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Tesla to host Investor Battery and Drivetrain Day in Q3 2019
Tesla will host an Investor Battery and Drivetrain Day in August or September this year, according to CEO Elon Musk during the 2019 Annual Shareholder Meeting. The announcement came during Musk’s answers to questions submitted and voted on prior to the meeting, specifically while responding to an inquiry about which aspects of battery production would be integrated with Maxwell Technologies.
“We think this is really quite strategic, but we’ll leave the details of this to a kind of a battery and powertrain investor day…[there are] some very important technologies there that will have a big effect on the cost and scaling of cell production, both reducing the cost and reducing capital required to scale production,” Musk replied.
Tesla confirmed last month that the company had completed the acquisition of Maxwell Technologies, Inc., a California-based company that specializes in ultracapacitors and batteries. The takeover was funded by transferring stocks worth over $235 million dollars and the move is poised to usher in new improvements in Tesla’s battery technology. Ultracapacitors are predicted to eventually be an alternative to today’s batteries, particularly as they have the potential to be safer and more reliable.
Overall, any battery-related answers during the livestreamed Shareholder Meeting were limited in details and deferred to the upcoming investor event.
“We have to scale battery production and match that to vehicle demand,” Musk commented in response to a question about Tesla’s battery needs surrounding the Model Y, Semi, Tesla Truck, and Roadster 2.0. “We don’t want to let the cat out of the bag too much, you know…it’s still in the bag,” he joked.
The Investor Battery and Powertrain Day event is expected to be similar to the Investor Autonomy Day held in April which provided in-depth information surrounding Tesla’s work on its Full Self-Driving computer and progress towards its autonomous driving goals. While physical attendance was limited, a public livestream was made available. The event lasted over three hours and was full of highly technical details about the hardware and software developed in-house for Tesla’s vehicles.
The Shareholder Meeting revealed a few other details about the company’s progress on other projects in the works as well.
Tesla’s Blade Runner-inspired pickup truck will be revealed this summer, according to Musk. The CEO also recently announced that its starting price would be under $50,000 and would be as more capable than a Ford F-150 in terms of functionality and better than a Porsche 911 in terms of sports car attributes. “It’s going to be a truck that’s more capable than other trucks,” Musk explained previously. Those goals were reiterated during the meeting without providing further details.
The location of Gigafactory Europe is also still in the works. In the Shareholder presentation, a photo of empty, dirt and grass-only fields was humorously presented as an updated view of the project. “As you can see, we’ve made great progress here,” Musk joked. The caption under the photo read “Active search for a European location”, and it was clarified that the image was not actually representative of a real location for the Gigafactory.
A decision on the final place for Gigafactory Europe will hopefully be decided this year, according to Musk, with the overall goal being to have a Gigafactory on every continent.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk and Tesla AI Director share insights after empty driver seat Robotaxi rides
The executives’ unoccupied tests hint at the rapid progress of Tesla’s unsupervised Robotaxi efforts.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk and AI Director Ashok Elluswamy celebrated Christmas Eve by sharing personal experiences with Robotaxi vehicles that had no safety monitor or occupant in the driver’s seat. Musk described the system’s “perfect driving” around Austin, while Elluswamy posted video from the back seat, calling it “an amazing experience.”
The executives’ unoccupied tests hint at the rapid progress of Tesla’s unsupervised Robotaxi efforts.
Elon and Ashok’s firsthand Robotaxi insights
Prior to Musk and the Tesla AI Director’s posts, sightings of unmanned Teslas navigating public roads were widely shared on social media. One such vehicle was spotted in Austin, Texas, which Elon Musk acknowleged by stating that “Testing is underway with no occupants in the car.”
Based on his Christmas Eve post, Musk seemed to have tested an unmanned Tesla himself. “A Tesla with no safety monitor in the car and me sitting in the passenger seat took me all around Austin on Sunday with perfect driving,” Musk wrote in his post.
Elluswamy responded with a 2-minute video showing himself in the rear of an unmanned Tesla. The video featured the vehicle’s empty front seats, as well as its smooth handling through real-world traffic. He captioned his video with the words, “It’s an amazing experience!”
