Tesla is an electric car company that also sells driver-assist software. Here, they’re talking about updates to their cars and software during their quarterly earnings call.
Hardware 3 (often shortened to HW3) refers to Tesla’s in-car computing platform used to run advanced driver-assistance and autonomy software. Tesla’s “upgrade” plan implies owners with HW3-equipped cars may receive additional changes so their vehicles can run newer FSD features.
FSD is Tesla’s paid package for advanced driving features. Here, the hosts are saying Tesla will update certain cars so FSD customers can use the newer capabilities.
Term
next gen roads
“Next gen roads” is Tesla-speak for upcoming improvements to how the car interprets and uses road data for navigation and driver-assistance. It’s mentioned alongside the software release timing, suggesting it’s part of the broader autonomy stack rollout.
The Tesla Roadster is Tesla’s flashy, high-performance electric sports car. When people say “Roadster Reveal,” they mean Tesla is about to show it off and share new details.
Topic
Model SNX Sunset Celebration Event
They’re talking about a “Sunset Celebration” event, which usually means Tesla is ending production of a particular model. The host is going to attend and report what it’s like.
They’re pointing you to a specific video on the Haggerty YouTube channel. That video is where you can see the new Signature Series Model S color up close.
The Tesla Model S is Tesla’s big electric sedan. Even though it may look similar over time, Tesla has continued improving it with updates. The discussion here is about that long-term evolution.
Garnet red is just the name of a specific exterior paint color. The hosts are saying it looks very similar to an earlier red, but slightly darker when you see it in person.
Signature Red is an earlier red paint option the Model S had. They’re comparing it to the new garnet red to see if it’s basically the same color or a bit darker.
Stealth Gray is a named exterior color on the Tesla Model S. The hosts compare the perceived darkness shift of the new red to how Stealth Gray appears on their own car, using it as a “known reference” for color perception.
When people say “EV movement,” they mean the big wave of interest and progress that got electric cars widely accepted. The idea is that early successful EVs helped convince more people to consider EVs.
In this context, “infrastructure” likely means the supporting systems Tesla needs for autonomy and robotics—such as data pipelines, compute facilities, charging/logistics, and operational tooling for a fleet. Tesla ties it directly to AI software that underpins robot taxi and future robotics businesses. The key takeaway is that Tesla views autonomy as requiring more than just cars; it needs an ecosystem.
A robot taxi is a self-driving taxi service. Instead of a person driving, the car would do the driving using software and sensors. It’s more like a future business plan than a single car option.
“AI compute” refers to the computing hardware and capacity used to train and run AI models—often including specialized accelerators. In Tesla’s context, it’s tied to scaling the company’s autonomy/robotics software and processing needs. More compute typically means faster iteration and potentially better real-world performance as the system improves.
Battery materials are the raw ingredients and processing steps needed to build EV batteries. Tesla investing in new factories here means it’s trying to secure supply and possibly reduce costs. It’s like building the “ingredients pipeline” for batteries.
MegaPak 3 is Tesla’s next-generation large-scale energy storage product line (a “Megapack” system used for grid-scale batteries). The mention of “start of production” suggests Tesla is preparing manufacturing capacity for a new iteration, which can affect cost, energy density, and deployment timelines. For listeners, it’s a key signal that Tesla’s growth isn’t only vehicle sales—it’s also grid storage.
CyberCab is Tesla’s planned autonomous taxi-focused vehicle concept, positioned as a dedicated robotaxi platform. In Tesla’s earnings messaging, it’s grouped with other production ramp items, implying manufacturing readiness and a timeline toward service. For listeners, it represents Tesla’s attempt to turn autonomy into a mass-market fleet product.
The Tesla Semi is an electric big rig truck. It’s meant for hauling goods over long distances. Tesla is trying to bring electric power to the commercial trucking world.
Vertical integration is when a company tries to do more of the steps in-house instead of outsourcing everything. For Tesla, that’s mainly about making sure it can get the materials and parts it needs without delays.
They’re talking about how the sources of energy (electricity for EVs vs fuel for gas cars) can affect price and reliability. The claim is that EV energy is easier to manage than gasoline supply.
RoboTaxi is Tesla’s idea of a self-driving taxi service. Instead of you driving, the car would handle the driving—at least in the planned service rollout.
Electrification just means moving away from gas engines and toward electric drivetrains. It usually comes with more charging and more factories making EV parts.
Advanced manufacturing refers to modern factory techniques that improve efficiency and consistency—often using automation, robotics, and tighter process control. For EV makers, it’s important because batteries and power electronics have complex, high-precision requirements.
Supply chain resilience is how well a company can keep making products when parts or shipping get disrupted. For EVs, it’s about having the right battery and electronics parts available.
Concept
auto business tailwinds vs headwinds
Tailwinds are things that help the business, and headwinds are things that make it harder. In EV news, it’s usually about demand, costs, and competition.
This chart is basically a scoreboard for how many cars (or how much production) the factories can make in a year. If it changes, it can hint at whether the company is ramping up or slowing down.
The Model X is Tesla’s electric SUV. In this segment, Tesla isn’t listing it in their production-capacity chart anymore, which suggests a shift in their manufacturing plans.
Pilot production means a company is making a small number of vehicles first. It’s like a test run to make sure everything works before they build a lot more.
Optimus is Tesla’s robot project. This segment is saying Tesla added a specific “Optimus Construction” item to its robotics updates so you can see where the work is happening and what stage it’s in.
Company
Gigatexus
Gigatexus is the location Tesla mentions for building a new robotics factory. The point is that Tesla is expanding into robotics manufacturing, not just cars.
Volume production is when a car or product is being built in large numbers, not just a few test units. They’re saying it’s started ramping up, but it hasn’t reached full production levels.
Optimus is Tesla’s robot project. They’re talking about building a factory to make a lot of robots, starting with big production plans in the next quarter.
The “Product Outlook” is where Tesla talks about what they expect to happen with products next. The host focuses on it because it’s the most interesting part for car people.
Car
Optimus
Optimus is Tesla’s humanoid robot. The hosts are saying Tesla is setting up production lines now so it can make more of them later.
Capex is money a company spends now to build or buy big things it will use for years. For Tesla, that usually means things like factories and production equipment for cars and batteries.
In an EV, the battery powertrain is the main system that turns stored electricity into driving power. It includes the battery and the electronics that control how that electricity powers the motor.
AI training is how computers learn from lots of examples. Tesla uses it to improve its software—so the car can get better at understanding what’s happening around it.
Chip design is the work of making the computer chips that power the car’s electronics. Tesla uses chips to run the software that interprets sensors and controls the vehicle.
It means the car is set up so it can support self-driving features. Depending on where you live, the company may turn those features on with software when the rules and testing are ready.
This is Tesla’s self-driving feature that still needs you to watch what’s happening. The car can do a lot, but you’re responsible for staying alert and ready to intervene.
Concept
stretched out S-Cove
When Tesla launches something new, it often takes time to ramp up production. The idea here is that the ramp-up curve is slower because the supply chain and factory setup are all new.
Energy storage means saving electricity for later. It helps the power grid handle ups and downs in demand and renewable energy output.
Car
mega pack three
Megapack is Tesla’s big battery system for storing electricity on the grid. “Megapack 3” is the next version, and Tesla says it’s preparing to start making it soon.
Version 15 is Tesla’s next big software update for self-driving. Tesla is saying it will be a major redesign of how the software is built and what computer it runs on.
Term
AFO
AFO is the computer/platform Tesla says its self-driving software will run on in the next major update. The hardware matters because it has to process everything the car sees fast enough to drive safely.
“Rover taxi” is Tesla’s idea of self-driving cars that can pick up passengers like a taxi. They can’t just turn it on everywhere—Tesla has to prove it’s safe first, so city expansion takes careful testing.
This is the safety testing step for self-driving systems. Tesla has to check that the car can handle lots of real-world situations before letting it operate broadly.
“Taping out” means the chip design is finished and ready to be manufactured. “AI5” is the next generation of Tesla’s AI chip. After this, the chip can be built and later installed into vehicles.
An AI inference chip is the part that runs the car’s AI “thinking” in real time. It’s built to do predictions quickly without needing the internet. That helps the car react faster and use less power.
“Edge compute” means the car processes data inside the car, not in the cloud. That makes responses faster, which is important for driving. It can also work even if the internet connection isn’t great.
“AI6” sounds like the next generation of Tesla’s AI computer chip. The idea is that each new generation can make the car’s AI smarter or more efficient. But what the car can do depends on both the chip and the software.
“Dojo” refers to Tesla’s AI training supercomputer platform, and “Dojo 3” implies a next-generation training system. Training hardware affects how quickly and effectively Tesla can develop and iterate on driving models. The segment frames it as part of the broader compute roadmap alongside new inference chips.
This refers to Tesla’s big software release near the end of the year. Instead of taking the car to a shop, Tesla sends the update over the internet, and it can add new features.
This means Tesla is changing the “foundation” of the car’s software, not just tweaking a few features. A bigger change like that can help the car think and react faster because the system is organized more efficiently.
Reaction time is basically how fast the car responds after it senses something or you press a control. Faster reaction can make driving feel smoother and more confident.
Concept
frame by frame analysis and copy everything we're doing
This is basically saying competitors watch Tesla’s progress very closely and try to copy the ideas. If they can learn from what’s shown publicly, they may be able to build similar solutions faster.
When people talk about the “upstream” part of production, they mean the steps before the car is fully assembled. For EVs, making batteries and motors can take a long time, so those timelines affect when the finished cars can roll out.
Battery packs are the assembled units of cells, modules, and protective hardware that power an EV. Their manufacturing capacity and supply chain timing strongly influence vehicle production rates because packs are a core component that must be available for assembly.
EV motors are what actually turn the wheels. If the motor factory can’t keep up or deliveries slip, it limits how many cars the main assembly line can build.
Concept
dismantling the SX production line
Dismantling a production line “from the small parts first” describes how factories retool or transition between product generations. It reflects that component-level suppliers and sub-assemblies often have to be reorganized before larger assemblies can be changed.
Dismantling a production line means breaking down the factory equipment that makes the product. It’s not something you can do instantly—then you have to put everything back together and make sure it works.
“Ramp production” refers to the process of increasing manufacturing output from early builds to steady, high-volume production. It’s often constrained by supply chain readiness, tooling, and the slowest component or process in the production system.
“Deconstruction” here describes Tesla breaking down and reworking parts of an existing production line to support new manufacturing needs. In this segment, they connect it to the Model S and Model X line changes, implying a major factory reconfiguration rather than a minor update.
Accelerate Auto is mentioned as the provider of an EV-focused extended warranty product called Xcare. For listeners, the key takeaway is that third-party warranty options can be used to cover repairs after the manufacturer’s warranty expires.
An extended warranty is extra coverage you buy after the factory warranty ends. The idea is that if something expensive breaks later, the warranty helps pay for it.
The manufacturer’s warranty is the original warranty that comes with the car. After it expires, you may want extra coverage if you’re planning to keep the EV for years.
An extended care plan is extra coverage you buy after the original warranty. It’s meant to help pay for certain repairs for a longer time or more miles.
This is an example of how a protection plan might be measured. It could cover you for a certain number of years and also only up to a certain number of miles.
This is a third example of extending coverage. It shows that you can buy longer coverage, but you should think about how long you’ll keep the car and how much you drive.
Term
human being on the phone
They’re pointing out that you can talk to a real person if you have questions about the coverage. That can matter when you need help later.
When companies build self-driving cars, they often roll things out slowly and carefully. That’s usually to make sure it’s safe and to learn from real-world driving before letting it do more on its own.
