News
Tesla’s in-house Full Self-Driving chip puts TSLA 4 years ahead of competition: analyst
Tesla’s decision to develop its Full Self-Driving (FSD) computer chip in-house has put it four years ahead of the competition, according to ARK Invest analyst James Wang.
Wang laid out the case for the all-electric car maker’s custom automotive-grade computer against the next-best options in the market, all Nvidia products, in an article on ARK Invest’s website. His stated goal in the piece was to clarify Tesla’s position and achievement with full self-driving in simple terms as well as explain why an off-the-shelf chip would not have accomplished the same feat.
Admittedly, Tesla’s Autonomy Day livestream debuting the arrival of its Full Self-Driving computer was chock full of very technical details that many outside the computer science world indicated were difficult to follow. Thus, Wang’s FSD simplification is helpful for gaining insight into Tesla’s autonomous driving progress in terms of the bigger industry picture.
In summary, by focusing only on what its particular needs were for its particular software demands, Tesla was was able to improve its chip’s performance efficiency to a level that has allowed it to “leapfrog” over competitors. Wang predicts that by 2021, Tesla will be ready to release its next generation FSD computer while its closest competitor in terms of optimal peak utilization is just coming to market.
Nvidia is a prominent and highly successful leader in computer chip design, and Tesla already uses its products for Hardware 2.5, the computer currently running the electric car maker’s Autopilot features. That said, the industry giant has three self-driving-focused chips in its lineup: Xavier (in production), Pegasus (readying for production) and Orin (still pending an official announcement).
Pegasus is a Level 5 self-driving computer, as is Tesla’s FSD; however, it has twice as many chips as FSD, consumes seven times more power than FSD, and is too big and expensive for the Model 3. Since Nvidia designs chips for a wide range of hardware manufacturers, much like the Windows and Android operating systems are designed to be flexible enough for different computer and smartphone hardware suites, their functionality cannot be overly streamlined for one system over another. In contrast, Tesla (like Apple hardware/software) can focus all of its autonomy efforts on its specific hardware and software needs, thus achieving a greater output than Nvidia’s product.
In a follow up to Tesla’s Autonomy Day presentation wherein FSD was compared to Nvidia’s Xavier computer, a chip designed for semi-autonomous driving only, the chip manufacturer published a company blog piece drawing attention to Pegasus’ capabilities as a better measure for analysis. As pointed out in Wang’s analysis, the FSD and Pegasus still do not achieve the same metrics, leaving Tesla well positioned amongst its self-driving computer peers. Despite the issue, though, Nvidia’s conclusion was a positive response to the car maker’s achievement: Tesla has raised the bar on self-driving and other car manufacturers need to get on board before falling too far behind.
During the Autonomy Day presentation, Tesla CEO Elon Musk crowned FSD as “objectively best in the world”, and James Wang’s analysis is yet another outline of why that is arguably the case. Tesla’s Full Self-Driving Computer (formerly known as Hardware 3) is currently being installed in all new production vehicles, and owners who purchased Full Self-Driving for a car produced in 2016 or later will receive a free upgrade to the FSD computer in the near future. Musk has further predicted that Tesla’s full self-driving software will be complete by the end of this year and fully operational by the second quarter of next year.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner in Los Angeles dominated the company’s global usage rankings after just one year, proving the concept is more than just a one-off novelty location that will fade away.
The performance could incite the company to build more locations, something that CEO Elon Musk has hinted at for some time.
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner delivered 21.2 GWh of energy in its first year of operation, the company’s head of Charging, Max de Zegher, revealed on X. Of the top 10 most utilized Supercharger locations in Tesla’s global infrastructure, the Diner in Los Angeles was the most used by drivers, and it wasn’t particularly close:
Tesla Diner opened exactly 1 year ago. Inspiring that futuristic places like this exist.
It’s our highest usage Supercharger in the world: 21.2 GWh delivered in a year, 1.6k sessions/day.
Top 10 Superchargers by energy delivered: https://t.co/9YvJ8lw696 pic.twitter.com/koB3AUJHws
— Max (@MdeZegher) July 21, 2026
On its launch day one year ago, nobody was too sure what the Tesla Diner would be about. It seemed like an interesting concept, and considering it had been in the works for years, it was a highly anticipated launch that many were looking forward to.
Based on its success, we could see additional Diners with Superchargers built throughout the United States, and potentially beyond. Musk has said on several occasions that the company would be willing to bring the Diner idea to more markets.
Tesla makes major change at Supercharger Diner amid epic demand
Of the markets that Musk has mentioned, both Palo Alto and Austin have come to be perceived as ideal selections. However, there are no concrete plans as of now to build new Supercharger Diners anywhere; the location on Santa Monica Boulevard will remain the exclusive spot to pick up Tesla-inspired eats, at least for the time being.
Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.
Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Shares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.
Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.
However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.
S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.
Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.
At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner probably just secured more locations
