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Tesla Giga New York awakens as Elon Musk’s Solarglass Roof push goes underway

Credit: Tesla

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Tesla’s Giga New York facility is ramping production to meet Elon Musk’s goals for the company’s energy business. Tesla started ramping solar roof sales and installations in 2019 when Q4’s 54 MW deployment showed a 26% jump from the previous quarter’s 43 MW.

In a series of recent tweets, the CEO shared some of his appreciation for the company’s workers involved in the ongoing rollout of the Solarglass Roof tiles. The third-generation tiles are Tesla’s flagship residential solar product, and they have the potential to disrupt the energy sector in a manner similar to how the Model 3 disrupted the midsize sedan market.

Musk’s tweets provided some updates about Tesla’s Solarglass Roof tiles. According to the CEO, new variants for the solar shingles are coming, though the company is mastering its current black tiles first. Tesla is also currently busy with installations in the Bay Area, though an expansion to other territories is coming soon.

California Today, The Rest Of The World Tomorrow

Starting Tesla’s Solarglass push in California makes a lot of sense, considering that it is a state where residents enjoy a solar investment tax credit of 26% for the purchase cost of energy systems between January 1 to December 31, 2020. This energy incentive will drop to 22% by 2021, and it will be retired by 2023. The incentives seem to have worked for the most part. As of December 2019, the state has 1 million solar systems installed, the majority of which are in residential properties.

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Just like how Elon Musk plans to put Gigafactories in every continent to lay the foundation for Tesla, California is an excellent location to build a stronghold and develop a good case to convince consumers in other places to buy the company’s solar solutions. Musk, as most people might know, has the grand plan of transitioning the world towards sustainability and his current endeavor is an initial step to that goal.

Tesla has adopted a series of initiatives that are designed to make its energy products more attractive to consumers. Aside from lowering prices in October, Tesla has also introduced an incentive program encouraging Tesla owners to share their experiences about their energy products.

“The demand is very strong and we are working also not just through Tesla Solar Roof, but also through new homebuilders and through just the roofing industry in general, whether is in North America on the order of 4 million new roofs per year,” Musk said during the recent Tesla Q4 2019 earnings call.

According to Musk, he believes that eventually, the Solarglass Roof would be a matter of choice for consumers between having a live roof that generates power and a conventional roof that only serves a single purpose. Tesla may have a revolutionary product in the Solarglass Roof, and if it were to succeed, it will allow Tesla Energy to grow at a pace that matches or even exceeds that of the company’s electric car business.

The solar industry has a big room to grow and draws a bright future for players such as Tesla. Of all greener energy options, it is expected to boom the fastest from today through 2050.

Tesla’s Giga New York Ramps Production

To meet the demand, Tesla’s Giga New York is bustling with activity. The 88-acre property in Buffalo is home to the factory that produces Tesla’s solar modules. New York State Assembly member Sean Ryan toured the Tesla factory in Buffalo last Friday and was pleased with the progress.

“The factory is built out. It has complete lines running, product moving around, people are there, so it’s really transformed itself into what we’ve been hoping for,” Ryan said. “We’ve been holding our breath since we put that big bet down on Tesla. They had a slow start, and I was worried as we’re appoaching this spring they were going to hit their deadlines, but they’re right on track.”

Ryan last visited the factory 15 months ago and his testimony corroborates Musk claims recently that Giga new York is operating at a good pace.

A curious soul who keeps wondering how Elon Musk, Tesla, electric cars, and clean energy technologies will shape the future, or do we really need to escape to Mars.

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Tesla Full Self-Driving will now overtake manual driving to avoid disaster

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla is beginning to roll out Full Self-Driving Supervised v14.3.9 with a new active safety layer that can take control even when the driver is operating the car manually.

Tesla AI said the software can activate FSD on the driver’s behalf when an imminent collision is detected and Automatic Emergency Braking may not be enough. It may also engage if the system detects heavy distraction or an accidental FSD disengagement.

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The capability is essentially Automatic Collision Evasion. However, unlike conventional AEB, which mainly applies the brakes in a straight line, this feature can use steering, braking, and acceleration together if the car calculates that stopping alone will not prevent impact and a safer path exists. The system may change lanes or move toward a shoulder when conditions allow, then continue driving after the immediate threat is handled rather than simply coming to a stop.

The intervention is meant as a last-resort safety net, not a replacement for attentive driving.

Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3.7 early review: FSD saved me from an accident

Tesla’s own description still frames FSD as supervised assistance. Secondary reports on internal release notes say the feature can fire while the car is being driven manually if cabin-camera monitoring suggests the driver is not sufficiently attentive, such as reaching toward the back seat, or if FSD appears to have been turned off unintentionally.

After the emergency maneuver, the car is expected to alert the driver and request a return to manual control.

The safety case is straightforward. Many collisions happen in the last second because a driver is looking away, fumbles a control, or faces an obstacle that braking cannot fully solve. A system that can both recognize that AEB is insufficient and execute a coordinated evasive path can reduce those remaining high-severity events.

