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A white Tesla Model S spontaneously burst into flames in a Rancho Cordova, California wrecking yard after the car had spent weeks sitting there after a collision. The Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District said that firefighters arrived at the wrecking yard to find the Tesla fully engulfed in flames. Each time the firefighters attempted to extinguish the flames, the Tesla's battery would reignite the fire. The fire department posted an Instagram video of the ordeal, saying that even when firefighters moved the Tesla onto it's side to spray the battery directly, the car would burst into flames again 'due to the...

An illustration of the Psyche asteroid. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU) If you wanted to do a forensic study of the Solar System, you might head for the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. That's where you can find ancient rocks from the Solar System's early days. Out there in the cold vacuum of space, far from the Sun, asteroids are largely untouched by space weathering. Space scientists sometimes refer to asteroids – and their meteorite fragments that fall to Earth – as time capsules because of the evidence they hold. The asteroid Psyche is especially interesting, and NASA is sending a mission...

Tesla has laid off both the President of its LGBTQ+ community and a lead involved in diversity and inclusivity programs at the company. While they were let go as part of a broader wave of layoffs, it comes amid several comments Tesla CEO Elon Musk made, concerning what he describes as the “woke mind virus.” Earlier this month, we reported on Musk telling Tesla executives in an email that they need to cut 10% of the workforce and pause hiring due to having a “super bad feeling” about the economy. Later, the CEO has decided to clarify the Tesla layoffs...

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis raised eyebrows on Wednesday when he referred to Elon Musk as an African American, thanking him for his support for the Republican Party. Musk had tweeted that he had voted for a GOP candidate for the first time (Mayra Flores in South Texas) and added that he predicts a “massive red wave in 2022.” He said that he was unsure who his pick for president in 2024 would be but that he was leaning towards DeSantis, who is rumoured to be considering a presidential run. In response to that, DeSantis told reporters: “I’m focused on 2022…...

Elon Musk, in a recently released video, has again called out the Biden administration over its alleged bias against his flagship company Tesla because it is non-unionized. “The current Democratic Party does not support Tesla because it is not unionized,” Musk said during a lengthy late May interview, part of which was released on June 15. “The pressure on this will increase over time,” he added. “The more Tesla is successful, the more Tesla is an existential threat to the UAW [United Auto Workers],” Musk said while sitting down with the Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley club at the Gigafactory...

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk stated in a tweet in the early hours of Wednesday that he voted for Republican candidate Mayra Flores in the recent special election for Texas’s 34th Congressional District, also predicting a “massive red wave in 2022.” Following her historic win, Flores responded to Musk saying, “Welcome to the Republican Party! We welcome all walk aways from all walks of life. The party of opportunity, prosperity, and freedom is here to stay. We look forward to working together and building a better future for all of America.” In a recent tweet, Tesla and SpaceX CEO...

Federal regulators made a key decision on SpaceX's plans to launch its gargantuan Mars rocket, called Starship, into orbit from Texas — saying Monday that, as long as the company complies with 75 "mitigating actions," the rocket launches should clear federal standards for environmental impact. The list of actions includes enlisting a "qualified biologist" to monitor the impact on local wildlife; warning the public ahead of launches about the loud sonic booms and possible dangers; and agreeing to clean up any shrapnel from the launches in "sensitive habitats." The company also has to agree to not launch on major holidays...

JB Straubel has spent the past two years covering a hillside with solar panels and rigging them up to cryptocurrency projects in his Carson City, Nev., mansion. Much of the equipment is essentially junk—the panels were all but worthless when the 46-year-old Tesla co-founder got them from a Texas solar plant, after a hailstorm voided their warranties. He’ll work on them alone for whole weekend, spooling wire and rigging hardware in the rolling scrubland. Sometimes he thinks through his company’s latest engineering obstacles while he works. Other times he daydreams how best to divert cascades of photons from the sky,...

This is a replay of the live stream. The upper stage engine shut down early, causing a mission failure. Launch window: 12:00 - 2:00 pm EDT (16:00 - 18:00 UTC) Launch site: SLC-46, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida Destination: Low Earth Orbit A commercial small satellite launch vehicle developed by Astra will launch the first pair of small CubeSats for NASA’s TROPICS mission. The Time-Resolved Observations of Precipitation structure and storm Intensity with a Constellation of Smallsats, or TROPICS, mission will measure environmental and inner-core conditions for tropical cyclones. Delayed from April. Thanks to NASASpaceflight and Chris Bergin for...

