Advancing Distributed Energy Reliability: Department of Energy’s Focus on Virtual Power Plants

Texas Capitol. Image by Gail Alfar.

(Austin, Texas) On March 10, 2023, an important event unfolded as Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm visited key stakeholders in Texas to discuss the groundbreaking Aggregated DER Pilot Project and the ADER Task Force. This visit marked the initiation of a series of Virtual Power Plant (VPP) listening sessions aimed at fostering deeper collaboration and information exchange. The primary goal is to explore how the Department of Energy can accelerate the deployment of VPPs, positioning them as essential tools for achieving national energy goals.

The Setting: Aggregated DER Pilot Project and ADER Task Force

During the visit, Secretary Granholm met with sponsors of the Aggregated DER Pilot Project and the leadership of the ADER Task Force, along with local Texas leaders and various stakeholders who are actively involved in advocating for distributed energy reliability solutions. These solutions, treated as virtual power plants, hold the potential to revolutionize energy affordability, grid resilience, decarbonization efforts, and energy justice.

Roundtable Discussion and Insights

The roundtable discussion, facilitated by Jigar Shah, Director of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, delved into several crucial aspects of the ADER Task Force’s efforts. Participants engaged in a comprehensive discourse on the rapid launch of the ADER pilot program and its accelerated timeline. This pilot program seeks to enhance energy affordability while bolstering the resilience of the energy grid. The roundtable served as a platform for participants to share valuable insights, best practices, and success stories that can be adapted across the United States.

Collaborative Governance and Essential Reforms

A distinctive aspect of the ADER Task Force’s work is the collaborative governance approach. This approach involves a dynamic partnership between sponsoring Commissioners, ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) staff, private sector entities, institutional stakeholders, and committees dedicated to organizing and mobilizing progress. This collaborative effort signifies a commitment to accountability and progress, aiming to catalyze essential reforms within electric markets policies.

Texas’ National Influence in Energy Innovation

The Department of Energy’s engagement with ERCOT and Commission leadership, research institutions, and energy reform advocates showcased the remarkable impact Texas is making on the national stage. By innovating solutions and driving investments where they are most needed, Texas is leading the way in shaping the future of energy reliability.

Gemstone of Progress: Illuminating the Brilliance of Virtual Power Plant

The visit of Secretary Granholm and the subsequent roundtable discussion underscored the significance of virtual power plants as a transformative solution for achieving energy affordability, grid resilience, decarbonization, and energy justice on a national scale. The collaborative efforts of stakeholders in Texas, coupled with the Department of Energy’s involvement, spotlighted the role of innovation in addressing pressing energy challenges. As the nation strives for a more sustainable and resilient energy landscape, the potential of virtual power plants shines brightly on the horizon.

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas
Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm and ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas

Article Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – March 14, 2023. All Rights Reserved. “My goal as an author is to support Tesla and Elon Musk in both making lives better on earth for humans and becoming a space-faring civilization.” – Gail Alfar

Elon Musk at Morgan Stanley TMT Conference 2023.

Elon Musk’s Talk at Morgan Stanley TMT 2023 on Twitter, X.com, Tesla and Starship

Elon Musk with Michael Grimes at Morgan Stanley TMT Conference 2023. Image courtesy @anirvanc on Twitter

Morgan Stanley held this year’s TMT Conference in beautiful (and rainy!) San Francisco and Elon Musk spoke on March 7 about Twitter, X.com, Tesla and SpaceX.  The talk was informative, hopeful, well thought out and funny! Of course you may listen to it online and you may also prefer to read Elon’s interviews so that is why I have transcribed (and categorized) the interview here on “What’s Up Tesla.” 

I do this with many of Elon Musk’s talks for you.  It is part of the goal of this publication to preserve these important talks in writing.   A breakdown for your reference:

Twitter:

  • Mission , News happening in real-time
  • Public relations department?
  • Advertising’s incredible potential 
  • Community Notes and the rigorous pursuit of truth
  • Proactively reducing child exploitation 
  • Advertisers enjoy brand safety
  • A healthy national dialogue
  • Freedom of speech: hearing what you don’t want to hear
  • Twitter won’t always be a fractal rube goldberg machine
  • Cash flow

Starlink, X.com, Tesla and SpaceX’s Starlink and Starship:

  • Starlink: a case study in effective advertising
  • X.com as your everything app
  • Tesla Master Plan 3 and the next-gen vehicle
  • Starlink’s advantage
  • Starship orbital launch

The Mission of Twitter

Michael Grimes: (paraphrased) Where are you on the core principles of Twitter: Authentic, informative, entertaining, accurate, brand safe and democratic?

Elon Musk: “I think some of these are a little at odds, but ‘brand safe’ I think really means ‘where advertising is displayed’ or the advertiser gets to choose what material is near that advertising. If it’s some sort of… like a train accident or a war scene, then probably a family-friendly brand is not going to want to advertise right next to that.  Or it can’t be like, ‘here’s a bleak war scene, would you like to buy a hamburger?’ it would be like, awkward, you know? 

So that’s understandable you want to put advertising next to content where it makes sense.  But the content in general needs to be authentic and informative even if it is controversial or jarring. I think people need to be able to choose, to some degree, what content they want to see.  Of course, on Twitter, you can. But really we want it to be the fundamental place you go to, to learn what’s going on and get the real story. 

The truth, the whole truth and it’s going to be more than, hahaha, I’d like to say nothing but the truth but that’s hard, (laughter) there’s going to be a lot of BS there too. There are going to be lies, for sure, but you want to have the truth and you want to bubble up the truth and be able to sort of sort it out… you really want truth with the least amount of error.”

News happens in real-time on Twitter

Elon Musk explains Twitter’s unique place as a real-time news source,

“Well, I’m sure many of you use Twitter.  Everything on Twitter is happening in real-time.

So if you contrast that to what’s happening in a newspaper, they have to learn the information, propose an article to their editor, get it approved, write the article, get it edited, figure out which day it’s going to get published on, and so the thing that happened is being reported on 3-4 days, sometimes a week late. And if it happens on a weekend then it’s at least 3 days. 

You know ChatGPT was huge news for several days on Twitter before there were any news articles about it in major publications. So when thinking about investing in things, you want to have information that is as timely and accurate as possible, there’s no better source than Twitter for that.”  Elon Musk

Michael Grimes lamented on the fact that people need to be “default skeptical” of any news story about Twitter and assume it’s default wrong because “not only some journalists have an agenda but the source has an agenda and it’s so easy to go through the chain of inaccuracy or outright falsehood.” He asked Elon Musk if a public relations department was a consideration,

No, PR departments… no the right name for PR is propaganda.  Maybe we should have a VP of propaganda, I think that’s more honest, and also a VP of witchcraft. (laughter) Those would be two great ones.

