Login

u/kris_sheppard

Weekly Tesla Brief (May 11 – May 17, 2026)
▲ 22 r/teslainvestorsclub

Weekly Tesla Brief (May 11 – May 17, 2026)

Unsupervised Robotaxi Fleet

City Now 7D 30D
Austin 28 0 +15
Houston 6 0 +6
Dallas 5 0 +5
Total 39 0 +26

Source: Robotaxi Tracker

Brief from theteslathesis.com

  • FSD 14.33 released; Elon confirms 14.3 stack sufficient for unsupervised deployment.
  • Tesla unredacts all 17 NHTSA robotaxi crash reports; teleoperator failures flagged.
  • Las Vegas Cybercab maintenance facility permitted; launch targeted within ~45 days.
  • Belgium announces 5,000 km FSD supervised trial; EU vote window summer–autumn 2026.
  • Cybercab testing confirmed in Colorado — first state beyond known markets.
  • Model Y prices raised up to $1,000 — first increase in two years.
  • Multiple Megapack contracts signed: $2.7B Georgia Power, $556M China, 1 GWh Scotland.

Autonomous Driving

  • FSD 14.3 is the operative unsupervised deployment version; v15 is not a prerequisite. Elon confirmed on the Q1 call (reiterated this week) that 14.3 is a sufficient architectural base for unsupervised FSD, with reasoning capabilities extending through point releases. V15 — described as a "complete overhaul of the software architecture" running on AI4 — is targeted for late 2026 or early 2027 as a further safety magnitude improvement, not a gating item. FSD 14.33 released mid-week; Bhakdi's Mars Catalog rated it "extremely positive."

  • Belgium is moving fastest in Europe. Director of Transportation for Flanders announced a 5,000 km FSD Supervised trial on Flemish roads, stating Tesla can begin "tomorrow." Sweden's Transport Agency said a consumer launch could come "at the earliest during the summer or autumn of 2026." Ireland confirmed active talks with Tesla. The EU-wide TCMV vote window is now expected summer–autumn 2026, with Belgium and Sweden the leading bilateral paths if bloc approval slips again.

  • FSD China approval flagged as the single largest near-term catalyst. During Elon's May 13 Beijing trip, FSD regulatory approval was reportedly his stated priority. Tesla posted China FSD data-labeling roles marked "urgent" and a robotaxi-specific hiring posting appeared in China for the first time — the operational sequence being FSD approval → supervised rollout → robotaxi launch, likely requiring Giga Shanghai-produced vehicles.

  • Cortex 2 live at 250 MW; first cluster training both FSD and Optimus. Came online approximately April 2026, targeting 500 MW by mid-2026 with ~100,000 additional GPUs. Cortex 1 continues scaling FSD training. The simultaneous dual workload on Cortex 2 is new this week and underappreciated, per brighterwithherbert.

  • FSD 14.3.2 coast-to-coast Cannonball Run: 2,833 miles, 49 hours 55 minutes, zero disengagements. Completed California-to-New York with human input only at charging stops, beating the prior FSD record by 8.5 hours. Tesla Vision superhuman night reconstruction (photon-count AI rebuilding sun-blinded scenes) cited as the core architectural advantage enabling adverse-condition performance.

Robotaxi

  • Elon: scaling bottleneck is convenience, not safety. Both Elon and Ashok confirmed zero accidental passenger injuries across the full robotaxi deployment history. Elon's characterization: "A lot of what limits wider deployment of robotaxi are actually not safety issues, but convenience issues where the car basically gets paranoid and gets stuck" — including routing loops and excessive caution near construction. Robotaxi revenue described as "not super material this year" but "material in a significant way" in 2027.

  • Las Vegas Cybercab infrastructure materializing. Tesla filed a Clark County permit for a ~36,000 sq ft automated Cybercab maintenance facility with ~55 parking spots — "Phase 2" designation implies concurrent Phase 1 work. Dillon Loomis puts the Las Vegas robotaxi launch at approximately 45 days out. Tesla is actively hiring robotaxi operations roles in 33 U.S. cities per job posting analysis.

  • Cybercab production units now moving out of Giga Texas. Approximately 14 new production Cybercabs were spotted departing the Giga Texas outbound lot (per cernbasher/Tegtmeyer footage), with units also sighted on public roads in Miami, San Francisco, and Houston, and confirmed testing in Colorado — the first state beyond current operating markets. Production rate estimates remain divergent: 20–40 units/day (brighterwithherbert/Tegtmeyer) vs. 5–15/day (Loomis).

