News
Tesla’s evident paint shop improvements lie within Quicksilver from Giga Berlin
Tesla’s Model Y in Quicksilver shows how it has overcome many of the paint issues that several owners once complained about.
Although former McLaren detailing specialist, Tiaan Krige, pointed out that most of those issues were exaggerated, Tesla faced a lawsuit and some criticism from Sandy Munro in 2020. One lawsuit filed in a German court alleged that Tesla painted over a crack in a Model 3. Another was filed in Canada over the paint quality, stating that the paint was prematurely degrading.
Sandy Munro, whose expertise Tesla has learned from over the years, also once criticized the paint job. “I don’t like the paint job at all,” he said in 2020. “That’s a bad paint department. I would be sacking the guy in charge and, during the shutdown, I would have had a whole new paint shop put in.”

That same year, CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla’s Giga Berlin would have the world’s most advanced paint shop.
Giga Berlin will have world’s most advanced paint shop, with more layers of stunning colors that subtly change with curvature
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 14, 2020
Fast forward to almost 2023, and we can see significant improvements in its paint quality and Elon Musk’s statement coming true. One example of this is the Model Y in Quicksilver, which was recently spotted in a service center in Frankfurt, Germany.
Twitter user @SP_MYP shared newer photos of the Tesla Model Y in Quicksilver. When Teslarati reached out to him, he pointed us to the owner of those photos, Rémi Thirion, who shared the photos in the Facebook group, Tesla Fans Francophones and on Twitter.
Just had a look at the new @tesla #ModelY #Quicksilver from #Berlin #Gigafactory Amazing looking car @NYKChannel pic.twitter.com/B6mx5l3sju
— Thirion Rémi🏡🇧🇪✈️🇫🇷|☢️☀️⚡️🔋 (@thirionremi) December 18, 2022
Thirion, who lives with his family in Belgium, bought his first Tesla in 2019 as a present for being promoted to Commander. Thirion has spent 16 years serving as a cargo airline pilot.
One of his friends in the Facebook group wanted to schedule a visit to Frankfurt, Germany, for Christmas, and they visited the Tesla showroom during the trip. The showroom had a single vehicle: a Tesla Model Y painted in Quicksilver.
“My employer is setting up a company car policy, and a few days ago, I ran a configuration simulation on the Tesla website. and amazingly enough, the car was now in front of me the way I set it up. The new color is just stunning,” Thirion said.
“The nuances are so complex and so specific to the Giga Berlin workshop expertise that I am even anxious about the process of making it repainted should a scratch occurs. It is even more impressive in person than on the promotion video or the Tesla website,” he added.
You can view Thirion’s photos in the gallery below.
[rl_gallery id=”226594″]
Disclosure: Johnna is a $TSLA shareholder and believes in Tesla’s mission.
Your feedback is welcome. If you have any comments or concerns or see a typo, you can email me at johnna@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter at @JohnnaCrider1.
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk confirms xAI’s purchase of five 380 MW natural gas turbines
The deal, which was confirmed by Musk on X, highlights xAI’s effort to aggressively scale its operations.
xAI, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, has purchased five additional 380 MW natural gas turbines from South Korea’s Doosan Enerbility to power its growing supercomputer clusters.
The deal, which was confirmed by Musk on X, highlights xAI’s effort to aggressively scale its operations.
xAI’s turbine deal details
News of xAI’s new turbines was shared on social media platform X, with user @SemiAnalysis_ stating that the turbines were produced by South Korea’s Doosan Enerbility. As noted in an Asian Business Daily report, Doosan Enerbility announced last October that it signed a contract to supply two 380 MW gas turbines for a major U.S. tech company. Doosan later noted in December that it secured an order for three more 380 MW gas turbines.
As per the X user, the gas turbines would power an additional 600,000+ GB200 NVL72 equivalent size cluster. This should make xAI’s facilities among the largest in the world. In a reply, Elon Musk confirmed that xAI did purchase the turbines. “True,” Musk wrote in a post on X.
xAI’s ambitions
Recent reports have indicated that xAI closed an upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, exceeding the initial $15 billion target to fuel rapid infrastructure scaling and AI product development. The funding, as per the AI startup, “will accelerate our world-leading infrastructure buildout, enable the rapid development and deployment of transformative AI products.”
