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Tesla advocate fighting cancer greeted by Elon, Franz, in special tour of Fremont factory

Tesla advocate with stage 4 cancer, Matthew Chan, greeted by Elon Musk [Credit: Alan Miller via Facebook]

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In a recently shared story on Facebook, a man diagnosed with cancer was given what could only be described as the best experience a Tesla owner and advocate could possibly wish for – meet Elon Musk and Franz von Holzhausen following a special tour of the Fremont factory.

The heartwarming tale was shared by Alan Miller, whose friend, Dr. Matthew Chan, was recently diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. Heeding the advice given to him by his wife – “When people have cancer they go to a dark place and they don’t want you to pretend or ignore them, they just want to know when they’re in that place that you’ll be with them, by their side.” – Alan did exactly that by giving Matt an experience that would remind him that there will always be people by his side.

Matt is a Tesla superfan, and during one conversation, Alan asked him what he would like to do. After being prodded to think bigger, Matt stated that it would be awesome if he could meet Tesla CTO JB Straubel or Chief Designer Franz Von Holzhausen, the team behind Tesla’s iconic powertrain and vehicle design. “I want to meet the man behind the man – the one who is told to get the job done and has to figure out how to do it. Because that’s who I am,” said Matt.

Alan went on a social media crusade to make Matt’s wish come true, and he was floored by the response from the Tesla community. After numerous emails, conversations, and an anonymous phone call which supposedly provided the personal mobile number of JB Straubel’s cell phone, Matt’s personal tour of the Fremont, CA factory and a meet-and-greet with Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen were arranged.

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The initial plan for Matt’s tour was quite simple. He would get a personal tour of the Fremont facility, meet Franz, and go home. When the tour actually happened, however, things began to take an interesting turn. It didn’t take long before Matt, his sister Danielle, his brother-in-law Billy, and Alan realized that this tour was something far more special than what they were expecting.

Photos courtesy of Alan Miller via Facebook

After getting the VIP treatment in his tour of the Fremont facility, Matt sat for an hour with Franz, who talked about how much passion goes into the creation of Tesla’s vehicles. Franz conversed with Matt about various aspects of the cars’ design, as well as his goal of making “people fall in love with the car, but (they) not know why.” According to Alan’s Facebook post about the tour, Matt was utterly awestruck the entire time.

Following the meeting with Franz, Matt was invited to test drive a car with the Tesla designer. Before Matt could get into the car with Franz, however, a fully-loaded Model S rolled up, and Elon Musk emerged. According to Alan, Musk was incredibly polite and cordial, speaking to Matt for a few minutes before disappearing into the Fremont factory.

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Courtesy of Alan Miller via Facebook

Matt’s Fremont experience was capped off by Franz personally signing his Model X 90D’s dashboard. By this time, Alan noted that his friend was on Cloud 9.

Stories such as these are not usually publicized by Tesla, and it is only through the online community that these tales are shared. Back in December, veteran Tesla owner and active community member Bonnie Norman also shared the story of a terminally-ill man who was bumped up the Model 3 reservation line to fulfill one of the last items on his bucket list.

Tesla proved once more that it isn’t just a company with a vision, it is also a company with a huge heart.

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“Matt, you are a great friend and your parents, family and friends will always be there for you – whatever place, dark or not, you are in,” says Alan.

 

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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Elon Musk

SpaceXAI just launched into your kitchen with their new app

SpaceXAI just powered its first consumer app and it predicts what you want to buy.

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SpaceXAI just made its first move into consumer AI, and it involves your grocery cart. On June 3, 2026, Gopuff and SpaceXAI announced the launch of Go, a Grok-powered shopping assistant built directly into the Gopuff app that predicts what you need before you even start searching for it.

Gopuff is an instant delivery platform that operates more than 400 micro-fulfillment centers across the U.S., delivering everyday essentials, snacks, drinks, and household items in as little as 15 minutes. It is not a restaurant delivery app or a marketplace. It owns its inventory, controls its warehouses, and handles its own logistics, which means it has built one of the most detailed consumer behavior datasets in retail over its 13-year history.

Go combines SpaceXAI’s advanced reasoning, voice, and image generation models with Gopuff’s dataset of hundreds of millions of orders and real-time cultural signals from X to prepare a suggested cart the moment a customer opens the app. It learns each shopper’s habits and automatically builds a personalized cart based on time of day, location, order history, and real-time indicators. Returning customers can check out with a single tap.


Rather than searching for specific items, users can describe a situation like a game-day party or the desire for a healthy breakfast and Go will assemble a cart automatically. It can also predict when shoppers are running low on items like coffee or paper towels and have them packed and delivered in under 15 minutes. Grok voice integration lets users talk to the app in plain conversational language and check out completely hands-free.

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Gopuff co-founder and co-CEO Yakir Gola said: “Today, we believe the greatest friction left in commerce is not delivery or instantaneous access to the essentials customers need. It’s the moment before: the thinking, the deciding, the remembering. We’re combining Gopuff’s demand intelligence with xAI’s frontier reasoning to create an everyday shopping experience that feels like a true extension of you.”

Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO

The timing carries context beyond the product launch. SpaceXAI was formed after SpaceX completed an all-stock merger with Elon Musk’s xAI earlier this year, folding one of the most advanced AI labs in the world into the same corporate structure as the company preparing what could be the largest IPO in history. SpaceXAI is dipping into consumer-focused AI just as it prepares for its public debut, and while Musk has openly discussed building an everything app, this launch uses Grok to power another company’s product rather than launching a standalone consumer platform. Every consumer-facing deployment of Grok ahead of the IPO roadshow adds tangible evidence that SpaceXAI is not just an infrastructure play but a direct competitor in the AI application layer where OpenAI and Google are already fighting for dominance.

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Tesla saves its passengers again – This time after a 300-foot cliff fall in Malibu

A Tesla Model 3 fell 300 feet off a Malibu cliff and both passengers survived.

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A Tesla Model 3 plunged roughly 300 feet off a cliff on Mulholland Highway in Malibu on Friday morning, May 29, 2026, and both occupants survived. The crash was reported at approximately 7:30 a.m. near the 2500 block of Mulholland Highway, triggering a multi-agency rescue operation involving Malibu Search and Rescue, the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the California Highway Patrol, and McCormick Ambulance.

When first responders arrived, the male driver was outside the vehicle shouting for help while the female passenger remained pinned inside the Tesla. Rescue crews rappelled down the cliffside on ropes to reach the wreckage. A flight medic was lowered by helicopter to begin treating both victims, and the driver was hoisted up to the roadway before crews used the Jaws of Life to free the trapped passenger. Both were airlifted to a local trauma center with moderate injuries despite a remarkable result for a fall that steep.

The outcome is not surprising, considering Model 3 earned an overall 5-star rating from NHTSA in every category and sub-category, and recorded the lowest probability of injury of any car ever evaluated by the U.S. New Car Assessment Program. The absence of a traditional engine in the front of the vehicle creates a longer crumple zone that absorbs impact energy before it reaches occupants, and the battery pack running along the floor gives the car an unusually low center of gravity that reinforces structural rigidity.

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This is not the first time a Tesla has kept passengers alive after going off a cliff. A Tesla Model Y carrying a family of four survived a plunge off a cliff at Devil’s Slide near San Francisco in January 2023, with two adults and two children walking away from a 250-foot fall. That incident drew widespread attention to how the structural integrity of Tesla’s electric platform performs in extreme crash scenarios that most vehicles would not survive.

Tesla Model Y driver who drove off cliff with family attempts to avoid criminal conviction

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NASA’s first human outpost on the Moon starts now – SpaceX on deck

NASA named the rovers, landers, and vendors that will build America’s first Moon Base.

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NASA has laid out its most detailed Moon Base plan to date, describing a permanent outpost near the Moon’s south pole that the agency intends to build over the coming decade as a direct stepping stone to Mars. “The Moon Base will be America’s and humanity’s first outpost on another celestial world,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said, adding that every mission crewed and uncrewed “will be a learning opportunity as we return to the lunar surface, build the infrastructure to stay, and master the skills required to live and operate in one of the most demanding and dangerous environments imaginable.”

The plan is structured in three phases involving both uncrewed and crewed missions to deliver equipment, vehicles, and infrastructure to the surface, with the first three moon base missions targeted to launch before the end of 2026.

Moon Base I, targeting fall 2026, will use Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lander to deliver scientific instruments to the Shackleton Connecting Ridge, the same region where Artemis astronauts will land. Moon Base II will send Astrobotic’s Griffin lander carrying more than 1,100 pounds of cargo including Astrolab’s FLIP rover to begin developing mobility systems on the surface. Moon Base III will carry the Lunar Vertex science mission on Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C Trinity lander to study lunar swirls near the south pole, with ESA and Korean science payloads aboard.

Elon Musk pivots SpaceX plans to Moon base before Mars

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On the rover side, NASA awarded Astrolab $219 million and Lunar Outpost $220 million to build the first phase of Lunar Terrain Vehicles, with both rovers targeted for deployment to the lunar surface by 2028. Astrolab’s crewed rover weighs roughly 2,000 pounds and can reach over 6 mph. Lunar Outpost’s Pegasus rover can operate autonomously or via remote control at over 9 mph. Blue Origin separately received $188 million with an option worth $280.4 million to deliver cargo landers for rover transport.

NASA also confirmed that MoonFall, a mission deploying four survey drones to scout Artemis landing sites, has selected Firefly Aerospace to build the transport spacecraft, with a 2028 launch target.

SpaceX sits at the center of that commercial layer. SpaceX holds the NASA Human Landing System contract for the Starship-derived lander that will put astronauts on the surface under Artemis IV, currently targeting 2028. Before that can happen, SpaceX must demonstrate in-orbit propellant transfer at scale, a process requiring multiple Starship tanker launches to fuel a single mission. Water ice at the lunar south pole is central to the base’s long-term viability, as it can be converted into drinking water, breathable oxygen, and rocket fuel, directly reducing dependence on Earth resupply. That resource loop becomes far more practical if Starship can land and be refueled on or near the Moon itself.

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Elon Musk has publicly stated that Starship V3, which recently completed its first flight, should be capable enough for initial Mars missions. The Moon Base plan announced Tuesday is the infrastructure layer that connects everything between those two ambitions, and SpaceX is the only American company currently contracted to build the rocket that gets humans to either destination.

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