  • Munster's rerating threshold: 5,000+ vehicles and 5–10% of U.S. ride-hailing. He estimates Waymo at ~4 million miles/day versus Tesla robotaxi at ~80,000 miles/day — roughly 50-to-1 — but maintains Tesla holds the superior long-term cost structure. Bhakdi's view: 10,000 robotaxis by year-end pushes the stock through $700 toward $1,000. Analyst consensus puts Cybercab's first commercial paid deployment in the July–September window.

Optimus

  • Optimus V3 design reportedly signed off per an unverified but cited source on X. Fremont Model S/X line is being cleared and Optimus assembly infrastructure is being installed, targeting up to 1 million units/year long-term. Tesla is hiring "data collection operator – Optimus" roles across at least 12 locations, consistent with Elon's stated goal of deploying ~5,000 units internally for training data generation.

  • Chinese supply chain committed to 70,000-unit readiness for 2026. A December 2025 sourced leak from "Tesla Ming" indicates Chinese Optimus component suppliers prepared supply chain capacity for 70,000 units this year; seven key partners have already passed Tesla's PPA certification. First bulk purchase orders placed with component suppliers, with large-scale ramp targeted August 2026.

  • No analyst has Optimus in their model — framed as asymmetric optionality. Piper Sandler's Alex Potter explicitly states investors are "getting Optimus for free" at $400/share and will begin incorporating it only once revenue arrives. Munster cautions against head fakes from small pilots: the true rerating event is a credible third-party commercial customer taking delivery at scale, which he rates as 5–10 years out.

  • Optimus requires more compute than FSD due to higher-dimensional action and perception space — the explicit rationale for Cortex 2's scale and its simultaneous training role. Elon has changed course on the tendon-driven forearm hand design described in the original patent; Optimus hand architecture is flagged as a key area to watch.

Tesla Semi

  • Tesla Semi enters first commercial demo under load. Covenant Logistics began a 3-week demo on May 13 running a full freight load on the 500-mile variant in California, with estimated annual fuel savings of $60,000–$80,000 per truck. Tesla Semi's E-PTO delivers 25 kW to refrigerated trailers, eliminating diesel auxiliary motors — hosts cite ~50% cost-per-mile savings in California versus diesel.

Energy

  • Multiple large Megapack contracts confirmed as executed. Georgia Power: $2.7B, 3+ GW. China: $556M. Scotland: 1 GWh. France: 240 MW (described as one of France's largest grid storage projects). Per brighterwithherbert, these are purchase orders, not pipeline. A new Megablock product is scheduled to ramp H2 2026.

  • BYD overtook Tesla as top global BESS integrator in 2025. BYD shipped 60+ GWh (13% share) versus Tesla's 46.7 GWh (10%), per Benchmark Mineral Intelligence — Tesla's first year out of the top position since 2023. Eight of the top 10 global integrators are Chinese; BYD's HaoHan system offers 14.5 MWh per unit versus Tesla Megapack 3's 5 MWh.

  • Giga Berlin 4680 expansion advancing: $250M for 18 GWh annual capacity. Cell production starts H1 2027; at 18 GWh output, the facility could supply cells for ~240,000–350,000 vehicles per year, potentially covering most of Giga Berlin's output in-house. Cumulative cell investment in Grünheide now approaches €1 billion.

Electric Vehicles

  • Model Y prices raised up to $1,000 — first increase in approximately two years. Premium RWD rises to $45,990 (+$1,000), Premium AWD to $49,990 (+$1,000), Performance AWD to $57,990 (+$500); base trims unchanged. Electrek reads the selective trim increases as margin-capture on high-profitability configurations, not a broad demand signal.

  • Panasonic raised U.S. battery sales forecast +19% to 46 GWh for fiscal year ending March 2027, explicitly citing Tesla's ongoing market share recovery. With the broader U.S. EV market projected roughly flat, Panasonic is implicitly forecasting Tesla outperforms the segment.

  • Model Y L confirmed for Southeast Asia/Singapore with U.S. arrival expected by end of 2026. A brief appearance on Tesla's U.S. website and Bay Area test sightings support a 2026 U.S. launch, projected at ~$55,000–$60,000. Tesla Canada is expected to claim a disproportionate share of the 49,000-vehicle/year Chinese EV import quota via Giga Shanghai Model 3 exports.

