Today on The Charging Station: Tesla's Q1 reveals the AI pivot underneath softening EV demand — including a major reversal on HW3 hardware — Europe's BEV market pulls 3x ahead of the U.S. post-subsidy with final ACEA numbers, and ChargePoint ships a 600 kW standalone charger that no current EV can fully use.
Tesla's Q1 is now fully reported: adjusted EPS 41¢ beat (37¢ consensus), revenue $22.39B missed ($22.64B). The headline numbers are cleaner than the internals — Electrek's teardown shows the profitability improvement was driven by warranty reserve releases, tariff refund windfalls, stretched payables, and $4.3B in new debt. The single biggest development beyond the financials: Musk confirmed HW3 vehicles (2019–2023) cannot support unsupervised FSD, reversing seven years of 'every car has the hardware' positioning — discounted trade-ins and metro upgrade facilities are the workaround. Capex guidance raised ~25% to ~$25B for AI/robotics and Terafab (Intel 14A as first customer). Stock -2% after hours.
Why it matters
The HW3 reversal is the most significant new fact — it's the single largest reputational reversal in Tesla's history and has triggered early class-action chatter from owners who paid $8–15K for FSD packages. The capex raise combined with the Intel 14A deal and Cursor acquisition inside the SpaceX IPO package confirm the strategic pivot to AI infrastructure is now balance-sheet-visible, not just narrative. Expect more price cuts to clear the 50K inventory overhang flagged yesterday rather than production adjustments.
Morgan Stanley's Adam Jonas reads the capex raise as AI/robotics re-rating validation. Ross Gerber and Electrek's Fred Lambert argue one-time items and new debt paper over deteriorating core economics. GuruFocus still has Tesla at 57% premium to intrinsic value. The HW3 class-action angle is new since yesterday's pre-earnings coverage.
ACEA's final Q1 numbers confirm and extend Monday/Tuesday's European sales thread: 723,704 EVs registered (19.4% BEV share, up from 15.2%), with Tesla EU sales doubling to 57,792 units (+101.9% YoY) — a direct contrast to Tesla's California registrations falling 24.3%. Italy (+65.7%), France (+50.4%), Germany (+41.3%) led. Key new fact: Germany's €1,500–€6,000 subsidy wasn't yet open for applications when March's 49% spike occurred, meaning the signal is fuel economics and energy security, not incentive-pull.
Why it matters
The subsidy-timing detail matters for the policy debate: Europe's surge is happening on fuel-price and energy-security drivers, not subsidies — which is the opposite of the U.S. post-credit collapse story. Tesla adding 1,000 German jobs while GM cancels programs sharpens that contrast into a single headline.
VW's 1M-unit capacity cut (covered yesterday) is the counterweight — volume without margin remains the unresolved European OEM problem.
What's new since yesterday's indefinite-suspension headline: suppliers have been formally notified, and GM is explicitly redirecting capital to the T1-2 gas-engine platform for the 2027 Silverado, with PHEV and range-extender variants possible. Analysts now project no new-gen full-size EV production before 2030.
Why it matters
The supplier notification converts this from a pause into a strategic reversal with a 5+ year hole — stranded capacity commitments made in 2023 are now the downstream problem. Ford's EREV pivot and Stellantis's Ram REV hybrid approach look increasingly vindicated, and Tesla/Rivian get a multi-year window without serious Detroit full-size BEV competition.
ChargePoint launched the Express Solo Tuesday — a 600 kW standalone DC fast charger with dynamic power allocation, NACS and CCS connectors, solar/storage integration, and modular scaling to 8 simultaneous vehicles. No current production EV can use the full output (Lucid Gravity is the fastest at ~400 kW); ChargePoint expects compatible vehicles by 2030. The company claims a 30% reduction in purchase, installation, and operating costs versus comparable hardware.
Why it matters
This is an infrastructure-ahead bet: build for the vehicles coming in 2028–2030 (Mercedes electric C-Class at 800V, CATL 3rd-gen Shenxing cars, and whatever the next BEV generation looks like) rather than for today's fleet. For U.S. sites, it also closes the conspicuous gap versus China's routine megawatt chargers — a competitive deficit Ars Technica has flagged. For dealership operators and fleet customers, the standalone-urban form factor matters most: it fits on gas-station footprints without the electrical rebuild that larger DC plazas require.
