Lifestyle
Tesla’s $7,000 EV incentive is a nail in the coffin for ICE competitors
The reintroduction of the electric vehicle tax incentive credit could be a nail in the coffin to Tesla’s competitors as if the company needed any more help to bury its competitors into the ground officially.
Earlier this week, it was reported that Tesla could be primed to receive the new EV incentives that would grant a $7,000 tax credit to the first 600,000 Tesla EVs sold in the United States. The new GREEN Act indicates that the number of applicable EVs per manufacturer would increase by 400,000 cars, from 200,000 to 600,000, making a considerable number of Tesla’s projected sales for 2021 reasonably less expensive for car buyers.
While Tesla didn’t give an exact estimation for how many cars it plans to build this year, several analysts have projected numbers between 800,000 and 950,000. However, Tesla’s Q4 Earnings Update Letter has a total output of 1,050,000 between its two active production facilities.
Tesla to gain access to 400k more $7k EV tax credits amid Biden’s sustainability push
The GREEN Act states:
“The bill also extends existing tax incentives available for the sale of electric vehicles. The bill increases the electric vehicle credit cap for manufacturers to 600,000 vehicles, but reduces the credit by $500 after the first 200,000 vehicles sold. This would replace the current phaseout period that begins with 200,000 vehicles sold, with a phaseout period that instead begins during the second calendar quarter after the 600,000-vehicle threshold is reached.
“At the start of the new phaseout period created under the bill, the credit is reduced by 50 percent for one calendar quarter and subsequently ends. For manufacturers that already passed the 200,000 threshold before the enactment of the bill, the number of vehicles sold in between 200,000 and those sold on the date of enactment are excluded in determining when the 600,000 threshold is reached.”
Tesla is sitting pretty if this happens to go through. For several reasons, the reintroduction of the EV incentive to Tesla’s cars could effectively bury conventional automakers who have not put a more serious and specific focus on the development of electric powertrains.
It is no secret that the future of vehicles is electric. While classic muscle cars will likely always be in existence for decades to come, mass-market vehicles from other manufacturers, like Ford Escapes, Honda Civics, Toyota Camrys, and Chevy Malibus, will fade away. Let’s be honest with each other here: Nobody is collecting any of them; they just don’t have the “it” factor that a classic vehicle has.
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Even today’s Mustangs, Camaros, and Corvettes don’t hold the value, the sentimental meaning, or the history that early builds have. And even worse, they don’t have the performance, the speed, or the technology and efficiency that an electric car has. EVs are the best of both worlds, and when you buy a Tesla, there is no better car to display that in the most exaggerated manner.
Subtracting another $7,000 from the price of any of Tesla’s vehicles thanks to the GREEN Act would be game over. The Model 3 SR+ would be well below the average cost of a car in the United States today while offering environmentally-friendly transportation, acceleration that is well beyond the norm for a combustion engine car, and pricing that just cannot be matched by some of the “luxury, high-performance” vehicles that are offered in today’s market.
Comparative to the Tesla Model 3 SR+ is the 2021 Mercedes-Benz CLA-Class. Both start at price points slightly below $38,000, but the specs speak for themselves. The Model 3 has a significantly faster 0-60 time at 5.3 seconds, while the Benz sits at 6.2. The quarter-mile race wouldn’t be close either, with the CLA getting to the line in 13.8 seconds. The Model 3 would be finished in 13.1, according to Matthew Cjel, who did three 1/4-mile runs with his SR+ and got times of 13.185, 13.181, and 13.218.
CarBuzz
While competitive without the incentive, pricing wouldn’t be close if the $7,000 credit was applied. That would bring the Model 3 to just under $31,000. Additionally, the CLA only gets 25 MPG City and 35 MPG highway. With spiking gas prices, that would be a considerably frequent trip to the local Shell station. The Model 3 gets 263 miles per charge and can be charged from home or at a local Supercharger for a fraction of the price.
This is just one example of where the $7,000 credit would make EVs more appealing than gas cars to those who remain on the fence. Price parity is becoming an outdated argument, and with Tesla’s battery advancements and increased production rates, cars will only become less-expensive every year. Soon enough, Tesla’s $25k mass-market vehicle will hit the roads, and there will be an overwhelming sense of demand from new car buyers. The initial 600,000 EVs will likely disappear as fast as turkey on Thanksgiving, making the tax credit obsolete in virtually no time.
