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Tales from a Tesla Model S that hit 400,000 miles in 3 years
Tesloop, a Tesla-only intercity shuttle service for Southern California commuters, has reached another milestone with its Model S 90D. In a recent announcement, the company revealed that their Model S, dubbed eHawk, has passed the 400,000-mile mark, making it as one of the highest mileage Teslas in the world today.
eHawk entered service on July 2015, driving from city to city in Southern California and Nevada. By February 2016, the Model S 90D had logged its first 100,000 miles, and by August that year, the full-sized family sedan passed the 200,000-mile mark. In a recent blog post, Tesloop stated that roughly 90% of eHawk’s trips were driven using Autopilot, with Pilots (as the company refers to its drivers) only taking over active driving duties when needed. Tesloop’s Model S 90D currently travels an average of 17,000 miles per month. On the company’s recent post, Haydn Sonnad, Tesloop’s founder, expressed his optimism for the coming years.
“Vehicle connectivity is about to transform the car ownership and user experience. We are close to the point where increasingly sophisticated autonomous driving features and deep connectivity are coupled with electric drivetrains that last hundreds of thousands of miles, a whole new approach to mobility can be offered, that will transform the economics of car ownership and usage, while offering a greatly superior customer experience,” he said.
Over the past 3 years and through 400,000 miles on the road, eHawk has accumulated roughly $19,000 worth of maintenance costs, equating to about $0.05 per miles. This cost is broken down to $6,700 for general vehicle repairs and $12,200 for regularly scheduled maintenance. According to the company’s estimates, a Lincoln Town Car or a Mercedes-Benz GLS class would have accumulated maintenance costs of $88,500 ($0.22/mile) and $98,900 ($0.25/mile), respectively, had the vehicles been driven for 400,000 miles.
The Model S 90D’s high voltage (HV) battery unit was replaced twice under warranty since July 2015. The first battery HV battery replacement was at 194,000 miles, while the second was at 324,000 miles. Average battery degradation over the vehicle’s first 194,000 miles was around 6% with multiple Supercharger stops every day. Between 194,000 – 324,000 miles, the HV battery degradation was estimated at around 22%. According to Tesloop, this was likely due to the company’s practice of constantly charging eHawk to 95-100%, instead of Tesla’s recommended 90-95%. On its blog post, Tesloop shared Tesla’s reminder to the company after its first HV battery replacement.
“Found internal imbalance in HV battery due to consistent supercharging to 100% from a low state of charge (SOC) without any rest periods in between. HV battery has been approved to be replaced. Also recommend that customer does not Supercharge on a regular basis and does not charge to 100% on a regular basis. We also recommend that the customer use scheduled charging to start charge 3 hours after end of drive at low SOC.”
The interior of Tesloop’s Tesla Model S 90D after being in service for 400,000 miles. [Credit: Tesloop]
Apart from its HV battery, Tesloop’s Model S 90D also had its front drive unit replaced under warranty at 36,000 miles. No issues with the vehicle’s drive units have emerged since. The Tesla-exclusive shuttle service also opted to upgrade the rear seating of eHawk to the executive seat option for maximum passenger comfort. According to the company, the seats have held up well over the thousands of passengers the electric car has transported over the years.
Considering the endurance showcased by its Model S 90D, Tesloop estimates that eHawk should be able to last another 600,000 miles over the next five years. If the vehicle achieves this, it would be the first Tesla Model S to reach the 1 million-mile mark.
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Tesloop currently operates a fleet of Model S and Model X vehicles. One of its Model X, a 90D named Rex, also achieved its own milestone last month, after it hit 300,000 miles on the road since being deployed. When the all-electric SUV reached the 300,000-mile mark, its battery degradation was estimated at roughly 10%. Since achieving its milestone, however, Tesla has changed the vehicle’s rear drive unit.
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Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya has cautioned investors shorting SpaceX shares, drawing a direct parallel to the intense short-selling pressure Tesla faced in its early public years.
