Tesla Q3 Earnings Call: Info on Safety Score, Tesla Insurance and more

October 22, 2021

By Nuno Cristovao

Tesla had it's Q3 earnings call and as usual there were some interesting tidbits to come out of this call outside of Tesla's financial information.

Manufacturing

Tesla's current goal is to manufacture over a million vehicles in a given year. Toward the end of Q3 they reached an annualized production rate that exceeded 1 million. If Tesla can continue the trend then they will be able to achieve their goal of a million vehicles produced in a year. This does not account for its Texas and Berlin Giga factories which will only help increase their manufacturing rates.

Tesla to eventually manufacture 20 million vehicles per year

The goal is to get Tesla producing millions of vehicles per year with the addition of Texas and Berlin Giga factories and longer-term Tesla's goal is to produce 20 million vehicles yearly.

The new Model X has started production and is ramping up.

4680 Cell Batteries

The future for Tesla is its 4680 structural battery packs. Tesla said that they're testing the batteries and aim to have testing completed this year, although there could be some unknowns. Tesla expects to have the first vehicles with 4680 batteries early next year.

This is great news for Tesla as the 4680 cells offer improved battery density and other efficiencies while also reducing the weight of the vehicle. Having 4680 cells available early next year is a pleasant surprise as most were not expecting Tesla to be as far along as they are regarding these batteries.

$25k Tesla

Tesla is not looking to add any new vehicles to their production lines right now. There is a large Tesla backlog that is continuing to grow so the focus right now is on manufacturing current vehicles and meeting demand. The next vehicles produced will be the Cybertruck, new Roadster and the Tesla Semi.

Best Selling Vehicles

Tesla announced that the Model 3 is currently the best selling premium sedan worldwide. The Model Y is poised to be the best selling vehicle in the world.

Texas and Berlin Giga Factories

Tesla's new factories are nearing completion. They are close to starting production of vehicles.

Although the first produced vehicles for these factories will be this year, we should not expect any deliveries from these new factories until 2022.

The hardest work is ahead and ramping these factories up to 5k and then 10k vehicles. They will start off by producing current vehicles and Texas Gigafactory will then add on the Cybertruck.

Both Texas and Giga factories were built to have room to expand.

Safety Score and Tesla Insurance

The Safety Score started off as a way to produce insurance in California. Tesla has found that providing their own insurance based on actual driver metrics is a great way to lower the overall cost of a Tesla.

Tesla introduced Tesla Insurance into Texas and is seeing good growth there. Their goal is to offer Tesla Insurance in every market that Tesla sells in. It'll be a slow process since each state needs to be approved individually.

The Safety Score has been working really well and it's something Tesla wants to continue developing and improving.

There are 150,000 cars that are using Safety Score right now for the FSD Beta. They have racked up 100 million miles of driving already in the last month.

Tesla is also noticing huge decreases in the probability of an accident. A customer who uses the Safety Score has a 30% lower chance of being involved in an accident.

Super Chargers

Tesla continues to view Superchargers as a necessity and will continue to rapidly expand them. The Supercharging network has doubled in the last 18 months and Tesla plans to triple it over the next couple of years.

Sometimes stations can become clogged but Tesla is actively working on improving congestions beyond just increasing the amount of chargers available.

Tesla vehicles are becoming smarter when choosing where and when to charge. When your car chooses to stop at a Supercharger in order for you to get to your destination, it will now take into account the real time usage of nearby Superchargers so that it can navigate you to one with lower usage.

Tesla has also been rolling out updates to reduce the amount of time each car needs to spend at a Supercharger. This includes warming up the batteries when you're on-route to a Supercharger which will let you charge faster than if your battery was colder.

The car is also better at determining exactly how much you need to charge before you can reach your destination which reduces customer wait time and congestion of the Supercharger as well.

Tesla continues to roll out more v3, 250Kw chargers. These chargers when coupled with some of Tesla's newest batteries allow much faster charging, allowing cars to spend last time at Superchargers.

FSD Subscription

Tesla says that it's still early to tell how well their FSD subscription is doing but they have not noticed a decrease in the buy rate for the FSD package as that remains a better value.

