News
Tesla Semi makes an appearance at Dallas, TX Service Center
Fresh off its visit to the Anheuser-Busch brewery in St. Louis, MO, the long-range Tesla Semi has been spotted at the Dallas, TX Service Center. The electric long-hauler was parked at the loading ramp of the facility when its photograph was taken.
The latest Tesla Semi sighting was shared by the Tesla Owners Club of North Texas on the group’s official Instagram page. A video of the truck filmed later during the day was also shared in the r/TeslaMotors subreddit, showing the electric truck exiting the Dallas, TX Tesla Service Center and accelerating towards the street.
The reason behind the Semi’s trip to Dallas is unknown, though the city itself is a point of interest. Just like St. Louis, Dallas hosts a facility that is directly related to one of the electric truck’s biggest buyers — PepsiCo. Dallas, TX, after all, is the corporate headquarters of Frito-Lay, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, the company that ordered 100 Tesla Semis for its operations across the United States. Dallas, TX is also the city where PepsiCo Sr. Director of Environmental Sustainability Al Halvorsen is based, as could be seen in his LinkedIn profile.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bgha9omFpHA/?tagged=teslasemi
A 30-year veteran of Frito-Lay, Halvorsen leads the environmental sustainability and compliance programs of Frito-Lay North America, ultimately helping the subsidiary transition into a more sustainable and environmentally-friendly business model — an initiative that the Tesla Semi would play a part in. Considering that Frito-Lay has its headquarters in Dallas, the presence of the Semi in the city could suggest that Tesla is paying a visit to one of its largest buyers. Frito-Lay products, comprised of snack food, after all, are a perfect match for the electric truck, considering that the items’ light weight would maximize the vehicle’s range savings.
Back in December, we reported that PepsiCo had secured a massive order of 100 Tesla Semis from the Elon Musk-led company. While the 100 Semis would comprise only a tiny fraction of PepsiCo’s 10,000-strong fleet of long-haulers, the electric trucks would play a role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the company’s supply chain.
As we previously reported, the Tesla Semi paid a visit to Anheuser-Busch’s brewery in St. Louis, MO last week. The electric long-hauler was photographed extensively during its trip to MO, with many Tesla enthusiasts managing to capture images of the vehicle as it was parked in the brewery and at a nearby Supercharger in St. Charles. Anheuser-Busch, just like PepsiCo, is also one of Tesla’s largest buyers for the Semi, having ordered 40 units of the electric truck.
Tesla is also actively involved in the development of in-house ultra high-powered Megachargers, which would be installed at key locations that would frequently be traveled by Semi fleet operators.
Watch the Tesla Semi leave the Dallas, TX Service Center in the video below.
Leaving the airport and caught the Tesla Semi leaving the service center DAL
byu/OMGchad inteslamotors
News
SpaceX just launched its secret Starfall saucer again
SpaceX launched its Starfall capsule again on Bandwagon-5, this time listed openly beside rideshare customers.
SpaceX launched its Starfall reentry capsule for the second time on Tuesday morning, flying it as the payload of the Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission. Falcon 9 lifted off from Space Launch Complex 40 in Florida at 7:04 a.m. ET with 32 payloads, and the first stage booster, on its 19th flight, landed on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas about nine minutes later.
Starfall was scheduled to separate last, 2 hours and 48 minutes after liftoff. The final customer satellite on SpaceX’s mission timeline comes off the upper stage about an hour and nine minutes in, which left a long gap before the capsule was due to be released alone. SpaceX later posted that the payload deployment sequence is complete. At liftoff, the company said Starfall “enables affordable, routine access to a microgravity environment, providing unique opportunities for on-orbit manufacturing, scientific research, and testing.”
Starfall enables affordable, routine access to a microgravity environment, providing unique opportunities for on-orbit manufacturing, scientific research, and testing https://t.co/y8kJg3QDor
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) October 20, 2026
As Teslarati reported before the first Starfall flight, SpaceX made no public announcement about the vehicle then, and nearly everything known came from FAA and FCC filings. This time Starfall is an item name on the official mission page, listed beside paying rideshare customers. SpaceX has still not said what, if anything, is aboard this Starfall, Spaceflight Now noted.
