Tesla Space #32: ⚡ Founder of Uber as Tesla head of Robotaxi?

DEEP DIVE: will Travis Kalanick become Head of Robotaxi?

Is Elon about to bring the co-founder of Uber to run robotaxi network?

Put on your tinfoil hats, this is a wild one.

I’ve so far gathered quite few hints that might be nothing, but also might be pieces of a robotaxi puzzle coming together in front of our eyes.

The robotaxi unveiling event is getting closer (8^th of August!), and knowing how Elon operates, I assume there’s a frenzy going on at Tesla to make everything happen.

What happened: Just yesterday, Elon followed Travis Kalanick on X. We know, because our friend Jonas at @elon_alerts keeps us up to date (the pic above).

I’d say it’s even more peculiar considering Travis hasn’t posted anything since 2019.

Now, I want to note that I will not go into how Uber operates under the current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi (2017-today), nor will I give my opinions on how it operated under Travis Kalanick (2009-2017). It’s a whole other rabbit hole.

Let me piece together a bit of the historical context between Tesla and Uber:

In 2015, Travis said to Steve Jurvetson (then board member of Tesla):

Jurvetson said Travis apparently couldn’t get a return call from Elon. Fast forward just a bit, we got Travis Kalanick in 2016, explaining why he felt the urge to move:

In a book called “Wild Ride: Inside Uber's Quest for World Domination”, we learn that after Apple invested $1B in Uber’s biggest rival Didi in China in 2016, Travis says he called up Elon Musk with a proposal to team up:

Now, I wrote a whole further deep dive here for you but it couldn’t fit in this email as we’ve got rest of Tesla to cover too. So hop on over to this button, read through the crazy insights I’ve found, and then pop back here, ok?

Some of what you’ll find above:

• Why it makes sense for Elon to hire Travis;

• Why it’s more likely Musk partners with Travis and takes on Uber, and not Tesla partnering with Uber;

• Are they close? I found three contact points between them, (one of which a great find from history with pics);

• What about Uber? Will it die or thrive after robotaxi is announced? I dug deeper into the interviews of current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and found what the thinks of Tesla FSD and Robotaxi incoming

• Curious: at the same time, the Uber CEO has sold 1M shares in June, almost half of its whole ownership in $UBER.

The deep dive article above is also a great way to share the news with friends. I put a lot of effort into it, so please do. 🤝 

X OF THE WEEK

Context: Molly asks in a video if he can fix the bug in the Sketchpad feature. Musk will make it happen.

I can already see it in the media headlines: “Tesla issues a recall of all vehicles to fix an issue with the infotainment screen that leads to disgruntled customers”

Why I find this wonderful: one, of course, it’s just adorable.

Second, it shows you a feedback loop that you don’t really get often in today’s world — straight access to the most powerful CEO in the world, and all via a public platform. Granted, this one usually only works if you got the post trending first. Tesla has, however, seeded a strong feedback loop from the start and it was perhaps more visible in the earlier days (see this video of Musk and Straubel in 2014 taking in customer’s suggestion for preconditioning).

Mandatory plug: 🔌 in case you didn’t know, we too have an X account that we’re becoming more active on (perhaps even start posting our videos there):
@TheTeslaSpace. I’m not saying you have to follow us, but if you don’t then well what are we even doing here.

TESLA, GLOBALLY

Tesla is turning the closed 118,784 ft² Winnetka Pacific Theatres building in Chatsworth into a delivery hub and service center. Here’s the current building, and Tesla’s render:

Now I wonder if, and how will Tesla utilize the 5,900 seats and 23 screens?

“Tesla’s goal was to reuse as much of the existing architecture and simplify the facade,” said Diana Tran, a Tesla representative at a planning commission meeting. The new delivery hub will have a showroom, a service lounge for customers, and an area used for pre-delivery inspection.

Tesla also opens its first Tesla Service center in Vermont.

🇺🇸 Tesla has slightly lowered the APR % for financing in the US, with excellent credit rating now getting 6.29% on 36-72mo loans and 7.39% rate on 84-month loans (from 6.49%-7.49% respectively)

🇨🇳 Tesla China extends its 0% interest (or 0% down payment) for M3/Y until end of July. The company also wrote the month of June hit a “new high” in sales… info which was later edited out of the post for some reason 🤔

🇹🇷 Tesla Türkiye delivery center opens, here’s a video compilation from the team.

🇩🇪 Welcome to the Rave Cave of Giga Berlin (25-sec video). Bonus cameo: cyber hamster?

