Tropic

Tesla: a world of amazing abundance. SpaceX: making life multiplanetary. Same dream, two companies, one future worth watching. That's why I follow both, minus the fluff.

SpaceX has put a price on its Starbase computing plans. A City of Starbase public notice says SpaceX proposes to construct, own and operate "a gas-fired power plant and super-compute facility" on about 444 acres between Boca Chica Blvd and the Port of Brownsville, with roughly $24 billion in estimated investment for the initial phases alone. The detail I'd focus on is the pairing. The notice names the power plant first and treats it and the compute as one project, owned and run by SpaceX. My read, and it's my interpretation rather than anything the notice says, is that electricity has become the real bottleneck for big AI buildouts, and SpaceX is choosing to make its own power instead of building around someone else's timeline. For scale, $24 billion over 444 acres works out to about $54 million per acre, and the notice says later phases and expansions could follow. What it leaves out matters too. There's no megawatt figure, no chip count, no construction schedule, no word on whether the compute serves Grok, Starlink or something else, and no terms for the tax break. Nothing has been approved yet. The Starbase City Commission takes up a property tax abatement and a related economic development agreement at a public hearing on December 9.

"Grok Bot fixes for improved token efficiency and smarter behavior are underway" Elon this morning. He gave no ship date and did not say weekly limits or plan prices would change. The work is in progress, not a finished update.

127,566 passengers in four days. That's how many riders The Boring Company says Vegas Loop carried between 14 stations during SEMA Show 2026 in Las Vegas, Nov 3 to 6. Roughly 32,000 a day, underground, in Teslas. 👀

Musk says upcoming efficiency improvements will allow a 40 kWh Cybercab battery pack. He also says Tesla will make Cybercab in liquid silver. No rollout date given for either plan.

NASA selected SpaceX today for a lunar communications demonstration. The plan: launch communications satellites on Starship into the region between Earth and the Moon in 2028, helping develop networks for a future Moon Base.

🚨 Starship Flight 15 is targeting Friday, Nov 13 for the first ship catch. SpaceX VP Kiko Dontchev gave the date at UP.Summit. Plan: catch both Super Heavy and Ship 42 with the tower arms.

"I think probably rent them." Elon today at the Baron Investment Conference, asked whether Tesla would rent or sell Optimus. Preferred path is renting. Manufacturing cost starts around $30,000 and trends toward $20,000.

"When we unveil the details of the Starmind computer next year, it will blow people's minds" Elon today on X. At Baron earlier: first StarMind computers co-designed with NVIDIA, launches starting around Q3 2027 — his best guess.

Tesla Semi: 2 Megachargers are now operational at the Port of Long Beach, California. Tesla Charging announced them as a private Semi for Business site, not a public charging stop.

Starlink is inviting creators to make a big-game ad with Grok Imagine. The brief: 30 seconds, English, using Grok Imagine for visuals and any character voices. A chance to be featured—not guaranteed airtime.

Starlink’s Router 4 is now shipping with V4 Kits in the U.S. and Canada on Residential 200 Mbps and Residential Max. The new development is availability: the previously announced Wi-Fi 7 router is now shipping with those kits.

🚨 SpaceX picks Qualcomm to build Starlink Mobile's U.S. 5G network. Official Qualcomm release: Dragonwing gear for tens of thousands of sites, rollout aimed at 2027.

🚨 SpaceX revenue this quarter alone will be substantially higher than NASA's entire annual budget. Elon on X this morning. NASA's FY2026 enacted budget is about $24.4B.

2028 Tesla Lineup

🚨 Tesla will wind down Cybertruck production at Giga Texas around mid-2027. Elon says the move frees capacity for increased Cybercab robotaxi output. Existing Cybertrucks, he added, will be around for a long time.

🚨 Tesla says "Cybercab is back" in Europe, starting tomorrow. A public display tour opens at Auto Zürich on Nov 5, then moves through Germany and Central Europe into January. It's a look at the car, not rides.

"Try asking Grok @Bot to make calls!" Elon, yesterday. Today the official @bot account made it official. Tell it who to call and why. It handles the conversation while you watch a real-time transcript.

"Hopefully Optimus will help us with that shortly." That's a Tesla Cybercab engineer on who plugs the robotaxi in. Cybercab keeps a charge port for Superchargers, so for now a human has to do it. The longer-term plan is automated charging. 👀

🚨 JAL says Starlink on every ZIPAIR jet, plus flexible pricing, "led to a 12.3% increase in passenger revenue year-on-year." Over April to September, load factor rose from 73.7% to 87.8% even as capacity fell 9.7%.

Tesla Roadster 🇺🇸