The hosts are saying safety is the main reason self-driving progress is slow. Before a car can drive without a person supervising, it has to prove it can handle dangerous or tricky situations.
Waymo is Google’s autonomous driving company, known for operating robotaxi services in select U.S. markets. In this discussion, it’s used as an example of how long it can take for an autonomous taxi program to mature. The key takeaway is that real-world deployment and safety validation take years, not months.
The “no fast forward button” idea is about the reality that autonomous driving progress can’t be rushed without increasing risk. Even small failures—like a minor collision—can trigger safety reviews, regulatory scrutiny, and reputational damage. For autonomous fleets, reliability and incident response are as important as raw driving capability.
A fender bender is a small, low-speed crash—usually just minor damage to the car’s outer panels. The point here is that with self-driving cars, even small accidents get a lot of attention. That can cause big fallout for the company.
This is the idea of a car that can drive by itself without you needing to watch it or be ready to take over. Even if the software exists, the company usually waits until it’s proven safe in each area before letting more cars use it.
Some road situations are much harder for self-driving software than others. Intersections with lots of moving parts—cars turning, pedestrians, confusing lanes—tend to be where mistakes happen.
The speaker is talking about intersections where crashes happen more often. If a self-driving system can’t handle those situations reliably, it won’t be safe to enable it there.
If the lane lines on the road are worn out or unclear, the car has a harder time knowing where it should drive. That can make self-driving less reliable until the system handles it well.
Concept
weather challenges
“Weather challenges” points to how rain, snow, fog, and other conditions can degrade sensor performance and perception quality. Autonomy systems may need more validation in these conditions before expanding unsupervised operation to new areas.
Instead of turning on the feature everywhere at once, Tesla would enable it step-by-step. They only expand it when they’re confident the system works well in a given area.
Before a self-driving feature can be used widely, regulators have to approve it. The rules can be different for a company’s robotaxi service versus a feature in your personal car.
Liability is who gets blamed legally if there’s an accident. If the car is driving itself and something happens, the big question is whether it’s Tesla’s responsibility or the owner’s.
Memory bandwidth is like how wide the “data highway” is between the computer’s memory and its processors. If that highway is narrow, the AI can’t get information in and out fast enough to make real-time driving decisions.
Concept
order aggressive transformer
A “transformer” is a type of AI model. When the model is configured to be more demanding, it needs more computing resources, and the discussion says fast data access (memory bandwidth) becomes especially important.
AI4 hardware is Tesla’s label for a certain self-driving computer setup. In this segment, it’s mainly important because it determines which cars get a better trade-in deal.
They’re describing an upgrade that involves swapping parts inside the car, not just installing a new software update. Specifically, they replace the computer and the cameras so the car can run the newer system.
Hardware 4 is Tesla’s newer computer (and supporting sensors) inside the car. The idea is that the car needs this newer setup to run the latest self-driving features reliably.
They’re saying they can’t do these upgrades one-by-one at regular service centers fast enough. So they want many upgrade “mini-factories” in big cities to speed up the process.
Term
V14
V14 is Tesla’s next software update for self-driving features. They’re saying Hardware 3 cars will get a simplified version, but it should still include the main features.
The “2.5” is an earlier version of the computer Tesla used for self-driving features. The speaker is saying some cars were already upgraded from that older computer to Hardware 3.
“Out of pocket” means you’d have to pay yourself, not have Tesla cover it. Here, it’s about whether owners without FSD would need to pay to upgrade their car’s computer for newer self-driving features.
Labor is the work time from the service center to install the parts and get everything working correctly. For upgrades, that can be a big part of the total price.
MCU is basically the car’s main computer for the screen and many of the car’s software features. If it’s upgraded, the menus and apps can feel faster and smoother. It can also be required to run newer software features.
The “Ryzen chip” refers to Tesla using AMD’s Ryzen-family computing hardware in newer vehicle computer platforms. Upgrading to a Ryzen-based compute module is expected to increase processing performance, which can make the interface faster and support newer software capabilities. In this segment, it’s tied to enabling AI-related features.
“AI4 cars” means Tesla cars with newer onboard computer hardware for advanced features. Some software features only work on cars with the right hardware. So two Teslas can feel different even if they’re both running the same general app.
A “micro factory” here means a small upgrade setup, like a mini service operation, where Tesla could install parts or update hardware without shipping the car far away. Doing it near a major plant could make the process faster and easier. It’s basically about making upgrades more convenient.
Tesla can upgrade the computer inside some cars so they can run newer software features. A “retrofit” means the update is done after the car was already built, usually at a service center.
“Hardware three” is the computer in the Tesla that powers its advanced driving features. If your car has the right hardware, it can support newer software updates more reliably.
“Q2 2026” means the second quarter of 2026 (roughly April through June). The hosts are basically saying the new timing lines up with what Tesla originally predicted.
They’re talking about self-driving that can go from one parking spot to another on its own. Instead of just helping with steering or braking, it has to plan the route and drive the whole segment safely.
They’re referring to a Tesla Model 3 Performance from 2018. The idea is that this specific car might get new software (and maybe new computer hardware) that enables more advanced self-driving features.
Some car software features only work well if the car has the right computer inside it. When Tesla’s older computer stops getting the biggest updates, you may need a hardware upgrade to get the newest capabilities.
“AI four” is Tesla’s next-generation onboard AI compute platform referenced as the thing that will be physically upgraded into cars. The segment implies that after software updates for older compute stop, the remaining capability will arrive only once cars receive the AI four hardware upgrade.
This is just business timing language: sometimes plans that are supposed to happen in Q4 end up spilling into the next quarter. Here, it’s about when Tesla updates/upgrades might actually arrive.
“AI five” is the next step in the car/robot’s onboard computing. They’re saying it may start being used outside the car first, and only later move into vehicles when it’s worth it.
A data center is a big room full of computers that do heavy AI work. Tesla can use it to test and improve the AI before the same level of capability is required inside the car.
This is self-driving that doesn’t need a person watching and ready to take over. The goal is for the car to handle driving situations on its own, more like a human would.
An SoC is the car’s main computer chip. If you add more memory to that chip, the AI can work with more information at once, which can make the driving features feel smarter.
The EU review is the process where European regulators decide whether Tesla’s self-driving features can be allowed more broadly. The timing of these reviews affects when the service can expand to more countries.
Training procedure just means how the car’s computer learns from driving data. The idea here is that Tesla can use the same overall learning method, but it needs more data from each region so the system understands local roads and behavior.
They’re talking about a government/official review in Europe that can determine when certain self-driving features are allowed. Even if the software is ready, the rules in each region can control when it can be used.
This means bigger changes to how the self-driving software is built, not just a minor update. Those changes can make the car better at handling tricky situations. They’re saying those improvements need to be finished and tested before scaling up.
They’re saying they’re starting self-driving taxi operations in only a few places first. That helps them learn and improve safely before expanding. The speaker then mentions expanding to more states later.
They’re talking about expanding self-driving operations from a few cities to many states. More places means more different driving conditions, so they want the software to be ready first. They also say it depends on how you define “large scale.”
A “fab” is a factory that makes computer chips. Tesla’s TerraFab project is about experimenting with new ways to make chips and then checking that the process can actually run like a real production line.
A “fab” is a high-tech factory that makes computer chips. Tesla is saying it wants to build a research version first, then use it to prove the process can work in real production.
In chip manufacturing, wafers are the flat disks chips are made on. Saying “a few thousand wafers per month” is basically a way to describe how much real production testing they can do.
A “research fab” is a lab-like factory where they test and develop manufacturing methods. It’s different from a full production factory meant to make lots of units.
Intel is being mentioned as a technology partner. They’re associated here with the manufacturing process know-how that Tesla plans to use for scaling up production.
“14A process” is Intel’s next-generation way of making computer chips. The idea is that by the time the factory ramps up, this chip-making method should be ready and reliable.
They’re talking about self-driving cars. Instead of a person doing all the driving, the car would handle driving tasks using technology and software. Tesla’s saying they’ll build different-sized self-driving vehicles over time.
“Vaporware” is a word for something that sounds real because it’s announced, but it’s not really happening yet. People use it when a car keeps getting delayed and there’s no clear proof it’s ready to be built.
A QA fleet is a set of test cars used to check that new software works correctly. Using cars around the country helps find problems that only show up in certain places or traffic conditions.
They test the system both on real roads and in computer simulations. That way, they can catch mistakes in rare situations without waiting for them to happen naturally.
Neural networks are computer “learning” systems that get better at recognizing situations from lots of examples. In this context, they help the car’s software predict outcomes during testing and simulation.
Sometimes a self-driving car can get “stuck” doing the same thing over and over. For example, it may keep trying to turn into a road that’s blocked by construction, then go around and try again forever. The fix is teaching the car to recognize it’s not getting anywhere and choose a different plan.
“Convenience issues” is a catch-all for autonomous-driving problems that don’t necessarily cause crashes, but still make the system frustrating or unreliable—like getting stuck, failing to handle a scenario smoothly, or behaving oddly in low-stakes situations. The host frames these as software/AI edge cases that can be improved through iterative updates.
The Rivian R2 is Rivian’s newer EV model. This part of the show is saying the first customer versions are starting production, and deliveries are expected soon after.
A dual-motor EV has two electric motors instead of one. That can help the car accelerate harder and grip better, especially when you’re driving quickly or on slippery roads.
“Long range rear wheel drive” describes a Tesla Model 3 configuration focused on maximizing driving range while powering only the rear axle. It contrasts with dual-motor all-wheel-drive setups, which typically add traction and performance but can change efficiency and packaging.
Term
R2s
“R2s” appears to be shorthand in the conversation for an early internal/early-production reference point, but the transcript doesn’t provide enough context to confirm what “R2” specifically means. It’s mentioned alongside “dual motor performance,” suggesting it’s describing early variants or batches.
The Ford F-150 Lightning is an electric pickup truck. It’s built on the F-150 name, but it uses electricity instead of a gas engine. People discuss it because it’s one of the more prominent electric trucks and it’s meant for everyday truck tasks.
They’re just making a fun comparison. The Cybertruck’s shape reminds them of the “warthog” vehicle from Halo, not something you’d see in real-world car specs.
“Squircles” are Tesla’s signature shapes—like a square that’s been rounded and kind of angled. The host is saying you can spot that design language in the taxi prototype too. It helps you recognize the vehicle quickly.
They’re pointing out that if there’s no human driver, the car doesn’t need a rear window for the driver to see out of. That can let the designers change the shape of the back of the vehicle. But from the outside, the rear view can look awkward or less appealing.
When they say “efficiency,” they mean the car gets more driving out of each charge. That can come from things like a shape that pushes through air better and systems that waste less energy.
A steering wheel upgrade means replacing or modifying the steering wheel to feel better or look nicer. People do it to improve comfort and sometimes to add extra controls.
A spoiler is a piece on the back of the car that changes airflow. It’s often for looks, and sometimes it can help the car feel more stable at higher speeds.
A full carbon fiber body kit is a set of exterior parts that change the car’s look. Carbon fiber is a lightweight material, but you still want a kit that fits well and is made to last.
Return rate is a key customer-satisfaction metric: a low return rate suggests buyers are generally happy with fitment, quality, and performance. For aftermarket parts, fitment issues are a common reason for returns, so a low number can be a practical indicator of better engineering and QC.
RPM is a company that sells aftermarket upgrades for Tesla cars. They’re saying their parts are high quality and they help you install them with videos.
