Autonomy debuted its electric vehicle subscription service in Austin, Texas, following its successful launch in California earlier in 2022 and its recent expansion into Florida and Washington. Following California and Florida, Texas is ranked third in EV registrations.
With almost 30,000 new EVs on the road between 2020 and 2021, Autonomy noted that the growth and natural demand makes Texas, “a compelling state for Autonomy to expand operations into.”
Scott Painter, founder, and CEO of Autonomy, gave a press statement emphasizing the growth of EVs in Texas.
“The EV adoption rate in Texas signals to us that there’s even more demand for EVs and more of a need for alternative ways to access one,” he said. “Today, Texas has more than 156,000 EVs on the road, with 22,122 in Travis County alone — the highest-ranking EV county in Texas. These numbers are encouraging, and we’re excited for Autonomy service to help boost EV adoption in the second-most-populous state in the country and increase EV adoption statewide.”
Austin has over 1,300 public EV chargers, with more than 500 new ones added within the last 90 days. Autonomy highlighted the city’s unique Austin Energy Plug-in EVerywhere network subscription plan that offers unlimited charging for $4.17 per month at any of its over 1,000 level 2 charging stations.
During a call with Teslarati on Wednesday, Scott Painter shared the types of EVs it will offer in Austin, along with a few additional details.
“Our fleet is predominantly Tesla Model 3s, and we have a couple of Modely Ys. Right now, we’ve got just under 2,000 cars in total in the fleet, and I think it’s about 100 Model Ys.”
“In the first quarter, we’re going to be adding VinFast, as well as Mercedes and Polestar. Those three brands are going to become part of the lineup in all of our markets.”
Scott added that he and the team at Autonomy were excited about Austin, specifically.
“Austin has a much bigger rate of EV registration rateably than everywhere else in Texas. Everywhere else in the country is sort of at about one or two percent that people are getting EVs. In Austin, it’s almost 10%.”
He added that it’s about 20% in California, but Austin and Miami are the top two cities in terms of EV registrations as a rateable number relative to non-electric vehicles.
We asked if Tesla’s move to Austin played any role in Autonomy’s decision to launch in Austin. Scott pointed out that although it did not, Tesla’s move probably played a key role in Austin’s EV registrations going up.
“Our decision was purely based on the evidence of EV registrations. I’m sure that EV registrations in Austin were influenced by Tesla’s decision to headquarter there. I think Austin feels like it owns Elon now, so, people who live in Austin feel like they should be driving the local car,” he said.
“But we’re simply making decisions based on really rational evidence that says this is the time to go to Austin.”
Scott emphasized the affordability of driving an EV versus a traditional internal combustion engine vehicle.
“I think that we could have never anticipated the kind of tailwinds that we’re seeing right now for going electric. Certainly, when gas prices go above four or five dollars a gallon, it’s undeniable. You should be driving an electric car.”
Scott noted that one could drive the same amount of miles for around one-eighth the price.
“The average American currently still gets 20 miles to the gallon and drives 1,000 miles per month. That means they’re putting $4,000+ per year into their car versus $800 per year for the same miles even in a state like California where we pay almost 20 cents a kWh for electricity.”
He also pointed out that Autonomy fills in the gaps where the cost of buying a new car, especially an EV, is becoming “unreachable” for many Americans. He also noted that many people are holding off on buying an EV because of the Inflation Reduction Act and tax credits.
“Everyone sort of thinks that, ‘I’ll just wait until the tax credit is there.’ Well, to qualify for the tax credit, you have to make a certain amount of money, and you have to buy a car that has a certain amount of all American-made products in it. So Tesla would normally fully qualify, but some of these new entrants don’t.”
Scott explained that as a fleet operator, Autonomy qualifies for all of it and is able to pass along those savings.
Disclosure: Johnna is a $TSLA shareholder and believes in Tesla’s mission.
Your feedback is welcome. If you have any comments or concerns or see a typo, you can email me at johnna@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter at @JohnnaCrider1.
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Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) beat Wall Street expectations of 406,000 vehicles delivered in Q2 by reporting 480,126 deliveries for the three months ending in June.
Tesla reported it delivered 467,762 Model 3 and Model Y units, while 12,364 Model S, Model X, and Cybertrucks switched hands during the quarter. The Model S and Model X were officially sunset this past quarter and will no longer be part of the company’s Production & Delivery reports moving forward.
🚨 BREAKING: Tesla delivered 480,126 vehicles in Q2, ANNIHILATING Wall Street expectations of 406,000. Production was reported at 451,758.
Deliveries:
Model 3/Y: 467,762
Other Models: 12,364Production:
Model 3/Y: 442,936
Other Models: 8,822 https://t.co/TTHwQAsKt8 pic.twitter.com/7qI4Zj6FE5— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 2, 2026
The quarter is a pleasant surprise and a good rebound from Q1, when Tesla slightly missed the Wall Street consensus of 365,645 cars by reporting 358,023 deliveries for the first three motnhs of the year.
Energy storage deployments also provided some strength in Tesla’s delivery report, hitting 13.5 GWh for Q2. This is a particular division of Tesla’s business that has been overwhelmingly robust over the past few years, truly being a strong point of the company’s overall model.
For the year, Tesla analysts still predict deliveries to trend in the 1.69 million unit region, a modest 3 to 5 percent increase from the 1.64 million cars the company delivered last year. Tesla will likely return to more sequential and noticeable year-over-year growth as the Cybercab project starts to ramp up considerably in the next few years.