Financials

  • Tesla 2026 capex guidance raised from >$20B to >$25B. Cash on hand remains >$30B. Munster characterizes the market's negative reaction as a "headscratcher" for a company building paradigm-shifting infrastructure that is roughly breakeven on cash flow. Q1 2026 profit was approximately $63M/day; FSD subscriptions contributed ~6.9% — higher than expected given their recurring, high-margin nature.

  • Bhakdi revised his 2030 base case downward to $4,000/share (from $6,000), citing increased caution on robotaxi and Optimus scaling timelines. Munster anchors at $600 by end of 2027. Bhakdi's near-term sequence: $490 prior high → $700 possible by November 2026 → $4,000 by 2030 on a standalone basis.

Market & Competition

  • SpaceX IPO targeted June 12 under ticker SPCX at approximately $2 trillion. Road show reportedly slated for June 8; early indications suggest 4x oversubscribed with 12–20x projected for round two. Ron Baron's $1.7B investment is reportedly now worth ~$15B; he plans to buy $1B more at IPO. The brighterwithherbert panel consensus: IPO generates a 10–15% Tesla halo lift, not a rotation out.

  • Honda books first annual loss in ~70 years — $9B+ in EV restructuring costs, abandoned its 2040 full-EV goal, suspended $11B Canadian EV investment. Mazda delayed its first dedicated EV platform to at least 2029 and cut EV investment by ~45%. Porsche announced 500+ job cuts. Legacy automaker competitive retreat framed as a structural Tesla tailwind.

  • Bhakdi flags 30-year U.S. bond yields approaching 5% as macro risk. The 10-year moved 14 bps in a single week; Iran's Strait of Hormuz blockade (20%+ of global oil) is cited as the root inflation pressure. Tesla dropped ~4.75% Friday on low volume (~40M shares vs. ~65M average) — attributed to "sell the news" following the Beijing summit, not thesis-specific deterioration.

Bear Case of the Week

  • Tesla Austin robotaxi crash rate approximately 4x worse than the human driver average. Per Reuters, Tesla reported 15 crashes to NHTSA since August 2025 — roughly one per 57,000 miles versus the human baseline of one per 229,000 miles (per Tesla's own vehicle safety data). Tesla had been the only ADS operator to fully redact all crash narratives before removing confidentiality designations this week. Teleoperator failures caused two of the 17 incidents: a July 2025 collision into a metal fence at 8 mph and a January 2026 impact into a construction barricade at ~9 mph. Spatial awareness failures — reversing into wooden poles, clipping trailer hitches, contacting metal chains — appear in several additional incidents.

  • Austin service reliability failures documented by independent and official sources. A Reuters three-week April 2026 study found no cars available 27% of the time and wait times exceeding 15 minutes roughly half the time. A 5-mile Dallas trip took nearly two hours, including a car that failed a left turn four times before remote intervention. Elon himself acknowledged the core problem: routing loops and excessive caution. Dillon Loomis: "I'm very confident you're going to end up disappointed unless we see significant geofence expansion" in Houston and Dallas.

  • Musk walked back his 2025 "half the U.S. population" robotaxi prediction, downgrading to "a dozen or so states" by end of 2026 on the Q1 earnings call. The five-city H1 2026 expansion originally committed has been delayed. Munster's rerating threshold — 5,000+ vehicles and 5–10% ride-hailing share — remains far from current operational scale, with Tesla at roughly 80,000 autonomous miles/day versus Waymo's ~4 million.

  • Solar Roof is effectively discontinued. Peak deployment reached ~23 installations per week versus the 2016 promise of 1,000/week — a 97.7% miss. Tesla installed roughly 3,000 total U.S. systems per Wood Mackenzie, stopped reporting solar deployment data in Q1 2024, and redirected customers to third-party installers. The TSP-420 panel pivot is an acknowledgment of the product's failure to scale.

