Tesla Space #92: give this Elon guy his trillion

Welcome to the Tesla Space newsletter, our 92^nd issue.

We’re coming to you on a Thursday instead of the usual, because I just got back from the IAA Mobility auto show in Europe (the largest around here).

As a media and a hardcore EV geek, I’ve got to keep up with all the new entries to the space and shake some hands. If I had to sum it all up for you in just one take-away it’d be this:

Just a few years ago, it was all the German automakers with the largest exhibitions, plus a bit of US & Korea represented. The Chinese makers were the ones with unknown names and small booths hidden in the back corners.

Today, it’s so different. XPeng’s EVs were right next to Volkswagen Group and, at times, commanded even more buzz around them. BYD’s stand rivaled most automakers in the city event. It’s a lot more of a game of equals these days.

I expect the same play out in the US one day, as the market will inevitably open for more foreign carmakers.

By the way, guess who managed to become the first-ever random guy (like, a non-employee) to drive a Lucid Gravity in Europe? ;)

Tesla wasn’t present at all. Even though they do auto shows at times, so that was a bit surprising. I expected them to bring at least the new Model Y Performance just launched in Europe (they showed the fresh M3 there two years back), but nope. 🤷 

Okay, back to Tesla, here’s all that’s on the menu today:

• Tesla Board released a new up-to-trillion-dollar worth of stock incentive package for Elon, which includes $7.5T target for shareholder value creation, a stay-out-of-politics request, and a succession plan for Elon.

• We have a full proxy statement for the 2025 Shareholder Meeting and all voting proposals, including an investment into xAI.

• Robotaxi app is now available for all in the US & Canada;

• Tesla Supercharging launches MultiPass and starts selling Superchargers to all businesses directly;

• Optimus now in Gold, Black, and showing off Grok voice in a video;

• SpaceX will do orbital refilling several times next year with Starship V3;

• Starlink drops $17 billion to buy itself a whole spectrum;

…and more, as always. Enjoy!

— Jaan

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TESLA NEWS

Tesla figured out how to keep Elon going

If you don’t read anything below, I’ll just give you one note — while news headlines want to only talk like Elon is getting a trillion dollars, it isn’t quite so. Elon actually gets equity, ownership, which he has been talking about for a while, needing to be sure that he is in control of Tesla and can’t be ousted by an activist shareholder.

And Elon only gets it if Tesla, yet again, massively outperforms.

This is what it’s about. Now,

Here is Tesla’s new website for voting on the Tesla 2025 Annual Meeting, see votetesla.com.

Big incentives for big goals. Tesla's board has proposed a new, up to ~$1 TRILLION equity-based compensation plan for Elon Musk, if he can add another $7.5 trillion to the company value and $400B in annual EBITDA over the next ten years.

This will be voted on by shareholders at the next Tesla Annual Shareholder Meeting on November 6th.

Tesla Board says in the Letter to Shareholders: "Tesla Board of Directors Robyn Denholm & Kathleen Wilson-Thompson: "In 2018, Elon had to grow Tesla by billions; in 2025, he has to grow Tesla by trillions — to be exact, he must create nearly $7.5 trillion in value for shareholders for him to receive the full award. Retaining and incentivizing Elon is fundamental to Tesla achieving these goals and becoming the most valuable company in history.”

The restricted stocks (not options) are awarded in tranches, the first starting at $2T market value (around doubling from today).

If Elon achieves all the milestones in Tesla’s proposed $1 trillion performance-based pay plan, his ownership in the company would rise from 13.5% to 28.8%:

Here is the SEC filing, Proxy Statement for the shareholder meeting with a massive amount of details around it all (367-page pdf).

Product Goals include 20 Million Tesla Vehicles Delivered, 10 Million Active FSD Subscriptions, 1 Million Bots Delivered, and 1 Million Robotaxis in Commercial Operation.

Notably, what most have missed on the operational milestones, Elon can pair any operational milestone with a market cap milestone to unlock a tranche. The operational milestones aren’t tied to specific tranches. For instance, if Tesla hits a $2T market cap and Elon achieves any operational milestone, that tranche would pay out.

Also, there’s something in the proxy about Elon winding down political involvement:

“Ultimately, the Committee believed it to be critical to Tesla to secure Musk’s commitment to Tesla, receive assurances that Musk’s involvement with the political sphere would wind down in a timely manner."

They are also making Elon plan succession: to earn the 11th and 12th share tranches, Elon must work with the Board to develop a CEO succession framework.

