Tesla Space #38: ⚡ Your priority Supercharging spot ♿️ 🤰 👶 👴 (or not)

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X OF THE WEEK

I’m not going to lie, it was hard picking an X of the Week today. This week, nearly all of Elon’s post were Trump stuff instead, on immigration, or the wild happenings of the UK. So we’ll go with Elon’s stance on CO₂ emissions:

He followed it up with “And we will run out of oil & gas down the road, so why run this CO2 experiment to extreme levels when need to solve sustainable energy anyway?” The whole idea is to “Convince people to switch by making better products.”

TESLA, GLOBALLY

Giga Train

The fully electric Giga Train finally arrives in Giga Berlin, set to carry about 3,500 employees daily from and to the factory. It’ll be free of charge both for workers and for the general public. The train is a Mireo Plus B battery-electric train from Siemens.

Here is an 18-minute uncut video by Tobias Lindth who took the train ride to the factory. While you’re there, give his YT account a follow — he does great drone videos of Giga Berlin.

Tesla releases the latest Vehicle Safety Report. Miles per Driven per one accident for Q2 2024:

• 6.68 million miles driven when on Autopilot

• 1.45 million miles without Autopilot

• 670,000 miles United States average

Elon held an X Space with Donald Trump (the audio livestream thing) yesterday. Elon said they also had a DDoS attack against X as they got started. As expected we didn’t hear much in Tesla news, more of Elon’s general thoughts around a sustainable energy economy. Here’s the full stream with timestamps for topics.

Trump on Tesla: “You do make a great product I have to say. I have to be honest with you. That doesn't mean everybody should have an electric car, but these are minor details, but your product is incredible."

Tesla shareholders have put together a letter to Senator Karen Elisabeth Warren, in response to her “concerning” letter to the Tesla Chair of the Board, Dr. Robyn Denholm about Tesla Board not meeting its fiduciary duties over addressing Elon’s conflicts of interest. Shareholders led by Alexandra Merz once again.

You can see, and as a Tesla shareholder sign, the response letter here. Over 1,700 had signed in the first 24 hours.

Quick takes:

• Tesla lists prices for 72-month leasing terms for the Model 3 & Y in different states. I wish they’d remove the “gas saving’s” from their calculations, but it does look pretty.

• Tesla sales license has reportedly been granted in Kentucky.

• Tesla reportedly pauses its factory plans for Thailand.

• 🇲🇾 A representative from Tesla will reportedly meet with Malaysia’s Ministry of Investment, Trade, and Industry on August 22 to discuss the company’s investment plans in the country.

• Tesla shares an article of 12 quick stories from Tesla interns.

• 🇮🇸 It seems Tesla has - only in Iceland - increased the basic vehicle limited warranty for owners to 5 years and 100,000 km (+20k km)

• Elon says he canned the program in Taiwan where Teslas would be sold in Costco stores.

THE VEHICLES

In the US? You can now book a Cybertruck test drive through Tesla: here.
If you go for a ride, let us know.

You might’ve already seen some headlines of “Tesla has gone through all its Cybertruck orders already”, which popped up after Tesla opened the orders for Foundation Series Cybertruck for those without a reservation?

It does not mean that all of the 1M+ reservation holders canceled theirs.

It means that Tesla allows all who want to get one of those extra Foundation Series Cybertrucks, which give Tesla a juicy $20,000 extra in vehicle price.

More likely than not, once this ‘round’ is over and the early series are done, Tesla will return to the same reservation holders with the option to order the AWD “regular” version of the truck, which would also be eligible for the $7,500 tax credit — so it’d go for $72.5k after credit.

Tesla will keep selling all the Cybertrucks it can make, in hundreds of thousands, for years.

Tesla has also now invited reservation holders from 🇨🇦 Canada and 🇲🇽 Mexico to configure a Foundation Series Cybertruck.

Also, no, the single-motor Cybertruck is not cancelled.

“Exciting opportunity - Do you want to bring the Tesla Semi to Europe?” 
…writes a Tesla recruiter on LinkedIn.

Tesla has posted a job listing of “Head of Business Development — Semi Truck EMEA” for Tesla’s future Semi Truck deployments in Europe. Graham Carroll head of BD of Tesla Semi Program, confirmed this on a post.

Quick takes:

• Tesla has introduced a 3-year Bundle for the buyers of new Model S and Model X in the U.S. and Canada for $5,000. It includes 3 years of: Free unlimited Supercharging, FSD (Supervised) and Premium connectivity.

• Tesla has launched the new Quicksilver Model 3 color in the US for $2,000.

