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Tag: ELON MUSK

  • Elon Musk Loses $20 Billion in Net Worth Following Tesla Roadster Demo

    Elon Musk Loses $20 Billion in Net Worth Following Tesla Roadster Demo

    Elon Musk lost $20 billion in personal net worth on Friday after unveiling Tesla’s experimental Roadster sports car, pulling his fortune down to $925 billion.

    The 2.11 percent single-day drop tracked a 1.3 percent slide in Tesla shares on Thursday, extending the automaker’s year-to-date market decline to 17 percent.

    Engineering Demo Draws Investor Skepticism

    Tesla presented the new two-seater Roadster with an autonomous demonstration where the vehicle climbed a steep ramp, hung upside down, flipped in the air, and landed using cold-gas thrusters. Musk said the sports car accelerates from zero to 60 miles per hour in less than one second, using 10 nozzles fed by ultra high-pressure air tanks developed with rocket engineers at SpaceX.

    SpaceX shares dropped 2.3 percent following the event, bringing its own year-to-date decline to nearly 8 percent. Commercial mass production for the vehicle is scheduled for 2028, four years behind earlier timelines.

    “It was an engineering flex with no commercial value ⁠beyond embarrassing traditional car makers,” Gene Munster, managing partner at Tesla investor Deepwater Asset Management, said on social media platform X.

    Shifting Priorities from Volume to Halo Tech

    For automotive supply chains and retail distribution networks across Asia, the stunt confirms Tesla’s pivot away from entry-level passenger electric vehicles toward speculative halo hardware. Asian rivals such as BYD, Geely, and Hyundai have consolidated volume sales across Southeast Asia by rolling out practical, sub-$25,000 passenger cars. Tesla instead spent engineering capital on an ultra-luxury niche model that offers no commercial volume for suppliers or fleet operators for years.

    Institutional investors in Asia-Pacific holding tech-heavy portfolios face increased exposure to execution risk. Tesla continues to redirect capital toward autonomous driving systems, robotics, and aerospace-derived concepts while its core passenger car lineup ages without high-volume replacements. The strategy protects brand prestige at the extreme top end of the market but cedes mass-market share to regional competitors in China, Thailand, and Indonesia.

    Regional Groundwork and Historical Parallels

    The original Lotus-based Roadster served as Tesla’s market entry point between 2008 and 2012 before the company built its core business on the Model 3, Model Y, Model S, and Model X. In Southeast Asia, Tesla recently registered Tesla Motors Vietnam with a charter capital of VND77.6 billion, or approximately $3 million, establishing an official corporate footprint in the country as it looks to build out service infrastructure.

    Tesla faces third-quarter financial results in the coming days, where Wall Street will review vehicle delivery numbers, automotive gross margins, and spending on autonomous software.

  • Elon Musk Loses Nearly $34 Billion in One Day, Marking a Major Wealth Decline

    Elon Musk Loses Nearly $34 Billion in One Day, Marking a Major Wealth Decline

    Billionaire Elon Musk experienced a staggering loss of $33.9 billion in net worth on Thursday, making headlines as one of his most significant one-day drops. This sharp decline comes amidst a very public spat with U.S. President Donald Trump, underscoring the intertwined nature of high-stakes business and politics.

    Record-Breaking Decline

    This incident marks the second-largest single-day drop recorded on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which tracks the wealth of the world’s 500 richest individuals. Only Musk’s own dramatic $50 billion plunge in November 2021 surpasses this recent loss. The clash began when Musk criticized Trump’s signature initiative, known as the “Big, Beautiful Bill.” Tensions escalated further when Trump suggested scrapping government contracts linked to Musk’s enterprises, which could jeopardize Tesla’s and SpaceX’s revenues.

    Going toe-to-toe with Trump isn’t just a headline grabber; it could spell trouble for Musk as he navigates various regulatory waters. Notably, Tesla’s ambitious plans to launch self-driving vehicles that operate without steering wheels or pedals hinge on the approval of the U.S. Department of Transportation, the body that oversees vehicle safety standards. Compounding the situation, the Department is also investigating Tesla’s “Full-Self Driving” software following a fatal incident.