There’s also an xAI investment in the air - Proposal 7

Tesla 2025 proxy filing has a proposed investment in xAI:

Tesla is now running paid advertisements on Google Search, encouraging Tesla shareholders to learn more about the upcoming shareholder meeting on November 6th.

Elon appeared on the All-In Podcast, and we got some interesting info from all across the Muskonomy. Here is the podcast (44-minute video), and some of my notes:

• “I haven’t been to D.C. since May. That was a hell of a side project. The government is basically unfixable.”

• Tesla’s Optimus robot project is the hardest ever in the company’s history.

• Tesla’s AI5 chip will be up to 40X better than AI4 in some metrics, and 8x better in raw compute. 9x more memory.

• “I am confident that the AI4 chips currently in the cars will be achieve self-driving safety at least 2-3x that of a human, maybe 10x.”

• FSD V14 will be the biggest upgrade in Tesla software since FSD V12.

  “Your car is going to feel like it is sentient by the end of the year.”

Other Tesla news:

• Tesla plans to open its first store in Abu Dhabi on Yas Island by 2027.

• Tesla will open an European R&D center in Berlin by 2026, for 250 engineers and technicians dedicated to advancing materials research, vehicle design, and drive system development.

• The new Model Y Performance is now also available to order in Australia and New Zealand (was just launched in Europe before).

• A two-year study found that Tesla’s Gigacastings are cheaper to repair in the case of an accident. Read it from our friend Luca, the Gigacasting expert here. Wes Morrill also commented: “If you simplify the body design with large structural casting,s it's better both for initial assembly and for repair.”

PS! If you enjoy our newsletters and want to support us, consider becoming a Tesla Space Insider — it will also level up your knowledge in all things Tesla, and we’ve got something big coming up.

FSD & ROBOTAXI

The robotaxi app is now available for all iOS users in the US!
You can download to join the waitlist – but as far as we can see, Tesla is going through that waitlist quite rapidly.

The first day downloads of the Tesla Robotaxi App outpaced Uber across all rolling 30-day periods by 40% and bested Waymo's best download day ever by >6x:

Tesla now allows 3 passengers per Robotaxi ride (up from 2). You can also now bring guests between the ages of 13 and 17 (with the consent of their parent or legal guardian).

Tesla’s Robotaxi app is now also available to iOS users in Canada. You can join the waitlist in the app. Android is coming later.

Tesla has, per Sawyer Merritt’s direct info request from the Nevada DMV, officially received approval from the Nevada DMV to start testing autonomous vehicles (robotaxis) on public roads.

Looks like Tempe, Arizona, is in the pipeline, as Tesla robotaxi validation vehicles have been spotted mapping there. It is also reported that Tesla wants to add San Francisco and San Jose airports to its robotaxi service area.

Elon writes about AI5-AI6 chips:

“Just had a great design review today with the Tesla AI5 chip design team! This is going to be an epic chip. And AI6 to follow has a shot at being the best by AI chip by far.

Switching from doing 2 chip architectures to 1 means all our silicon talent is focused on making 1 incredible chip. No-brainer in retrospect. Please join the Tesla silicon team if you want to work on chips that save lives. Milliseconds matter.”

And he also said:

“Could be wrong, but I think AI5 will probably be the best inference chip of any kind for models below ~250B params. By far lowest cost silicon and best performance/Watt. AI6 will take that much further.”

More on that is explained well in our video uploaded yesterday!

TESLA ENERGY & SUPERCHARGING

Tesla Supercharging launches MultiPass in Europe

“Nobody likes creating more accounts with payment details and passwords. For charging, this can even mean needing a third-party charging card mailed to your house… “ — Max de Zegher, Tesla Charging.

Tesla launched the MultiPass, using your Tesla account to charge at non-Tesla chargers.

Simply activate your Tesla key card or use the Tesla App to start charging at non-Tesla chargers. Find chargers, start charging, and view charging history all in the same convenient location. Live today for Tesla owners in the Netherlands. More sites & countries soon.

Tesla also released an article called “Making Charging Ubiquitous”. I’ll likely dig deeper into the learnings next week for you as we’re running out of space today.

Also, when I heard MultiPass, this is the first thing that popped into my mind. Anyone?

I asked Max some details on how the pricing in the third-party chargers is figured out and he was kind enough to give an answer:

What I’ll tell you right now off the bat is that IF Tesla releases this option for non-Tesla owners as well, then it will kill quite a few middleman businesses with its approach. And EV owners will win out of this.

Tesla started selling Superchargers to all businesses.

See more from their dedicated supercharger-for-business website here.

