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.
Hard to believe that is high efficiency solar power seamlessly integrated into beautiful roof tiles. Great work by SolarGlass engineering, Giga NY factory & Tesla installation teams!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 9, 2020
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.
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.
I was pleasantly surprised by my recent visit to the Tesla plant. It was encouraging to see Solar roofs, batteries, and charging stations being built in the facility. Tesla reports over 1100 workers at the plant and they say they will hit 1460 by the April deadline. pic.twitter.com/33aSuRdQLC
— Senator Sean Ryan (@SenSeanRyan) February 8, 2020
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.
Elon Musk
Tesla Cybercabs narrowly miss deadly Amazon cargo plane crash
An Amazon cargo plane crash near Miami’s airport stopped feet from dozens of Tesla Cybercabs.
An Amazon Prime Air Boeing 767 cargo jet overran the runway at Miami International Airport on Sunday afternoon, killing five people and injuring five more. The jet, operated by North Carolina based carrier 21 Air as Flight 7598, touched down around 2 p.m. after arriving from San Juan, Puerto Rico, then crossed the airport perimeter, plowed across NW 67th Avenue and struck multiple vehicles before catching fire, according to the Associated Press.
Photos and video from the scene show the aircraft’s nose stopped within meters of a fenced staging lot holding dozens of gold painted Tesla Cybercabs, the steering wheel free robotaxi Tesla began putting on public roads in Austin last week. Miami-Dade Fire Rescue has confirmed the plane struck “multiple vehicles” but has not said whether any Cybercabs were among them, and neither Tesla nor airport officials have addressed the fleet directly.
The Cybercabs had not yet entered commercial service in Miami. Tesla’s existing Robotaxi operation there runs on modified Model Y vehicles and has been unsupervised since Ashok Elluswamy confirmed the detail on X in July.
Footage of the plane crash from earlier today | #ONLYinDADE pic.twitter.com/iGoOtnd6cD
— ONLY in DADE (@ONLYinDADE) September 6, 2026
Elon Musk offered the briefest of reactions. Replying to a Zero Hedge post about the Cybercabs sitting so close to the wreckage, he wrote a single word: “Weird.” He has not commented further, and Tesla has not issued a statement.
The timing puts Tesla’s newest vehicle near an unrelated but highly visible tragedy just days after its Austin debut, a launch that had already drawn scrutiny from federal regulators. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an audit how Tesla certified the Cybercab as compliant with federal vehicle safety standards, a process Teslarati covered after the vehicle’s September 3 launch event. That inquiry concerns the car’s lack of a steering wheel and pedals, not the Miami crash.
Investigators from the FAA and NTSB are focused on the plane, not the parking lot beside it. Flight data reviewed by outlets including Simple Flying show the 767 touched down around 170 knots, well above the 135 to 140 knot range typical for the aircraft, though investigators have not determined a cause. Amazon said it is working with authorities and that its priority is the safety of everyone affected.
Whether any Cybercabs were damaged, and what Tesla plans for the fleet parked near one of the country’s busiest airports, remain open questions.
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Tesla crosses major Unsupervised Self-Driving milestone
Tesla has reached a notable benchmark in its autonomous driving program after its Robotaxi fleet surpassed one million miles of unsupervised operation. The company made the announcement during its Cybercab event in Austin on September 3.
Tesla Vice President of AI Ashok Elluswamy told attendees he was happy to report the fleet had achieved one million miles of unsupervised Robotaxi operation as a testament to safety.
The new total marked a sharp increase from the 380,000 unsupervised miles Tesla disclosed during its second-quarter 2026 earnings update in late July.
In roughly six weeks, the company added about 620,000 miles. That acceleration followed Tesla’s decision to remove in-vehicle safety monitors from most of its operations outside the San Francisco Bay Area.

Credit: Tesla
Tesla first launched Robotaxi service in Austin in June 2025 with safety drivers present. It later began fully unsupervised rides and expanded into Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa. The San Francisco Bay Area remains the exception, where a safety monitor still rides in the vehicle under California permitting rules.
The company has not released a city-by-city breakdown of the one million unsupervised miles.
The milestone arrived as Tesla began offering public Cybercab rides in Austin. The purpose-built vehicle has no steering wheel or pedals and is designed only for autonomous ride-hailing. Production versions joined the existing fleet of modified Tesla vehicles already operating in the service.
Tesla’s unsupervised mileage is growing at a double-digit weekly rate according to earlier company comments, yet its fleet size remains modest compared with established competitors. Waymo has accumulated more than 200 million fully autonomous rider-only miles. Tesla has described its own unsupervised operations as having recorded zero notable incidents in the period leading up to the July update.
The one-million-mile figure reflects Tesla’s shift from supervised testing to broader driverless service in multiple states. It also highlights the company’s strategy of using both existing Model Y vehicles and the new Cybercab to scale its network.

Credit: Tesla
Whether the rapid recent growth continues will depend on further city expansions, regulatory approvals, and the performance of the purpose-built Cybercab in everyday paid rides. Tesla has not specified how many of the latest miles involved the new vehicle versus the rest of the fleet.
The announcement underscores Tesla’s progress toward a larger robotaxi network while illustrating the remaining gap in total autonomous experience relative to longer-operating rivals.
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Tesla Robotaxi will be a 24/7 service: here’s when
Tesla AI lead Ashok Elluswamy said this week that 24-hour Robotaxi service is close. Replying on X to a rider who wanted Cybercab trips all night, he wrote that the capability would arrive “next month or so” once “the next tech to merge on the v15 plan” is ready.
The comment landed on September 4, one day after Tesla opened public Cybercab rides in Austin. It is the clearest near-term timeline yet for overnight unsupervised operation. Tesla’s paid Robotaxi network currently runs from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. seven days a week across Austin, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Orlando, and Tampa.
next month or so. the next tech to merge on the v15 plan will enable it.
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) September 4, 2026
That 16-hour window is shorter than the 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. schedule the company used for much of the prior year.
Elluswamy did not name the specific feature or say whether the change would apply first to purpose-built Cybercabs, the existing Model Y fleet, or both. He also offered no city-by-city rollout list. The link to Full Self-Driving v15 is nevertheless significant.
Tesla has described v15 as a step-change architecture with seven parallel improvement tracks and roughly ten times more parameters than earlier builds. Early versions of that software already operate on the Robotaxi fleet and contain about 40 percent of the planned gains.
By July 2026, the unsupervised fleet had logged more than 380,000 miles across six cities in two states with what the company called an impeccable safety record and no notable incidents caused by the vehicles themselves. Tesla has repeatedly argued that camera-based end-to-end neural networks, rather than extra sensors, are the core of the solution.
Overnight service would test that claim in lower-light conditions and would also raise vehicle utilization, a key variable for Robotaxi unit economics. The company has already begun using public Superchargers at night and is building dedicated Robotaxi charging sites.
Riders have asked why software must change if the cars already drive in the dark. The practical answer appears to be reliability and scale: Tesla has held back mass expansion until more of the v15 stack is merged, citing the need for higher confidence before putting thousands of unoccupied vehicles on streets around the clock.
If the next module arrives on the timetable Elluswamy sketched, 24-hour service could begin in October 2026 in at least some markets.
That would mark a shift from a daytime-bounded pilot to a service that can run whenever demand exists, including the late-night hours that have so far remained out of reach.