“If you pick up any given newspaper and read the whole thing and say, ‘how many of those stories are positive about anything at all?’ Almost none. So if something is newsworthy it is going to have a negative slant, whether it is positive or not.  There’s like something in journalism that, they’ve been trained to basically never write a positive story about anything. Once and a while you see a puff piece but it’s rare.  So anything that’s newsworthy will get written about, anything that’s written about will go through a negativity lense and so you, therefore, have a bizarrely negative view of the world if you draw your information from newspapers. This is simply a fact.” Elon Musk

Why advertising on Twitter has incredible potential

“So on Twitter, you can get a much more balanced positive-negative situation, it doesn’t have that bias quite as much.  There’s probably still a little bit of negativity bias but much less so.  I’m not sure what the legacy media does, I mean at this point, really, Twitter is, by the way, the #1 news app in the world.  So in terms of what people download for news, it’s #1. 

There are 500M active users. 250M daily users of which I’d say there are probably 180M significant daily users, where it’s a meaningful amount of time. The average amount of time people spend on Twitter of that 250M is about 1/2 an hour or so.  The thing I think that is most interesting is about 120M to 130M hours of human attention per day on Twitter, every single day on average.

I think it comes to an interesting point which is, it’s startling how poorly monetized that is because you have to say, how valuable is that attention? 130M hours of human attention per day, of people that read.  So these are generally the smartest people in the world, the most influential people in the world, and you have 130M hours of their time per day, that’s a lot!

Currently, Twitter makes about 5 or 6 cents per hour of that time.  I think this is poorly monetized (laughter). Like, if I’m spending 2 hours a day on Twitter, whatever ads are coming through are getting my, or yours or everyone in the room’s attention, your time is incredibly valuable.  The thing is, we need to actually serve ads that are relevant and useful and I think as we do that we can probably at least get it like 15 cents an hour or 20 cents an hour, a quarter? 

I think the actual potential here for Twitter revenue is gigantic.  And it’s going to be a win-win situation which is if you are served advertising that you find timely and relevant with products and services that are useful to you, that’s good for you and good for the advertiser. Advertising in the limit of relevance is content.” Elon Musk

Community Notes and the rigorous pursuit of truth 

Michael Grimes asked how Community Notes can be used without being hijacked by either side of an issue or political spectrum. Elon Musk explained,

“There’s a White Paper on Community Notes that I recommend reading, in fact, I’ll tweet it out so that people can have easy access to it because it’s really quite a clever idea.  Think of it like page rank for pages as applied to people, which is that as people build credibility in how they review notes, they build up enough credibility to actually write notes. Those notes are then rated by others, and depending upon the credibility of the people rating your notes, your credibility score gets affected. In order to be a notes contributor, you have to be a verified person. And it takes a while to get there; when you just start out, you will start off with no credibility score.

We actively look at any attempts to game the system and shut them down. If they’re determined to be not real people or if they seem to be brigading because there are deliberate attempts to manipulate Community Notes. We also make the Community Notes source code open and available, so you can basically see everything. You can see exactly how Community Notes is calculating things, and what changes are made to Community Notes and we’ll keep iterating and the goal is to have truth with the least amount of error.

There’s always like, ‘What is truth?’ Does someone really aspire to the truth?  If they really aspire to the truth they must acknowledge that there is some probability that what they think is untrue. If somebody thinks that what they say is true with 100% probability, there’s a 100% probability they are lying. Truth must acknowledge error, and you aim to minimize the error over time, that’s what Community Notes is. I think also, once someone gets Community Noted, they think twice about being dissected in the future.  You start getting noted a few times, and you think ‘Uh, oh!’

The important thing is that anyone can be noted, including me, and in fact, I wanted to make a note of being noted. The point is that if I can be noted, anyone can be noted, including advertisers. We’ve had a few cases where the advertising wasn’t accurate and it got noted.  This, I think will be very helpful in truth in advertising. The goal is the rigorous pursuit of the truth, aspirationally the whole truth, and the least amount of untruth.” Elon Musk

Proactively reducing child exploitation on Twitter 

“I’ve repeatedly said to the Trust & Safety team at Twitter that the #1 Priority,
which will always be the #1 Priority no matter what,
is ensuring that children are safe on Twitter,
that there’s no child exploitation. 
So that is #1 priority always and forever.”
Elon Musk

Elon Musk explained to Michael Grimes, “I’ve repeatedly said to the Trust & Safety team at Twitter that the #1 Priority, which will always be the #1 Priority no matter what, is ensuring that children are safe on Twitter, that there’s no child exploitation.  So that is #1 priority always and forever. 

What I’ve been told is that we’ve done more to eliminate [CSE material] on Twitter in the last four months than what has been done in the last ten years. It will continue to be our number one priority. A 100-fold reduction in CSE search patterns is pretty gigantic to say the least.  It’s the absolute number one priority.”

Advertisers on Twitter enjoy brand safety

Elon Musk used the example of Disney.  “With respect to brand safety, it really depends a lot on the brand. By the way, Disney is a major advertiser on Twitter worldwide.  Apple is one of our biggest advertisers.

But Disney of course does not want to have one of their ads next to things that aren’t appropriate for a family audience.  But there are other products that are kind of more R-rated if you will, so they’re more comfortable with advertising being in the equivalent of like a R-rated movie or something like that.  So brand safety depends on what brand you’re talking about.  Is it a family brand or a less family brand? 

Advertisers can actually adjust what content they are comfortable having their advertising appear next to.  The same is true on TV.  The advertising that you’ll see at 7 pm is different than the advertising that you’ll see at midnight. We have the same functionality on Twitter, so it’s truly up to the advertiser where they want to put their content.  But I think by far the most important thing is if the advertising is effective.  That it is relevant and that it moves the needle for a company.  Advertising relevance is the most gigantic thing. 

This is going to sound totally bizarre but Twitter did not consider relevance in advertising until 3 months ago.  In fact if you use Twitter for a long time, you should ask ‘how many products have you bought off Twitter?’ Probably zero! (laughter) Judging by the laughter, probably zero.  And your time is incredibly valuable.” 

Michael Grimes: Flamethrower, no one bought a flamethrower?

Elon Musk: Haha, its possible that they might have bought things from content-based tweets because the content that’s recommended is reasonably relevant but the advertising has not been.  So as we shift towards advertising being relevant and timely, as I said, advertising that is relevant and timely is content.  The time of 130M person-hours of the smartest people on earth is insanely valuable. Historically, with advertising being mostly irrelevant, we’ve been wasting peoples’ time and that’s not good. Going forward, Twitter will have very relevant and useful advertising. There will be a massive increase in revenue because it is now useful. So I’m very optimistic about the future.  It’s been a very difficult 4 months, but I’m optimistic about the future. 

