Investor's Corner
Tesla Model 3 Mid Range RWD deliveries are starting earlier than expected
Tesla appears to be learning the art of under-promising and over-delivering. When Tesla announced the Mid Range Model 3, the company noted that deliveries of the vehicle would likely begin within 6-10 weeks. If recent reports from the Tesla community are any indication, though, it appears that deliveries for the Mid Range Model 3 have already begun, less than two weeks since the vehicle was initially launched.
In a recent post, Tesla Motors Club member ivan801 noted that he had taken delivery of his Mid Range Model 3. Based on images shared by the Model 3 owner, his vehicle was a solid black variant with black interior and 18″ Aero Wheels. The vehicle’s VIN was also in the 150k-range, suggesting that Tesla registered the electric car on October. The past month, after all, saw Tesla register more than 61,000 new Model 3 VINs, starting the month with numbers in the 118k-range and ending the month with the highest VINs at the 179k-range.
Apart from the TMC member’s post, a video of a Model 3 accelerating on a freeway on-ramp was recently uploaded on YouTube as well. The video’s owner dubbed the vehicle as the “economy” variant of the Model 3 in the clip’s description, though in later comments, the uploader remarked that the vehicle was a Mid Range Model 3. The short clip featured the vehicle accelerating from a sub-20 mph rolling start, and based on the video; it appears that even Tesla’s “slowest” vehicle to date is still pretty quick on its feet.
-
- A Mid Range Tesla Model 3 RWD. [Credit: ivan801/Tesla Motors Club]
-
- A Mid Range Tesla Model 3 RWD. [Credit: ivan801/Tesla Motors Club]
A Mid Range Model 3 has been delivered to a reservation holder. [Credit: ivan801/Tesla Motors Club]
In the days prior to the car’s announcement, Elon Musk began teasing the arrival of a “lemur” on Twitter. On October 18, Tesla released the Mid Range Model 3, a lower-cost version of its electric sedan that initially cost $45,000 before incentives. Neither Tesla nor Elon Musk announced the reasons behind the “lemur” references, though the little primate’s name could be a clever play on the vehicle’s LEMR variation (Limited Edition Mid Range, perhaps?).
While the price of the Mid Range Model 3 was adjusted to $46,000 not long after the vehicle was released, the new variant does offer budget-conscious reservation holders the opportunity to join the Tesla ecosystem at a time when the full $7,500 federal tax credit is still in effect. Earlier this year, Tesla sold its 200,000th electric car in the United States, triggering a phase-out period for its vehicles’ $7,500 federal tax credit. With the phase-out period in effect, electric cars that will be delivered starting January 1, 2019, would only be eligible for a $3,750 tax credit, 50% less than those who would take delivery before the end of 2018.
A recent email from Tesla to reservation holders noted that deliveries for the Mid Range Model 3 would start in as little as four weeks. According to Tesla’s communication, “current delivery timelines are 4 weeks for the west coast, 6 weeks for central and 8 weeks for the east coast.” The electric car maker further noted that those who can pick up their vehicle directly from the Fremont factory would likely see deliveries in “under four weeks.”
The Mid Range Model 3, at its current price, represents a $3,000 savings from the Long Range RWD variant of the vehicle, which was the first version that Tesla started producing. With the price savings comes a number of compromises in terms of performance, though, as the Mid Range Model 3 features a 260-mile range, a 0-60 mph time of 5.6 seconds, and a top speed of 125 mph. In contrast, the Long Range RWD variant, which started at $49,000 before incentives, has a range of 310 miles per charge, a 0-60 mph time of 5.1 seconds, and a top speed of 140 mph.
