This week in Tesla (Subscribe to speak)

All right, hey everyone. And thanks for joining us for another subscriber space. We're doing this publicly because Android users apparently can't join the subscriber-only spaces. So, for their sake, so they can still listen in. We've been doing this publicly. So, man, what a year this week has been. It's been a wild week. An emotional week, I think, for a lot of people. You have people debating whether AI is going to kill us. You had a new iPhones. You had a Roadster launch unveiled. We had the anniversary of 9-11, which a lot of people said hit harder this year on the 25th anniversary with all the memories and videos and people recounting it live. So, yeah, there's a lot to discuss. Let's see, I asked people what was the most interesting news of the week. We got a semi-event coming up. We've got a Roadster event coming up. This is the last month of the quarter. Some people mentioned Mr. Coxon, the guy who went on TV and said, AI is going to kill us all. Some people mentioned Dario. But, let's start with something positive. We'll start with the Tesla Roadster. So, Tesla Roadster, we've got the unveil on October 1st. It's going to be in Waco, Texas, they said in the invite, which is close to Tesla's rocket engine testing facility in McGregor, Texas. So, what we know is this is going to be the demo of the Roadster, the Roadster with the SpaceX package. Elon previously called it the most insane demo you'll ever see. So, it's going to be interesting to see how they kind of unveil this in addition to the product itself. And, yeah, we'll probably see the SpaceX and Tesla collaboration on a Roadster with cold gas thrusters. I think that's going to be pretty insane. I'm excited to see what they've got for us. And from what I hear, this Roadster is really built on an all-new platform. You can kind of see it in the teaser image that went out with the invite that this isn't exactly the same design that they unveiled in 2017. This looks like it's going to be a brand-new design, obviously, making changes to incorporate the thrusters, but really reflecting a lot of the new technology and stuff that they've worked on in those years. So, this isn't just going to be the 2020 Roadster, I think it's going to be much better. And I feel like this is kind of a theme right now in 2026 is, Tesla just tying up a lot of things that we've been looking forward to for a long time, whether it's Robotaxi and fully unsupervised self-driving, which we've been looking forward to for a long time, or even the Tesla semi in the Roadster, which we've actually been looking forward to, since before autonomy day. The Roadster and semi reveal was two years before autonomy day. But now everything's sort of coming together. The Wall Street Journal had an article today, which I saw Sawyer share. And they mentioned, yeah, Tesla's US market share is actually recovering, even though the USEV market is down. Tesla was hit much less hard than the other automakers. In many cases, because the other automakers just shut down their EV production. So Tesla is now selling the majority of the EVs in the United States once again. And people are really mentioning FSD when the reporters talk to them. They're starting to notice, they talked to one guy who was looking at the RIVian R2. He really liked the RIVian R2. The RIVian R2 looked good to him. But they said, well, we don't want to fight over who has the car with FSD anymore. We got two Teslas. So I'm going to upgrade my 2018 to a 2026 Model Y with FSD instead of the RIVian. You're starting to hear this more and more. It's becoming more of a deciding factor. Sawyer, would you think of that testimonial in that news story? That was great. I mean, it aligns with what I'm experiencing with people that are either buying their first Teslas or just buying newer ones with hardware 4 coming from older generation ones. And that FSD is increasingly becoming a key reason why people are either sticking with the Tesla brand or coming into the Tesla brand. There's still ways to go. Obviously, there's not like wide market penetration or even awareness of FSD and its capabilities. But certainly in the last three to six months, let's say, I think there's been a huge increase in terms of awareness of this technology. That's without any advertising on Tesla's part. They're doing some a few more things in terms of getting the word out there. But they really haven't done any real traditional paid advertising. So this is really just mostly word of mouth and Tesla's own non-paid advertising efforts doing this. But I think V14 was really the game changer in terms of capability and having it be good enough for the, I think, most everyday people. Like, if we have 98-year-olds using FSD now, that should tell you that it's good enough for pretty much everybody. I think V15 will take it to a next level in terms of safety and that last mile stuff, because I think parking and navigation can still be an issue. So hopefully that'll be worked out soon. But for the most part, getting from point A to point B, you can do that now. And I think a lot of people see value in that. I passed five Tesla's today on the highway, all model-wise. And I glanced over to their interior screen just to see if they were on FSD. All of them were. So, and I periodically do that. And it didn't used to be that way like a year ago. So people really value this thing. And hopefully we'll see a meaningful increase in FSD subscriber numbers next month when the Q3 reunings report comes out. But yeah, I mean 50% of people in North America or the US are adding FSD to their orders as of Q2. So we'll see what that number is for Q3. Yeah, it's