(FREE) ELON CHRON: Your 24hr Musk Companies Update (Patreon)

2nd of April, 2025

"Accurate actuators accelerate automation..." - Elon Musk (@elonmusk)

■ TESLA $TSLA ($282.76, +5.33%):

Latest image of the Tesla Diner. H/T Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt).

Q1 Produced:

• Model 3/Y: 345,454

• Other Models: 17,161

• Total: 362,615

Q1 Delivered:

• Model 3/Y: 323,800

• Other Models: 12,881

• Total: 336,681, -13% YoY (Street Estimate: 377,590)

Q1 Energy Deployment: 10.4 GWh of energy storage products, +156% YoY

Model Y refresh changeover at all four Gigafactories accumulated several weeks of lost production in Q1, but the numbers reflected here are not just from a changeover. Politics, good or bad, certainly played a role here in the U.S and Europe. Regardless, TSLA did not mind the downturn in production. Q1 Financial Results and the Webcast will on the 22nd of April at 4:30 p.m. CT.

- New Optimus video drop from Elon. It's got a smoother walk, more human like. Per Tesla AI's Milan Kovac (milankovac), "Our latest walk! Straight knees, smoother heel-to-toe gait & arms sway, just chilling around. Entirely trained in simulation with RL."

Per Tesla's Ashish (@ashishkr9311), "Learned with RL in sim, deployed zero shot to real. We are planning to extend our RL sim training to manipulation in the coming months (with 22 dof hands). Initial results will produce dexterous robot specialists. My team is also building a generalist robot policy by leveraging robot & generic internet video data. Both are on the critical path to general robot intelligence. Reach out if interested!"

Per Tesla Operations Hrushi Kesh (@hrushikesh2808), "Sustainable abundance."

- Tesla's Nour Hermiz and Team participated in the Bella Center Fair in Copenhagen, Denmark, this past weekend. Tesla "It was a very positive experience. We were met with great hospitality, and the event went smoothly. A clear success that must be repeated!"

- Tesla has started to hand out their employee Accelerator of the Year awards for 2024. Winners include Luis Sánchez, Sr. Controls Engineer, and Hazem Elkhaiat, Quality Engineer. Per Luis, "This really means a lot to me and I'm super grateful to my leadership and Tesla for this recognition. I am forever grateful for the encouragement and support received along the way." Per Hazem, "Out of 26,000+ people in my Senior Director’s org, only 102 were selected for this recognition. I’m beyond grateful to be part of that group."

FLYOVERS (flight links in sources section):

• Giga Texas: Joe Tegtmeyer (@JoeTegtmeyer), 2nd of April, '25. The first Megapack for the 2nd Battery Energy Storage System at Giga Texas was set in place! Non-launch edition Model Ys are ramping. Subscribe to Joe and support his work!

■ SPACEX:

- Fram2 Mission Commander Chun Wang (@satofishi) gave us an update last night. Pilot Rabea Rogge (@rprogge) spent time on the FRAM2 Ham Competition, making contact with Berlin. The next day the took the first human X-rays in space. Last, they opened the cupola at midnight right above the South Pole.

- Eva Dorogi, Diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Hungary, along with her team visited the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California, yesterday. A heartfelt thank you to SpaceX's Dillon MacInnis and Paul Bouagnon organized the visit and conducted a bilateral meeting. Per Eva, "We deeply appreciate SpaceX’s strong partnership and look forward to continued collaboration in space innovation. It was an incredible experience visiting SpaceX. A special highlight of the visit was engaging with Tibor Kapu, Hungary’s soon-to-be astronaut, as he completes his preparations for the AX-4 mission."

- Update pics from Carlos, the Starbase Surfer (@cnunezimages). Starship 38 getting heat shield installed. High Bay demolition, roundabout and flame trench construction continues. And a beautiful shot of Booster 14 being lifted onto the OLM. Subscribe to Carlos and support his work!

- Researchers with DARPA's AtmoSense program was studying sound waves from controlled explosions in New Mexico to detect disturbances like earthquakes. While using Earth's atmosphere as a sensor, they unexpectedly identified a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket reentry. This discovery revealed a repeatable phenomenon that could detect aerial and space events of national security interest. DARPA has now planned a virtual workshop in this month to explore further applications.

- Falcon 9 Booster B1085 from the Fram2 launch aboard A Shortfall of Gravitas heading to Port Canaveral. Pic by NSF's Sawyer Rosenstein (@thenasaman).

- Falcon 9 Booster B1063 from Starlink 11-7 waiting at the Port of Long Beach. Pic by Matt Hartman (@ShorealoneFilms).

- SpaceX President and COO, Gwynne Shotwell, has become a billionaire with a net worth of $1.2 billion, driven by her 0.3% stake in the company. SpaceX reached a $350 billion valuation in December 2024 after a sale of insider shares.

