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First Look at a ride inside the Boring Company’s LVCC Loop as testing begins
Elon Musk’s Boring Company performed capacity testing in Las Vegas at its Las Vegas Convention Center Loop yesterday as the Sin City prepares to reopen with no restrictions on June 1st. In preparation for Las Vegas to welcome back travelers, visitors, and residents alike to the downtown area after over a year of quarantine, the Boring Company is preparing for the first days of operation with its newly constructed Vegas Loop, a public transportation option that aims to give travelers efficient express options to travel to and from the city’s most popular hotspots.
A fleet of Model 3, Model Y, and Model X vehicles was on the ground in Las Vegas, and eyewitnesses estimate around 50 Tesla electric vehicles were a part of the testing phase. Additionally, less than 500 people were a part of the tests that aimed to give the Boring Company and the LVCC officials some clarity on how the Loop would run once the city fills back up with people.
Credit: eirunning85 | imgur
One eyewitness, u/adjudicatedmonster on the r/BoringCompany subreddit, gave several details about what they saw while the testing phase was ongoing. One of the most notable parts of the test was the constant loop of vehicles working on merging and coexisting smoothly. This remains to be the most crucial part of the LVCC Loop’s effectiveness because, without smooth and uneventful travel, the Loop will not work efficiently. However, u/adjudicatedmonster said that boarding the vehicles and getting moving went “smoother than expected.” The Model X took the longest to board and get going, while the Model Y was unequivocally the most efficient.
Credit: jacksonjourneys | Instagram
Most cars were filled with three passengers, plus a driver who controlled the vehicle manually through the tunnel. u/adjudicatedmonster said the vehicles traveled around 30 MPH through turns and around 39 MPH on straightaways.
Video thanks to eirunning95 on imgur
The Boring Company also gave out souvenirs, like Boring Company hats and some lucky guests even got to operate Boring Company flamethrowers.
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As Las Vegas prepares to reopen on June 1st, there will be no restrictions on businesses or activities, according to KTNV, an ABC affiliate station in Las Vegas. Life is getting back to normal, and it is expected to be busy, considering the Sin City hasn’t had a normal week of business in over a year. In 2019, Las Vegas recorded over 42 million visitors, a far cry from the only 19 million that made their way to the city last year as the pandemic raged on. For years, public transportation has been a struggle for Vegas visitors. Limited options combined with high prices have made walking around the city a more viable option. However, the LVCC Loop from the Boring Company won’t break the bank, and it will get visitors from Point A to Point B in a fraction of the time. Projections estimate that the Loop will move 8,000 people every hour.
For now, the LVCC Loop will transport passengers across the Convention Center Campus that spans 73 acres big. Eventually, Vegas visitors and residents will have the ability to go from resort to resort and hotspot to hotspot thanks to The Boring Company’s Vegas Loop. More hotels and resorts continue to seek entrance into the Vegas Loop, with the most recent being Resorts World, located just off of the Vegas Strip.
What do you think? Let us know in the comments below, or be sure to email me at joey@teslarati.com or on Twitter @KlenderJoey.
Elon Musk has acknowledged that early discussions with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) could bring the company into his ambitious Terafab semiconductor project, signaling a possible partnership with the world’s leading contract chipmaker.
Musk confirmed that early talks are underway, but as of right now, they are “just discussions.” There is no confirmation of a deal nor dismissal of the possibility of one, leaving open the prospect of one of the largest advanced-chip collaborations under discussion in the U.S.
@wholemars Just discussions, but something may come of it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The report that speculated on potential discussions between Terafab and TSMC comes from Tim Culpan, who outlined a few ways the collaboration could operate. One is TSMC using the project as an “anchor customer” for future facilities in Texas, potentially contributing process expertise, operational know-how, or capacity while Terafab provides capital, long-term purchase commitments, or both.
Tesla and SpaceX jointly developed the Terafab project, with Intel already participating on the tech side. Elon Musk announced the project in March, and it intends to produce more than one terawatt of AI compute capacity annually once fully built.
Company statements place the first phase at approximately $16.8 billion in cost, with later filings pointing to a total that could reach well into the tens of billions across multiple stages.
Intel joined the effort in April 2026 and is expected to supply its 14A manufacturing process for the full-scale plant.
Musk has said existing suppliers, including Samsung and TSMC, remain important for near-term needs; Tesla already has production arrangements with Samsung for AI5 and AI6 chips, but that future demand from Optimus robots, Cybercab vehicles, and planned space-based data centers will eventually exceed what the global industry can currently deliver.
Terafab is positioned as the long-term answer to that projected shortfall, and Tesla did something similar during COVID to avoid a chip shortage. This is just a much larger-scale solution.
