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Tesla’s ability to deliver the Model Y in various trims at launch is a big deal
The initial deliveries of the Tesla Model Y are about to begin, and as more reservation holders are advised to prepare for delivery, it is becoming more evident that the electric car maker has turned a new page when it comes to its production efficiencies. If Tesla’s first wave of emails to reservation holders are any indication, it appears that the Model Y ramp will be nothing like the Model 3’s rollout.
When the Model 3 started deliveries, Tesla only offered the vehicle in one variant and one interior option: Long Range RWD with black interior. This was done to make it easier for the company to produce the sedan, especially since it was a time when Tesla was still learning how to find its stride in the production of the electric car. It was a pretty good strategy, as it allowed Tesla to find its rhythm first with Long Range RWD production before it attempted to build other, more complex variants like the Model 3 Performance with white interior, which required two motors and a different interior trim.
Reservation holders who wanted a Performance Model 3, or a Dual Motor AWD, or those who opted for Tesla’s white interior, experienced an extended wait that lasted months. Tesla started delivering the Model 3 in the second half of 2017, and customers who wanted a Performance version ended up waiting until the middle of 2018 to receive their electric car. Canadian reservation holders were in for a long wait as well.
This gradual ramp does not seem to be happening with the Model Y. If Tesla’s emails to its reservation holders are any indication, it appears that the company is preparing to deliver not just the dual-motor AWD versions of the vehicle; Performance versions will be released this coming March as well. Apart from this, reservation holders who ordered both black and white interiors have been invited to set a delivery date. But this is not all. Reservation holders in Canada have also received notifications from Tesla, informing them of upcoming Model Y deliveries.
This is something that has never really happened before, at least not at this scale. The reason behind this has not been announced by the electric car maker, though a lot of it may have to do with the Model Y sharing 75% of its parts with the Model 3, Tesla’s highest-volume vehicle available today. Tesla has already optimized its Model 3 production capabilities, after all, to the point where the company can manufacture enough vehicles to address some of the electric car’s demand in other countries. As such, developing the Model Y line may not have been as much of a challenge for the electric car maker.
Tesla has already made a lot of headway in its vehicle production efficiencies over the years. It took a while for the company to refine its Model 3 production, and it is taking all these learnings in the Model Y’s ramp. This is represented by the Model Y’s design and large casts, which are seemingly intended to ensure that the all-electric crossover could be produced in a quick and efficient manner. These will ultimately allow the company to avoid the issues that befell the Model 3’s first iterations, which were faulted by teardown expert Sandy Munro for being far too complex and heavy than it needed to be.
Simply put, the Tesla that’s about to deliver the all-electric crossover today is a far different, far more mature company as the one that tried to mass-produce the Model 3 back in 2017. This ultimately bodes well for the Model Y, considering that CEO Elon Musk expects the vehicle to outsell the Model S, Model X, and Model 3 combined. This may also send some chills down the spine of rival automakers, as Tesla’s biggest disruptor yet may end up entering key markets at a speed and scale that’s never really been seen before.
Elon Musk
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla confirmed HW3 vehicles cannot run unsupervised FSD, replacing its free upgrade promise with a discounted trade-in.
Tesla has officially confirmed that early vehicles with its Autopilot Hardware 3 (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving, while extending a path forward for legacy owners through a discounted trade-in program. The announcement came by way of Elon Musk in today’s Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call.
🚨 Our LIVE updates on the Tesla Earnings Call will take place here in a thread 🧵
Follow along below: pic.twitter.com/hzJeBitzJU
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
The history here matters. HW3 launched in April 2019, and Tesla sold Full Self-Driving packages to owners on the understanding that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. Some owners paid between $8,000 and $15,000 for FSD during that period. For years, as FSD’s AI models grew more demanding, HW3 vehicles fell progressively further behind, eventually landing on FSD v12.6 in January 2025 while AI4 vehicles moved to v13 and then v14. When Musk acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 simply could not reach unsupervised operation, and alluded to a difficult hardware retrofit.