Healthy national dialogue on Twitter

Elon Musk: I think the objective reality for anyone looking at Twitter for a long time was that Twitter had a massive thumb on the scale on the left side. Twitter would ban and suspend accounts on the right 10 times more than on the left. This is naturally what you would expect, frankly, because we are in San Francisco, which is deep deep blue.

So, Twitter was controlled by the far left. So the natural thing that would happen then was the suppression of moderates, not just suppression of the right but even suppression of moderate voices. But that’s not conducive to a healthy national dialogue.

In order to have a healthy national dialogue, you have to represent the whole country, and you have to represent everyone in other countries too. That’s the only way to have a Town Square.

Freedom of speech: hearing what you don’t want to hear

Elon Musk: There were disproportionately more accounts unsuspended and un-shadowbanned on the right because Twitter had a huge thumb on the scale in favor of the left.  But if you say, ‘Have we been suspending accounts on the left?  Have we been shadowbanning accounts on the left? No, no we haven’t.’ No, because exactly what I said we were doing which is to make it an even playing field and you know something is Freedom of Speech when you’re hearing speech from someone you don’t like and you don’t like what they’re saying. 

Otherwise it’s not free speech. And if you don’t have that ability, then sooner or later that suppression of speech is going to be turned on you. It is a good sign if you’re seeing people you don’t like say things you don’t like.  That is a good sign, not a bad sign… provided you can say your piece too! I think this is fundamental.

The reason I did the Twitter acquisition was not because I thought this would be some lucrative goldmine, and in fact, it has been arduous and difficult with being dumped on [by mainstream media] every day. That’s not the most fun thing in the world. But if we do not have a strong foundation of free speech, I fear for the future of our civilization. We must have this. That’s why I did it.

Twitter won’t always be a fractal rube goldberg machine

Elon Musk: The codebase is like a Rube Goldberg Machine and when you zoom in on one part of the Rube Goldberg Machine there’s another Rube Goldberg Machine and then there’s another one! That’s what I mean by the fractal.  As you zoom in there’s another fractal and another fractal and a fractal Rube Goldberg Machine. It’s quite difficult to keep this thing running and then also difficult to advance the product because it is really overly complex. We’ll make what appears to be a small change somewhere that then causes a massive disruption. For example, yesterday we made what we thought was a small change, we want to be in full disclosure including gruesome details.  There was what was supposed to be a small change to 1% of the Twitter user base ended up being a catastrophic event to 100% of the Twitter user base. We don’t have enough time to go into the details but there was a Boolean flag in the Twitter front end that should not have been there. 

I’ll give you an example.  At one point there was a problem with Twitter Spaces where suspended users were able to join conversations even though they were suspended and so we temporarily turned off access to Twitter Spaces which then made anyone who is using the Twitter Android App unable to like a tweet. Now how those things are connected is not clear, haha. So if you had an iOS app you could like tweets, if you’re on the Web app you could like tweets but not if you had an Android app because of Spaces. 

There’s a lot of work behind the scenes and simplifying the code base, getting rid of extraneous features and enabling Twitter to evolve more rapidly in the future but it requires a lot of cleanup. 

Looking forward to Twitter being cash flow positive

Michael Grimes: You’ve grown users [on Twitter] despite a lean engineering team and cutting out a data center. 

Elon Musk: Yeah, I think on balance we’re doing okay.  Just to give you a sense of where things were at the close of acquisition on October 29th, Twitter was tracking to a negative 3 Billion dollar a year burn rate and had 1 Billion in the bank. That’s a pretty dire situation.

If 2023 had been a normal year, Twitter would have done something on the order of 4.5 Billion in revenue and 4.5 Billion in cost, roughly break even, but when you add 1.5 Billion of debt servicing to that and a massive decline in advertising, some of it cyclic, some of it political, but call it at roughly a 50% decline in revenue, you’ve got over 3 Billion dollars negative.  Twitter has some revenue that’s not advertising-based, data subscriptions and what-not, but in the absence of action, Twitter would have had 6 Billion in costs and 3 Billion in revenue so minus 3 Billion and there was 1 Billion in the bank, so it would have gone bankrupt in 4 months.  Immediate and drastic action had to be taken, which was. 

We actually have now cut the non-interest burn to roughly 1.5 Billion.  So we’ve got 1.5 Billion of debt servicing and 1.5 Billion of expenditures.  We went from 3 data centers to 2, and reduced our cloud expenditures significantly, while at the same time having the fastest product evolution in Twitter’s history.  So overall, not bad. There have been a few bumps along the road obviously but this is to be expected. And now I think we have the opportunity to grow it into something quite spectacular.  We had the highest total user minutes in Twitter history. 

The real numer to care about is actually not the MDAU (Monetized daily active user) but its user time.  How many total user hours per day do you have? That’s the real figure of merit because one could for example go to 300 Million daily active users but if they spent less time on the system cumulatively that would actually be a downgrade.  Its how much human attention are you worth?

That’s why I think the really profound thing is what Twitter has is roughly 130 Million hours of the smartest most influential people on earth, every single day.  There’s nothing else that has that.  I mean there are social networks that have more users but they do not have the smart, influential people, they don’t have you!

Michael Grimes: After doing the math, Twitter is EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) profitable today and then you’re looking for break even after debt services.  When do you get to cash flow break even?

Elon Musk:  Well it’s EBITDA profitable but the “D” is quite big! (laughter)

Michael Grimes: When do you get to cash flow break even after that “D”?

Elon Musk: This is where we need to focus on the “E” part. (laughter) Yeah, I hope we pay taxes. So like I said, we’re getting to the point where we’re close to having the total expenditures for the company excluding debt roughly equal to the debt. I think we’ll be there in Q2. I definitely don’t want to count chickens before they’re hatched or jinx it or anything but I think we’ve got a shot at being cash flow positive next quarter.

Twitter has huge advertiser value

Michael Grimes: Twitter has great advertiser value with 147 Billion global impressions of the World Cup 2022 conversation. 

Elon Musk:  What I say to advertisers and brands is ‘use Twitter yourself and believe what you see on Twitter, not what you read in the newspapers.’ Because what you see on Twitter is the real thing, and what you read in newspapers is not. And I’d like to thank Mark Read and WPP for their support and publicists and others that have stuck with us like Disney and Apple.

Michael Grimes: When do you introduce performance-based advertising and scale it?

Elon Musk: Performance-based advertising is really just advertising that is relevant, in fact we should realistically have zero nonperformance-based advertising. 