MotorTrend and Ars Technica both frame this as U.S. charging finally catching up to global standards. ChargePoint's commercial story is the 30% cost reduction and modular scaling for phased deployment. Skeptics note that utilization economics at 600 kW are unproven until vehicle-side hardware catches up and that ChargePoint's balance sheet can't fund aggressive rollout on its own.
Rivian started R2 SUV production at its Normal, Illinois plant this week with first customer deliveries targeted for Q2 2026. The base Standard model starts at $45,000, the Launch variant tops out at $57,990, and the SUV delivers up to 656 horsepower with an estimated 345-mile range — positioned directly against the Tesla Model Y. Rivian is targeting 23,000 R2 deliveries in 2026. This follows Rivian's $500M Uber investment and 35,000-vehicle robotaxi commitment (covered Monday) and state-ballot pushes to expand direct sales beyond the Washington carve-out.
Why it matters
R2 is Rivian's make-or-break product — the first real mass-market proof that a pure-play U.S. EV startup can execute against Tesla on price and volume. A 23K-unit target for 2026 is modest but critical for unit economics; anything below 20K would signal structural trouble given Rivian's cash burn. For the broader market, R2 lands exactly when GM is cancelling its next-gen full-size EVs and Ford is consolidating its EV unit — meaning Rivian has an unusually clean competitive lane for the next 18 months in the $45–60K segment as long as production ramps cleanly.
TruthAboutCars and Reuters present this as a credible ramp story with execution risk. Rivian's direct-sales ballot push (covered Monday) is the other axis of strategic risk — franchise-state blockage could constrain R2 distribution just as production scales.
Building on yesterday's California -40.2% headline, Colorado is now the sharpest data point: EV registrations fell 64% YoY in Q1 — the deepest post-credit decline among 24 studied states — after the federal credit expiration was compounded by the state cutting its own incentive from $2,500 to $750. Overall new-car sales dropped 18.4%. The $12,000 average transaction-price gap (EV: $57,139 vs. gas: $44,919) is the explicit consumer-facing barrier cited.
Why it matters
Colorado is the cleanest natural experiment available: both federal and state incentives expired in the same window, and the result was a 64% collapse — sharper than California's 40% and the national ~27% contraction. This is the most concentrated argument that current EV MSRPs are structurally above willingness-to-pay without subsidies, and that pricing action (not marketing) is the only near-term lever.
Sunday's $6.8B Samsung SDI–Mercedes-Benz headline now has commercial detail: the multi-year supply agreement covers next-generation compact and mid-size electric SUVs and coupes with tens of GWh of volume and joint R&D on next-gen chemistry, pairing with Mercedes's electric C-Class (762 km WLTP, 800V, 94 kWh) revealed Tuesday.
Why it matters
This is Korea's direct counter to CATL's six-platform Tech Day (covered Monday) — Mercedes is diversifying battery sourcing at exactly the moment CATL is launching Shenxing LFP, Qilin Condensed NCM, and Naxtra sodium-ion simultaneously. The template for other German OEMs to follow is now set.
Gasgoo implicitly frames it as geopolitical hedging rather than pure cost optimization — a distinction worth tracking as EU-China trade pressure continues.
The Presidio-NCM Average Dealership Performance Benchmark shows U.S. franchised dealership net pretax profit fell 11.2% YoY in Q1 2026, with new-vehicle sales down 8.9% and every brand compressed. A meaningful portion of the decline is a tough comp against March 2025's tariff-driven buying frenzy. The report flags used-vehicle acquisition (now with 1M+ EVs coming off lease), fixed operations, and AI-driven cost efficiency — scheduling, valuation, and mobile service — as the recoverable profit levers. Australia's listed dealer groups show the same pattern globally: +13.5% revenue to $18.58B but flat net pretax profit.
Why it matters
Tom, this one's directly in your wheelhouse: the entire franchise network is rebalancing from new-vehicle front-end margin to fixed ops and used, and it's happening inside a quarter. The operational priorities the report flags — technician capacity, mobile service, AI-driven scheduling and valuation — are exactly the places to build tooling and sales motions over the next 12 months. The Ireland EV-technician bottleneck (covered last weekend) and the 1M+ off-lease EV wave are the binding constraints; dealers that solve them first will capture disproportionate share as the used-EV market matures.
