Connect with us
tesla-supercharger-ramp tesla-supercharger-ramp

News

Tesla’s 62 stall Santa Monica V3 Supercharger hits speed bump, LA housing crisis takes priority

Credit: Larry Thompson/Instagram

Published

on

Tesla’s already approved project in Santa Monica would allow the electric automaker to open a massive 62 stall V3 Supercharger along Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles hit a speed bump earlier this week. After being approved by the City Commission on March 3rd, a follow-up meeting on March 9th proved that the two lots Tesla planned to utilize for the new Supercharger project are being included in an Emergency Interim Zoning Ordinance for potential housing in Los Angeles.

Santa Monica’s V3 Supercharger Project

Tesla applied to have 62 V3 Supercharging stalls located at 1401 and 1421-1425 Santa Monica Boulevard, which was approved on March 3rd. The project would bring Tesla’s fastest electric vehicle chargers in massive numbers to Santa Monica. The City Council approved the construction and subsequent operation of a 62 stall “recharging facility with solar canopies, restrooms, and support equipment split between two project sites.”

The approval solidified the fact that this would be the largest V3 Supercharger facility in the world, as the current largest all-V3 Supercharging station is located in Firebaugh, California, but only has 56 stalls. Additionally, the largest Tesla Supercharger station in the world is the 72 stall Shangahi Supercharging Facility in China, but the chargers are only V2, which do not charge as quickly as V3.

Tesla’s largest V3 Supercharger facility is coming to Santa Monica

City Council halts the Santa Monica V3 Supercharger Project

Concerns arose from some City Council members who projected worries regarding Los Angeles housing situations. While LA houses 3.967 million people, there are simply not enough apartments or condominiums in the area, and the City plans to build new housing locations for people to live in. However, Councilors recommended that they are not in favor of displacing current housing to create new buildings, complicating the living situations of the residents who currently occupy the buildings.

Advertisement

Because of this, City Council enacted an Emergency Interim Zoning Ordinance that would effectively reserve unoccupied lots for prospective housing development. One of the zones that were considered for new buildings was, in fact, the area where Tesla planned to install the 62 stall V3 Supercharging station. Because of the ordinance, Tesla may be forced to scrap the plans, even though they have already been approved.

Ultimately, the project could be delayed for any length of time between 45 days and two years, according to Council members’ recommendations in the language of the Ordinance.

The portion of the meeting that shows the discussion regarding Tesla’s V3 Supercharging site is available below thanks to @DriveTeslaCanada.

Advertisement

Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

Advertisement
Comments

News

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.

Published

on

Credit: OpenAI | YouTube

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.

Advertisement

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,

Advertisement

“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.

Elon Musk confirms Grok 4 launch on July 9 with livestream event

Continue Reading

News

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.

Published

on

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.

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.

Advertisement

SpaceX secures FAA approval for 25 annual Starship launches

Continue Reading

News

Tesla Giga Texas continues to pile up with Cybercab castings

Tesla sure is gathering a lot of Cybercab components around the Giga Texas complex.

Published

on

Credit: @JoeTegtmeyer/X

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. 

Advertisement

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.

Continue Reading

Trending