We want advertising that matters, people’s attention is precious. We should not serve them ads that are annoying or irrelevant or strident or ugly.  It was interesting you should mention White Lotus, I was talking today with David Zaslav, it was great, and he was like, ‘Why can’t we put a White Lotus trailer every time someone mentions White Lotus on Twitter?’ I’m like, ‘Absolutely!’

So one of the super-obvious but profound things that we’re doing is enabling keyword advertising so that can the keywords, like ‘White Lotus’ and if somebody mentions White Lotus, you put the White Lotus trailer there.  I mean, that sounds very obvious. 

We don’t need advanced AI for this one (laughter).  It’s sort of just google Adwords that apply to tweets and the home timeline and replies and everywhere else because you often have sort of long, deep conversations with people going on talking about movies, TV, products and whatnot and that’s the perfect opportunity for advertisers to provide their message. 

Starlink: A case study in effective advertising

Elon Musk: You know, if I think about something, for example, like Starlink, which does advertise in various media you want to advertise to users in a region that are not already saturated.  So Starlink tends to be saturated in urban areas but it is not saturated in rural areas.  What Starlink would like to do is say, ‘Please show the ad to rural users with a slow connection. And the simple message is, ‘Do you want faster internet for less money? Click. Probably you do.  Twitter needs to be able to do a simple thing like that.  And it will.  It is already able to do that, we just haven’t fully rolled it out.  So I think we’re around 20%-ish but by the end of this year almost all advertising should be reasonably relevant.

“Twitter is not a one way street, there’s continuous interaction. 
I think we can have a profoundly more useful advertising experience.” Elon Musk

Elon Musk: Even if you say nothing about that ad, after its dropped in the Twitter system and it has 10,000 views, you populate the parameter space of the ad and then you correlate the user parameter space and the ad parameter space and then you don’t need to do any demographic targeting because you could be like, say its a gardening ad or you could be 20, 30, 40, 70 years old, any sex, whatever, it doesn’t matter. 

What matters is you like gardening and that’s the ad that should be shown. I think we can get away from the ad targeting by age range and sex in favor or targeting by interest.  Alot of this demographic tageting was done coming from a TV or newspaper era where you don’t have interaction with the user, you just have to kind of guess because its a one way street in TV.  But on Twitter its not a one way street, there’s continuous interaction.  I think we can have a profoundly more useful advertising experience.

The everything app: X.com

Michael Grimes: Tell us about your vision for X, the everything app.

Elon Musk: I think its possible to create a very powerful finance experience basically. Paypal is kind of like a halfway version of what I think could be done in payments and finance. You want to be able to send money easily from one account on X / Twitter to another account effortlessly with one click.  You want to be able to earn interest on the money, you want to be able to have debt so your interest can grow negative.  Basically, I think it’s possible to become the biggest financial institution in the world just by providing people with convenience and payment options.  We don’t have time to go into detail here except if we just make the app more and more useful, people will use it more and it will be great.  I mean, you’ll see!

Michael Grimes: The Tesla team is nice and built out, the Twitter executive team is perhaps a bit leaner.  Maybe there’s a meme that’s accurate.

Elon Musk:  He does have a black turtleneck, haha! Do you need anything more?  I don’t think so.

Michael Grimes: So when does that Twitter management team have that bench like you showcased at the Gigafactory?

Elon Musk: Well I think it takes a lot of time to build a strong management team.  We built the Tesla management team over 20 years.  I think Twitter is an easier problem than Tesla by a long shot. But it will take some time to build the team, probably a few years. 

Tesla Master Plan 3 is a message of hope grounded in physical reality

Michael Grimes:  You shared Master Plan 3 at the Gigafactory and the edit that came to my mind was ‘Master planet! after your first piece there in sustainable energy for all earth.  Can you take us through that positive, optimistic, mathematically underpinned vision?

Elon Musk: Okay, there’s not a lot of time to do that but I guess the overall message is that we can absolutely turn earth into a sustainable energy economy, fully sustainable, using lithium-ion batteries, solar, wind, as well as geothermal, nuclear and other things but primarily it’ll be solar and wind and lithium-ion batteries.

And to our calculations, you need roughly 240 TeraWatt hours of lithium-ion batteries.  Most of those will be iron phosphate for the primarily iron cathode which is a plentiful material.  In fact, the #1 element on earth is actually iron — a little factoid.  I think earth by mass is about 32% iron and about 30% oxygen and then everything else is miscellaneous. So we’re like a mighty rust ball.  So, plenty of iron.  Basically, the materials needed to make 240 TerraWatt hours of batteries are actually plentiful on earth. We don’t need to mow down the Amazon or anything like that!

We don’t need to do anything terrible to the environment to create 240 TerraWatt hours of batteries, in fact, there will be less mining required in a sustainable energy economy than is currently required.  Really, this is a message of hope and optimism grounded in physical reality, it is not wishful thinking.  We should be excited and inspired about the future.

And I am not suggesting complacency or anything like that and getting there faster is better than getting there slower, but we don’t need to live some terrible austere life and give up the things that we like. You can have the things that you like, in fact, even more of them, and the environment can be good.  All the good things are possible, that’s what I’m saying. 

We should be excited and optomistic about the future.  We need to go build this, its a lot of work but you should not feel sad about the future regarding sustainable energy, it will happen! Elon Musk

Elon Musk: We should be excited and optimistic about the future.  We need to go build this, its a lot of work but you should not feel sad about the future regarding sustainable energy, it will happen! We just want to make it happen faster rather than slower.

Tesla’s next generation vehicle 

Michael Grimes:  That was the first big takeaway, the next one that I had was your next phase of vertical integration, the relentless first principles thinking on vehicle design, battery design, factory optimization. Could you talk more on this?

Elon Musk: There’s a clear path to making a smaller vehicle that is roughly half the production cost and difficulty of our Model 3. That vehicle will really be used almost entirely in autonomous mode.  The thing that is really gigantic for Tesla is autonomy and if people have used the Tesla full self driving and gave seen how rapidly the full self driving capability has been evolving, it should be obvious that that is by far the most profound thing. 

Elon Musk: The total addressable market stuff, it’s like, guys, this is actually not the right way to think about it.  Passenger vehicles right now only see about 10-12 hours of use per week.  There’s 168 hours in a week, if those vehicle are autonomous they’re probably going to get used for 50-60 hours a week. That’s a 5x increase in the value of a car and it costs the same to make the car. At that point you basically have software margins in a hardware product, it’s the same.  Total addressable market is everyone, all humans. Powerful.

Why Starlink’s speed is fast

Elon Musk: The Starlink team is doing an amazing job. 

More than half the satellites in orbit right now are Starlink satellites. So if you add up all satellites launched cumulatively, they are less than Starlink. Starlink is currently providing global connectivity, you can get connectivity anywhere on earth from the most remote part of Antarctica to San Francisco.  Anywhere. Full-level connectivity, high bandwidth, and low latency.