  • Automotive gross margins compressed from above 25% (early 2023) to below 18% (mid-2025) through sustained price cuts, and Q1 2026 saw a ~50,000-vehicle inventory build alongside missed delivery expectations. The Model Y price increases this week are a partial reversal, but full-year 2025 deliveries of 1.636 million were below the 2023 peak — context for investors modeling delivery growth assumptions.

u/kris_sheppard — 5 days ago
▲ 19 r/teslainvestorsclub

Weekly Tesla Brief (May 4 – May 10, 2026)

Unsupervised Robotaxi Fleet

City Now 7D 30D
Austin 28 +7 +18
Houston 6 0 +6
Dallas 5 0 +5
Total 39 +7 +29

Source: Robotaxi Tracker

Brief

  • FSD 14.3.2 hits ~50–60% of HW4 fleet; navigation regression confirmed.
  • Tesla Semi high-volume Nevada line live; 430+ units ordered at ACT Expo.
  • Cybercab production ~20 units/day; FMVSS-compliant, no NHTSA exemption cap.
  • EU FSD bloc vote missed May 5; next window June 30; Belgium fast-tracking.
  • Tesla loses ~$400M/year 45X battery credit under new PFE rules.
  • NHTSA Engineering Analysis covers ~3.2M Tesla vehicles — recall-stage review.

Robotaxi

  • Unsupervised fleet expanded to nighttime operations in Austin for the first time. Previously limited to midafternoon, the extension to evening hours signals improved system confidence in low-light conditions. Dallas and Houston launched and remain 100% unsupervised — no safety monitor in any vehicle in either city.

  • Brian Wang's 10x-in-60-days thesis: 300+ unsupervised vehicles by end of June. Wang cites 80+ parked robotaxi-badged vehicles reportedly staged in each Texas city and the precedent of Dallas/Houston skipping the supervised phase entirely. He separately predicts all remaining supervised Austin vehicles convert to driverless within ~10 days.

  • Cybercab production at ~20 units/day; FMVSS-compliant from day one. Joe Tegtmeyer documented 40–50 Cybercabs at or near Giga Texas, with a Tesla Semi filmed transporting a fresh batch. Tesla's head of engineering confirmed Cybercab meets FMVSS, meaning the NHTSA 2,500-vehicle annual exemption cap does not apply — production ramp is manufacturing-constrained, not regulatory.

  • Q1 2026 paid robotaxi miles: ~1.7M, up from ~610K in Q4 2025. Farzad projects Q2 could exceed 4M paid miles and Q3 could approach 10M — potentially nearing Waymo's annual commercial volume by year-end. Pony.AI's break-even benchmark of ~23 paid rides per vehicle per day frames the utilization bar.

  • Bay Area remains anomalous: ~551 vehicles operating under a limo-service permit with human drivers. Tesla has not applied for a California AV permit despite reportedly accumulating sufficient miles. Panel theories include federal AV legislation preference and headline-risk aversion, but the posture is described as "genuinely puzzling."

Autonomous Driving

  • FSD 14.3.2 rolling out broadly — ~50–60% of HW4 fleet — with a confirmed navigation regression. FutureAzA's real-world review rated vehicle control as "exceptional" but documented FSD looping the block three times before entering a parking lot: "The navigation has absolutely gotten worse." New features include a parking-intent indicator and a one-tap intervention logger.

  • FSD 14.3 architecture significance: ground-up runtime rewrite enabling RL fine-tuning pipeline. Reaction time estimated at ~0.2 seconds vs. ~1.5 seconds human standard. Phil Beisel (ex-Apple, ex-Rivian) confirmed the rewrite establishes headroom for higher inference frequency and rapid field-issue fine-tuning — the structural reason Tesla could launch Dallas and Houston without safety drivers.

  • EU FSD bloc vote missed the May 5 window; June 30 is next. The Dutch RDW presented 18 months and ~1M miles of test data; regulators raised objections on speed-limit compliance, wildlife hazards, icy roads, and the "Full Self-Driving" name. Bhakdi assigns 30–50% odds of passage; his base case is rejection followed by individual-country approvals. Belgium's Flemish Minister of Mobility formally requested Tesla's dossier and instructed her administration to map a rapid homologation path by end of week. Denmark's regulator publicly contradicted a Reuters skepticism report, stating it had issued no official position.

  • FSD 14.3 slippery-surface detection added. The build now detects potential hydroplaning conditions and automatically limits speed to 70 mph in Standard mode — addressing a gap critics flagged in adverse-weather handling.

  • NHTSA Engineering Analysis covers ~3.2M Tesla vehicles — the stage typically preceding a recall — over FSD camera failures in sun glare and fog, and potential crash under-reporting. Concurrent with the 2026 Model Y becoming the first vehicle to pass all eight NHTSA NCAP ADAS evaluations, including four new criteria.

Optimus

  • Model S/X lines shut down; Fremont converting to Optimus production. Tesla confirmed last Model X and Model S units off the line, consistent with the Q1 earnings call announcement. The Fremont line targets 1M units/year; a dedicated Giga Texas Optimus factory targets 10M units/year. V3 production set to begin summer 2026; 2027–2028 combined target is 100,000–300,000 units at a $20,000–$25,000/unit cost target.

