Investor's Corner
Tesla’s defense of workers’ safety triggers fiery Twitter rebuttal from Reveal
Tesla’s blog post calling out Reveal of intentionally painting a false picture of the company’s safety policies has triggered a fiery Twitter response from the publication on Tuesday. In an extensive article, Reveal alleged that the electric car maker is neglecting workers safety and intentionally mislabeling some of its employees’ injuries to make its facilities appear safer.
Citing former employees of the company and an executive from Worksafe, an organization that has clashed with Tesla in the past, Reveal‘s article suggested that the Elon Musk-led company is operating its facilities in a dangerous, haphazard fashion. According to the publication, much of the dangers that workers face could be blamed on management, especially CEO Elon Musk. The report claimed, for example, that Musk and Tesla’s management allowed the factory floor to have very little hazard markings for dangerous areas because “Elon does not like the color yellow.”
The Reveal article prompted a response from Tesla, which denied the allegations in the report. The Elon Musk-led company went a step further as well, stating that the piece was an “ideologically motivated attack by an extremist organization working directly with union supporters to create a calculated disinformation campaign against Tesla.”
Reveal did not take Tesla’s defense lying down. In a series of tweets on Tuesday, the publication reaffirmed the accuracy of its report. The two reporters who wrote the article have also announced that they will be doing a Reddit AMA to answer questions about their investigation into the electric car maker. Reveal’s tweetstorm could be accessed here, though we have compiled them for easier reading below.
So before yesterday’s investigation came out, Tesla released a statement accusing us of being an “extremist organization” who’s “working directly with union supporters to create a calculated disinformation campaign.” A LOT to unpack right there. So let’s do it.
First of all, there’s zero “disinformation” in this story. The story is based on internal company documents, interviews with five former members of the Tesla safety team and dozens of other current and former employees as well as medical records of injured workers, OSHA records, 911 calls and Tesla’s own injury logs.
That information shows Tesla failed to report some of its serious injuries on legally mandated reports. This makes the company’s injury numbers look better than they actually are.
Case in point: Tarik Logan.
6/ How do we know this? We got his medical records. And the text messages he sent his mom. pic.twitter.com/ciZNJBNwp7
— Reveal (@reveal) April 17, 2018
On to this accusation of “working directly with union supporters”: Our story was done completely independent of any unionization efforts. Some of the workers we talked to supported the union, but many had no involvement – including Tesla’s own former safety experts.
On to those emails: Here’s one from Justine White, the factory’s safety lead, to Elon Musk’s chief of staff on 12/21/16. “I know what can keep a person up at night regarding safety,” she wrote. “I must tell you that I can’t sleep here at Tesla.”
When White resigned, she warned that Musk’s preferences for the color yellow, and other aesthetic tastes, were creating an unsafe workplace. The reporters didn’t rely on just one source for these claims. They spoke with five former safety team members, and they all told the same fundamental concerns.
9/ When White resigned, she warned that Musk’s preferences for the color yellow, and other aesthetic tastes, were creating an unsafe workplace. pic.twitter.com/CPIrhpnHnc
— Reveal (@reveal) April 17, 2018
In its statement, Tesla complained about us visiting employees at their homes unannounced. We didn’t do that, though we do have to do it for some stories. They also complained about us getting in touch with employees on social media. That’s what fair reporters do. They go try to talk to as many people as possible to understand the true story.
Tesla is yet to respond to Reveal’s fiery response.
Back in February, Tesla VP for Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) Laurie Shelby published a blog post outlining the company’s target of becoming the safest car factory in the world. Shelby noted that workers safety in an automotive production line usually comes down to a combination of common sense, a culture that values safety, the rollout of proactive preventive measures, and a management that listens to its employees. According to the 25-year veteran in the EHS field, Tesla already exhibited many of these attributes even before she joined the company in October 2017.
Investor's Corner
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
New drone footage shows Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory steel frame nearing completion at Giga Texas.
Tesla’s dedicated Optimus factory at Gigafactory Texas is closing in on a finished steel frame, according to drone footage posted Thursday afternoon by longtime site observer Joe Tegtmeyer. In the video, Tegtmeyer said structural steel assembly is now about five column grids away from reaching the building’s north perimeter beam, putting the primary skeleton in its final stretch roughly six months after Tesla broke ground on the North Campus site in late March.
The Giga Texas Optimus Factory latest update … construction keeps moving fast!
Steel assembly is now only about 5 column grids from the north perimeter beam. Concrete is going in on the three upper floors, rebar is still being laid for more pours, and footing / grade-beam work… pic.twitter.com/qvFPvwnYzW
— Joe Tegtmeyer 🚀 🤠🛸😎 (@JoeTegtmeyer) September 17, 2026
Tegtmeyer’s footage shows concrete already going in on three upper floors while crews continue laying rebar and pouring grade beam footings at ground level. That kind of parallel work, steel rising at one end of the site while concrete sets at the other, is a scheduling approach Tesla used at the original Giga Texas building and appears to be repeating here to save time before the plant’s targeted 2027 production start.
