
Welcome to the Tesla Space newsletter, our 112th issue.
Honestly, I was starting to think I’d never see the day. But it happened.
I just took a ride in a Tesla Model 3 on FSD… in Europe.
my FSD ride-along in Spain
I jumped on the opportunity to take an FSD ride-along in Malaga, Spain, where I’m currently at. Tesla offers these in at least 6 European countries now, ahead of its rollout of the feature itself to European Tesla owners (who have been waiting forever).
The real bottleneck is regulation right now, with the Dutch RDW solution expected by the end of February, but not certain. That’d allow the rest of the countries to adopt the legal ways of bringing Tesla FSD (Supervised) into their countries.
Anyway, we took a ride with a Tesla Supervisor on the front seat, and it was all very smooth, except for two hiccups:
It was stopped for a pedestrian crossing traffic light when it actually shouldn’t have (it was too careful of the yellow light), and
It actually hit a small branch that was sticking out to the tree with its side mirror (it wasn’t careful enough).
I confirmed on the menu that this unit was running on a localized version of FSD 14.1.7, so it’s a little ways behind the US, which just saw 14.2.2.5 start rolling out. They couldn’t demo Actually Smart Summon as they don’t have app access, but we were able to autopark, which went well.
All of it feels like the future has finally arrived, and most Europeans have no clue what’s coming.
Anyway, here’s what’s on the menu today:
Our video into the Moon Base Alpha
First Cybercab off the mass production line in Giga Texas,
production starts in AprilTesla’s 5 robotaxi incidents explained (they’re not at all what headlines say)
FSD (Supervised) driven counter jumps to 8.2 billion (500M miles)
Starlink hits 10 million customers
6,000 Starlinks covertly sent to Iran by the US government
xAI all-hands on video
Boring Company to build twin-tunnel in Orlando, Florida
… let’s dig right in. Enjoy!
— Jaan

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Before we kick off, here’s our latest Tesla Space video: Elon Musk Reveals SpaceX Moon Base Alpha. You’ll love this one:
Done? Let’s get on with the Tesla Space news this week
X OF THE WEEK
The story started with this, a huge milestone as the first actually not hand-built Cybercab rolled off the production line:

Now, keep in mind that although this one is off the actual production line at Giga Texas, we aren’t seeing the mass production fully yet. Elon says April, and then a ramp-up begins.
and it all progressed to this thing about Marques Brownlee (MKBHD).
If you’ve missed how the guy comes into play, Marques ‘famously’ said on his video a year or two ago that if Tesla sells a Cybercab to a customer for $30k or less before 2027, then he will shave his hair. It’s become quite a joke around the socials since then.

And then, perhaps most importantly for us, Elon confirmed that they aim a customer getting a Cybercab for <$30k by the end of this year:

It will be interesting to watch how that exactly takes place — there’s still a lot of constraints for such a sale.
Elon wrote the post talking about April production actually on this video which shows how 10 years ago, Elon predicted cars would later have no steering wheels. The audience laughed.
TESLA NEWS
Doug DeMuro ranked the Tesla Model S as the #1 most important car of the last 30 years in his new video: “The Model S really changed the world. It made you think that EVs could be cool, fast, luxurious.” Elon reposted it with: “Model S & X are great cars! Order yours before we sunset the program in a few months.”
The Murphy Police Department in Texas gets two new Model Y patrol vehicles:

The Grok with Navigation Commands is now also starting to roll out to
Tesla owners across Europe.
Tesla has introduced 0.99% APR financing for all new Model 3 and Premium Model Y orders in the US on loan terms of up to 72 months, dropping from 2.99% APR
Forbes has named Elon Musk #1 on their "America's 250 Greatest Innovators" list.
Quite a quiet week this one… but I’ll bet it won’t stay like this for long!
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You’ll get Inside knowledge, Insider Alerts when something breaking happens, and a bunch of other perks.
ROBOTAXI, FSD
From Giga Texas on Friday: “at least a half dozen different Cybercabs driving and testing production processes today.”

Source: Joe Tegtmeyer
Cybercabs, Cybercabs everywhere!!
Tesla went ahead and did it: FSD can not be bought outright in the US anymore, now only available as the $99/mo subscription. It also ends in Australia on March 31st.
Some publications were recently trying to clickbait people into thinking Tesla’s 5 reported Robotaxi incidents in Dec–Jan were all serious “crashes.” Here’s what actually happened:
A stopped Tesla Robotaxi hit by a bus
Extremely minor backing up into a fixed object at 1mph
2mph backed into a pole/tree
Drove into a straight object on the street 17mph, minor damage
4mph low-speed contact with a heavy truck, very minor damage
No hospitalizations, no airbags deployed, no towing required.
Even with all that, Tesla's Robotaxi fleet safety in Austin, Texas, reportedly improved by 2X between Dec 2025 and January 2026, with estimated miles per incident now at 417,000 miles, up from 208,000. Here’s some extrapolation of that data:

Tesla has announced that Tesla owners have now driven over 8.2 billion miles on FSD (Supervised) — the FSD miles driven counter thus jumped by 500M on their counter on their FSD Safety website.