DealershipGuy frames this as cyclical with structural opportunity. CBT News and AutoTalk Australia emphasize that Chinese-brand penetration is a second axis of margin pressure — 18.3% of Australian new-vehicle sales, 3.1% in Germany Q1 (up from 1.7%) — that service departments will eventually have to navigate regardless of import quotas. CADA's Canadian bulletin shows one framework for how dealer associations are advising members on new-OEM partnerships.
Monday's VW capacity-cut headline now has fuller confirmation: ~50,000 German jobs impacted by 2030, Scout Motors called out as the North American growth vehicle (direct-sales, launching 2027), and — the most significant new detail — Blume has signaled willingness to sell European plants to Chinese competitors, explicitly acknowledging VW cannot match Chinese cost structure in European labor markets.
Why it matters
The plant-sale signal is the tell that separates this from prior coverage: VW has chosen partial divestment over closures, which is a more permanent structural concession than a capacity reduction. The 24–36 month China-paced development cycle target (vs. BYD's ~18 months) is the new competitive baseline every Western OEM must approach.
DigiTimes frames this as strategic maturation; CarScoops emphasizes labor-relations risk. The Scout direct-sales template is the one unambiguous bright spot.
Monday's CATL Tech Day sodium-ion announcement now has its first commercial slot: Naxtra cells ship in Changan's Nevo A06 by end-2026. GWh-level industrialization milestones have been cleared. ZeCar adds that the paired 3rd-gen Shenxing LFP outpaces BYD Blade 2.0 on fast-charge speed.
Why it matters
The Changan Nevo A06 slot is the first credible answer to 'when does sodium-ion actually ship' — if CATL produces it at GWh scale with meaningful cost advantage over LFP, the implications for entry-level EV cost curves and lithium-extraction project economics are significant. The gap in cell-level R&D velocity vs. Western OEMs is now the primary competitive problem, not just cost.
Verified across 2 sources:
Electrek(Apr 22) · ZeCar(Apr 22)
British International Investment announced £1.1B (US$1.5B) in new British Climate Partners funding targeted at coal-dependent Asian developing economies — India, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia — committing at least 40% of BII's new investments to climate finance over the next five years. The region needs an estimated US$210B annually in South-East Asia and US$160B in India through 2030, and BII is positioning as catalytic capital to de-risk private investment. In parallel, Ireland eliminated dual grid fees for battery storage (projected 30% utilization increase, €37M annual savings); Recurrent Energy got Australian grid-connection approval for a 360 MW solar + 150 MW/4-hour battery hybrid; LONGi energized a 13.75 MW/50.16 MWh BESS in Italy.
Why it matters
The BII program is one of the first concrete institutional responses to the gap between climate commitments in Asia and private-capital hesitance. Combined with the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions' Battery Belt roadmap ($102B investment, 374,000 jobs, $141B output), the picture is clear: climate infrastructure capital is reorganizing around specific regional plays rather than global targets. For U.S. investors and operators, the Battery Belt number is the one to watch — Southeast states could absorb meaningful EV/battery supply-chain capacity that might otherwise go to Mexico or Canada.
Eco-Business and BII frame this as catalytic. Local activists in recipient countries have historically criticized DFI climate programs for under-delivering on additionality. EFI Foundation's new tracker separately shows U.S. DOE has $80B+ in unspent innovation funding — a reminder that capital availability is not the main bottleneck.
Chief U.S. District Judge Denise Casper issued a preliminary injunction Monday blocking the Trump administration's permitting policies that required three-level political-appointee approval for wind and solar projects and imposed stricter offshore-wind standards. Industry groups argued the rules were unlawful delay tactics; the ruling restores prior permitting pathways while the underlying case continues. Separately, Michigan joined 24 states suing to challenge the EPA's endangerment-finding rollback, directly affecting vehicle greenhouse-gas regulation.
Why it matters
Together these two rulings re-open a narrow window for clean-energy project execution and preserve the legal basis for vehicle emissions rules that underlie most OEM product planning. Project developers still face policy-reversal risk if the administration appeals or issues new guidance, but the near-term effect is enough certainty to resume stalled permitting. For OEMs watching the endangerment-finding case, the outcome will shape emissions rules for the next 5–10 years of vehicle design and directly affect whether hybrid and ICE platforms remain the rational capital bet.