However they have noticed that more owners are willing to try out FSD by buying a subscription, which introduces them to what is available with FSD.

As Tesla's FSD matures and the FSD beta comes more widely available, Tesla expects additional revenue to come from the FSD subscription.

Ability to Transfer FSD to Another Vehicle

Tesla does not plan to offer this, but what they did say is that if you trade your car to Tesla they will give you more for a car that has FSD when compared to one that doesn't. That value can then be applied to a new Tesla.

Tesla is viewing this as a sort of transfer of FSD since you won't lose everything you paid for and could use that additional value to be applied to the next vehicle's FSD package.

Cybertruck

The Cybertruck is on track to launch late next year. There are various alpha trucks being tested now with various features. Tesla mentioned that the alphas have been spotted on social media. The Cybertruck we saw recently with side mirrors and slight modifications appears to be one of these alphas.

Tesla confirmed again that the Cybertruck will have rear steering. Tesla is testing these various alphas to mature the design of the truck. There are a number of smaller or less visible improvements that have been made to the truck.

Why Service is Slow

Tesla is aware that service has been bogged down and slower than normal. They attribute this to the sudden return to normalcy, where demand for service has increased due to many customers holding off on services during the pandemic. Parts are sometimes slower to get as well due to the global shortage.

Tesla expects both of these issues to clear up over time.

They reiterated that the best service is no service. Tesla continues to increase build quality and provide pre-emptive warnings for service so that customers have a sudden need for service. For example, the car will let you know if your 12-volt battery is providing lower voltages than expected so that you can have it looked at before it becomes critical.

Tesla’s Hollywood Diner: In-Car Controls & Theater Screens Turned On [VIDEO]

April 18, 2025

By Karan Singh

Sky Fox

Tesla has been quietly building something pretty unique on the streets of Hollywood—and we’ve been keeping a close eye on it. That’s right: the long-anticipated Tesla Hollywood Drive-In, Diner, and Supercharger is shaping up to be one of the most creative approaches to EV charging yet.

But this isn’t your average Supercharger site. It features a retro-futuristic, 24-hour diner and an outdoor movie theater, blending the charm of the 1980s with the tech-forward vibe of the 2020s.

Construction has been underway for quite some time, with the Cybertruck-inspired stainless steel structure going up around mid-2024. And more recently, we spotted hints in the Tesla app that the Diner’s debut is getting close.

Diner Controls in App / Car

Tesla hacker Greentheonly managed to spot some new evidence of changes within Tesla’s 2025.8.6 software build, which includes a new modal for “Charger Diner Controls”. While there isn’t anything to activate this new modal just yet, it is an indication of how Tesla intends to integrate the experience right into each and every Tesla.

The text in the modal reads: “Plug in, place your order, recharge” - which means that once you arrive and are plugged in, you’ll be able to place your order - and likely pay through Tesla’s payment system. It seems like this will all be done through either the Tesla app or the vehicle’s tocuh screen. No need to fumble with a separate app or pull out your wallet.

This is definitely a level of integration you just can’t have anywhere else - and just like any other Supercharger site, the Tesla Diner will appear as a suggested site for charging when you’re navigating or looking around the Hollywood area.

This is our best look yet at the two 45-foot LED screens at @Tesla's upcoming Hollywood diner and Supercharger.

We can also see the second Supercharger lot on the left with solar canopies. This will be one of the largest Supercharging spots in North America. pic.twitter.com/aWUe67M5vw
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) April 18, 2025

45-Foot Screens Ready

Those two absolutely gigantic 45-foot LED screens have now been turned on for the first time, meaning that Tesla is likely close to opening the Supercharger site. The screens were spotted displaying some test patterns, as well as some Tesla-themed content. It really brings the construction site to life - and it's the clearest sign that the Diner is well on its way to completion.

We’re hoping that this first Tesla Diner sees plenty of success - and that Tesla begins opening more of these types of facilities throughout North America, and eventually globally. Given Tesla’s penchant for unique Superchargers, we imagine this could truly be the case one day.

Tesla’s FSD V13 Pushes HW4 Hardware Capabilities; End of Line for HW3?

