Tesla Space #88: Elon kills Dojo

Welcome to the Tesla Space newsletter, our 88^th issue.

Here’s what I’ve got for you this week:

• Elon does customer service;

• Elon killed the Dojo (but it reincarnates);

• Elon also replies to me on X about Ford;

• Cybertruck gets the armored battery it deserves;

• Air Force orders 2 Cybertrucks because it thinks the enemy might use ‘em;

• Tesla secures new Texas robotaxi permit and Elon wants California side to have 100+ vehicles asap; also robotaxi rides can be ridiculously cheap?

• The FSD release in about 6 weeks will be a dramatic gain;

• Grok 4 now free to test for everyone

• And did one of you really just discovered a new Tesla Easter Egg?

…and more, as always. Enjoy!

— Jaan

X OF THE WEEK

Since most of Elon’s posts this week were just pictures and videos from Grok Imagine AI generator, I chose this little thread instead between a disgruntled Tesla owner, Elon, and the boss of Tesla service:

It wasn’t the only one this week, either. Same day:

$TSLA

… is up 9.62% in a week (since Tuesday’s close), now at $338.43 per share. This puts Tesla back above the trillion market cap, at $1.06B.

PS! If you enjoy our reports and want to support us, consider becoming a Tesla Space Insider — it will help us do these videos and newsletters and also level up your knowledge in all things Tesla.

TESLA NEWS

Tesla killed the Dojo project, its supercomputer meant for AI training for FSD and Optimus. The head of Dojo, Pete Bannon, leaves Tesla. But that doesn’t mean it killed the training side, it just seems that the AI6 hardware is what overcame the need for Dojo itself.

So you could skip all the doom & gloom headlines out there, here's Elon's explanation directly:

And here is a good longer thread on Elon answering on the Dojo topic. He says, in different posts:

“It doesn’t make sense for Tesla to divide its resources and scale two quite different AI chip designs. The Tesla AI5, AI6 and subsequent chips will be excellent for inference and at least pretty good for training. All effort is focused on that.

In a supercomputer cluster, it would make sense to put many AI5/AI6 chips on a board, whether for inference or training, simply to reduce network cabling complexity & cost by a few orders of magnitude. One could call that Dojo 3, I suppose.

The difference in real-world performance between AI4 and AI5 is far more than any chip version I’ve ever heard of by a lot.

It’s real good.

Most training in the future will actually be inference for the sole purpose of training (aka synthetic data generation)”

In other related news, the previous head of Dojo that left in 2023 has launched a supercomputer program called DensityAI with ~20 former members of the Tesla's Dojo project.

In other news:

I accidentally (kind of) got a reply on X from the man himself today, as he replied to acknowledge something I noticed from the latest Ford EV presentation:

Fun fact, Doug Fields that you see here actually worked high up at Tesla once, then moved to Apple for its electric Apple Car project (which got scrapped) and has now been with Ford for a few years.

And the Ford → Tesla parallel didn’t stop there, oh no, the whole Universal EV Platform launch was pretty much a nod to all Tesla has done before. You can see it on video from my somewhat viral post here, as Ford explains they will:

• create an “assembly tree” production line (= Tesla’s unboxed manufacturing process)

• start using “unicasting” (= same as Tesla’s gigacastings)

• they’ll start integrating the LFP batteries into the vehicle floor (which Tesla pioneered)

• …and a few more such tidbits.

Back to Tesla’s News

• Tesla has added an AI Support Agent integration for help in their mobile app. Also, Raj Jegannathan, the new Tesla service boss, shared some of the deeper insights on how the service is changing, including more transparency and some locations already having the possibility of “escalation”, so the possibility to reach out to the higher-ups if disagreeing with something:
  

  

• Tesla's wait times for some Model 3 & Model Y variants in the US increase to 4-6 weeks from 1-3 weeks, and inventory is drying up. Incentives are also decreasing and starting lease prices going up - all because of the current rush towards getting the $7.5k federal tax credit that ends on Sept 30th. It’s a frenzy out there.

• Tesla clears up that the (rather viral) video showing the Cybertruck being “de-activated” by Tesla with a red screen is, indeed, fake.

  

PS! If you enjoy these reports and want to support us, consider becoming a Tesla Space Insider — it will also level up your knowledge in all things Tesla.

VEHICLES:

Cybertruck “battery armor plate” is now available for $3,500 - Rock Sliders and Body Armor can be first bought by Foundation Series owners and soon for others. Here’s a video of Tesla testing it in the wild (crazy).