Teslarati has tracked the building’s progress since Tesla confirmed construction was officially underway in May, when the first steel structure went up on what was then bare, reclaimed land. The facility is part of a more than 5.2 million square foot expansion of Giga Texas’s North Campus that Tesla has said will eventually run nearly the length of the existing vehicle factory, over 4,000 feet, while sitting somewhat narrower. Musk has pegged the long term output target at 10 million Optimus units a year once the line is running at full capacity, a volume that would dwarf the one million unit pilot line Tesla is standing up separately at its Fremont, California factory.
Tesla Giga Texas to feature massive Optimus V4 production line
The Texas facility sits alongside another major buildout on the same campus. Terafab, the joint Tesla and SpaceX chip fabrication plant that will eventually supply the silicon running Optimus units in the field. Housing robot assembly and chip production on the same grounds is a deliberate supply chain decision, cutting down on the shipping and lead time that would otherwise sit between the two.
Tesla has not given an updated timeline beyond its previously stated goal of bringing high volume Optimus production online at the site in the summer of 2027. Fremont’s smaller pilot line began mass producing the current Gen 3 robot in January, with that plant expected to build tens of thousands of units this year primarily to generate the real world data Tesla needs to refine the robot’s software before Giga Texas ramps up. Six months of visible construction progress, tracked almost entirely through Tegtmeyer’s recurring drone flights, gives the clearest outside look yet at how seriously Tesla is treating that 2027 deadline.
Investor's Corner
Tesla and SpaceX take “Terafab” Trademark fight to Federal Court
Tesla and SpaceX sue a small Illinois firm after cease and desist letters over Terafab.
Tesla and SpaceX are asking a federal judge to rule that their planned Terafab chip factory does not infringe a small Illinois company’s trademark, a request that arrives only after months of quiet negotiation broke down this summer.
The dispute traces to May 18, when Tesla filed three U.S. trademark applications for “Terafab” and “Tesla Terafab,” covering semiconductor chips and related chip making services. TERA-print LLC, a nanotechnology company that has held a federal trademark for “Tera-Fab” since 2021, responded five days later with a cease and desist letter. According to the lawsuit, first reported by Reuters, TERA-print argued that Tesla and SpaceX’s use of “Terafab” would confuse consumers familiar with its own trademark, which covers a desktop photolithography printer sold to researchers for sensor and bioengineering work.
What stands out in the filing is the timing of TERA-print’s own paperwork. One day before sending that cease and desist letter, on May 22, TERA-print applied to expand its existing registration to cover semiconductor materials, silicon chips, nanoelectronic devices and AI design services, categories it had not previously claimed. Tesla and SpaceX call that filing opportunistic in their complaint, noting it arrived two months after Tesla’s public Terafab announcement and just days after Tesla’s own trademark applications went in.
Elon Musk launches TERAFAB: The $25B Tesla-SpaceXAI chip factory that will rewire the AI industry
By June 10, TERA-print was threatening to sue for federal trademark infringement, false designation of origin and unfair competition, the complaint states. Rather than wait to be sued, Tesla, SpaceX and SpaceXAI met with TERA-print six separate times between June and August trying to resolve the dispute directly. Those talks collapsed, and the companies filed for declaratory judgment this week in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, asking a judge to find that “Terafab” does not infringe TERA-print’s mark before TERA-print can file a claim of its own.
TERA-print isn’t backing down. The company told PCMag it discussed a settlement with Tesla as recently as September 2 and feels misled by what it called Tesla’s professed interest in settling. Its CTO, Andrey Ivankin, said TERA-print holds a Defense Department contract to fabricate semiconductors and partially owns Mattiq Inc., an AI company built on TERA-print’s products, and that the company will vigorously defend its rights.
Tesla and SpaceX argue the overlap is superficial. Terafab is planned as a $16.8 billion complex spanning roughly 100 million square feet at the Grimes County site SpaceX confirmed last month, built to produce chips for Optimus robots, Tesla’s AI computing needs and SpaceX’s orbital data center ambitions, a scale and purpose the companies say no reasonable consumer would confuse with a tabletop lab printer. TERA-print’s product line has stayed focused on lithography tools for biological and sensor research since it registered its mark in 2021.
The trademark fight is the second legal dispute tied to the Terafab project in the past week, following a separate SpaceX suit aimed at keeping company records about the facility out of public view, as KBTX reported. Whether construction proceeds under the Terafab name now depends on a federal judge in Austin.
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.
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