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Elon Musk reveals date for Boring Co. Vegas Loop’s first operation

Subsurface Station | Credit: Boring Company

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Elon Musk has revealed that The Boring Company’s Vegas Loop is “maybe a month or so” away from operation.

The Vegas Loop is currently undergoing “some finishing touches” that are needed on the stations. The underground tunnel will then be ready to transfer passengers across the Las Vegas Convention Center’s massive campus.

The tunnel will eliminate long and stressful trips that are needed for navigating through the Vegas Strip. It will likely revolutionize the way tourists and residents alike navigate through Las Vegas.

Currently, plans show that Tesla vehicles will be transporting passengers across the LVCC campus in Tesla EVs. However, there are numerous expansion plans. Initially, the tunnel’s growth was planned to stretch from the Fremont Street Experience, down the Strip’s main corridor, to the south, reaching McCarran Airport.

However, on October 13, Teslarati reported that The Boring Company had applied for permission to expand its Vegas Loop by adding more stops and lengthening the tunnel’s footprint underneath the Sin City. With the plans for expansion, Musk could be faced with a dilemma that involves choosing an appropriate vehicle for the Loop.

Elon Musk’s Las Vegas Boring Company tunnels ‘only a few months away’ from operation

Nevertheless, there are still some questions about what vehicle will transport passengers in the Boring Co. tunnels.

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Tesla and The Boring Company CEO Elon Musk revealed early this morning that the electric car company would develop a “dense” Tesla after replying to a Tweet that showed an all-electric bus that would be used for underground tunnels. However, Musk deleted the Tweet a few minutes after posting it.

Most recent state that Tesla vehicles will be transferring people from location to location in the tunnels. The small, more private cars are likely more desirable for some passengers, especially in the midst of a widespread pandemic that will likely ramp social distancing awareness for several years. The idea of a small, four to six-passenger vehicle is more aligned with pandemic awareness than a large bus or van that could move more people at one time.

For now, it seems the most logical solution has the already-operational Tesla vehicles transport passengers in the Boring Co. tunnel. If Musk sees it fit to revise the plans, it will likely happen down the road after Research and Development on a van or bus is performed.

Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Tesla Cybercab and Semi have more in common than you might think

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Credit: Tesla

Although the two vehicles are built for completely different use cases, Tesla utilized engineering expertise while developing both the Cybercab and Semi to build a thermal architecture that would fit both vehicles. Of course, with some slight revisions.

The development was noted by Lars Moravy and Dan Priestley last week at Tesla’s Semi Handover event in Sparks, Nevada, where the company showed off its dedicated production facility for the Class 8 truck.

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Tesla’s decision to develop one thermal architecture for both the Cybercab and Semi is one of the more revealing engineering choices in the company’s 2026 lineup:

“We designed it at the same time we designed the Cybercab and we said okay we’re going to take our most efficient vehicle and our biggest vehicle and we’re going to take one thermal system and make it work for both.”

Core parts, meaning the compressor, pumps, and heat exchangers, are shared, with only modest changes to cooling-loop sizing and a larger radiator on the truck. The result, they said, is a compressor and thermal stack already proven across millions of miles, delivering “reliability from day one.”

Priestley also highlighted a practical payoff of the indirect design:

“There’s no AC lines, there’s no refrigerant lines…It comes from the factory fully charged, sealed with refrigerant, and it just exchanges coolant. It doesn’t actually run refrigerant up to the front of the vehicle.”

This eliminates potentially leak-prone plumbing that would otherwise require hands-on service, reducing overall uptime and potentially cutting into business margins. The megamanifold runs cabin HVAC and every powertrain heating and cooling loop at once, recapturing waste heat from motors and the battery instead of dumping it the way a diesel engine does.

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The approach is just the latest chapter in a continuing story of stretching thermal solutions across wildly different vehicles. Model Y’s Octovalve evolved into the Super Manifold used on Cybertruck, and later Model S/X refreshes. Cybercab then introduced Supermanifold V3, which Tesla says is 80 percent automated to build and 38 percent more efficient than typical automotive thermal systems.

Tesla has done the same with the 4680 cells, both being utilized in the Cybertruck and Semi, and with heat-pump compressors that Priestley noted were already common across the passenger-car fleet.