The only real concern that could arise from the new credit is it is likely to increase demand significantly, which could bring issues for Tesla’s projects that have been delayed due to battery constraints. I don’t know how more 3 and Y purchases, along with S and X, would affect Roadster, Semi, or Cybertruck production. However, Tesla is battery constrained, and available cells would likely be subjected to the S3XY lineup, which could further delay the other projects.
Demand is never a bad thing, though. The higher sales of its mass-market vehicles would give Tesla even more capital to invest in battery manufacturing and tech. It would give them more money to source cells from third-party suppliers. It also would only help the company’s financials for many quarters to come. But battery shortages have halted the Semi and Roadster project several times, and the Cybertruck now seems like it could be subjected to the same issues. It seems like Musk could have been hinting toward that in the podcast with Rogan yesterday, where he said that they can “hopefully” begin volume production next year. During the Q4 EC, Musk also said:
“If we get lucky, we’ll be able to do a few deliveries toward the end of this year, but I expect volume production to be in 2022.”
Let’s hope things continue to expand in a timely fashion, I think the EV incentive and the long list of advantages that EVs have over their ICE competitors will be recognized by everyone who remains in limbo over which power source will “fuel” their next vehicle.
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk drops a surprise update on Boring Company’s next big dig
Musk says Boring Company could shrink the Austin to San Antonio drive to just minutes.
Elon Musk says The Boring Company is working on what he called “a simple, precursor Hyperloop” tunnel connecting Austin and San Antonio, targeting speeds above 200 mph and cutting a drive that can take up to two and a half hours down to a consistent under 30 minutes. Musk posted the idea on X Sunday, in a reply to a repost of an AI generated video imagining a science fiction future with human colonies on other worlds, which he shared with the line “This is the future we shall bring into being.”
This is the future we shall bring into being pic.twitter.com/8aD0w8MDVc
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 20, 2026
The Boring Company’s own account picked up the idea in the same thread, adding a detail about how the trip would actually work: “Because Loop/Hyperloop is express (i.e. no intermediate stops), one could travel from an Austin parking lot to a favorite San Antonio restaurant in about 30 minutes. As long as they both have Loop stations.” That framing ties the proposed intercity link to the same station model the company already runs in Las Vegas, where riders enter the tunnel network through small, garage style stops rather than one central terminal.
This is not the company’s first run at the Austin to San Antonio corridor. Boring Company floated tunnels between the two cities as far back as 2021, and later competed for a separate San Antonio Loop project tied to the airport before that specific bid stalled. Pitches for tunnels in Chicago, Los Angeles, and a New York to Washington corridor have followed a similar pattern of big announcement without a shovel in the ground.
What is different this time is the balance sheet, especially since The Boring Company closed a 3 billion dollar funding round led by investors in the United Arab Emirates earlier this month at a valuation near 23 billion dollars, giving the tunneling company more capital to chase speculative projects than it had during its earlier Texas pitches. The company is also mid-build on two other intercity systems it has actually broken ground on, inc;luding a Nashville tunnel linking downtown to the airport, where a second boring machine finished commissioning in June, and its Las Vegas network, where the station count keeps climbing on paper faster than tunnels get dug.
That gap between announcement and execution is the reason to treat Sunday’s post as an opening bid rather than a project. A tunnel spanning roughly 80 miles between two metro areas, running at speeds Boring Company has not demonstrated over any real distance, would dwarf anything the company has built. For now, the Austin to San Antonio Hyperloop exists as a caption under an AI generated space video.
Elon Musk
Tesla eyes supply partners for Optimus mass production
Tesla certified three Chinese suppliers for Optimus mass production, signaling its robot timeline is accelerating.
Tesla’s robotics team traveled to Ningbo, in China’s Zhejiang province, on September 16 and spent the following day auditing component suppliers for Optimus, according to a Bloomberg report cited by RobotAIGeek. The visit moved three manufacturers from provisional status to certified mass production partners: Tuopu Group, which handles actuators and chassis components, Ningbo Joyson Electronic, a sensor supplier, and Zhejiang Sanhua Intelligent Controls, which builds thermal management systems. All three already supply parts to Tesla’s electric vehicles, and the audit reportedly came with fresh orders that supply chain reports put at an initial batch of roughly 5,000 units.