- This morning, Gwynne Shotwell was a part of YPO Live. I am looking to see if there is a recording of the event.

Countdown to 180 (37 - Falcon 9, 0 - Falcon Heavy, and 2 - Starship):

• Launch 40! Thursday, 3rd of April, at 3:54 p.m. PT, Falcon 9 Starlink 11-13 will launch from Space Launch Complex 4E (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 41! Saturday, 5th of April, at 3:30 p.m. PT, Falcon 9 Starlink 11-11 will launch from Space Launch Complex 4E (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 42! Saturday, 5th of April, at 10:40 p.m. ET, Falcon 9 Starlink 6-72 will launch from Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. The booster will land on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

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■ THE BORING COMPANY: N/A... boring.

■ NEURALINK:

- Neuralink has reposted that the Patient Registry is now open globally. Not sure why they took it down yesterday. If you or someone you know has quadriplegia and interested in Neuralink, you can sign up from anywhere in the world. Link to registry is in the sources section.

 Per Neuralink's Romina Nejad (@RominaNejad), "So excited to offer people around the world the opportunity to join our registry!"

■ STARLINK:

- Starlink Zero-G mode is now available in the Starlink app.

- SpaceX's Director of Starlink Global Licensing and Market Activation, Rebecca Slick Hunter, will be at the Bangladesh Investment Summit 2025. The event is from the 7th - 10th of April at the Intercontinental in Dhaka.

- This was Liberty Global's Starlink announcement event. They are now a Starlink authorized reseller in Panama. Per Reinier Huisman, Sr. Product Director at Liberty, "This partnership allows us to deliver high-speed, low-latency satellite internet to even the most remote areas—empowering businesses across the country with a full suite of reliable connectivity options like never before."

■ X:

- According to Nima Owji (@nima_owji), X is going to start selling inactive usernames. You will have to submit an inquiry via an automated support bot and X will send you the price. There will be discounts for bulk purchases.

- Community Notes has updated note ranking to fortify against pile-ons or organic waves of ratings from one perspective. Notes now need a minimum number of ratings from raters with different perspectives. Notes that otherwise meet the Helpful standard but do not have enough ratings are shown as visible note previews to help gather more ratings. They will also be included in the Needs Your Help tab.

- X will soon add a menu option when you tap on an image to edit it with Grok.

■ xAI: N/A...

■ DOGE:

Estimated Savings: $140 Billion

Amount Saved Per Taxpayer: $869.57

- There is a report by Politico that Elon will soon depart as a special government employee with DOGE so he can focus on his companies. Per Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) on the report, "This "scoop" is garbage. Elon Musk and President Trump have both publicly stated that Elon will depart from public service as a special government employee when his incredible work at DOGE is complete."

- Yesterday, agencies terminated 80 contracts with a ceiling value of $203.6 million and savings of $139.1 million, including a $2.1 million Department of State management consulting contract for a “senior advisor in the Democratic Republic of Congo”.

- The $13 million referenced yesterday that the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) placed into its private Endowment has been returned to the Treasury.

- The Department of Veterans Affairs has canceled a ~$380,000/month contract for minor website modifications. The same work is now being executed by 1 internal VA software engineer spending ~10 hours/week.

■ ELON NEWS:

- Yesterday, Elon met with CIA Director John Ratcliffe (@CIADirector) to discuss ideas and progress for making government more efficient. Per John, "Had a great visit and meeting. I look forward to working with Elon and his team to ensure that CIA remains the premier intelligence Agency in the world." The second pic is really cool. Elon and John are standing under Archangel 12 (A-12). The A-12 was developed under the classified Project Oxcart, a CIA program to create a very fast, high-flying reconnaissance aircraft to succeed the U-2 spy plane. It was the precursor to SR-71 Blackbird.

- Elon backed Wisconsin Supreme Court nominee (R) Brad Schimel lost to (D) Susan Crawford. The state will remain a 4-3 liberal majority. Elon spent over $21 million. This was the most expensive judicial contest in U.S. history at over $90 million in total spending.

■ THANKS FOR READING:

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Have a great day!

■ SOURCES:

FLYOVERS:

• Giga Texas: Joe Tegtmeyer... coming soon.

Tesla:

• Q1 2025 Update: https://ir.tesla.com

• Q1 Financials Webcast (4/22/25): https://ir.tesla.com

SpaceX:

• https://gizmodo.com/darpa-unintentionally-invents-new-rocket-radar-thanks-to-spacex-2000584008

• https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeremybogaisky/2025/04/01/gwynne-shotwell-spacex-billionaire/?utm_source=ForbesMainLinkedIn&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflowForbesMainLI

Neuralink:

• https://neuralink.com/patient-registry/

Elon News:

• Elon Quote: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1907317741763084507

• https://www.reuters.com/world/us/wisconsin-votes-high-profile-judicial-race-after-millions-spent-by-musk-2025-04-01/