AbstractOcean.com is a website where you can buy extra parts and accessories for Tesla cars. They’re saying they likely have a lot of different options.
“Infinity Shield” sounds like a gadget that helps with your garage door. They’re saying it works with most garage door openers and doesn’t require a complicated install.
The garage door threshold is the bottom part of the doorway where the door comes down. That’s also the area where small objects or parts of a car can get hit, so safety sensors are placed there.
Some garage doors use invisible beams across the doorway. If something blocks those beams while the door is closing, the system stops the door so it doesn’t crush the object.
A ceramic coating is a protective layer you put on the paint. It makes the car easier to clean and can last a long time, so you don’t have to wax as often.
Waxing is applying a protective product to the paint so it sheds dirt and water better. The hosts are saying ceramic coating can reduce how often you have to do this.
Paint protection film is a clear protective layer that you stick on the paint where it gets hit most, like the front bumper and hood. It helps prevent chips and scratches from driving.
They’re talking about a car detailing business you can contact through their website. Detailing is basically deep cleaning and protecting your car’s surfaces so it looks better and stays cleaner longer.
A “snap plate plus” is basically a simple front license plate holder. The point is to keep it looking clean and not get in the way, even though you still have to mount a front plate.
Stainless steel reinforcements are metal supports built into the part to make it sturdier. Stainless steel also tends to resist rust, so the part holds up longer.
“Space Tier” is just the name of a Patreon membership level. It doesn’t refer to a car part or EV feature—it's about who supports the podcast.
Concept
Maximum Plaid Tier
“Maximum Plaid Tier” sounds like a special supporter membership level. “Plaid” is a Tesla name people often connect to performance cars, but here it’s probably just a tier label for perks.
Concept
Plaid level supporters
The segment distinguishes “grandfathered and Plaid level supporters,” implying different tiers with different eligibility rules. For EV fans, this is a common community-membership concept, but it can be confusing because “Plaid” is also Tesla’s performance branding—so listeners may benefit from knowing this is about supporter levels, not a car specification.
An EV is a car that runs on electricity stored in a battery. Because it’s electric, it can feel different than gas cars, and some features can improve with software updates.
LIVE
On this week's episode of Ride the Lightning,
the Tesla and EV podcast,
Tesla held its quarterly earnings call for Q1 2026,
and we got a big update on Tesla's plan
to upgrade the Hardware 3 cars for people that paid for FSD.
Plus, we now have a better idea of when to expect
the upcoming V14 Lite release for Hardware 3
and the next gen roads to reveal and more.
What's happening friends? Alongside Daisy the Boxer,
my name's Ryan McCaffrey.
Welcome to episode 560 of Ride the Lightning,
your weekly Tesla and EV podcast.
This one is publishing on April 26th, 2026.
And I start here this week.
Apropos of nothing,
this week's Patreon poll question
was a wide open evergreen one.
I wanted to get the poll question up early in the week
because the Tesla earnings call was this week
and that sort of compresses my production week
for Ride the Lightning.
So I wanted to just get a question out there to you early
so there wasn't really anything in the news to tie it to.
So I just thought, okay, you know what?
I'd like to know what's your favorite thing
to listen to in your car?
Thank you to the 300 people who voted in that,
which you don't have to be supporting me on Patreon,
you don't have to be giving me a dime.
The Patreon poll is open to anyone and everyone
each week over on my Patreon page,
found at patreon.com slash Tesla podcast.
And 53% of you said podcasts
are your favorite thing to listen to in your car.
I suppose I should be flattered.
A lot of you do listen to this podcast in your car,
but I also, I have to say,
I honestly wasn't trying to tilt the results
or anything like that because, you know,
this shows only an hour, hour and a half long each week
and odds are you're in your car
for longer than that each week.
So if you listen to Ride the Lightning in your car, great,
but maybe the rest of the time you listen to music
or audiobooks or something else,
but thank you to the 53% of you that said podcasts.
I, if I were eligible to vote in my own poll,
which I am not, I would have voted in the 32% group
who said music.
I'm definitely a music person in the car.
9% of you said audiobooks
are your favorite thing to listen to in the car.
3% of you voted talk radio.
And shout out to the, no pun intended,
shout out to the 2% of you that said silence
is your favorite thing to listen to in your car.
And you know what?
I feel that sometimes it's just nice to listen to nothing,
especially when you're in a car that is already silent.
There's no gas engine, there's no exhaust.
You've got a quiet car and if you're out,
just in the out, not on a freeway, not on a main road,
if you're just out on a quiet road somewhere,
just have no sound going on the audio system
and just enjoy the silence, the sound of nature.
That's nice sometimes too.
So again, thank you to everybody
that kindly took the time to vote
in this week's Patreon poll.
Be sure to stop by sometime this week at your convenience.
The polls typically go up on Tuesday nights.
And again, new question will go up sometime this week.
And it will probably be tied to something
that I'll be talking about on next week's podcast.
So this week, a Tesla event did get announced,
but sadly it wasn't the one I was hoping for.
I'm eagerly awaiting that Roadster Reveal,
as I know a number of you are as well.
I do have an update on the Roadster Reveal
later in the podcast courtesy of Tesla's CEO
during the earnings call.
So we'll get to that.
But the Tesla event that did get announced this week
is the Model SNX Sunset Celebration Event.
We have a date, it'll be happening on May 12th
and it will be located as expected in the very facility
where those cars are soon to no longer be produced.
Here at the Fremont factory in my neck of the woods
in Northern California,
I am going to do my very best to somehow some way
find a way into that event
so that I can have the great privilege
to see those cars in person,
see what the Garnet Red paint looks like in real life,
and then report back to you
on what the experience of that event is like.
So cross your fingers for me on that one
that I'm able to find my way into that event
some way, somehow.
But regardless, that event is coming up in just what?
Just a few weeks here, let's see,
from one to two and a half weeks, in fact,
from the publication of this episode.
So stay tuned for that.
Speaking of that final run of Signature Series Model Ss,
specifically, you absolutely have to go watch
the new Jason Camisa video
over on the Haggerty YouTube channel.
It's called The Tesla Model S
is the most important car of your lifetime.
And it is about the legacy of the Model S
and how it never stopped getting better
even if it fundamentally mostly looked the same
its whole life.
In that video, we do get our first look
at what the actual Signature Series S, the new one,
looks like in real life with that garnet red paint.
From the video, it seems like it's pretty close
to the old Signature Red, but a shade darker,
which if that bears out with my own eyes
when I get a chance to see the car in real life,
that would be similar to how Stealth Gray,
which no doubt many of you have on your car,
is almost literally, I don't know technically if it is,
but to my eye, it looks like it is just one shade darker
than the midnight silver metallic paint color
that it replaced.
But in any case, it's just a great video.
It goes into the legacy, the impact,
the importance of the Model S.
And it's really a must watch
for certainly for any Tesla fan,
I think any EV enthusiast,
because the Model S is basically more or less
single-handedly responsible for the EV movement
as it is today.
I don't think that's too big of a fanboy thing to say.
I don't think that's really that much of an exaggeration,
but in any case, I could not recommend that video more.
I'm gonna do my best to remember to put the link to it
in the episode description to make it easy for you
to just click on that and find it.
If I happen to forget though, which isn't impossible
as I spend the next hour, probably in a half,
going through the earnings call and all that stuff,
if I forget, just go to the Hagerty YouTube channel
and you should see it right at the top
of their list of videos.
Again, the name of the video is the Model S,
the Tesla Model S is the most important car of your lifetime.
Before I get to the shareholder letter and earnings call,
I wanna mention this week's Lightning Round mini episode,
if you're kind enough to be supporting me over on Patreon
at that most popular tier, that's the $10 per month tier,
you've got this week's Lightning Round mini episode,
the 190th of them, and this one,
since last week I was talking all about the Model Z,
as I'm calling it, I made a little mini episode
about the 10 things that I expect the Model Z to have
or not have as a $25 to $30,000 car,
so check that out over on Patreon if that's of interest.
A reminder, you can join me on Patreon
at patreon.com slash Tesla podcast.
There are multiple tiers, all kinds of stuff.
Starting at just five bucks a month,
you can be supporting the podcast and in return,
as a thank you, I will give you an ad-free episode
and early access to that ad-free episode.
Step up to that $10 per month tier,
you get that early access ad-free episode,
and you get the entire catalog
of those Lightning Round mini episodes.
So if you enjoy the podcast, you get something out of it,
you've been listening for a while,
I would be humbled and grateful
if you would consider supporting me
over on patreon.com slash Tesla podcast.
As usual, I like to start with the shareholder letter,
which actually gets published a little bit ahead
of the earnings call.
So I'll give you the summary here,
just a couple of notable things that jumped out to me,
and then we will dive straight in
to the earnings call itself.
I'll give you all the highlight clips,
reactions, analysis, all that good stuff coming up.
So as usual, we begin with the summary statement
on the opening page of the shareholder letter
where Tesla writes,
we continued to make meaningful progress
on the build out of the infrastructure and AI software
that underpins our robot taxi
and future robotics businesses in Q1.
We commenced the ramp of additional AI compute,
new factories across battery materials,
and further prepared lines for the start of production
of MegaPak 3, CyberCab, and the Tesla Semi.
We saw continued growth in demand for our vehicles
in markets in the Asian Pacific region and South America,
while also seeing a rebound in demand,
a rebound of demand, pardon me,
in both Europe and North America.
We're making the necessary investments
that will ensure our access to key materials
and componentry in each region
across vehicle energy and AI
as trade and geopolitics become more uncertain.
In recent months,
we've announced further regionalization
and vertical integration of critical supply chains.
Our focus on affordability and utility
across our vehicle lineup
continues to be a key competitive advantage,
particularly as gas-powered alternatives
become more expensive due to their reliance
on a more sensitive and less flexible
energy supply chain.
Boy, that's a fancy way of saying
oil prices and gas prices going up.
It continues.
We are excited about Tesla's positioning in 2026
with tailwinds persisting for the auto's business,
our continued progress on FSD supervised,
the ramp of RoboTaxi,
the progress on Optimus ahead of mass production,
and the growth of our energy production capacity.
There remains significant effort and hard work
to realize our mission of amazing abundance.
As always, we are focused on maintaining
a rapid pace of innovation in new and exciting technologies,
such as electrification, cutting-edge software
and artificial intelligence,
expanding our lead in advanced manufacturing
and increasing supply chain resilience
to ensure we manage future risk to our scale.
The future is incredibly bright.
All right, well, if I'm being honest,
that's nothing really new or super exciting there.
I mean, it's certainly good to hear about tailwinds
for the auto business, though,
rather than the alternative, which is headwinds,
which is what really a lot of other EV manufacturers
are unfortunately facing right now
for a number of reasons.
So that's the opening statement.
Now we flip along, scroll through the pages
of the shareholder letter
in the good old installed annual manufacturing capacity chart
that I always love to check out every month
to see if there are any changes
to any of the upcoming vehicles that Tesla has
in its product roadmap.
There are, in fact, some changes.
This quarter, most notably and most sadly,
Model S and Model X are gone.
They are no longer listed
in the installed annual manufacturing capacity chart.
And yeah, it's kind of a bummer.
I actually went back and looked
at the previous quarter, Q4 2025.
I went back and looked at that one
and then had them open side by side next to each other.
And it was a little bit of a bummer
to see the SNX now just not in that chart anymore.
On the plus side, CyberCab now shows as pilot production
for the very first time, as does the Tesla Semi.
There's also a new addition in the robotics category,
and it adds Texas Optimus Construction
as far as location, robot product, and status.
So there is a new robotics factory
under construction at Gigatexus.
