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.
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.
Subscribe
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date on the latest Tesla news, upcoming features and software updates.
Last night on X, Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla will be expanding the service area for its Robotaxi Network pilot in Austin, Texas, this coming weekend. This is the first official confirmation we’ve had of a date for expansion, following news that Tesla is hiring more Vehicle Operators and plans to expand the Robotaxi supervisor ratio in the coming months.
This is a sign of Tesla’s confidence in the Robotaxi pilot program and its current FSD builds.
Expanding to a larger service area in Austin this weekend
The announcement confirms the sights we’ve been seeing of Tesla’s engineering validation vehicles focusing on areas outside the initial geofence. This public test shows that Tesla was likely finalizing FSD builds and gathering the necessary safety data to push the boundaries for the service, and this upcoming weekend’s expansion will be the first direct result of that work.
Given the increase in service zone size, this expansion will also likely include the addition of more vehicles to the initial Robotaxi fleet of approximately 20 vehicles. We expect the new number to be anywhere from 30-50 vehicles serving both the original and new areas, combined, based on Tesla’s previously expected rollout schedule.
What to Expect
While the exact new boundaries haven’t been released, it is almost certain that the expansion will include the South Congress Bridge and the downtown core areas of Austin. Expanding into a dense urban zone will include more complex intersections, heavy pedestrian traffic, and a unique road layout. That is a major vote of confidence for Robotaxi FSD’s capabilities.
The expansion will also help Tesla to close the service area gap with Waymo, its primary autonomous competitor in the city. This quick expansion is a sign of just how scalable Tesla’s vision-only approach is, versus Waymo’s arduous and drawn-out mapping processes.
We also expect that with this first service zone expansion, Tesla will continue to invite more people to its Robotaxi Network in the coming weeks. Tesla has already sent out various rounds of events, as they’ll need users to continue using the system. If you’re waiting for an invite, it may be time to start getting excited about the next rollout.
We’ve been hearing about Grok, xAI’s AI assistant, coming to Teslas for almost two years now, but this is finally coming to fruition soon. XAI unveiled Grok 4 last night, but the entire stream didn’t mention Teslas. However, Musk later posted on X that Grok will arrive in Tesla vehicles “by next week.”
Between leaks and the Grok mobile app, there’s a lot we already know about Grok, but there are a few missing pieces that will be cleared when it finally arrives.
Next Week, or Next Next Week?
Musk said that Grok would arrive by next week, meaning it could arrive before then. However, based on how Musk typically states Tesla timelines, there are a few things to consider that give us a better idea of what to expect.
First, whenever Musk posts a Tesla timeline on X, he typically means when it’ll be released to employees and not a public release. Expect this to be the same thing.
Tesla releases software updates to employees first for a final round of testing before starting a gradual release to the public. Sometimes issues are found, especially with FSD updates, and the update needs some fixes before being released publicly. So expect employees to get it by next week, and not necessarily normal Tesla owners.
The second part to this is that Tesla always rolls out their updates gradually, so when it does finally arrive, it’ll only be available on a small percentage of vehicles. Tesla will gradually monitor issues and logs, continuing the rollout as long as no major issues are found.
Which Software Update?
The entire Grok UI was already included in software update 2025.20, but it’s not exposed to users. Typically, a new feature like Grok requires a vehicle update to be added; however, this version may be different, as it’s locked behind a server-side configuration.
Tesla likely has the ability to enable it for all supported vehicles with a simple switch. However, we feel more confident in it being rolled out in Tesla’s next major update, which is likely to be 2025.24 or 2025.26. Rolling it out in a new update aligns with how Tesla has historically introduced features.
If they turned it on for everyone at the same time, they could be exposing everyone to potential new issues, rather than only a smaller segment of users. While Grok is now well-tested through X and the Grok app, there are several elements that are new in Teslas, likely including the ability to control various vehicle functions, such as opening the glove box or other capabilities that voice commands are currently capable of. The Grok interface in the vehicle is also entirely new and may have some bugs associated with it that will need to be addressed, especially if they impact other features.
What we can likely expect is that Tesla will make some tweaks or bug fixes to Grok with the next major update that weren’t included in update 2025.20 and they’ll begin rolling it out to employees and then customers.
Supported Vehicles
Speaking of supported vehicles, thanks to the behind-the-scenes look at Grok, we have a good idea of the vehicles that will be supported. Tesla uses the same code for most of its vehicles, but then it’s compiled for each type of hardware. However, only the needed code is compiled for each vehicle, meaning that some pieces are left out entirely. Unfortunately, Grok code is not included in Intel software builds, meaning that only AMD Ryzen-based vehicles will receive Grok, at least initially.
We’ve seen Tesla go back and add support for Intel vehicles after it initially released a feature for AMD vehicles. We saw this with the weather radar overlay and several other features in the past. However, Tesla has been developing code with web technologies lately. While this makes development easier, it just doesn’t perform as well on the slower Intel hardware, causing it to be left out. We saw this with the new Dashcam Viewer, which is entirely coded in HTML, CSS, and JS. The new viewer was available on HW3 and HW4 vehicles, but only those that included the Ryzen infotainment processor.
Grok is coming to Tesla vehicles very soon. Next week at the latest.
There’s a lot we’re expecting in Grok for Teslas. Some people will absolutely love it because it’ll completely transform their drives from a singular experience to feeling like they have a knowledgeable person sitting right next to them. Given the recent controversies surrounding Grok, some people will strongly oppose it. Hopefully, Tesla makes it easy for those users to turn off Grok.
The voice command system, which is activated through the steering wheel, is expected to be replaced with Grok. This will mean that you’ll be able to talk to your vehicle much more naturally, rather than having to remember specific syntax and commands, which should be a major improvement.
We’re personally looking forward to just being able to ask questions that pop into our heads while driving, such as What’s the date of Tesla’s next event, or How many miles away is Mars? Knowledge will be available at the touch of a finger and more accessible than ever.
Grok is also expected to support continuous conversations, meaning that you’ll be able to hold a conversation with it and go back and forth about a certain topic. While there are hints of a wake word in the code, for now, it seems like you’ll press the steering wheel button once to activate it, and then again to turn it off.
For those excited about AI and Grok, this will be one of the biggest additions to Tesla’s software in years, possibly only rivaled by the Dashcam / Sentry Mode feature and FSD Beta.
It shouldn’t be long now before we all have a chance to try it out for ourselves.
![Tesla Updates Robotaxi App: Adds Adjustable Pick Up Locations, Shows Wait Time and More [VIDEO]](https://www.notateslaapp.com/img/containers/article_images/tesla-app/robotaxi-app/25-7-0/robotaxi-app-25.7.0.webp/4ac9ed40be870cfcf6e851fce21c43b9/robotaxi-app-25.7.0.jpg)
