December 31, 2019 held significance for Tesla, as it marked the end of another quarter. The day determined if the company could follow its momentum from Q3 2019 and turn in another profit. It also marked the final day when the $1875 federal tax credit could be applied. Yet, perhaps more importantly, the end of 2019 marked the day when Tesla potentially gained thousands upon thousands of new supporters and future influencers.
On New Year’s Eve, numerous dedicated Tesla owners decided to help out the electric car maker in its push to deliver as many cars as possible. Some provided orientations to new owners about the basic features and functions of their new electric vehicles. Others provided pointers about configuring their Teslas. Just like the past year, Tesla’s end-of-year deliveries were powered, at least to some degree, by regular owners who just happen to be passionate about their vehicles.
In Fremont, for example, large groups of people gathered on New Year’s Eve to take delivery of their cars. Unfortunately, the DMV caused a delay with issuing out license numbers, creating a backlog for many would-be owners. As the wait times turned to hours, Tesla owner-volunteers stepped up. Tesla Raj, a Model 3 owner who started a YouTube channel about his ownership experience, described how owner-volunteers contributed.
“We helped by pulling groups of people from the showroom to do orientations where we covered the car inside and out. This helped ease the stress and pain in the wait… Lots were very pleased that we were volunteering, and they were interested in who we are and why we were doing it. We had a member following customers to their car for 1-on-1 training, and I was in the lobby gathering groups of people for a walkthrough-orientation. They loved it. They felt a sense of the Tesla community and what we stand for,” Raj said.
True to his tweets, Tesla CEO Elon Musk also dropped by the Fremont site to help deliver cars to new owners. His mom, Maye, also paid a visit to the delivery center. Amidst all the waiting that resulted mostly from the DMV delay, Musk’s presence helped boost the morale of the Tesla employees. It also eased the patience of many owners looking to receive their cars. Arash Malek, a Model 3 owner-videographer who also volunteered his time on New Year’s Eve, described the atmosphere after the CEO’s arrival.
“Before Elon came, people were getting really frustrated. Some people had been waiting all day. But soon as Elon arrived, you could feel the energy change. I heard an employee behind me say, ‘This is why we love working for Tesla.’ It was pretty awesome and inspiring to see the CEO eager to help deliver cars. Raj and I along with other members of the (Tesla Owners) club were giving future Model 3 owners full tutorials on how to use their cars. Everyone was genuinely soo excited! I had some people ask me why am I volunteering to help on New Years’ Eve. I told them that if it was any other car company, I wouldn’t, but the Tesla community is so awesome that I felt honored to be able to help the mission,” Malek said.
Tesla would go on to deliver cars to new customers until the final moments of 2019, and reports from the community on social media suggested that deliveries happened even after midnight. Some have mentioned that their deliveries were pushed to the next few days as well. Yet, despite these challenges and tests of patience, the Tesla community did grow significantly on the 31st of December, and a lot of it was due to the thousands of volunteers who dedicated their time to help out newcomers to the Tesla community. Thousands, after all, saw a glimpse of the Tesla community and how it functioned, and that’s really what matters the most.
Seeing such a close-knit community of owners-enthusiasts and a driven CEO who spends a holiday with his employees is a pretty unique experience. Very few companies in the world have experienced something similar. The latest iPhones from Apple may invite long lines of waiting customers, but rarely does one see a longtime iOS user volunteering their time to help new owners with their devices. This is even more notable with other car brands. When was the last time avid Ford or GM enthusiasts volunteered at a dealership to help hand over cars? Such events would be difficult to recall.
From the Tesla volunteer-powered delivery push to Elon Musk’s contribution to the year-end deliveries, there is a good chance that a couple dozen of new owners in Fremont were inspired enough to be passionate community members themselves. Perhaps some would start their own Tesla-themed YouTube channels. Maybe some with start Tesla aftermarket businesses. Perhaps some will love their car enough to the point where they recommend Tesla to their close friends and family members. This is pretty much how the Tesla community has grown over the years. It’s just happening now at a far quicker rate, with the adoption of higher-volume vehicles like the Model 3.
In a new interview on Wednesday, Tesla uber bull Ron Baron said that anyone looking to buy the company’s stock should do so as soon as they can.
Baron, founder and CEO of Baron Capital and one of Tesla’s most persistent institutional bulls, used a CNBC Squawk Box appearance on Wednesday to deliver a familiar message with fresh urgency: In his opinion, Tesla stock is a buy:
“The time to buy the stock is now. FSD is catching on, and it’s going to be bigger and bigger. 55% of new buyers are buying it (Teslas) with FSD. It’s going to be everywhere. It’s safer.”
The Baron Capital frontman’s case is built around Full Self-Driving. Tesla reported 1.48 million active FSD subscriptions in the second quarter, up 56 percent year over year, and company officials have said roughly 55 percent of new North American deliveries left with a subscription enabled.
Baron framed that attach rate as proof the product is moving from enthusiast extra to default expectation, and as a reason software, not just vehicle volume, should drive the next phase of value.
His conviction on Tesla shares is not theoretical, as Baron Capital made its first Tesla investment in 2014, after years of meetings that began around the 2010 IPO roadshow. The firm later built a large SpaceX position starting in 2017.
Ron Baron today in new interview on Tesla:
“The time to buy the stock is now. FSD is catching on, and it’s going to be bigger and bigger. 55% of new buyers are buying it (Teslas) with FSD. It’s going to be everywhere. It’s safer.” pic.twitter.com/Rv5PB0bVZ2
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) September 16, 2026
Baron said those Musk-led bets have generated about $30 billion of the $71 billion in profits Baron Capital has produced for clients. He put the firm’s current exposure at roughly $25 billion in SpaceX and $5 billion in Tesla. Personally, he described SpaceX as his largest holding, at about $5 billion, with about $1.5 billion in Tesla and additional Tesla exposure through the firm’s funds.
That concentration is also a statement of loyalty. Asked about talk of a SpaceX-Tesla combination, Baron said he had already walked Elon Musk through arguments for and against a deal, then declined to repeat them on air. His public position was simpler: “Whatever you decide is better is what I’m going to support,” he said to Musk.
Baron also said that he picked up the farewell edition of the Model S after Tesla decided to sunset the vehicle earlier this year, calling it his favorite car he’s ever driven.
Elon Musk
SpaceX’s next Starship launch is about to attempt its biggest leap yet
SpaceX targets September 22 for Starship Flight 14, its first attempt to reach real orbit.
SpaceX has set September 22 as the target date for Starship’s 14th test flight, and this one carries a different goal than any of the 13 that came before it. Every previous Starship mission has intentionally flown a suborbital arc, reentering the atmosphere within the same hour it launched. Flight 14 is designed to send the craft into a genuine orbit around Earth for the first time.
The launch window opens at 7:15 a.m. Central time at Starbase in South Texas and runs for 75 minutes, pending regulatory approval, according to SpaceX’s mission description published Tuesday. If the flight goes as planned, Starship will circle the planet roughly six times at an altitude near 275 kilometers over about ten hours before a deorbit burn sends it toward a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean west of Chile, a departure from the Indian Ocean recoveries used on the last several flights.
The mission also marks the first attempt to put a working batch of Starlink V3 satellites into actual service. Flight 13 carried 20 of the new satellites in July, but because that mission never left a suborbital trajectory, the payload reentered along with the ship instead of separating into orbit.
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
Each V3 satellite is rated for roughly one terabit per second of downlink capacity, so a successful deployment on Flight 14 would be SpaceX’s largest single jump in network bandwidth since Starlink began flying on Falcon 9.
Flight 13 still did the heavier lifting on the technical side. That July mission flew a deliberately more stressful reentry profile to test Starship’s heat shield, and the ship survived its softest splashdown yet, intact enough for drone inspections shortly after landing. Elon Musk said the flight delivered “all the heat shield data we needed and then some,” a result Teslarati covered in detail when he later said SpaceX had solved the vehicle’s biggest reusability challenge. Flight 14 is where SpaceX starts spending that confidence on an actual orbital insertion rather than another controlled fall back to Earth.
One thing Flight 14 will not attempt is a tower catch of the ship. Musk floated the idea right after Flight 13, but walked the timeline back in August, saying a catch attempt was more likely “in a few months.” The Super Heavy booster will still aim for its own recovery, targeting an offshore landing point in the Gulf of America, the same approach used on recent flights.
September 22 is SpaceX’s own target, not a locked date. Starship’s schedule has slipped before over hardware readiness and FAA sign off, and the company has said as much in its own mission notes. But the plan itself represents the clearest marker yet that Starship is moving from a suborbital test program into something meant to carry paying payloads and, eventually, people.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk gives his most telling Tesla-SpaceX merger conversation yet
Elon Musk hinted a Tesla-SpaceX merger could be coming, and Wall Street is taking notice.
Elon Musk gave his clearest signal yet that Tesla and SpaceX could eventually combine, telling the All-In Summit in Los Angeles that the two companies’ deepening collaboration makes the question worth asking. Sawyer Merritt first surfaced the highlight on X Tuesday.
Asked directly why Tesla and SpaceX remain separate given how closely they already work together, Musk told hosts at the summit: “Great question there. With all this collaboration, on so many levels, who can imagine what action one might take when there’s so much close collaboration in so many areas.” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell, who joined Musk on stage, added that SpaceX personnel have already moved into xAI to fill leadership and engineering gaps, saying the businesses are integrating “faster than I thought,” though “not fully integrated yet,”
The comments landed on top of merger speculation that has been building on Wall Street for months. JPMorgan has called a tie-up “strategically coherent on paper,” pointing to overlapping ambitions in AI, robotics, energy, transportation and space. Jefferies went further, estimating Musk could retain roughly 55.3 percent voting control in a deal structured without a premium, a scenario that would still leave room for Tesla shareholders to come out ahead. On Kalshi, traders now put the odds of a merger before 2028 at 66 percent.
Tesla’s stake in SpaceX, still under one percent, traces back to its earlier investment in xAI, which converted to SpaceX equity after SpaceX absorbed the AI company. The two are also jointly building Terafab, a chip facility in Austin meant to serve both Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s satellite ambitions. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has stood by a 2027 merger timeline for months, and Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest recently floated a similar case, an idea Musk pushed back on directly at the time.
Another Tesla SpaceX merger prediction by ARK Invest has Elon Musk talking
The timing adds another layer. Tesla has scheduled an October 1 unveiling for its next generation Roadster at a venue near SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas test site, using the phrase “Go for launch” in its promotional material. Both stocks dipped roughly 2 percent Monday before recovering slightly in premarket trading Tuesday, with SpaceX shares up about 0.4 percent and Tesla essentially flat.
Musk stopped short of confirming anything is in motion. But unlike his past denials of a corporate restructuring, this response didn’t rule one out, and it came with Shotwell sitting next to him describing an integration that’s already underway.
Tesla uber bull Ron Baron says ‘the time to buy the stock is now’
SpaceX’s next Starship launch is about to attempt its biggest leap yet