  • Optimus communications blackout is intentional, per Elon — competitive intelligence concerns cited. A promised Q1 2026 reveal did not occur. Bhakdi states an Optimus reveal is coming within 90 days; he also cites a report that Tesla paused the production line to retool for faster assembly, characterizing it as a development positive.

  • AI5 chip confirmed as a hard prerequisite for meaningful Optimus production, per Phil Beisel. Specs: 2,500 TOPS, 144 GB memory, up to 40x system-level improvement over HW4. Tesla's AI chip roadmap: AI4 (superhuman safety) → AI5 ("almost perfect" cars) → AI6 (Optimus and data centers) → AI7/Dojo 3 (space-based).

  • Optimus supply chain being built from scratch; zero legacy architecture debt. Elon described the hand and forearm as "more difficult than the entire rest of the robot." Virtually every component is new — structurally advantageous over competitors building from industrial supply chains, but harder to scale initially.

Tesla Semi

  • High-volume Giga Nevada Semi line live; first unit confirmed off the line. The 1.7M sq ft Sparks facility targets 50,000 trucks/year; 2026 analyst estimates range 5,000–15,000 units. Aerial footage confirms paint operations, stamping press, and bridge crane installation active.

  • 430+ units ordered at ACT Expo. Watt EV: 370 units (~$100M, first 50 in 2026); Big F Transport: 40 units post-demo; NA Container Freight Lines: 20 units operational by early 2027. Official pricing confirmed via CARB filing: $290K long-range (822 kWh, NCMA/4680), $260K standard range (548 kWh) — 25–35% below competing electric Class 8 trucks.

  • New charging suite removes depot infrastructure barrier. Mega Charger: 1.2 MW, 60% charge in 30 minutes, ~$188K per two-post setup, 66 planned locations across 15 states. Base Charger: 125 kW, 60% in ~4 hours, daisy-chainable on a single breaker, ~$40K installed for two units, deliveries early 2027.

  • Washington WAZIP rebate cuts long-range Semi to ~$115K — ~$60K below the average new diesel Class 8. California's comparable $200K HVIP voucher has been claimed for 965 Tesla Semis out of 1,067 total clean-truck applications statewide (Jan 2025–Feb 2026).

Energy

  • Tesla loses ~$400M/year 45X battery credit under IRS Notice 2026-15. New Prohibited Foreign Entity rules mean CATL cells at Lathrop exceed the PFE allowance threshold, eliminating the $10/kWh module assembly credit. Tesla's Nevada LFP line (CATL-licensed equipment) may restore eligibility, but cathode sourcing is the decisive variable — ~99% of LFP cathode supply is currently China-based.

  • Q1 2026 energy gross margin of ~39% flagged as including one-time tariff benefits, not fully recurring. Management confirmed it is unrelated to the February Supreme Court tariff refund ruling.

  • Giga-scale Megapack pipeline accelerating sharply. 11 projects over 1 GWh came online in Q1 2026 alone; full-year 2026 pipeline at 122 projects, up from 50 in all of 2025. Australia became the second-largest ex-China market with over 8 GWh in Q1. A 200 MW / 800 MWh Megapack installation in South Australia (~$225M) is under construction, commissioning targeted September 2027.

  • Megapack competitive position under pressure. Benchmark's Iola Hughes describes Tesla as potentially lagging Chinese players on cell energy density innovation — Chinese manufacturers are at 700 Ah cells, progressing toward 1,000+ Ah. At ~$190–$200/kWh after volume discounts, Megapack is significantly above Chinese systems deploying under $100/kWh domestically. Tesla retains reliability and after-sales service advantages in tariff-protected Western markets.

Electric Vehicles

  • Tesla China April deliveries: 79,478 units (+36% YoY) — best April ever. South Korea: 13,190 units, a record, outselling BMW and Mercedes combined. Model Y confirmed world's best-selling EV in March 2026; Tesla passed BYD in Q1 2026 total EV sales.

  • Canada Model 3 RWD (Giga Shanghai) now at $29K USD ($39,940 CAD) — cheapest Tesla offered globally — enabled by a 49,000-vehicle quota at reduced tariffs. Delivery estimates already slipped from June to October 2026 on strong intake; Chinese EV brands have no Canadian sales infrastructure to compete for the quota this year.