The near-term offering is more concrete. Tesla’s head of Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed on today’s call that a V14-lite will be coming to HW3 vehicles in late June, bringing all the V14 features currently running on AI4 hardware. That is a meaningful software update for owners who have been frozen at v12.6 for over a year, and it represents genuine effort to keep older hardware relevant. Unsupervised FSD for vehicles is now targeted for Q4 2026 at the earliest, with Musk describing it as a gradual, geography-limited rollout.
For HW3 owners, the over-the-air V14-lite update is welcomed, and the discounted trade-in path at least acknowledges an old obligation. What happens next with the trade-in pricing will define how this chapter ultimately gets written. If Tesla prices the hardware path fairly, acknowledges what early adopters are owed, and delivers V14-lite on the June timeline it committed to today, it has a real opportunity to convert one of the longest-running sore subjects among early adopters into a loyalty story.
Elon Musk
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Tesla’s Optimus factory in Texas targets 10 million robots yearly, with 5.2 million square feet under construction.
Tesla’s Q1 2026 Update Letter, released today, confirms that first generation Optimus production lines are now well underway at its Fremont, California factory, with a pilot line targeting one million robots per year to start. Of bigger note is a shared aerial image of a large piece of land adjacent to Gigafactory Texas, that Tesla has prominently labeled “Optimus factory site preparation.”
Permit documents show Tesla is seeking to add over 5.2 million square feet of new building space to the Giga Texas North Campus by the end of 2026, at an estimated construction investment of $5 billion to $10 billion. The longer term production target for that facility is 10 million Optimus units per year. Giga Texas already sits on 2,500 acres with over 10 million square feet of existing factory floor, and the North Campus expansion is being built to support multiple projects, including the dedicated Optimus factory, the Terafab chip fabrication facility (a joint Tesla/SpaceX/xAI venture), a Cybercab test track, road infrastructure, and supporting facilities.
Credit: TESLA
Texas makes strategic sense beyond the existing infrastructure. The state’s tax structure, lower labor costs relative to California, and the proximity to Tesla’s AI training cluster Cortex 1 and 2, both located at Giga Texas and now totaling over 230,000 H100 equivalent GPUs, means the Optimus software stack and the factory producing the hardware will share the same campus. Tesla’s Q1 report also confirmed completion of the AI5 chip tape out in April, the inference processor designed specifically to power Optimus units in the field.
As Teslarati reported, the Texas facility is intended to house Optimus V4 production at full scale. Musk told the World Economic Forum in January that Tesla plans to sell Optimus to the public by end of 2027 at a price between $20,000 and $30,000, stating, “I think everyone on earth is going to have one and want one.” He has previously pegged long term demand for general purpose humanoid robots at over 20 billion units globally, citing both consumer and industrial use cases.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a miss on vehicle deliveries for the first quarter, delivering 358,023 vehicles and building 408,386 cars during the three-month span.
As Tesla transitions more toward AI and sees itself as less of a car company, expectations for deliveries will begin to become less of a central point in the consensus of how the quarter is perceived.
Nevertheless, Tesla is leaning on its strong foundation as a car company to carry forward its AI ambitions. The first quarter is a good ground layer for the rest of the year.
Tesla Q1 2026 Earnings Results
Tesla’s Earnings Results are as follows:
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.41 Reported vs. $0.36 Expected
- Revenues – $22.387 billion vs. $22.35 billion Expected
- Free Cash Flow – $1.444 billion
- Profit – $4.72 billion
Tesla beat analyst expectations, so it will be interesting to see how the stock responds. IN the past, we’ve seen Tesla beat analyst expectations considerably, followed by a sharp drop in stock price.
On the same token, we’ve seen Tesla miss and the stock price go up the following trading session.
Tesla will hold its Q1 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q1 2026 Earnings Call at 4:30pm CT https://t.co/pkYIaGJ32y
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 22, 2026
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
