Investor's Corner
Tesla’s volunteer-boosted Model 3 delivery weekend is a wake-up call for legacy auto
If social media posts and anecdotes from participating owners are any indication, it appears that Tesla’s volunteer-boosted Model 3 delivery weekend is looking to be a success. As Tesla’s volunteers aid the company in orienting large numbers of new owners with their vehicles, the demand for quality electric cars is becoming more evident than ever.
This weekend saw something remarkable happen in the Tesla community. With the company currently attempting to address Elon Musk’s self-dubbed “delivery logistics hell,” some owners of Tesla’s electric cars stepped forward to offer help. The idea was initially pitched by IGN reporter and Ride the Lightning podcast host Ryan McCaffrey on Twitter, and Elon Musk promptly greenlighted the suggestion, stating that any help would be greatly appreciated. The community mobilized itself immediately, and by Saturday, Tesla’s delivery centers had volunteers who were ready to help new owners with the features and functions of their electric cars. Even Elon Musk himself was in Fremont’s center, interacting with new owners.
Hanging out with @elonmusk while waiting for our new cars @Tesla pic.twitter.com/2UjGyYkD5u
— Bradley Wong (@brawong) September 23, 2018
Reports on social media and in forums such as the r/TeslaMotors subreddit suggest that Tesla’s volunteer-augmented delivery efforts have been largely successful. One such account came from r/TeslaMotors subreddit member and Model 3 owner u/jpbeans, who narrated his experience as a volunteer in one of Tesla’s delivery centers. According to the Model 3 owner, Tesla gave them Guest badges, and they ended up helping owners on several topics, from basics like opening the Model 3’s door handle, to navigating the car’s functions through the 15″ touchscreen.
On Twitter, similar accounts were shared. Twitter user @GuyTesla, who volunteered in Tesla’s Littleton delivery center on Saturday, even noted that a nearby Jaguar dealership inquired how Tesla would be able to store the vehicles being delivered to the site. When informed that the electric cars were not staying in the facility, the staff of the legacy automaker were reportedly a bit shocked.
Hilarious highlight of the day: The Jaguar dealers that had just moved in next-door to Tesla Littleton commented on all of the truck carriers of cars showing up, and asked, “where are you going to put all of these?” And the answer was “They aren’t staying.”
Sad faces…
— 🐍🎷 Tesla Guy 🎷🐍 (@GuyTesla) September 23, 2018
Inasmuch as the Littleton volunteer’s observations are but an anecdote in an otherwise busy delivery weekend, the demand for premium electric vehicles should be undeniable by now. Over the years, Tesla’s electric cars, despite the company’s teething challenges, proved successful in their respective segments. With the Model 3, Tesla has begun an attack into the mainstream auto market, and the electric sedan is starting to make some waves. In August alone, the Model 3 became the 5th best-selling passenger car in the US, being outsold only by the Toyota Camry, Honda Civic, Honda Accord, and the Toyota Corolla Family, all of which are lower-priced vehicles.
Tesla is pretty much unchallenged in the premium electric car market, though highly-anticipated competitors such as the Mercedes-Benz EQC and the Audi e-tron have recently been unveiled. While these vehicles have long been hyped as possible “Tesla-killers” due to their manufacturers having decades of experience in the auto industry, the performance of the vehicles, as well as their battery tech, seemed to be a bit subpar compared to Tesla’s electric cars. This was addressed by Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi recently, when he noted that contrary to a prevalent bear thesis, there is “no actual flood of competition coming” for Tesla’s vehicles.
The recent offerings of premium legacy automakers have caught the attention of Christina Bu, General Secretary of the Electric Vehicle Association in Norway. Norway is among the world’s leaders in the electric car transition, and it is one of the countries where Tesla’s vehicles hold a formidable place. After the reveal of some of Tesla’s competitors from legacy automakers, the EVA General Secretary proved unimpressed, calling on manufacturers to “stop pretending and start delivering” on real electric cars that have compelling performance and features. Bu further noted that the strong demand for affordable, decently-specced vehicles like the Kia Niro Electric and Hyundai KONA Electric, is proof that consumers are ready to embrace EVs.
Tesla is pretty much only halfway through its efforts of ramping the production of the Model 3. This third quarter, Tesla is aiming to produce 50,000-55,000 Model 3 — a record number of vehicles but still only a fraction of its planned 10,000/week production rate for the electric sedan. Tesla eventually plans to build 500,000 Model 3 per year, and its upcoming crossover SUV, the Model Y, is expected to hit a production rate of 1 million units per year. Even when the company achieves these targets, though, the auto industry could not transition into the electric car era on Tesla alone — other manufacturers, particularly those with decades of experience, must embrace the shift as well. As Norway’s General Secretary of the EVA noted, the time is now to “stop pretending and start delivering.”
Featured
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.
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.
Cybercab will be on display in Asia this month!
Come experience the future of autonomy in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing & Shanghai. pic.twitter.com/wGmmEastfX— Tesla Asia (@Tesla_Asia) September 4, 2026
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.
