Tesla Space #73: Tesla employees already ride the robotaxi

X OF THE WEEK

We now know more of the third Neuralink patient — Brad. He can now use Neuralink to type with his brain, as he is unable to talk. 🤯 

$TSLA

… is up +25.66% since our last week’s newsletter (Monday’s close), now at $285.88 per share right as I send you this before the market open. Tesla is now at $895,8B market cap. There’s more in this section visible for Tesla Space Insiders, including info on the first Tesla insider stock buy in the past 5 years. Join us to unlock this section.

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DEEP DIVE: TESLA Q1 COMPANY UPDATE

On Tuesday, Tesla held a Q1 2025 earnings call (‘Company Update’).

All that speculation about what that Company Update means… it was pretty much an ordinary earnings call. We did learn quite a bit, though. But first,

Resources:

• Earnings call Q&A on YouTube (timestamped to the 07:09 start);

• Shareholder Deck from Tesla (32-page pdf);

• Tesla’s X account shares highlights of Q1.

As usual, I’ll give you my notes in rough categories and will blend in both shareholder deck and the webcast Q&A info. I’ll skip over some of the stuff we’ve discussed in our newsletters before. Shall we?

Financials for Q1:

• EPS (non-GAAP): $0.27 ($0.39 estimated)

• EPS (GAAP): $0.12

• Revenue: $19.33 ($21.1B estimated), -9% YoY

• Net income (GAAP): $409M, operating margin dropped to 2.1%

• Tesla now has $37 billion of cash/equivalents, up from $36.6B in Q4.

Robotaxi in Austin in June:

Tesla will launch its Unsupervised FSD on the Model Y and not the Cybercab this June in Austin, Texas. Elon says Tesla will initially be operating 10-20 robotaxis. There will be no safety drivers in the cars. I do assume there will be remote teleoperators at the ready though, this is a likely requirement.

Elon gave some details of the current work: “There’s just always a convoy of Teslas just going all over to Austin in circles. I just can’t emphasize this enough. In order to get figure out these long tail things, it was one in 10,000 miles. Or one in 20,000 miles or one in 30. The average person drives 10,000 miles in a year. So now try to compress that test cycle into a matter of, you know, a few months. That means you need a lot of cars doing a lot of driving to do in a matter of a month what would normally take someone a year."

Elon again says that the Cybercab will be built 6x faster than the Model Y. A Cybercab will roll off the production line every 5 seconds vs 33 seconds for the Model Y.

Less time on DOGE

Elon says his time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly starting next month and that he will devote far more time to Tesla:

"The large slug of work necessary to get the DOGE team in place is mostly done; I'll continue to spend 1-2 days per week as long as the President wants me to."

Wider remarks from Elon:

Elon: “There will probably be some bumps this year (for Tesla), but I remain extremely Optimus about the future of the company."

"The future of Tesla is brighter than ever." On that, I’ll leave a post from Tesla here connecting to this message it seems:

Elon on demand: "Absent from macro issues, we don't see any reduction in demand."

Potential tariff / sentiment impacts:

Tesla: "Uncertainty in the automotive and energy markets continues to increase as rapidly evolving trade policy adversely impacts the global supply chain and cost structure of Tesla and our peers. This dynamic, along with changing political sentiment, could have a meaningful impact on demand for our products in the near-term."

New / affordable models:

Tesla says the more affordable models are launching this year, but they are “working out last minute issues” and that the ramp will be a little slower than they had hoped initially due to current trade/global issues.

Lars says the more affordable cars will resemble the form and shape of the cars that Tesla currently makes. "The key is that they will be affordable and that you'll be able to buy one." Will these just be stripped down versions of current Teslas or completely new just sharing elements of 3&Y? We did not get a clear answer on this.

Tesla writes (again) that more affordable models remain on track to start production in the first half of 2025.

"Given economic uncertainty resulting from changing trade policy, more affordable options are as critical as ever."

"During the (new Model Y) switchover, we also prepared our factories for the launch of new models later this year."

Model Y retooling: "we achieved record orders for a single day in the APAC region when we launched New Model Y." new Model Y ramp is outpacing all past production ramps.

Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja: "The negative impact of vandalism and unwarranted hostility towards our brand and our people, had an impact in certain markets. Despite this, we were able to sell out legacy Model Y. We produced the legacy Model Y until the end of February."