    Market Reaction

    As tensions escalated, the markets reacted swiftly. Traders dumped Tesla stocks in heavy trading driven by fears of the broader implications for Musk’s business interests. By the end of the day, Tesla shares took a drop of 14%, erasing a staggering $150 billion from its market capitalization.

    Despite this setback, Musk still retains his title as the world’s wealthiest person, with an impressive estimated net worth of $334.5 billion. It’s worth noting that Musk had previously faced a $50 billion loss in 2021, triggered by a Twitter poll in which he asked followers if he should sell 10% of his Tesla shares, leading to a 16% dip in stock value.

    To sum up, Musk’s wealth may fluctuate like the stock market, but it seems he has mastered the art of making headlines.

    Questions & Answers

    What prompted Elon Musk’s recent financial drop?
    Musk’s loss was triggered by his public feud with President Trump, which included criticism of Trump’s initiatives and concerns over potential government contract cancellations related to Musk’s companies.

    How significant is this loss compared to Musk’s past financial fluctuations?
    This loss of $33.9 billion is the second largest reported drop in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, only outranked by Musk’s own $50 billion dip in November 2021.

    Is Elon Musk still the richest person in the world after this decline?
    Yes, despite the substantial drop in his net worth, Musk remains the wealthiest individual globally, with an estimated net worth of $334.5 billion.

  • Federal judge is forcing Musk to talk with the SEC again over his purchase of Twitter

    Federal judge is forcing Musk to talk with the SEC again over his purchase of Twitter

    Elon Musk has been ordered by a federal judge to testify once again as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) continues its investigation of Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. The court gave Musk and the SEC one week to come up with a date and location for both sides to meet. If neither side can agree to a date and time for the interview, the judge said that she would hear from both parties and come up with a date and time for them.

    The SEC sued Musk last October in an attempt to force the multi-billionaire to testify about the purchase of Twitter which he made in 2022. Musk, who famously renamed Twitter “X,” had failed to show up during a scheduled meeting with the SEC in September which was related to the agency’s probe of the transaction. Twitter was a publicly-traded company before Musk took it private which means that any deep dive into the transaction by the government would start with an SEC investigation. In filling out the required paperwork for his purchase of Twitter, the question is whether Musk followed the letter of the law or included misleading statements with his submissions.

    Musk accused the SEC of harassment as he attempted to prevent the regulatory agency from interviewing him again about the Twitter acquisition. He complained that the SEC had already spoken with him twice. Judge Beeler said that the SEC, seeking relevant information from Musk, did have the authority to subpoena him.

    The SEC and Musk have battled before. In 2018, Musk posted a tweet that said, “Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.” The tweet led Tesla’s shares to soar 11% that day, but no deal was ever announced. The SEC, Musk, and Tesla agreed to a settlement. Musk and Tesla paid $20 million in fines, and Musk had to leave his post as Tesla chairman although he retained the CEO job. The settlement also required that any tweet Musk sent out with material information about Tesla had to be approved by the SEC in advance.

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  • Elon Musk announces upcoming UI overhaul and new Twitter features

    Elon Musk announces upcoming UI overhaul and new Twitter features

    Elon Musk has announced via Twitter that the social network will get a new look and features. Some of the features he teased include swiping to move between timelines, a bookmark button on Tweet details, and long-form tweets.

    Since Elon Musk took over Twitter as owner and CEO, it has become the standard to look to his direct feed for feature announcements and changes in the platform’s terms of use. Such was the case with his controversial move last year to block links that directed users to competing social media platforms, which was later reversed but prompted calls for Musk to step down as CEO of Twitter.

    While his latest announcement is far from being controversial, it is worth noting as it announces key changes to the platform that its users should be aware of. According to Musk, a new feature will be rolling out later this week which will enable users to move between recommended vs followed tweets in their timelines.

    Although unclear as to what this will look like, since there was no preview provided for it, one can guess it will work similarly to how pinned timelines currently work on mobile devices. It is also unclear whether this new feature will be exclusive to the Twitter mobile apps or if the web client will see something similar as well.

