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Let’s start with this section today, because…

Last week we had a raffle and no date. Now we have both.

Tesla started emailing invitations on August 22 for a Cybercab Launch Event on September 3, at 1 Tesla Road in Austin, which is… Giga Texas. The invitation reads "Join us for our Cybercab Launch Event and experience the future of full autonomy." This is what the event invite looks like:

Tesla says it will livestream the launch. We’ll be watching and sending out one of our Insider Alert email afterwards to all the Insider members of Tesla Space with the most important bits, as per usual (become one here).

One thing worth being precise about: nothing Tesla has published says paid public Cybercab rides begin on September 3.

So we’re actually a bit unclear about what exactly the event will hold… Cybercab rides were already done in the 10/10 event way back when. It’s likely they will launch real Cybercabs in the public Austin fleet right at that moment. I’m hopeful we will see more of the Cybercab production line, too.

There are golden Cybercabs parked all over Tesla’s (and some seemingly random) lots now across cities, like this Devon, PA location:

Oh, and we’re now seeing the steering-wheel-less (is that a word?) Cybercabs running around the streets with supervisors in the passenger seat… although, of course, both of those are now the passenger seats…

Tesla has received Nevada approval to operate up to 5,000 fully autonomous Robotaxis over the next 12 months, clearing the way for the company to launch paid public service in Las Vegas and expand beyond the tiny fleet allowed under its earlier interim authorization.

The Nevada Transportation Authority approved Tesla's full “Autonomous Vehicle Network Company” permit on August 20 following its four-hour general session.

Tesla's previous interim order had limited the company to just 10 vehicles operating within a defined Las Vegas Strip corridor.

The 5,000 is a ceiling, not a plan. Tesla Cybercab chief engineer Eric Early told the commission that Tesla would be "extremely happy" to reach roughly 2,500 vehicles in Nevada over the next year.” The first fleets there will be Model Y units, with Cybercabs following later.

And then there’s this, just in from an hour ago:

Tesla will officially open its new dedicated Semi factory in Sparks, Nevada, on September 24, with an invite-only “Semi Rollout” event that will give attendees factory tours and ride-along experiences in the electric truck.

The event was announced by Tesla in a post on the Tesla Semi’s official account on X. The company dubbed the occasion the “inauguration” of the Semi Factory in Nevada.

The building runs 1.7 million square feet (158,000 m²) next to Giga Nevada, and it is designed to eventually turn out 50,000 trucks a year. The first Semi came off its high-volume line there in late April, and I’d assume this factory opening event means it’s ready to ramp up real mass production.

And no, despite being one of the biggest Tesla Semi progress watchers out there and reporting on it constantly, I was not invited to the event. I would fly over the pond just for this one. No sour grapes though, I promise.

Tesla will unveil the European Semi's specifications and launch details at IAA Transportation in Hannover, Germany, giving us the clearest look yet at when and how the electric truck will enter the European market.

Now, this one I will be flying in for, so look for my on-the-ground reporting straight from Hannover on around 14-15th of September.

Exactly two years ago, I managed to become one of the very first non-employees to ever ride in the Tesla Semi right at that same event (right place, right time, as I somehow happen to be). Here’s my deep dive of everything I saw and learned back then, including a little convo with Dan Priestley himself.

I happened to bring about 2 million eyeballs to the Semi itself with my content back then, fun times.

The teaser video of the European Semi is worth a second look, too. The truck in it appears to carry camera monitor systems instead of the camera mirrors. This is something that the European rules allow since 2016 (and US still don’t):

Tesla continued to dominate the U.S. electric vehicle market in July, accounting for roughly 55% of all new EV sales. The company sold an estimated 42,435 vehicles, up 4.9% from June. The entire U.S. EV market reached 77,266 sales, meaning Tesla alone sold more EVs than every other automaker combined.

Here is how the month looked across the brands:

One month never tells the story on its own, so here is the year: Cox has Tesla at 242,100 EVs across the first half, or 52.3% of the market.

