Tesla Space #36: ⚡ Ride in a Cybertruck with this one weird trick

X OF THE WEEK

I know I said we don’t do politics here (except for that brief of ours the other week), so I’ll leave it at that. While there is no actual “EV mandate”, Trump is probably talking about the subsidies. Musk is right though — Tesla has enough margin to play with even without subsidies, unlike the EVs of other automakers.

Interestingly, Trump followed his sentence up with “…thereby saving the US auto industry from complete obliteration,” to which Elon said:

“Obliteration is coming anyway.”

DEEP DIVE: TESLA Q2 Earnings

Tesla held its Q2 earnings call. Here are the resources you need to dig deeper:

• Slide deck (29-pages)

• Webcast (1 hour) with Elon and Q&A

• Questions and Answers in written format on the Say platform.

• Or: my conclusions below.

The thing is — your inbox real-estate is really limited and I couldn’t fit the overview (I really tried). So hop on over to a dedicated article I made to go over everything we learned:

It’s worth checking out — we got updates from Robotaxi event (delayed to 10/10) to 4680 and dry cathodes, from Tesla compute and Dojo (new focus!) to Giga Mexico being paused, and all sorts of insights more. Click it, read it, and return back here, ok?

TESLA, GLOBALLY

Here’s a livestream from the X takeover event, an hour-long video interview with Elon Musk.

Musk said at one point, referring to early next year: “Tesla will introduce never-before talked about products.” Also, “all Tesla vehicles can operate or will be able to operate as a Robotaxi. But I think the dedicated Robotaxi will have the single biggest effect in the world.”

He also commented on the robotaxi unveil event (10/10), that “some people will realize how profound it is — but not everyone will get it, but it’ll be obvious in hindsight.”

Side take: thanks to a Business Model patent from Tesla, uncovered by @SETI_park, we see that Tesla seems to seriously consider the Robotaxi as a standalone business to run, and has been researching and developing key technologies around it. Also, here’s a deeper dive into the Tesla Transport Protocol.

The zero-emission vehicle credits

Jalopnik runs a FUD article saying “Half Of Teslas Q2 Profit Came From Your Taxes”. Luckily, we get Community Notes to say it is obviously plain wrong, since the regulatory credit revenue comes from other automakers who are polluting over their legal quotas. However it’s quite sad they get 10M monthly visits, so these are the disinfo headlines we all have to deal with.

Cern Basher calculates Tesla earns about $1,800 from other automakers per vehicle sold. Ex-policy head of Tesla, Rohan Patel, agrees. Here’s a whole thread on how these Zero-Emission Vehicle credits work.

Oh, and it appears Tesla still has at least $4.9B incoming from other automakers as near-future revenue per existing contracts. Over the last three years, Tesla has received $5.49B from its competitors, basically funding Tesla’s total investment in Compute ($5.1B)

Quick takes:

• Watch tip: A tour of Giga Berlin in 12 minutes, by Fully Charged. Including going over my favorite part, the gigacastings.

• Zurich Australia partnered with Tesla to become the preferred EV insurance provider for Teslas in Australia — they can now access the InsureMyTesla insurance offering directly through the Tesla app.

• Tesla China sales seem to be getting stronger and about to catch up with 2023, with July being the strongest-ever first-of-quarter month.

• Tesla opens St Albans, UK service center this Saturday, holding an Open Day for all. Sidenote - test drives scheduled for that day can win 48-hour Tesla use and a goody bag.

• Kentucky is reportedly finally changing the rules and allowing for direct car sales in the state. That’d reduce friction and trip time for new owners of Tesla, Rivian and other (future) D2C automakers.

• Dan Priestley (the Tesla Semi guy) shows the current progress and final render of Tesla Semi factory.

THE VEHICLES

The @cybertruck account is my favorite Tesla-affiliated one on X, just because of this stuff.

Anyway, we broke the news on the Tesla Police fleets going electric starting with South Pasadena PD last week. We’ve got some follow-up videos now, with the Police Department explaining why they went all-Tesla, all at once.

The fleet consist of 10 Model Ys for patrol cars and 10 Model 3s for administrative and detective uses. The emphasis is on the safest and most capable vehicles for the job: “it was Tesla… or nothing.” Here’s their overview on the electrifysouthpas.com website.

Quick takes:

• Watch tip: Model S Plaid record quarter-mile time: 8.56s (at 162mph). 0-60mph in 1.88s.

• Tesla Shop released a new detailing kit for S,3,X,Y for $120. Oh, and also karaoke mic in the US, called caraokemic, for $215.

• Tesla China now offers the ambient lighting as retrofit for ¥1,299 ($180) for Model Ys produced between Jan 24, 2022, and Oct 1, 2023.