    Musk also confirmed that there is a larger UI overhaul on the way and that this new feature is just the start. Another change coming to the UI is the addition of a Bookmark button in the Tweet details view, which, as per Musk, will serve as the defacto “silent like” on tweets and will be rolling out a week later. Bookmarking tweets has been available for some time, but it requires a couple of extra clicks.

    Finally, the long-promised feature to be able to compose long-form tweets is truly on its way. Musk also confirmed that this will be added in early February, though no additional details were shared on what the feature will entail.

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  • Vietnam’s Elon Musk challenger turns heads in 2023

    Vietnam’s Elon Musk challenger turns heads in 2023

    Vietnam is an unlikely home of the next Elon Musk. That’s why Le Thi Thu Thuy is one person to watch in 2023. The 48-year-old is at the wheel of VinFast, a money-losing electric-vehicle maker racing the U.S. entrepreneur’s Tesla on Western roads. It’s a complicated route.

    VinFast has made its name selling gas guzzlers in the Southeast Asian nation, where its parent Vingroup is the top conglomerate. Now Thuy is heading in an entirely new direction by turning the carmaker fully electric, and by taking its brand global. Within a year, she plans 70 showrooms across the United States, Canada and the European Union to sell cars like the VF9 sports utility vehicle, which is priced at $76,000, around 15% more than Tesla’s comparable Model Y.

    The former Lehman Brothers investment banker is leaning on sophisticated suppliers like battery-maker Contemporary Amperex Technology and electronic products-outfit Aptiv rather than counting on VinFast to develop proprietary technology. It is building a local factory in the United States too, something that’s hard for Chinese auto rivals like Nio and Xpeng to replicate as tensions fester between Washington and Beijing. An expensive marketing campaign is starting to yield results: VinFast reported 58,000 reservations as of December.

    A planned initial public offering in New York is key to fund the expansion. Thuy must convince investors that the company isn’t desperate for money. Hanoi’s crackdown on the real estate sector is a drag on the property-heavy Vingroup. That makes it look like VinFast has a weak parent at a time when the auto business is also deep in the red: its net loss almost doubled to 34.5 trillion dong ($1.48 billion) in the first nine months of 2022.

    Yet accessing Vietnam’s stock market is tricky and, to date, only nine Vietnamese companies have listed overseas, raising less than $1.5 billion in total, Refinitiv data shows. VinFast’s listing would, therefore, present a rare opportunity to tap an economy the International Monetary Fund expects will grow 6.2% in 2023. Thuy can at least count on a scarcity premium to fuel her big drive.

    Context news

    Vietnamese electric-car maker VinFast is planning a U.S. initial public offering, an initial prospectus published on Dec. 6 shows.

    VinFast reported a net loss of 34.5 trillion dong($1.48 billion) for the nine months to the end of September, against 18 trillion dong for the same period a year earlier. Revenue fell to 10.5 trillion dong, down from 11.2 trillion dong.

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  • Elon Musk Says ‘I Have Too Much Work On My Plate’

    Elon Musk Says ‘I Have Too Much Work On My Plate’

    Billionaire Elon Musk said on Monday he was working “at the absolute most amount…from morning til night, seven days a week” when asked about his recent acquisition of Twitter and his leadership of automaker Tesla Inc.

    “I have too much work on my plate that is for sure,” Musk said by videolink to a business conference on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali.

    Musk is chief executive of both companies and also runs rocket firm SpaceX, brain-chip startup Neuralink and tunneling firm the Boring Company. Wearing a batik shirt sent by the organizers, he appeared on screen lit by candles, explaining that he was speaking from a place that had just lost power.

    Tesla investors worry that Musk, a self-confessed “nanomanager” who has been personally involved in working-level decisions from car styling to supply chain issues, is distracted at a critical time for the world’s largest electric vehicle maker.

    Tesla’s shares have halved in value since early April, when he disclosed he had taken a stake in Twitter. His Tesla share sales, including another $4 billion last week to bring his Twitter-related sales to $20 billion, have added to the pressure.

    When asked about the complexity of industrial supply chains “decoupling” from China and the risks from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Musk returned to how busy he was.

    Responding to an observation that many business leaders in Asia wanted to be the “Elon Musk of the East,” Musk said: “I’d be careful what you wish for. I’m not sure how many people would actually like to be me. They would like to be what they imagine being me, which is not the same thing as actually being me. The amount that I torture myself is next level, frankly.”

