Elon is facing some serious backlash over Tesla SpaceX merger talks, but solar power actually isn't

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:04][music] >> You're tuned in to Quick Charge, the high-voltage podcast bringing you the top stories in electric vehicles and sustainable energy daily.

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[00:00:22]>> Welcome to Quick Charge. It is May 28th, 2026, and I'm your host, Joe Borris.

[00:00:28]Before we get too far into it, I just want to remind you that today's episode is sponsored by GM Energy. Smart energy features are no longer just a luxury, they are a necessity, and one in four homes experience power outages each year. From grid shut-offs to extreme weather, many homeowners are looking for new ways to stay powered on and connected. Fortunately, home energy systems can offer resilience, style, and sustainability benefits in one package.

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[00:01:32]We'll have more and a link to that in the show notes as well at electrek.co.

[00:01:37]And whenever you see a episode that is sponsored by GM Energy, instead of seeing Quick Charge by Electrek, you're going to see this, Quick Charge by GM Energy. Thanks so much to those guys for sponsoring the show. Moving on, today's show is all about backlash. There is a huge backlash forming around Tesla and SpaceX proposed merger, which would be Musk's fourth billion-dollar self deal.

[00:02:03]Elon Musk is reportedly floating the idea of merging Tesla and SpaceX weeks before SpaceX's massive IPO on Nasdaq.

[00:02:11]If it happens, it would literally be the fourth time Musk has orchestrated a billion-dollar deal between companies he controls. According to CNBC, Elon Musk discussed with colleagues the possibility of folding Tesla and SpaceX together. The timing is notable. SpaceX filed its S1 on May 20th and is expected to start trading on the Nasdaq under the sticker SPCX on June 12th, targeting a valuation of 1.75 trillion US American dollars and a raise of approximately 75 billion, making it the largest IPO in history. Tesla's market cap currently sits at about 1.6 trillion, meaning the combined entity will be worth over 3 trillion dollars.

[00:02:53]Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has put the odds of a merger at 80 to 90% by early 2027 with prediction markets being less bullish. Kalshi traders placed only 33% odds on a merger before May of '27. Musk holds about 20% of Tesla's equity, but controls 85% of SpaceX's voting power through a super voting share class. That voting disparity is central to the self-dealing problem. When Musk negotiates the terms of any deal between these entities, he is negotiating with himself and his interests are not equally distributed. There's a couple of examples of this, as Fred noted in this article. SolarCity in 2016, that was a 2.6 billion-dollar deal. Twitter and X at 44 billion, xAI, and now this new SpaceX thing. So, there's been a lot of this, and this I think doesn't even include the fourth one with another entity there as well. That'll be in the show notes over at electric.co. We'll have a link to it here below. Now, a lot of people have opinions on this. The one that I like best, the one that resonated with me, was from Perfect Union over on Instagram. They wrote, "Elon Musk wants a SpaceX IPO valuing the company at upwards of 1.75 trillion dollars. To get there, he got the rules changed so that index funds with millions of Americans' retirement savings will be forced to buy in. Retirees could take huge losses while insiders cash out." So, yeah, you know, it's hard to know if that's true.

[00:04:24]It's hard to know if any of this stuff is true cuz it's all forward-looking crystal ball-type stuff. But, uh it sounds right based on what I've seen with Elon and his dealings with the current administration. And uh yeah, but those guys seem on the up and up, right?

[00:04:38]I mean, nothing to see there. Moving on from that, Tesla's own AI trainers are having a little bit of backlash themselves saying that they do not trust full self-driving or its safety statistics. That's according to a new report by Reuters investigation published today revealing that Tesla's widely touted full self-driving statistics are built on deeply flawed methodology and that the company's own data labelers, the workers who train the AI system, don't trust the technology to drive them around. We've been calling out Tesla's misleading FSD safety claims for a while, and the Reuters investigation confirms the core problem with hard data. Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other executives have repeatedly claimed full self-driving is up to 10 times safer than human drivers. Tesla's CFO Vaibhav Taneja first made this claim last July, and Tesla board chair Robyn Denholm repeated it at a November shareholder meeting. Musk himself displayed a chart at that meeting claiming 85% fewer crashes. Reuters found that a central comparison error inflated Tesla's claimed vehicle safety level by a a of three. Tesla counted crashes where airbags deployed in its own vehicles, then compared that number to federal data that includes all crashes requiring a tow truck, a far less severe threshold. Tow truck crashes don't often involve airbag deployments at all. The critical point, the federal data Tesla used already included airbag deployments crashes as a separate category. Tesla could have made a valid apples-to-apples comparison, but specifically chose not to.

[00:06:14]Don't trust Elon on this is the heading there from Fred. Beyond the statistics, the Reuters report reveals what Tesla employees actually think about the technology that they helped build. Seven out of nine former data labelers told Reuters they would not trust FSD to drive them. One said he wouldn't ride in a Tesla robotaxi, quote, "If you effing paid me." A veteran self-driving engineer who reviewed Tesla crash data for years called the company's safety claims BS and [clears throat] said, "Definitely don't trust Elon on this."

