This is, at least, as per recent images taken of the facility.
Cybercab castings galore
As per longtime drone operator Joe Tegtmeyer, who has been chronicling the developments around the Giga Texas complex for several years now, the electric vehicle maker seems to be gathering hundreds of Cybercab castings around the factory.
Based on observations from industry watchers, the drone operator appears to have captured images of about 180 front and 180 rear Cybercab castings in his recent photos.
Considering the number of castings that were spotted around Giga Texas, it would appear that Tesla may indeed be preparing for the vehicle’s start of trial production sometime later this year. Interestingly enough, large numbers of Cybercab castings have been spotted around the Giga Texas complex in the past few months.
Cybercab production
The Cybercab is expected to be Tesla’s first vehicle that will adopt the company’s “unboxed” process. As per Tesla’s previous update letters, volume production of the Cybercab should start in 2026. So far, prototypes of the Cybercab have been spotted testing around Giga Texas, and expectations are high that the vehicle’s initial trial production should start this year.
With the start of Tesla’s dedicated Robotaxi service around Austin, it might only be a matter of time before the Cybercab starts being tested on public roads as well. When this happens, it would be very difficult to deny the fact that Tesla really does have a safe, working autonomous driving system, and it has the perfect vehicle for it, too.
These Tesla, X, and xAI engineers were just poached by OpenAI
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Tesla Giga Texas continues to pile up with Cybercab castings
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