    Musk also said he wanted to see Twitter support more video and longer-form video so that content creators could make a living on the platform, but did not provide details. His remarks were streamed live on Alphabet Inc’s YouTube.

    Indonesia has been trying to secure a deal with Tesla on battery investment and potentially one for SpaceX to develop a rocket launch site.

    Musk made no commitment to either of those but said Indonesia had a large role to play in the electric vehicle supply chain and that it would make sense “long term” for SpaceX to have multiple launch points around the globe.

    It was not clear where Musk was during the Bali event. His personal jet has remained in Austin, Texas, Tesla’s headquarters since the weekend, according to @ElonJet, a Twitter account that tracks Musk’s Gulfstream G650.

    “I’m just looking at this video and it’s so bizarre,” Musk said. “I’m sitting here in the dark surrounded by candles.”

    Musk added he believed that the economy would make the transition to sustainable energy, adding it was “just a question of how long it takes.” He said space exploration should remain a priority “so we can understand the nature of the universe and our place in it.”

    “Maybe we’ll find alien civilization or discover civilizations that existed millions of years ago, but we see the ruins of ancient civilizations. I think that would be incredibly interesting,” he said.

  • Musk still willing to buy Twitter under this one condition

    Musk still willing to buy Twitter under this one condition

    The richest man globally, worth nearly $280 billion, is Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The executive announced in the middle of April that he would buy social media app (and website) Twitter for $44 billion. But by early last month, Musk had withdrawn the offer leading Twitter to sue Musk and the latter to file a countersuit.. What made Musk change his mind was Twitter’s failure to prove to the multi-billionaire that spam and fake accounts make up less than 5% of the total number of Twitter accounts.
    Musk believes that at least 10% of Twitter’s daily active users (DAU) that see ads are not authentic. Furthermore, Musk alleges in his countersuit that of the 229 million daily active users on Twitter, 65 million, or 28%, do not see any ads. To get a more accurate indication of the number of bogus accounts on Twitter, Musk used Botometer, a tool created by Indiana University that measures inauthentic accounts. With this tool, Elon’s team found more fake accounts than the number that Twitter disclosed, according to court filings.
    With a trial set to begin in October, Musk’s lawyers wrote in a document submitted to the court, “Twitter was miscounting the number of false and spam accounts on its platform, as part of its scheme to mislead investors about the company’s prospects. Twitter’s disclosures have slowly unraveled, with Twitter frantically closing the gates on information in a desperate bid to prevent the Musk parties from uncovering its fraud.”
    But having said all that, Reuters today cited a tweet disseminated early today by the Tesla CEO that says if Twitter could reveal how it samples 100 members and confirms that they are real Twitter users, his $44 billion bid to buy Twitter will be back on. But Musk added in his tweet, “However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then it should not.”
    In his court filing, Musk claims that Twitter double counts linked accounts. The multi-billionaire claims that Twitter had inflated monetized daily active users in its SEC filings by as many as 1.9 million people each quarter.
    In response to another Twitter user who asked whether the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was investigating the “dubious claims” made by Twitter, Musk tweeted back, “Good question, why aren’t they?” The legal battle between both sides is taking on a harsh tone. This past Thursday Twitter rejected Musk’s claim that he had been tricked into bidding for Twitter.
    Tinged with sarcasm, Twitter’s response was filed with the court and it said, “According to Musk, he — the billionaire founder of multiple companies, advised by Wall Street bankers and lawyers — was hoodwinked by Twitter into signing a $44 billion merger agreement.” Twitter added, “That story is as implausible and contrary to fact as it sounds.”
    Bret Taylor, Twitter’s Chairman of the Board, said of Musk, “His claims are factually inaccurate, legally insufficient and commercially irrelevant.” And as far as the Botometer tool is concerned, Twitter called it unreliable and pointed out that it once called Mr. Musk’s own Twitter account “highly likely to be a bot.” In its lawsuit, Twitter said, “Musk refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.”
    A “specific performance” clause that is part of the contract allows Twitter to sue to get the deal to close as long as Musk’s financing remains in place. But if the funding for the deal falls through, Musk can pay $1 billion to end his obligations to buy Twitter.
    While Musk is a multi-billionaire, much of his wealth is tied up in Tesla shares. Musk planned to borrow against the value of some of his Tesla shares to raise as much as $12.5 billion. A dangerous financial maneuver, had Tesla shares declined sharply, Musk could have been forced to pay additional funds with a margin call, or have the Tesla shares pledged as collateral for the loan sold out from under him.
    Eventually, the executive decided against borrowing against his Tesla holdings before scraping the deal altogether. Still, the tweet that Musk posted today reveals that there is still a path to a completed acquisition.
  • Elon Musk Weighs in on Active Investing

