As everyone at Tesla’s Cyber Rodeo settles down to listen to Elon Musk’s talk at Giga Texas, the anticipation builds in the air. The Tesla community is eager and excited to hear about any updates and details Elon Musk will announce to the world at Giga Texas Cyber Rodeo.
Welcoming Elon Musk to the stage are drones depicting an image of Nikola Tesla, the inventor the company is named after. The drones also depicted the Cyber Rodeo sign. Later, the drone show formed the image of a moving vehicle, which turned out to be the Model Y. Next the drones formed the Cybertruck’s outline in the sky, an image few at the Cyber Rodeo will forget.
And, of course, in true Elon fashion, Tesla did not forget to highlight the community’s love for The Doge with drones. The Tesla hedgehog also made an appearance during the spectacular drone show.
After the drone show, Tesla showed a short clip of a “herd” Tesla Model Y’s running through Giga Texas grounds alongside a horse and its rider.
The video was cut short with the arrival of Elon Musk, arriving in style in an original Tesla Roadster — the car that started it all.
The following are Elon Musk’s comments from his Giga Texas Cyber Rodeo address.
“We’re gonna talk about the past, present and future,” Elon Musk told the crowd, showcasing the first car Tesla ever made: the Roadster.
“When we first started out Tesla, I thought we had — optimistically — a 10% chance of succeeding,” he stated. He thanked the Tesla team for their hard work and contributed the company’s current success to them.
Musk lists all the products Tesla offers, including its solar products. He announced that two-thirds of America’s electric vehicles are Tesla cars.
Musk highlighted the accomplishments of the Tesla AI team. He announced that Tesla was aiming for the wide release of FSD beta in North America this year.
“California was running out of room,” Musk stated. “And we needed a place to grow big. And there’s no place like Texas,” he said, thanking the state and particularly Travis County.
Musk revealed that Tesla Giga Texas is taller than the Burj Khalifa if the factory were turned on its side. In classic Elon Musk, the CEO said that one could fit a total of 194 billion hamsters in Giga Texas.
“And this building is the most advanced car factory that Earth’s ever seen,” proclaimed Elon Musk, bringing up the idea that Tesla’s factories are product in and of themselves once again.
Musk noted that Tesla is building its own cells at Giga Texas, the long-awaited 4680 cells. He proudly stated that the Austin factory could be one of the biggest cell factories in the world.
“Raw materials in, a bunch of stuff happens, and car out,” Musk said, describing the simplified version of Tesla’s main operations. He added that Tesla plans to produce the Cybertruck in Austin next year.
“I can’t wait to have this baby around. [Cybertruck] is gonna be epic,” Musk commented about the electric pickup truck.
Musk also stated that Giga Texas will be the most “high-volume” factory in America. He stated that Tesla will aim to command 20% of the auto market in the long term.
“We’re gonna move at a truly massive scale,” Elon Musk teased. He also hinted at the company’s Robotaxi fleet, describing it as futuristic and significantly different than Tesla’s other offerings. Musk also talked about Optimus.
Tesla plans to produce V1 Optimus, the Cybertruck, the next-generation Roadster, and the Semi next year.
Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen later showed up with the Cybertruck. Elon Musk pointed out that there are no handles on the Cybertruck. He apologized for the vehicle’s production delay, though both the CEO and the Design Chief assured the audience that the Cybertruck will be well worth the wait.
And with that, Elon Musk kicked off the Cyber Rodeo party! Several minutes’ worth of fireworks ensued.
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News
SpaceX Starship Flight 13 faces wrath of the Texas skies
SpaceX pushed Starship Flight 13 to Friday, blaming weather instead of the previous engine issues.
SpaceX called off Thursday’s launch attempt of Starship Flight 13, pushing the mission to Friday because of weather tied to Tropical Storm Bertha. The company confirmed the delay on X, noting “Now targeting Friday, July 24 for Starship’s thirteenth flight test, due to weather. A key objective for the flight test is to get clear imagery from the ground of Starship’s heatshield as it flies at a higher dynamic pressure during ascent, which won’t be possible with today’s weather conditions.”
This is the second delay for Flight 13 in two weeks. SpaceX first tried to launch the mission on July 16, but the countdown ended in an automated abort at T-0 when four of Super Heavy Booster 20’s 33 Raptor engines failed to ignite. Musk said at the time that two Raptors would need to be removed and replaced, as Teslarati reported. The company spent the following week destacking Ship 40 and Booster 20, swapping engines, and running leak checks before restacking the vehicle on Pad 2 Wednesday night, according to Spaceflight Now’s live coverage.
Unlike the engine problem, Thursday’s delay has nothing to do with the hardware. SpaceX wants clean footage of Starship’s heat shield captured from the ground as the vehicle flies through max dynamic pressure, something the storm’s cloud cover over South Texas would not allow. The company said visibility should improve for Friday’s attempt, with the same 90 minute window opening at 5:45 p.m. CT.
