Tesla Space #77: Elon is BACK

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Before we kick off with the juicy details, I’ve got to tell you about something that’s coming:

It’s ready.

This week, we’re dropping the first in a monthly series of deep dive reports into different businesses that make up Tesla. It is and will stay an exclusive Tesla Space Insider-only report. 

Our first deep dive is Tesla vs Automakers, and we’ll see where Tesla places within the auto industry, ranking its standing and plans against both legacy and pure-EV automakers. The second deep dive is already in the making, on Charging industry, then comes robotaxi and humanoid roundups, Neuralink, TBC, etc.

To celebrate, we’ll launch a discount to everyone who wants to get it as soon as it launches. Become an Insider and get 12% off any of our plans, available only for the next few days:

You’ve probably noticed, we don’t really do discounts much. Launch deal was the highest at 15%, and we won’t go back to that. We will also raise the subscription price in the future, while anyone subscribing now will get to keep their price set at the current level forever.

PS! I’ve also been working on the V2 of our Tesla Space Stock Tracker — even before we have fully completed the first which is live for Insiders right now. The topics for the tracker and deep dives are the same so they tie together, and the trackers show all the competition live in one place. It will be a great resource to track and discover what’s going on in each industry Tesla (and Muskonomy) plays in.

Anyway, back to the newsletter 👇️ 

X OF THE WEEK

Back to spending 24/7 at work and sleeping in conference/server/factory rooms.

Can’t say we don’t like the sound of that. Now, Elon has elaborated why now, too — he saw a lot of his suggested cuts via DOGE being shot down by GOP. So the obvious next step is to accelerate GDP growth:

Elon also follows up in answering comments with saying humanoid robots would take 4-5 years to have an actual effect on the GDP, and robot cars (aka FSD) in 1-2 years.

Elon also said in a recent CNBC interview "My rough plan on the White House is to be there for a couple days every few weeks, and to be helpful where I can be helpful."

$TSLA

… is down 0.80% since our last week’s newsletter (Monday’s close), now at $339.34 per share right as I send you this before the market open. Tesla had two strong weeks in a row before this flat one, and Tesla is now at $1.06T market cap.

TESLA, GLOBALLY

Anyone in the US can now schedule a 48-hour test drive of Tesla Model 3, Y and Cybertruck directly online, without any prior invitation needed!

If you haven’t tried out a Tesla yet, or would like to try for example the Cybertruck specifically, head over to tesla.com/drive.

PS! If you do go for this drive, let us know about your experience and we’ll cover it in the next newsletters.

Some Tesla owners in US & Canada have received an in-app notification for this as well, which also included Model S&X test drives.

Previously, Tesla has offered mostly 30-minute test drives, or overnight test drives where you’d get the car at 4:30pm and return it by 09:30am. With this new option, a lot of the Tesla showrooms we clicked through on the Tesla site show limited or no availabilty for the next month, which seems to hint at this offer going well.

Saywer Merritt says just his own post on X about the availability — as usual he has been the quickest to report such developments — got 10,530 clicks on the signup link itself.

My opinion: Tesla is actually the only EV maker that can provide 48-hour test drives online at scale. Tesla's D2C business model eliminates the dealership problem. And it has the scale and systems built in, from easy booking to being able to open and drive the car without anyone involved.

Also, this helps not only just Tesla but also the whole industry. I have long been an advocate of a very simple approach to sell EVs: BUTTS IN SEATS. Even better if those butts can feel out the car for longer, to test it on both trips and charging at home and more.

As every EV owner knows, once you get the feel of the EV, you don’t ever want to go back.

We got our closest view of the Cybercab castings yet from Joe Tegtmeyer’s drone videos, really makes me wonder how far along Tesla is in the manufacturing process already:

Fun note from the LinkedIn by one of the Tesla employees:

Quick takes:

• The EV market will be changing somewhat in the US considering the Trump's “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”, the new tax bill that passed the House (still needs to pass Senate) — it will kill the federal EV tax credits by the end of the year (Dec 31st) and adds a $250/year fee solely to EVs. Meanwhile, it will include tax deductions for American Made Vehicle purchases, up to $10k. Seems it’ll be both a loss and a win for Tesla.

• Tesla opens its first sales & service center in New Hampshire. NH Tesla owners now no longer have to leave the state for service and can now take direct delivery here.