• Click tip: Tesla Gallery, in case you didn’t know, is Tesla’s official product image gallery. It has high-quality images of all its products, and just late last week, Tesla added some new Semi, M3, MY and MX pictures there.

• There’s an issue with the new 2024 M3 Performances in the US, with at least 4-5 confirmed cases of oil leaks from rear drive units — owner-reported, info and pics here.

• Tesla has pushed back the start of production for the $16,000 Cybertruck range extender to early 2025 (from late 2024).

• The worker we reported about last week who died at Giga Texas? The family has filed a lawsuit against Tesla as apparently the worker’s cardiac event was a result of electrocution. Per the lawsuit, the licensed electrician was instructed to examine electrical panels before they were supposed to be powered on, but one of the panels had already been energized, leading it to electrocute the worker and leave him unconscious.

SUPERCHARGING & ENERGY

a bit of an exclusive here, something that hasn’t been reported on yet elsewhere:

Tesla creates priority charging spots.

A priority Tesla Supercharging stall in Finland. Is this the first in the world? It has ample space for wheelchair access, families, and the elderly.

This was shared by one of our followers on X from Finland — thanks, Harri!

Meanwhile, Tesla has reached its 250th Supercharging stall in the country, and celebrates with a heavy-metal themed X post and a wrapped stall:

Oh, and you should absolutely witness this great customer service from the Tesla Charging team in North America — an X post lists 24 Tesla Supercharger stations that are built but waiting activation for up to 17 months. @Teslacharging team answers by putting the status and expected opening date behind each one. Wonderful.

Supercharger site of the week:

One of the newest Tesla Supercharger sites, launched this Saturday in Morrisville, NC (12 stalls). It has an interesting canopy solution I haven’t seen Tesla launch before (doesn’t do canopies at all often). Oh, and trashcans too.

How about charging your Tesla boat?

This was taken in Berthierville, Quebec on Sunday, after the floods caused by storm Debby:

Tesla says one Powerwall 3 can be built every 25 seconds, or over 700,000 per year, in its Powerwall 3 video.

In Europe, Chargemap now extends Tesla Supercharger integration to its Chargemap Pass charging service to most European countries, after a successful pilot in France.

TECH, FSD & SOFTWARE

The Tesla App now celebrates your vehicle’s anniversary. Yep, I know.

Recall Mandatory Software update due to Tesla voluntarily “recalling” updating US cars: 1.8M Teslas in the US will see an update to fix the vehicle potentially not recognizing when the hood latch is unlocked (and thus fail to prevent driver to drive with an open hood). Affects 2020+ vehicles. No crashes or injuries reported on this, and the first cases were actually reported in China in March (so probably fixed there by then already). Here’s the NHTSA safety recall document.

AI5 is ~18 months away from high-volume production (per Elon’s reply).

Tesla released updates for its older (MCU1) vehicles (that are on HW3 though), including improving the Automatic Emergency Breaking (including in reverse); AEB Reacting to Perpendicular Vehicles (for example someone running a red light or cutting you off), added haptic feedback in addition to the audible and visual warnings on the Forward Collison Warning system.

FSD V12.5.(1.3)

Tesla FSD (Supervised) v12.5.1.3 has started rolling out to owners on HW4. No rollout to HW3 yet, a bit over the 10 days promised, although Elon says the team is working on it.

Related: Here's how to check if your Tesla has Hardware 4 (AI4) or Hardware 3

Per our friend @alojoh analysis on the Q2 earnings deck, Tesla FSD miles increased over 3 times in Q2 compared to Q1. In other words, about 40% of FSD miles ever driven were done in the last quarter. In other words, as many FSD miles were driven in the past 3 months, as over the prior 33 months combined.

A Cybertruck has finally been sighted by Chuck Cook (@chazman), the guy behind the ‘famous’ unprotected left turn test for FSD near his house, which the Tesla ADAS Operator employees always verify for new versions. Seeing the CT there for the first time means that FSD is now internally tested for it by Tesla employees, and coincides with Musk saying it’ll launch at some sub-version of the 12.5.

Anyway, back to FSD 👇️ 

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

• FSD is paying attention to hand-held (STOP) signs now?

• FSD 12.5 gets in an infinite loop of not knowing what to do next.

• Freaking FSD 12.5.1.3 out by turning off the headlights at night.

• FSD 12.5 has learned it's safer to ignore lane lines and drive more centered in the road when there's no traffic around.

• FSD 12.5 prioritizes smoothness so much that it sometimes triggers the forward collision warning.