TECH, FSD & SOFTWARE

Tesla files for a patent on automatic vehicle interior sanitation

Tesla's patent WO2023/163943A1 presents a system and a method for automatically sanitizing enclosed spaces, particularly vehicle interiors, that can be shared by multiple people.

It shows possible systems with using the HVAC system (warm air), and also sanitizing light, steam or heated air. This would be awfully useful for a Robotaxi?

X account to follow: @seti_park, an independent patent seeker who often surfaces patents from SpaceX and Tesla for us geeks.

FSD

FSD V12.4.2 is rolling out to owners now.

Tesla Autopark is coming alive in Europe and operates well — at HW3, no parking sensors, only cameras. (video)

📚️ Reading tip: Here’s a great writeup from Freda Duan reviewing all the major (~20) L2 self-driving and robotaxi vehicles in US & China.

👀 Watch tip: A great video explains how gigacastings are now repairable.

👀 Watch tip #2: Seems the new full-screen UI visualizations while parked can be run on Teslas running on Intel, per this video that tweaked a little something to access it. It does seem slightly less smooth though.

SUPERCHARGING & ENERGY

The Tesla Diner

at the corner of Santa Monica and Orange in Hollywood is coming along nicely. Here’s the most recent flyover video from last weekend. Here’s a progress video of this location from 9 months ago when construction started, until today.

Probably the first time I’ve seen bollards set up in front of Tesla chargers, in a Belgium V4 site.

Tesla opens its largest V4 Supercharger site yet, in Roye (France) with 32 stalls. They also just reached 200 SC locations in the country.

The best part about this one might just be the bk World lounge that launched alongside with it!

Powerwall 3 is now available in UK and Germany. Tesla has also partnered with Octopus Energy in UK and Spain to install the Powerwall and so the customers could utilize Octopus’ smart tariffs.

Mercedes is now listed at tesla.com/NACS as one of the ‘Coming Soon’ automakers getting access to the Superchargers. Ford and Rivian are already supported, while GM, Volvo, and Polestar are listed coming soon.

TESLA-POWERED

We got an overwhelming ‘yes’ from you last week when I asked in a poll if we should keep the new Tesla-powered EV conversion section going… so I’ll keep at it. Thank you everyone who chimed in!

Ferrari Teslarossa

This time I’ve got a whole playlist with 12 videos for you, by Electric Classic Cars on converting the Testarossa into Teslarossa.

The new Teslarossa is upgraded to:

• Motor: Tesla performance drive unit, 600hp

• Weight: as original, improved weight distribution for better handling

• Performance: 0-60 under 4.5s

• Battery: 60kWh

• Charging: 7kW AC and 150kW CCS

• Range: 150 miles

Actually, seems they’ve now made three Teslarossas. Wow what I’d give to drive one.

THE MUSK CO

SpaceX

SpaceX is now reportedly valued at $210 billion, up from $180 billion in December 2023. This valuation makes it the world’s second most valuable startup, second only to TikTok’s parent company ByteDance.

Two Falcon Heavy boosters landing at the same time is just crazy to watch. Related: here’s my best joke on the first Starship catch attempt under the same video, which somehow has gotten 2,400 likes already.

SpaceX was also testing the Starship-catching Mechazilla arms, aka chopsticks with a catch simulation of the test tank (a 6-hour live here). You’ll find the “slaps” also timestamped on the first comment there. My favorite comment: “HUGs not RUDs”.

Blue Origin (aka Bezos’ space company) has filed a comment to the FAA saying they should cap SpaceX's Starship launches from Cape Canaveral due to "impact on local environment".

Musk responds: “In past years, Blue Origin also sued to stop SpaceX from using what is now our primary launchpad at 39A and tried to patent landing a rocket on a ship, even though that idea had been around for 70 years!

And on another post, “An obviously disingenuous response. Not cool of them to try (for the third time) to impede SpaceX’s progress by lawfare.”

Meme time:

When it comes to SpaceX; there’s one small problem for retail investors like many of us. We can’t access investing in SpaceX. It’s not publicly traded.

So far, I have found four ways to get some exposure (not financial advice of any kind, do your own research ok?):

Let me know in the feedback form if this is helpful and if we should research more like this. And also if you’ve found any other ways. You can also chime in on our X post about this (yes we indeed have an X account. If you read this you’re hereby required to follow us).

Starlink released a video on how to set up Starlink Mini step-by-step.

xAI; Neuralink

Elon confirms Grok 2 is coming in August. Also, check out the racks on this team picture 👀

Joe Rogan hosted Noland Arbaugh, the first human recipient of Neuralink’s brain-computer interface implant.