There were actually photos of that
in the, or at least the ground breaking of it,
in the photo section at the very end
of the shareholder letter.
If you'd like to go take a look at those,
you can do so at IR, which stands for Investor Relations.
Not Immaculate Reflections, my friend, my detailer,
but ir.tesla.com.
So yeah, it joins.
There's already California Optimus Construction
for the pilot line of Optimus here
at the Fremont facility and the adjacent buildings.
So on that same manufacturing and hardware page
under the automotive section,
Tesla says, we are focused on optimizing
our vehicle product portfolio
with an emphasis on vehicles designed
for a fully autonomous future.
We continued the launch of Model 3
and Model Y trims globally,
including the rollout of the Model Y L
in markets outside of China
and more affordable trims of both models.
We also began deliveries of Cybertruck in the UAE.
We expect volume production of both CyberCab
and Tesla Semi this year.
So that's a little bit of a,
I don't know if it's necessarily a change technically,
but April was supposed to be the month
that the CyberCab entered volume production
and it's not at volume yet.
There are cars coming out.
Glossy gold cars are being spit out of Gigatexes,
but we'll have to see when this year
that ends up being for both CyberCab and Tesla Semi.
And then to explain that new Texas entry under robotics,
Tesla writes, as I was mentioning earlier,
preparations for our first large scale Optimus factory
will begin shortly in Q2.
The first generation line designed
for one million robots a year
will replace the Model S and Model X lines in Fremont.
We are also preparing Gigafactory Texas
for the second generation line,
which is being designed for long-term
annual production capacity of 10 million robots.
Well, not too much to add there.
So let's move along to the last bit of the shareholder letter
that I wanna share with you,
which is the Outlook section at the end.
I always key in on the Product Outlook section in particular,
since I'm of course a car guy
and that's what I'm most interested in.
Tesla says, we continue to evolve
and augment our product lineup with a focus on cost, scale,
and future monetization opportunities
via services powered by our AI software.
We remain focused on growing our sales volumes
through a differentiated
and efficiently managed product portfolio,
which includes leveraging and optimizing
our existing production capacity
before building new factories and production lines.
CyberCab, Tesla Semi, and MegaPak 3
are on schedule for volume production starting in 2026.
First generation production lines for Optimus
are being installed in anticipation of volume production.
Capacity build out and ramp related
to our multi-year infrastructure initiatives,
including AI compute, solar, battery material,
and semiconductor manufacturing are underway.
So again, shareholder letter wise,
pretty vanilla stuff this quarter.
Fortunately, however,
things got a lot spicier on the earnings call.
And by spicier, I don't mean contentious or anything negative.
I just mean newsworthy
and for a lot of you, very relevant to your interests.
And I'm specifically looking at you,
my many fellow hardware three owners.
But let's get started as always with the earnings call
by me playing you Tesla CEO Elon Musk's
opening statement in full.
It's just about eight minutes long.
Take a listen.
I think we've got a very exciting year ahead of us with 2026.
We're going to be substantially increasing
our investments in the future.
So you should expect to see a very significant increase
in capital expenditures,
but I think well justified
for a substantially increased future revenue stream.
And obviously Tesla's not alone in this.
I think you've seen in most, if not all,
certainly the major technology companies
substantially increasing their capital investments.
And we're going to be doing the same.
I think it's going to pay off in a very big way.
So we're investing in and improving our core technologies,
battery powertrain, AI software, AI training,
chip design, manufacturing,
laying the groundwork for significantly increased
manufacturing production.
We are also strengthening our supply chain across the board,
batteries, energy, AI silicon, everything.
And laying the groundwork, like I said,
for what we expect to be a significant increase
in vehicle production in the future.
And of course a very significant increase,
well actually releasing Optimus,
but increasing our tunnel production for testing
and then probably being able to have Optimus be useful
outside of Tesla sometime next year.
As you've heard me say a few times,
I think Optimus will be our biggest product,
not just Tesla's biggest product ever,
but probably the biggest product ever.
And I remain convinced of that conclusion.
So on the RF vehicle side,
it's always I think worth noting that
it has a car is incredibly, incredible value for money
and they're all autonomy ready,
depending on what part of the world you're in,
the supervised full self-driving is getting extremely good.
We have just started production of CyberCab
and we'll begin production of our semi truck soon.
Now I should say whenever you have a new product
with a completely new supply chain, new everything,
it's always a stretched out S-Cove.
So you should expect that initial production
of CyberCab and semi will be very slow,
but then ramping up and going kind of exponential
towards the end of the year and totally next year.
And in fact, we'll be ramping up production of all vehicles
and all factories to the best of our ability
through the balance of this year.
On the energy front, the United States
and the whole world will need a lot of energy storage
to meet growing electricity demand.
Demand for our mega pack is very strong
and we're excited to begin production of mega pack three
later this year in our new world-class factory
outside Houston for full self-driving and robot taxi.
Version 14.3 was a major architectural update
and we have a whole pipeline of major improvements
to full self-driving that we believe will lead
to unsupervised full self-driving being available
anywhere in the world that it is legal to do so.
And then there's a version 15 hopefully by the end of this year
but certainly by early next year
and that will be a complete overhaul
of the software architecture and we'll run on AFO.
And at that point, we're really just
increasing the safety level of FSD
above human safety level even more.
Meaning, I think even within version 14,
we're significantly safer than human
but B-15 will take that to another level.
We've expanded rover taxi to Dallas and Houston
using the same software source in the Bay Area
and the limiting factor for expansion
is really rigorous validation,
making sure things are completely safe.
We don't wanna have a single accident or injury
with the expansion of rover taxi
and we have to the credit of the team
not had a single one to date.
And then Optimus, we're preparing Fremont
for start of production later this year with Optimus.
Again, totally new supply chain, totally new technology
so therefore the production S-Cov is always
very slow in the beginning
but we'll ramp up to significant numbers next year
and we're constructing a second Optimus factory
in at our gigatexus location
and that will probably start production
around summer next year.
The B-3 Optimus design is almost ready to demonstrate.
I think we wanna just make sure it's like polished
like it works functionally
but there's some aesthetic elements
that need to be finalized.
And I think probably middle of this year
we should be able to show it off.
We're also a little hesitant to show B-3 off
because we find our competitors do a frame by frame analysis
whenever we release something
and copy everything they possibly can.
So I think there's some value to not showing new technology
until it's close to production.
The congratulations again to the Tesla AI chip team
for taping out AI5.
That's gonna be a great chip.
I think probably the best AI inference chip
for edge compute that exists.
And certainly I think unequivocally
the best value for money.
Team did a great job
and we're already have a lot of momentum for designing AI6
and we've begun to discuss ideas for Dojo 3.
So this is all very exciting.
We've also
finalized plans for the
the research chip fab on the Gigatexus campus
and we'll start construction of that this year.
In conclusion, Tesla is working on a lot of
large ambitious projects that are all very challenging
but I think they're gonna be revolutionary.
And this is what the team does best,
solve the hardest problems and build amazing products.
And I'd like to thank the Tesla team for all the hard work
and thank you to all of our supporters.
Well, as far as Elon Musk's quarterly earnings call
opening statements goes, this one was fairly tame.
I mean, it certainly doesn't stack up to the
we're retiring the Model S and Model X bombshell
that he dropped on us at the beginning
of last quarter's earnings call.
So really for me, the biggest thing
in his opening statement here
was that detail about FSD version 15.
Now, obviously we knew version 15 was coming
but now we have a better idea as to when,
end of this year or early next,
which means taking that into account,
I would say I would give it a 30% chance,
maybe 25% of being the headline feature
of this year's holiday software update
in November or December,
but the safe bet is probably that it'll drop sometime
in Q1, so roughly we can, I think,
generally say less than a year from now
would be a reasonable optimistic statement to say
for version 15.
And we now know also, I should say we also know
a little bit about why it's going to be version 15
rather than say a version 14.5 or 14.6
or some other point release.
And that's because it is a complete overhaul
of the software architecture,
which likely means plenty of gains in optimization
and thus things like better reaction time for the car
slash quicker decisions.
Kind of like how, I mean, we saw that exact thing
from 13, version 13 to version 14.
It was also nice to get a small update
on the timing for the Optimus V3 demo,
Elon said in the summer there.
In fact, in the very next clip I have for you,
we're gonna hear a little bit more granularity on that.
It is the answer to the first
of the most upvoted retail shareholder questions,
and it is about when the Optimus V3 reveal is happening,
when Optimus production will start,
and what the expected production rate will be.
Take a listen to this.
Well, as I was saying, what we found is that
when we've unveiled various Optimus versions,
we found out how competitors literally do a frame by frame
analysis and copy everything we're doing.
So I think we wanna push the Optimus 3
unveil maybe closer to production.
Sutter production is,
we're assuming is somewhere around
the late July, August timeframe.
And, I mean, just to inject some reality
into these questions, since these questions are not,
who did this question does not fully understand
what happens with the production line.
The last SX production will be in early May,
but you have to look at the entire upstream portion
of the production line.
So you start with sales, battery packs,
motor production, all the parts production.
And so we've been dismantling the SX production line
from the more base level parts,
the more basic level parts to,
as you get to more larger sub-assemblies,
you start dismantling the line from the small parts first,
not from the final assembly first.
So the final assembly line will,
that'll be dismantled next month
and after the last of the SX vehicles done.
Now you can't dismantle some gigantic production line
like overnight.
It takes at least a few months to do so.
And then you've got to install a new production line
and you've got to provide all of the wiring and communication,
test out the machines of the new production line
for Optimus.
So that also takes several months.
So frankly, if we were able to go from
stuffing production on one line,
dismantling that entire line,
reinstalling a whole new line
and turning that on in a matter of four months,
that is an insanely fast speed.
I don't think any other company on earth
has ever done that before,
just to put things into perspective
and inject some reality into the situation here.
I don't know what the production rate of Optimus
will be this year.
It is impossible to predict these things.
When you have a brand new product
and an entirely new production line
and you have 10,000 unique items,
all of which have to go right into ramp production,
it'll move as fast as the least lucky,
slowest, dumbest part in the entire 10,000.
And this is Optimus is a completely new product,
a completely new production line.
So it's just literally impossible to predict,
except that I think it will be quite slow for us
as we iron out the 10,000 plus unique items
that have to be sold for Optimus to reach fine production.
Initial skills will be,
obviously we're gonna start with simple skills
in the factory and then build up from there.
So even if you're not interested
in the particulars of Optimus,
I wanted to play you that clip
because I thought the piece about the deconstruction
of the Model S and Model X assembly line,
which by the way is called GA1,
General Assembly 1 in Fremont, was interesting.
Also, maybe some of you can relate to this.
And I know I kind of already talked about this earlier on,
but I got a little sad inside
when Elon started talking about
tearing down the Model S and X line.
It just kind of bummed me out.
But setting my own feelings aside here,
it sounds like that mid-year demo
for Optimus V3 is actually gonna be July or August,
which yes, still technically mid-year there.
And presumably it'll be at Fremont or Palo Alto,
either way here in the Bay area,
because that's where A, the Optimus team is located
and where the initial run of them will be built.
So stay tuned for that in another three to four months or so.
I've got a whole lot more to share with you
from that Tesla Q1 earnings call,
but first just a quick note
from my friends at Accelerate Auto
and their Xcare extended warranty option.
I am a two-time customer of it myself.
If you are planning on holding onto your EV
past its manufacturer's warranty,
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So you might be wondering,
okay, well, why should I go with Xcare
versus Tesla's own extended warranty
if you're a Tesla owner?
