Tesla Space #78: corruption kills Superchargers

If this newsletter was forwarded to you, subscribe here.
If you’re a proper Tesla geek, upgrade to Insider here.

X OF THE WEEK

just to clear this up (there was a major NYT hit piece about Elon being on drugs)

$TSLA

… is up 4.49% since our last week’s newsletter (Friday’s close since we had a holiday there), now at $354.49 per share. Tesla is now at a $1.11T market cap.

DEEP DIVE: Corruption vs Tesla Superchargers

“RIP, thanks NJTurnpike.”

This is what George Bahadue, a Senior Manager on Tesla’s Supercharging team who has been with the company for 9 years, captioned this photo of him with, at one of the Supercharger sites that was shut down in New Jersey on May 31st. Here’s the story.

I would call this a full-on anti-Tesla corruption case, but I’ll leave you to decide.

In New Jersey, Tesla has to remove 64 Superchargers that it already operates from the highway, because the New Jersey Turnpike Authority (NJTA) has chosen a sole third-party charging provider, Applegreen Electric, to serve the New Jersey Turnpike and is not allowing Tesla to co-locate. So Tesla has to rip up all the sites it designed.

However, Tesla also says “We have been preparing for 3 years for this potential outcome by building 116 stalls off the New Jersey Turnpike, ensuring no interruption for our customers.” Here’s the full story from Tesla:

And here are the replacement sites if you’re one of our readers from the area:

If you’re wondering about Applegreen Electric, the one chosen, here’s their current footprint in the US…

I won’t even show you Tesla’s. You know how it looks.

I’ll leave you with a few comments here from the Tesla team about this…

Sendil Palani is the Vice President of Finance at Tesla, and one of the longest-standing executives in the company:

Elon replied with “Sounds like corruption”.

Someone also put together relevant government official contacts and an email template so you could let gov officials know what you think of all this.

We also heard some background on how things are done in New Jersey from one of the Tesla employees from back in 2012, David Havasi:

“The Government in New Jersey is so corrupt. When I was working for Tesla back in 2012 during the Model S launch program, the Tesla Tri-State DMV team met with New Jersey transportation officials and were told mob-style that Tesla would never be allowed to operate in the state of New Jersey. Because of this we had to find very creative solutions to be able to operate in the state. Such a disgrace. NJ should be ashamed. May innovation always trump corruption.”

In other news:

• Tesla is again trying to take my job, and released its monthly recap thread (it’s basically a best-of Tesla-related X posts). I did enjoy what they ended the thread with:

• "Elon Musk was the lowest-paid chief executive of an S&P 500 company last year. Tesla paid him $0." — WSJ ended up with quite the phrase there. (link)

• "Tesla does not want to produce cars in India”, a federal minister said on Monday as the government finalized its EV policy, with the company's plans currently focused on importing cars into the country. At the same time, policy changes will now allow 8k EVs per year at reduced 15% duty vs the current 70%, if they commit to investing around $500 million to build EVs in the country

VEHICLES

There was a Performance Model Y spotted testing at Fremont factory test track, and somehow everybody thought this disguised model is the shorter version of Model Y. It is not.

I have received a lot of questions from you guys about the Model Q, or Model 2… believe me, I’ll tell you when we’ve got something (this is not it). I suspect we might see the first ones in June/July.

Video: See the $300k Tesla Cybertruck patrol vehicle in Guadalajara for the 2026 FIFA World Cup.

Video: This Tesla Model 3 was run off the cliff, crashing spectacularly… and I guess the battery did not ignite after all. It was crazy to watch the airbags deploy mid-air though! (we also saw that in the Cybertruck ramp rollover crash test so this isn’t a one-time thing)

FSD & SOFTWARE

Elon, on Thursday:

Do notice the self-delivery deadline — next month?!

Bloomberg has reported that the launch of the robotaxi is planned for June 12th.

Also, Elon replies “Sure” to a question of: "If I fly in to Austin end of June, would I (anyone) be able to test out the network, or is it going to be invite only at first?"

This is what we’ve seen before from Elon — leaves a huge question mark for everyone which part he replied “sure” to.

It’s interesting to see Elon do some kind of an appreciation lap on X. He quote-posted his post from November 2015, which he says started the Autopilot team:

Three videos:

• Teslas now also drive themselves out of the factory in Giga Berlin, Germany;

• A pretty crazy save by FSD in this video;

• And a video of Chinese testing out FSD driving on literal mountain peaks, even Ashok reposts it with "Jesus!"

Software: Tesla adds “Child Left Alone Detection” as an OTA update:

Tesla will literally go in and try to fix bad parenting over an Over-the-Air software update. 😂 

MUSKONOMY

SpaceX & Starlink

Here is the full 42-minute speech Elon gave at SpaceX ahead of the Starship Flight #9: The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary. We got a lot of details on the Mars program, from getting there to building a city. You can find some great visual representations on their new SpaceX web page for Mars, including how the actual orbit to Mars will look like, with possible launches every two years. The next window will open in 2026.

Establishing a self-sufficient city on Mars will require upwards of one million people and millions of tonnes of cargo to be delivered to the Red planet. By launching more than 10 times per day to maximize transfer windows that open up every approximately 26 months, several thousand Starships will ultimately transfer crew and equipment to build a lasting presence on another world.

SpaceX's current lead candidate for where they will land Starship on Mars is the Arcadia region, which has a large ice deposit:

Oh and by the way, Starship will have 42 engines. Elon says “it was inevitable” 😂 

SpaceX will start launching version 3 of Starship starting in late 2025.
Flight 9 on the left, V3 in the middle, and future starship on the right:

Elon said: "We'll be making at some point as many Starships for Mars as Boeing and Airbus make commercial airplanes."

xAI

X released XChat, currently in Beta (look for the access on the left side menu on your app).

Also, it was quite funny to read Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov shout out that Telegram users will get the best AI tech in the market thanks to a 1-year partnership with xAI, bringing Grok to the app.

Elon replied: “No deal has been signed”

(Pavel then replied: “True. Agreed in principle, but formalities are pending.”)

Neuralink

Neuralink announced that it has raised $650 million Series E fundraising round (reportedly at ~$10B valuation), and there’s a

“We're building technology to transform people's lives: helping restore autonomy to those with motor, speech, or vision impairment by enabling them to control computers and robotic arms with their minds, output verbal thought as text, and generate visual perception."

In 2 weeks, Neuralink will “have a public demo where we share that [investor] presentation with some bonus content.”

Elon <> DOGE

Elon: “DOGE is going to continue as a way of life, and I'll have some participation in that, but my focus has to be on the companies at this point." Here's the full interview for CBS

He also says, in this video cut:

"It's not like I agree with everything the administration does. I agree with much, but we have differences of opinion. There are things I don't entirely agree with, but it's difficult for me to bring that up in an interview because then it creates a bone of contention, so I'm a little stuck in a bind where I'm like, 'Well, I don't want to speak out against the administration, but I also don't want to take responsibility for everything the administration is doing.'"

Here’s a video of President Trump gifting Elon with a key to the White House as a thank you for his DOGE work, and a brief note from Elon there.