The FAA’s environmental assessment from May describes a disk about 10.2 feet wide and 2.5 feet tall that weighs roughly 4,600 pounds and can bring 2,200 pounds of payload back to Earth.
Interestingly, the same rocket also carries a competitor’s hardware. Varda Space Industries launched its W-Series 7 capsule on Bandwagon-5, a spacecraft about three times smaller than Starfall that will test whether microgravity can improve the solubility of a cancer drug called Protac. It is Varda’s ninth reentry capsule, and W-8 and W-9 launched earlier this month on Transporter-18. SpaceX has been Varda’s launch provider since the company’s first Falcon 9 rideshare contract in 2021.
SpaceX has not published where or how this Starfall will come down. The preview we ran in June described a recovery from the Pacific Ocean, and the company has not said whether this flight follows the same plan. The launch also arrives hours before SpaceX posts its third quarter results after the market closes, a report we previewed earlier this week.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s latest Tesla tunnel truck mod “fits like a glove”
The Boring Company has modified a Tesla powered tunnel truck to carry freight containers underground.
The Boring Company has found a second job for the Tesla hardware it already runs underground. In a post on X, Elon Musk’s tunneling company showed its latest Prufrock Liner Truck modified to carry a standard 20 foot shipping container. “Using TBC tunnels to transport freight,” the company wrote. “The latest Prufrock Liner Truck (using Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units) has been modified to carry a standard 20′ shipping container. Fits like a glove!”
The photo shows a red container sitting on a long, low white chassis parked outside, with drive hardware visible at one end. The Boring Company did not say where or when freight hauling would start, which customers it has in mind, or how many trucks it is converting.
Using TBC tunnels to transport freight.
The latest Prufrock Liner Truck (using Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units) has been modified to carry a standard 20’ shipping container.
Fits like a glove! https://t.co/VV0phWK4fc
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) October 19, 2026
Until now, the liner trucks have hauled concrete. Teslarati reported in August on Liner Truck 3, which uses Model 3 battery packs and drive units to move more than 22,000 pounds of precast tunnel segments to the boring machine. It has 28 miles of range, tops out at 12 mph, and is piloted remotely from the company’s operations center in Texas. The freight version appears to be the same platform with a different bed, and The Boring Company has not said whether it will also be remotely piloted.
Freight has been on the company’s menu for years. When TBC updated its product lineup in 2021, its freight tunnel was described as sized to fit a standard shipping container, “barely.” The company later used the idea at Tesla’s own factory, where Prufrock 3 dug a tunnel to Giga Texas that now moves finished Cybertrucks away from the production line.
The Boring Company closed a $3 billion Series D in September at a $23 billion valuation, and Teslarati has covered how that money is tied to a UAE tunneling push and a faster Nashville build. In Nashville, Prufrock MB1 and MB2 are mining at the same time, and a third machine is expected to launch in late October. Each machine needs a steady supply of liner trucks, so any design that works for segments and containers alike gives the company more use out of the same Tesla parts.
The Vegas Loop remains the only Boring Company system open to the public, and it moves passengers in Tesla vehicles. A freight service would be a separate product, and the post gave no indication that one is close to launch. For now, it is a truck, a container and a short caption saying they fit together.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk will give ‘every kid in America’ a SpaceX share in 2027
Elon Musk said he is planning to give “every one of his SpaceX shares to every kid in America” in 2027, stating that “this will be the first of many.”
SpaceX went public earlier this year, and its stock price has been relatively stable since leveling off shortly after its IPO. Based on its current price, it’s a gift of just over $10 billion to children across the United States.
It appears to be closely related to President Donald Trump’s bank accounts for children, which were set up earlier this year as Trump Accounts.
Just hours earlier, Anthropic had announced the establishment of its Anthropic Public Benefit Fund, “a new wholly-owned entity dedicated entirely to public benefit.” Musk responded by stating he recommended “giving the shares directly to the public,” and that he would be doing it that way.
Just a little bit later, Musk said children across the U.S. would be getting a share from him:
Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America.
This will be the first of many.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 19, 2026
There are roughly 70 million children, meaning someone under the age of 18, in the United States, according to the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Musk’s ownership of SpaceX stock shows he has around 849 million Class A shares of SpaceX stock, according to filings with the SEC.