And I would say the number one thing,
first of all, the Tesla option's great,
but what I love about Xcare is the flexibility.
With Tesla, it's just, there's one option.
You just have to take the extended care plan
that they give you and that's it.
With Xcare, you can totally customize it.
You can go on an extra two years and 20,000 miles,
you can go an extra three years, 45,000,
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So there's a lot of customization to be had
and because of that customization,
you might have questions.
So you can call and talk to someone,
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The website is xcare.com, x-c-a-r-e.com.
Either way, so if you're online,
you wanna use this referral code for $100 off
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And if you're talking to somebody on the phone,
just mention it and mention that referral code lightning
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So again, xcare.com or call eight, four, four, seven, five,
five, four, one, eight, six.
The next clip I have for you
is from another one of the most upvoted
retail shareholder questions
and it asked about the ramp
of the unsupervised robotaxies,
which as you may know,
there are literally just a few of them in Austin right now,
as well as a couple in a couple of other Texas cities.
So here's Elon's response to that.
Well, we certainly hope to be,
have unsupervised FSD or stash robo taxi
operating, you know, and I don't know.
It does in or so states by the end of this year.
Initially, you know, we're taking it very cautious approach
to the rollout here.
Like we haven't had any injuries
and certainly no fatalities to date
with the unsupervised FSD and robo taxi expansion.
We want to keep it that way.
And so, I think probably,
unsupervised FSD or robo taxi revenue
will not be super material this year,
but I do think it will be material,
it'll be material probably in a significant way next year.
Now I've seen plenty of anti Tesla posts online
that dunk on the fact that Elon ended up wildly wrong
on the timeline for this.
And sure, okay, dunking on Elon's missed timelines,
not a new thing, kind of an established sport.
It's been around for a while.
But unlike, say, the new Roadster,
which is arguably a more justified dunking
because that there's just been no progress on
for years and years and years and years,
there's really no other rational way forward
with the unsupervised robo taxi ramp
than to take the extremely slow and cautious approach
that they've been doing for exactly the reason mentioned.
Safety, right?
I mean, while that's reason number one,
there is a secondary reason, at least as far as I'm concerned,
that's an extension of that,
is that the second that there is a single,
and by single, I do mean that literally no exaggeration,
even one slight injury,
let alone something as tragic as a death,
which I hope never happens.
The second that anything like that happens,
Tesla knows it's going to be scrutinized to death
a thousand times over, not only in the court
of public opinion, but quite possibly real court too.
I mean, a robo taxi network, it's a long game, right?
That is, it's a long game.
Just ask Waymo, who's taken many, many years
to get to where they are now.
I'm fortunate enough, living in San Francisco,
I have seen all the phases of Waymo over the years,
and they took a long time to get where they are now,
and they're an awesome, the Waymo service is awesome now.
But, and robo taxi is rapidly on its way to that as well,
but there's just no fast forward button
that you can press without risking, again,
even one thing to go slightly wrong.
If there were even a fender bender,
and someone in the robo taxi suffered a scrape on the arm,
you'd see the pitchforks and torches come out for Tesla.
So, I get their approach here, I get it.
The next retail shareholder question was one
that we'll probably get every quarter until it happens.
When can we expect full self-driving unsupervised
in our cars, in customer cars, here's the response.
I'm just guessing here, but probably in the fourth quarter.
It's simple to release this like to everyone everywhere
all at once, because we do wanna make sure
that they're not unique situations in a city
that particularly complex intersection,
or actually, they tend to be places
where people get into accidents a lot.
Because they're just, perhaps there's an unsafe intersection
or bad road markings, or a lot of weather challenges.
So, I think we would release unsupervised gradually
to the customer fleet, as we feel like
a particular geography is confirmed to be safe.
I say this with nothing but kindness and respect,
but I wouldn't make any firm plans
to have your car driving you to Disneyland for Christmas.
Let's put it that way.
Eventually, this will happen,
and Tesla is very clearly getting closer
to that massive end goal.
But here's the thing, in addition to the software
needing to be very, very ready,
as we've already established in the previous clips,
there are a couple of other pieces to keep in mind
with actual, full self-driving, unsupervised
becoming a real thing in your car.
One, regulatory approval.
Will there need to be any here in the US,
or does whatever approval Tesla already has,
at least in Austin, well, that's suffice.
Now, granted, that is a bit of a different thing
because the approvals that Tesla has now
are for operating a robotaxi fleet
versus an individual person operating
their own personal car, but my point still stands.
There might be an additional regulatory hurdle
to get over yet, I'm not sure.
If anybody knows, please let me know.
Go ahead and email me.
I would love to get educated on this,
but that's one thing to keep in mind.
And then the other thing, number two is liability.
If Tesla pushes FSD unsupervised to your car
and you're out in the backseat of your own car
as you're driving or as it's driving you around
and something happens, who assumes liability?
Will it be Tesla?
And if they don't and it's you, how do you feel about that?
And again, I'm not trying to be argumentative or anything.
I'm just genuinely raising a real question
that has to be asked here before unsupervised
can really be a thing.
I mean, it's a couple of tricky issues
and that are gonna have to be sorted through
as this continues to inch closer and closer to reality.
So we'll see how those shake out as time goes on.
Next up here is arguably the single biggest moment
of the earnings call, and it is the big update
that we've been waiting for
for my fellow Hardware 3 owners out there.
Take a listen.
Unfortunately, Hardware 3, I wish it were otherwise,
but Hardware 3 simply does not have the capability
to achieve unsupervised FSD.
You know, we did think at one point it would have that,
but relative to Hardware 4,
it has only one eighth of the memory bandwidth
of Hardware 4, and memory bandwidth is one of the key elements
needed for unsupervised FSD.
And it's just generally a thing that's needed for AI.
If you're doing an order aggressive transformer,
memory bandwidth is the true point.
So for customers that have bought FSD,
what we're offering is essentially a trade-in,
like a discounted trade-in for cars that have AI4 hardware,
and we'll also be offering the ability to upgrade the car
to replace the computer,
and you also need to replace the cameras,
unfortunately, to go to Hardware 4.
So to do this efficiently,
we're gonna have to set up like kind of micro factories
or small factories in major metropolitan areas
in order to do it efficiently,
because if it's done just at the service center,
it is extremely slow to do so and inefficient.
So we basically need like many production lines
to make the change.
And I do think over time,
it's gonna make sense for us to convert all Hardware 3 cars
to Hardware 4, because that's what enables them
to enter the robot taxi fleet and have unsupervised FSD.
And for what it's worth, in the meantime,
we're gonna also release a V14 version for Hardware 3.
This will be a distilled version of the same V14 software
that we released for Hardware 4,
and people should be able to start the drives
from Park State and basically have all the features
that V14 for Hardware 4 has,
and that's expected to come end of June.
I have to confess to you that as I was listening
to that call live, I thought Elon was gonna stop
after discounted trade-in and that they had pivoted away
from the hardware upgrade that he had initially promised.
But I'm glad that that sentence kept going because wow,
it sounds like the plan has come together a bit.
We are going to get Hardware 4 in our Hardware 3 cars,
but not just the computer, the cameras too,
because remember, it was a year or so ago
that Elon, when Elon first said
that they would upgrade the Hardware 3 cars
for people that have paid for FSD,
he said at that time that the cameras were good enough,
the existing Hardware 3 cameras,
but quite frankly, I'm glad they're not because they're not.
They're one megapixel versus the five megapixel cameras
in the AI4 cars, and he's talking there about setting up,
as he called it, micro factories specifically to do this.
Now, I saw plenty of people laughing at this online,
saying this is never gonna happen,
and I don't blame you for taking that position.
However, this is a company that set up
a sprung tent structure at the Fremont factory in 2018
in order to get Model 3 production ramped up quickly.
So I wouldn't put it past them.
And though it wasn't explicitly stated there,
it sure sounds like the folks like me
that paid for FSD on their Hardware 3 cars
are gonna get this upgrade, pardon me, for free.
That was my interpretation, which, I mean, we should.
We paid, we were told, we would get everything we need,
and we've already been upgraded from some of us
from 2.5 to Hardware 3.
So as far as I'm concerned, Tesla has to eat that.
We have paid our money, and they've gotta do it.
And then I imagine with his other comment there
about eventually upgrading all the Hardware 3 cars to AI4,
that to me seems like it's opening the door
for folks that didn't buy FSD, that have Hardware 3 cars,
to pay out of pocket if you'd like
to upgrade your Hardware 3 car.
Now, if I'm right, what that will cost
remains to be seen.
I think it's very likely to be thousands of dollars.
I mean, my ballpark guess, ballpark.
Again, I really am not basing this on much.
Four to five grand would be my guess
because we're talking about the FSD computer itself
plus the cameras, plus the labor.
I mean, cameras are cheap, the labor
to install all those cameras, not so much.
And then the computer's not cheap.
But then don't forget the MCU in the car as well.
That will need an upgrade to the Ryzen chip,
which means you'd get a zippier interface day to day,
whether you're using FSD or not,
and access to all of the new apps and features
that only the AI4 cars have been getting,
such as what I talked to you about
in the spring software update last week.
But even if I'm right, and it's four to $5,000,
that would still be a lot cheaper
than buying an entire new Tesla, either new or used,
like even if you found a used AI4 Model Y.
So that would be a more affordable option
to then have complete full access
to FSD unsupervised potentially.
So theoretically, the micro factory thing
would be somewhat easy to set up
here in the San Francisco Bay Area
because Tesla could just set up a structure
in one of the parking lots at the Fremont factory
somewhere and just do these by appointment,
plus another good reason to set it up at the factory
would be there's a lot of us here
in the San Francisco Bay Area
that have this upgrade owed to us.
It's very high concentration of cars.
Austin, probably also pretty easy
because they've got nothing but space
to play with at Gigatexes.
Other places, I think particularly
once you get up into the Northeast,
gets a little trickier to get the space to do this,
but hey, that's for Tesla to solve, right?
So it was great to get the details of their plan there,
but one key part of the plan was missing, a timeline.
I mean, it certainly sounds like
it's not happening immediately.
It's not like it's gonna be this quarter
or even next quarter.
They did also give us that,
that was a Ashok, the head of AI,
of the AI team at Tesla,
did give us hardware three owners
another big update there at the end of that clip
saying that V14 Lite is on track for end of June,
which quite frankly is exactly what I expected
when Tesla had originally said Q2 2026
when V14 Lite first got mentioned last year.
Also good to hear from Ashok there
that it's gonna have all the features of version 14.
So that's meaning that should be point-to-point driving
from parking space to parking space self-driving.
So I'm eager to get that V14 Lite here
in another two months or so
into our 2018 Model 3 performance.
But the question is,
when will these physical upgrades happen
to go from hardware three to AI four?
My guess, again, it's just purely speculation on my part,
but I would place a very, very tiny wager,
meaning like 10 bucks,
meaning I'm not afraid to lose that money.
I would say sometime about a year from now,
maybe end of Q1 or sometime in Q2 of next year.
And I'm basing that on the Q4 or Q1 estimate
that Elon gave us for full self-driving unsupervised
from earlier in this episode when I told you about that.
And yes, I know I need to take my own advice
and take that with a grain of salt.
And then, because the other thing that's due
in around a year from now is version 15.
So I would imagine that V14 Lite due in the end of June
is probably the end of the line
for major software updates to hardware three.
So if we get that at the end of June,
that can hopefully tide us over, if you will,
until they physically upgrade our cars to AI four.