Tesla’s deliveries for the Mid Range Model 3 comes amidst Tesla’s improving production ramp for the vehicle. The past quarters have been difficult for the electric car maker, with Elon Musk dubbing the Model 3 ramp as “production hell.” After hitting its goal of producing 5,000 Model 3 per week at the end of the second quarter, though, the winds started to shift for the company. Things continued to improve in the third quarter, with Tesla delivering 55,840 Model 3 from July to September. What’s more, the company also surprised Wall Street by posting $6.8 billion in revenue and beating earnings estimates with a GAAP profit of $312 million.
With large numbers of Mid Range Model 3 expected to be delivered in the fourth quarter, and with upgrades from Panasonic and Grohmann expected to be installed in Gigafactory sometime in Q4, the current quarter might very well become Tesla’s most impressive yet.
Watch a Mid Range Model 3 accelerate on a highway on-ramp in the video below.
Elon Musk
Tesla Cybercabs narrowly miss deadly Amazon cargo plane crash
An Amazon cargo plane crash near Miami’s airport stopped feet from dozens of Tesla Cybercabs.
An Amazon Prime Air Boeing 767 cargo jet overran the runway at Miami International Airport on Sunday afternoon, killing five people and injuring five more. The jet, operated by North Carolina based carrier 21 Air as Flight 7598, touched down around 2 p.m. after arriving from San Juan, Puerto Rico, then crossed the airport perimeter, plowed across NW 67th Avenue and struck multiple vehicles before catching fire, according to the Associated Press.
Photos and video from the scene show the aircraft’s nose stopped within meters of a fenced staging lot holding dozens of gold painted Tesla Cybercabs, the steering wheel free robotaxi Tesla began putting on public roads in Austin last week. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue has confirmed the plane struck “multiple vehicles” but has not said whether any Cybercabs were among them, and neither Tesla nor airport officials have addressed the fleet directly.
The Cybercabs had not yet entered commercial service in Miami. Tesla’s existing Robotaxi operation there runs on modified Model Y vehicles and has been unsupervised since Ashok Elluswamy confirmed the detail on X in July.
Footage of the plane crash from earlier today | #ONLYinDADE pic.twitter.com/iGoOtnd6cD
— ONLY in DADE (@ONLYinDADE) September 6, 2026
Elon Musk offered the briefest of reactions. Replying to a Zero Hedge post about the Cybercabs sitting so close to the wreckage, he wrote a single word: “Weird.” He has not commented further, and Tesla has not issued a statement.
The timing puts Tesla’s newest vehicle near an unrelated but highly visible tragedy just days after its Austin debut, a launch that had already drawn scrutiny from federal regulators. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an audit how Tesla certified the Cybercab as compliant with federal vehicle safety standards, a process Teslarati covered after the vehicle’s September 3 launch event. That inquiry concerns the car’s lack of a steering wheel and pedals, not the Miami crash.
Investigators from the FAA and NTSB are focused on the plane, not the parking lot beside it. Flight data reviewed by outlets including Simple Flying show the 767 touched down around 170 knots, well above the 135 to 140 knot range typical for the aircraft, though investigators have not determined a cause. Amazon said it is working with authorities and that its priority is the safety of everyone affected.
Whether any Cybercabs were damaged, and what Tesla plans for the fleet parked near one of the country’s busiest airports, remain open questions.
Featured
Tesla Cybercab is coming to Asia this month as US service officially begins
Tesla Asia says Cybercab will be on display in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai this month.
Tesla’s Cybercab is heading to Asia. The official Tesla Asia account posted on X Thursday, inviting Cybercab fans to “Come experience the future of autonomy in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing & Shanghai.” The post went up within hours of Tesla’s own Cybercab milestone in Texas, where the company said Thursday it had begun offering rides in across Austin.
Exact dates and venues for the Asia tour haven’t been released yet, though Tesla Hong Kong replied to the announcement with “Cybercab will be on display in Hong Kong soon,” while Tesla Japan’s response pointed fans to a sign up page for updates. Neither post mentions test rides or a service area, and nothing so far suggests Tesla is launching Robotaxi operations in any of the four cities. Based on how Tesla has run past Cybercab tours, in Europe in late 2024 and at US shopping centers that same December, the Asia stops are almost certainly static displays at Tesla stores or public venues as a means to stimulate buzz for its future driverless ride-hailing service in the big cities.
