Tesla Space #42: ⚡ Tesla now has the best ASS in automotive

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X OF THE WEEK

Even though I know the timelines may be off, getting updates like this is still wildly exciting. Here’s the post on X. More on SpaceX in our Muskonomy section.

TESLA, GLOBALLY

Elon live: appeared on the All in Summit, see the full 1h14min video here. This one was quite amusing, actually. Tune in from 6:20 to see an epic intro before Musk coming on stage.

From the broadcast, we also got some information on Dojo: the Dojo 2 should be in volume production by the end of 2025, and third iteration maybe late 2026. Dojo 2 will be “comparable to a NVIDIA B200 type system. I have some improved convinced in Dojo, but we won’t really know how good it is until version 3. Usually it takes three major iterations on a technology for it to be excellent.”

Oh and here’s the 4-minute clip on Elon telling a story about his proposed skit for when he did Saturday Night Live in 2021, which got rejected.

Robotaxi & wireless charging?

Exactly one month from today, Tesla is holding the Robotaxi unveiling event.

More Tesla engineering vehicles keep popping up.

In late August, Bloomberg learned Tesla plans to use California’s Warner Bros. Studio for the Robotaxi reveal — similar to what they did when launching the Solar Roof on the Desperate Housewives set.

What we’ll see is anyone’s guess, mine would be different scenarios of a whole fleet of robotaxis roaming around a large area there, perhaps guests being able to “hail” a robotaxi from any point of the closed 110-acre area.

@Greentheonly, a known Tesla ‘hacker’, reported that Tesla had started gathering mapping data in and around the movie studio from August 28th. Pre-mapping the area makes sense.

Now, we’ve got some specific news about robotaxi wireless charging which we’ve expected for a while:

Tesla has filed four patents related to a wireless charging mat for vehicles.

The four patent titles are:

• Temperature sensors and applications for wireless charging

• Shorting switch to reduce ground leakage in inductive charging

• Wireless charging circuit topology and related methods of manufacturing

• Parameter estimation for wireless charging

Now, this doesn’t ensure the robotaxi will be using this system, but we’ve seen Teslas hints towards wireless charging for a while now:

• Investor Day 2023 pic of a wireless charger below a Tesla in a garage,

• Tesla acqui-hired the German Wiferion wireless charging team;

• Franz confirmed they’re working on wireless charging in a Jay Leno video (timestamped here).

• Inductive charger connectors on the battery pack are shown in the Cybertruck service manual.

I’ve also seen quite a lot of the other industry players start their research programs into wireless charging since they need to stay ahead of try to keep up with Tesla, with one major automaker to launch their plans soon (can’t tell you yet).

The patent researcher we follow for these is @seti_park. For example, he just recently found a patent for Tesla Optimus vision which shows it has a total of six “eyes”.

The Arctic Cybertrek team made it! 
5,500 miles, from Florida to the Arctic Ocean.

Here’s part one, a 1h30 min video on the journey up until arriving. Follow the channel for the part II. And here’s their 1-minute video from arriving the End of the Road.

The impact of their trip goes beyond showcasing how tough EVs can be — the trekkers also brought six Tesla L2 chargers with them, and installed the very first public EV charger in Inuvik for future EV travellers.

Huge congratulations — and a bow to thank you — to the Cybertrek team from us at Tesla Space.

Quick takes:

• The Tesla new referral program (which we covered previously here) has now launched in several European countries.

• Donald Trump says he will hire Elon Musk to lead the suggested “Government Efficiency Commission” and that Musk has already agreed to lead it.

• Rohan Ma, the Tesla Energy director who launched Autobidder at Tesla, says he is moving on after eight years.

• EVject agreed to recall its older V1.0 and V1.1 connectors after Tesla filed a lawsuit against EVject for the lack of built-in thermal protection. EVject says they “want to be good partners with Tesla” and are now offering all previous adapter owners a free update to V1.2 which includes the built-in thermal protection and will be shipping ‘later this year’.
  Tesla comments: “Tesla and OEMs will keep working with the industry to provide safe adapters and develop common sense regulatory standards.”

• Tesla continues its run as the leader in brand loyalty with a rate of 67.8% for the first half of 2024, per the latest S&P Global report. While all Tesla models retain more than 60% of their previous owners, the Model 3 remains the leader in the brand's lineup with a loyalty rate of 72.1%.

• Fighting the FUD: Elon says Tesla’s Giga Shanghai factory is running at max capacity, contrary to the news.
  He also says the WSJ article on xAI and Tesla splitting revenue of FSD is nonsense: “Tesla has learned a lot from discussions with engineers at xAI that have helped accelerate achieving unsupervised FSD, but there is no need to license anything from xAI.” More context from Elon here.

• In addition to the all-electric Giga Train, Tesla has now launched a free bus line that takes employees to work.

• 🇱🇹 Tesla opens up its first presence in Lithuania (first in the Baltics).