Responding to reports of elevated short interest in the newly public rocket, satellite, and AI company, Palihapitiya noted that similar dynamics played out with Tesla, where aggressive short sellers ultimately “went broke.”
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) went public on June 12, 2026, in the largest IPO on record, pricing at $135 per share. Shares quickly surged to an all-time high of $225.64 just days later, briefly implying a valuation exceeding $2 trillion. The stock has since retreated sharply amid valuation concerns, lockup expiration fears, and broader market dynamics.
By early August, it traded near $108–$125, representing a roughly 50 percent decline from the peak and bringing the market capitalization closer to the $1.5–1.7 trillion range. On August 4, shares closed up more than 9 percent at $125.33 ahead of earnings before facing pressure in after-hours and premarket trading.
Short interest has climbed dramatically. According to S3 Partners data widely cited in market reports, short positions reached approximately 219.3 million shares by late July, about 34 percent of the limited public float of roughly 640 million shares, and represented a notional value of around $24.6 billion.
Utilization of shares available to borrow hit 95 percent, with borrow fees rising. This level of shorting exceeded the dollar value of short bets against Tesla at the time and built rapidly ahead of two catalysts: the company’s first post-IPO earnings and an August 6 lockup expiration that could free up to 911.5 million additional shares.
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CEO Elon Musk has issued warnings of his own. In mid-July, as short interest approached one-third of the float, he posted that “the survival probability of firms who maintain a significant short position in SpaceX over time is very low,” reiterating his view that the company could ultimately be worth more than Earth if it achieves its goals.
On August 4, just before earnings, Musk responded to the latest short-interest data by saying, “I try to warn them, but they just double down.”
SpaceX delivered its first quarterly results as a public company after the close on August 4. Second-quarter revenue rose 92 percent year-over-year to $7.8 billion, beating consensus estimates near $6.8–6.9 billion.
The net loss narrowed to $541 million, or 9 cents per share, better than the roughly 23–24 cent loss expected. Starlink/connectivity contributed about $4.3 billion (up 66 percent), while the AI business generated $2.6 billion (up roughly 250 percent). Capital expenditures were heavy at $18.4 billion, largely tied to AI infrastructure. Management projected a $100 billion annualized revenue run rate by year-end 2026 and outlined a path toward $1 trillion in annual revenue by 2030.
The combination of Chamath’s historical reminder, Musk’s repeated alerts, and the company’s ambitious growth targets underscores the high-stakes debate surrounding SPCX. Short sellers are positioned for near-term supply pressure from the lockup, while long-term bulls point to Starlink scale, Starship progress, and AI compute expansion as reasons the bears may ultimately face the same fate as many early Tesla skeptics.
Investor's Corner
SpaceX and Nvidia team up on Musk’s orbital AI bet
SpaceX revealed a new Nvidia satellite partnership, then Musk pledged an exclusive Nvidia hardware commitment.
SpaceX and Nvidia are now working together on the hardware that will power Musk’s orbital data center ambitions. SpaceX announced on X on Tuesday that it is partnering with Nvidia to design the compute payload for Starmind AI1, the first satellite in a planned constellation built to run AI workloads directly in orbit. Each Starmind satellite will carry Nvidia’s Rubin GPUs and Vera CPUs, according to the post, which included renderings of the payload design.
The announcement landed hours before SpaceX’s first earnings call as a public company, where Musk went further, saying the company has committed to building its AI infrastructure exclusively on Nvidia hardware. “We think the Vera Rubin architecture is the best architecture. We think it’s the best AI computer, and we greatly value our close cooperation and partnership on many levels with Nvidia,” Musk told investors on the call,. “So we’re exclusive to Nvidia.”
Musk said SpaceX plans to deploy Nvidia’s Vera Rubin NVL72 rackscale system, codenamed Kyber, both on the ground and in space. He set a target of 2 gigawatts of compute capacity online by the end of this year, scaling to roughly 10 gigawatts by the end of 2027.
