ELON CHRON: The Daily Chronicle of Elon Musk’s Companies

“Tesla AI will feel increasingly sentient…” – Elon Musk (@elonmusk)

■ TESLA ($438.69, +1.29%):

– The Archer Aviation (@ArcherAviation) Midnight and Cybercab at the UP Summit last week.

– FSD (Supervised) v14.1 update, rolling out via software version 2025.32.8.5, introduces the new “Start Self-Driving” button that activates the system with a single tap on the touchscreen—no more holding it down for a second or pressing the brake pedal to confirm. This change, along with adjustable settings like Speed Profiles and Arrival Options directly from the central display, incorporates Robotaxi-derived features such as vision-based real-time detours, enhanced parking in lots/streets/driveways, and reduced driver nags, making the experience more seamless and autonomous-like.

– Tesla’s first public Semi charger on the East Coast is planned for Conley, Georgia, at 1786 Rock Cut Rd, about 2 miles south of Interstate 285 via US-23. Permits have been filed for 8 Semi charging stalls initially, with 4 more to be added later. H/T MarcoRP (@MarcoRPi1).

– The Giga Nevada team joined the Discovery Museum’s EMPOW[HER] Collective for Women & Girls in STEM. The initiative aims to expand STEM programming for girls to keep them engaged throughout their education. The collective includes women in STEM professions and students, offering mentorship, networking, and hands-on programs to foster a community that supports the next generation of female STEM professionals.

– Tesla exhibiting at Fleet & Mobility Live 2025, Europe’s largest fleet event held October 7th – 8th at the NEC in Birmingham, UK. Attendees could test-drive and explore the Model 3 and Y tailored for fleet applications, engage with Tesla representatives on electrification solutions, and attend EV Café panels addressing fleet transition challenges like charging infrastructure and cost management. The free two-day event featured three specialized theatres with seminars on fleet operations, sustainability, and mobility innovations.

– At the Tesla Light Show event at the Tesla Center in Bussigny, Switzerland, Charles from Fribourg captured a vibrant evening organized by Club Tesla Suisse Romande. Attendees experienced the new Model Y Performance, a light show by creator Simon Pollock, and a glimpse of the Cybertruck, which Teslab AG is working to homologate for Switzerland. The event included tours of Tesla’s workshops and discussions with the team, highlighting innovation and community passion, which Charles documented through his photography.

FLYOVERS (flight links in sources section):

Giga Texas: Joe Tegtmeyer (@JoeTegtmeyer), 8th of October, ‘25. Very possible Joe spotted some more SpaceX Cybertruck Fleet vehicles. Per Joe, “Cybertruck headed off to Mars from Giga Texas? It sure looks like it, with SpaceX purchasing many of these to replace their gas & Diesel trucks at Starbase, the Bastrop, TX, Starlink factory, their operations at Roberts Road at Kennedy Space Center, their testing site at McGregor, TX, and more!“

■ SPACEX:

– Today, Flight 11’s Super Heavy Booster 15.2 was rolled to Pad 1, escorted by three Cybertrucks from their new fleet (SICK). B15.2 is currently sitting on the OLM waiting for Starship 38. Epic pics by Travis Sorensen (@HardcoreElectr1) and Jessica (@sparkyinfinity).

– Last night, launch 131 of Falcon 9 Starlink Mission 11-17 took place from Space Launch Complex 4E (SLC-4E) at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. This was the 29th flight for first stage booster B1071. It previously launched NROL-87, NROL-85, SARah-1, SWOT, Transporter-8, Transporter-9, Transporter-14, NROL-146, Bandwagon-2, NROL-153, NROL-192, and 17 Starlink missions. The booster landed on drone ship Of Course I Still Love You in the Pacific Ocean. 28 Starlinks were deployed.

– At Massey’s, Test Tank B18.3 had a short duration cryo-test last night. This was its fourth test overall.

