Tesla Space #69: Elon’s xAI acquires Elon’s X

X OF THE WEEK

I surface this here since it seems one of the ACTUALLY HAPPENING deadlines now since the same June start is posted by different Tesla leaders and the official account as well. However, I found another response from Elon a lot more telling. In a reply to a post from Farzad saying the real separation isn't Tesla achieving Level 4. It's the fact Tesla can manufacture 2-3 million cars per year that are able to do this at < $30k per unit COGS, Elon responded this:

As far as I know, he has never argued against the approach (of say, Waymo) quite like this. Basically taking the longer road, which should end up dominating.

$TSLA

… is down 0.52% from our last week’s newsletter, now at $276,94/share right as I send you this, and at a $867,4B market cap. Subject to change though, as I’m looking at the life share price that is up 6,86% today.

It’s the end-of-the-quarter results time tomorrow — buckle up.

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TESLA, GLOBALLY

Before we kick off, we’ll make our only reference to the April 1st here today — by resurfacing Elon’s posts from 7 years ago for the occasion. The shares dropped ~7% for this joke 😅 

Latest on the anti-Tesla protests and vandalism

At least 17 Teslas were destroyed after a “fire broke out” at a Tesla showroom in Rome this morning, according to Italian fire officials. No injuries have been reported. Rome’s fire service said it was investigating “all avenues”, and to be fair, there is no exact reason of the cause of the fire yet.

Here’s a video of Tesla building security watching overhead as protesters dance on the street during a TeslaTakedown protest in Seattle.

A 70-year-old Idaho man was arrested after ramming individuals at a pro-Tesla rally with his car. Elon cmmentso: “The violence against Tesla is insane!”

Meanwhile, BMW seems to try and get a little spotlight with running an add in Canada saying “Tested, not protested. Charge ahead in the award-winning BMW i4.”

Or, you can see the funny (or sad?) Sentry video of this guy who rammed his mini four-wheeler into a Cybertruck. He was later arrested.

Elon also posts “Sure is insanely ironic that the people shooting bullets into Tesla stores, burning down cars and generally being violent are calling me a Nazi when I have done literally zero violence at all 🤷‍♂️”

In a rather candid interview with Fox News, Elon says: “My companies are suffering because I'm in the government. Do you think it helps sales if dealerships are being firebombed? Of course not. Tesla customers are being intimidated all over the country and all over Europe. Does that help Tesla?

[…] I think a great wrong is being done to the people of Tesla and to our customers. Tesla is a peaceful company; It hasn't harmed anyone, and yet people are committing violence. They're threatening people. What are they doing this for?"

As usual, we cover both sides of this protests — the same thing today. 
For example,

It is pretty weird that a bunch of those protests ended at 12am or 1pm sharp with people disbanding, like their gig was up. One of the examples on video here. In the Netherlands, the protest lasted just 30 min.

The protestors don’t seem to slow down the people actually interested in buying or test driving a Tesla either. Here’s one account of things from Forbes in LA:

“That [New Model Y] was likely the reason for a long line of customers queuing up to test drive, pick up, or purchase the new Y. I was in one of those lines waiting for a test drive. But after an hour and a half, I gave up. […] In fact, Saturday was the busiest I have seen a Tesla store in Los Angeles this year.”

Meanwhile, let’s jump to the other side of the world for a sec — here’s a look at a Tesla showroom in Hanam, South Korea — all these people are waiting in line to check out the Model Y:

Now back to US: The Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the Department of Justice has brought forth charges against another alleged Tesla firebomber: "We are seeking 20 years in prison. Let this be a warning: You can run, but you cannot hide. Justice is coming."

Meanwhile, Texas might pass a bill that classifies damaging or disrupting EV charging stations as a third-degree felony, punishable by 2–10 years in prison and/or a fine up to $10,000.

Here are 300+ supporters outnumbering the protesters 20-to-1 in New Jersey.

A little background: here is the full document of Tesla Takedown organizing the protest, including the specific chants people are expected to use (see the last page). Even Elon comments: “I wonder who wrote them.”

And here's a long deep dive relating to the "who are funding the protesters" if you want to go down the rabbit hole further.

If you want a little laugh, just check out the ‘No Cap on God’ 7-minute video where he went to buy a Tesla during a Tesla protest and had some fun with the protesters. Just my opinion here but — some of this stuff really cracked me up!

The US tariffs vs Tesla?

Trump announced he is imposing a 25% tariff on all vehicles imported to the US from as soon as April 2nd. About 40% of all new cars sold in the US are imported.

Elon explains the impact on Tesla: “To be clear, this will affect the price of parts in Tesla cars that come from other countries. The cost impact is not trivial.”