In Q1 2025 deck, Tesla has changed the status of:

1. Cybercab from "in development" to "Construction"

2. Tesla Semi from "Pilot Production" to "Construction"

3. Roadster from "In development" to "Design development"

“Construction includes factory and infrastructure buildout as well as tool installation.”

FSD Supervised

Tesla drivers have now cumulatively driven over 3.6 billion miles on FSD (Supervised) as of the end of March, up from 2.9 billion at the end of December. That's an average of 8.88 million miles per day.

Elon: "I predict there will be millions of Teslas operating autonomously by the second half of 2026."

Elon also says FSD Unsupervised will be available on personally owned Teslas in several US cities by the end of 2025.

Interestingly, Elon also acknowledged that Tesla’s FSD needs to be able to adapt to local differences: "It's increasingly obvious that there is some value to having localized set of parameters for different regions and localities (such as snowy areas)."

Elon: "I'm confident that later this year, the first Model Y will drive itself all the way to the customer from the factory. From both factories."

In China: "While conventional wisdom is that competition will be bad for Tesla, we have long believed that it accelerates broader EV adoption and is positive for our sales long-term. The Shanghai Model Y factory fully ramped production in six- weeks, our quickest ramp of any vehicle ever. We launched FSD (Supervised) in China – the first market outside of North America – with positive reception."

Elon: “autonomy will start to move the financial needle for Tesla starting in the middle to second half of 2026. […] Once we can make it work in a few cities in America, we can make it work in any city in America."

Tesla Energy

Tesla says Megafactory Shanghai produced >100 Megapacks in Q1.

Q1 record quarter for Powerwall too: "We achieved a fourth sequential record for Powerwall deployments, crossing 1 GWh for the first time, and continue to be supply-constrained. Gross margin for the Energy Business improved sequentially."

Tesla Optimus

We got the first image of the Optimus pilot production line at their Fremont factory:

Elon: "We expect to have thousands of Optimus robots working in Tesla factories this year; We expect to scale Optimus up faster than any product in history.”

“Tesla will be able to produce 1 million Optimus robots per year by 2030.”

Other specifics

Record test drives: Tesla says they had a record number of test drives globally in Q1 2025.

Ferrite motors: It was great to have confirmation on this - Tesla is working on ferrite motors, which means there will be NO Rare Earths needed for the permanent magnet motor.

I’ll leave you a slide I saw on the Investor Day presentation from last year:

“Our lithium refining and cathode production plants are on track to start production in 2025, on-shoring production of critical battery materials to the U.S.”

As of the end of Q1 2025, Tesla has

• 7,131 Supercharger stations (+14% YoY), with

• 67,316 Supecharger connectors (+17% YoY)

• 1,390 locations (+10% YoY)

• 1,799 Mobile Service fleet (-5% YoY)

We also got some images of the Tesla Diner:

TESLA, GLOBALLY

Tesla released a new video 📹️ saying “FSD Supervised ride-hailing service is live for an early set of employees in Austin & San Francisco Bay Area. We've completed over 1.5k trips & 15k miles of driving. This service helps us develop & validate FSD networks, the mobile app, vehicle allocation, mission control & remote assistance operations.”

Also, from the video, you could see that there was another reason Tesla started adding rear screens to their vehicles…

Autonomous vehicle rollout in the US should be easier going forward too — the Trump administration announced its first policy moves to remove regulatory barriers facing autonomous vehicles:

The NHTSA will now allow domestically produced AVs to qualify for exemptions to US automotive safety standards previously offered only to imports, the agency said today. NHTSA will also continue to require carmakers and other companies to report crashes involving self-driving systems, while loosening some reporting requirements — Tesla might be one of the main beneficiaries here:

"The Transportation Department announced that it will no longer require automakers to report certain kinds of non-fatal crashes — but the exception will apply only to partial self-driving vehicles using so-called Level 2 systems, the kind Tesla deploys."

Per a recent Business Insider article (so take this one with a grain of salt), Tesla reportedly has 300 test operators driving around Austin, Texas, to prepare for the June robotaxi launch.

A spokesperson from the Austin Police Department said that Tesla has also already held a testing day with first responders from Austin and the Texas Department of Public Safety.