The latency is important because unless you’re in low earth orbit you cannot get a low latency.  The geostationary satellites are very high, you’ve sort of got sometimes up to a second of latency from a geostationary satellite, all things inclusive. With Starlink satellites, we believe we can get the latency under 20 milliseconds. 

For international communications, an interesting thing is that in fiber, light travels much slower than in air or vacuum. So in rough approximation, light travels about 300 kilometers per millisecond in air or vacuum but only just roughly over 200 kilometers per millisecond in fiber. So you’ve got roughly a 40% increase in speed of light going through the Starlink system than through fiber and it can also follow a more direct route. 

Instead of following the coastline of the continents, it [Starlink] can actually have a more direct route.  It’s a shorter route and inherently faster from a physics standpoint so it connects the world way better than fiber and is providing connectivity to people that either never had it before or where their options were extremely expensive or very low bandwidth.

So [Starlink] is helping out a lot of communities that never had access, especially when you consider that education is digital these days, that’s really how you can learn anything. You can basically learn anything for free on the internet if you have the internet!  In terms of providing education abilities to remote communities, Starlink is doing a lot of good in that regard.

Starship going orbital

“We don’t want to be one of those lame, one-planet civilizations!”
Elon Musk

Starship launch soon. Image courtesy Elon Musk.

Elon Musk: We’re getting ready for the first launch of Starship.  This is a very difficult program.  The rocket is roughly 2.5 times the thrust of a Saturn V so if and once it reaches orbit it will be by far the biggest rocket that reaches orbit, but more importantly it is designed to be the first reusable orbital rocket ever so that the key to extending life beyond earth is a fully and rapidly reusable orbital rocket. 

This is a very hard problem given the constraints of earth.  Earth has a thick atmosphere and strong gravity, it is literally barely possible to do this, that’s why its not been done before.  We are getting close to our first orbital attempt of Starship, hopefully in the next month or so we’ll have our first attempt.  I’m not saying it’ll get to orbit but I guarantee excitement.  (audience laughter) It won’t be boring.  I think it’s hopefully above a 50% chance of reaching orbit. 

We’re building a whole series of Starships in South Texas and so I think we’ve got, hopefully, an 80% chance of reaching orbit this year.  It will probably take up a couple more years to achieve full rapid reusability, which I can’t emphasize enough, is the profound breakthrough that is needed to extend life beyond earth because it lowers the cost of access to space by orders of magnitude. In the same way, let’s say there were no airplanes that were reusable, how expensive would air flight be?  It would be insane. You’d have to buy a new airplane every time you flew somewhere and you’d have to tow a small airplane behind you for the return flight.  That’s not going to scale.

So if things go well there, this vehicle could make life multi-planetary, that’s a really big deal.  And it could make life on Mars real and that’s one of the great filters that any civilization has to pass through which is, ‘does this civilization become multi-planetary or not?’  This is one of the elements of the Fermi Paradox.  I mean I sort of wonder that, if we are able to get to multi-planetary that will be a forcing function to improve spaceflight to become multi-stellar, to go to other star systems and I think we may discover that there are many long-dead one-planet civilizations.  We don’t want to be one of those.  We don’t want to be one of those lame, one-planet civilizations!

Austin at sunset, image courtesy Aeriel Austin, Instagram

Gail Alfar, Author, Military Veteran. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – March 12, 2023. All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author is to support Tesla (the most American vehicle manufacturer) and Elon Musk in both making life better on earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization.

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Tesla Model Y in Iceland. Image Courtesy Arash Malek/Scentwedge

Gail’s Tesla Podcast Episode No. 7

(Austin, Texas) Meet special guest, Minimal Duck aka Arash Malek. Arash is an artist at heart with an eye for clean, elegant, minimalistic design. When I first tried his scentwedge pine scented natural wood product (Mountain Forest) in my Model Y, I was instantly enchanted with the peaceful, non-overpowering scent. As a fine perfume customer and collector of Chanel, Dior, nYc, Burnt Hair by Singed and many more fragrances, I believe that to leave the house without wearing a scent, you are leaving the house partially undressed.

Likewise, you are driving your Tesla without the full benefit of an extraordinary scent if you pull out of the driveway without a scentwedge in your Tesla. I loved hearing Arash explain his business model during our podcast, all the while driving with me on FSD beta in Austin. Our conversation went beyond scentwedge.

We also talk about Austin jobs, Elon Musk, and the Tesla community. Hope you enjoy!

https://x.com/GailAlfarATX/status/1638222501590212621?s=20

Tesla Model 3. Image Courtesy Arash Malek/Scentwedge
Tesla Model 3. Image Courtesy Arash Malek/Scentwedge

Try Arash’s “Collective” He says, “Experience everything we have to offer and explore the scents you love. This kit is about a 3 month supply of Scentwedge. Includes a 2-week supply of every scent we have to offer. Scents Included are: Valencia, Grounded, Big Sur, Coastal Forest, Mountain Forest, and The Summit.”

Tesla Model Y in Iceland. Image Courtesy Arash Malek/Scentwedge
Tesla Model Y in Iceland. Image Courtesy Arash Malek/Scentwedge

Don’t have a Tesla yet to put Scentwedge into? Use this code to receive a nice sum of money when you order: www.tesla.com/referral/gail74884

Don’t own a bottle of Burnt Hair by Singed? You can order it here.

Gail Alfar, author. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author and podcaster is to support Tesla (the most American vehicle manufacturer) and Elon Musk in both making life better on Earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization.

By (originally) various authors, compilation by Eryn Blaire - my compilation of these images:File:Canis_lupus_laying.jpgFile:Mariposa

PART 1: Master Plan 3 & Investor Day. Elon Musk Talks About Good Hope For the Future. (multi-part series)

Did you watch Tesla Investor Day on March 1 live from Gigafactory Texas in Austin? Master Plan 3 was created for the investor and Elon Musk said he meant “the broadest definition of investor, as in the people & life of Earth. It will be a message of good hope & positivity for the future.”

This article is part 1 of a series that will examine the message of good hope and positivity for the future. The “investor” is considered the people & life of Earth instead of only retail and institutional investors. 

The People of Earth

You may have heard Elon Musk explain how our earth is like a small vulnerable candle in vast darkness and that we must not let that candle blow out.  Each of the 8 billion people who are alive today has a unique story and their life is amazing.  The generations that come after yours can live in a clean beautiful future. Master Plan 3 explains how to make this a reality.