• TIME Magazine has released their Most Influential People in AI 2024. Elon and Sam Altman aren’t on the list, while Scarlett Johansson is.

• 🇸🇪 Tesla offers 0.00% interest for the Model Y in Sweden.

• Dan Priestley is “Checking in on factory progress”:

  

  If you’ve got any Semi-specific questions you’d like to ask Dan (he’s the Semi program lead), let me know and I’ll try to include them — I’m trying to get an interview or at least a few questions in on the IAA show next week and report back.

FSD, TECH & SOFTWARE

Tesla and Elon confirm launching FSD in China and Europe is on the roadmap for Q1 2025! Pending regulatory approval. (we’ve been tracking the regulations for Europe and it actually checks out, they should be clear to go soon)

Elon also confirmed FSD could launch in Right-Hand Drive markets (like the UK and Australia) in late Q1 or early Q2, pending regulatory approval.

Tesla launched ASS

…aka the Actually Smart Summon, which allows owners to summon their vehicle from a parking spot to a particular location nearby. Works in parking lots, not on public streets. The release notes say:

Here’s @AIDRIVR finding Summon’s maximum range in a ~2-minute video. And here’s how the ASS is doing on a roundabout. And here are both HW3 and HW4 Teslas working the same route on ASS.

Cybertruck has now received the Vision Autopark feature. Also, interactions like these is why it’s fun to be at X:

And here’s one of Elon’s thoughts on the yoke:

Hands-free Frunk

2024.32 Software Update sends the long-awaited feature hands-free frunk opening to the new Model 3 and S&X owners.

"Open your frunk even when your hands are full. Stand still in front of your frunk with Phone Key unobstructed, listen for the chimes, and the frunk opens on its own."

This will be particularly useful with the Cybertruck, as the frunk is powered and opens all the way up with this.

This follows the recent update on the hands-free trunk opening, which currently Android phone users still don’t access. Wes Morrill confirms the team is working on it and they ‘need support from each manufacturer to access their device’s hardware’.

@greentheonly also found that somewhere inside the update, Tesla is planning to add "smart child seats" that you can add in UI, it will also alert you when you leave a child behind.

THE MUSKONOMY

Hey guess what? Looks like Morgan Stanley also calls Elon’s companies the ‘Muskonomy’ in their analyst notes

SpaceX

Polaris Dawn mission just launched! Here’s the full broadcast.

Watching the Dragon deploy with the four astronauts on board is just
…something else.

Make sure you tune in for the crew’s spacewalk on Thursday, Sept 12th.

Polaris Dawn will travel to an altitude of 1,400 km, attempt the first commercial spacewalk from Dragon, test Starlink-laser-based communications, and conduct a wide range of research in microgravity before returning to Earth and splashing down off the coast of Florida.

(SpaceX’s) Starlink

Milestone: The Starlink team has now built over 1 million Starlink Standard kits in the Bastrop, Texas factory — all in just 10 months.

Meanwhile, SpaceX launched its 7,000th Starlink satellite last week. Elon says Starlink now constitutes roughly 2/3 of all active Earth satellites.

The Starlink constellation contains 9,000+ lasers transmitting 10Pb+ of daily data traffic. These lasers can sustain a 100Gbps connection per link, can connect up to 3,300+ miles apart, and maintain a mesh network with 99.99% uptime.

More than 10% of all households in Alaska are now using Starlink. “It’s not even the talk of the town anymore,” said Chevak resident Earl Atchak, who was one of the first to switch to Starlink from the state’s largest internet provider, GCI, in November 2022. “There’s just a few people that don’t have them.”

Atchak said that Starlink, which charges users $90 a month after initial equipment fees, more than halved his internet bill for a service that’s far quicker and more reliable

Sawyer Merritt did a recent Starlink adoption roundup that I had planned so I’ll drop it here: Starlink is used by

• Over 2.5% of all homes in Australia

• Over 10% of all households in Alaska

• 400,000 users in Canada

• 150,000 users in Mexico

• 1.4 million people in the U.S.

• On contract to connect more than 1,000 aircraft all around the world, including commercial airlines. Starlink has now been provided on over 33,000 flights.

• And many more users, of course in the 105+ countries and regions Starlink is now available in.

A few more updates on Starlink:

• Starlink now also offers a Family Plan to existing customers.

• SpaceX is adding a $200-$300 fee to Starlink services if the dishes are activated outside of the region they were originally sold, to avoid unauthorized resellers.

• Musk on Starlink Cellular: “Starlink direct to mobile phone Internet is exclusively with T-mobile in the US for the first year, then other carriers thereafter.”

It’s the little things that count:

The Boring Company

12 weeks after completing the Cybertunnel at Giga Texas, Prufrock-3 has completed its first tunnel in Las Vegas! 

The next Prufrock-3 launch (after upgrading several systems to the Prufrock-4 spec) is scheduled for October 30.

X

X has officially launched its TV app in the US. Search "X TV" on your TV to install it.