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Full autonomy will arrive sooner than expected, says Tesla CEO

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Tesla Autopilot in 'Shadow Mode' will pit human vs computer

During the Tesla Motors earnings call on Wednesday, Elon Musk told analysts and investors, “Full autonomy is going to come a hell of a lot faster than anyone thinks it will. And I think what we’ve got under development is going to blow people’s minds. Blows my mind.”

Full autonomy will reduce fatalities

He bemoaned the amount of attention being paid to the first fatality while using Autopilot. Even though there are more than 32,000 highway deaths a year in America — a number that has gone up recently as cheap gasoline has led to an increase in the number of miles driven — the media, regulators, and even Congress have been talking non-stop about the death of Joshua Brown on May 7.

“Tesla can’t sneeze without there being a national headline,” Musk said. He promised that work on full autonomous driving would continue with the intention of making it available as soon as possible. It will make the Tesla Minibus possible, an idea that was contained in Musk’s Master Plan Part Deux when it was revealed last month.

Tesla to make own inverter

Even though the Tesla/SolarCity merger is not yet a done deal, Musk is behaving as if it is inevitable. A critical piece of any solar power system is the inverter. It converts the direct current supplied by solar panels into the alternating current used by homes and businesses. It is essential to the Tesla Powerwall residential storage battery system.

“There’s no question Tesla’s going to do an integrated inverter. It’s the logical thing to do,” said Musk during the conference call. “Most people don’t even know what an inverter is.”

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Until this point, Tesla has been using inverters supplied by third parties, but Musk has a preference for bringing as many components of his products in-house, where design and supplies can be tightly controlled.

Climbing out of “factory hell”

Musk told analysts on Wednesday that Tesla “just managed to climb out of hell” in June but now the “production line is humming.”  The company reported weekly production stood at 2,000 cars by the end of the quarter. Musk expects that number to increase to 2,200 cars a week in Q3 and rise higher still to 2,400 cars a week by the end of the year.

Burned by persistent delays from suppliers for the Model X, he sent a warning to suppliers involved with the production of the Model 3, saying “suppliers who fall short will be cut out of the picture.”

EPS disappoint

Tesla reported a lost of $1.06 per share for Q2, which was considerably more than most analysts expected. The stock was down immediately after the earnings call but quickly rebounded in after hours trading. The stock reaction is “another lesson that Tesla’s stock doesn’t trade over earnings per share,” said analyst Ben Kallo of Robert W. Baird & Co. “Automotive gross margin improved, and the commentary about demand helps with the stock as well.”

As much as Elon dislikes the attention being paid to Tesla because of the death of Joshua Brown, his company gets more press attention than all other car makers combined — a critical part of Tesla’s plan to market its cars without the benefit of traditional advertising.

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That flood of news about Tesla, which focuses mostly on the consistently buoyant projections from Musk himself, is what keeps the company’s stock price high. People aren’t buying today’s performance. They are buying the future. If you believe everything Elon Musk is saying, that future looks very bright indeed.

Source: Bloomberg, Photo credit: Electric Jen

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Tesla rolling out Robotaxi pilot in SF Bay Area this weekend: report

Similar to the Austin pilot, the Robotaxi rides will reportedly be a paid service.

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Credit: @AdanGuajardo/X

Tesla is reportedly preparing to launch a Robotaxi pilot program in the Bay Area this weekend, with invites to a select number of customers reportedly being sent out as early as this Friday.

The update was shared in a report from Insider, which cited an internal memo from the electric vehicle maker.

New Robotaxi service launch

According to Insider, the Robotaxi service in the Bay Area is set to launch as soon as Friday. Thus, some Tesla owners in the area should receive invites to use the driverless ride-hailing service. Similar to the Austin pilot, the Robotaxi rides will reportedly be a paid service.

The publication noted that the Robotaxi service’s geofence in its Bay Area launch will be quite large, as it will include Marin, much of the East Bay, San Francisco, and San Jose. This is not surprising as California has long been saturated with Teslas, and it is home to several of the electric vehicle maker’s key facilities.

Unlike the Austin pilot, the Tesla Robotaxi service’s pilot in the Bay Area will use safety drivers seated in the driver’s seat. These drivers will be able to manually take over using the steering wheel and brakes as needed. As per a spokesperson from the California DMV, the agency recently met with Tesla but the company is yet to submit a formal application to operate fully driverless cars. 

