Tesla Space #76: Optimus dances better than me

X OF THE WEEK

$TSLA

… is up +10.26% since our last week’s newsletter (Monday’s close), now at $350.80 per share right as I send you this before the market open. It was a second strong week in a row, sending Tesla now to a $1.10T (yes, that’s a trillion) market cap.

 Join the Tesla Space Insider to unlock some more insight inside this very section every week — this time including Elon posting the stock chart as well.

TESLA, GLOBALLY

Tesla has a new board member — Jack Hartung, a former Chipotle exec. This is what Tesla shared:

“We are pleased to welcome Jack Hartung to Tesla’s Board of Directors, effective June 1, 2025.

​Jack joined Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc. in 2002 and has held several leadership positions during his tenure. Most recently, Jack has been serving as President and Chief Strategy Officer, and previously served as Chief Financial and Administrative Officer, where he was responsible for all finance and accounting functions as well as supply chain, strategy and safety and asset protection.

Over the past 20+ years under Jack’s financial leadership, Chipotle has seen significant growth with over 3,700 restaurants today across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. Jack was named ‘CFO of the Year’ by Orange County Business Journal and Best CFO in the restaurant category by Institutional Investor.

​Jack will be retiring from his executive role on June 1st and transition to a senior advisor role with Chipotle. Jack serves on the Board of Directors for Portillo’s Inc., The Honest Company, Inc. and ZocDoc, Inc.”

Also in other news: Jack Hartung has voluntarily declined both cash and stock compensation for his new board member role, for now.

Tesla has shared new tidbits of info during a session with Wall Street analysts, led by the head of Investor Relations, Travis Axelrod:

On Optimus, Tesla wants to offer investors tours of low-scale manufacturing by Q4 2025, and Tesla can currently make 12 Optimus robots at a time on the second floor of Fremont. Second-gen line is targeting 10k/month. Third-gen line 10x the second-gen line. Tesla wants to build thousands of Optimus robots by the end of this year.

Neural nets for Optimus are far larger than the ones for their cars.

Elon corrected the line that said production capacity is currently at 1k/month: "Not correct. We are building a production line to enable 1000/month Optimus production, but that is still many months away."

Tesla is still on track to launch its Robotaxi service in Austin. Initial fleet of 10-20 cars. It will be invite-only at first.

Tesla Dojo 2 (D2) comes out in 2026. It will be more efficient than Dojo 1 and cheaper than a comparable Nvidia solution. Not expected to be "1 for 1" as competitive to Nvidia. Dojo 3 is expected to come out in 2028. The company thinks it can narrow the performance gap for Application-Specific Integrated Circuit. Tesla believes that 10x-ing their computing and acquiring much cheaper chips could result in a major unlock.

Chart break: we’ve shared @alojoh’s charts with you from the start — glad to see he made it all the way to being reposted by Elon himself now. Of course, it does look pretty — free cashflow history of EV-only makers, shown cumulatively since inception:

Quick takes:

• Tesla partners with Lyft - to give $1k in Tesla Credits when taking delivery and another $1k incentive from Lyft. CEO David Risher comments on it here with “"I know there are a lot of feelings about Tesla and their CEO. I also know from personal experience that Teslas, and EVs in general, are great options for rideshare riders and drivers.”
  The deal itself is pretty much the same program as what Tesla and Uber did back in November 2024.

• Tesla expanded its Military Discount, now calling it "Made in America for Everyday Heroes”, which includes a $1,000 discount to now also to verified students, teachers, first-responders, in addition to previously covered military veterans, retirees, active-duty members, their spouses, and surviving spouses.

• Tesla will be hosting Memorial Day celebration events at Tesla showrooms around the US. “During the event, enjoy music, limited giveaways, and a chance to go on an extended demo drive. Food will be available on site for purchase."

• 👀 Elon replies "exactly" to a post talking about utilizing Cybercabs at night for parcel deliveries.

• FUD-busting: If someone shares with you an article about the Friday afternoon fire inside the hourly garage at Jacksonville International Airport being started by a Tesla (a bunch of those popped up) — officials have confirmed that it was not caused by a Tesla.

• Was this one of the reasons Elon moved HQ to Texas? Texas Governor just signed into law new corporate protections, including provisions making it harder for shareholders to file lawsuits in Texas against publicly traded companies, like the one that blocked a pay package for Elon Musk.
  Meanwhile, Reuters says that "In Tesla’s wake, investors in nine public companies worth at least $1 billion each will vote in the coming weeks on proposals to ditch Delaware as their place of incorporation."

