News
Tesla Investor Day: Five things we’d love to hear (but probably won’t)
Tesla Investor Day is set to kick off later today, and there will surely be plenty of massive developments that CEO Elon Musk and other executives could give us details on. However, there are still some things that Tesla fans and investors would love to know about, but we might not get the opportunity, at least not yet.
Here are five things we’d love to hear about at Tesla Investor Day, but probably won’t:
1. New Paint Colors
It’s already been rumored that the Midnight Cherry Red and Quicksilver paint schemes will make an appearance at Gigafactory Texas for Investor Day. These colors are exclusive to the Giga Berlin operation, and there has not been too much of an update in terms of paint colors in the North American market for years.
Although Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen hinted toward new paint colors for the U.S. earlier this year on the Ride the Lightning podcast, there are a few bottlenecks keeping Tesla from actually doing so. First off, Tesla’s Fremont Factory would have to have its paint facility updated. While the company has taken steps to do this in the past, it was more for ventilation and fire protection than improvements that would improve quality and make way for new colors.
Credit: Photo Credit: @thirionremi / Twitter
Fremont still builds all four Tesla models, while Gigafactory Texas only builds Model Y units. With Tesla’s order log getting longer and longer every day, the company simply cannot afford to shut down Fremont to update the paint shop, but there could be other options in the future that allow the company to do so. Tesla is expanding Fremont and could build an entirely new paint shop, updating the old one upon completion.
2. Tesla’s Strategy for non-Tesla Superchargers
This one is probably the most reasonable to expect details on, but even still, it seems like what Tesla will talk about today will be geared toward more macro topics.
Credit: Branden Flasch | Twitter / Tesla
Tesla hasn’t formally released a specific plan for which Superchargers it will open to all EVs. While it did release a detailed video on how other EV brands can utilize the open Superchargers equipped with the “Magic Dock” last night, it has not detailed how it will determine which chargers it will choose to be open to all brands.
There must be a method to the madness, and owners will likely want to know which chargers are going to be geared toward being open to other EV brands.
3. Plans for Tesla after Elon Musk
Tesla wouldn’t be what it is today without Elon Musk, but unfortunately, nothing lasts forever.
There will be a day when Musk will ultimately step away from his responsibilities as Tesla CEO, and it will be understandable. It’s been a long and stressful tenure as CEO that many of us could never even dream of handling. One day, Musk will need to step aside, and even though it might not be all that soon, it would still be nice to know who could potentially take the reigns.
Whoever takes over the position will have a massive set of shoes to fill, but it won’t be impossible, just an extreme challenge. Musk will likely handpick his replacement, as he is likely the only person who could determine who is fit to run Tesla’s day-to-day operations.
4. Any sort of plan for Tesla’s Public Relations
While notable Tesla bull and recent Board of Directors hopeful Ross Gerber has always talked about Tesla’s need for a PR Department. Tesla abolished the use of one several years ago, which has made it difficult for the company to fend off negativity from media outlets when drastic and challenging stories about the company are published. Elon Musk has usually taken it upon himself to publicly announce what stories are real and which are false, but even still, a dedicated PR department might not be a bad idea to discuss today.
Tesla has utilized a series of posts on its company blog to respond to some negative reports. Most recently, the company responded to allegations that it fired numerous employees who were attempting to unionize at Gigafactory New York in Buffalo.
A PR Department would undoubtedly be a great way for Tesla to deal with negativity in the media, giving journalists and writers people to reach out to directly for anything they might need. Granted, media members still reach out to the company but are met with no response most of the time.
5. Improvements to Tesla Service
Service is still arguably Tesla’s biggest weakness. When I wrote a story about a Model S Plaid owner who had their vehicle totaled by a Service Center employee, people reached out with horror stories regarding issues with getting their vehicles fixed.
The stories still continue to come in, not as regularly, but likely because there has not been a story on it, and people don’t know where to reach out.
Credit: Tesla
Service and Showroom locations grew 19 percent in 2022 compared to 2021, while the Tesla Mobile Service fleet expanded by 24 percent in the same time frame. Unfortunately, there are still many people who complain about the shortcomings of service. Tesla has tried to push a more efficient service strategy using an “F1” method, but with that, they phased out Uber Credits and Loaners in some circumstances.
If anything, this is Tesla’s biggest weakness, and if the company can fix it, it could likely be monumental.
I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please email me at joey@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.
Tesla Cybercab is set to launch in Austin, Texas, on September 3, as the company has officially started sending out invitations to a dedicated event it will hold in the city where its headquarters is located.
The Cybercab is Tesla’s dedicated ride-sharing vehicle: it features just two seats and has no steering wheel or pedals. It is aimed at fully autonomous passenger transport, and will operate in the Robotaxi fleet alongside the Tesla Model Y, which has been performing driverless rides for real-world passengers for more than a year.
Thank you so much @Tesla for inviting us to the Cybercab launch in Austin! 🤠 pic.twitter.com/F1rAR8zd5O
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 22, 2026
The launch of the Cybercab marks the next chapter in Tesla’s autonomy story. The company has been developing autonomous transport for years with its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) platform, which is available in any vehicle the company has built with the proper hardware and software capabilities.