The Life of Earth

The life of earth takes on many forms as depicted in the header picture of this article.  All life should be preserved so the earth can remain healthy.  Non-human life forms need us humans to work to preserve them.  It is easy to destroy the earth and we should stop doing so. Tesla shared a picture of our current state and this is what needs to change to protect the life of earth.

Our energy economy is dirty & wasteful. Image courtesy Tesla.

Message of Good Hope

Stamped Tesla car parts, courtesy Tesla, Inc.

No one feels great after listening to a message of doom and gloom.  If we want to inspire the young generation to raise a family then the older generations can start by sharing a message of good hope. 

Tesla shared a pretty gloomy photo at the start of Investor’s day of our current dirty and wasteful energy economy that leads to a polluted world and the goal is to change humanity from depending on fossil fuels to one of clean-energy use exclusively. 

Tesla also shared what seemed like an infinite number of stamped vehicle body parts.  I was first hit with how cool and artistic it looked and then later I was hit with the message that Tesla may one day be able to create limitless vehicles that are affordable for people to own or ride in.  What a message of good hope this really is! 

The new Gigafactory in Mexico will build a new vehicle that is expected to be a huge volume product. 

Elon Musk highlighted the challenges, which may explain why Mexico was selected for the next gigafactory, 

“Demand for our vehicles, in terms of desire to own them may as well be infinite, it’s indistinguishable from infinite at this point.

The affordability is what matters so as you make the car more affordable we will have to amend go crazy basically. The hard part is building the cars. I can’t emphasize that enough.

The hard part is building the cars and the entire supply chain that goes with the cars. this is a logistics challenge of extraordinary difficulty. 

All the things that have to go into the car have to scale with the car while everything is doing an exponential ramp and if you miss even one of those things — and, it doesn’t matter why, earthquake, fire, revolution, I thought I’ve heard them all!  If any part of that supply chain gets interrupted, then you have a seizure.

The hard part is building the cars in the supply chain that goes with it.” Elon Musk

Gigafactory Mexico is a message of hope that Tesla will be able to build affordable vehicles faster and at greater volume. 

Tesla has the magnificent support of the government of Nuevo León, Mexico and Mexico is home to many automotive clusters that have grown up throughout the country as a way to more effectively support local manufacturers through economies of scale. 

Message of Positivity for the Future

Positivity means you have an optimistic attitude.  Master Plan 3 is achievable.  It is fitting that the Tesla HQ is in Texas.  Texans are known for having a “CAN DO” attitude.  Elon Musk said,

“The thing that is needed at a very large scale, that’s not currently present, is a vast amount of battery energy storage.

Our rough calculations is that this is about 240 TeraWatt hours — 240,000 GigaWatt hours. It is actually a lot of batteries, but it is actually a very achievable amount that’s a combination of electric vehicles and stationary storage.”  Elon Musk

Elon and the Tesla team explain how battery storage can be achieved and I’m going to add that it will create endless job opportunities so the road it takes to get to a clean energy future is a bright one.  I will write more about this in Part 2 of this series. 

Master Plan 3

On the live stream, Elon spoke about the most important message, Master Plan 3,

“There is a clear path to a sustainable energy Earth.

It doesn’t require destroying natural habitats.

It doesn’t require us to be austere and stop using electricity and be in the cold or anything.

The story, and I think this holds together quite well – it will be actually published in a detailed white paper with all of our assumptions and calculations — is that there is a clear path to a fully sustainable earth with abundance.

In fact, you could support a civilization much bigger than Earth and much more than the 8 billion humans could actually be supported sustainably on Earth.

I am often just shocked and surprised by how few people realize this. Most of the smart people I know actually don’t see a clear path, they think that there’s not a path to a sustainable energy future or at least there’s not one that is sustainable at our current population or that we have to resort to extreme measures. none of this is true.

So we are going to walk through the calculations for how to create a sustainable energy civilization.” 

Elon Musk

A Sustainable Energy Economy is Within Reach & We Should Accelerate It. Image Courtesy Tesla, Inc.

To be continued…

In my next article, I’ll write more in depth about Master Plan 3 and how it affects you and future generations. Please subscribe to my blog to get a notice of when my articles publish.

Tesla Semi and Model S 3 X Y make an appearance at Investor Day. Image courtesy Jeff Roberts.

Gail Alfar, Author, Military Veteran. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – March 5, 2023. All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author is to support Tesla (the most American vehicle manufacturer) and Elon Musk in both making life better on earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization.

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Gail’s Tesla Podcast Episode No. 6

Let your Tesla take you to the Hair Salon | Enjoy this fun drive through Austin’s suburbs and I’ll share a few hacks with you! | Special sponsor is ATX Auto Finishes!

We’ll go to the Hair Salon together, followed by a short trip to see inside of ATX Auto Finishes! Our 10-minute video is just for you!

https://x.com/GailAlfarATX/status/1628939693315293185?s=20

Gail Alfar, author. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author and podcaster is to support Tesla (the most American vehicle manufacturer) and Elon Musk in both making life better on Earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization.

Ready to get money off when you reserve your Tesla with Gail’s Special Code?  Use this when you order for goodies: www.tesla.com/referral/gail74884

Gail’s Tesla Podcast Episode No. 5

Join Gail to go get groceries at HEB. We’ll drive through Austin’s streets together following the ice storm that hit Austin and most of Texas in February, 2023. Gail will show you some fun ways to relax while using FSD beta to get around town. Enjoy the podcast!

Join me on the X App for this video!

https://x.com/GailAlfarATX/status/1626343900326641667?s=20

Gail Alfar, author. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author and podcaster is to support Tesla (the most American vehicle manufacturer) and Elon Musk in both making life better on earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization.

Cybertruck Ecosystem: Which modification is for you?

Cybertrucks (lots of them!) on the roads are essential for Tesla’s mission to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy.

As we await delivery of first Cybertrucks, it’s worth looking at the ecosystem forming in anticipation. This article takes us on a journey into our future cyberworld and looks at,

  • Travel, hunting and camping applications
  • Military, law enforcement & apocalypse mods
  • Artistic expressions

Travel, camping and hunting applications

Image Courtesy Tesla, Inc.

Tesla has people excited with their beautiful render of a camping addition.  Camping enthusiasts are ready to reserve this the moment Tesla makes it available.

Cybertruck Hunting mode has been suggested, “One of the things I’m really looking forward to in my CT is hunting Elk on southern Montana public lands. My dad’s truck was modified to disable all lights (interior, headlights, brake lights, blinkers, etc., with the flip of a couple of switches. Has anyone given any thought as to what a “Hunting Mode” might do? It would be great if all lights could be disabled from the control screen, and the screen itself dimmed, once you were off road.” (Michael Jorge, Cybertruck owners club)

StreamIt, Inc. created the CyberLandr, a retractable camping add-on that has solar panels mounted on top allowing you to stay off the grid for days. The Green Product Award went to this American company for creating a distinguished product in sustainability, innovation & design. For information regarding CyberLandr visit https://cyberlandr.com/features.