Tesla has some other potential catalysts to spur vehicle deliveries, too. Not only is it expecting Cybercab to truly start making a change in the next few years, but other vehicles could be entering the company’s lineup.
Tesla sends production Cybercab with no steering wheel, pedals to on-road testing
The slightly longer Model Y L has been a highly speculated release candidate in the U.S. It has already done incredibly well in China, and U.S. buyers have been wanting slightly more interior space than the Model Y. Now that the Model X is gone, it is more needed than ever.
Q2 highlights a pretty stable automotive division within Tesla, and no true concerns arise from these figures, especially considering it managed to beat expectations convincingly.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted a photo of himself standing with the Optimus production team inside Tesla’s Fremont factory, arms crossed amid workers in hard hats and safety vests. The image captures a pivotal industrial shift: the same facility space once dedicated to building Tesla’s flagship Model S sedan and Model X SUV is now home to the company’s humanoid robot manufacturing line.
Walking the Optimus production line in Fremont pic.twitter.com/ABS0tuRibW
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2026
Tesla’s Fremont Factory, acquired in 2010 from the former NUMMI joint venture between Toyota and GM, has been the company’s original U.S. manufacturing hub since Model S production began in 2012.
The Model X followed soon thereafter. These premium vehicles offered lower annual volumes, recently around 30,000 combined, compared to the high-volume Model 3 and Model Y lines that continue around the site. Over their combined run, the S and X accounted for roughly 610,000 units.
In late January 2026, during Tesla’s Q4 2025 earnings call, Elon Musk announced the end of Model S and Model X production in Q2 2026. The final vehicles rolled off the line in early May. Rather than retooling for another vehicle, Tesla chose to convert the dedicated S/X assembly area into a dedicated Optimus Gen 3 production line.
Model 3 and Y manufacturing remains unaffected. Tesla’s official Fremont Factory page now lists Optimus alongside the 3 and Y as core products.
The conversion was executed with remarkable speed. After production stopped, crews dismantled the existing vehicle line and installed entirely new modular equipment—including lines sourced from Germany and dozens of sub-lines for actuators, batteries, and other components—in roughly four months.
Musk described the timeline as “insanely fast,” noting it would be unprecedented for any other manufacturer. Initial Optimus output is expected to ramp slowly due to the robot’s roughly 10,000 unique parts and the brand-new production processes involved. The Fremont line targets an eventual capacity of 1 million Optimus units per year.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Optimus Development Timeline
- August 19, 2021: Optimus (then called Tesla Bot) formally announced at Tesla’s first AI Day. A concept video showed a person in a suit demonstrating the vision for a general-purpose humanoid capable of dangerous, repetitive, or boring tasks using the same AI architecture as Full Self-Driving.
- 2022: Early prototypes displayed. At the second AI Day in September, semi-functional units demonstrated walking across a stage and basic arm movements
- 2023: September videos showed improved capabilities, including sorting colored blocks, precise limb awareness, and holding a Yoda pose.
- 2024-early 2025: Factory integration videos showed Optimus navigating workspaces and handling objects like battery cells.
- January 2026: Gen 3 mass-production activities began at Fremont, with reports of over 1,000 Gen 3 units already operating inside the factory for real-world learning and AI training
- April 2026: Musk confirms Optimus production on converted Fremont line would begin in late July or August 2026. The Gen 3 reveal, originally eyed for Q1, was pushed closer to production start. A second, much larger Optimus factory at Giga Texas is under construction, with volume production targeted for Summer 2027 and long-term capacity of 10 million units annually
- July 1, 2026: Musk’s on-site visit and team photo confirm the Optimus line is operational and the transition is actively progressing
Tesla positions Optimus as potentially its largest project ever, leveraging vertical integration, AI expertise, and car-like manufacturing know-how to scale humanoid robots first for its own factories and later for broader industrial and consumer use.
The Fremont conversion serves as a critical proving ground for this ambitious new chapter in Tesla’s already-rich history.
Investor's Corner
Tesla gets its latest short from Michael Burry: ‘Happy it jumped back to this level’
Tesla short seller Michael Burry, the subject of the film “The Big Short,” where he was portrayed by Steve Carell, has revealed he has opened a new bet against the stock.
In a new update to his Substack newsletter in a post titled “Trading Post June 30, 2026,” Burry revealed a new set of bets against Tesla, Caterpillar, NVIDIA, Applied Materials Inc., and the iShares Semiconductor ETF.
In regard to Tesla, Burry wrote:
“And finally I shorted Tesla at 416.22. Happy it jumped back to this level.”
This means Burry likely opened his new short position after the company’s recent rally on Wall Street, which saw Tesla shares sink in mid-May, only to recover to well over the $400 mark. Currently, shares trade at around $427.
The company saw a big Tuesday as shares climbed considerably, over 10 percent. The size of the Tesla short was not provided, nor did Burry give any information on the position’s structure, the number of shares, dollar value, or whether options were used in the short.
The Tesla and SpaceX merger everyone is talking about is quietly building
Over the years, Burry has been one of the more vocal critics of Tesla, calling its share price “media inflated,” and saying it was “ridiculously overvalued” as recently as December.
The company has largely transitioned away from being known as an automotive company and instead is much more widely regarded as an AI play, mostly due to its Full Self-Driving efforts, Optimus robot development, and data collection related to both.
This has not pulled those skeptics away from being vocal about their distaste for how Tesla is valued, but there’s no denying that the company is a global force in many things, including sustainable energy, automotive, and AI.
Tesla annihilates Wall Street expectations with strong Q2 delivery showing
Tesla Optimus project fires up as Musk sees production line progress