• Did Wes Morrill just accidentally confirm Tesla Semi has a 900kWh battery? Oh, and Cybertruck range extender will not be easily removable, but structurally mounted instead for safety.

• A weird defect on a 4-year old Model 3, where the paint is peeling off the car all over. We’re following to see what Tesla says.

• 🇮🇹 In Italy? Go check out the Cybertruck at these events through August.

• Watch tip: Cybertruck wins the 2500 Class at the tractor pull. Here’s another, where you can actually hear the people say “no way” in the audience. Oh, and check out this torture test from The Fast Lane Truck with Tesla Cybertruck pulling 10,500lbs over an 8-mile climb — not breaking a sweat while the F-150 overheats twice.

• Remember our video on the potential issue with Cybertruck motors? Well Ryan from The Kilowatts just saw his rear motor disabled at 30 minutes of their 4-hour drive home, limiting his speed to 50mph. Will it be swapped by Tesla, as it did for the front motors? We’ll be watching.

SUPERCHARGING & ENERGY

The “wet towel hack” that fools the Superchargers’ sensors and allows faster charging? Tesla says it doesn’t work (it did though 🤷‍♂️) and you shouldn’t do it (this one I agree with). Now, it seems like Tesla has changed the software to make this ‘trick’ useless.

Tesla launched two largest V4 Supercharger stations in the world, back-to-back with no fuzz. So we’ll make it ourselves:

Auxerre, France — Appoigny, with 36 stalls and then Mt Laurel Township, New Jersey — NJ-73, with 40 stalls.

The layout on this France one, including the pull-through charging spot in the back and the positioning to cater to the non-Teslas charging… 👌 

TECH, FSD & SOFTWARE

FSD V12.5(.1)

FSD V12.5.1 started a wide release yesterday, with rolling out to the Hardware 4 (HW4) vehicles.

“There will be several point releases in quick succession,” says Musk. He has given us some other FSD-related insights over the past week, like:

“Still some issues with this release, but you can see the magic already. We’re pushing it out only to those who have requested advanced releases (setting on screen that is defaulted off). For regular users, ~V12.5.3 is probably suitable for wide release.”

And on the Hardware 3 vehicles: ““It takes considerable software effort to optimize the code enough to run on HW3. It also needs to be validated separately. Estimated rollout is about 10 days.”

On the HW4, he also says “We have yet to unlock the full potential of HW4. That may enable up to a further 8X increase in parameters.”

Sidenote — you can see how much of his focus Elon puts on FSD lately by how often he engages in conversations about it on X. All of it feels very much accelerating. I’m also seeing some drivers going from “FSD sucks” to “Best it’s ever been” within days.

Last week, I asked when will we finally see ASS, and now Elon told us when we will see the ASS: “Yes. Technically ASS is separate code, but it will be bundled with 12.5.x next month.” Since one of our readers, Jonas, said I should include more memes, here’s one for ya:

In case you’ve missed it, though, ASS = Actually Smart Summon. Btw go and follow Jonas on X under his new and really great account: @elon_docs. He is surfacing interviews and videos with Elon that even Elon himself has replied to as “Didn’t know these videos even existed.”

FSD globally? Tesla will request regulatory approval for FSD (Supervised) v12.5 or v12.6 in Europe, China, and other countries. On the earnings call, Elon said Tesla is likely to receive this approval by the end of the year. 

The MCU1 (Tegra) vehicles will also get support for FSD Supervised 12.3.6 with the summer update 2024.26. Btw, although we covered this update release notes two weeks ago, Tesla now published it with pictures here. They also added there is now a brightness slider for ambient lighting, and TeslaMic is now supported in the US for Karaoke. Here’s an example of the weather forecast details and the Air Quality Index.

Anyway, back to FSD 👇️ 

Latest FSD V12.5 videos I’ve gathered for you:

• FSD 12.5.1 “escapes the X Takeover event”, aka navigates from grass parking spots out to the streets. “And it will improve significantly from here,” comments Musk

• FSD 12.5.0 perfectly navigating around construction.

• FSD 12.5(.0) reacts to a surprise oncoming car and navigates around a crash at the intersection.

• FSD 12.5.0 goes for a really narrow pass. I’d say it’s ready for the European cities now.

• FSD 12.5.0 is driving past a parked minivan which suddenly pulls off — FSD pauses the car immediately and just pulls in behind the van.

• Progress: Same ~8-minute route, FSD Beta V10 had 8 interventions and '21 nags’ in September 2021, while V12.5 had 0. Full video here.

• One hour of trying some toughest challenges with FSD 12.5. With @Wholemarsblog & @FuturamaKing commentary. Sorry I keep bringing up X accounts, but this really is where the most of the community lives. 

Now these are just short videos for ideal ‘situation’ consumption. Overall, people with V12.5 tend to write about it like this.