TESLA SPACE 🤝 RISE ROBOTICS,
“The Tesla for heavy equipment”

Tesla did it to cars. Now the same shift is coming for excavators, forklifts, cranes, and military equipment. The difference is that nobody has owned this moment yet — until RISE Robotics.

Their technology strips hydraulics out of heavy machinery entirely and replaces it with a patented electric actuator. No fluid. Full digital control. Built for the autonomous machines that are coming whether the industry is ready or not. The Pentagon is already a customer.

Last Round Oversubscribed. $9.7M in revenue already on the board. Dylan Jovine of ‘Behind the Markets’ spotted it early. The Wefunder community round lets anyone invest alongside institutional backers.

Limited Shares Allocation Available.

PS, if you’d like to advertise in the best Tesla-related newsletter out there, reach out to us!

It's official. The first Tesla Semi has rolled off the new high-volume production line at the dedicated 1.7-million-square-foot factory next to Gigafactory Nevada.

The milestone suggests that Tesla is moving the Semi program into commercial production, allowing the company to start producing and delivering the vehicles at materially higher numbers.

Here’s a photo of the production Semi, fresh from its high-volume line, together with the Tesla Semi team.

This is a fundamentally different moment from the handful of pilot units PepsiCo received in late 2022. The factory is designed for an annual capacity of 50,000 trucks, which would represent nearly 20% of the entire North American Class 8 truck market.

The ramp will be gradual, but the production model has seen significant improvements: roughly 1,000 lbs lighter thanks to 48V low-voltage architecture and 4680 battery cells, a 7% improvement in aerodynamic efficiency, and a maintained 500-mile range at full 82,000-lb gross weight.

Meanwhile, AiLO Logistics just deployed Tesla Semis on live freight routes in a 3-week pilot program, and Alyath has launched a Tesla Semi-as-a-Service model to remove the barriers for fleets that don't want to buy trucks outright.

It's not just the truck anymore. There are business models being built around it.

PS! If you enjoy our work, you should join us as a Tesla Space Insider. That’s where you get more of us.
Upgrade to Tesla Space Insider

Giga Berlin hit a big milestone: 1 million drive units produced.

Combined with the factory record of 61,000+ vehicles in Q1 and EMEA deliveries in France and Germany growing over 150% quarter-over-quarter, Berlin has quietly become one of Tesla's most productive factories. And they have just announced 1,000 new jobs will be added to Giga Berlin, as Tesla has seen an uptick in Model Y orders (which is the only model the factory produces… for now).

Speaking of productivity at Giga Berlin: Tesla has reduced sick leave at its Grünheide factory to below 5%, down roughly 70% from 2024’s typical 15-17%. The improvement follows a mix of employee incentives and stricter handling of sick pay.

Giga Berlin had previously struggled with high absenteeism, with roughly 2,000 of 12,000 employees on sick leave at one point in 2024. Plant manager André Thierig attributed the shift to a “new spirit” within the workforce.

Tesla introduced measures to motivate its employees at Giga Berlin, including a stock ownership plan, an attendance bonus, expanded on-site amenities such as a gym and barbershop, and employee perks like discounted €25/day Tesla rentals.

“They simply like to come in already dressed in their work clothes. People think it's awesome.” — André Thierig, plant manager at Giga Berlin

🇪🇪 Tesla has officially entered Estonia with a launch event on April 24 and a Cybertruck showcase. A small market, but it rounds out the Baltics for Tesla (Latvia incoming soon), and signals continued European expansion into smaller markets.

Given that yours truly here is actually an Estonian, you’ll get a bit of a specialized insight that none of the world’s media has as of now. Details:

Little-known fact that I dug up from our national statistics: even without ANY official Tesla presence in Estonia until today, the Model 3 is the most-registered EV in Estonia (1,031 units), followed by Model Y (724).

Now these owners & more get an official service center 👏

Tesla has just added another Unsupervised Model Y Robotaxi to its Dallas, Texas fleet.