“Purchase and install Superchargers at your business. Superchargers are compatible with all electric vehicles, bringing EV drivers to your business by offering convenient, reliable charging.

We treat your site like we treat our sites. By providing you with a full-service package that includes network operations, preventative maintenance and driver support, we’re able to guarantee 97% uptime—the highest in the industry.”

Minimum order is four charging posts.

PS, Tesla Energy also just launched its Megablock & Megapack 3, I had it written and ready but it didn’t fit into this email (literally). Coverage coming next week!

MUSKONOMY

Optimus in Gold:

This, according to Elon, is the V2.5 of the Optimus, not yet V3, which Elon says is “sublime.”

But! There is also a black version now. It was seen in the Tesla Diner, handing out popcorn, suitably calling itself Poptimus:

However, I think Tesla should certainly change how transparent the Optimus’ “face” is, this wouldn’t be the friendliest face to see around the house…

Oh, and here’s a great minute-long video of Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff talking with a golden Optimus with Grok installed. Elon was next to him (as I can hear) on the video, the Optimus was kind of stuttering and paused a lot, but eventually Optimus started walking them to the kitchen after hearing a request for a Coke.

SpaceX / Starlink

Elon said: "Starship catch is probably flight 13 to 15, depending on how well V3 flights go"

And also, for some wow factor, Elon wrote this as a reply on X:
“SpaceX will do orbital refilling several times next year with Starship V3.

Because we are simply docking with ourself, this is a much easier problem than docking with the Space Station, which SpaceX already does several times a year.”

SpaceX’s VP of Build and Flight Reliability, Bill Gerstenmaier, explains the ‘crunch wrap’ they were testing on Flight 10 to improve sealing and better tile performance, it’ll be now used in most of the tiles on Flight 11.

Starlink:

This is actually huge news — SpaceX announced that it will buy wireless spectrum licenses from EchoStar for its Starlink satellite network for about $17 billion.

Why is it a big deal? It means that Starlink can bring 5G coverage for its Starlink Direct-to-Cell everywhere by owning the spectrum and not having to lease it from carriers. SpaceX writes:

"This agreement will enable us to develop and deploy our next-generation Starlink Direct to Cell constellation, which will be capable of providing broadband service to cell phones globally.

Through the agreement with EchoStar, SpaceX will purchase EchoStar’s 50 MHz S-band spectrum in the US (bands known as AWS-4 and PCS-H) as well as its global MSS spectrum licenses. Exclusive access to this spectrum, along with use of optimized 5G protocols designed for satellite connectivity, will enable a step change in performance for Starlink Direct to Cell.

The next generation of Starlink Direct to Cell satellites will be designed to fully utilize this spectrum. Driven by custom SpaceX-designed silicon and phased array antennas, the satellites will support thousands of spatial beams and higher bandwidth capability, enabling around 20x the throughput capability as compared to a first-generation satellite."

Montana is awarding Starlink $119 million to bring high-speed internet to 20,000 underserved locations in the state. And Ohio gives $51M for 31,000 locations across the state. PCMag estimates that Starlink will receive about $300M in federal funds to expand in underserved areas.

Starlink now has over 7 million customers, up from 6M in June 2025 and 5M in February 2025.

Neuralink

Neuralink shared this graph and said: “here are now 12 people around the world with Neuralink implants. Collectively, they’ve had their devices for 2,000 days and accumulated over 15,000 hours of use. We look forward to continuing to explore the possibilities of neural interfaces with all of our participants!”

Neuralink has just successfully implanted its "Telepathy" brain chip into two more humans last week, and they did it in Canada. As you’ll see in our video this week, the first patient was able to control a cursor by just thinking within minutes. Both men were already let home from the hospital the next day after the surgery.

Elon wrote on X: “Aiming to restore (limited) sight to the completely blind next year”

The Boring Company

Elon says: "Boring Company tunnels will work and cost <10% of alternatives.
If more flow is needed, additional tunnels can be built and furthermore they can be route water from many parts of the city, not just one."

It is now confirmed that Tesla has now started to test FSD in the Vegas Loop. So far there have been drivers taking you through, although in the end, naturally, that wouldn’t be necessary.

It is actually interesting to watch how much actually achieving FSD is changing around Tesla and the Muskonomy companies as well. Another more significant change will come once Optimus bots production reaches scale.

xAI / Grok

xAI launches Grok Code Fast 1, "a speedy and economical reasoning model that excels at agentic coding"., available for free. Per Elon, Grok Code launch lead increased to 60% higher usage than Claude Sonnet. 

A recent xAI team pic was shared when Elon came to visit Colossus 2 in Memphis: