Want to Know: Your Daily Musk Companies Update (Patreon)

10th of December, 2024

"Any self-respecting civilization should at least reach Kardashev Type II..." - Elon Musk

■ TESLA $TSLA ($400.99, +2.87%):

- Tesla Cybercab by French photographer Damien Naud.

- The Strausberg-Erkner Water Association (WSE) approved Giga Berlin’s new water supply contract that will run for a year and a half. Tesla has committed to new wastewater regulations possibly due to an increase in polluted sanitary wastewater from the factories expansion. It is expected to increase the factory’s annual production capacity from 500,000 to 1 million units.

- Teresa Gutierrez, Country Manager of TESLA Mexico, was selected as one of the Foundation for Mexico's top 25 leaders from Mexico. "She has more than 20 years of experience in multinational companies, which is why she has been recognized as one of the "100 most powerful women in business," according to Forbes. Teresa's passion and tireless commitment to promote both the development and potential of our country make her an inspiring example for all."

- For the week of December 2nd - 8th, 21,900 new Teslas were insured in China. This was the second best week of 2024. 16,760 Teslas sold were Model Ys!

- Tesla and Polytechnic University of Timisoara, Romania, had over 250 students and teachers participate in a Demo Drive event with a Model 3 and Y in the parking lot of the Library.

- The US Patent office has granted Tesla its Actually Smart Summon "ASS" patent.

- Sofie Bukovska at the Tesla Store in Miami, Florida, for this year’s Art Basel Miami week. "A standout moment for me was attending Tesla’s event featuring the Cybercab. It’s inspiring to see companies like Tesla embracing creativity and making art a meaningful part of their brand experience. This kind of collaboration between industries is a powerful reminder of how art and technology can shape culture together." "Fingerpaint" by artist & designer Spencer Lee. Tesla Bot styled by exclusivegame.

- Tesla China's Global Vice President Grace Tao Lin was so excited about the new catering service at Giga Shanghai, she posted about it on Weibo. Per Grace, "Today I caught up with the new teppanyaki stall opened in our factory, and I felt so happy. The super catering at Giga Shanghai recharges the batteries for those who work hard and change the world." H/T faultbugs (@faultbugs).

- FSD/Autopilot Lead Zheng Gao is leaving Tesla for Amazon's Zoox robotaxi company to lead its hardware engineering team.

- Tesla AI is at the 2024 Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS), a multi-track interdisciplinary annual meeting that includes invited talks, demonstrations, symposia, and oral and poster presentations of refereed papers. Itis being held at the Vancouver Convention Center from today through Sunday.

■ SPACEX:

- This morning Booster 14 was removed from the Orbital Launch Mount and rolled back to the production site.

- Future Starship builds inside the Starfactory by Mary (@BocaChicaGal) for @NASASpaceflight.

- Starbase GM Kathy Lueders (@KathyLueders) was at the 2nd annual Space Economy Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, this past week.

Countdown to 144 (123- Falcon 9, 2 - Falcon Heavy, and 4 - Starship):

• Launch 131! Thursday, 12th of December, at 11:33 a.m. PT, Falcon 9 Starlink 11-2 will launch from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The booster will land on drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean.

• Launch 132! Thursday, 12th of December, at 3:55 p.m. ET, Falcon 9 O3b mPower 7 & 8 will launch from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The booster will land on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. This is the seventh and eighth of a constellation of eleven high-throughput communications satellites in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) built by Boeing and operated by SES.

• Launch 133! Friday, 13th of December, at 6:30 p.m. ET, Falcon 9 GPS III SV10 will launch from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The booster will land on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. GPS-IIIA (Global Positioning System) is the first evolution stage of the third generation of the GPS satellites. It consists of the first ten (known as “tranche”) of GPS III satellites.

• Launch 134! Monday, 16th of December, at 1:33 a.m. PT, Falcon 9 NROL-149 will launch from Space Launch Complex 4 East (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The booster will land on drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean. This is 6th batch of satellites for a reconnaissance satellite constellation built by SpaceX and Northrop Grumman for the National Reconnaissance Office to provide imaging and other reconnaissance capabilities.

• Launch 135! Monday, 16th of December, at 10:37 p.m. ET, Falcon 9 4x Astranis MicroGEO will launch from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral, Florida. The booster will land on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. This is four Astranis MicroGEO communications satellites that will be inserted in a custom geostationary orbit, from where they will conduct on-orbit maneuvers to reach their individual slots.

• Launch 136! Tuesday, 17th of December, at 8:26 p.m. ET, Falcon 9 Thuraya 4-NGS will launch from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The booster will land on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. Thuraya 4-NGS is a communication satellite being built by Airbus Defense and Space for the UAE based Yahsat. Based on the all-electric Airbus Eurostar-Neo Platform, Thuraya 4-NGS will incorporate a large 12-meter L-band antenna and a payload with on-board processing providing advanced routing flexibility of up to 3200 channels with dynamic power allocation over a large number of spot beams.

■ THE BORING COMPANY:

- "The Boring Company could do it for 1000X less money..." Elon's comment on the proposed $20 Trillion tunnel that would connect New York to London in 54 minutes.

■ NEURALINK: N/A...

■ STARLINK:

- James Cook University (JCU) with AirBridge is commissioning Vocus Starlink services to deliver greater educational opportunities to remote parts of Queensland. The partnership has provided Starlink at JCU sites at Thursday Island, Burketown, Dajarra and Emerald, with some introductory Learn JCU modules provided free for prospective students. Per JCU’s Head of Digital Infrastructure Delivery Dean Coran, "Before Starlink the only solution we had for these remote areas was 4G connectivity, which had hardly any reception. We’ve enhanced the connectivity with the same solution at our research stations at Fletcherview Station and Orpheus Island. Orpheus Island would have at least one outage most week, and since we’ve put Starlink in, they haven’t had one."

- Qatar Executive, the private jet charter division of Qatar Airways Group, announced starting the 14th of December they will provide Starlink on its first Gulfstream G650ER. Executives also confirmed that five more of its 15 G650ER fleet will have Starlink installed by May 2025, and entire fleet in the next 18 months.

■ X:

- Linda Yaccarino (@lindayaX) is in Tokyo, Japan, this week meeting with X Japan CEO Ayumu Matsuyama (@ayumu_matsuyama) for what is to be an exciting week. Can't wait to hear what comes next. Japan is X's 2nd largest market after the U.S. Pic of Tokyo's Imperial Palace posted by Linda.

- In case you missed it, the X Shop has an official account... @XShop.

■ xAI:

- xAI enhanced Grok's image generation abilities with a new model, code-named Aurora. Aurora is an autoregressive mixture-of-experts network trained to predict the next token from interleaved text and image data. xAI trained the model on billions of examples from the internet, giving it a deep understanding of the world. Beyond text, the model also has native support for multimodal input, allowing it to take inspiration from or directly edit user-provided images. xAI has posted a new blog. Link in the sources section.

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■ ELON NEWS:

- Per Elon, "If we transition to primarily sustainable energy consumption (electric transport and heating) and production (mostly solar and fission) within 20 years or so, which is currently trending to happen, the world will be fine imo."

■ WAYS to SUPPORT:

Thanks for all the support guys! We got Tesla Mezcal w/ Copitas, The Boring Mug, and Dragon Pin as giveaways for December! Good Luck!

If you are interested in getting a new Tesla, you can also support me by using my Referral. You can get up to $1,000 off the purchase. ts.la/stephen746292

Check out my linktr.ee for my other socials.

Have a great day!

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■ SOURCES:

Tesla:

• https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-giga-berlin-water-supply-contract-2024/

Starlink:

• https://www.jcu.edu.au/news/releases/2024/december/satellites-to-deliver-remote-education

• https://www.afritraveller.com/post/qatar-executive-brings-starlink-internet-onboard-gulfstream-g650er#google_vignette

xAI:

• https://x.ai/blog/grok-image-generation-release

Elon Quote: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1866176382411145602