Flight 13 will be the second outing for the V3 versions of Starship and Super Heavy, following their debut on Flight 12 in May. The mission carries 20 production Starlink V3 satellites, the first time SpaceX has flown operational satellites rather than mass simulators on Starship. Six of those satellites are fitted with cameras to inspect the heat shield from a different angle during ascent, giving engineers a second data source beyond the ground imagery the weather is currently blocking.
Booster 20 will attempt a boostback burn and a splashdown landing burn in the Gulf of America, while Ship 40 follows a suborbital trajectory toward a landing in the Indian Ocean. The flight plan largely mirrors Flight 12, though the booster will run a more aggressive ascent burn after max Q this time, and the ship’s heat shield includes load sensing tiles meant to measure stress at the higher dynamic pressure SpaceX is targeting.
If Friday’s attempt succeeds, Flight 13 could be the last suborbital test in the program. SpaceX is already looking to push for an orbital flight on Flight 14.
Tesla stock (NASDAQ: TSLA) endured one of its sharpest single-day declines in years on July 23, tumbling approximately 14.5 percent and closing near $320 after opening the session around $374. The drop erased more than $140 billion in market value amid heavy trading volume and left the shares at multi-week lows.
The sell-off followed the company’s second-quarter 2026 results, released the previous evening. Tesla reported record revenue of $28.2 billion, up 26 percent year over year, driven by a Q2-record 480,126 vehicle deliveries. Energy storage deployments also rose strongly.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Yet profitability disappointed sharply. Operating income fell 57 percent to $398 million, compressing the operating margin to just 1.4 percent. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $0.33, well below the roughly $0.53 analysts had expected. Free cash flow turned negative by $1.1 billion as capital expenditures surged 142 percent to $5.8 billion, largely tied to accelerated spending on artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomous systems.
The losses on capex were expected, as Tesla said it would be spending heavily in 2026.
Investors also reacted to lingering uncertainty surrounding key product timelines. During the Earnings Call, management reiterated ambitions for Robotaxi deployment and the Optimus humanoid robot, but offered limited new concrete milestones, renewing questions about execution pace that have long accompanied Tesla’s ambitious roadmap.
The magnitude of the decline places it among Tesla’s more severe one-day percentage losses since its 2010 initial public offering. Historically, the two largest single-day drops (split-adjusted) remain September 8, 2020, when shares fell 21.1 percent amid broader market volatility and valuation concerns, and January 13, 2012, with a 19.3 percent plunge during the company’s early growth struggles.
Other notable declines include an 18.6 percent drop on March 16, 2020, at the onset of pandemic-related market turmoil. Thursday’s move ranks roughly ninth on the all-time list but stands out as the steepest in more than a year.
Despite the short-term pain, Tesla’s long-term trajectory has repeatedly recovered from such volatility. The latest results underscore both the strength of its core automotive and energy businesses and the near-term costs of heavy investment in next-generation technologies.
Elon Musk clapped back at France’s decision to withhold the approval for Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) Supervised system, projecting a clear and blunt message to French Transport Minister Phillippe Tabarot, after he publicly rejected the technology in its current form.
Tabarot outlines several concerns with Tesla Full Self-Driving in a detailed video statement, where he said, “The safety trade-offs are not yet sufficient to authorize it as it currently stands,” he said. He emphasized that FSD is not a true self-driving system and that the driver remains fully responsible.
Key issues Tabarot also brought up included allowing speeding when surrounding traffic exceeds limits and what he believes are insufficient guarantees of driver attention during complex urban maneuvers such as lane changes, intersections, and roundabouts.
Delaying the approval of FSD in France will cost lives
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
While acknowledging technological progress and France’s support for autonomous innovation, Tabarot stressed that deployment must prioritize road safety. He noted ongoing technical discussions with Tesla, the Netherlands, and other European partners, with further ecosystem meetings planned for the fall.
Musk’s rebuke highlights the human cost of regulatory caution. Tesla’s latest safety reports provide compelling data supporting accelerated adoption. In the most recent 12-month period, vehicles using FSD (Supervised) recorded one major collision per approximately 5.1 million miles driven, dramatically better than the U.S. national average of one crash per 698,000 miles.
Even Tesla vehicles driven manually with active safety features outperform the average by a wide margin. These figures come from billions of real-world miles of telemetry, showing FSD vehicles involved in far fewer incidents than both manual Teslas and the broader U.S. fleet.
Critics argue Tesla’s comparisons require careful scrutiny regarding reporting thresholds and fleet demographics, yet the data consistently positions FSD as a potential lifesaver. With road fatalities remaining a leading cause of death worldwide, Musk contends that proven safer technology should not face prolonged bureaucratic hurdles.
France’s measured approach reflects the broader European regulatory caution, which many, especially Musk, have been critical of in the past. However, as autonomous systems from Tesla and competitors like Waymo demonstrate superior safety in independent studies, pressure is mounting for harmonized approvals.
Musk’s warning carries the belief that every month of delay may equate to avoidable tragedies on European roads.
SpaceX Starship Flight 13 faces wrath of the Texas skies
Tesla stock tumbles after earnings, one of its sharpest single-day declines