Trump comments: "It could be a net neutral or maybe good. He (Elon) has a big plant in Texas and California. Anybody that has plants in the US it's going to be good for."

Meanwhile, Canada has frozen all rebate payments for Tesla and banned the company from future EV rebate programs.

If you want to dig deeper into localization of the supply chain for Tesla in the US, see the data Sawyer pulled from NHTSA.

Quick takes:

• You might have seen the story on the Financial Times of Tesla’s “1.4B red flag in accounting”, suggesting that Tesla had shady accounting with $1.4 billion "missing." It was, of course, widely shared by anti-Tesla sites (like Electrek) and elsewhere. Now, Financial Times has retracted and said they made a mistake. and there’s no $1.4B discrepancy. But will you see all FUDsters that shared it earlier do the same? Doubtful…

• Tesla is the #1 most affordable car to own and maintain, according to Consumer Reports. Over the first five years of ownership, maintenance costs average $730 in the first 5 years and totalling $5,050 for 10 years.

Tesla reaches 500,000th Model Y built in Giga Berlin 🥳 

Also, Giga Berlin now has two “drYve” new Model Y's solely set for the employees to rent for just 25€/day (all included, also charging):

This is one of the benefits for the Tesla Giga Berlin workers — and you can see some more listed by Tesla on this pic from an employee, Romain:

FSD & SOFTWARE

Tesla AI account posted last week: “Collectively, the Tesla fleet has driven more than 3.6 billion miles on FSD – first Beta, then Supervised.
2.16 billion miles in 2024 alone.” That’d be 5.9M miles on average per day…

🇳🇴 🇪🇺 Tesla is about to officially test FSD Supervised on public roads in Europe - in Norway! Per the gov applications that our friend Kees Roelandschap surfaced, these will be running FSD v12/13 and only driven by trained Tesla employees. No public rides yet. This would pave the way for more tests in Europe.

Some watch tips from FSD in China (some aren’t from earlier weeks):

• FSD in China: “FSD was looking for road entrance in a big open lot. No markings on the ground. No signs. FSD recognized not going off the edge of the lot. It almost looked like FSD AI was conscious, sort of knowing what it needed to do to get back to the road.”

• This video from FSD on a dirt road (if you can call it that) might even be wilder to watch.

• This video where Chinese testers tried to make the FSD go and fit between some blocks on the road… but the car decided to turn around instead.

• This video where FSD navigates the bustling downtown area of Guangzhou.

A new feature for the Android app: Dashcam Viewer. And the new 4.43.5 version code has been decompiled, hinting at upcoming features:

• Early access program enrollment via App

• Supercharger Queue system integrated

• Alerting of FSD version before subscribing

• More Robotaxi cleanliness feedback strings seen in the code

MUSKONOMY

SpaceX & Starlink

SpaceX launched the Fram 2 mission — the first human spaceflight to Earth’s polar regions. Here’s a video of the first views of Earth's polar regions from Dragon. Also, here’s a video showcasing Dragon’s cupola: Fram2 is the second mission to fly with Dragon’s cupola — at nearly 4’ wide, the cupola is the largest continuous window in space, providing 360° views. This is a real view from today:

Neuralink

Neuralink confirms it aims to implant its new brain chip, Blindsight, into a human patient for the first time in late 2025. Elon, in his speech at Wisconsin, said: “It will be low resolution at first, but over time, the impact will enable vision that is like super human."

𝕏 = xAI

Elon announced that xAI has acquired X in an all-stock deal!
It is not an April Fools’ joke.

See Elon’s post for the full announcement, but I think this is the essential part:

“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent. This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach."

The combination values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45B minus the $12B debt). The 2nd-largest shareholders confirm the new valuation for xAI is $125B.

For any Tesla investors, this should likely come in as good news

This deal is good news for $TSLA investors because it lowers the risk that Elon potentially might have had to sell Tesla stock at any point in the future to cover X’s $12 billion debt.

Now… anyone remember this from back in July last year?

Tesla could’ve owned about 10% of the xAI for the $5B bet back then…

D.O.G.E.

DOGE, per its website, now estimates that they have saved a total of $140 billion to date.

Elon says: "I think we're at a turning point in civilization. To be honest, I'm pretty stressed about it. It would be really easy to just go back to working at my companies, building rockets and cars—and I'm still doing that part-time—but in the meantime, we just have to stop the waste and fraud at the government level."

Now, Elon’s tenure in the government is coming to an end in about a month. But seems Elon will still be running DOGE after the current special government employee tenure period 🤷 

However, I’m wondering if it’ll mean his time spent there is reduced, considering what Trump says: "I think he's amazing, but I also think he's got a big company to run, so at some point he's going to be going back. He wants to. I'd keep him as long as I can keep him. I love very smart people."

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