• 1,000 Giga Berlin employees participated as the biggest team in the Berlin Company Run, led by the new Model Y pace car.

VEHICLES

We’ve got spy shots!

Tesla Model Y Performance was spotted under camouflage in the Nürburgring track, with larger wheels and a more aggressive ride height sitting lower. Wheels seem to be similar to the Arachnid rims found on the Model S Plaid. The front bumper might be tweaked later on we think, this one looks to be standard for now.

Now, we’ve heard from Lars Moravy already that Model S and X will ‘get some love’ later this year and this seems to be confirmed now:

New Model X and Model S versions were spotted in Monterey, with front cameras under the bumper (new), new wheels, and new light blue metallic color. The interior was covered with a blanket, but in another pic from @klwtts we saw some taping exactly where ambient lighting would be, so that’s likely to come too.

The New Model S Plaid seems to be coming too, based on these Nürburgring spy shots that also show an additional front lip and new front bumper design, and new wheels…

Quick takes:

• A follow-up to the increase-Cybertruck-tongue-weight-until-it-snaps thing that JerryRigEverything did: he released a detailed video about how Tesla fixed it (and it was actually positive!). Wes Morrill (Cybertruck Lead Engineer) left a thorough comment here (and deeper details here.)

• Rapper 2chainz on his Tesla Cybertruck: “It’s one of the most comfortable, convenient and easy to drive vehicles that I have. That’s why a bunch of these cars been in the garage and the truck been out there. I don’t have to go to no gas stations; The truck is bullet proof.”

• meme time — I saw a crashed-nose Cybertruck picture from Wham Baam Teslacam and just had to hop on the latest lemon meme trend. Even the @cybertruck account liked the post, though did not dare reply:

FSD & SOFTWARE

It seems that Tesla is doubling down on the different use cases once they reach robotaxi:

Meanwhile, here’s some of what Elon said on the robotaxi launch in Austin, per his latest interview on CNBC:

• There will be NO safety driver in the driver seat when Tesla's robotaxi service launches in Austin next month. No one will be sitting in the front driver’s seat.

• "We are actually going to deploy not to the entire Austin region, but only the parts that are the safest. So we will geofence it. It's not going to take intersections unless we are highly confident it will do well."

• "Tesla will have 10 robotaxis on the road during the first week when it launches next month, then it will grow from there. We'll probably be at 1,000 robotaxis within a few months."

• "There are a number of automakers that have talked to us about licensing FSD."

• "Hundreds of thousands of Teslas in the US will be running Unsupervised FSD in 2026."

Also, here’s Elon answering the question on video on “Why doesn’t Tesla buy Uber”. Elon explains, but basically says: no need for that.

MUSKONOMY

Optimus can… do a lot of things

“I'm not just dancing all day, ok” says Optimus account and shares a video with a lot of training they’ve done like taking out trash, tear a paper towel etc. If you watch one thing today, make it this video.

My reaction to this can be summed up by this engineer on the video:

What’s behind it all is even more fascinating — Optimus can really learn from human-made videos and they’ll be testing random internet videos!

One of the AI team members at Tesla, Murtaza Dalal, said:

And then we’ve got one of the leaders, Milan Kovac:

Oh — and then there was this new Optimus next-gen of hand cameo on the video of the US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy visit to Giga Texas. ✋ 

SpaceX & Starlink

Today: StarShip Flight #9 and Elon’s speech. A few hours from me sending this newsletter to you — at 1pm ET, Elon will be providing a SpaceX company update “The Road to Making Life Multiplanetary” at SpaceX, which will be also live-streamed on X (here). This is right before the StarShip will attempt its ninth flight at 6:30pm ET. You can read more about the flight here and there’s already a livestream set up on X for it here.

xAI

𝕏 is launching 𝕏 Money soon. Elon says: "This will be a very limited access beta at first. When people’s saving are involved, extreme care must be taken."

Also, on the CNBC interview we saw Elon commenting on the potential merger between Tesla and xAI: “"I guess anything's possible. It's not out of the question, but that's something that the Tesla shareholders would have to vote for. There are no plans to do so."

Neuralink

Elon says (in this interview): Neuralink has now successfully implanted its brain chip into five humans. The patients can control a mouse using only their thoughts.

Neuralink aims to implant its new brain chip, Blindsight, into a human patient for the first time in late 2025/early 2026, likely in the UAE. The device aims to restore sight to people who are completely blind.