– Hayley Arceneaux (@ArceneauxHayley), a physician assistant and cancer survivor, wore this SpaceX Spacesuit during the 2021 Inspiration4 mission, the first all-civilian spaceflight. The spacesuit is now displayed at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where she was treated as a child. Per St. Jude (@StJude), “Hayley Arceneaux went from St. Jude patient, to physician assistant, to astronaut and now her Inspiration4 spacesuit is here at St. Jude for all to enjoy. The suit that soared 366 miles above Earth and helped raise $250M for childhood cancer research is even cooler in person.”

Per Hayley, “My spacesuit is finally home where it belongs, with the patients of St. Jude. I hope that it serves as a symbol of possibility and hope, that life after cancer can be full of accomplished dreams. Getting to share it with the patients was incredibly heartwarming and emotional. The kids love it already and many of them told me they want to wear their own spacesuit someday! My heart couldn’t be happier.”

Starbase City Commission Meeting (Located at The Hub, 39046 LBJ Blvd, Unit 2, Brownsville, TX 78521):

City Commission Regular Meeting, October 15, 2025 7:00 PM
City Commission Regular Meeting, November 19, 2025 7:00 PM
City Commission Regular Meeting, December 17, 2025 7:00 PM

Countdown to 180 (127 – Falcon 9, 0 – Falcon Heavy, and 4 – Starship):

Launch 132! Thursday, 9th of October, 9:34 p.m. ET, Falcon 9 Project Kuiper (KF-03) 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. This is the third of three launches contract for Amazon’s Kuiper low Earth orbit satellite internet constellation.
Launch 133! Sunday, 12th of October, at 4:11 a.m. ET, Falcon 9 Starlink 10-52 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.
.Launch 134! Monday, 13th of October, at 6:15 p.m. CT, Starship Test Flight 11 will launch from Orbital Launch Pad 1 at Starbase, Texas. Vehicles are Starship 38 and Super Heavy Booster 15-2. This will second flight for Super Heavy Booster 15-2 and it will make a planned splashdown in the Gulf of America. Starship 38 will splashdown in the Indian Ocean. Live X link

here
Launch 135! Tuesday, 14th of October, at 4:11 p.m. PT, Falcon 9 SDA Tranche 1 Transport Layer C 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 136! Wednesday, 15th of October, at 12:21 p.m. ET, Falcon 9 Starlink 10-17 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.
Launch 137! Friday, 17th of October, at 11:09 a.m. PT, Falcon 9 Starlink 11-19 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 138! Monday, 20th of October, at 4:00 a.m. PT, Falcon 9 Starlink 11-5 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 ??? Wednesday, 22nd of October, at ??? ET, Falcon 9 SpainSat NG II 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. This is the second of two new-generation satellites built by Airbus to provide secure communications to the Spanish government, its allies, and various international organizations.

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■ THE BORING COMPANY:

– Per Renata Haidle from stories_yet_untold , “Only in Vegas could “public transit” feel like a sci-fi cameo. Fast and smooth, a bit surreal. And yes, a little claustrophobic. The Vegas Loop is a network of underground tunnels connecting a few major resorts and the convention center, with more stops to be added in the future – one of them being the Las Vegas airport. A bit ambitious (it’s a Musk project after all), it is planned to include 68 miles of tunnels and 93 stations.“ Love the lo-fi chill music btw…

■ NEURALINK:

– On October 2nd, Brad Smith (@ALScyborg), Neuralink patient No.3, and his wife Tiffany gave a speech at the ALS Arizona Vendor Fair. This Fair is for individuals with ALS, families, and caregivers to explore adaptive equipment vendors for mobility and communication, attend educational presentations, and participate in community activities. Brad made a film for it. Check it out above.