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Re-engaging after accidental disengagement also addresses a practical failure mode: a small steering nudge that drops FSD at the worst moment. The advantage is a background safety net that uses the same vision stack already running in v14, instead of leaving the car solely to emergency braking once the driver is no longer in command.

The feature still depends on FSD being enabled and, according to reports, an active FSD purchase or subscription. It does not make the vehicle unsupervised. Drivers remain responsible, and Tesla has not published how often the system is expected to intervene or how it will handle false positives.

If the rollout is conservative and the false-alarm rate stays low, the update is a meaningful step: FSD is no longer only a feature the driver turns on. In the rare moments when disaster is already forming, it can step in.

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Tesla Cybercab launch catches NHTSA’s attention who wants to know more

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(Credit: Teslarati)

Tesla launched the all-electric, steering wheel-less, and pedal-less Cybercab last night at a quiet and small event in downtown Austin, Texas.

The launch, which marked the beginning of unsupervised ride-hailing for Tesla’s Robotaxi platform with Cybercab, has already caught the attention of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) who has more questions.

NHTSA opened an Audit Query (AQ) into the Cybercab’s Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS) certification that Tesla gave the vehicle. Manufacturers self-certify vehicles much of the time to avoid excessive regulatory delays.

Tesla Cybercab interior, note the lack of steering wheel and pedals. (Credit: @niccruzpatane/X< /a>)

However, the agency needs more information; it said in a summary:

“On September 3, 2026, Tesla began commercial deployment with a small number of its Cybercab vehicles in Austin, Texas. Tesla notified the Agency that it certified those Cybercab vehicles as compliant with all applicable Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (FMVSS). Tesla also notified the Agency that it plans to gradually expand commercial deployment of the Cybercab to include additional vehicles and locations.”

It also went on to state that the Cybercab lacks traditional automotive controls, which is a groundbreaking move. The process is entirely new to the NHTSA, which gives the agency some leverage to put Tesla’s launch under a microscope:

“The vehicles lack permanently attached, conventional manual controls, such as a brake pedal, gas pedal, steering wheel, and mirrors. NHTSA is opening this AQ to examine the process and technical data on which Tesla relied when certifying the Cybercab and related issues. Among other things, NHTSA will consider the extent to which Tesla’s certification depended on determinations that certain FMVSS are inapplicable to the Cybercab.”

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Tesla has added 45 Cybercab units to its fleet of Robotaxi-enabled cars in Austin, according to public documents the company submitted to the State of Texas over the past week. Enabling this level of self-driving is something Tesla has worked toward for many years, and now that it is finally here, it seems more than reasonable that regulatory agencies will have some questions.

Many outlets might try to frame this as a negative, but it is truly an agency looking to gain more information about groundbreaking tech that Tesla has been developing for years.

In an effort to keep riders, pedestrians, and property safe, any and all data accumulated from these first days, weeks, and months of rides will likely be shared with the NHTSA to enable broader rollout strategies across the United States and more in the future.

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Tesla Cybercab is coming to Asia this month as US service officially begins

Tesla Asia says Cybercab will be on display in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing and Shanghai this month.

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Concept image of Tesla Cybercab in the streets of Hong Kong via Grok
Concept image of Tesla Cybercab in the streets of Hong Kong via Grok

Tesla’s Cybercab is heading to Asia. The official Tesla Asia account posted on X Thursday, inviting Cybercab fans to “Come experience the future of autonomy in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing & Shanghai.” The post went up within hours of Tesla’s own Cybercab milestone in Texas, where the company said Thursday it had begun offering rides in across Austin.

Exact dates and venues for the Asia tour haven’t been released yet, though Tesla Hong Kong replied to the announcement with “Cybercab will be on display in Hong Kong soon,” while Tesla Japan’s response pointed fans to a sign up page for updates. Neither post mentions test rides or a service area, and nothing so far suggests Tesla is launching Robotaxi operations in any of the four cities. Based on how Tesla has run past Cybercab tours, in Europe in late 2024 and at US shopping centers that same December, the Asia stops are almost certainly static displays at Tesla stores or public venues as a means to stimulate buzz for its future driverless ride-hailing service in the big cities.

The timing lines up with Tesla’s only prior Cybercab appearance in the region, a booth at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai last November, which Teslarati covered at the time. At that event, Tesla’s regional general manager for Shanghai framed the car as evidence of the company’s broader mission, a message Tesla has since formalized in its Master Plan Part IV, which states that “autonomous vehicles have the capacity to dramatically improve the affordability, availability and safety of transportation while reducing pollution, particularly in our increasingly dense global cities.” The same document is where Tesla lays out its “sustainable abundance” framing for Cybercab and Optimus alike, describing the two as the hardware behind an AI driven push to cut the cost of transportation and labor at scale.

Whether Cybercab actually operates as a robotaxi anywhere in Asia remains an open question, considering China has already pushed an autonomous ride-hailing market that’s run on homegrown players like Baidu’s Apollo Go and Pony AI. For now, the four city tour reads as a marketing push timed to Austin’s momentum.

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