As Americans try out the newest Starlink dishes on their R.V.s, a space expert says Elon Musk’s Starlink makes the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) “nervous” as the “only” player in the field now when it comes to the U.S.’s strategic space race with China.“It is important to understand that Elon Musk’s SpaceX company is the only thing keeping the U.S. in the Space Race with China,” Brandon Weichert, space expert and author of “Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower,” told The Epoch Times in an interview in late-May. Countdown and launch of Falcon 9 into orbit at Cape Canaveral...

Elon Musk recently told Tesla employees they must work a minimum of 40 hours a week in the office. However, experts say the world's richest man is wrong to say that logging on from home during the pandemic "tricked" people into thinking they don't need to work hard. Nick Gallimore, director of innovation at Advanced People Management, told Insider that Musk would need "something of a miracle if he expects people to even stick with him ... let alone be more productive." "Musk's comments – that remote work simply can't be as effective or as productive as working from a...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk shot down a claim from the CEO of One America News that he is interested in buying the far-right cable channel, a favorite of supporters of former President Trump. “We just received a call from somebody very close to @elonmusk telling us that he would like to talk to us about purchasing @OANN,” Robert Herring, the network’s CEO said in a tweet on Thursday. “Only Twitter,” Musk replied minutes later. Musk has earned headlines in recent weeks over a deal struck with Twitter to purchase the social media platform. The billionaire has often been critical of...

Members of California’s Air Resources Board today questioned the practicalities of their staff’s proposal to ban gas-powered vehicles, raising concerns over challenges in buying and charging electric cars.

By a vote of 339 to 249 Members of the European Parliament (MEP) voted to outlaw fossil-fueled vehicles by the year 2035. Netherlands MEP Jan Huitema characterized the decision as "our last best chance to save the planet." BMW CEO Oliver Zipse pointed out that "a focus on tailpipe emissions neglects to take into account the total pollution impact of switching to battery-powered vehicles. First of all, they are more expensive. Many of the components require rare minerals—some of them from unreliable sources of supply like China. Worn out batteries cannot be safely disposed of without creating environmental problems. The...

The shortage threatens the pace of the U.S. transition away from fossil fuels as the Biden administration seeks to decarbonize the grid by 2035.. U.S. renewable energy developers have delayed or scrapped several big battery projects meant to store electrical power on the grid in recent months, scuttling plans to replace fossil fuels with wind and solar energy. At least a dozen storage projects meant to support growing renewable energy supplies have been postponed, canceled or renegotiated as labor and transport bottlenecks, soaring minerals prices, and competition from the electric vehicle industry crimp supply. .... Storing power is considered vital...

Tesla just filed its annual proxy statement with the SEC and revealed it plans a three-for-one stock split, and that board member Larry Ellison does not plan to stand for re-election. Shares of Tesla were up by more than 1% after-hours having closed at $696.69 on Friday. In the filing, the company wrote of the proposed stock split, “Our success depends on attracting and retaining excellent talent,” and that “highly competitive compensation packages,” offering every employee an option to receive equity, helped Tesla to do that. “We believe the Stock Split would help reset the market price of our common...

To Jonathan Pruiett, it just didn't make sense. A geospatial analyst who updates Google maps for a living, Pruiett had been called back to his company's offices in Bothell, Washington, five days a week, starting June 6. Like many on his team, Pruiett had only worked remotely, having started the job in the pandemic. He'd adapted well to it, finding efficiencies such as multitasking during virtual meetings, using the time to process data. And yet, now he was being told to report to office. Anyone who failed to report within three days of the return date would be processed as...

Elon Musk took to Twitter Saturday to ask if anyone was bothered by how quiet the "leaking" Justice Department is when it comes to the Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, said the DOJ, which grew notoriety for leaking under former President Donald Trump, was remarkably silent about the deceased convicted pedophile. "Only thing more remarkable than DOJ not leaking the list is that no one in the media cares," Musk tweeted.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will meet with his Chinese counterpart, Defense Minister Wei Fenghe face to face for the first time in a tour of Asia next week. The Chinese government formally reached out to the Pentagon Friday to set up the meeting. The focus of it will be on "managing competition," according to a US official familiar with planning. One aspect competition is heating up between China and the US is the race for rare earth minerals. These 17 metallic minerals make up almost everything electronic, including the US military’s most important weapons like F-35 fighter jets, M1Abrams tanks,...

One of the biggest concerns about EVs is that the batteries will need replacing after a few years, at great expense. After all, your smartphone battery is likely to have seen better days within as little as three years. But a Tesla researcher is getting ready to kick this idea into touch once and for all, after demonstrating batteries that could potentially outlive most human beings. Tesla enthusiasts are likely to have heard of Jeff Dahn already. He’s a professor at Dalhousie University and has been a research partner with Tesla since 2016. His focus has been to increase the...