Tesla

Tesla — if it moves on schedule inside Sol, one of their yards probably touched it.

Tesla is a human-owned Sol-system industrial corporation. Mars holds the headquarters and the largest heavy assembly yards, but the company is not a one-planet shop: Luna runs precision lines and legal certification, Earth arcologies feed stamped subassemblies, and belt facilities assemble, service, and recover units where the work actually happens. Tesla does not license full production outside Sol. Competitors hate that sentence. Lawyers have fed families on it.

Tesla builds industrial droids: maintenance frames, tunnel welders, scoop-corridor inspectors, sky-car traffic units, autominers, and the tireless gate-tech machines travelers see at ring couplings. Models vary by district because Mercury heat, Luna dust, Mars yards, and belt vacuum do not reward the same engineering. The common promise is dull and valuable: the unit clocks in, follows procedure, and does not ask for hazard pay.

Sky cars and autominers remain Sol-licensed product lines. Export is treaty-blocked under the Solaris–Hardfell Automation Compact. Outside Sol, dwarves call the arm "real space" — pirates, salvage wars, and wildlife nesting in hollow asteroids. Tesla autominers are too delicate and too expensive for that work even when somebody smuggles one out. Hardfell Extraction Frames and league pit crews still own deep-lane mining.

Jump gates are hungry machines: constant adjustment, radiation hygiene, coupling wear, astral scrub, queue logic. Humans supervise; Tesla units do most of the ugly physical work. Other firms sell droids, but Concord signs exclusive maintenance and deployment contracts with Tesla. Market gossip calls it a protected monopoly. Dock crews call it the reason a replacement coupling arrives with six Sol inspection stamps and a bill large enough to need its own berth.