Tuopu, Joyson, and Sanhua built their manufacturing base serving the automotive industry, where tolerances and volume requirements are already close to what a mass produced humanoid robot demands. Sanhua in particular has history here. Teslarati reported last October that the company had received a roughly $685 million order for linear actuators tied to Optimus, a volume industry watchers estimated could cover around 180,000 robots once production ramped.
Supply chain reports tied to this week’s audit put Tesla’s near term production goal at about 1,000 Optimus units a week by late September, rising to 2,000 to 2,500 units a week by the end of the year. That pace would put real weight behind the timeline Tesla has been building toward since May, when it wound down Model S and Model X production at Fremont to convert that floor space into a dedicated Optimus line targeting one million units annually. JPMorgan analysts who toured the factory in August confirmed the conversion took roughly four months, a pace Musk has called unprecedented for a facility that size.
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
Fremont is only the first phase. A second, larger Optimus plant is rising at Gigafactory Texas, where drone footage shared by Joe Tegtmeyer last week showed the structural steel nearing completion on the north end of the building. Tesla has said that facility is meant to eventually support production of up to 10 million units a year, though volume output there is not expected before 2027.
Commercial sales of Optimus are still targeted for the second half of 2027, but production is expected to start well before then. JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta has said Tesla’s “Optimus Academy” program, which uses early units to collect real world training data inside Tesla’s own facilities, is expected to be running later this year. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Ian Ma described the Ningbo audits as “a positive commercialization signal for China’s humanoid supply chain,” noting that sentiment could improve further if the visit leads to confirmed supplier nominations and larger orders. The Solactive China Humanoid Robotics Index rose about 1.4% on the news, though it remains down roughly 30% for the year.
Elon Musk
Tesla primes Cybercabs for 4K streaming and high bandwidth gaming with Starlink integration
Tesla is now shipping Cybercabs from Giga Texas with Starlink hardware built in as standard.
Tesla’s Cybercabs are now leaving Gigafactory Texas with Starlink hardware on the rear hatch in significant numbers, according to drone footage captured Tuesday by longtime Austin drone observer Joe Tegtmeyer. Production at the factory ramped back up after the Labor Day weekend, and his flyover of the outbound lot showed rows of gold Cybercabs alongside Model Y Long Wheelbase units, many carrying the satellite module for the first time as standard equipment rather than a one off retrofit.
Giga Texas today is busy with production coming back up following the long weekend. Of interest today in the outbound lot is the appearance of hundreds of Mode; YL’s and many more Cybercabs and for the 1st time equipped with the Starlink module one the hatch in big numbers.
At… pic.twitter.com/G9yl6s51m4
— Joe Tegtmeyer 🚀 🤠🛸😎 (@JoeTegtmeyer) September 8, 2026
Tesla first showed Starlink built into an actual Cybercab on August 10, when the Robotaxi account posted images of a single gold unit with the antenna integrated into the roofline above the taillights and called it the first Cybercab with Starlink integration. That followed a July reveal where Tesla and Starlink jointly posted a cutaway diagram of the antenna placement without a working vehicle to back it up. Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s VP of AI software, said at the time that the connection isn’t required for the car to drive itself. It exists mainly for navigation, customer service and keeping tabs on the fleet.
Musk has made a different case in public. During Tesla’s Q2 earnings call, he said the company can’t afford robotaxis stranded in what he called “Bermuda Triangles of lack of cellular connectivity,” and he separately claimed on X that Starlink will eventually reach every Tesla built, calling it the only way to deliver high bandwidth to billions of vehicles. He has also pitched the antenna as an entertainment upgrade, telling riders they would be able to stream 4K video or play games during a trip.
The rollout has moved fast since. Robotaxi service opened to the public in Austin on September 3, and Cybercabs had already been spotted with Starlink hardware in Houston and near Miami International Airport in the weeks before Tuesday’s factory footage showed the module shipping at volume rather than on scattered test units. Whether the satellite link earns its keep is still an open question. Tesla’s unsupervised service currently runs in dense metro geofences in Texas and Florida, markets where cellular coverage is already strong, which is not where the rural dead zones Musk describes tend to show up.
SpaceX just got the green light Starship has waited years for
SpaceX completes another secret Pentagon launch, adding to suspected Starshield buildout
