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

16th of April, 2025

"Hammer Time..." - Elon Musk (@elonmusk)

■ TESLA $TSLA ($241.55, -4.94%):

- Tesla posted that "One day it’ll drive itself right to your house" referring to new vehicle orders. Elon replied, "This year..." That is another big nod to FSD Unsupervised being released this year. Unsupervised at the factories, Cybercab in June, and now this? Exciting!

- Tesla's Lithium Refinery and This One's for the Gals partnered to host the 2025 "Engineer Like a Girl" event and introduced over 85 Seale Junior High students to the world of engineering. Per Klarissa Garcia Tesla Lithium's Sr. Site Operations Coordinator, "The event featured motivational talks from Tesla's engineering and leadership team and a hands-on activity where participants designed and built their own charging outlets with extension cords and multiple ports. This interactive experience aimed to inspire and educate the next generation of female engineers, fostering a culture of innovation and inclusivity that empowers young women to pursue STEM careers and make a lasting impact in their communities."

- The new 52k sq ft Tesla Center in Londonderry, New Hampshire, has officially opened. Tesla customers in NH will soon be able to take direct delivery of their vehicles at a local Tesla location—something that wasn’t possible in NH before. Pics by Cameron Berry (@cameronberrynh).

- Giga Shanghai shipping more Model Ys. This time aboard the Grand Pace cargo vessel at the Shanghai Nangang Terminal.

- The two 45ft LED movie screens at the Tesla Diner were spotted running. H/T Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt)

- Tesla launched a Voice AI agent for Tesla Insurance customers, enabling automated basic policy changes without human interaction. It will summarize your previous call to avoid repetition. This is now available for all Tesla Insurance customers.

- Ultra Red is now available at Giga Berlin.

FLYOVERS (flight links in sources section):

• Giga Texas: Joe Tegtmeyer (@JoeTegtmeyer), 16th of April, '25. More Cybercab testing and FSD Unsupervised. Perimeter beam progress continues at the Cortex Support Facility. Subscribe to and support Joe!

• Giga Nevada Semi Factory: Zanegler (@HinrichsZane), 15th of April, '25. Building extension toward the stamping pits is well underway. Subscribe to and support Zane!

■ SPACEX:

- Super Heavy Booster B17 had a quick visit to Mega Bay 1 yesterday and was rolled to the Rocket Garden where it waits for a flight next to Starship 20 and Super Heavy Booster 12. Pics from @NASASpacelight's live feed.

- Booster 14's hot staging ring was staged outside of Mega Bay 1, and today, thanks to @StarshipGazer, we see it was lifted and may already be installed.

- Uday Tennety, VP of Product at Armada AI, and team had a tour of SpaceX Hawthorne. Inside they visited the manufacturing site. "Walking through the production lines where rockets are built at scale was nothing short of inspiring." They also met with Peloton, a leader in real-time data solutions for Oil & Gas, and aim to deliver Starlink connectivity, compute, and AI/ML solutions to accelerate digital transformation in harsh environments like remote oilfields and offshore rigs.

- SpaceX President and COO Gwynne Shotwell congratulating the new CEO of KDDI, Hiromichi Matsuda, and on the launch of "au Starlink" Direct-to-Cell program in Japan.

- Yesterday, the Bahamas Deputy Prime Minister Chester Cooper announced they have suspended all Falcon 9 landings pending a full environmental impact assessment (EIA) and submits a post-launch report on the historic Falcon 9 landing that occurred in February. An Environmental Baseline Statement (EBS) by BRON, a local consulting firm acting on behalf of SpaceX, was released in February.

SpaceX's Kiko Dontchev (@TurkeyBeaver), said BRON had submitted preliminary findings from the post-launch report. He said the report found no significant differences in environmental conditions before and after the landing. While there was a temporary increase in sound during the landing, no changes in marine life were observed. Water quality remained stable, and bird species present before the launch were still observed in the area. Per Kiko, "Our assessment is that there was no impact from the landing."

- Yesterday, Greg Scott (@GregScott_photo) flew over Port Canaveral and spotted Falcon 9 booster B1083. It was undergoing landing leg retractions to be placed on the transporter (next to it on the left). It will then go to Hangar X at Kennedy Space Center for refurbishment. Follow Greg and support his work!