Tesla has officially launched its operations in Latvia, opening local online ordering for the Model 3 and Model Y and opening its first physical location in the country at Riga's Spice shopping center.

Lithuania in 2024, Estonia earlier this year, and now Latvia, completes the Baltic countries on Tesla’s European map. Here’s an image of the Northern European Tesla team at the launch event:

No announcement, no farewell post. It is just gone from Tesla’s website, with the old links (tesla.com/solarroof) now directing to Tesla Solar, the mounted product.

It launched in October 2016, alongside the SolarCity acquisition. The marketing talked about roughly $22 per square foot. It seems that Tesla has managed to install about 3,000 of of these solar roof systems over the 10 years, but it never really took off.

It’s also as if someone we know called it already, almost 2 years ago, in a video called “The Real Reason Tesla Solar Has Failed”… 🤔

The Starship that would not sink is finally coming out of the water:

The heavy-transport ship Forte reached Christmas Island late on Sunday and began loading Ship 40 straight out of the sea on Monday. It is a semi-submersible, so the method is to flood the ballast tanks until the stern goes under, float the 52-metre (171 ft) vehicle over the deck, then pump out and lift it clear. To show you the ‘before’:

The trip home to Starbase is roughly 13,000 nautical miles (24,000 km, 15,000 miles), and NASASpaceflight's estimate for arrival is mid to late October.

And SpaceX flew its 100th Falcon mission of the year on August 22, a Falcon 9 out of Vandenberg carrying 27 Starlink satellites.

Musk also spent the week talking about what happens to Falcon. Casey Handmer flagged reporting that NASA is uneasy about SpaceX retiring it in favour of Starship, and Musk answered on August 22:

"Once Starship is flying reliably several times per week, it makes sense to shift super scarce SpaceX engineering and production resources to Starship to get launch rate to several times per day, which means winding down Falcon."

And they are already winding down, as Kiko Dontchev, VP of Launch at SpaceX, shared this on X:

“As from launches off Florida for Falcon, mission from pad 40 was the last planned Falcon 9 Starlink launch from Florida (and it launched on the fleet leading booster!!), marking the end of an era for these launches on the East Coast. From here on, Starlink missions out of Florida will fly on Starship. The West Coast team will continue regularly launching Starlink from Vandenberg.

Louisiana and SpaceX announced on Tuesday that the company will build a $100 billion Starship launch campus at Pecan Island in Vermilion Parish, about 50 miles (80 km) south of Lafayette.

SpaceX is calling it Starbase, Louisiana. It would be the company's fourth launch site and by some distance its largest… and the renders show 10 launch towers.

Here is the Gov Jeff Landry & SpaceX team making the announcement: 1hr live broadcast with videos etc.

The state describes five launch complexes with two pads each, plus propellant production, power generation, vehicle processing, and housing for employees and their families. Reuters and Axios put the land at 125,000 acres (506 km²). Construction is expected to begin in 2027, with a first launch targeted as soon as 2029.

Musk, in the state's own announcement: "We're preparing to build a spaceport that, until now, has only existed in science fiction. [...] Starbase, Louisiana will unlock that future."

Including Starbase, Louisiana, SpaceX now has 17 Starship launch pads under development. Those 17 pads will eventually have a combined launch capacity of 15,000+ launches per year, more than twice the total number of rocket launches in all of history.

For the Grok users among us (which is a surprisingly large amount of you actually based on some of our polls):

Grok Build is out of beta for everyone. It was Heavy-only when it launched in July, and xAI's post now reads "Grok Build is now available on every plan, on the web and on mobile." Apps you publish get their own grok.me address.

Grok Bot is now included with SuperGrok Plus (the $100/mo plan), Cursor Pro+ and Cursor Teams plans, rather than being an add-on. It is still labelled early beta, but I know several users now who are raving about it.

I’m planning to give the Grok Bot a go — let me know if you’ve started using it and how it goes (and what for)!