Cybercab will be on display in Asia this month!
Come experience the future of autonomy in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing & Shanghai. pic.twitter.com/wGmmEastfX— Tesla Asia (@Tesla_Asia) September 4, 2026
The timing lines up with Tesla’s only prior Cybercab appearance in the region, a booth at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai last November, which Teslarati covered at the time. At that event, Tesla’s regional general manager for Shanghai framed the car as evidence of the company’s broader mission, a message Tesla has since formalized in its Master Plan Part IV, which states that “autonomous vehicles have the capacity to dramatically improve the affordability, availability and safety of transportation while reducing pollution, particularly in our increasingly dense global cities.” The same document is where Tesla lays out its “sustainable abundance” framing for Cybercab and Optimus alike, describing the two as the hardware behind an AI driven push to cut the cost of transportation and labor at scale.
Whether Cybercab actually operates as a robotaxi anywhere in Asia remains an open question, considering China has already pushed an autonomous ride-hailing market that’s run on homegrown players like Baidu’s Apollo Go and Pony AI. For now, the four city tour reads as a marketing push timed to Austin’s momentum.
Elon Musk
OpenAI cites distrust of SpaceX in decision to drop Cursor partnership
OpenAI will cut SpaceX-owned Cursor’s model access in November, citing Musk’s history of broken contracts.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced late Friday that it is ending its partnership with Cursor, cutting off the coding tool’s access to its models on November 12. The move comes two weeks after SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor’s parent company, Anysphere, folding the popular AI coding assistant into Elon Musk’s growing SpaceXAI division.
In a post on its website, OpenAI said the decision came down to trust, not technology. “We cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk’s companies violating contracts,” the company wrote. OpenAI pointed to two specific incidents: X, now part of SpaceX, allegedly breaking the terms of an existing OpenAI contract after Musk bought Twitter.
That lawsuit is the backdrop for all of this. Musk cofounded OpenAI in 2015, left the board in 2018, and sued Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2024, arguing they abandoned the company’s nonprofit mission for profit. A federal jury sided with OpenAI in May, finding Musk waited too long to sue rather than ruling on the merits of his claims. Musk said at the time he would appeal to the Ninth Circuit, calling the outcome a “calendar technicality” rather than a real judgment.
SpaceX’s interest in Cursor predates that verdict by weeks. The company first struck a deal with Cursor in April, securing an option to acquire it for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for joint development work instead. As Teslarati reported at the time, the logic was straightforward: Cursor was paying retail prices to Anthropic and OpenAI, two of its most direct competitors, every time a developer used its product, while SpaceX had idle capacity on its Colossus supercomputer, roughly the equivalent of a million Nvidia H100 GPUs, that Cursor could use to train its own models instead. SpaceX exercised the option in June, days after its own IPO, and the deal closed in mid-August.
Once it closed, Musk moved fast. On an all-hands call with more than 1,000 Cursor employees, he reportedly told staff that SpaceXAI’s Grok was playing catchup in the AI race, unlike Tesla and SpaceX in their own markets, and singled out Anthropic as the company to catch. Cursor CEO Michael Truell now reports directly to Musk inside SpaceXAI.
Losing OpenAI’s models leaves Cursor leaning harder on Anthropic’s Claude, which has its own compute agreement with SpaceX, and on Cursor’s in-house Composer model, the one SpaceX’s compute was supposed to accelerate in the first place. OpenAI framed the November deadline as maximum notice under its contract, and said it wants to “go above and beyond” to help developers through the transition. Whether Anthropic makes the same call is now the open question in AI coding.
Elon Musk rips ABC News over fatal NYC Tesla crash report
Tesla’s two defunct flagship models are getting a big upgrade