- Quick run around Starbase shows that teams are installing the final exterior paneling on the Starfactory. The second half of the roundabout is getting its sub-layer of rock. The water deluge system is getting work done. And lastly the Flame Trench is getting mor eplumbing installed. All pics by Shaun Gisler (@lifeatstagezero) for Marcus House.

Countdown to 180 (43 - Falcon 9, 0 - Falcon Heavy, and 2 - Starship):

• Launch 46! Saturday, 19th of April, 3:41 a.m. PT, Falcon 9 NROL-145 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. This is a batch of Starshield 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 47! Monday, 21st of April, at 4:15 a.m. ET, Falcon 9 Dragon CRS-2 SpX-32 will launch from Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at Kennedy Space Center, Florida. The booster will return to site and land at Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. This will be the 32nd commercial resupply services mission to the International Space Station. The flight will be conducted under the second Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA.

• Launch 48! Thursday, 24th of April, at 3:22 p.m. PT, Falcon 9 Starlink 11-9 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 49! Thursday, 24th of April, at 9:32 p.m. ET, Falcon 9 Starlink 6-74 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:

Michel (@Mic_VegasSphere) Vegas LOOP Update:

• Virgin Resort Station: This is the corner of Paradise and Harmon. It used to be the location of the Hard Rock Cafe. Lots of wall sections are moving into the tunnel. It appears to be moving South towards UNLV.

• Paradise Road Boring Company Apartment Complex: This property is across from the north parking at Virgin on Paradise. The boring equipment has left the yard and the property is being cleared to start groundwork. This tunnel appears to go north towards the Convention Center.

• Firefly - Hughes Center and Sphere Locations: This is the former Firefly Tapas Kitchen & Bar on Paradise. As you can see, the boring is well underway. Michel took this picture from the sidewalk on Paradise Road.

• Gordon Biersch - Hughes Center and Sphere Locations: South of Firefly on Paradise Rd is the former Gordon Biersch Brewery. This will be the Boring Company's Vegas Loop Headquarters. It will also be the station closest to the Sphere. It’s on Paradise Road right next to Del Frisco’s Steak. Nothing going on here yet. The new Boring Firefly location is about 100 yards north of here on the opposite side of Paradise Road.

This was a great update by Michel! Please follow and give him your support!

■ NEURALINK: N/A...

■ STARLINK:

- Today, India's Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal (@PiyushGoyal) met SpaceX Starlink executives, VP Chad Gibbs (@chadgibbs88) and Senior Director Ryan Goodnight (@ryangoodnight), to discuss partnerships and future investment plans in India. Starlink, partnered with Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel, aims to provide high-speed internet to remote areas, pending regulatory approval. Per Piyush, "Discussions covered Starlink's cutting-edge technology platform, their existing partnerships & future investment plans in India."

- On the 10th of April, Guinea-Bissau’s National Regulatory Authority for Information and Communication Technologies (ARN-TIC) officially approved Starlink for operation in the country. The licensing announcement was made by Bamba Kote, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Telecommunications Regulatory Entity (ARN). Although SpaceX received a provisional license in December, the company is now finalizing the last administrative requirements before rolling out full operations in Guinea-Bissau.

■ X:

- The account X Support (@Support) will soon be closed. X says they plan to streamline how users can contact us for help through the Help Center (link in the sources section). Subscribers can still get support via the Premium (@Premium) account... To those needing help, Premiums included, good luck. I have never got a real response... ever.

- Be ready for the X Shop to drop an OG X t-shirt soon. "'99 to ♾"

- X's Zach Warunek (@ZachWarunek) replied to a post stating that DMs will be removed completely and soon. Overall consensus is that it will be replaced with XChat.

- X is testing different locations for the view count on posts. Aaron (@aaronp613) found they were testing it in the top right corner on iOS. Aaron also discovered that students will be able to access SuperGrok for free for 2 months.