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
Starmind has been in development since Musk confirmed the name in June, following an xAI trademark filing that tipped off the project before SpaceX made it official. The idea is massive in scope and instead of moving data down to ground based servers, satellites equipped with onboard processors and large solar arrays would compute AI workloads in orbit and beam results back to Earth. SpaceX has already filed with the FCC for a constellation of up to one million satellites to support the effort, citing constant solar power and the absence of zoning restrictions as advantages over terrestrial data centers.
The Nvidia exclusivity marks a shift in tone from just two weeks ago, when Musk was busy knocking down a report that SpaceX had ordered $52 billion worth of Nvidia GPUs through Foxconn, calling it fake news at the time. The dollar figure in that rumor may have been wrong, but the underlying direction seems correct. SpaceX’s AI division already leases Colossus compute capacity to Anthropic and Google, and Tuesday’s earnings report showed AI revenue climbing sharply as those deals ramp up.
Nvidia shares rose roughly 3% in Tuesday trading on the news, while SpaceX stock climbed nearly 9% during the day before giving back gains after hours as investors digested the earnings report’s capital spending figures.
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SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX) reported a beat in revenues and EBITDA in its first earnings call report while also minimizing losses as its business continues to gain momentum.
After its IPO in July, SpaceX saw some tough losses on Wall Street due to a major selloff after a delay in its 13th Starship test flight. The ship launched later that week and completed what was arguably the most successful IFT operation in the Starship program’s history.
Nevertheless, the company is continuing on and reported some encouraging financials while also promoting what appears to be a robust outlook moving forward in its Space, AI, and Connectivity divisions.
SpaceX to report first-ever earnings today: here’s what to expect
Earnings Results
- Revenues: $7.8 billion reported vs. $6.7 billion expected
- Adjusted EBITDA: $3.5 billion vs. $2 billion expected
- Net loss of $541 million, an improvement of $467 million from net loss of $1.0 billion
Additionally, CFO Bret Johnsen had these comments:
“2026 has been a momentous year so far, and the second quarter demonstrated the true power of SpaceX. Revenue growth accelerated across all our business segments and we delivered strong operating leverage, with significant margin expansion led by our new AI compute agreements. Our unparalleled leadership in launch, Starlink subscriber growth, new enterprise and government partnerships, and best-in-class AI infrastructure underscore our ability to drive meaningful scale and deliver attractive returns. As a newly public company, we are delighted to welcome our broad base of shareholders and bondholders. We ended the second quarter with $100 billion of cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, and $47.5 billion in backlog. This financial strength gives us substantial capacity to invest in Starship, Starlink Broadband and Mobile satellites, and our AI platform, while maintaining a disciplined long-term capital allocation framework.”
Space Business Highlights
SpaceX shared some of its biggest Space Business Highlights for Q2:
- Space revenues grew 55% sequentially and 29% year-over-year to $962 million, driven by a higher number of large customer launches and a favorable customer shift compared to the prior year
- Total costs and expenses for the Space segment were up by $389 million year-over-year, as we continued to accelerate R&D investments in our Starship program, which we believe will reduce the cost to orbit by 99% or more relative to the historical average, and unlock significant revenue potential across all business segments
- Leading launch provider for the world with 78 launches and 1,041 metric tons of mass to orbit deployed over the six months ended June 30, 2026, primarily allocated to Connectivity for the deployment of our Starlink constellation
- Starship V3 development continued to advance towards full and rapid reusability:
- Completed Starship V3’s first suborbital mission in May, Flight 12, which achieved a successful lift off from our new Starbase pad, a precision landing of Starship’s upper stage, and deployment of modified V2 Starlink satellites
- Subsequent to the second quarter, completed Starship Flight 13 in July, which achieved all flight objectives including deploying 20 production V3 satellites, demonstrating in-space relight of a Raptor engine, and executing the softest ever splashdown of Starship, providing critical views of an intact heatshield
SpaceX will report its earnings today at 4:30 P.M. EDT.
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SpaceX shorts get warned by Musk ally, echoing Tesla’s early struggles
SpaceX and Nvidia team up on Musk’s orbital AI bet
