This ad broke its own record last week again as the most-clicked ad of all time in this newsletter… so here it is for the last time (ends in 2 days):

Apple just secretly added Starlink satellite support to iPhones through iOS 18.3.

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This one goes quite well with our video of the week. The size is ridiculous.

Tesla has conceded that the power conversion system in pre-2026 Cybertrucks does not meet its reliability standards, and extended the warranty to cover it.

When the PCS fails, home charging drops from 48A to 24A and then stops altogether. This seems like a solid move from Tesla.

We’ve got some Tesla sales numbers from Europe, and July would look bad at first glance.
Norway fell 97%, Spain 81%, Italy 77%, Portugal 69%, Germany 67%, Sweden 60% and the UK 48%. Only France and Denmark went the other way, up 86% and 52%.

but

We also know Tesla plays with their quarterly deliveries quite a lot per market and Giga Berlin is ramping up with a big backlog. I made a quick graph here to show you the year-to-date (green, to the right) next to the monthly (red, on the left)

Tesla has filed a recall for 20,349 vehicles over headlights that are too bright. The filing covers 18,735 Model Y from 2020 to 2023 and 1,614 Model 3 from 2017 to 2023, where the low beams can exceed the maximum intensity allowed under federal standard FMVSS No. 108.

Tesla petitioned NHTSA last month to avoid the recall and was turned down. No remedy has been developed yet, and brightness is a hardware problem, so owners should expect a Service Center visit soon, I guess.

Tesla's robotaxi account posted the first Cybercab with a Starlink antenna built into the roof, photographed in gold at Giga Texas:

The caption was four words long: "First Cybercab with Starlink integration."

Cybercab will benefit from the connection for obvious reasons, but it will also be the riders who will be able to use it to stream 4K video, work, browse the internet, etc.

Then, we got to see a Cybercab with an American flag colored lightbar, for the Governor DeSantis announcements about “the future of transportation” in Florida at SunTrax.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis talked about and showed a Waymo and Tesla's Cybercab yesterday during a press conference.

"Cybercab comes out of Tesla. You go in there and you just sit. You have a screen. There's no steering wheel, no pedals. Clearly these things could be very beneficial."

DeSantis said on X: “We took a ride on a robotaxi on the Suntrax course and it successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.

Impressive!”

And yes, that is a colored lightbar. I’m wondering if it’s a one-time thing or might it be it’s a feature? Could make finding your Cybercab amid a larger fleet of them easier.

FSD story: 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan crashed a Model S on Autopilot (not FSD) in July, and talked about it publicly this week. He dropped his phone, reached for it, and in the couple of seconds his eyes were down the car drifted into oncoming traffic at about 20 mph (32 km/h). He came away with a concussion, a broken nose, three broken ribs, a broken left hand and 40 stitches. The other driver, a 21-year-old woman, was not seriously hurt.

His own verdict: "It's always your fault. Whether you're on autopilot or not, you can't take your eyes off the road."

Elon delivered a company update to SpaceX employees, and SpaceX put the full 29 minutes on X. Set aside the time for this one, as Elon starts going through the SpaceX from the very beginning with his commentary, too.

The line he most wanted them to take away:

"This is the most important message I want to convey today: We must win on AI, because the future is overwhelmingly AI and robots."

SpaceX's AI revenue will pass all other SpaceX revenue combined in September, he said, and will "significantly exceed" it in the fourth quarter. He put AI at 99% of SpaceX's value inside five years, and said 10 gigawatts of AI capacity online by the end of next year would be worth $300 billion to $500 billion a year.

Starlink’s numbers were shown, too: 13 million consumer subscribers, 22 million monthly Starlink Mobile users (the mobile dish, not the cellular), and close to 11,000 satellites in orbit, against a long-run target of 100,000 spacecraft on V3.

Notice how the ceiling keeps moving. On the earnings call last week it was that Starlink might deliver a majority of the world's internet. Last night it was that Starlink "will probably carry over 90% of all internet traffic eventually."

He finished on the part that has nothing to do with revenue, but a lot in aspirations:

"Anybody at SpaceX who wants to go to the Moon or Mars will be able to. I guarantee it."

On X, Elon responded to some speculation on the Starlink constellation size:

“Yes, I expect the Starlink total constellation size, inclusive of direct-to-cell, to exceed 100k. Future versions of our satellites may exceed 50X the throughput of a V2, making the total system bandwidth even higher.”

Meanwhile, the Starship that was floating in the Ocean after Flight 13 and which SpaceX surprisingly had a chance to perhaps recover? Rough seas caused troubles.

Elon: “Unfortunately, ship recovery is not looking good right now. Nonetheless, we were able to obtain close-up photos of critical regions of the heat shield and engines for future upgrades.”

What I’m thinking: it seems that SpaceX has figured out the “Star” bit, but not yet the “Ship” part.

We signed off last week noting the insider lock-up lifted on August 6. It did, and the day was a ride, closed at an all-time low sometime that day at around $105/share, and has now jumped back above its $135 IPO price to $146/share as I write this, just short of $2T market cap.

Bolivia will install more than 5,000 Starlink kits in unconnected areas over the coming months to provide internet access to rural schools.

Oh, and Lufthansa Group (one of the largest in Europe with 850 aircraft) is starting to equip all its partner airlines with Starlink, should be finished by 2029.

This one was really wild to me (but also makes sense): SpaceX's Gwynne Shotwell: "We heard from one of our airline customers, shockingly, customers are flying shorter hop flights instead of direct, so that they could ensure that they're on a Starlink-activated flight. They'd never seen this in the business before."

xAI launched Grok Bot today, a team of agents that get their own cloud computer, sign into your existing apps, work inside them the way you do, and keep going while you are asleep.

The pitch, in xAI's words: "Grok Bot is your team of always-on agents. They have their own computer, work inside tools and apps like you do, and keep working 24/7."

You teach one by doing a task once while it watches. It saves that as a routine, takes your corrections, and runs it on its own the next time. No API and no MCP needed, because the bot is working the interface the way a person would. Several can run at once and hand work between each other in group chats.

Beta is live on desktop and iOS, Android is listed as coming, and enterprise is a waitlist. Access is bundled rather than sold on its own: SuperGrok Heavy, Cursor Ultra at $200 a month, or Cursor Teams Premium at $120 per seat. If those Cursor tiers look out of place, that is the $60 billion all-stock acquisition of Cursor that SpaceX announced this summer, which has not closed yet.

Oh and in case you were wondering:

SpaceXAI also just dropped the Grok 4.6, and says “It delivers frontier intelligence and is a significant improvement over Grok 4.5 at the same price.”

Elon also, just an hour ago, wrote: “Grok 4.7 is significantly better than 4.6 and should be ready in 3 to 4 weeks. Initial training is complete and now we’re adding a massive amount of SpaceX company data in supplemental training. This will be something special.”

Grok Imagine 2.0 shipped on August 7th, adding a lot of features like editing segments and regions, removing backgrounds, transparent exports, consistency and referencing, etc.

TBC has introduced their Liner Truck 3, their latest fully electric tunnel vehicle.

Fun fact: the same Liner Truck can carry standard freight containers through the tunnel.

Steve Jurvetson got to remotely operate this liner truck, says it was easy to learn (video).