Tag Archives: tesla news

Elon Musk, Tesla, Twitter

Why Elon Musk Bought Twitter V3: The Tesla Phone Wrinkle

In a bizarre twist Elon tweets a “threat” to sell phones if Apple or Google ban Twitter from App stores

This article is the third in a series that was never intended to be one. The question of why, other than lack of impulse control and way too much money, Elon Musk would buy Twitter and take it over himself is still unknown. Our first two articles chronicled two possible motivations, each put forth by someone claiming to have inside information. This story is based on Elon Musk’s direct reply to a tweet.

With Twitter getting more dangerous daily, if you are an advertiser or stake your reputation on the content not being toxic (good luck!), and now speculation is mounting that Apple and/or Google might ban downloads for the app.

Elon Musk actually responded to these thoughts with a tweet saying, “…yes, if there there’s no other choice, I will make an alternative phone.”

Oddly, this idea has been around a long time as a sort of fake news thread – various YouTubers have a continuous output of made-up stories about Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceX. One of the most circulated is one claiming that there is already a solar-powered, Starlink connected phone from Tesla, which some claim is called the “Model Pi”.

Spoofs that become real?

There are many, many reasons, beyond the fact that the whole thing was a spoof, that make it very unlikely that this could ever happen. It’s true that the various capabilities that would be needed to make an iPhone like product are generally within the scope of what Tesla already does.

Manufacturing, supply chains, software, all of these are within the general scope of what Tesla has done very well up until now. It is, on the other hand, more than a bit crazy to think that, literally overnight, a new product could overtake or even compete with the incredibly mature capabilities of the iPhone or a top Android unit.

The iPhone has been evolving for fifteen years and the resources that Apple brings to bear in improving it are not small. The spoof version invents a few bombshell features such as built in crypto mining (presumably where the name “Pi” comes from ), Solar charging, Starlink internet, and others to ad believability to the joke.

Even if these features were available (crypto less of a incentive now lol) it’s extremely unlikely that a large number of people would jump on the trend with so many other features delayed (Cybertruck, anyone?).

The genius is that people think that Elon Musk can make the impossible happen

Getting away from the negative, what Tesla has accomplished in changing perception of EVs from a dead on the shelf product, to one that has forced the entire automotive industry to adopt a similar path is amazing.

And, even at Twitter, it is possible that, after a lot of pain and tumult there could be a new Twitter that is no worse that the pre-Musk version. It could even be bigger and, eventually, not a cesspool.

One thing that is abundantly clear, however, is that the ongoing drama will continue and maybe even accelerate. Watch this space for the next chapter.

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Elon Musk, LA Local, Tech

Tesla is Accepting Dogecoin at new LA Supercharger

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Drive-in and 50’s Diner still to come

A new Tesla Supercharger is now open in Santa Monica. Located at 1421-1425 Santa Monica Blvd., just blocks from the beach, it is the first location in Tesla’s Supercharger network to accept payments in Dogecoin.

The rumored plans for a Drive-in Theater and a 50’s style diner are no longer slated for this location, but will be added to an upcoming location which is planned for Hollywood.

The Santa Monica facility will have 26 total Supercharged one fully operational. Elon Musk confirmed that the Dogecoin payments are going to go live, which makes this the first in the growing network to take crypto as a payment method.

Elon Musk has long championed both Bitcoin and Dogecoin, with each serving a different function. (add clip from Fridman interview here). The idea that the meme-coin can be great for daily transactions is catching on, with others such as Mark Cuban’s Dallas Mavericks already selling merchandise and souvenirs in exchange for Doge.

Though not widely known there are up two thousand companies that will accept Dogecoin as payment according to Cryptwerk. According to the site this include 1315 shops and markets. Much of the commerce revolves, not surprisingly, around online services and digital goods, but there are also tangible items such as food, clothing and travel.

“ In truth, the gold standard is already a barbarous relic”

John Maynard Keynes – 1924

In a kind of mind bending twist of logic you can even purchase gold bullion with your doge, in case you want to revert to the original, non-digital form of gold, once called a “barbarous relic” by John Maynard Keynes in 1924.

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Elon Musk, SpaceX, Tech

Musk vs Bezos: Judgement Day

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Federal judge quashes Bezos’ lawsuit against NASA over SpaceX contract In the ongoing and ever escalating feud between worlds 1st & 2nd biggest billionaires things just got meme-ier Sad, bad loser Bezos turned to the courts when his dick-rocket compensation company was passed over for the 2.9 billion $ manned lunar lander contract that was awarded exclusively to Musk’s SpaceX.

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / Tesla / Various Sources

Musk’s Twitter Feud with Bezos goes back to the early days of Blue Origin, when Musk dubbed the future penile manufacturer a “copy cat” and proceeded by lambasting his “blue balls” marketing campaign and then turning the focus to his full time career as a litigant in sour-grapes lawsuits…

The complaint was brought against NASA by Blue Origin via the government watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, claiming that the decision, which NASA said was made for reasons of budget, was “anticompetitive”.

Let that sink in, Bezos, the man behind amazon’s well known and all pervasive anticompetitive marketplace practices, which are currently under siege by the FTC and multiple governments around the globe, feels that it’s “unfair” that his “rocket-looks-like-a-xxx” manufacturing company was not picked to get a multibillion dollar contract.

“Anticompetitive” is a concept not unfamiliar to the ex-Amazon CEO

Above: Screenshot of Reuters Article

A recent Reuters Special report outlined how a treasure trove of internal documents exposed a pattern that nails just what “anticompetitive” looks like: at Amazon.

Though accusations were denied by the company, Reuters research into the voluminous documentation revealed that ” the company ran a systematic campaign of creating knockoffs and manipulating search results to boost its own product lines in India, one of the company’s largest growth markets. The employees also stoked sales of Amazon private-brand products by rigging Amazon’s search results so that the company’s products would appear, as one 2016 strategy report for India put it, “in the first 2 or three … search results” when customers were shopping…”

Boo hoo? Musk, ever the master of meme generation, celebrated the news with a meme-tweet of Sly Stallone’s Judge Dredd with the caption “You have been Judged”. What Bezos will not be participating in is The Human Landing System program, a NASA initiative to design a lunar landing system that could return humans to the moon in 2024.

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Hot-Lynx

Musk is developing a Humanoid Tesla Bot with a Screen-face

Photo Credit / Tesla

At the end of Tesla’s AI Day presentation, Musk revealed an unexpected new product, the Tesla Bot.

The humanoid robot would be 5’8″ tall and its main purpose, according to Musk, would be to eliminate dangerous, repetitive, and boring tasks. The prototype is expected to be available some time next year.

The CEO also made a typically bold statement about the future and AI, saying “Essentially, in the future, physical work will be a choice. If you want to do it, you can, but you won’t need to do it.”

Elon finished with an invitation for engineers to join the Tesla team to build the robot.

Read at:

TECHCRUNCH

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Business, Stock Market, Tech

Elon Musk, Tesla & SpaceX income from Carbon Tax Credits, Bitcoin and Government Subsidies

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Above: Photo collage / Forbes / Lynxotic

Odd facts that illustrate the world today where Elon Musk says BitCoin is “less dumb” than cash. He’s right. Cash also known a “fiat currency” is a piece of paper with a promise to pay on demand nothing in exchange when presented.

It does have a legal framework behind it, meaning you go to jail if you try to use your own version. There’s that.

The Tesla CEO said that investing in Bitcoin is a “less dumb form of liquidity than cash” after his company bought $1.5 billion of the cryptocurrency.

“To be clear, I am not an investor, I am an engineer,” he said on Twitter. “I don’t even own any publicly traded stock besides Tesla.”

The idea that Tesla and other companies are having concerns over the stability of cash, and concerns over the effectively negative interest rates in the mean time is clear.

Bitcoin may not be a solution that will be permitted by the Government (think gold in 1934). But a reckoning is a-comin’ and it will get interesting.

There is no doubt that Elon Musk is a genius who is doing great things. Perhaps it is his genius for finance that is most underestimated, however, considering his funding success throughout the years.

Some stats:

Regulatory Credits, aka, Carbon Tax credits, as per CNN:

It’s a lucrative business for Tesla — bringing in $3.3 billion over the course of the last five years, nearly half of that in 2020 alone. The $1.6 billion in regulatory credits it received last year far outweighed Tesla’s net income of $721 million — meaning Tesla would have otherwise posted a net loss in 2020.

“Based on our calculations, we estimate that Tesla so far has made roughly $1 billion of profit [on Bitcoin holdings] over the last month…To put this in perspective, Tesla is on a trajectory to make more from its Bitcoin investments than profits from selling its EVs in all of 2020…” source: Wedbush’s analyst Dan Ives

SpaceX income in U.S. Gov contracts and subsidies:

LA times estimated that already by 2015 Various Musk led businesses took in over 4.9 billion in government income:

“Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support, according to data compiled by The Times. The figure underscores a common theme running through his emerging empire: a public-private financing model underpinning long-shot start-ups.” – LA Times

More recently in 2020 in Forbes:

“The research note titled SpaceX: Raising Valuation Scenarios Following Key Developments, listed the company’s recent $1.9 billion funding round and the “continued momentum in winning government contracts” (mainly from NASA and the U.S Department of Defense) as key reasons for its revision of SpaceX’s value. The note doesn’t bother to mention important financial details like SpaceX’s current revenue or estimated revenue for 2020 or even 2021. Or whether SpaceX is profitable or not.”

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Apple, Apple Car, Books, Breaking News

Apple Car Confirmed: talks with Potential MFG Partners including Hyundai underway

Above: Photo Collage Apple / Lynxotic

Following leaks and rumors, a more definitive statement from Hyundai

In December 2020, a Reuters story cited sources with knowledge of the project to confirm the existence of the long rumored “Project Titan” otherwise known as the “Apple Car”. Now, based on a statement from a Hyundai spokesperson, “AppleCar” is moving forward in the form of discussions with potential manufacturing partners.

Hyundai also confirmed to CNBC that discussions with Apple has begun, but added the caveat that they “understand that Apple is in discussion with a variety of global automakers, including Hyundai Motor. As the discussion is at its early stage, nothing has been decided.”

This hesitation could stem from the possibility that the initial statement may have been interpreted as hinting that an agreement could be imminent, sending Hyundai’s stock 23% higher. The surge in the price followed a  report by the Korea Economic Daily which had implied that Apple suggested the tie-up and Hyundai Motor was reviewing  terms.

Apple doing what Apple does

Even after the Reuters report in December, many were still skeptical, and today the time frames being discussed are very conservative mentioned a 7 year time horizon, even while the Reuters report mentioned at least the possibility, however remote, that 2024 could see an actual release onto the consumer market. 

It is historically established that Apple often enters established markets for specific products and, in may cases, makes a ultra high quality, uniquely “Apple” version. EVs are now firmly established as the future of individual sustainable transport, but with Tesla having set the quality and popularity bar as high as it has, Apple will have a challenge ahead of it to produce a likely self-driving fully realized electric vehicle to match the state of the art in 2024 and beyond. 

At CES 2020 Hyundai unveiled new technologies they already have in development, such as EVs, driverless and even flying cars.

The fact that Tesla founder Elon Musk is now the richest man in the world, after removing that title from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, is not a factor in the “race” to build the best software and hardware for the future of EVs, but is an added dramatic fact that serves as a backdrop to the intrigue.

And hey, wow, imaging having a variety of non-polluting, sustainable energy vehicles to choose from by the worlds top manufacturers and with Apple and Tesla battling it out at the high end to provide the best and most desirable.

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