CNBC and industry groups frame the injunction as a near-term win with durable risk. CBT News emphasizes that regulatory whiplash — not the specific rules — is the core OEM complaint. The administration is expected to appeal.
Verified across 2 sources:
CNBC(Apr 21) · CBT News(Apr 22)
Gasgoo's analysis frames what's new beyond Monday's VW-XPeng agentic AI announcement: Great Wall, Li Auto, IM Motors, and XPeng are deploying VLA 2.0 (Vision-Language-Action) as native cockpit architecture — not LLM overlays — with the real moat being end-to-end systems engineering and proprietary user data. Stellantis committed to 100+ co-developed Microsoft AI initiatives and 60% datacenter footprint reduction by 2029; GM disclosed AI design tools are now shaving months off development cycles.
Why it matters
The cockpit-AI battleground is 12–24 months ahead of Western deployment cadence, and the Stellantis-Microsoft and VW-XPeng responses both rely on hyperscaler partnerships rather than in-house capability — a structural vulnerability. The buyer committee in automotive now includes cockpit/AI product leads who didn't exist two years ago.
Motor Trade News warns OEMs that don't absorb distributed-ecosystem innovation will fall permanently behind — a more pessimistic read than the Stellantis-Microsoft framing of the hyperscaler-partnership template as credible.
Google Cloud Next reframed Vertex AI under Gemini Enterprise, released TPU 8t/8i chips for agent workloads, and signaled $175–185B in 2026 capex. Concurrent enterprise locks: Salesforce+Google enable Agentforce Sales inside Gemini Enterprise with Slack/Workspace integration; SAP+Google launch Joule Agents with bidirectional BigQuery access (H2 2026); Merck signed a Google Cloud deal worth up to $1B. Nasdaq hit a record. Infor's data shows 49% of firms still in early AI stages, blocked by data security, talent gaps, and unclear ROI.
Why it matters
This is the week agentic AI crossed from pilot architecture to enterprise production monetization — CRM, ERP, and hyperscaler are converging on the same orchestration layer, forcing buyers toward single-platform decisions. The 31% who still distrust autonomous agents on critical processes makes governance tooling the next budget line, building on yesterday's Microsoft Agent 365 launch.
The CIO procurement guide argues orchestration and verification — not model performance — are the real competitive axes, which aligns with the Infor data. Realm's $4.5M seed and Backstory's rebrand (see next story) are the specialist-layer signal.
Following yesterday's Von and Realm seed coverage, three more signals today: People.ai formally rebranded as Backstory (Revenue Answers Platform, embedded in CRM/email/call workflows); Mosaic raised $18M Series A led by Radical Ventures for deterministic deal-modeling used by top PE firms (20x speed over Excel); Loop raised $95M Series C for supply-chain AI. EIF data: B2B AI sales adoption jumped from 39% to 81% with a 17-point performance gap between agentic and manual orgs.
Why it matters
Tom, the pattern across Von, Realm, Backstory, and Mosaic is clear: the revenue-ops category is specializing around concrete measurable tasks — RFPs, pipeline reasoning, deal modeling, churn — not generic 'AI for sales.' The deterministic vs. probabilistic tool split (Mosaic vs. Backstory) matters for regulated workflows where audit trails are required; 40%+ of agentic AI projects risk cancellation by 2027 without governance proof.
New details alongside Monday's positive-absorption story: Acadia Realty Trust and Osiris Ventures acquired the Chanel and Cartier Newbury Street storefronts for $113.5M — over $5,800/sqft, a new benchmark for Boston luxury retail. Separately, CNBC reports Boston life-sciences lab real estate is beginning to stabilize after NIH grant cancellations pushed vacancy above 30%, with VC deployment and a slowing construction pipeline bringing it back toward balance. Greater Boston home-sale contract cancellations rose to 9.5% in March (from 7.3% YoY).
Why it matters
The bifurcation from Monday's office story is getting sharper: premium retail and high-quality office re-rating upward while residential transaction reliability and lab market remain fragile but improving. The World Cup Fan Fest at City Hall Plaza (June 12–27) adds a near-term hospitality and retail tailwind to the premium segment.
Banker & Tradesman is more cautious on the residential signal — rising cancellations in a tight market usually precede price pressure.