An important bit from Elon on how the increased traffic from the autonomous future fits in with Boring Company:
Total miles traveled will increase significantly when people don’t have to drive themselves in soil-destroying traffic.
The resulting traffic increase will slow transit times, even with autonomous cars.
That’s why we will need a network of multi-level tunnels, which can alleviate any amount of traffic.
Quick notes:
Video showing how Tesla FSD (Supervised) V14.2.2.4 stops at a DUI checkpoint in Mexico, then proceeds all on its own after the driver briefly talks to the cop.
Some fun with the Cybertruck & Optimus (video).
Tesla is now hiring AI chip designers in South Korea. “This project aims to develop AI chip architecture that will achieve the highest production volume in the world in the future.”
Tesla Shop: Tesla has released a "Love Autonomy Destiny Tee" in North America for $69. It seems to be in the style of one of the posters Tesla had in 10/10 robotaxi event. Meanwhile, for Valentine’s, Tesla posted “Love bots”:

Another addition to the shop is the "Tesla Mezcal Design Studio Edition” ($450), where Director of Product Design Javier Verdura and Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen have personally signed 50 boxes, which will be randomly assigned to orders. “Each limited-edition bottle is packaged with a specially designed box sleeve featuring early sketches of the bottle design as well as printed signatures from the designers themselves."

TESLA ENERGY

Tesla opened a beautiful new Supercharger in Taiwan to celebrate installing its 700th Supercharger stall in the country.
It also reached another milestone for Supercharging in APAC: 500th Supercharger in Hong Kong!

Tesla has reportedly hired an additional 350 employees at its Giga New York factory — as it starts towards the 100GW/year solar panel production. It has now started the production of said panels. Tesla also says it has invested $350 million in supercomputers on the site, which should mean the DOJO.
MUSKONOMY
SpaceX
We covered the Mars Moon plans of SpaceX quite a lot last week, but here’s Elon saying this might actually help the Mars plans accelerate:
“To be clear, we are still going to do Mars. I don’t think this change affects the time to a Mars city being self-growing by more than 5 years and it might turn out to accelerate Mars.”
SpaceX is aiming to increase production to 50,000 Starlink kits per day in 2026. That’s up from 15,000 kits per day in Q1 2025. Starlink says they have removed waitlists for Starlink in every country where Starlink is available today.

Just imagine the scale. SpaceX recently crossed 10 million active Starlink customer across ~160 countries & territories. In 2025, the company achieved a delivery rate of 70+ satellites per week, and should reach 10,000 satellites in orbit in March!

The first Starlink version 3 satellites are expected to launch later this year on Starship, which will bring gigabit connectivity and 20X capacity.
News says that apparently the Trump administration covertly sent 6,000 Starlink terminals into Iran after the regime's brutal crackdown on demonstrations last month, US officials have said, an effort to keep dissidents online following Tehran's stifling of internet access.
Southwest Airlines has now also announced it will equip all its planes with Starlink by the end of this year, and the service will be free to all passengers. Sidenote: I just recently went on a flight with Starlink enabled and it truly felt like we’ve finally emerged from the Stone Age. United Airlines and Southwest Airlines adopting Starlink means that it now has 2 out of 4 largest US commercial airlines, with ~1,800 planes between the two.
xAI (now part of SpaceX)
The 45-minute xAI company all-hands was shared live on X. xAI announced it’s new org structure and “reorganizing” means some of the team was let go. Elon said: “xAI was reorganized a few days ago to improve speed of execution. As a company grows, especially as quickly as xAI, the structure must evolve just like any living organism.
This unfortunately required parting ways with some people. We wish them well in future endeavors. We are hiring aggressively. Join xAI if the idea of mass drivers on the Moon appeals to you.”
Here’s what xAI has accomplished in just 2.5 years after starting:

Here’s an image from the presentation showing the mass driver to shoot satellites into space.

It’s also now clear that 𝕏 Money is coming: to be launching in 1-2 months in a limited external beta, and then worldwide to all 𝕏 users later. Elon said: "This is intended to be the place where all the money is. The central source of all monetary transactions. It's going to be a game-changer."
They also shared this render of “the world’s largest supercomputer… again!”
The “MACROHARD” Phase 1 has 330,000+ GPUs, and the Phase 2 “MACROHARDER” adds 220,000 Nividia GB 300s.

There was also a quick look inside here
xAI also writes: “From Day One, xAI has been upgrading grid infrastructure and ensuring ratepayers don’t pick up our tab. Today, we are continuing our commitment by installing our own power lines to power our MACROHARD facilities.”
Boring Company
Boring Company plans to connect Universal Orlando Resort’s north campus to Universal Epic Universe.
The proposal describes a twin-tunnel configuration, with one tunnel in each direction. It also noted that permitting, design, and construction could take roughly a year and a half once approvals are secured

COMMUNITY CORNER
We’re done for today! We strive to be the most value-packed and concise Tesla-related newsletter out there. How did we do?
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R said:
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— And we like you reading it, thanks!
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See you next week for more,
— Jaan, Ted, and Sean.
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