Tesla Space #55: Optimus tumbles, but does not fall

X(AI) OF THE WEEK

This comes as a report says Elon plans to go for 1M GPUs in Memphis for Colossus. Wild. Grok is a hot topic recently — as you’ve probably seen in some of our recent videos as well, the latest just last week. But as it goes, the team does not sleep, there’s more news:

Grok can now generate images way better, including memes, with Aurora.

"We've enhanced Grok's image generation abilities with a new model, code-named Aurora. Aurora is an autoregressive mixture-of-experts network trained to predict the next token from interleaved text and image data.
We trained the model on billions of examples from the internet, giving it a deep understanding of the world. As a result, it excels at photorealistic rendering and precisely following text instructions. Beyond text, the model also has native support for multimodal input, allowing it to take inspiration from or directly edit user-provided images."

Most importantly - it can now accurately draw the Cybertruck, Tesla Semi, Cybercab and Optimus.

And not only can it generate images, but understand them too. You can upload anything from a phone picture of your blood test results to an MRI or X-Ray and Grok will analyze it for you.

Grok is now also free in most regions for 10 questions every 2 hours (all access available for X Premium subscribers).

Also, in case you missed it, Elon said recently: “Too many game studios that are owned by massive corporations. xAI is going to start an AI game studio to make games great again!”

Musk reportedly directly approached Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, offering a premium to expedite a $1.08B order.

xAI reported it raised another $6 billion, now has raised $12B total. We know xAI was aiming for a $50B valuation for this round, although it isn’t mentioned.

According to the Financial Times, only investors who’d backed xAI in its previous fundraising round were permitted to participate in this one.

And this X of the Week section is officially taking too long now so I’ll stop now.

TESLA, GLOBALLY

In case you’re following the $TSLA share price, you probably know it has been on its way up — now at $390/share range and 1.22 trillion market cap as I write this. Up 124% in the past 6 months. To put it into perspective, Tesla will reach its all time high, which it achieved on Nov 4th 2021, if it surpasses $414.50/share. And due to some natural dilution, the market cap, aka the valuation, has actually already reached a new all-time high at $1.25T.

Elon has taken the chance to cast some shade on the naysayers, with comments like “TSLA shorts reciting Litany Against Fear rn 😂” and “The TSLAQ went Q”

We were first of the Tesla verse to discover a specific piece of news on Tesla — Tesla lobbied UK to strengthen rules on electric Semi trucks, via a letter to the British government. “Government should begin consulting on a ZEV mandate for HGVs, as soon as possible.”

Quick bites:

• Tesla is doing cyber themed showrooms now, here’s a video from the first, in Berkeley, CA.

• Tesla has further extended its 5-year 0% interest loan incentive in China for the Model 3 and Model Y to December 31st. The Q4 push is in full swing, and Tesla just recorded its second-best week of sales over the last years.

• Case study: The Bargersville, Indiana Police Department spends $400 a month to charge its 13 Teslas, compared to $3,100 a month to fuel the same number of gas-powered F-150 police trucks.

• In the latest Consumer Reports survey of car owners, Tesla ranks:

  • #3 in owner satisfaction rating (after Rivian and BMW)

  • #2 in ownership cost,
    #2 in most satisfying driving (after Porsche) and
    #2 in cabin storage.

• Good time for… Tesla’s winter driving tips.

• Tesla's Supercharger network in North America reached a record-high single-day energy consumption of 12 GWh on Saturday November 30th, two days after Thanksgiving.

• Merch: Tesla Shop has a New Cybertruck Icon Snapback Hat. And a Tesla Bot Long Sleeve Tee, for $45. Oh, and it also went live with Tesla Glow Lantern, $110 (out of stock, of course). It has a Warm White Mode, a Camp Mode with a flickering flame look, and Romance Mode with red glow.

• Tesla redesigned the Inventory section of the website each vehicle’s existing options are now a lot more visible.

VEHICLES

Meet the Cy•Bear•Truck, seen at Art Basil in Miami with faux fur.

Okay, headline image out of the way, here’s a great video of Eric, Tesla’s lead engineer for Cybercab, giving a five-minute talk about the Cybercab.

We get insights like

• 2 seats, because 82% of miles are driven currently with 2 drivers or less;

• Efficiency focus is not only on the energy side, but also for cleaning, maintenance etc, very few pockets of space so it’d demand less maintenance;

• Butterfly doors: allow for better egress/ingress, they could move the B-pillar back, makes getting in and out of the car easier.