A set of concurrent Providence-area moves: RISD received the largest outright gift in school history — $20M from the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation funding full-tuition scholarships and two endowed faculty lines; URI's board chair Margo Cook and Renee Cohen gave $2.1M to launch the Cook-Cohen Scholars program (first cohort fall 2026); Cross Insurance opened a new 30,000-sqft Providence office in the Foundry for up to 75 staff; Citizens Bank faces two federal class actions after an April 20 Everest ransomware incident (bank says most affected data was masked test data); Rhode Island moved its primary from Sept. 8 to Sept. 9 to avoid the Labor Day setup crunch; Brown hosted a mayoral forum Tuesday night with Smiley, Morales, English, and Waters.
Why it matters
Providence is quietly having a durable institutional moment — two transformative higher-ed gifts within a week, meaningful commercial real estate expansion, and a credible mayoral field going into September 9. The Citizens Bank cybersecurity situation is the offsetting risk and worth watching: second major Rhode Island data-breach lawsuit cluster in a month, which tends to precede tighter state-level disclosure rules. For founders based in the Boston-Providence corridor, the RISD and URI gifts in particular signal an expanding design and research talent pipeline over the next 3–5 years.
PBN treats the gifts and office expansion as positive institutional signals. GoLocalProv frames the Citizens Bank lawsuits as the beginning of a liability wave, not an isolated event. The Ocean State Climate Alliance launch earlier this month adds a coordinated business-climate advocacy layer in Providence worth tracking.
S&P 500 closed at 7,138 (+1.05%) and Nasdaq at 24,658 (+1.64%) on Tuesday — 81% of 87 S&P reporters beat earnings, 76% beat on revenue. Key movers: Texas Instruments +10%, United Rentals +15%; Tesla -2% on revenue miss; IBM -6% on no guidance raise; ServiceNow -13% on Armis ($7.75B) integration concerns. Futures declined pre-market Wednesday. Two-thirds of S&P reporters flagged elevated energy costs on their calls.
Why it matters
The energy-cost flag from two-thirds of reporters is the structural drag to watch — the ceasefire extension (covered yesterday) removed headline risk but Hormuz remains closed, meaning the $115/bbl EIA Q2 forecast and supply disruption flow into corporate margin guidance for at least another quarter.
Barclays argues the 'Sell America' trade is exhausted on relative valuation. Morningstar's 23% top-5 concentration warning is the persistent counterweight to breadth recovery.
Two new developments beyond Monday's S-1 filing: SpaceX has signed an agreement to acquire AI coding specialist Cursor for $60B (or alternatively pay $10B for services, with outright acquisition considered more likely); and SpaceX separately warned investors of GPU supply/cost pressure while announcing plans for in-house GPU development. The IPO targeting a June 2026 date at $1.75–2T valuation with $75B raise remains the anchor. Cerebras is filing for a ~$23B Nasdaq IPO backed by a $20B OpenAI Master Relationship Agreement; OpenAI is targeting Q4 2026 at $852B.
Why it matters
The Cursor acquisition is the new signal — it positions SpaceX explicitly as an AI-infrastructure company in its IPO narrative, not just a launch provider, and the in-house GPU plan alongside xAI's ongoing technical challenges (11 of 12 founders departed) raises questions about execution capacity across Musk's portfolio heading into the June roadshow.
Motley Fool's retail scenario ($5K allocation ranging $2,218–$12,442 over five years) puts 125x 2025 revenue pricing in context. Futurum's Cerebras teardown flags UAE concentration risk in the wafer-scale silicon thesis.
The ceasefire extension (announced Tuesday) has not changed the physical supply picture: IEA chief Birol warns 13 million barrels per day remain offline — surpassing the 1973 embargo in scale — with Europe facing acute jet fuel shortages within weeks. EU Energy Commissioner Jorgensen called it 'as serious as 1973 and 2022 combined' and launched 'AccelerateEU' covering jet fuel redistribution, gas purchasing, fertilizer diversification, and electrification. The EU has spent €24B in additional energy import costs since late February. Reuters finds 21 firms withdrew/cut guidance, 32 announced price hikes, 31 warned of direct financial hits — Lufthansa cutting flights, BASF raising key product prices 30%+.