  • Model Y L spotted testing in the US; unveil possible within 60 days, with deliveries potentially starting around October 2026 at ~$55,000–$60,000. The vehicle also earned a five-star ANCAP safety rating. Model S/X production has officially ended.

  • Model S/X Signature Edition delivery event postponed from May 12; no new date set.

Financials

  • Tesla guided to negative free cash flow for the rest of 2026. Major capital commitments include Terafab ($55B upfront, $119B total), xAI's Colossus 2 supercomputer ($18B in chips), and the Optimus supply chain buildout.

  • FSD Europe perpetual purchase ends May 21, 2026, shifting UK, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, and others to subscription-only — converting one-time revenue to recurring ARR across a key growth market.

  • Bhakdi DCF: ~$600/share intrinsic value in 2026, explicitly conditioned on 10,000 robotaxis deployed by year-end. He pushed original timelines back 12–18 months and acknowledges being slightly early on his 1,800-vehicle inflection prediction (April–May), but characterizes the delay as operational, not fundamental.

Market & Competition

  • xAI dissolved into SpaceX as "SpaceX AI"; Colossus 1 leased to Anthropic. The February SpaceX–xAI merger, described by Reuters as the largest corporate merger ever recorded, created a combined entity estimated at ~$1.25T. Colossus 1 (220,000 Nvidia GPUs, 300+ MW) now provides Anthropic inference capacity; revenue estimates range $16–$28B/year. Grok launched on Apple CarPlay.

  • Terafab chip fab: $55B upfront, $119B total, jointly owned by Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, and Intel; proposed site in Grimes County, Texas (~2 hours from Austin); county hearing June 3. Target: over 1 terawatt of AI compute per year. Multiple commentators flag domestic chip supply as a five-year constraint on both Robotaxi and Optimus scaling.

  • Waymo projected to lose ~$5B in 2026 — roughly $100 per ride across ~52M annual rides. Morgan Stanley pegs Tesla robotaxi cost per mile at ~$0.81 vs. Waymo's ~$1.36–$1.43; ARK projects ~$0.25/mile at full Tesla scale. Brian White argues Waymo must abandon its entire LiDAR/HD-mapping architecture to reach viable unit economics.

  • Tesla stock up ~11% on the week, closing above the 200-day moving average (~$402–$404), but still down ~4.75% YTD vs. Google +26%.

Bear Case of the Week

  • FSD 14.3.2 navigation regression confirmed in real-world testing. FutureAzA documented FSD looping the block three times before entering a bank parking lot on the same build praised for vehicle control: "The navigation has absolutely gotten worse." Regression on a wide release with ~50–60% fleet penetration is a meaningful quality signal.

  • NHTSA Engineering Analysis covers ~3.2M Tesla vehicles for FSD camera failures in sun glare and fog conditions, with potential crash under-reporting. This is the stage that typically precedes a recall — concurrent with a positive NCAP headline, but a real regulatory overhang.

  • 4680 "8L" pack quietly replaced higher-energy LG cells in European Model Y, cutting WLTP range 52 km (−8%) with no disclosure on the configurator or order confirmations. Charging performance also lags: 10–80% takes >40 minutes vs. ~27–30 minutes for the 2170 variant; charge curve degrades from 31% SOC. The L&F cathode contract written down from $2.9B to $7,386 (−99.9%) confirms structural 4680 supply struggles.

  • Tesla loses ~$400M/year 45X credit in 2026 under new IRS PFE rules on Chinese cells. The Nevada LFP line may restore eligibility, but ~99% of LFP cathode supply is currently China-sourced, making the fix uncertain. Combined with management's negative free cash flow guidance for the rest of 2026, the capital picture is tight.

  • Cybertruck PCS2 board failures documented across a wide VIN range (up to VIN ~77,000; concentrated VINs 25,000–35,000). The failure silently halves charge rate from 48A to 24A with no driver alert; out-of-warranty repairs initially ran $4,000–$7,000. Parts are backordered 4–8 weeks. Multiple service-community voices are calling for a formal recall.

  • California unsupervised robotaxi service not before 2027, per direct CPUC contact: Tesla has not filed for any AV permit and is subject to a 6–9 month minimum approval timeline once applied. The ~551-vehicle Bay Area fleet generating zero unsupervised revenue is the largest single fleet concentration and remains fully stuck behind a supervised driver.

Daily Tesla Briefs at https://theteslathesis.com

reddit.com
u/kris_sheppard — 12 days ago