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Elon Musk and Warren Buffett Squabble Over Solar In Nevada
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns NV Energy, the largest utility company in Nevada. NV Energy has recently pressured the Nevada PUC to slash the amount it must pay residential solar customers for electricity from rooftop solar arrays. Elon Musk is not happy.
Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway owns NV Energy, Nevada’s largest electric utility. Part of Tesla Motors’ agreement with the State of Nevada regarding the Gigafactory is a provision that guarantees the factory to receive discounted electricity rates for 8 years. However that discount will result in a $1.50 per year increase to existing NV Energy customers, according to the Las Vegas Sun.
Elon Musk has a major role in SolarCity, the rooftop solar company that specializes in helping residential customers obtain rooftop solar systems for their homes. In Nevada, those homeowners were able to sell any excess electricity back to NV Energy through a process known as net metering. The reimbursement rate was set at 11 cents per kilowatt. That extra money helped fuel a boom in residential rooftop solar with SolarCity leading the way.
But recently, under heavy pressure from NV Energy, the Nevada Public Utilities commission slashed the rate to just 2.6 cents per kilowatt. The rooftop solar companies screamed that the move would eviscerate the residential solar industry in the state. SolarCity shut down its operation in Nevada and laid off hundreds of employees.
Warren Buffett told CNBC on Monday that it is ridiculous for NV Energy to pay rooftop solar customers 11 cents per kilowatt when the company’s base cost of electricity from conventional operations is just 5 cents per kilowatt. He says it is unfair for 1,000,000 customers who don’t have rooftop solar to subsidize the 17,000 or so who do. He says Elon Musk has called and spoken to him about the situation.
“He was unhappy,” Buffett said of Musk. Then he added, “He’s being subsidized with his battery plant big time.” Is that really true? The battery factory Buffett is referring to is the Tesla Gigafactory, which has been designed from the start to be net zero. That means it will generate more electricity every year than it uses. Net zero does not mean it will never draw power from the electrical grid. It means it will put more back into the grid than it uses over the course of a year. There is no information available on how the new rules from the Nevada Public Utilities commission may impact Tesla.
Musk always likes to remind people that the $1.3 billion Tesla is receiving in incentives amount to only a small discount compared to the size of the economic benefits the project is conferring on the area. “It makes sense that if something is the biggest thing on Earth, it’s probably going to have incentives that are big in the absolute, but small in relative terms,” Musk says
Warren Buffett likes to say that Berkshire Hathaway is strongly committed to reducing global carbon emissions. But he, like the Koch Brothers, is heavily invested in fossil fuels. According to ThinkProgress, he wrote in his annual letter to investors recently, “Last year, BHE [Berkshire Hathaway Energy] made major commitments to the future development of renewables in support of the Paris Climate Change Conference.”
That may be true, but last year it also nearly doubled its position in Phillips 66 and boosted its investment in Suncor position by nearly seven million shares to 30 million shares, an investment now worth approximately $1.1 billion. Suncor is the Canadian company that seeks to develop the Alberta tar sands, the dirtiest source of petroleum on the planet.
Buffett may be one of the smartest investors in the history of the planet, but he is no leader on climate change issues the way Musk is. His letter to investors had this paragraph: "As a citizen, you may understandably find climate change keeping you up nights. As a homeowner in a low-lying area, you may wish to consider moving. But when you are thinking only as a shareholder of a major insurer, climate change should not be on your list of worries."
ThinkProgress labels coastal flooding as a potential trillion dollar liability. Berkshire Hathaway is one of the largest companies in flood insurance and therefore has a huge potential risk from rising sea levels.
Photo credit: CNBC
The Tesla Model Y L is arguably the most hyped trim of the all-electric crossover, other than the Performance configuration that comes with white-knuckle speed and sports car-level handling.
However, it is not all perfect. Tesla owners in China who took delivery of the Model Y L, denoted with an L to highlight its longer wheelbase, are experiencing what they are referring to as “collapsing” of the rear wheels, as suspension issues appear to be an issue with some of the builds.
🚨 Model Y L owners in China report rear suspension sag
• Six-seat long-wheelbase Y. Shanghai. On sale since August 2025
• Owners say the rear tire-to-arch gap shrinks after mileage or a full load. Some cases after about 9,000 km loaded. Others near 30,000 km
• Tesla service… pic.twitter.com/Lr6i5Tbi07— Joe Hansen (@joehansen) September 1, 2026
The gap between the wheel arch and tire has narrowed to the point that “not even a single finger” could fit, according to a report from Car News China. The failures are not tied to a specific mileage, as one owner said that after just 9,000 kilometers (5,600 miles), they noticed the suspension issue when their car was fully loaded.
