Investor's Corner
Tesla gets restraining order against TSLA critic who tried to disrupt Model 3 test car
The man behind one of the most prominent anti-Tesla accounts on Twitter, @skabooshka, has been issued a temporary restraining order after allegedly trying to cause an accident during a Model 3 test vehicle’s Navigate on Autopilot demonstration. The noted TSLAQ member reportedly drove so recklessly that his vehicle ended up triggering the Model 3’s crash emergency avoidance maneuver.
The temporary restraining order was granted by the Alameda County Superior Court in CA on Friday, though it is still unknown if the restraining order has been served. In its filing, Tesla claimed that California resident Randeep Hothi, the man allegedly behind the TSLAQ @skabooshka account on Twitter, had “stalked, harassed, and endangered” three employees who were driving a Model 3 in the Bay Area. The electric car maker noted that this was not the first time that the noted short committed acts against the company, as he also reportedly injured a member of Tesla’s security personnel when he was caught trespassing on company property.
Tesla explains its request for a restraining order as follows (credit to Twitter user Nafnlaus for providing screenshots of the documents). The following are excerpts from Tesla’s restraining order.
Respondent has a history of trespassing at Tesla’s facilities, unlawfully taking photographs and video to post on his Twitter account, and other misconduct, as explained in the Leslie Declaration. However, in recent months, Respondent’s conduct has escalated and has resulted in violent and intimidating confrontations with Tesla employees.
In an incident in February 2019, Respondent hit Tesla’s security employee Tyler James with his car as Mr. James approached Respondent to ask him to leave Tesla’s private property. Mr. Tyler suffered minor injuries. The Respondent did not stop and fled the scene. The Fremont Police Department were called and arrived on the scene. The Department later attempted to issue Respondent a warning notice of trespass, but was unsuccessful because Respondent has avoided and been uncooperative in meeting with Fremont police officers.
More recently, on April 16, 2019, Respondent stalked, harassed, and endangered (three Tesla employees) who were driving on the highway in a Tesla-owned Model 3 vehicle bearing manufacturer plates and mounted with camera equipment. In particular, Responded pursued these employees on the public highway for about 35 minutes, variously driving ahead of, beside, and behind them, and swerving dangerously close to the vehicle. Respondent swerved so close to the side of the Tesla that the vehicle’s side-collision (crash) avoidance safety feature was triggered to engage an emergency maneuver to avoid the collision.
These employees had no prior knowledge of Respondent’s interactions with Tesla, but it appeared that Respondent was trying to interfere with their drive, and each feared that Respondent’s road conduct would cause a collision and injure them. Fearing for his safety and for the safety of the other passengers in the Model 3 (a Tesla employee) called the San Francisco Police Department at that time. However, because no officers were in the area, (the Tesla employee) ultimately did not request that an officer be sent to their location.
On April 22, 2019, Tesla will host an event at its headquarters at 3500 Deer Creek Road, Palo Alto, during which Tesla employees will be demonstrating vehicle functionality in manufacturer-plated vehicles on nearby roads. Respondent has expressed interest in this event on Twitter, and his Twitter followers have encouraged him to try to follow and interfere with these drives. Respondent is a vocal Tesla detractor, claims to be a Tesla short-seller, and tweets extensively about his desire to see Tesla (and its Autopilot technology) fail. To ensure the safety of Tesla employees and the public, temporary protection is needed, on April 22,2019, for any Tesla employee driving a Tesla vehicle with manufacturer plates within 5 miles of Tesla’s headquarters at 3500 Deer Creek Road, Palo Alto, California.
It should be noted that @skabooshka’s actions mentioned by Tesla in its restraining order disturbingly mirror some of the suggestions proposed by the TSLAQ community when the noted bear posted images of the company’s Model 3 test car on Twitter. Among these suggestions include braking in front of Tesla’s test vehicles, as well as intentionally swerving into the electric cars’ lane to ensure that the company’s demonstrations are authentic. Other Tesla bears also joked that it would be amusing if the Model 3 crashed.
Due to his actions, the noted Tesla bear will now be required to stay at least 100 yards away from the Fremont factory or the employees named in Tesla’s restraining order. He is also required to stay 10 yards away from any Tesla vehicle with manufacturer plates within five miles of the factory. The restraining order is effective until May 7, when a hearing is set.
The Tesla critic’s reckless actions seemed to have stemmed from a particular focus on Tesla’s upcoming Autonomy Investor Day on April 22, where the electric car maker is expected to give investors a deep dive into its full self-driving initiatives, including its custom Hardware 3 computer. Test rides on vehicles equipped with unreleased features of Autopilot and the Full Self-Driving suite are also expected to be held in the event.