On the other side of the world, Tesla just secured a 2-year exemption to run FSD (Supervised) on public roads in Norway:

Real Tesla-managed cars, live software and government oversight. The test program lets Tesla use Tesla-trained drivers (only) to run FSD V13 with modified steering and speed control to be run on the streets. We already know Tesla is testing on Dutch streets as well — seems likely there’s regulation change upcoming too.

New incentives

Tesla has set up quite a lot of incentives in the US just last week (mostly for Model 3):

• Model Y: Tesla is offering early original Model Y owners $2,000 off of the new Model Y.

• Model 3: 0% APR financing for new Model 3 orders. Applies to new orders placed on or after April 24th and to loan terms of 60 months. 0.99% rate on 72 month term loans.

• All models: Tesla brought FSD transfer back again in North America (only excluding Cybertruck Foundation Series and Model Y Launch series holders)

• Model 3 Perf: Tesla is currently offering select brand new 2024 Model 3 Performance inventory cars for just $40,490 (Fed tax credit included) with a 10% off discount, 0% APR and free FSD transfer. By the way, here’s a community-built spreadsheet (thanks, Dennis!) for the best inventory deals with links.

• Deep Blue Metallic and Pearl White paint colors, as well as the white interior, are now included for no extra cost on new Model 3 Performance orders in the U.S. No FSD purchase necessary.

Incentives have historically been used to spruce up the demand, so we’re not fully sure if Tesla here has demand issues, or is just trying to avoid its huge delivery waves, evening out the quarter.

Quick takes:

• 🇨🇦 Tesla has increased new Model Y pricing in Canada by up to 21% and M3 by up to 15% due to the tariff situation with the US (says the reason is that on the Tesla website banner).

• Tesla has created a new X account for the Tesla Semi: @tesla_semi, and launched a progress update video 📹️ .

  Fun fact, as of today, yours truly here is the first-ever and still the only person that @tesla_semi account has ever replied to — even if I did question whether the Semi has gained weight 😅.

• Washington state passed the law called the “Tesla tax” that targets Tesla by introducing a 10% tax on the money that Tesla receives in the state from selling carbon emissions credits.

• Tesla celebrated Earth Week with celebrations and volunteering events across its locations in US & Europe together with the team and visitors.
  A lot of ‘Supercharger’ events took place, too, with free ice cream, free Supercharging on Earth Day (26th), gifted Cybertruck 48-hour test drive cars, and more.

Elon acknowledges the Inverse Cramer effect:

And to ex-Waymo CEO negatively commenting on Elon’s remarks about Waymo costing way more money, Elon replied: “Waymo needs ”way mo” money to succeed 😂”

MUSKONOMY

SpaceX & Starlink

This was SpaceX completing the 250th dedicated Starlink launch 👆️. Meanwhile, Falcon completed its 475th mission on April 25th! Can you believe the scale…

In certain US cities, SpaceX is increasing the one-time "congestion charge" for new Starlink sign-ups from $100 to $250.

At the same time, Starlink is offering $0 for the Standard Kit with 12-month residential service plan commitment in select markets, you can check your address availability at starlink.com/12m-residential. I counted at least 12 European countries in the list.

Elon comments on a post about Virgin Atlantic considering Starlink and other providers: “Airlines that don’t have Starlink will be at a serious disadvantage.”

xAI

Elon, replying to Paul Graham on the X feed becoming more right-wing extremist: “A much improved Grok-powered algorithm is coming. Should help a lot.”

Elon says that next week, Grok 3.5 early beta release is coming (to SuperGrok subscribers only.)

“It is the first AI that can, for example, accurately answer technical questions about rocket engines or electrochemistry. Grok is reasoning from first principles and coming up with answers that simply don’t exist on the Internet.”

XAI Holdings (the fresh xAI and X merger company) is reportedly in talks with investors to raise roughly $20B in funding, per Bloomberg.

Neuralink

Elon says: “Robots will surpass good human surgeons within a few years and the best human surgeons within ~5 years. Neuralink had to use a robot for the brain-computer electrode insertion, as it was impossible for a human to achieve the required speed and precision.

Neuralink is reportedly planning to raise about $500M at a pre-money valuation of $8.5 billion.

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