Concurrent development of crucial vehicle elements buys scale and reliability that a truck-only thermal system could not match. High-volume passenger car parts are cheaper and more accessible, which can give fleets a sealed, low-maintenance loop of operation from their first day of operation.

For owners and operators, that translates into less energy spent on cabin heat in the colder months, fewer refrigerant-related repairs, and a thermal architecture already stress-tested at passenger-car volumes before the first high-volume Semi left the lines in Nevada.

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Elon Musk weather update tips Tesla Roadster speculation into Plaid Mode

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla CEO Elon Musk certainly tipped off some details of the Tesla Roadster event with a broadening of information regarding the company’s decision to delay the unveiling for two weeks.

For years, people have speculated about what the Roadster will be capable of. While there have been plenty of things said about what it *could* do, we have not seen or been told by Tesla what it will actually be capable of.

However, over the past few days, Tesla’s weather updates have truly pushed the speculation into Plaid Mode, basically all but confirming the car will have some sort of aerial capability — whether that would be hovering or fully flying remains to be seen — but it definitely seems that it will be able to leave the ground intentionally.

“Because this event can only be held outdoors…”

Tesla posted on Monday that it would delay the Roadster event until October 15, and it indicated that it had to do this because the event “can only be held outdoors.”

With the potential SpaceX collaboration to develop cold-gas thrusters that will help the vehicle go airborne, doing this indoors is probably not a safe, or even plausible, possibility.

FAA Airspace Restriction

The FAA gave Tesla a Temporary Flight Restriction (TFR) for 10,000 feet above ground level, much higher than the typical 2,000-foot restrictions that are usually placed at SpaceX’s McGregor, Texas site.

Tesla Roadster event requires restricted airspace, and the FAA obliges

Some have said that this massive increase is due to Tesla’s need to restrict unauthorized drone use for spying on the event.

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Elon Admits High Winds

“Due to high winds, the new Roadster demo is postponed by 2 weeks,” Musk said in a post on X yesterday.

A reply reading, “What’s strong wind got to do with a car demo with four grounded wheels?” was directly below Musk’s post, satirically and sarcastically probing for more details.

All signs are pointing toward an aerial demonstration for the Roadster.

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Tesla snags $30B in fresh credit lines for expanding its biggest projects

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Credit: Grok

Tesla has secured $30 billion in fresh credit lines from Citibank and Wells Fargo in an effort to scale its biggest current projects.

Tesla agreed to a $20 billion three-year delayed-draw term loan facility from Citibank, it announced on Tuesday. Additionally, it signed a five-year, $8 billion revolving credit facility and a $2 billion, 364-day term credit facility with Wells Fargo.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), that it “may draw” from the $20 billion delayed-draw term “from time to time” and “no more than ten times during the 18 months following the closing date.” This loan matures on September 29, 2029.

The five-year revolving facility from Wells Fargo will also be accessed by Tesla “from time to time,” and will become due and payable on September 29, 2031. Tesla can request two separate one-year extensions.

On the $2 billion, 364-day revolving loan, it becomes due and payable on September 28, 2027. Tesla can also increase its additional commitments to an additional $4 billion across the Revolving Facilities. This would increase the total facilities to $14 billion. Tesla said it does not plan to utilize any of these loans in 2026.

Tesla plans to utilize the money to help prop up its ambitions to scale its biggest products, each of which is either in early launch phases or still in development. Of course, we’re talking about Cybercab and Semi, which have launched, and Optimus, which is still under heavy development and working toward initial release.

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All three Tesla products have one thing in common: they’ve all required Tesla to build new manufacturing lines for them.

For the Semi, Tesla built a brand new factory in Sparks, Nevada, adjacent to the Tesla Gigafactory. For Optimus, Tesla sunset Model S and X production at the Fremont Factory, which brought an end to the two flagship models, thus creating manufacturing space for the humanoid robot. Finally, Cybercab is being built at Gigafactory Texas and officially entered production earlier this year.

Tesla Cybercab fleet doubles to well over 100 units

The cash will help Tesla bolster its finances for the continuing development of these products. Tesla said that it forecasts its CapEx to be over $25 billion, up from just over $8.5 billion last year. These loans surely help with that spending.

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