Elon Musk
OpenAI cites distrust of SpaceX in decision to drop Cursor partnership
OpenAI will cut SpaceX-owned Cursor’s model access in November, citing Musk’s history of broken contracts.
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced late Friday that it is ending its partnership with Cursor, cutting off the coding tool’s access to its models on November 12. The move comes two weeks after SpaceX completed its $60 billion acquisition of Cursor’s parent company, Anysphere, folding the popular AI coding assistant into Elon Musk’s growing SpaceXAI division.
In a post on its website, OpenAI said the decision came down to trust, not technology. “We cannot be confident that SpaceX will use our technology within our terms of service, based on our experience with Elon Musk’s companies violating contracts,” the company wrote. OpenAI pointed to two specific incidents: X, now part of SpaceX, allegedly breaking the terms of an existing OpenAI contract after Musk bought Twitter.
That lawsuit is the backdrop for all of this. Musk cofounded OpenAI in 2015, left the board in 2018, and sued Sam Altman and Greg Brockman in 2024, arguing they abandoned the company’s nonprofit mission for profit. A federal jury sided with OpenAI in May, finding Musk waited too long to sue rather than ruling on the merits of his claims. Musk said at the time he would appeal to the Ninth Circuit, calling the outcome a “calendar technicality” rather than a real judgment.
SpaceX’s interest in Cursor predates that verdict by weeks. The company first struck a deal with Cursor in April, securing an option to acquire it for $60 billion or pay $10 billion for joint development work instead. As Teslarati reported at the time, the logic was straightforward: Cursor was paying retail prices to Anthropic and OpenAI, two of its most direct competitors, every time a developer used its product, while SpaceX had idle capacity on its Colossus supercomputer, roughly the equivalent of a million Nvidia H100 GPUs, that Cursor could use to train its own models instead. SpaceX exercised the option in June, days after its own IPO, and the deal closed in mid-August.
Once it closed, Musk moved fast. On an all-hands call with more than 1,000 Cursor employees, he reportedly told staff that SpaceXAI’s Grok was playing catchup in the AI race, unlike Tesla and SpaceX in their own markets, and singled out Anthropic as the company to catch. Cursor CEO Michael Truell now reports directly to Musk inside SpaceXAI.
Losing OpenAI’s models leaves Cursor leaning harder on Anthropic’s Claude, which has its own compute agreement with SpaceX, and on Cursor’s in-house Composer model, the one SpaceX’s compute was supposed to accelerate in the first place. OpenAI framed the November deadline as maximum notice under its contract, and said it wants to “go above and beyond” to help developers through the transition. Whether Anthropic makes the same call is now the open question in AI coding.
Investor's Corner
Tesla Robotaxi gets a massive upgrade in Nevada
Nevada regulators just approved a massive expansion of Tesla’s robotaxi fleet across the entire county.
Tesla’s robotaxi footprint in Nevada just grew by roughly 500 times in a single regulatory vote.
The Nevada Transportation Authority approved Tesla’s full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit on Thursday, clearing the way for the company to deploy up to 5,000 driverless vehicles across Clark County over the next 12 months. The decision came during a four hour general session meeting that Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt watched live and reported on X, noting the vote replaces the interim order that had limited Tesla to just 10 robotaxis on a narrow stretch of the Las Vegas Strip.
EXCLUSIVE: Tesla has just officially received approval for its full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit in Nevada, clearing the way for Tesla to launch a paid public Robotaxi service in Las Vegas.
This officially allows @Tesla to deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis over the next… pic.twitter.com/DPs5UtUlrE
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 20, 2026
That earlier cap, covered here after it surfaced on August 13, came with restrictions that looked stricter than what Tesla runs in Austin: a 45 mph speed ceiling, no airport pickups, and a geofence confined to the Strip corridor. The new approval extends Tesla’s operating authority to all of Clark County, with room to request an even wider geofence across the state.
Tesla representatives at the meeting said they have no intention of putting 5,000 cars on the road right away. Commercial rides are expected to start within 30 days, pending vehicle inspections, insurance filings, and fare approval, the standard steps every robotaxi operator in Nevada has had to clear.
Tesla’s own Robotaxi account replied to the news with a short line, The golden future is upon us.
The timing lines up with Tesla’s broader robotaxi push this month. The company is preparing to open Cybercab rides to the public in Austin as soon as this month, and it opened a sweepstakes for riders to win a seat at the launch event. Tesla filed its original application for a 5,000 vehicle Nevada fleet back in June, a request regulators trimmed to 10 vehicles when they issued the interim order in July. Thursday’s vote effectively grants the number Tesla asked for from the start.
Zoox, the Amazon owned robotaxi operator, has run in Nevada since 2025 and was capped at 100 vehicles before Thursday’s decision. Tesla’s new ceiling puts it well ahead of that comparison on paper, though the company has said its actual fleet size will depend on how quickly FSD v15 rolls out, the software update executives have called the gateway to scaling unsupervised robotaxi operations nationwide.
Tesla Full Self-Driving will now overtake manual driving to avoid disaster
Tesla Cybercab launch catches NHTSA’s attention who wants to know more