Why it matters
This is the gap between Tuesday's equity rally and the physical reality: Hormuz still closed, insurance and refinery-restart lags mean flows won't normalize for months even post-reopening, and the €24B EU cost figure translates directly into compressed capex across energy-intensive European sectors through at least Q3. For anyone modeling European customer budgets, delayed capital commitments are the operational implication.
Oxford Economics argues vulnerability is highly asymmetric — Asian refined-fuel importers are worst exposed, not shipping routes. This contradicts the EU-centric framing from Jorgensen and is the most important analytical divergence to track.
Breaking since yesterday's draft preview: ESPN's Dianna Russini reports Vrabel will seek counseling and be away for Day 3 (Saturday) following surfaced photos from an Arizona resort — Eliot Wolf and VP Ryan Cowden will run 8 of the Patriots' 11 picks. Vrabel is still present for Day 1 (Thursday, Pittsburgh). On A.J. Brown: the gap is confirmed — Patriots offering a second-round pick, Eagles asking for a first (2027 or 2028). Pick 31 consensus remains OT Max Iheanachor (Arizona State) with edge Cashius Howell as alternate; a trade-back to 34 for Vanderbilt TE Eli Stowers is in NBC Sports Boston's mock.
Why it matters
The Vrabel story lands at the worst possible moment — Day 3 covers 8 of 11 picks — but Wolf and Cowden have been handling late-round execution for years, so the football-operations risk is manageable. The Brown trade gap (second vs. first) means no deal this week is the most likely outcome; June 2+ restart once cap math improves (Eagles dead cap drops from $43.3M to $16.3M) remains the operative timeline.
Pats Pulpit's capital-value analysis ranks the Patriots 20th in draft value despite 11 picks, arguing the team needs to trade up or strategically to convert volume into quality — the more important football story behind the Vrabel distraction.
Tesla Q1 reveals a company pivoting under cover of one-time gains Headline EPS beat (41¢ vs 37¢) and 136% operating income growth are largely warranty reserve releases, tariff refund windfalls, and a 10-day stretch in payables. Strip those out and the core auto business is flat-to-down, energy storage revenue fell 12%, and Musk raised 2026 capex 25% to ~$25B to fund AI/robotics — plus the HW3 admission that 2019–2023 cars can't run unsupervised FSD. This is the earnings call where Tesla stopped pretending it was primarily an EV company.
The EV market has split into three distinct regional stories Europe Q1 BEV registrations +26–29% with March +49% and Tesla EU sales doubling; U.S. down ~27% with California -40% and Colorado -64% post-subsidy; China down 21% but exporters surging globally. One product category, three different demand curves driven by fuel prices, policy, and local competition — and OEMs are now cutting capacity (VW -1M units) while Chinese brands fill the gap.
Agentic AI has crossed from pilot to production this week Google Cloud Next made agents the centerpiece, SAP+Google announced multi-agent workflows, Salesforce+Google let Agentforce act inside Gemini Enterprise, and Stellantis committed to 100+ co-developed Microsoft AI initiatives. Infor's data shows 49% of firms still stuck in early stages — the gap between leaders and laggards is now the dominant enterprise AI story, not model performance.
OEMs are officially retreating from their 2028 EV roadmaps GM indefinitely parked its next-gen full-size EV refresh (suppliers notified), VW is cutting another 1M units of capacity and shrinking its portfolio below 100 models, and Bentley's first EV is a hedge inside a multi-pathway strategy. The common thread: OEMs underwrote EV volume assumptions on subsidy-era demand curves that no longer exist, and capital is rotating back to hybrids, EREVs, and ICE refreshes.
Charging and battery infrastructure is racing ahead of vehicle capability ChargePoint's 600 kW Express Solo can't be fully used by any current production EV (Lucid Gravity tops out at 400 kW); CATL's 3rd-gen Shenxing charges 10–98% in 6:27 and sodium-ion mass production arrives end-2026. The infrastructure-ahead thesis is becoming explicit: build for 2028–2030 demand while the market consolidates.
What to Expect
2026-04-23—NFL Draft Round 1 in Pittsburgh — Patriots pick at 31; Vrabel will be present for Day 1 but away Day 3
2026-04-24—Beijing Auto Show opens — XPeng unveils VLA 2.0 + IRON humanoid + ARIDGE flying car; Tesla absent