Neither Tesla nor Hothi have responded to requests for comment to media publications such as The Verge, though the @skabooshka Twitter account boldly declared on Saturday post that “I will not rest. This is my promise. Tesla is a zero. @elonmusk will go to prison.” Elon Musk, for his part, noted on Twitter that the actions of the noted Tesla bear was something that he has never seen before.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.
In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.
In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:
“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”
This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.
The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.
The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.
This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.
Wedbush Securities is initiating stock coverage on SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), marking the first comments on the company since it went public several weeks ago. Wedbush and its analyst handling coverage, Dan Ives, are widely bullish on fellow Musk company Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA).
Ives wrote his first note initiating coverage of SpaceX shares on Wednesday with a $190 price target and an ‘Outperform’ rating. The firm believes the company is well positioned off of its IPO because of its wide array of projects, including AI compute power and infrastructure, connectivity projects, and launches.
“We view SpaceX as one of the most differentiated assets within the tech market with a strong footprint across its three core markets, with Starlink driving success with connectivity,” Ives wrote, “Starship launches leading to a demand flywheel and increasing deal flow for its Colossus clusters.”
Elon Musk called it Epic: The full story of SpaceX’s Starship Flight 12
Wedbush leans heavily on Starlink, which they say is the “profitability driver given the strength of its recurring revenue base of ~12 million subscribers as of June 5th.” Ives believes Starlink is still in the “early innings” of penetrating the global telecommunications and broadband market, as it only holds less than a 1 percent share. However, this number is sure to increase over time.
It also highlights the importance of Starship, which it says is an “essential layer” of SpaceX’s overall success. SpaceX developing and displaying the ability to reuse rockets is a major cost and reliability advantage “as it reduces the necessary hardware launch costs while generating a feedback loop for future flights to improve their launch flight rate without accelerating capex spend.”
Finally, SpaceX’s recent AI/Compute projects are also very elementary, Ives writes. It is worth mentioning Wedbush said its $190 price target is derived from a valuation forecast that sees the company yielding roughly $2.48 trillion of implied enterprise value.
There are also some factors that Wedbush did not take into account with its initial coverage. The firm wrote in the note:
“We note that there is optional value coming from Starship’s accelerating scale towards sub-$200/kg unit economics, orbital data centers, and enterprise AI monetization as these factors could drive meaningful upside but these face major hurdles, so we do not take that into account with our valuation.”
SpaceX shares are down just over 2 percent today, trading at around $167 at the time of publication.
For years, there have been images and videos across social media platforms that have reminded me of when I was a 15-year-old kid teased by “Xbox 720” videos on YouTube. These videos are of the supposed “Tesla Phone” that Elon Musk was secretly developing in between leading Tesla with its electric cars and SpaceX with its reusable rockets.
Would you buy a Tesla phone ? pic.twitter.com/aaTwvvIJit
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) October 6, 2023
Although Musk has put those rumors to bed several times, it was never completely out of the realm that he could get involved in cell phones in some capacity. Think outside the box and more macro-level, though. Instead of reinventing the computer, Musk reinvented connectivity by developing Starlink with SpaceX.
It could be something similar, TD Cowen analyst Gregory Williams said in a note last week, where he hinted SpaceX could be gathering some steam to acquire T-Mobile.
Williams said it would be the “clear choice” for SpaceX if it decided to go through with a network acquisition. He also suggested AT&T.
The move would be possible through selling more of its own stock, which would help SpaceX raise the money to purchase T-Mobile, which would cost roughly $300 billion. It could be one of the moves SpaceX makes post-IPO in terms of an acquisition: it already acquired Cursor AI for $60 billion.
Other analysts, like Dan Ives of Wedbush, believe SpaceX and Tesla will eventually merge into one anyway, and that conglomeration could come as soon as this year, some have said.
The implications of SpaceX purchasing T-Mobile are massive. A combined entity would create a truly ubiquitous network: T-Mobile’s terrestrial 5G towers and Starlink’s growing constellation of Direct-to-Cell satellites. This would essentially eliminate dead zones across the U.S. and potentially globally.
SpaceX would instantly become a full-scale facilities-based carrier with satellite differentiation; a huge advantage. This would pressure AT&T and Verizon heavily.
There are also concerns like a potential reduction in long-term competition, and of course, a deal of that size would face intense scrutiny from government agencies.
The strategic fit is compelling due to the existing Starlink–T-Mobile partnership and complementary technologies (space + terrestrial). It could create a dominant integrated communications player. However, the regulatory, financial, and execution hurdles are enormous — this remains highly speculative with no indication SpaceX is actively pursuing it right now.
Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