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Tesla Robotaxi expansion

Interestingly enough, Tesla did tease the release of its Robotaxi service to the Bay Area in its second quarter earnings call. While discussing the service, Tesla VP of Autopilot/AI Software Ashok Elluswamy mentioned that the company will initially be rolling out Robotaxis with safety drivers in the San Francisco Bay Area. He did, however, also highlight that the electric vehicle maker is working hard to get government permission to release the service for consumers.

“The next thing to expand would be in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are working with the government to get approval here and, in the meanwhile, launch the service without the person in the driver seat just to expedite and while we wait for regulatory approval,” he stated.

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Tesla is ready with a perfect counter to the end of US EV tax credits

Tesla executives have mentioned that these more affordable models would resemble the company’s current lineup.

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Credit: Tesla Asia/X

The United States’ electric vehicle tax credit is coming to an end at the end of the third quarter. Tesla, the country’s leading electric vehicle maker, is ready to meet this challenge with a rather simple but clever counter. 

Tesla executives outlined this strategy in the recently held Q2 2025 earnings call.

End of the US EV tax credit

While Elon Musk has always maintained that he prefers a market with no EV tax credit, he also emphasized that he supports the rollback of any incentives given to the oil and gas industry. The Trump administration has not done this so far, instead focusing on the expiration of the $7,500 EV tax credit at the end of the third quarter.

Tesla has been going all-in on encouraging customers to purchase their vehicles in Q3 to take advantage of lower prices. The company has also implemented a series of incentives across all its offerings, from the Cybertruck to the Model 3. This, however, is not all, as the company seems to be preparing a longer-term solution to the expiration of the EV tax credit.

Affordable variants

During the Q2 2025 earnings call, Vice President of Vehicle Engineering Lars Moray stated that Tesla really did start the production of more affordable models in June. Quality builds of these vehicles are being ramped this quarter, with the goal of optimizing production over the remaining months of the year. If Tesla is successful, these models will be available for everyone in Q4. 

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“We started production in June, and we’re ramping quality builds and things around the quarter. And given that we started in North America and our goal is to maximize production with a higher rate. So starting Q3, we’re going to keep pushing hard on our current models to avoid complexity… We’ll be ready with new, more affordable models available for everyone in Q4.,” Moravy stated. 

These comments suggest that Tesla should be able to offer vehicles that are competitively priced even after the EV tax credit has been phased out. Interestingly enough, previous comments from Tesla executives have mentioned that these more affordable models would resemble the company’s current lineup. This suggests that the more affordable models may indeed be variations of the Model Y and Model 3, but offered at a lower price.

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Elon Musk reveals Tesla’s next Robotaxi expansion in more ways than one

Tesla Robotaxi is growing in more ways than one. Tesla wants to expand and hopes to reach half the U.S. population by the end of the year.

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed the company’s plans for its next expansion of the Robotaxi in terms of both the geofence in Austin and the platform overall, as it looks to move to new areas outside of Texas.

Tesla launched the Robotaxi platform last month on June 22, and has since expanded both the pool of users and the area that the driverless Model Y vehicles can travel within.

The first expansion of the geofence caught the attention of nearly everyone and became a huge headline as Tesla picked a very interesting shape for the new geofence, resembling male reproductive parts.

The next expansion will likely absolve this shape. Musk revealed last night that the new geofence will be “well in excess of what competitors are doing,” and it could happen “hopefully in a week or two.”

Musk’s full quote regarding the expansion of the geofence and the timing was:

“As some may have noted, we have already expanded our service area in Austin. It’s bigger and longer, and it’s going to get even bigger and longer. We are expecting to greatly increase the service area to well in excess of what competitors are doing, hopefully in a week or two.”

The expansion will not stop there, either. As Tesla has operated the Robotaxi platform in Austin for the past month, it has been working with regulators in other areas, like California, Arizona, Nevada, and Florida, to get the driverless ride-hailing system activated in more U.S. states.

Tesla confirmed that they are in talks with each of these states regarding the potential expansion of Robotaxi.

Musk added:

“As we get the approvals and prove out safety, we will be launching the autonomous ride-hailing across most of the country. I think we will probably have autonomous ride-hailing in probably half the population of the US by the end of the year.”

We know that Tesla and Musk have been prone to aggressive and sometimes outlandish timelines regarding self-driving technology specifically. Regulatory approvals could happen by the end of the year in several areas, and working on these large metros is the best way to reach half of the U.S. population.

Tesla said its expansion of the geofence in Austin is conservative and controlled due to its obsession with safety, even admitting at one point during the Earnings Call that they are being “paranoid.” Expanding the geofence is necessary, but Tesla realizes any significant mistake by Robotaxi could take it back to square one.

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