Romina Nejad (@RominaNejad), Clinical Trials Lead at Neuralink, with Brad Smith and his family at the ALS Arizona Vendor Fair last week. Per Romina, “Brad, P3, the first ventilated ALS participant enrolled in PRIME, gave an inspiring talk… Huge thanks to Taryn and ALS AZ for bringing everyone together and for all the work they do to serve the ALS community. These moments put everything into perspective 🫶🏼”

■ STARLINK:

– SpaceX is focused on providing a secure, compliant, and high-quality broadband experience in India. At the India Mobile Congress 2025 in New Deli, Parnil Urdhwareshe, SpaceX’s Starlink India Market Access Director, said the following. “We’re just focused on being ready to provide Indians who want that option with a compliant, secure and great experience. And we’re really excited with all of the fantastic work that the government is doing, and you see this in concert across the Ministry of Communications, the TRAI, the DoS (Department of Space), InSpace, the DPIIT, everybody’s been doing a whole lot of work to make sure that option is made available to people who want it.”

– SpaceX is expanding its free Starlink Mini promotion to select Residential subscribers in the US and Canada who’ve been customers for over a year. An email offering the $499 kit at $0. Look at it as a rental that must be returned if users cancel their Residential or Roam plans. But, recipients get 50% off Roam service and can opt for $5/mo. standby mode. If the 50% off Roam and Standby Mode are included, this is a steal. Have any you seen this email?

■ 𝕏:

– Per X’s Head of Product, Nikita Bier (@nikitabier), “It’s been a helluva a quarter at 𝕏. During the month of August, we set a record for the most total downloads in the app’s history—beating our prior record by over 30%. Then in September, we beat that record again—and also set a record for first-time downloads. We’ve been ripping globally. And Android is just getting started too: just hit 1-year highs on the charts in all our major markets. Now that growth is fixed, we’re focusing our attention on core product and retention.”

– X Global Government Affairs (@GlobalAffairs) continues its campaign warning that the client-side scanning (CSS) in the EU’s Chat Control proposal poses severe privacy and security risks, including mass surveillance, massive false positives on innocent content triggering unwarranted investigations, and violations of EU Charter Articles 7 and 8 on privacy and data protection. As the EU Council vote approaches on October 14th, X urges member states to reject it to protect end-to-end encryption and fundamental rights. Their latest post included the above video.

■ xAI:

– xAI is on the verge of securing a massive $20 billion capital raise, exceeding its original plans. It includes equity investment from Nvidia and a mix of equity and debt financing. This funding is specifically linked to Nvidia’s graphics processing units for Colossus 2. Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, has confirmed the investment and wishes he did so sooner. “The only regret I have about xAI is that I didn’t give him more money.“ The Colossus 2 Megapack images above are not new, but the first I have seen them. They were taken in lates August. The pic below of xAI employees over looking the switch yard is new.

– Grok Code Fast is now in public preview within Microsoft Visual Studio via GitHub Copilot Chat for Pro, Pro+, Business, and Enterprise plans. It supports agent (tool-using tasks like grep/terminal), ask (queries), and edit (code changes) modes to boost efficiency. You can enable via the model picker in Copilot Chat. For Business/Enterprise, admins must activate the policy in Copilot settings first. Initially rolled out in VS Code in late August 2025, it expanded to Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Xcode, and Eclipse on yesterday, with free limited-time access through partners like Kilo Code extension.

– Grok Imagine v0.9 is the new video generation model. Massive advancement from v0.1. Visual quality, motion, audio generation, it’s good!

– According to X Freeze (@amXFreeze ), when making Grok Imagine videos, use any black image matching your desired aspect ratio as the base, input your prompt, and generate for excellent results. For optimal output, structure prompts to include: subject (main character’s appearance), scene (environment/location), motion (movement dynamics), aesthetic control (lighting, camera angle, shot type), and stylization (art style like cyberpunk or illustration). Then enhance prompts via Grok 4 Fast for superior quality.

Per Elon on using the black template, “Temporary workaround. Direct video generation from text coming soon.”

■ ELON NEWS: N/A…

Thanks for reading! As always, if you have any questions, feedback, or would like point out an error in the reporting, please do so in the comments.

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Have a great day!

■ SOURCES:

FLYOVERS:

Giga Texas: Joe Tegtmeyer… coming soon.

Starlink:

Elon News:

Elon Quote: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1975769541813887179