Image of CyberLandr courtesy StreamIt, Inc.

One South African company is already putting a Cyber-inspired camper-trailer on the road.  Edgeout won the Red Dot Design Award 2022 in the category Product Design.  Red Dot jury panel said, “With its innovative construction and distinctive exterior design, the EdgeOut conveys robustness and mobility,”

Edgeout camper-trailer

Military, law enforcement and apocalypse technology

Police forces in Mexico and the United Arab Emirates placed early reservations for Cybertruck.

Dubai’s police force stated,

“The new cars (Cybertrucks) will help enhance security presence in tourist destinations.” – Commander-in-Chief of Dubai Police Abdullah Khalifa Al Marri

San Luis Potos, Mexico with its 2.8 million people may enjoy 15 Cybertrucks for local law enforcement and logistics.  Cybertruck is “common sense,” – Adrian Esper Cardenas, Mayor

When Adrian Esper Cardenas announced the purchase of 15 Cybertrucks the media questioned the maintenance of the vehicles, to which the mayor pointed out that maintenance costs are “zero.”  Cardenas assured the press that if an engine fails, the guarantee will be applied for replacement; If a headlight breaks, you can order it online. “It’s very easy,” he said.  

Jay Leno asks Elon: "But why make it bullet proof...?"
Elon to Jay: "Do you want your Cybertruck to be bullet proof or not?"
Jay: "Yea, I guess I do want my Cybertruck to be bullet proof!"

Military applications are natural for Cybertruck.  The dreamer in me imagines Giga Texas with an underground facility where apocalypse, combat ready and law enforcement Cybertrucks with accompanying drones are assembled. Tougher wheels and suspension are needed for these applications.

“… the body panels are bulletproof to a handgun so it’s probably helpful in the apocalypse.
Let me tell you, the truck you want in the apocalypse is the Cybertruck.
We wish to be the leader in apocalypse technology.” Elon Musk 

Cybertruck Heavy Duty. Image courtesy Z AV Design

CyberMonster, safe loading and artistic expressions

Monstertruck owners make up a small but enthusiastic market.  Expect to see websites that will guide you on the best ways to convert Cybertruck into CyberMonster.

Remote control monster Cybertrucks available now on amazon

Ramp for safety and practicality

Cybertruck ramp image courtesy Tesla, Inc.

Tesla makes safety a top priority and loading truck beds is difficult and dangerous.  Cybertruck reduces the chance of injury with a retractable ramp and elevated front suspension.  Tesla says,

“Raise and lower suspension four inches in either direction for easy access to Cybertruck or the vault, while self-leveling capabilities adapt to any occasion and assist with every job.” 

“Every job” will include harp transportation,

“Harp transportation! Our daughter plays the harp. It’s big, it needs to be wrapped up and put on a hand truck every time we move it (multiple times a week for practices). When I saw that ramp off the back, and the size of the bed confirmed it would be large enough….. that’s when my pre-order went in. It will save my back.” (reddit user MotorFloating)

“Cybertruck will be waterproof enough to serve briefly as a boat, so it can cross rivers, lakes & even seas that aren’t too choppy. Needs be able to get from Starbase to South Padre Island, which requires crossing the channel.”
Elon Musk 

Elon Musk has shown approval of suggestions to colorize Cybertruck. Cybertruck will be an irresistible canvas for artists to create stainless steel etched designs and colorful wraps.

CONCLUSION

My take is that Tesla needs to get Cybertrucks on road fast as possible by scaling production for hundreds of thousands of eager reservation holders.  This will greatly accelerate Tesla’s mission.  I believe people will receive a high-quality utility vehicle that will be open to many aftermarket modifications.

An ecosystem is starting in anticipation of Cybertruck and will get bigger as people take delivery.  This article covered fantasy mods and practical ones that can be reserved or purchased now.  If you know of an accessory or mod that I should include, please let me know! 

Read more about Cybertruck here…

Your Cybertruck and Why The Wait is Worth it explains why anticipating Cybertruck has healthy benefits for you.

Austin, Texas (January 17, 2023) Image courtesy PrimaPixVisuals

Gail Alfar, Author, Military Veteran. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – February 12, 2023. All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author is to support Tesla (the most American vehicle manufacturer) and Elon Musk in both making life better on earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization.

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Gail's Tesla Podcast

Gail’s Tesla Podcast Episode No. 4

Ash Martian with Cybertruck
Ash Martian with Cybertruck

(Austin, Texas) In this episode, Guest Ash Martian, a Tesla investor, computer engineer, FSD beta tester, and friend, comes along to explain details about the importance of attentiveness while using FSD beta.

FSD on the Freeway at Night

Using FSD beta on freeway journeys means increased safety. Enjoy the Podcast with this special guest, who has a passion for going to Mars one day. Find Ash on the X app at https://x.com/1stMarsColonist

Gail’s 4th Podcast Episode. Welcome!

Gail Alfar, author. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author and podcaster is to support Tesla (the most American vehicle manufacturer) and Elon Musk in both making life better on Earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization.

Save with Gail’s Referral

Order Tesla products through Gail’s Referral Link to earn cash off your order – plus exclusive referral benefits. https://www.tesla.com/referral/gail74884

Photo by Spencer Davis on Unsplash
Photo by Spencer Davis on Unsplash

Your Cybertruck and Why The Wait is Worth it

Cybertruck photo courtesy Tesla, Inc.

Welcome back to What’s Up Tesla.  I hope you are doing great.  I live in Austin, Texas and this week we are recovering from a severe ice storm.  Many people are still without power as I write this article.  Austin’s power relied on having a stable connection to the Texas grid and when ice layers built up on the Live Oak trees it caused banches to break and this led to downed power lines. Yes, many of our power lines are still above the ground and one solution would be for the city to install below-the-ground power lines.  Another solution is for large apartment buildings and housing developments to become self-sufficient through the use of solar power backed by battery storage (Tesla Solar and Powerwalls).

Sometimes instead of talking about all these problems, I like to kick back and talk about a future with Cybertruck! This article explores why it’s so good, in fact, it’s mentally healthy to anticipate the delivery of Cybertruck. 

When can we expect Cybertruck to be delivered?

Several indications point to Cybertruck deliveries later this year with rapid scaled production in 2024. I say this because Elon Musk has extraordinary talent at scaling production and he led Tesla in scaling Model Y production in the USA, China and Berlin.  His investment in Cybertruck is massive and the 9000 ton Giga Press at Tesla in Austin built exclusively for Cybertruck castings is just a fraction of that investment. 