    Elon Musk Weighs in on Active Investing

    The Tesla CEO is using his newly acquired toy, Twitter, to criticize passive investing.

    Elon Musk joined a conversation on Twitter, which he recently acquired for $44 billion, initiated by venture capitalist Maro Andreessen. On the thread, the latter posited that firms like BlackRock have too much influence over companies given their outsized holdings in passive funds tracking indexes, on Thursday.

    Passive investing has «gone too far», Musk said on the Twitter thread, where he was joined by Ark Investment Management founder Cathie Wood. Those investing in index funds that tracked the S&P 500, for example, would have missed out on the big gains in Tesla before it was included as a component of the index, Wood said.

    Wood made the point that history will deem the accelerated shift toward passive funds during the last 20 years as a massive misallocation of capital.

    Those supporting index funds, however, say that active funds charge high fees and often fail to beat indexes against which they are benchmarked. For their part, the active managers highlight their role in creating efficient markets and their potential to harness higher gains.

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  • Twitter agrees to go private; Musk to buy the company for $44 billion

    Twitter agrees to go private; Musk to buy the company for $44 billion

    Twitter today agreed to  q be bought out by Elon Musk for $44 billion or $54.20 a share in cash. Musk, in a statement, reiterated his support for free speech and mentioned some of the changes that he wants to bring to the site. “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.”
    “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it,” the multi-billionaire said.
    The richest man in the world with a net worth estimated at approximately $270 billion, Musk had bid $43 billion to buy Twitter and the company decided to fight by having the board issue a poison pill that would have gone into effect once someone purchased 15% of Twitter. Seeking to dilute Musk’s holdings, the poison pill would have allowed the company to sell shares to stockholders at a discount price. Musk owned 9.2% of Twitter’s shares when he first publicly announced his bid.
    Bret Taylor, Twitter’s Independent Board Chair, said, “The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon’s proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing. The proposed transaction will deliver a substantial cash premium, and we believe it is the best path forward for Twitter’s stockholders.”
    Twitter’s stock price closed on Monday at $51.70, up $2.77 or 5.66%. Each Twitter stockholder will receive $54.20 in cash as Twitter becomes a private company. Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal stated today, “Twitter has a purpose and relevance that impacts the entire world. Deeply proud of our teams and inspired by the work that has never been more important.”
    The transaction is expected to close sometime this year and stockholders will get to vote on the deal. To finance the purchase of Twitter, Musk arranged $25.5 billion in debt and margin loan financing. He is adding $21 billion in equity financing. Musk himself is one of the most popular figures on Twitter with over 83 million followers.
    Musk has the opportunity to become the new face of Twitter replacing co-founder Jack Dorsey. Dorsey stands to make a ton of money from the deal with his 18,042,428 shares of Twitter bringing him $978 million once the transaction is closed.
    Over the years Twitter has been available over several different mobile platforms including iOS, iPadOS Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, and Nokia S40.
    While there was no comment from The White House regarding the deal, spokesperson Jen Psaki said, “No matter who owns or runs Twitter, the president has long been concerned about the power of larger social media platforms.” Lawmakers also have questioned whether legislation is required to keep social media firms like Twitter from spreading fake news and disinformation.
    Back in 2018, when Facebook Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent consecutive days testifying before the Senate and the House, the elected representatives in both chambers showed that their knowledge of how tech works is pretty low. For example, one lawmaker couldn’t believe that Facebook is free. So he asked Zuckerberg how his company makes money and with just a hint of an eye roll, Zuckerberg explained that Facebook sells ads.
    Speaking of ads, according to Statista, at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021 Twitter had 217 million daily active monetized viewers. That was up 13% on a year-over-year basis.
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  • Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk buys a 9.2% stake in Twitter

    Tesla and SpaceX billionaire Elon Musk buys a 9.2% stake in Twitter

    Billionaire Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, has recently acquired a three billion dollar Twitter stake, which equates to about 9.2% of the social media company, or 73,486,938 Twitter shares.