Wes Morrill says: “The off road armor has two components; one covers the battery with corrugate for impact attenuation and another replaces rocker with structural steel rock sliders for breakover contact.”

Here is a great explainer video from an owner who got an early access to it.

The US Air Force wants to buy two Cybertrucks to use as targets for precision munitions testing and training. The only specific brand they wanted out of the other 33 vehicles required. The reason for asking for the Cybertrucks specifically (other 31 car procurements did not need a specific brand) was also interesting:

“In the operating theatre, it is likely the type of vehicles used by the enemy may transition to Tesla Cyber trucks as they have been found not to receive the normal extent of damage expected upon major impact. Testing needs to mirror real world situations.”

The new Model Y L was spotted on public roads at the Nürburgring in Germany. It's about 7" (18cm) longer than the current Model Y.

Some news on the models from China:

• The Model Y L, the longer wheelbase, gets an official range figure in China: 751 km CLTC range, the battery is 82kWh NMC from LG. It also reportedly went into mass-production in Giga Shanghai.

• The Model 3+ gets up to 830 km range, on 78 kWh NMC battery. It seems this is called Long Range RWD now launched, with a 830 km CLTC range, which is roughly equivalent to 363 miles on the EPA used in the US. Here’s the video announcing it in China.

ROBOTAXI, FSD & SOFTWARE

Tesla secured a Texas permit for robotaxi operations without safety drivers, which means Tesla will be able to operate its robotaxi service under new regulations governing autonomous vehicles in the state.

The company is listed as Tesla Robotaxi LLC, I wonder if that also means some of the service liability doesn't expand to Tesla itself?

And the robotaxi is going live without invites next month (seems it applies to Austin), as Elon says: "It will be open access next month".

They'll need a lot more cars to do that.

Also, Tesla has already been seen doing validation testing far from the Austin area, latest being 30 miles north of Austin in Georgetown.

Elon said on Wednesday about the Cali operations: "We are working as quickly as possible to get 100+ Teslas operating for autonomous ride-hailing (can’t use the word “taxi” or “cab” in California) in the Bay Area and allow anyone to request a ride."

Meanwhile, Robotaxi prices for short distances are crazy cheap, especially compared to Waymo (e.g $3.82 vs $21.54 like here). I’ve seen that a bunch by now, so it makes you wonder if Tesla subsidises to make it look so much cheaper, or are these the actual prices Tesla plans to operate with.

FSD

On the next FSD version, Elon says: "The FSD release in about 6 weeks will be a dramatic gain with a 10X higher parameter count and many other improvements. It’s going through training & testing now. Once we confirm real-world safety of FSD 14, which we think will be amazing, the car will nag you much less."

He also wrote:

"This will substantially reduce the need for driver attention, but some complex intersections, heavy weather or unusual events will still require attention. Note, the Austin robotaxi FSD build is ~6 months more advanced than what is available in cars in America and there are some additional breakthroughs in Tesla AI that will make the car feel eerily human."

For the first time ever, Tesla allowed free FSD transfer in Europe, until Sept 30th. This is after someone asked Elon to do it on X.

SUPERCHARGING

I indeed did not see this right away…

Speaking of easter eggs, make sure you scroll to the bottom of this newsletter today to see one with Tesla’s Cyber Owl, found by one of our readers.

Tesla Energy is reportedly preparing to enter UK’s energy market in the coming months, with plans to launch a household electricity supplier. Tesla Electric, as the supplier will be called, is likely to integrate closely with Tesla cars and Powerwall home batteries with a promise to save on household bills.

MUSKONOMY

SpaceX / Starlink

SpaceX is now offering services to Mars: Italy signed an agreement to carry Italian experiments on the first Starship flights to Mars with customers. The payloads will gather scientific data during the missions. Italy continues to lead in space exploration!

In some regions in the US, Starlink’s monthly fee is now $99/month instead of $120, and Residential Lite Plan is now $65/month instead of $80/mo.

xAI / Grok

Grok 4 is now free for everyone worldwide (go to grok.com to test it out, or the app to also play with the Imagine generator). The free tier allows 5 requests every 12 hours.

Elon also says "Grok 5 will be out before the end of this year and it will be crushingly good."

Elon also casts some shade on GPT5 underperforming Grok 4 on some metrics, saying "Bottom line though: Grok 4 Heavy was smarter 2 weeks ago than GPT5 is now and G4H is already a lot better. Let that sink in".