April 18, 2025

By Karan Singh

Not a Tesla App

As Tesla continues to push the capabilities of its hardware as it prepares for autonomy with FSD Unsupervised, there has been a distinct divergence in features between HW4-equipped vehicles on FSD V13, and HW3-equipped vehicles on FSD V12.6.

There are definitely reasons for this, and Tesla hacker Greentheonly, over on X, went into great detail on some of the reasons why this divergence has continued and is likely to continue.

If you’re interested in some background, we recommend the following articles. Although they’re not necessary, you may enjoy reading them before diving right in if you enjoy this topic.

Back in the summer of 2024, we reported that Tesla’s HW4 had yet to reach its full potential, and that HW3 still had some compute to work with. However, FSD has undergone a rapid evolution - there are now fundamental differences driven by the hardware capabilities and sheer scale of the latest builds of FSD.

FSD V13’s Gargantuan Neural Networks

FSD V13 is a substantial leap for Tesla. It features substantially larger neural networks - the core brain that processes all the environmental data and makes decisions. Those networks are far larger in V13 than in V12, which results in a much smoother and human-like expereience.

Tesla’s FSD computers contain two nodes. According to Green’s analysis of FSD V13, Node B, which handles the actual end-to-end driving logic, tripled in size from 2.3 GB in V12 to a staggering 7.5 GB in V13. That’s a substantial increase, and one of the main reasons why HW3 can’t handle FSD V13. While Interestingly, Node A on HW4 remains similar in size to FSD V12, using up about 2.3 GB.

However, this massive size is also pushing the limits of HW4. While this isn’t necessarily a big problem immediately - at the end of the day, there is a limited amount of compute and ram available and model sizes will likely grow in the future. In fact, Tesla is planning to scale model sizes in the next FSD version and has already said they’ll need to optimize them, as context size is limited by on-board memory.

HW3 Limitations

Since HW3 can’t run the latest FSD models, where does this leave millions of Tesla vehicles equipped with the now-legacy FSD hardware? Are they hitting a dead end? Not exactly - Tesla has promised to replace HW3 computers with new units during the Q4 2024 Earnings Call, but only for those who have purchased FSD and only if Tesla is no longer able to update HW3 vehicles.

There’s no doubt Tesla hopes to achieve autonomy and then work backwards to make it compatible with HW3, but that’s unlikely to happen with the limited ram available on HW3.

Tesla’s AI team has continued to say that they’re still working on updating HW3 vehicles - but that they will be taking a backburner to updates for HW4 until the team can optimize the model efficiently enough to run on the smaller footprint. That means V12.6 isn’t just V13 “lite” - it is a distinctly different software branch tailored specifically for HW3’s capabilities.

Green's analysis showed that HW3 under V12.6 runs NNs totaling 1.2 GB on Node A and 3.1 GB on Node B, which is significantly smaller than the footprint of V13. Back in November, we discussed how Tesla is running a smaller and optimized FSD model on HW3, with the specific goal of achieving similar performance to V13. FSD V12.6 appears to be the current implementation of that smaller model strategy.

Green also found that of the total neural nets used for FSD, 135 are shared between the current V12.6 and FSD V13.2 releases, which is the result of Tesla’s AI team working to optimize and refine the V13 model for HW3. So some neural nets are shared between the two sets of hardware, while others are specific to HW3 or HW4.

AI4 in the Future

The fact that V13 is already stretching HW4’s limits makes us wonder about Tesla’s imminent release of AI5. Last year, Tesla mentioned that AI5 would be 18 months away - which is now about 8 months away, and potentially even sooner to help solve the autonomy problem.

At the same time, Tesla is looking to launch Unsupervised FSD in June in Austin, Texas, with presumably HW4, which would indicate that they’re confident in its capabilities.

Unless Tesla launches the Robotaxi network with AI5, we don’t believe AI5 will be a “must have” item. Undoubtedly, it will result in similar improvements to HW4 compared to HW3. However, the software needed to take advantage of the newer hardware could still be years away.

All eyes will be on Tesla’s Robotaxi network launch and the hardware required for it. For now, HW4 owners are in good hands with future updates are on the horizon, and we’re certainly excited for what’s next.