And thus, okay, it means if we've got V14 Lite
for the second half of 2026,
and then, yeah, hopefully sometime a few months
into the new year after the Q4 end of year pushes over,
maybe it spills into Q2,
then we start getting these car upgrades.
At least I hope that's a reasonable prediction
and it doesn't turn into Q1 of 2029
or something crazy like that.
All right, next up.
I had hoped that someone would ask this
and the retail shareholders did and they upvoted it.
So bravo to all of you that were a factor in this.
The question was a follow-up
to Elon's recent post on X
that I talked about here on the podcast very recently
where he said that AI five, that chip,
would not be going into the cars.
So he was asked specifically about that
and here was his response.
Well, the reason AI five tape out finished early
was because the team worked incredibly hard
to make it happen.
And just over time, we gathered a lot of momentum,
but we did have to work every weekend for six months straight
including every holiday.
So it was a lot of sacrifice by team
and I was there of course, myself every weekend.
And fortunately we didn't encounter any major,
we didn't make any major mistakes
at least that we're aware of
that required pushing out the tape out.
So the team just did a great job
and worked incredibly hard is the reason.
Yeah, I do expect that AI five will go into Optimus
and into the data center
because it's looking like we'll be able to achieve
unsupervised self-driving with AI four
that is far greater than human safety levels.
So, which means it's not,
certainly not immediately needed in the car.
At some point, I think it will make sense for us to switch
to AI five in the car,
but there's not a pressing issue to do so.
So, but at some point the AI four hardware is going to get
like so old that it's like, okay,
the only reason they keep in the factory open is for AI four.
We are planning an AI four upgrade
to use a newer generation RAM.
So it'll go from 16 gigabytes to I think 32 gigabytes
per SOC, so a total of 64 gigabytes
and probably a 10% increase in compute
and sort of into trillions of operations per second
and in memory bandwidth.
So that's AI four, point one, AI four plus
probably goes into production middle of next year, I think.
It depends on Samsung's doing the modifications for us.
So it sort of depends on when they're able to finish that,
finish those modifications and bring it to production.
So AI four plus or maybe we call it AI 4.5, huh?
Piggybacking on top of what I was just saying
about the hardware three upgrades,
is that what the hardware three cars
are gonna get upgraded to?
And can existing AI four cars get that upgrade?
Cause having double the RAM sure would be nice.
And as for AI five, I think it's fair to say
that what I said about it last week was pretty accurate,
that I theorized that what he meant was
it won't go into cars at first, but then it will eventually
and that seems to be exactly the case here.
All right, next up for my European friends,
a question was asked about the RoboTaxi strategy for Europe.
Unfortunately, the answer didn't yield much good news,
but I wanted to play it for you regardless.
Well, we're probably jumping gun here on
RoboTaxi in Europe since it is,
took us an immense amount of time just to get supervised
self-driving approved in Europe.
And these, we don't control the regulators.
We push as hard as we can, but that's ultimately up
to the governments in Europe and the EU
to decide what to do.
So, yeah, as it is, we've only been approved
in Netherlands, we expect to be approved
in a lot of other countries.
And I think the supervised FSD goes to Brussels
for EU review in May, yeah.
So, obviously, the next thing beyond that
is to aim for unsupervised self-driving or RoboTaxi
in Europe, I actually don't know what the timeframe
for that is, and would be somewhat at the mercy
of the regulators as to when that approval would take place.
And from a technology standpoint,
what we deployed in Netherlands and Europe
is the same exact architecture
and the training procedure and so on,
except we had more Europe data,
and I suspect the same thing will be true
for unsupervised FSD as well.
Whatever we use to solve in the US
will work in other places in the rest of the world too,
provided we were able to add the data
from the local regions.
I appreciate that Elon didn't even try
to put a timeframe on it,
since he knows he has so little control over it in Europe.
And by the way, that's not a criticism on my part of Europe,
just an observation of the bureaucratic reality over there
when it comes to stuff like this.
Hopefully the rest of Europe, or at least a lot of it,
is gonna get full self-driving supervised
after that EU review in Brussels next month.
The next question was regarding Elon's post
about 14.3 of FSD being the, quote,
last piece of the puzzle for unsupervised.
So this was looking for some more clarity on that,
and here is what Tesla's CEO had to say.
No, I think 14.3 is last piece of the puzzle
for unsupervised FSD.
Now the question is like degrees of safety,
like how, safety and convenience, I suppose.
We have a lot of known improvements,
like major architectural improvements
that we know would improve the probability
of safety significantly.
So I think it's not gonna make sense for us to deploy
unsupervised FSD or overtaxi at large scale
when we know that there are major architectural improvements
to the software that can improve safety.
So I think we're gonna wanna finish writing
that software, validate it and release it
before going to large scale unsupervised FSD,
depending on what large scale means.
I mean, we are, of course, as I mentioned earlier,
doing unsupervised FSD in three cities,
and we'll expand on it to, like I said,
probably a dozen states or more later this year.
So kind of depends on where your definition
of large scale is.
But I do think it wouldn't be right for us to go to,
like very large scale unsupervised FSD
when we know that there are software improvements
in the pipeline that would improve safety.
Yep, and I'd like to note that the version of robot taxi
that's running in Austin, Dallas, Houston, et cetera,
those are essentially 14.3 variants.
And it's obviously safe that that's why we're able
to launch in those cities.
And we continue to expand based on the V13,
sorry, V14.3 base for a while until V15 lands.
And V15 is gonna be a major upgrade.
You know, I've always wondered what version of FSD
the robot taxis are running,
and now we know what they're currently,
at least currently running, a variant of 14.3.
I wonder what's different about that variant
besides just the obvious, which is the UI layer,
but it does sound like V15 is going to be
a significant upgrade just as 14 was over 13.
And so given the way that the Tesla team
talked about 15 versus 14 there,
and how it wouldn't be right to deploy unsupervised
at a large scale when they know there are a ton
of improvements still on the table
that are coming along in version 15,
I wouldn't be surprised if a polished 15,
so like a 15.1 or a 15.2,
if that ends up being the one
that delivers unsupervised to customers
rather than any version of 14.
We shall see over the next year or so.
The next question was about the recently announced
Moonshot TerraFab project.
We're still working out the details
of the TerraFab deployment.
In the near term, Tesla will be building
the research fab on our Gigatexa's campus.
This is something we expect to be probably,
a $3 billion-ish initiative,
and capable of maybe a few thousand wafers per month,
but it's really intended to try out ideas,
the research fab, both in terms of maybe,
we have some ideas for improving
the fundamental technology of how chips are made,
and some new physics we'd like to test out,
but we also want to test out the ability
to see if something is working in production.
So you need kind of like a few thousand wafers
to start a month to make sure
that a production process is sound.
And then SpaceX is going to take care of
like the initial phase of the scaled-up TerraFab,
and that's what we've figured out thus far.
Any kind of intra-company thing has to be approved
by both the SpaceX and Tesla board of directors.
It's got to go through a conflict resolution.
It's kind of a lot of, unfortunately a lot of complexity
because we've got to make sure Tesla shareholders are served
and SpaceX shareholders are served
and strike the right balance there.
So it takes a while to work through
the kind of independent director reviews on this.
So that's basically what we've figured out thus far
is Tesla's doing the research fab,
SpaceX's doing the initial part
of the large-scale TerraFab,
and then we got to figure out the rest.
And what about Intel's involvement?
Yeah, so Intel is excited to partner with us
on some of the core manufacturing technologies
so we plan to use Intel's 14A process,
which is state-of-the-art
and in fact not yet totally complete.
So but given that by the time TerraFab scales up,
14A will be probably fairly mature
or ready for prime time.
14A seems like the right move.
And we have a great relationship with Intel,
a lot of respect for the CEO, the CTO
and the new team there.
So we think it's going to be a great partnership.
Yeah, and the other thing on the research fab,
I think we've said it before,
we plan to do memory, logic, everything in the same place,
including masks because we want to have a quick iteration loop
so that we can see and basically scale the technologies
which we're trying to bring up.
Yeah, I think this will be unique in the world,
or at least I'm not aware of any place
where you have the lithography mask creation
and then logic, memory and packaging
in under one roof, in one building.
That's about the fastest I could possibly imagine
doing recursive research and development
and being able to try out some pretty radical ideas,
some of which have, it's kind of long shot stuff,
but if some of these long shots pan out
would be radical improvements in the way chefs work.
So it sounds like the TerraFab is still
in the pretty early planning phases
and that this research fab at Gigatexus,
the smaller facility, will be like the warm up version of it.
So indeed a long, long way to go
on this gargantuan undertaking.
I probably wouldn't expect any significant updates
on this for a while personally,
but it's not as if Tesla's lacking in big projects
to talk about these days.
So I've got two more clips for you to play.
This next one is a great question from an analyst
asking about the recent reports about the Model Z,
again as I'm calling it, without explicitly naming it.
It was really framed very well
and here's what Elon had to say.
I mean, CyberCAP is good to contact people.
It's actually, I mean, it's very roomy,
but it's a two person vehicle.
And we do think probably most of our production long term
will be CyberCAP because 90% of miles driven
are with two or one or two people.
So it would mean that, you know,
you'd want a vast majority of your production to be CyberCAP.
Then over time it's gonna make sense
for our whole lineup to be autonomous vehicles
of different sizes.
And I did talk a bit about this
when we did the kind of AI day and LA at Warner Brothers
and showed like this is our current lineup
and this is what, you know,
some idea of what our future lineup will be,
which is that it's gonna be almost entirely autonomous.
In fact, long term, the only manually driven car
will be the New York Tesla Roadster.
Speaking of which, we may be able to debut that
in a month or so.
It requires a lot of testing and validation
before we can actually have a demo
and not, you know, have something go wrong with the demo.
But I think it will be one of the most exciting
product unveils ever.
I'm not sure, I don't think it moves the needle massively
from a revenue standpoint, so, but it is very cool.
I think it might be one of the most spectacular demos ever.
You know, I've been doing this podcast long enough
and listening to these earnings calls for long enough
to, I think, say with some amount of confidence
that I feel like the old Elon
from like six or seven years ago
probably would have either spilled the beans outright
on the Cyberban and or the Model Z,
but the new Elon has gotten better about not doing this.
But still, I do have every bit of faith in my source
about the Cyberban and Reuters sources about the Model Z,
that those cars are happening
and Elon just did a good job there
of not showing his hand at all.
Plus, my source who said that the Model YL
will launch here in September, don't forget about that.
That's another new vehicle that should be finding its way
to our shores here pretty soon.
In fact, as a bit of corroborating evidence
of the Model YL coming stateside,
a camouflaged Model YL was spotted on the roads
here in the San Francisco Bay Area
near Tesla's engineering offices down in Palo Alto.
And they're not gonna dare run one of those cars
on US roads covered up or not
unless it was actually coming to this market.
So I feel like it's pretty strong corroborating evidence there
that my source is indeed correct about the Model YL.
So there's some good news.
Less good news is another delay
in the new Roadster Re-Reveal.
We're pushed out another month, presumably,
until around the end of May.
And thus I will very tentatively
and lightly in pencil circle Thursday, May 28th
on my calendar.
I've erased Thursday, April 30th,
which I had similarly circled lightly in pencil.
And I know, again, I know a lot of people
are gonna dunk on this
because it's yet another delay for the vaporware car.
And hey, I mean, I get it.
I totally get it.
But as I've pointed out on recent podcasts,
there are patent applications now.
There are job listings specifically for this car now.
There are real indications
that the Roadster is finally getting made.
So hopefully we'll finally get this epic demo
in another month or so.
Although I know I said that a month or so ago.
So it continues, but eventually it's gonna happen.