The company also teased the rollout of its upcoming frontier AI model. “Looking ahead, Grok 5 is currently in training, and we are focused on launching innovative new consumer and enterprise products that harness the power of Grok, Colossus, and 𝕏 to transform how we live, work, and play,” xAI wrote in a post on its website.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s xAI closes upsized $20B Series E funding round
xAI announced the investment round in a post on its official website.
xAI has closed an upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, exceeding the initial $15 billion target to fuel rapid infrastructure scaling and AI product development.
xAI announced the investment round in a post on its official website.
A $20 billion Series E round
As noted by the artificial intelligence startup in its post, the Series E funding round attracted a diverse group of investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group, among others.
Strategic partners NVIDIA and Cisco Investments also continued support for building the world’s largest GPU clusters.
As xAI stated, “This financing will accelerate our world-leading infrastructure buildout, enable the rapid development and deployment of transformative AI products reaching billions of users, and fuel groundbreaking research advancing xAI’s core mission: Understanding the Universe.”
xAI’s core mission
Th Series E funding builds on xAI’s previous rounds, powering Grok advancements and massive compute expansions like the Memphis supercluster. The upsized demand reflects growing recognition of xAI’s potential in frontier AI.
xAI also highlighted several of its breakthroughs in 2025, from the buildout of Colossus I and II, which ended with over 1 million H100 GPU equivalents, and the rollout of the Grok 4 Series, Grok Voice, and Grok Imagine, among others. The company also confirmed that work is already underway to train the flagship large language model’s next iteration, Grok 5.
“Looking ahead, Grok 5 is currently in training, and we are focused on launching innovative new consumer and enterprise products that harness the power of Grok, Colossus, and 𝕏 to transform how we live, work, and play,” xAI wrote.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets price target bump, citing growing lead in self-driving
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock received a price target update from Pierre Ferragu of Wall Street firm New Street Research, citing the company’s growing lead in self-driving and autonomy.
On Tuesday, Ferragu bumped his price target from $520 to $600, stating that the consensus from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas was that Tesla’s lead in autonomy has been sustained, is growing, and sits at a multiple-year lead over its competitors.
CES 2026 validates Tesla’s FSD strategy, but there’s a big lag for rivals: analyst
“The signal from Vegas is loud and clear,” the analyst writes. “The industry isn’t catching up to Tesla; it is actively validating Tesla’s strategy…just with a 12-year lag.”
The note shows that the company’s prowess in vehicle autonomy is being solidified by lagging competitors that claim to have the best method. The only problem is that Tesla’s Vision-based approach, which it adopted back in 2022 with the Model 3 and Model Y initially, has been proven to be more effective than competitors’ approach, which utilizes other technology, such as LiDAR and sensors.
Currently, Tesla shares are sitting at around $433, as the company’s stock price closed at $432.96 on Tuesday afternoon.
Ferragu’s consensus on Tesla shares echoes that of other Wall Street analysts who are bullish on the company’s stock and position within the AI, autonomy, and robotics sector.
Dan Ives of Wedbush wrote in a note in mid-December that he anticipates Tesla having a massive 2026, and could reach a $3 trillion valuation this year, especially with the “AI chapter” taking hold of the narrative at the company.
Ives also said that the big step in the right direction for Tesla will be initiating production of the Cybercab, as well as expanding on the Robotaxi program through the next 12 months:
“…as full-scale volume production begins with the autonomous and robotics roadmap…The company has started to test the all-important Cybercab in Austin over the past few weeks, which is an incremental step towards launching in 2026 with important volume production of Cybercabs starting in April/May, which remains the golden goose in unlocking TSLA’s AI valuation.”
Tesla analyst breaks down delivery report: ‘A step in the right direction’
Tesla has transitioned from an automaker to a full-fledged AI company, and its Robotaxi and Cybercab programs, fueled by the Full Self-Driving suite, are leading the charge moving forward. In 2026, there are major goals the company has outlined. The first is removing Safety Drivers from vehicles in Austin, Texas, one of the areas where it operates a ride-hailing service within the U.S.
Ultimately, Tesla will aim to launch a Level 5 autonomy suite to the public in the coming years.