[00:06:45]The data labelers are based primarily in a Utah office. They reviewed footage from the eight exterior cameras on Tesla vehicles using FSD. They described regularly seeing FSD fail at basic tasks, including pulling over for emergency vehicles, giving motorcyclists enough space, braking on freeway off-ramps, and avoiding construction zones. In one incident, a Tesla allegedly drove into a construction zone and nearly struck workers. So, that all sounds like it's going wonderfully. And in news that should not concern Tesla shareholders at all, Waymo has begun offering rides in its new Oji robotaxi with sixth-generation driver. Waymo is beginning to offer select riders trips in the new purpose-built robotaxi, debuting the company's sixth-generation driver hardware across San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. Trips will be free for a limited time. The Oji represents a significant step for Waymo, which has now surpassed 20 million fully autonomous trips across 11 states, a scale that no competitor comes close to matching. The Oji is Waymo's first purpose-built robotaxi designed from the ground up as a rider-first vehicle rather than as a retrofit customer car.

[00:08:01]Built by Zeekr, then outfitted with Waymo's autonomous driving hardware at the company's Arizona factory, the van-style vehicle features an expansive cabin with increased legroom, three large adaptive screens for rear passengers, charging points, and cup holders. Accessibility is a clear priority when designing this vehicle. It features a flat floor and a low step-in height for easier entry and exit. Rail markings, grab bars, and other features designed for riders with disabilities.

[00:08:31]One of Waymo's press images shows a visually impaired rider with a white cane interacting with the vehicle, a signal that the company is serious about making autonomous rides accessible to everyone. On the operational side, Waymo says the vehicle includes easier-to-clean interiors, faster charging, and increased battery capacity, as well as a more modular design for efficient maintenance and repairs. Those are the kind of improvements that matter when you're running fleets at scale. And uh you know, especially when you're not trying to run something stupid like this, which as you can clearly see was not made with considerations for people who are visually impaired, who may have to navigate that door, was not made for necessarily elderly people or people with limited mobility, who would have to figure out a way in and out of this low-slung sporty's kind of vehicle. And yeah, there is no place to put a walker or any other sort of elderly device here. This is really interesting because the promise of automation of the promise of autonomous driving is that you will be able to get people who otherwise could not drive themselves and give them access to mobility, independence, all of that. And Tesla Cybertruck does none of that, and really seems to only serve guys like me who want a new electric Honda CRX, or a bunch of dudes who live in Silicon Valley who have literally not once, a single time ever in their lives, considered what it might be like to be old, hurt, injured, sick, or in any way disabled other than you know, whatever disability it is to have absolutely no empathy for your fellow human beings.

[00:10:10]That's about the only kind of person who could design something as ridiculously incapable of serving the public as this Cybertruck. But hey, that's just my opinion. You don't have to agree with me, and I'm sure if you don't, you will let me know in the comments. Moving on to something a little more substantial, most big US solar projects do not spark backlash after all. That's according to a new study from researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, who found that most large-scale solar projects in the US move forward with relatively little public opposition. The study was published in the journal Energy Research and Social Science, and looked at 686 utility-scale solar projects that have come online between January '22 and November '23.

[00:10:56]Researchers found that 56% of the projects fell into no or low conflict categories, with just 19% experiencing high levels of conflict. The findings push back against the idea that opposition to solar development is widespread across the US. And we all know who is trying to spread that particular brand of crackaganda. "All I saw in the news was conflict, conflict, conflict over solar," says lead author Juniper Katz, assistant professor of public policy at UMass Amherst. "But there was really very little research that operationalized what conflict means, and looked at it from a national scale to understand if the appearance of conflict was as prevalent as it seemed.

[00:11:39]However, Katz cautioned that the study shouldn't be interpreted as proof that state level permitting systems are automatically better than local review processes. Instead, she said the findings point to the need for more research into how different permitting structures affect public participation and project outcomes. Larger solar projects are more likely to generate opposition, but one finding stood out.

[00:12:00]The political makeup of the surrounding community did not make much difference.

[00:12:05]The study found no significant link between the share of Democratic voters near projects and levels of opposition.

[00:12:11]That differs from earlier studies on wind energy projects, which often found that wealthier, whiter, or more left-leaning communities were likely to oppose development. Quote, "We shouldn't just assume that all renewable energy is the same in terms of how it gets from conception to build out." The researchers measured conflict by analyzing news coverage and social media posts containing terms tied to public disputes including protest, lawsuit, and opposition. That is all that we have for you today. Be sure to like and subscribe. Check out the show notes below. Give the GM Energy guys a click for sponsoring the show. And if you, of course, hate everything I said about Elon here, which a lot of you do, go down to the comments so I can laugh at you fully down there.