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Tesla’s carbon-wrapped motor to pave way for new Roadster improvements
Tesla CEO Elon Musk appears to have shared one of the key updates that would be rolled out to the next-generation Roadster, an all-electric supercar that’s expected to be the company’s undisputed halo car. In a series of posts on Twitter, Musk explained that some of the Model S Plaid’s key innovations could pave the way for unlocking even more power for the next-generation Roadster.
Musk’s updates came as a response to Tesla bull @ajtourville, who inquired if the carbon fiber sleeves of the Model S Plaid’s rotors are direct-wound or pressed-on. The Tesla CEO noted that with the Model S Plaid, “fiber is wound over rotor at high tension load.” He also noted that the “carbon sleeve must put (the) copper rotor in compression or it loosens at low temp due to differential thermal expansion.”
Main advantage of this is a much stronger EM field compared with a rotor that is held together by metal (usually high strength steel).
Other advantage is that rotor can go to higher RPM, as carbon sleeve (mostly) stops copper rotor from expanding due to radial acceleration.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 13, 2021
Musk highlighted that Tesla’s carbon-coated motor has several key advantages, one of which is a stronger electromagnetic field compared to a rotor held together by metal such as high strength steel. The rotors can also go to a higher RPM, as the carbon sleeve mostly stops the copper from expanding due to radial acceleration. In a later tweet, Musk noted that these innovations had given Tesla some ideas for increasing the torque and maximum RPM of the next-generation Roadster.
This would make the all-electric supercar into something even more impressive than its prototype. When it was unveiled in late 2017, Elon Musk announced that the next-generation Roadster would have a wheel torque of 10,000 Nm, which is already very impressive in its own right. With a higher maximum RPM, the next-generation Roadster’s production could offer some monstrous amounts of power. Together with its SpaceX-infused tech and 620-mile range, the Roadster could truly stand above the Model S Plaid, effectively justifying its expected base price of $200,000.
The Plaid carbon-wrapped motor is arguably the most advanced motor on Earth outside of maybe a lab somewhere. We have to keep some secrets!
We have a few ideas for increasing torque & max rpm even further for new Roadster. Definitely fun & exciting engineering ahead!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 13, 2021
The machines that enable the production of the Model S Plaid’s new electric motors were made possible by Tesla Automation. Interestingly enough, Tesla Grohmann Automation, which is located in Germany, has been undergoing a pretty extensive expansion, as indicated by reports from electric vehicle owners in the area. This expansion is expected to correspond to more activity in the facility, particularly as Gigafactory Berlin starts its local operations.
The next-generation Roadster is the spiritual successor of the car that started it all for Tesla. But while the original Roadster was based on the Lotus Elise, the new Roadster is built and designed from the ground up by the company. This paves the way for specs that would likely need to be seen to be believed, such as its 0-60 mph acceleration of 1.1 seconds with its SpaceX package.
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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