If the partnership were to materialize, it would add TSMC’s industry-leading strategies to a project that already combines Tesla’s and SpaceX’s capital and offtake with Intel’s process technology. For now, the only public confirmation is Musk’s brief acknowledgement that conversations are occurring.
Tesla’s early strategy for charging units operating within its Robotaxi fleet reveals that the company surely has not lost any of that scrappy DNA that took it from an unlikely success story to the most valuable carmaker in the world.
An observer at a Tesla Supercharger in Austin spotted ten total Robotaxi vehicles arrive: one Cybercab and nine Model Y units. A Tesla employee was waiting at the lot and allowed each unit to park itself; every car that arrived had nobody in it.
Tesla wins FCC approval for wireless Cybercab charging system
The Tesla employee would walk around and plug each car in, adjusting the parking if needed:
So look at what I found. This is how Tesla charges unsupervised robotaxis at a public supercharger. Here is a driverless Cybercab showing up with no one in it. There are 9 other Model Ys that showed up too. A Tesla employee is walking around and plugging each of them in. She also moves the cars if they are not positioned well enough to charge. I love this process. One person charges multiple robotaxis at once
— Abhimanyu Yadav (@WorldlyReviewer) October 3, 2026
It’s a very interesting strategy, but extremely understandable at this early point in the Robotaxi program. It’s only been out for about 15 months, and Cybercab just entered the fleet in early September.
On top of that, Tesla is still working tirelessly on its wireless charging apparatus, and a new patent was just published regarding that product last week.
However, this is just another example of how Tesla still has plenty of that scrappy DNA leftover from the “production hell” days, when CEO Elon Musk slept on the floor of the factory, employees were working crazy hours, Tesla was building Sprung Structures to build cars in, and the company was tiptoeing on the brink of bankruptcy.
@Teslarati Sheer magnitude of the entire production system is hard to appreciate. Almost every element of production is >75% automated. Only wire harnesses & general assembly, which are <10% of production costs, are primarily manual.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 12, 2020
For now, Tesla is utilizing a simple system for recharging its ride-hailing vehicles, and that is a Tesla employee doing it manually until another solution presents itself. Sure, it’s not the most high-tech thing, and it certainly is not what people might have expected at this point in time, but it works, and it’s keeping the entire suite running.
Tesla is expanding its Robotaxi service hours by pushing the time back by one hour, keeping the ride-hailing service operational until 11 p.m., one hour later than previously.
CEO Elon Musk confirmed the change and offered a specific reason the expansion has been gradual: the system still needs to reliably avoid small pets that are difficult to see after dark, as they commonly blend into the color of the road, especially when they’re grey.
The latest adjustment restores only a fraction of the operating window the service once held. When paid Robotaxi rides began in Austin on June 22, 2025, vehicles ran from 6 a.m. to midnight.
In September 2025, Tesla lengthened the day to a 2 a.m. close, producing a 20-hour window that stayed in place for most of the following year. By early August of this year, the cutoff had already been pulled back; an August 26 update formalized hours of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. across Austin and several other markets.
The October move to 11 p.m. therefore leaves the Austin day one hour shorter than the original launch schedule and three hours shorter than the 2025 peak.
Musk addressed the constraint directly after the announcement. “The main thing we’re trying to solve is making sure that we don’t run over pets when they’re hard to see at night,” he wrote. “Literally trying to avoid grey kittens on grey tarmac in the dark.”
Robotaxi operating hours moved from 10pm to 11pm.
The main thing we’re trying to solve is making sure that we don’t run over pets when they’re hard to see at night. Literally trying to avoid grey kittens on grey tarmac in the dark.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The example points to a low-contrast perception problem in which a small animal can blend into the road surface under limited lighting.
Tesla’s vehicles rely on cameras and neural-network processing rather than lidar; Musk has previously argued that advanced vision software can extract useful information even in low light by analyzing photon counts, but the pet-detection case remains the stated limiter in later hours.
The modest schedule change arrives alongside faster growth in the purpose-built Cybercab fleet. Texas registration data tracked by observers showed the Austin Cybercab count rising sharply in recent weeks, reaching 169 vehicles after more than 100 were added in a short span.
Tesla has indicated that a broader shift toward 24-hour operation is tied to the upcoming FSD v15 software release expected this month on Robotaxi vehicles. Until that capability is validated for the edge cases Musk described, the company continues to add service time incrementally rather than jumping straight to overnight coverage.
The one-hour extension gives Austin riders a later option for evening trips while the underlying detection work continues.
Elon Musk teases TSMC as potential Terafab partner
Tesla reveals early Robotaxi charging strategy, showing scrappy DNA
