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Tesla and Hong Kong: Once ideal companions for a city of contrasts
Luxury automobile owners in Hong Kong have enthusiastically embraced the Tesla brand over the past three years. In large part, that’s because Tesla vehicles were not part of the pool of new car purchases that incurred a tax often equal to or exceeding a car’s full sticker price. Tesla had benefited from a nearly twenty year old exemption from this tax as part of the electric vehicle category.
However, the allure of a Tesla as a luxury car with great value and zero emissions may be fading for Tesla consumers.
During a speech about the annual budget for 2017, financial secretary Paul Chan announced that the government will lift a long-standing waiver for electric cars on new vehicle registration taxes. It will be replaced by a maximum deduction that is equivalent to about $12,500 U.S. As there had been so few electric car choices in the Hong Kong market, the original heavy tax on new private car purchases, which had been imposed as a measure to mitigate emissions and reduce traffic, really didn’t amount to much lost tax revenue for the government in its early years.
That is, until Tesla came to town. Car buyers soon found that it could purchase an automobile with the panache of a Mercedes but spend about half the amount. Tesla owners would also have the added benefit of feeling better about their contributions to a city that suffers from heavy air pollution.
Hong Kong’s love for Tesla
Hong Kong is a fascinating place. Calm and orderly crowds. Ample green spaces interspersed between and on top a vertical city. Open land just on the city outskirts. An area that feels like one giant interconnected shopping mall with a density of luxury brand stores. Three Tiffany’s Flagship stores. Eight Hermès shops. Thirteen Armani stores and the Armani Nightclub. In Hong Kong, the new and contemporary complement the ancient and traditional: temples beside skyscrapers, luxury shops flanking Chinese pharmacies, double-decker trams and mini-buses puttering alongside Teslas.
The Tesla brand has fit nicely into the Hong Kong cultural melting pot of neon signs and urban landscape. With networking as an integral part of life and thirty-somethings working and playing hard in a hedonistic lifestyle, Tesla arrived in Hong Kong at the right time. A top tax bracket on income set at 17.5% didn’t hurt sales, either.
Electric vehicle (EV) registrations in Hong Kong catapulted in the last few years. That affection for EVs may be coming to an end now that the government is revising the regulations that inspired their popularity. The new legislation will alter a Tesla Model S 60 with a sticker price of price of $570,000 HK ($73,000 USD) to a cost total of $925,500 HK ($120,000 USD). That means there would be little or no price advantage to purchase a Tesla over a Mercedes. It remains to be seen whether Tesla will still have appeal due to its now-established strong brand, its inherent zero petrol costs, and its ability to contribute to lower pollution levels.
A Tesla spokesperson says that the company is “disappointed” with the government’s new measure:
“Over the past few years, the impressive growth in all kinds of electric vehicles on Hong Kong’s roads has helped create a cleaner, more sustainable city without increasing congestion as almost all our new owners are replacing a particularly high-polluting fossil fuel vehicle. [The action] threatens to move Hong Kong backwards. We will continue to support our owner community and will work with all our current order holders to ensure the delivery of their vehicles with full FRT exemption.”
Here is the cost breakout for Hong Kong luxury car purchases under the new measures.
Image courtesy of Quartz
Elon Musk
SpaceX just got pulled into the biggest Weapons Program in U.S. history
SpaceX joins the Golden Dome software group, deepening its role in America’s most expensive defense program.
SpaceX has joined a nine-company group developing the core operating software for the Golden Dome, America’s next-generation missile defense system. According to a Bloomberg report, SpaceX is focused on integrating satellite communications for military operations and is working alongside eight other defense and artificial intelligence companies, including Anduril Industries, Palantir Technologies, and Aalyria Technologies, to build software connecting missile defense capabilities.
The Golden Dome concept dates back to President Trump’s 2024 campaign, and on January 27, 2025, he signed an executive order directing the U.S. Armed Forces to construct the system before the end of his term. The system is planned to employ a constellation of thousands of satellites equipped with interceptors, with data centers in space providing automated control through an AI network.
FCC accepts SpaceX filing for 1 million orbital data center plan
Space Force Gen. Michael Guetlein, director of the Golden Dome initiative, has described the software layer as a “glue layer” that would enable officers to manage and control radars, sensors, and missile batteries across services. The consortium is aiming to test the platform this summer.
Trump selected a design in May 2025 with a $175 billion price tag, expected to be operational by the end of his term in 2029, though the Congressional Budget Office projected the cost could reach $831 billion over two decades.
The Golden Dome role is only the latest in a string of military wins for SpaceX. As Teslarati reported, the U.S. Space Force awarded SpaceX a $178.5 million task order on April 1, 2026 to launch missile tracking satellites for the Space Development Agency, covering two Falcon 9 launches beginning in Q3 2027. That came on top of more than $22 billion in government contracts held by SpaceX as of 2024, per CEO Gwynne Shotwell, spanning NASA resupply missions, classified intelligence satellites through its Starshield program, and military broadband.