    The news comes from a US securities filing, and according to the BBC, the acquisition, which reportedly happened on March 14, has now resulted in Twitter’s shares jumping up 25% in pre-market trading. With his acquisition, Musk now owns a larger Twitter share than the site’s original co-founder and until recently CEO Jack Dorsey, who currently owns 2.25%.

    Being a regular and prolific Twitter user, Elon Musk’s official profile currently has over 80 million followers. He’s used the platform to not only share his views on current events and update people on what his companies are up to, but to interact with fans, often Tesla users, and has been known to regularly share witty memes.

    This has created an image of being a different and fun, relatable “kind of billionaire,” as opposed to the likes of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

    Notably, the billionaire has used Twitter to share his views on the subject of free speech, and has been critical of social media sites, Twitter included, in regards to it.

    The 50-year-old billionaire’s first breakthrough was through co-founding x.com, which was later renamed to PayPal and sold to eBay for $1.5 billion. Currently Musk is most well-known as the CEO of electric car company Tesla and aerospace manufacturer SpaceX.

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  • Elon Musk Giving ‘Serious Thought’ To Build A New Social Media Platform

    Elon Musk Giving ‘Serious Thought’ To Build A New Social Media Platform

    Tesla Inc Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk is giving “serious thought” to building a new social media platform, the billionaire said in a tweet on Saturday.

    Musk was responding to a Twitter user’s question on whether he would consider building a social media platform consisting of an open-source algorithm and one that would prioritize free speech, and where propaganda was minimal.

    Musk, a prolific user of Twitter himself, has been critical of the social media platform and its policies of late. He has said the company is undermining democracy by failing to adhere to free speech principles.

    His tweet comes a day after he put out a Twitter poll asking users if they believed Twitter adheres to the principle of free speech, to which over 70% voted “no”.

    “The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully,” he said on Friday.

    If Musk decides to go ahead with creating a new platform, he would be joining a growing portfolio of technology companies that are positioning themselves as champions of free speech and which hope to draw users who feel their views are suppressed on platforms such as Twitter, Meta Platform’s Facebook and Alphabet-owned Google’s YouTube.

    None of the companies, including Donald Trump’s Truth Social, Twitter competitors Gettr and Parler and video site Rumble, have come close to matching the reach and popularity of the mainstream platforms so far.

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  • Elon Musk Claims Master Plan 3 Will Scale Tesla To Extreme Size

    Elon Musk Claims Master Plan 3 Will Scale Tesla To Extreme Size

    As Tesla opened its Berlin gigafactory, its CEO (techno king) Elon Musk who is the world’s wealthiest human, revealed that his electric car company will scale to an extreme size thanks to the third iteration of his master plan.

    Musk revealed that master plan 1 and 2 were stepping stones in Tesla’s journey towards becoming the preeminent electric car maker in the world, but now master plan 3 is coming. On Twitter, the South African revealed that he would be working towards scaling Tesla towards an extreme size.

    “Main Tesla subjects will be scaling to extreme size, which is needed to shift humanity away from fossil fuels, and AI,” he tweeted.

    Tesla’s aim is achieve a production capacity of 20 million vehicles by 2030 that’s than double of what the Volkswagen group and Toyota produce currently. Volkswagen and Toyota are around 10 million units per year right now and in eight years, Musk wants Tesla to double this number.

    Musk wants to get control of Tesla’s supply chain and manufacturing so that it can scale to these levels; since the global supply chain has been fractured thanks to a combination of the pandemic and geopolitical issues.

    As a part of this master plan, Musk will include his other ventures which are SpaceX and the Boring Company.