- X MENA's Stephanie Terroir (@stephterroir) and Joêlle Yazbeck (@YazbeckJoelle) at the Creators HQ event. Pics by Cristina Nájera (@CrisNajeraG)

- X Safety (@Safety) posted they will be highlighting several of their key safety policies next few days with the mission to create a safe, transparent, and trusted environment for everyone on the platform. "We’re guided by a core enforcement philosophy of allowing freedom of expression to coexist while limiting the spread of violative content. We’re constantly evolving our policies to make them clearer, simpler, and more actionable for both users and brands. Through a balance of transparency, control, and education, we aim to empower our community with the information they need to engage safely and confidently."

■ xAI:

- Yesterday evening, xAI released the first version of Grok Studio and added code execution and google drive support. With Grok Studio, Grok can now generate documents, code, make reports, and browser games. It will open your content in a separate window, allowing both you and Grok to collaborate on content together.

• Code Extension: If you ask Grok to generate code, you can see how it runs in a “preview” tab. You can preview HTML snippets, run Python, C++, JavaScript, Typescript and bash scripts.

• Google Drive Support: You can now attach files from your Google Drive. Grok can work with documents, spreadsheets and slides. This is available for all users.

If you have feedback on Grok Studio, send it to xAI's Alexander Coppess (@TheAlexCoppess).

- New Case Law Benchmark results shows Grok 3 mini Beta leading with 88.1% accuracy, at a cost of $3.00 per 0.9/1.5M tokens, and a latency of 3.91 seconds. DeepSeek V2 followed 2nd at 86.2% accuracy, $1.29 per 0.9/1.5M tokens, 13.66 seconds latency. Gemini 2.5 Pro Exp was third at 86.1% accuracy, $1.25 per 0.9/1.5M tokens, 8.05 seconds latency. Per xAI's Daniel (@nearlydaniel), "I spent plenty of time back at Harvey trying squeeze out the last bit of LLM performance for all sorts of legal tasks. After joining xAI and with the launch of Grok 3, I'm especially proud of this one."

- Grok 3 Beta also leads in the new Tax Evaluation Benchmark rankings! Grok 3 Beta topped at 78.8% accuracy with 13.11 latency. Next was GPTo1 at 78.6% accuracy with 19.19 latency. Claude 3.7 Sonnet (Thinking) was third at 78.4% accuracy and 43.26 latency. Per xAI's Jimmy Ba (@jimmybajimmyba), "Just grokked through some hard taxes today. 12 more months, expect full automation."

- Democrats, utilizing groups like Memphis Community Against Pollution and the Southern Environmental Law Center, are framing the xAI Colossus facility as an environmental and racial justice issue. They are alleging it exacerbates pollution in the predominantly Black Boxtown neighborhood, specifically from 35 natural gas turbines used to generator power. The charge is being led by Rep. Justin J. Pearson (D-Memphis) of District 86 and founder of Memphis Community Against Pollution. He claims using the turbines violates the Clean Air Act.

■ DOGE:

Estimated Savings: $155 Billion

Amount Saved Per Taxpayer: $962.73

- Yesterday, agencies terminated 57 contracts with a ceiling value of $1.6 billion and savings of $1.5 billion. This included a $120K USDA contract for an “Indonesia environmental policy and law enforcement specialist”.

- DOGE posted a update on the credit card program. The audit on unused/unneeded credit cards has expanded to 30 agencies. After 7 weeks, ~470k cards have been deactivated out of the ~4.6M that were active at the beginning.

■ ELON NEWS: N/A...

■ WAYS TO SUPPORT:

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I am working on getting a Starlink referral. We shall see.

Have a great day!

■ SOURCES:

FLYOVERS:

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

• Giga Nevada Semi Factory: Zanegler https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXhVhgUnPos

SpaceX:

• https://www.reuters.com/science/bahamas-suspends-spacex-landings-pending-post-launch-probe-2025-04-16/

Starlink:

• https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/business/piyush-goyal-meets-starlink-delegation-discusses-future-investment-plans-in-india/

X:

• http://help.x.com

xAI:

• https://www.commercialappeal.com/picture-gallery/money/business/development/2025/04/16/xai-impact-in-memphis-town-hall/83061935007/

Elon News:

• Elon Quote: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1912346979709120528