The accumulation of defense contracts, now including a seat at the table on the most expensive weapons program in U.S. history, positions SpaceX as the dominant infrastructure provider for American national security in space. With a SpaceX IPO still on the horizon, each new contract adds weight to what is already one of the most consequential companies in aerospace history, raising real questions about how much of America’s defense architecture will depend on a single private operator before it ever trades publicly.
News
Tesla pulls back the curtain on Cybercab mass production
Tesla’s Cybercab drives itself off the Gigafactory Texas line in a striking new production video.
Tesla has provided a first look from inside a production Cybercab as it drove itself off the assembly line at Gigafactory Texas. The video footage, posted on X, opens on the factory floor with robotic arms and assembly equipment visible through the Cybercab windshield, and follows the car through a branded tunnel marked “Cybercab”, before autonomously navigating itself to a holding lot.
The first Cybercab rolled off the Giga Texas production line on February 17, 2026, with Musk writing on X, “Congratulations to the Tesla team on making the first production Cybercab.” April marked the official shift to volume production. The Giga Texas line is being prepared to produce hundreds of units per week, with 60 units already spotted on the Gigafactory campus earlier this month.
Purpose-built for autonomy
Cybercab in production now at Giga Texas pic.twitter.com/Y9qG3KyWBa
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 23, 2026
The Cybercab was first revealed publicly at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024 at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, where 20 pre-production units gave attendees rides around the studio lot. Musk said he believed the average operating cost would be around $0.20 per mile, and that buyers would be able to purchase one for under $30,000. The two-seat design is deliberate. Musk noted that 90 percent of miles driven involve one or two people, making a compact two-passenger vehicle the most efficient configuration for a fleet-scale robotaxi. Eliminating rear seats also removes complexity and cost, supporting that sub-$30,000 target.
Tesla’s annual production goal is 2 million Cybercabs per year once several factories reach full design capacity. The Cybercab has no steering wheel, no pedals, and relies entirely on Tesla’s vision-based FSD system. What the video shows is the first evidence of that system working not as a demo, but as a production reality, driving itself off the line and into the world.
🚗 Our first ride in Tesla Cybercab last October: pic.twitter.com/kGqIqgJPRn https://t.co/BITCXFhbVd
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2025
Elon Musk
Elon Musk talks Tesla Roadster’s future
Elon Musk confirmed the Roadster as Tesla’s last manually driven car, with a debut coming soon.
During Tesla’s Q1 2026 earnings call on April 22, Elon Musk made a brief but notable comment about the long-awaited next generation Roadster while describing Tesla’s future vehicle lineup. “Long term, the only manually driven car will be the new Tesla Roadster,” he said. “Speaking of which, we may be able to debut that in a month or so. It requires a lot of testing and validation before we can actually have a demo and not have something go wrong with the demo.”
That single statement is the entire Roadster update from yesterday’s call, and while it represents another timeline shift, it comes as no surprise with Tesla heads-down-at-work on the mass rollout of its Robotaxi service across US cities, and the industrial scale production of the humanoid Optimus.
The fact that Musk specifically framed the Roadster as the last manually driven Tesla is significant on its own. As the rest of the lineup moves toward full autonomy, the Roadster becomes something rare in the Tesla-sphere by keeping the driver in control. Driving enthusiasts who buy a $200,000 supercar are not doing so to be passengers. They want the physical connection to the road, the feel of acceleration under their own input, and the experience of controlling something with that level of performance. FSD, however capable it becomes, removes that entirely. The Roadster signals that Tesla understands this distinction and is building a car specifically for the people who consider driving itself the point.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
The specs for the Roadster Musk has teased over the years are genuinely unlike anything in production. The base model targets 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, and up to 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery. The optional SpaceX package takes it further, rumored to add roughly ten cold gas thrusters operating at 10,000 psi, borrowed directly from Falcon 9 rocket technology. With thrusters, Musk has claimed 0 to 60 mph in as little as 1.1 seconds. In a 2021 Joe Rogan interview he went further, stating “I want it to hover. We got to figure out how to make it hover without killing people.” Tesla filed a patent for ground effect technology in August 2025, suggesting the hover concept has not been abandoned. The starting price remains $200,000, with the Founders Series requiring a $250,000 full deposit. Some reservation holders placed those deposits in 2017 and are approaching a full decade of waiting.
With production now targeted for 2027 or 2028 at the earliest, the Roadster remains Tesla’s most audacious promise and its longest-running delay. But if what Musk is testing lives up to even half of what he has described, the demo alone should be worth waiting for.
Elon Musk says the Tesla Roadster unveiling could be done “maybe in a month or so.”
He said it should be an extraordinary unveiling event. pic.twitter.com/6V9P7zmvEm
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
SpaceX just got pulled into the biggest Weapons Program in U.S. history
Tesla pulls back the curtain on Cybercab mass production