Why not next month?
That's my attitude here.
The final clip I have for you
is the answer from Ashok and Elon
about what key safety metrics that Tesla's looking at
on the RoboTaxi's when they look to remove
the safety driver from the car
and or widen the service area for RoboTaxi.
Take a listen.
Yeah, we track basically all the metrics that you mentioned.
We have a pretty large QA fleet
spread across all of the United States.
And then we look at any intervention that could happen
and then sort of simulate both in practice
and also in our simulators
that are very, very good nowadays using neural networks
as what would have happened.
And then based on all these analysis,
we in the end make the call to expand.
And so far, all of the expansions have gone
according to our expectations.
Yeah, a lot of the limiting,
a lot of what limits wider deployment of RoboTaxi
are actually not safety issues, but convenience issues
or the car basically gets paranoid and gets stuck.
Like sometimes it gets,
because it's programmed for maximum safety.
So the problem is that then it sometimes just
gets scared to do things.
So like sometimes gets scared to cross railroads, for example,
or it'll get stuck at a light where there's,
the light never changes from red.
Or I mean, there was one kind of amusing situation
where a whole bunch of RoboTaxi's got stuck
in the left turn lane in Austin
because a kid in not a Waymo had crashed into a bus.
And so they could not turn left
because the Waymo had crashed into the bus.
And so you had this like long line of like,
I don't know, it does no more.
It has a RoboTaxi's that were waiting for the bus to move,
but the bus was never gonna move
because the Waymo has crashed into the bus.
So that obviously drives people crazy
if there's a whole bunch of RoboTaxi's blocking the whole road.
So it's a ton of things like that.
That's a single biggest thing is just the car
being scared to move or getting kind of stuck
in situations like that.
We've also had literal infinite loops
where the car might wanna make a turn into a road,
but there's construction,
and then it goes around the block,
tries to turn into the road with construction,
goes around the block, tries to turn the road.
And so you have to stop the infinite looping,
literal infinite looping.
So those are actually,
and those are by far the issues that we have to resolve
as opposed to direct safety issues.
We've all seen the videos of Waymo's
getting stuck doing weird stuff, right?
I mean, as Elon noted here,
there are definitely going to be videos
of Tesla RoboTaxi's getting stuck
in the same kind of weird ways every now and again,
but more and more of those weird convenience issues,
as Elon called them,
will get ironed out as FSD unsupervised
gets closer and closer.
All right, that's everything I wanted to play for you
in this quarter's earnings call.
Hope you enjoyed my recap and analysis of this one.
And before I start to wind down the show,
there's one other bit of other EV news
that I wanted to mention.
I did not want to let this week go by
without giving a shout out,
a congratulations to everybody on the team at Rivian.
The first customer R2s have come off the production line.
Still waiting on deliveries.
Those are expected probably in June,
is what the sort of scuttle butt seems to be on that.
But the first customer cars coming off the production line,
it's that's such an awesome milestone for them.
And if you're curious about what the first one is,
it is a, I mean, of course, it's a dual motor performance
as all of the initial run of Rivian R2s are going to be.
But the first customer R2 off the line
is has white paint and CEO RJ Scarron's drove it off
the assembly line as sort of a celebratory moment.
And again, that should mean that we are not too far away
from those first official customer deliveries.
By the way, this got me thinking
and I'm gonna give you a quick bit of Tesla trivia here.
I remember this vividly.
So I'm just curious if anybody else does test yourself.
There's no points involved.
So no worries if you don't happen to remember this.
Do you remember the spec of the first production Model 3
off the production line at the Fremont factory?
Elon Musk had posted a picture of it
on back when it was still Twitter in 2017.
And it was his car, Vin number one, and that car,
which by the way, I've said this before,
I'm gonna say it again here,
that car I firmly believe should be in a museum.
And if anybody connected to Elon is listening to this,
maybe just whisper that in his ear like,
hey, where's your Model 3?
Where's Vin number one?
Where is that car?
We should, you should put that in a museum.
It's history.
Somebody should just whisper that in his ear.
Anyway, Vin number one of the Model 3 is a black paint,
black interior, long range rear wheel drive,
cause all of them were in the beginning,
just as all of the initial R2s are dual motor performance,
black on black, long range rear wheel drive
with the 19 inch sport wheels.
So that's the spec, that was the very first
production Model 3 off the line.
All right, that's all of the Tesla
and a little bit of extra EV news for you this week.
Stick with me, I am gonna come back around
to start to wind things down.
The ride the lighting hotline,
there's no time for it this week
cause we're already pushing 90 minutes
by the time I get said and done here.
So that's kind of par for the course
with the earnings call episodes.
Usually just run at a time
for your ride the lighting hotline calls.
But if you'd like to call in,
if you've got something to say,
a question to ask, whatever it is,
a topic of discussion,
please do feel free to call in
and I will get to it on an upcoming episode.
There are two easy ways to call in.
Either use your smartphone's built in voice recording
software and just record your question.
Please try to keep it to 90 seconds or less
and send it my way at teslapodcastatgmail.com.
That's the email address.
Or you can call in and leave a message
on the ride the lighting hotline.
The toll free number to dial is 1-888-989-8745.
That number again, 1-888-989-TSLA.
This is Steve Downs, the voice of Master Chief Sierra 117.
You're listening to Ride the Lightning,
the Tesla unofficial podcast.
You know that cyber truck looks a lot like a warthog,
doesn't it?
Master Chief out.
As for what's going on with me and my car this week,
while I was on my way back from an allergist appointment
today in fact, and on my way north up the freeway
towards San Francisco, just as I was passing
the San Francisco International Airport,
very unmistakably in front of me.
Not one, but two cyber cabs.
So two more engineering prototypes.
I could see the cyber truck steering wheels
in there, the squircles.
But yeah, it's, I have to say, coming up on it
directly from behind, like I was in the same lane,
the straight from behind angle,
really bad angle on the car is,
because with the no back window,
since of course there's no human driving
that needs to look through a rear view window.
But man, the view from the back
is not awesome on that car.
Again, I'm still, I'm not feeling it yet,
like in terms of seeing it on the road
and the design of it.
I will say this, it definitely stands out.
Like it doesn't look like any other car on the road.
So if you're hailing a cyber cab,
you've ordered one, you've got a ride coming,
you're not gonna be like, wait, which model, why is it?
Which car is it?
Like no, you're gonna be like, okay, yeah, that one.
It's that very unique looking car right there.
And again, I know it's all about efficiency,
it's like maximum efficiency and 0% sexiness,
but yeah, I'm not loving the look of it
out in the wild so far.
We'll see if my opinion on that evolves over time.
Here's an entertainment recommendation for you
for this week, it's another video game,
and it's a good one, it's one I'm having
a very good time with.
It's called Mouse PI for hire,
and it's with a bunch of anthropomorphic mice,
you play a detective, and it's in black and white,
it's done like hand animated,
it looks like a Steamboat Willie cartoon,
like by design, and the animation's phenomenal,
the gameplay, the first person shooter gameplay
is really solid.
I'm having an excellent time with it so far,
I've still got a long ways to go in it,
but really digging that one.
It's out on pretty much everything,
so PC, Xbox, PlayStation, and I believe it's also
on Nintendo Switch, I don't know if it's just Switch 2,
but you can Google it if you're curious,
depending on which platform you own,
but there's my entertainment recommendation for this week.
And now, from you guys, the audience,
here is your Tesla Pro tip of the week.
It comes from long time listener,
Rome, from the North Bay,
here in the greater San Francisco Bay area.
Hey, Ryan, this is Rome up in the wine country.
I found a secret that I think very few people
out there know about, so I'd like to share it with you.
Driving to Las Vegas, we had to get to
Lost Hills Superchargers because it's the best,
and I found myself being very, very close in power
to get there, so if you go under controls,
safety, you'll find a speed limit mode
that's about three quarters the way down,
and speed limit mode means that you can set
your maximum speed, which FSD will adhere to.
You slide it over to activate,
and then you enter a pin number, and you're on your way.
It's a very clever way to try to manipulate
any close calls with your energy management
by making a max speed that keeps your car very slow,
extending your range.
Hope that helps a lot of people.
It is a great prototype, in my opinion.
Great job, Ryan, keep it up.
Rome, I love this one.
It does seem like a semi-hidden way,
kind of a workaround to keep FSD's top speed in check a bit.
Thanks so much for sending this in.
Appreciate the call.
If anybody else out there has a good Tesla
or EV pro tip of the week, I'd love to hear it.
I'd love for you to call in so I can share it
with all the other owners and enthusiasts out there,
and we can all grow our collective EV knowledge base.
So to send that in, send it in the regular same way
that you'd send in a ride the lightning hotline call,
and I gave you the two easy call-in methods for that
just a few minutes ago.
Some hopefully useful to you friends
of ride the lightning before I go.
I'll start with RPM Tesla.
They've got over 1400 Tesla products
that ensure compatibility with Tesla's warranties
and safety systems.
They design everything in-house.
So their stuff is largely aesthetic.
A lot of just beautiful stuff,
steering wheel upgrades, dashboards, spoilers,
even full carbon fiber body kits.
You can buy with confidence.
They do not charge restocking fees
or require customers to pay for return shipping
if you're dissatisfied.
But odds are you won't be dissatisfied
because their product return rate is less than 3%.
RPM believes selling high quality products
and standing behind them fosters brand loyalty.
They also have over 600 DIY installation videos.
So installing their products after you've bought them
is simple and detailed for all Tesla owners.
Check them out at rpmtesla.com
and use the promo code RTLSAIL for an additional,
pardon me, five to 10% off your next order.
That's R-T-L-S-A-L-E, all one word, no spaces.
RTLSAIL for an extra discount there.
Check them out, rpmtesla.com.
AbstractOcean.com also has a whole ton of Tesla parts
and accessories, a lot of aftermarket.
Just anything you can probably think of,
they most likely have.
But not just Tesla Rivian stuff too.
So you gotta check them out to see what they have.
Like I would be here for another hour
if I tried to tell you everything
that's on the abstractOcean.com website.
Like when I click on Model 3, like my Model 3 here,
I mean there's even so many different categories.
Product type, here's, I'll just give you some product types.
Lighting, phone slash charging,
exterior, emblems, decorative stickers,
cleaning and tools, center console accessories,
interior, trunk and frunk, vinyl stuff,
wraps and decals, wheel accessories,
that those are just some of the categories.
Then there are a bunch of products within that.
So go take a look, abstractOcean.com.
And when you've got everything you like
in your online shopping cart and you go to checkout,
use the coupon code RTLpodcast to get 15% off of your first
or that's very generous, 15%.
Coupon code again is all one word, no spaces.
And that word is RTLpodcast.
The infinity shield.
This again, this is the garage door opener sensor.
It's compatible with any and all garage door openers.
It's super easy to install,
doesn't require any special tools.
And it turns your garage door threshold basically
into like the laser grid that protects the hope diamond.
Just like a massive cross section of 25 beams
so that if anything gets in the path of your garage door
and you hit that button and that garage door
starting to come down, it's gonna,
the infinity shield's gonna catch it
and stop the door from coming down
and hitting your roof, your hatchback door.
We know whatever the case, whatever's impeding,
whatever's in that threshold,
you don't want it getting hit by the garage door.
The infinity shield stops that.
This is like a bullet proof,
once in a lifetime solution.
You get it once and you're good forever.
It is awesome and I do recommend it.
Go to infinity-shield.com.
And that's by the way,
infinity spelled the regular word way,
not infinity the car brand where they put an I on the end.