pretty insane. There was not always that level of uptake. I mean, I remember when the take rate was less than 20% let alone 50%. So you're definitely seeing something real happening here. It's very much driven by the model improvements. And when you've got a guy who's old enough to drive a Model T. And they're now using self-driving. And it's actually easy enough for them to use. You know, they don't need the quick reflexes of a young person. It just works. I think that really says a lot. And we've heard a lot over the last few years. People just sort of agreeing with Elon's strategy saying, look, autonomy is far out. You need to add more vehicle models. You need to do this. You need to focus on the traditional auto business when they really sort of went all in on autonomy. And yeah, what do you think about sort of that strategy that they've been doing for a few years? You know, I think early on now is more skeptical than I am now. I think having written in the cyber cab and it being a really great experience, I kind of see why Elon was like, why would we even focus on building all these new models with steering wheels when this cyber cab is going to be the future and no steering wheel, no pedals and it's a great experience. So I kind of see it more than I did before I think. I still feel like I would love to see, you know, a expansion of Tesla's vehicle lineup. But that's just because I think I just love their vehicles. And I just want more off-finality. But look, I mean, I get what Elon's trying to do, right? We have legacy auto manufacturers who are struggling with TVs and struggling to stay profitable. And they have basically zero self-driving efforts. I mean, Rivian and some of the new players are trying to do it. But Hyundai Motor Group literally just yesterday was like, you know, we're going to like take our time and maybe in five years we'll catch up to Tesla. I'm like, why are you guys dragging your feet? Like this is you need to get on this now, like, or 10 years or five years ago even. So yeah, I get why Elon kind of just I mean, it kind of happens with a lot of Elon's visions, right? Or missions and goals. People kind of just initially view it as crazy or way too ambitious or almost impossible. And then like a few years later, you might be late on his predictions. But he ultimately more often than not is correct. Yeah, it's definitely interesting. And I'm with you, I love new Tesla vehicle models, right? I love their cars. I'm super excited that we are at least getting one new Tesla vehicle model. The roads are really excited to see that. But yeah, it's really tough when you have fans who want a bunch of new vehicles and who have a lot of desires and are sort of giving you advice. Hey, make a van, make a mini van, make an SUV, make this, make a, you know, a $25,000 compact. And I think he showed real leadership kind of not just listening to what everybody said, but focusing very intensely. And it was hard to see when the EV market was sort of at the peak of the hype cycle. And it was really easy to get capital from public markets or private markets for EV efforts. And you know, you had companies like Nikola worth more than GM in that environment. It was hard to see. But by focusing on, you know, what was really important like FSD, even when it seemed crazy. And even though you got people making fun of the roadster for not shipping for years and years and people saying, oh, they're never going to ship it. You know, to kind of take that criticism and focus on what's really important. That's, I think, a very unique leadership quality. And I mean, you look at what's happened to the other companies now that the EV incentives have gone. A lot of them just can't make EVs anymore. And Tesla avoided that situation. They may only have a few models, but none of them are going out of production. Well, except for the SNX. Yeah, I think the transition to what Tesla's become has been a little bit difficult for some to understand or they're just tough to watch because I think a lot of people in the Tesla community now initially fell in love with Tesla when they were the vehicle and the energy company. And then all of a sudden, they're sort of the robot and AI company. And it's sort of like hard to, well, wait, what about all these other, you know, what about the original mission? And so when they changed the mission, I think it was a little bit hard for people to understand. But I think if we look at it from Elon's perspective, the opportunity with robots and AI is far, far greater and it has a far much larger chance to positively impact the world. And I think they're vehicle and maybe to a slightly higher degree their energy business does. And so I think that's his his outlook, right? And I think for some, it was hard to understand that. But it seems like more and more people are hopping on board with that vision. Yeah, it's a really interesting time, really interesting transformation for the company. And it was interesting for me to hear Ashok say at a recent talk that, you know, Tesla's mission is amazing abundance through the creation of general-purpose robots. And that's very different than the mission we start or at least in wording, very different than the mission they started with of accelerating the transition to sustainable energy and transport. But we're kind of seeing some signs here that, you know, changing the mission doesn't necessarily mean abandoning the old projects. The semi-still-entering production, they're still doing very cool things with Megapack and Powerwall and Insolar. Like they're about to build a $10 billion solar factory. Yeah, I love seeing that. I love the investments that they're making.