Another one had the issue at 30,000 kilometers (18,640 miles) and noticed that the wheel gap shrank to two fingers, so not as drastic as the person who reported a similar issue at 9,000 km.
Tesla Model Y L is gaining momentum in China’s premium segment
Along with the visual recognition of the issue, others are saying the sagging is causing abnormal wear on the inside of the tires. Extra weight and instant torque already provide additional stress on the tires in electric vehicles during normal operation, so it is no surprise that this is another complaint.
There has been no recall issued by Tesla, and the company has not yet publicly acknowledged the issue.
Some are suggesting that owners use a “finger test” to self-diagnose whether there is an issue with the suspension. There should be four fingers between the tire and the wheel well; anything less than that starts to get dicey.
Tesla is starting to truly tease and hype its groundbreaking Cybercab event, which takes place tomorrow in Austin, Texas. It will be the first time members of the public will be able to ride in a Cybercab, a vehicle without any manual controls, on public roads.
Tesla has been dropping some hype on X over the past several days, but this morning, the excitement has truly started to build up for the event. Although Cybercab has been unveiled before, this is truly Tesla’s announcement that it is ready to start offering autonomous rides for public passengers in its new ride-hailing-geared vehicle for the first time.
The hype has started with a variety of different social media posts that are a true indication that Tesla is preparing for something big. Teasing so much of the potential of Cybercab, including its ability to truly revolutionize how people hail rides for local travel, is what the big idea for the event entails. The time that many Tesla owners, fans, and investors have been waiting for is potentially here:
— Tesla (@Tesla) September 2, 2026
The event has remained slim on details. Even invitees are still awaiting true details about what the event will entail, where they’ll go, and what is in store for the evening. This is pretty typical for an event run by Tesla; they keep things under wraps for the most part until the very last minute.
However, there is no secret about what the real intention of Tesla is for this event: it is going to be a huge reveal party for a vehicle that has no steering wheel and no pedals. It is a truly massive step for the company moving forward.
No steering wheel, no pedals
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) September 2, 2026
Speculation persists as to whether this is going to be an event that simply announces that rides will begin with the Cybercab, or it will be something more substantial. Tesla has said in the past that they plan to sell the Cybercab to the general public in what could become a great way to earn passive income by adding it to a more global fleet of Robotaxi-geared vehicles.
Tomorrow, the show begins in Austin, and the Cybercab goes live at some capacity; we just don’t know exactly how quite yet.
News
SpaceX tells the FCC that Starship Flight 14 is going to orbit
SpaceX filed with the FCC for Starship Flight 14, its first true orbital launch attempt.
SpaceX has asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to fly Starlink terminals during Starship’s fourteenth flight test, and the filing lays out a genuine trip to orbit, something the program has never attempted.
Every Starship flight so far, including Flight 13’s successful splashdown in the Indian Ocean on July 24, has flown a suborbital arc that ends with the ship reentering the atmosphere within the same hour it launches. The FCC paperwork describes a mission profile built around an actual orbital insertion instead.
The payload is the other half of the story. Flight 13 carried 20 production Starlink V3 satellites, but because that mission never reached orbit, the satellites reentered along with the ship rather than joining the constellation, something Teslarati covered in detail after SpaceX released footage shot from one of those satellites as it drifted away from Starship in space. Flight 14 is designed to close that gap. If the orbital insertion holds, the roughly 20 V3 satellites onboard would separate into an operational orbit and could eventually go into service, each one rated for about 1 terabit per second of downlink capacity by SpaceX’s own account.
SpaceX announces new Starbase for ‘thousands of Starship launches annually’
Elon Musk first flagged the orbital attempt during SpaceX’s August 4 earnings call, the company’s first as a public entity following its June IPO under the ticker SPCX. He also floated catching the ship with the Starbase tower on the same flight, an idea he walked back on August 20, saying the catch attempt would more likely come “in a few months,” as Teslarati reported at the time. Flight 14 will instead target a splashdown for the ship in the Indian Ocean, the same recovery method used since Flight 12.
Hardware has been catching up to the ambition. Booster 21 completed a full 33-engine static fire on August 28, and Ship 41 finished its own six-engine test the week before. An airspace briefing circulated to pilots on August 20 listed September 15 as the target date, later than the end of August window Musk mentioned on the earnings call, though SpaceX has not confirmed a launch date publicly and Starship schedules routinely slip while hardware and FAA paperwork line up.
The FCC filing itself does not guarantee a launch date. It covers communications authority, and not flight readiness, considering SpaceX still needs Ship 41 fully stacked and cleared by the FAA before Flight 14 can fly. But the filing is a real marker of intent and it puts a specific regulatory process behind what had so far only been Musk’s word on the earnings call.
Tesla Model Y L gets suspension complaints in over odd issue China
Tesla Cybercab event gains steam ahead of massive launch