Its capabilities vary by hardware and software version, but Tesla says its latest hardware version, known as AI4, can deliver full autonomy. However, future vehicles will operate with even more robust hardware packages, as Tesla will develop AI4.5 and AI5 for even more capability in its vehicles.
Following a report from The Information that surfaced earlier this week, the writing was on the wall that Tesla was set to launch Cybercab in the near term. The report stated Tesla could launch Cybercab as soon as the end of August. Tesla came close and has booked it for September 3.
The big thing with this event being scheduled is not necessarily that Tesla is launching a new vehicle, but instead that it is launching a vehicle that has no steering wheel or pedals and will operate exclusively on a self-driving program that is evidently nearing full autonomy. If the event allows vehicles to take passengers on public roads and drop them off wherever they please within the City of Austin, it will be a drastic advancement in the company’s self-driving story.
People have ridden in Cybercab previously: Tesla had the “We, Robot” event in October 2024, which allowed people to experience fully autonomous rides in a closed circuit at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank.
🚨 Ride in a Tesla Cybercab with us
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) May 11, 2025
Additionally, Tesla launched employee rides in Cybercab in July.
It’s a drastic step forward for Tesla, whose CEO, Elon Musk, has promised for years that the company would release a fully autonomous vehicle and platform capable of allowing drivers to relinquish any responsibility behind the wheel.
TESLARATI Premium Membership
$19.99 USD
Elon Musk put a number on where he thinks SpaceX’s Starship program is headed by 2030, replying on X a day after President Trump signed a memo pushing the country toward 1,000 space launches and reentries a year.
The exchange started when Aaron Burnett, co-founder of propulsion startup Mach 33, posted that “1,000 launches/reentries is the goal,” quoting White House science adviser Michael Kratsios on the newly signed National Space Transportation Policy. Burnett noted that the FAA’s own bull-case forecast reached only 385 annual launches by 2030, while his firm’s conservative model already put SpaceX alone near 940. Musk responded, “We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized. Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!”
We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized.
Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 21, 2026
That figure is specific to Starship, the rocket SpaceX is still developing for orbital and lunar missions, not the Falcon 9 fleet that carries most of the company’s current launch volume. Starship has flown twice this year, a slower pace than the four and five flights SpaceX managed in 2024 and 2025. Getting from two flights a year to 30 a day is the scale of jump the new federal policy is meant to clear regulatory room for.
Trump’s memo, signed Thursday, directs agencies to identify new launch and reentry sites on federal land, including a new reentry site within 90 days, and to speed up the permitting and environmental reviews that have long slowed cadence growth. It also sets a goal of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2028 and placing initial lunar base elements by 2030, tying the launch buildout directly to NASA’s Artemis program.
SpaceX has already been pushing the FAA toward higher numbers on its own. The agency approved up to 44 annual Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center in February, on top of a 2024 review that raised the cap at Starbase in Texas to 25 a year. Those approvals cover a fraction of the 10,000 annual flights Musk is now describing, which shows how far current permitting still sits from the administration’s stated target.
The near-term test of all this is more modest. SpaceX cleared a full-duration, six-engine static fire on its next Starship vehicle this week, the last major hardware checkpoint before Flight 14, which is targeting no earlier than August 28 and is expected to attempt the vehicle’s first full orbital mission. Musk said last week that a tower catch of the upper stage is still probably months away, a reminder that the immediate roadmap remains far more incremental than the daily launch numbers he just posted.
Tesla will resolve its massive recall of nearly three million vehicles in China with stickers and a software update.
On Friday, Chinese regulators filed recall plans against Tesla, Xiaomi, Leapmotor, Xpeng, Chery, Geely, Dongfeng, Arcfox, and FAW to resolve what is essentially a carbon-copy issue throughout each of the companies’ vehicle models: emergency door release latches are simply not visible enough.
Tesla door handle saga gets its latest chapter and a big change is coming
The companies will be required to add things that will make these latches, which will open the door in the event of an emergency, more visible. Of the 7 million vehicles impacted, Tesla accounts for 2,975,910 units. More than 1.9 million of those are Model Y vehicles, with the rest, just over 970,000, being Model 3s.
To resolve the issue, Tesla is going to add warning labels to the emergency latches free of charge, and then utilize an Over-the-Air update to add a post-crash window-lowering strategy, according to CNEVpost.
This massive effort to fix the all-electric Model Y and Model 3’s emergency latch system comes just months after several probes across various markets identified the trouble some had identifying this latch. Those who had gotten involved in car accidents that stripped the vehicle of its power were not aware that every Tesla has emergency door latches.
China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said that severe crashes that disable a vehicle’s low-voltage system could not only hinder occupants from getting out, but also make it more difficult for emergency response workers to gain entry.
SAMR is starting to tighten the regulations it has on door handles on vehicles. A new mandatory national standard will take effect for all models starting January 1, 2027, and will require all doors to be equipped with mechanical release mechanisms. This will effectively end purely electronic door handles. Models already on sale with type approval have been granted a two-year transition period, which will enable things to change until January 2029.
Tesla will launch Cybercab on September 3
SpaceX and a new Trump order that could rewrite the next decade of launches