Towards Unsupervised operations
During an xAI Hackathon earlier this month, Elon Musk mentioned that Tesla owed be removing Safety Monitors from its Robotaxis in Austin in just three weeks. “Unsupervised is pretty much solved at this point. So there will be Tesla Robotaxis operating in Austin with no one in them. Not even anyone in the passenger seat in about three weeks,” he said. Musk echoed similar estimates at the 2025 Annual Shareholder Meeting and the Q3 2025 earnings call.
Considering the insights that were posted Musk and Elluswamy, it does appear that Tesla is working hard towards operating its Robotaxis with no safety monitors. This is quite impressive considering that the service was launched just earlier this year.
Elon Musk
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service has continued its rapid global expansion, surpassing 9 million active customers just weeks after crossing the 8 million mark.
The milestone highlights the accelerating growth of Starlink, which has now been adding over 20,000 new users per day.
9 million customers
In a post on X, SpaceX stated that Starlink now serves over 9 million active users across 155 countries, territories, and markets. The company reached 8 million customers in early November, meaning it added roughly 1 million subscribers in under seven weeks, or about 21,275 new users on average per day.
“Starlink is connecting more than 9M active customers with high-speed internet across 155 countries, territories, and many other markets,” Starlink wrote in a post on its official X account. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell also celebrated the milestone on X. “A huge thank you to all of our customers and congrats to the Starlink team for such an incredible product,” she wrote.
That growth rate reflects both rising demand for broadband in underserved regions and Starlink’s expanding satellite constellation, which now includes more than 9,000 low-Earth-orbit satellites designed to deliver high-speed, low-latency internet worldwide.
Starlink’s momentum
Starlink’s momentum has been building up. SpaceX reported 4.6 million Starlink customers in December 2024, followed by 7 million by August 2025, and 8 million customers in November. Independent data also suggests Starlink usage is rising sharply, with Cloudflare reporting that global web traffic from Starlink users more than doubled in 2025, as noted in an Insider report.
Starlink’s momentum is increasingly tied to SpaceX’s broader financial outlook. Elon Musk has said the satellite network is “by far” the company’s largest revenue driver, and reports suggest SpaceX may be positioning itself for an initial public offering as soon as next year, with valuations estimated as high as $1.5 trillion. Musk has also suggested in the past that Starlink could have its own IPO in the future.
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NVIDIA Director of Robotics: Tesla FSD v14 is the first AI to pass the “Physical Turing Test”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine.
NVIDIA Director of Robotics Jim Fan has praised Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14 as the first AI to pass what he described as a “Physical Turing Test.”
After testing FSD v14, Fan stated that his experience with FSD felt magical at first, but it soon started to feel like a routine. And just like smartphones today, removing it now would “actively hurt.”
Jim Fan’s hands-on FSD v14 impressions
Fan, a leading researcher in embodied AI who is currently solving Physical AI at NVIDIA and spearheading the company’s Project GR00T initiative, noted that he actually was late to the Tesla game. He was, however, one of the first to try out FSD v14.
“I was very late to own a Tesla but among the earliest to try out FSD v14. It’s perhaps the first time I experience an AI that passes the Physical Turing Test: after a long day at work, you press a button, lay back, and couldn’t tell if a neural net or a human drove you home,” Fan wrote in a post on X.
Fan added: “Despite knowing exactly how robot learning works, I still find it magical watching the steering wheel turn by itself. First it feels surreal, next it becomes routine. Then, like the smartphone, taking it away actively hurts. This is how humanity gets rewired and glued to god-like technologies.”
The Physical Turing Test
The original Turing Test was conceived by Alan Turing in 1950, and it was aimed at determining if a machine could exhibit behavior that is equivalent to or indistinguishable from a human. By focusing on text-based conversations, the original Turing Test set a high bar for natural language processing and machine learning.
This test has been passed by today’s large language models. However, the capability to converse in a humanlike manner is a completely different challenge from performing real-world problem-solving or physical interactions. Thus, Fan introduced the Physical Turing Test, which challenges AI systems to demonstrate intelligence through physical actions.
Based on Fan’s comments, Tesla has demonstrated these intelligent physical actions with FSD v14. Elon Musk agreed with the NVIDIA executive, stating in a post on X that with FSD v14, “you can sense the sentience maturing.” Musk also praised Tesla AI, calling it the best “real-world AI” today.
Elon Musk and Tesla AI Director share insights after empty driver seat Robotaxi rides
Starlink passes 9 million active customers just weeks after hitting 8 million
