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To many, this news was… disappointing.

In May, Elon said that Tesla would have 1,000 autonomous Robotaxis in Austin “within a few months.” Then, lately, he has been talking of 500 by the end of the year. Looks like he underestimated the speed of rollout a bit.

Per the community-built robotaxi tracker, which logs the license plates that people have seen in their app on their robotaxi rides, has currently logged 29 vehicles in Austin and 112 on the San Francisco side. Doubling that in Austin only puts us at ~60…

Now, we see a delay, but here’s why it isn’t exactly the worst thing in the world.

The lower-than-Elon-anticipated robotaxi rollout in Austin for a moment makes sense if you consider that the service with safety operators does not make sense to scale. Like…at all. Safety Drivers out must come first (expected within December?), then the numbers can go up explosively if the fleet ops are handled. The demand is clearly there.

And that scaling-up part is where Tesla can excel, given the robotaxi can literally just roll off the line in Giga Texas and enter service immediately with no added modifications.

The Model Y is winning the best-selling EV title in Europe again in 2025.

Much like it won in
2024
2023
2022

Why didn't it win in 2021, you might ask?

Well, because it started sales in Europe in August 2021.

Elon did a 2-hour interview with Nikhil Kamath. I found this part interesting:

“I think there's increasingly a convergence between SpaceX, Tesla and xAI, in that if the future is solar powered AI satellites, which is pretty much needs to be in order to harness a non-trivial amount of the sun, you have to move to AI-powered satellites in space.”

This has been on Elon’s mind a lot lately, expecting to hear more soon.

…and no, the emojis didn’t come here because I started to use some AI or anything, just felt like it. Don’t know if you knew this, but I use absolutely zero AI to put these newsletters together. All my rants you’re seeing here.

If you’re liking the Tesla Space newsletters, you’ll love the Tesla Space Insider membership.

So, this happened — Elon reposted my post (well, he did it through Sawyer quote posting mine below, but still). I was wondering why the impression count suddenly shot up so much:

The finding itself was notable — Waymo’s Q3 data in California showed 90% of the Waymo robotaxi had 2 or fewer people riding. It’s as if Elon and Tesla knew what they were doing with the 2-seater robotaxi…

Tesla is now offering FSD (Supervised) ride alongs in Europe for the first time ever, with Italy, Germany, France and Netherlands available to book for now.

A lot of the ride-alongs that people have already shared from Europe are under this thread.

Tesla writes: “Ride along in the passenger seat to experience how it handles real-world traffic & the most stressful parts of daily driving, making the roads safer for all.”

In case you’re Europe like me (most of you aren’t), you can find links to sign up in the respective countries through this page.

In Netherlands, Tesla invites to festivities “Featuring Caraoke, FSD Supervised ride-along experiences, holiday light shows with our S3XY lineup & more”. I like the image they cooked up for this:

French media after trying FSD V14 in France: "It's mind-blowing! Both for the safety and for the "humanity" of the choices; We were allowed to film everything and I have a huge video coming (including a long uncut)."

Also, the approach seem to be working for legislators as well (key benefit Tesla is surely going for!):

Here’s the Mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri, and the Commissioner for Transportation and Mobility, Eugenio Patanè, just after riding along in Tesla FSD on their own streets.

Elon replied to this with: “Cool”

Tesla has launched a free 30-day trial (actually a bit more even, it ends early January) of FSD (Supervised) V14.2 in North America for the estimated 1.5 million Tesla owners with HW4 who have not purchased FSD. Owners will receive an email and in-app notification about the trial.

We’re seeing some wildly large mileage counts of no-intervention drives lately.

For example, this 1,200 mile journey from Chicago to Cape Canaveral, Florida, or the 1,136.3 miles on FSD (Supervised) V14.2 without a single intervention. Also saw someone’s 1,102-mile at 99%…

And here’s the other one of my posts from the same week, where Elon commented on Max’s comment on my post. A more vague one this one, but glad Elon agrees Supercharging needs to keep scaling!

Tesla Supercharging team is preparing for peak travel days through a site opening push, proactive service visits, attendants at some of their busiest sites, and deployment of mobile assets.

MegapackChargers & Mobile Supercharger Units are deployed at 5 new locations (4x CA, 1x OH)

Oh, and… the largest Supercharger in the world, the Lost Hills, CA with 168 stalls, is now live and powered by the sun!

🇮🇹 And the 1,000th Supercharger was deployed in Italy. As one of my favorite things in the Tesla world, they wrapped it:

SpaceX received approval to develop Space Launch Complex-37 for Starship operations at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. Construction has started.

“With three launch pads in Florida, Starship will be ready to support America’s national security and Artemis goals as the world’s premiere spaceport continues to evolve to enable airport-like operations.”

Starlink products are now sold directly on Amazon, with Starlink's support pages now listing Amazon as an authorized retailer.

AND Starlink has now also opened one of its first physical stores: located in Gretna, Nebraska.

Starlink service is now free in Indonesia for the flooding disaster areas. Elon writes: “SpaceX standard policy is to make Starlink free whenever there is a natural disaster somewhere in the world. It would not be right to profit from misfortune.”

Falcon 9’s first stage has yet again landed, completing this booster’s 30th flight!

The Boring Company has released an update on the tunnel it's building in Nashville. The initial airport-to-downtown tunnel will carry 20,000-30,000 people per hour and have 20 stations.

Future add-on stations will not slow the system’s travel times. A rider traveling from Centennial Park to the airport, for example, would still make the trip in about ten minutes regardless of how many intermediate stations are added later.

See more with images on their blog.