• Massive trunk, able to fit from multiple golf bags, to two full-size carry-ons, two full-sized checked bags all at once. Foldable wheelchairs will fit as well.

• Screen is 21’’, resolution is the same as M3/MY’s today.

• It’ll have roughly half the parts compared to the Model 3, and

• The body structure will have 60% less components compared to the Model Y.

• Body material hasn’t been finalized yet;

Fast takes:

• “If the product is special enough, no logo is needed” — Elon, on the Cybercab

• Here’s a Cybercab wrap visualizer in 3D by Tesbros.

• For some reason, Tesla paused Cybertruck production for three days (Dec 3rd-5th).

• Tesla ends its in-house Cybertruck wrap service.

• Watch tip: Tesla Cybertruck: The Truth After 50k Miles, from TesLatino who literally went to the Arctic with it.

• Edmunds’ latest test of Model 3 Performance says it has a “Lamborghini performance at a fraction of the price.”

• Tesla Model 3 was November’s fastest-selling used car in the UK, taking just 14.7 days to sell on average.

• Jason Cammisa (Hagerty) put up a 26-minute Tesla M3 Performance vs BMW M3 Competition comparison video. I continue to say both Cammisa’s punny performance and their incredible video team make for the best combo for car content out there. Bonus: Randy Pobst is in it.

Tesla shares its safety achievements across continents:

Unplugged Performance has unveiled their new Model 3 Performance Aero Kit.

MUSKONOMY

Optimus

Well, Optimus is from Tesla but I’ll still file it under the larger Muskonomy section here…

Optimus’ new hand with 22 degrees of freedom (and 3 on the wrist/forearm), catches a tennis ball (teleoperated though).

Elon says: “Easy move to connect AI vision with arm actuation to catch autonomously. Will be done next quarter. We are just testing the actuation and sensor system here.”

Tesla also released a video of Optimus roaming free, including slipping on a slope and impressively correcting itself. The fun part is, the Optimus was walking “blind”, so without using its video feed!

Oh and just recently, Elon also dropped a note on Optimus price/volume expectations:

“Optimus is a very sophisticated robot. It will be immensely difficult to get the cost to $20k. Not easy at all, but it will eventually happen. Production volume needs to be above 1M/year for that. Price will be driven by demand, but eventually even price will get to ~$20k.”

SpaceX

Falcon 9 completes its 400th successful mission and Falcon's 375th overall landing.

Watch tip: Elon explaining Starship to Trump, Ted Cruz, Bryson DeChambeau and others.

SpaceX is reportedly discussions to sell insider shares (meaning employees can sell shares) that could boost the value to around $350 billion.

(SpaceX’s) Starlink

🌎️ Global internet traffic from SpaceX's satellite internet service more than tripled in 2024, according to data from Cloudflare.

Starlink Mini dish hardware is reduced by 25% and the monthly fee by 40%.

🇳🇿 Starlink is launching Direct to Cell (DTC) service “shortly” in New Zealand.

🇺🇸 The FCC also just officially granted the US commercial license for SpaceX's Direct-to-Cell program.

In case you missed it, Starlink just completed the first DTC commercial orbital satellite constellation with 320+ satellites in orbit.

This will enable unmodified cellphones to have Internet connectivity in remote areas. Bandwidth per beam is only ~10Mb, but future constellations will be much more capable.

These telcos have already signed to use Starlink D2C:

T-Mobile (USA); Optus (Australia); Rogers (Canada); One NZ (New Zealand); KDDI (Japan); Salt (Switzerland); Entel (Chile); Entel (Peru).

🇿🇼 In Zimbabwe, Starlink’s fast internet gives telehealth a boost: "Our doctors can conduct video consultations with near in-person clarity, seeing fine visual details essential for accurate diagnoses."

🇮🇹 Italy plans to begin tests of Starlink as early as January to see if it is a viable solution to boosting the rollout of high-speed internet in the country.

🇺🇦 SpaceX has received a Pentagon contract to expand Ukraine’s Starlink access, so the 2,500 Starlink terminals already in Ukraine will get access to Starshield, a version of Starlink that’s more difficult to hack into or jam.

Neuralink

🧠 Neuralink has received approval to test how its brain-computer interface (BCI) implant, called the N1 Implant, can be used to control a robotic arm.