• Also on this topic: Tesla's board of directors has reportedly formed a special committee to examine Elon Musk's compensation, which could lead to a new stock option package being offered to him.
  
  

VEHICLES

What are these?! Some heavily camouflaged cars pop up at Giga Texas?!

President Trump had a motorcade of red Cybertrucks when he arrived in Qatar. Elon also confirmed that robotaxis will come to Saudi Arabia at one point.

Quick takes:

• Tesla just shared there are now over 40,000 Teslas on the road in the UAE.

• Tesla is now accepting Cybertruck trade-ins, but only for the Foundation Series, for now. Also, Tesla is emailing Cybertruck reservation holders, informing them that they must take delivery by June 15th to keep the original $7,000 FSD price they locked in at the time of their order (it’s $8k now).

• The Cybertruck wasn’t the best-selling EV truck in Q1 anymore, per the S&P Mobility — F-150 Lightning beat it with 7,913 vs 7,126. The Cybertruck production stop and the cant rail recall certainly had something to do with it, interested to see what Q2 brings.

• Tesla is now selling a charcoal suede dashboard decor upgrade for $250 to Model 3/Y owners. This is the same dashboard that came on the Launch Series Model Y. Compatible with Model Y vehicles produced in 2025+ and Model 3 vehicles produced in 2024+

  

FSD & SOFTWARE

Tesla launched a video of FSD Supervised in Paris, and in Australia. This is the dirst time we see it on a Right Hand Drive market!

Meanwhile, Tesla’s boss in Australia says expansion to other markets are prioritized and there is no regulation issue for Australian entry: “Drew said there is no regulatory barrier to the technology hitting Australian roads – only local calibration and finessing of the service.”

Tesla asked, and owners delivered, a lot of <60 second Tesla FSD videos handling all kind of conditions (thread here). One of the best videos from there: a video from a guy born with no hands driving a Cybertruck and praising how FSD enables him to do so.

MUSKONOMY

Optimus can dance… even better! 

As Milan Kovic, head of Optimus, teased last week, we got an even better video from the Optimus team on its dance moves.

Here's a compilation video of the Optimus views side by side with real humans doing same dance moves.

Also, Elon comments on whether the video was real:
"It does this every day in our Palo Alto lab.
And multiple Optimus robots walk around the office 24/7 with no one watching over them, charging themselves as needed."

This will be fun: Elon says: "I will have an Optimus dance troupe on stage with me at the Tesla shareholders meeting"

I hope they’ll teach the Optimi all the dances Elon has performed so far. You know, stuff like these:

Oh, and then there was this exchange:

SpaceX & Starlink

Elon: “Later this year, if fate smiles upon SpaceX, the ship will be caught by the tower, just like the booster.”

Starlink has quietly expanded its $80/month "Residential Lite" Starlink plan from 15 states earlier this year to 30+ now, including Alaska, parts of California and Texas, and more of New England.

Starlink is officially now available to the public on United Airlines flights (for free).

Reportedly, world’s largest international airline Emirates is also in talks to add Starlink.

SpaceX sends a letter to FCC on their call for alternatives to GPS saying they could do it. “SpaceX looks forward to playing an integral role in creating a more robust, resilient, and secure PNT ecosystem for Americans and people around the world. SpaceX has invested considerable resources to ensure that its satellite systems can operate independent of GPS.”

xAI

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft: “Grok is coming to Azure Foundry! Thanks @elonmusk for joining us at Build to talk about what it means for devs.”

Here is their 6-minute discussion together.

Also, Elon says “Colossus 2 will be the first Gigawatt AI training supercluster” after a report says xAI just received 168 Tesla Megapacks to power Colossus 2 their second AI data center.

Grok went rogue: Something weird went down with Grok recently, where someone (a rogue team member?) had "directed Grok to provide a specific response on a political topic". That topic was about white genocide in South Africa, which interestingly also happens to be what Elon has been posting quite a few times lately as well.

The Boring Company (TBC)

The Boring Company is in discussions to potentially help reduce costs on Amtrak’s Frederick Douglass Tunnel program. The talks come as the project’s estimated costs have surged from an initial $4B to as high as $8.5B.

Neuralink

Neuralink says it is launching the first clinical trial in the Middle East at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi in partnership with the Department of Health Abu Dhabi.

The UAE-PRIME trial explores how individuals with motor and speech impairment can use thought to control devices & communicate.