    Master plan 2 involved the acquisition of SolarCity which was another company that Musk had founded. Musk could be pondering the creation of a holding company called “X” that would be an umbrella organization under which SpaceX, Tesla, Boring Company all operate — much like the formation of Alphabet by the founders of Google.

    2022 for Tesla is all about scaling production and delivering. There will be no new product launches as global supply chain issues and the semiconductor shortage have nuked Tesla’s plans of launching the Cybertruck, the new Roadster and Musk even said currently it doesn’t have the bandwidth to work on the sub $25,000 hatchback that he had announced in September 2020.

  • Elon Musk Leaves $200-Billion-Club Empty

    Elon Musk Leaves $200-Billion-Club Empty

    Geopolitical tensions affecting global stock markets have also cut into the fortunes of the world’s wealthiest.

    The richest man on the planet has lost a large chunk of his wealth after Tesla shares fell 13 percent on Wednesday.

    Until yesterday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was the only person whose wealth exceeded $200 billion, leaving the club-of-the-over-$200-billionaires empty. In the past, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ wealth also reached the $200 billion thresholds, the report says.

    Musk’s wealth reached a record $340.4 billion in November last year, after which he sold over $16 billion worth of stock and donated $5.7 billion to charity.

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  • Former SpaceX Engineers Are Making Electric & Self-Driving Railway Vehicles

    Former SpaceX Engineers Are Making Electric & Self-Driving Railway Vehicles

    Tesla is not the only company that’s run by Elon Musk. In fact, Musk used some of the money he made with SpaceX to invest in Tesla to eventually gain control of the electric car maker. And SpaceX has also been categorized by Musk as some of the most important work he is doing in his life. But as it happens some of his former SpaceX engineers have quit and formed a startup that’s looking to reinvent the railway industry.

    Parallel Systems, founded by former SpaceX engineer, Matt Soule who partnered with a bunch of his former SpaceX colleagues, intends to disrupt the railway industry with electric powertrains and autonomous vehicle technology that’s taking over the consumer automotive space. The company has received $50 million in a Series A funding round and only recently came out of stealth

    Their idea is to create a small autonomous electric-powered rail vehicle. The idea is for a cargo vehicle that enables one to drop the cargo on a Parallel Systems vehicle and have it move without the need for the entire train to be unloaded. Each container can do individually move 800 km or band together to be even more efficient.

    This would allow smaller railroads to be reopened and new ones to be built to deliver cargo closer to customers and take some market away from trucks. These vehicles in question can also take in an impressive payload of 128,000 pounds which is twice the capacity of a semi-truck. So far though, their prototype vehicle can only do 80 km.

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  • Financial Times Names Elon Musk As Its ‘Person Of The Year’

    Financial Times Names Elon Musk As Its ‘Person Of The Year’

    The Financial Times newspaper has followed the Time magazine in naming Elon Musk, the chief of Tesla Inc, as its “person of the year”, commending him for the work done in transforming the electric vehicle industry. Tesla, the global EV leader, has pushed many young consumers and legacy automakers to shift focus to electric vehicles. In a column, the FT’s editor, Roula Khalaf, credited Musk for demonstrating that EVs could replace cars fueled by gasoline, and called him a revolutionary in the industry.

    “For a long time, the rest of the auto industry was basically calling Tesla and me fools and frauds,” the newspaper quoted Musk as saying in an interview. “They were saying electric cars wouldn’t work, you can’t achieve the range and performance. And even if you did that, nobody would buy them.”

    Musk is the world’s richest person and his company Tesla is worth about $1 trillion, making it more valuable than automakers Ford Motor and General Motors combined. Over the last few weeks, Musk has sold nearly $13 billion worth of Tesla shares.

    U.S. Senate Democrats have demanded that stocks and tradeable assets of billionaires be taxed as majority of their wealth lies there.

    Earlier this week, Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren took to Twitter to say that Musk should pay taxes and stop “freeloading off everyone else” after Time magazine named him its “person of the year”.

    “And if you opened your eyes for 2 seconds, you would realize I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year,” Musk responded.

    From hosting NBC sketch comedy show “Saturday Night Live” to dropping tweets on cryptocurrencies and meme stocks that have triggered massive movements in their value, Musk has dominated the headlines and amassed over 66 million followers on Twitter.

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