Tesla’s 9000 ton Cybertruck Giga Press (shown here being assembled) rests in Austin at Gigafactory Texas. Photo courtesy Joe Tegtmeyer.

“Giga Texas is a $10B+ investment over time, generating at least 20k direct & 100k indirect jobs” – Elon Musk on Twitter 

Why anticipating delivery of Cybertruck is good for us

In a statement from the National Institute of Health, 

“Anticipation, paying attention to the upcoming stimulus predicted by a contextual cue (Bermpohl et al., 2006), has important implications in human well-being and mental health. Anticipation confers important evolutionary benefits to human beings. Specifically, expecting the forthcoming events allow active preparations in cognitive, affective, and behavioral strategies (Grupe et al., 2013), which ensure survival in the changing and potential challenging environment (Gilbert and Wilson, 2007). Furthermore, the deficits of anticipation of future experience have been associated with extreme low levels of well-being, such as depression (MacLeod and Byrne, 1996; Abler et al., 2007) and anxiety (Nitschke et al., 2009; Boehme et al., 2014; Heitmann et al., 2014)” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5767250/#sec-1title

In short, anticipation is often as valuable as the actual end experience. For example, there are tens of thousands of people who are excited by the prospect of humans one day going to Mars. It is truly important to be able to wake up in the morning and be excited about the future. SpaceX’s Starship mission to Mars accomplishes this for many people. Likewise so does the excitement of Cybertruck. Elon Musk said,

“You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great – and that’s what being a spacefaring civilization is all about. It’s about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past. And I can’t think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars.”  -Elon Musk

What Will You Do with Your Cybertruck? 

Every so often I see somebody ask on Twitter how many Cybertrucks they have on order or what they plan to do with their Cybertruck(s). Here are some of the comments seen on Twitter,

“Work on the farm and hauling cattle.” – Justin Owens

“Stare at it parked in my driveway, sitting in a camping chair drinking a home brew.” – Rich

“Use as an everyday car and haul garden things.” – Richard 

“4 wheeling on Mars” – Die Antwoord 

“I will definitely have to up my clothes game to drive that f*cker. The Crocs are right out. Black tee shirt in.” – Todd Gunter

“Showed my wife a pic of the Cybertruck… her reply “buy one” looks like we’ll be adding another Tesla to the garage” – Kobayashi Maru

“I can’t bear the wait, it is painful. This product is so sick, even more than Model X. Happy to be one of the first to get this masterpiece. All variations are secured (with FSD): TM, DM, RWD.” – Green Power

Cybertruck Sightings in the Wild

When Cybertruck sightings occur, hundreds of people begin to analyze the changes they notice.  Everybody is excited about what the final product will look like. In the most recent sighting there were changes noted in the rearview mirrors and lighting.  Elon Musk confirmed on Twitter that Cybertruck will have a solid red lightbar in the rear. Owners can remove the new triangular shaped rearview mirrors after purchase. 

There is a period of time when different styles of windshield wipers were spotted. This led to extensive speculation and a lot of outspoken views on why people did or did not like the large solo windshield wiper.

My thought is that as we get closer to Cybertruck deliveries this year there will be many Cybertruck sightings which will fill people with more anticipation and excitement. My other take is that Cybertruck will continue to evolve and improve over time so it’s exciting to think that the longer somebody waits to take delivery, the more refined the product will be!

In addition to Cyber anticipation, Tesla investors day is on March 1, and there’s a possibility that a new product will be announced which will lead to more anticipation!

Cybertruck on Mars, Unknown Artist

CONCLUSION

Research shows that it is beneficial to anticipate things like an upcoming wedding, birth, vacation, job change or major life shift. 

It is important to our well being and survival, “Specifically, expecting the forthcoming events allow active preparations in cognitive, affective, and behavioral strategies (Grupe et al., 2013), which ensure survival in the changing and potential challenging environment (Gilbert and Wilson, 2007).  Furthermore, the deficits of anticipation of future experience have been associated with extreme low levels of well-being, such as depression (MacLeod and Byrne, 1996; Abler et al., 2007) and anxiety (Nitschke et al., 2009; Boehme et al., 2014; Heitmann et al., 2014)” 

If you are anticipating Cybertruck with excitement, this is a very good thing. I think Cybertruck will be a major life shift for many people. There are plans set in motion that people have for where they will park their Cybertruck, what they will do with their Cybertruck(s), how they will use Cybertrucks for their business and how they will travel and have adventures off-road in the vehicle.

Additionally, it is exciting to talk about the science-fiction attributes of the vehicle. I love discussing the possibility of the vehicle being on Mars or used in a zombie apocalypse or in fantastical military situations. If I tallied up all the hours that I thought about these things or talked about these things, it would be in the hundreds of hours. It’s provided me and my family with endless conversation and laughter.

Reserve a Cybertruck for $100 here https://www.tesla.com/cybertruck

Love What’s Up Tesla? Read more here:

As Batteries begin to replace fossil fuel power plants, what are 4 challenges to overcome? This article is about four challenges that will be overcome for this incredible transition to succeed.  Elon Musk saw this article on Twitter, and replied to it on July 25, 2022, calling it a “Good article.” I hope that you’ll enjoy it as well!

Breaking down Tesla’s 6+ businesses, comparing them to a traditional car company.  When Elon Musk spoke at the All-In Summit on May 16, he detailed how Tesla is 6+ businesses.

Austin Ice Storm, February 1, 2023. Photo courtesy Shane Ware.

Gail Alfar, author. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – February 5, 2023. All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author is to support Tesla (the most American vehicle manufacturer) and Elon Musk in both making life better on earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization.

Gail’s Tesla Podcast Episode No. 3

(Austin, Texas) On this amazing drive, Gail shows you how smooth Tesla FSD beta runs in busy downtown East Austin. The car confidently slows as a person runs into the street. Gail also takes us through a high-crash intersection. This interesting thing about using FSD beta, as demonstrated in this episode, is that if the vehicle cannot (this may happen for many reasons) make a turn exactly where it should in order to reach a destination, then it will automatically correct itself. In this case, the car corrected itself by turning into a shopping center parking lot, moving through it, going back onto public streets, and then finding its way to the destination. This is how a human driving (who knew the area well) would do it. Unfortunately, as humans, we do not know every area of every city well. However, using FSD beta overcomes that obstacle. Enjoy the podcast!

Join Gail in her Model Y on the Podcast!

Gail Alfar, author. Exclusive to What’s Up Tesla – All Rights Reserved. My goal as an author and podcaster is to support Tesla (the most American vehicle manufacturer) and Elon Musk in both making life better on Earth for humans and becoming a space-fairing civilization.