The company added (at least) 5 Unsupervised vehicles to its fleet today for a total of 24: 19 in Austin now, 3 in Dallas, 2 in Houston.

South Korea's car-sharing platform Socar launched a Tesla FSD Supervised subscription service, and demand has been massive, with 2,000 reservations. Instead of buying or subscribing through Tesla directly, Korean users can experience FSD through Socar's shared fleet.

The Tesla FSD work in Sweden keeps expanding — Tesla is expanding FSD testing as Strängnäs considers becoming the next municipality to approve it.

But here’s a side-story for you: the Swedish unions against Tesla are not going quietly. One union is now directly targeting a local political leader in Nacka over their decision to approve Tesla FSD testing:

LO Stockholm has awarded its annual “Kängan” (The Kick) to Mats Gerdau, the chairman of the municipal executive board in Nacka, over his decision to allow Tesla to test self-driving vehicles in the municipality despite the company not signing a collective bargaining agreement. 

Meanwhile, Seko is escalating its actions against Tesla by targeting the company’s expanding charging network in Sweden. The union plans to block maintenance, service, and repair work at Tesla charging stations, including those operated by third-party partners. These are part of Seko’s efforts to halt further expansion of the Supercharger network before Tesla signs a collective agreement.

“It’s about stopping Tesla from installing more charging poles before they have signed a collective agreement.” — Ulrika Nilsson, contract secretary at Seko

Overall, however, luckily the Swedish Union pushes seem to be on the verge of breaking up:

New reports suggest that dissatisfaction is growing among striking Tesla employees in Sweden, as IF Metall now requires strikers to work 40 hours per week on picket duty to receive compensation.

Some workers stated that the requirement makes striking less viable, with one noting, “If I'm going to stand outside for eight hours a day, I might as well go in and work.”

The changes come amid ongoing issues around strikers’ pensions, benefits, and compensation rules.

Also, turns out Sweden's "Tesla Shame" has faded after just one year, as Tesla sales in Sweden grew 144% year over year, resulting in the Model Y once again becoming the country's best-selling electric car. Similar trends have been observed in several other European markets.

As Ulrika Nilsson, contract secretary at Seko, said (no doubt trying to shade Tesla but the outcome being actually something that I think is positive):

“Tesla is Tesla. They keep trying.”

Tesla has rolled out a new machine learning model to improve Supercharger wait-time predictions, using 9 million miles of aggregated, anonymized vehicle trajectory data collected within charger geofences worldwide.

The system reduces queue length estimation error to around 20%, allowing Tesla to predict queues of 10+ vehicles within a margin of just 1–2 cars. The new model enhances Tesla’s Trip Planner and is now being deployed globally across the Supercharger network.

Genoa Golf Club in Genoa, Nevada, has launched one of the first privately owned Tesla Supercharger sites in the western US, and it’s a destination all on its own — founded in 1851, Genoa is Nevada’s oldest settlement.

The Supercharging site with 8 stalls - which is larger than what we usually see from third-party developments - was developed in partnership with Tesla Energy, Trout Electric and local stakeholders.

If you’re around Nevada, you can join the public ribbon-cutting event scheduled for May 8, 2026 at 12 PM to 4 PM. The event will include:

Musk v Altman on OpenAI trial started yesterday. On the topic of OpenAi turning into a for-profit company, when it was supposed to be a nonprofit from the start. In case you didn’t know, Elon was the one who founded and funded OpenAI, back when he couldn’t acquire DeepMind (Google did - that’s your Gemini et al today). Elon did that because he didn’t trust that Larry Page cares enough about AI safety.

So, all these years later, we get this high(est) profile trial going on. Elon, of course now having the large rival xAI, has a lot to gain from this and not much to lose.

First to the stand? Elon Musk himself.

I too wish this was televised. Here’s something that went down that I found amusing:

Upgrade to become a Tesla Space Insider to support our publication!