Infinity with a Y, dash shield.com
and use the promo code RTL at checkout
for a very nice $35 discount on the infinity shield.
How about my friend, Jeff at Immaculate Reflections.
He does such incredible detailing work
here in the San Francisco Bay area.
So if you're in or gonna be in
the greater San Francisco Bay area with a car
that you love, whether it's your Tesla
or something else in the garage
and you wanna get it,
just get it looking better than ever.
Whether that's through paint correction
to actually get into the finish
and get some of those imperfections out
that can build up over time.
Maybe you wanna do ceramic coating
so you don't have to spend twice a year waxing the car
for the next five years,
because a ceramic coating will last five, maybe more years.
I got seven years out of mine on our 2018.
It's on its second coat now.
Maybe you wanna do paint protection film
to protect that paint, as the name implies,
at the front of the car,
maybe all the key areas, the rocker panels,
or maybe the rear bumper, or maybe even the whole car.
Whatever you wanna do.
Any of those professional detailing services,
there is a Ride the Lightning Listener discount available.
So go to the website irdetailing.com.
There's a contact button both in the upper left corner
and in the middle of the homepage.
Click that, reach out to Jeff.
Let him know what you're looking to have done.
He'll work with you on budget and timing and all that.
And make sure to mention up front
that you are a Ride the Lightning Listener
and you will have that Ride the Lightning Listener discount
kindly extended to you
with any work that you have done.
The snap plate or snap plate plus
available at everyamp.com slash RTL.
This is a great product, I also recommend.
This is the front license plate bracket
for people like me that don't like having
to have a front license plate bracket,
but you gotta do it.
This is the one, it's a nice super clean minimal design.
Doesn't, it doesn't get in the way of anything,
whether it functionally or aesthetically, right?
So it's just a nice looking,
minimal front license plate bracket.
If you go with the snap plate plus, it's extra strong.
So it's gonna hold up if you happen to,
anything bumps it, whatever the case may be.
Both the regular snap plate and the snap plate plus
are made from recycled, made in the USA plastics
with stainless steel reinforcements.
Check them out, again, it's everyamp.com slash RTL.
And there's a discount code for you
and that code is RTL.
Finally, my Patreon, I mentioned it earlier,
I'll just mention it one more time here real quick.
Patreon.com slash Tesla podcast.
That is the website to go to if you see it in your heart
to support what I'm doing here with Ride the Lightning
every single week for over 10 years every single Sunday.
I'm very grateful to be able to still say that,
still claim every Sunday.
And very proud of that too, if I may.
So I would be super grateful for any support
you may be able to throw my way.
I do offer thank yous at every support tier
of the Patreon.
The whole thing starts at just five bucks a month.
There is also an annual pledge option.
If you just wanna pledge once to support me for a year,
you can do that at any of the tiers
and there's a thank you for that.
In addition to the thank yous you get
for whatever tier you're on,
the thank you for the annual pledge is a 10% discount.
And then you'll still get all the perks and bonuses
that are at each of those pledge tiers.
Like I was telling you about earlier,
the $5 a month tier, you'll still get early access
to each week's episode and you'll get an ad-free version
of that early access episode as well.
10 bucks a month, the most popular tier
gets to the ad-free early access
and all of those lightning round mini episodes.
So check it out, patreon.com slash teslapodcast
and I sincerely appreciate your consideration.
You can find me on pretty much all the major podcast services
like Apple podcasts and Spotify,
tune in as well as YouTube podcasts
to find me just search ride the lightning Tesla
and you should see this podcast pop right up,
click the follow button, boom, you're done,
it's free, doesn't cost you anything.
And what that'll do for you is every time
there's a new episode, which for this podcast
is every Sunday at 9 a.m. Eastern, 6 a.m. Pacific,
you will get a push notification reminder
on your device letting you know,
hey, there's a new episode to ride the lightning for you.
Just tap that, it'll take you straight to the episode
and you can begin listening.
Finally, you can follow me on X and or on Instagram,
same username on both.
That username is DMC underscore Ryan.
You can also email me anytime about Tesla
or EV related stuff.
My email address is teslapodcast at gmail.com.
And before I sign off for this week,
I just wanna say hello and thank you
to the top tier super generous Patreon backers.
They're very generous support, so greatly appreciated,
helping me out, helping my family out.
So part of their thank yous as they get,
as part of their monthly pledge is a shout out
at the end of each week show.
So here we go, I'll start with the Roadster
and Space Tier backers.
Thank you to Pete White, Lyle Austin, Steve Radspinner,
Fernando Cordero, Lawton from Chicago,
Sean Nydig, Neil Weaver, Jackson Wallace,
Rolf and Jennifer Evers, Howard Anthony Smith,
Victoria Aya Caveto, Tesla Hitchhiker 42,
Carol Weston, Robert from near Philly,
American Home Contractors, Doug Carey,
Michael Gallo and Tony Figueroa.
Next up, the Maximum Plaid Tier.
Huge thanks to Jonathan Wales, Cameron Clark,
Daniel Grummer, Seth Capello, the Galpin family,
Ryan from New York City, Darren Nicol,
Cos Barnes, Patrick Wisnesky, Todd Badger, Joe Edgel,
Kevin Yank, the Tesla Owners Club of San Joaquin Valley,
Will Steadman, Jeremy Harris, Chris Beech,
Tom Mills, Cory O'Donnell, Aaron, Joel Sap,
Paul Casarino, Chris Osborn, KB, Adam Lavoie,
Jason Chalukis, Travis Krenzel, Bruce Otterstein,
Tom Behan, Josh Pennington, John from Cream Ridge, New Jersey,
Dustin Hart, Derek Finley, Charles Clement,
Damon Klein, Jeff Brown, Jerry Slinger,
Kenneth Corbett, Brian Bertoglio, Kim Bae,
Troy Sievers, Chip Hooper, Matt Chinander,
Robert Moran, Rav, Christopher Mann,
Michael Williams, Eric Harbert, Scott Sheper and Tom Tharp.
And lastly, the grandfathered and Plaid level supporters.
Thank you so much to George Casiopo, Logan Willis,
Peter Chalet, Eric Randolph, Dory and Steve Guberman,
the Tesla Owners Club of Taiwan, Ron Lee,
Charlie Gillespie, Jeff Angwin, Chase Cabaneas,
the Lydia family, Aaron Altschul, Jared Brown,
Jamie Dalton, Mike and Barbara from Louisville,
Matt Nixon, the Tesla Owners Club of Wisconsin,
Ish, not Elon Musk in quotes,
Peter and the Bear Boys of Colorado.
And with that, another quarterly earnings call show
is in the books here, episode 560.
Now normally I do try to aim for our monthly
Patreon hangouts on Zoom the first Saturday of the month,
but I will actually be away.
I'm doing my annual baseball trip with my uncles.
We're doing a little earlier in the season
than we typically have been.
That's just kind of how everybody's schedules worked out.
And if I have any listeners in Boston,
look for me on Nessun.
You might see me on one of the Red Sox games, I doubt it,
but you never know.
I'll be at Fenway Park,
which I've had the pleasure of being to before.
One of my uncles has not, which is incredible
because he's been a baseball fan longer than me
because he's older than me.
But yeah, really looking forward to visiting Fenway.
For me of the, I don't know how many ball parks
I've visited now, a number of the ones I've been to
are gone, right?
And there are newer ball parks that have replaced them.
But I guess I've probably, of the current ball parks,
I've probably been to, I mean,
definitely well over a dozen of them,
maybe close to half at this point,
something like that over the course of many years.
Anyway, Fenway is my favorite so far
of the ones I've been to.
It is Fenway, it's been a while since I've been there,
but man, what a special place that is.
Wrigley is incredible too, but I just, I don't know,
something Fenway just really, really clicked with me.
So I'm looking forward to getting back
for the first time in a long time.
Anyway, I say that to note that I will have a vacation show
for you next week.
I've prepared something original, something new.
So it just, it won't be current events
for whatever happens next week in the world of Tesla and EVs.
But I am thrilled with how this turned out.
It's, and I'm looking forward to sharing that with you.
So if you're kind enough to be backing me on Patreon
at any level, I will have that for you
extra, extra early this week.
You know, there's, I'm gonna be going away.
So there's no reason for me to not just share that
with the very generous folks supporting me on Patreon
at the, at a super early time in the week
because it'll be done and ready to go.
So look for that.
And then in two weeks, I'll be back
with the regular weekly thing that I do here.
So with that, I wish you all happy electric motoring
and I will see you back here.
Well, a prerecorded version of me
will see you back here next week.
Elon Musk, people don't like Elon Musk.
The guy founded PayPal and Tesla.
And people are like, yeah, but he's a troll and a bad dad.
I'm like, so is mine.
He did nothing to fight climate change.
They do.
Also, have you been in a Tesla?
Have you been in a Tesla?
My buddy let me drive a Tesla.
I laughed out loud at how fast it went.
Been clinically depressed my entire life
on dozens of medications in a Tesla
for 13 seconds cured forever.
I mean, I think a Tesla
is the most fun thing you could possibly buy ever.
That's what it's meant to be.
Our goal is to make...
It's not exactly a car.
It's actually a thing to maximize enjoyment.
It's maximum fun.
About this episode
Tesla’s Q1 2026 earnings kick off with big plans for AI compute, supply-chain resilience, and ramps for CyberCab, Semi, MegaPak 3, and Optimus. The headline for Hardware 3 owners: unsupervised FSD won’t run on HW3, but Tesla will offer discounted trade-ins and an upgrade path to AI4—including replacing the computer and cameras—via “micro factories.” V14 Lite is slated for end of June for HW3. Elon also reiterates FSD v15 timing (end of year/early next), cautious unsupervised robo-taxi expansion, and a July/August Optimus V3 demo window. Roadster reveal slips again to late May.
Tesla held its quarterly earnings call for Q1 2026, and we got a big update on Tesla's plan to upgrade the Hardware 3 cars for people that paid for FSD. Plus: we now have a better idea of when to expect the upcoming v14 "Lite" release for HW3 and the next-gen Roadster reveal, and more! Watch Jason Cammisa's Model S video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwnJzP0TlCk
If you enjoy the podcast and would like to support my efforts, please check out my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/teslapodcast and consider a monthly or (10% discounted!) annual pledge. Every little bit helps, and you can support for just $5 per month. And there are stacking bonuses in it for you at each pledge level, like early access to each episode at the $5 tier and the weekly Lightning Round bonus mini-episode (AND the early access!) at the $10 tier! And NO ADS at every Patreon tier!
Also, don't forget to leave a message on the Ride the Lightning hotline anytime with a question, comment, or discussion topic for next week's show! The toll-free number to call is 1-888-989-8752.
INTERESTED IN A FLEXIBLE EXTENDED WARRANTY FOR YOUR TESLA? Be a part of the future of transportation with XCare, the first extended warranty designed & built exclusively for EV owners, by EV owners. Use the code Lightning to get $100 off their "One-time Payment" option! Go to www.xcelerateauto.com/xcare to find the extended warranty policy that's right for you and your Tesla.
P.S. Get 15% off your first order of awesome aftermarket Tesla accessories at AbstractOcean.com by using the code RTLpodcast at checkout. Grab the SnapPlate front license plate bracket for any Tesla at https://everyamp.com/RTL/ (don't forget the coupon code RTL too!). Enhance your car with cool carbon-fiber upgrades from RPMTesla.com and use the promo code RTLsale for 5-10% off your next purchase. And make your garage door foolproof with the Infinity Shield – get yours at https://www.infinity-shield.com and use the promo code RTL at checkout for a $35 discount.
