People still actually think that I'm "trolling" or "doing it for clicks" when it comes to Cybercab with steering wheel and pedals.
Let me restate my thesis for the 69th time - completely unchanged from the very beginning - to clear up any confusion:
Tesla will be FORCED to sell a car with steering wheel and pedals that will be built on the Cybercab line - either a literal Cybercab or a Cybercab-like vehicle - because their production capacity will VASTLY OUTSTRIP the number of places they can physically drop the car - primarily due to regulation - during a massive cash burning phase for Optimus Bot and Terafab.
Tesla's stated goal for Cybercab production is the same as the rest of the fleet combined - call it roughly 2 million units per year.
Tesla will likely reach this sometime around 2027 into 2028.
That's roughly 40,000 Cybercabs PER WEEK of production.
Between here and then, there will be a VIOLENT RAMP - likely starting in the 2nd half of this year - where the number of Cybercabs Tesla will product per week will increase RAPIDLY week over week.
This is called an S-curve ramp - where the first and last 20% of the ramp are very slow, and the middle 60% is insanely fast.
So the question becomes - does Tesla have the technical capability, infrastructure capability, safety validation, and regulatory approval to align with the ramp?
If you look at the current picture, the only state where there's a clear pathway for Tesla to dump Cybercabs anywhere they like is Texas. Yet Tesla's geofrence is quite limited as of today.
But let's assume that by the end of next year, Tesla can operate anywhere in the three major metro areas of Dallas/Fort-Worth, Austin, and San Antonio.
If you ask Grok for an estimate of PEAK Uber drivers in those 3 regions combined for the entire metro areas, it comes up with a number around 70,000.
That is LESS THAN 2 WEEKS OF PRODUCTION OF CYBERCAB FULLY RAMPED.
And that is assuming a) Tesla has completely and utterly displaced Uber in all those markets b) there's 0 regulatory/safety hurdles c) there's little to no lobbying effort from disrupted entities like Uber, Legacy Auto, Taxis, etc.
And we're not even talking about the infrastructure build out needed for charging, servicing, cleaning, etc. What's the likelihood all of these will be ramped up to coincide with Tesla's explosive increase of the fleet?
And so simply extrapolate this to the rest of the country and the world and ask yourself - what is the likelihood that Tesla's ramp of Cybercab without steering wheel and pedals will align with the ramp of all the needed approvals/validations/buildouts that would allow regions to ABSORB that many Cybercabs.
But you know what solves this problem ENTIRELY and allows Tesla to run the Cybercab line AT FULL CAPACITY with 0 risk of anything slowing them down?
SELLING IT WITH A STEERING WHEEL AND PEDAL.
And then when regulation, safety, infrastructure, and validation is all aligned you simply a) yank the wheel and pedal for units you are producing to dump in those regions and b) customers can do the same for personal/Robotaxi use.
Do you really think Tesla is going to find it acceptable to have a Cybercab line that is not running full tilt, burning cash for no reason - WHILE THEY ARE RAMPING BOT AND TERAFAB?
ARE YOU GUYS ACTUALLY INSANE?!?!?!?!?
It's so unbelievably obvious that this is going to happen, that it actually melts my brain that so many in the Tesla community are so unbelievably blind to this unbelievably obvious outcome.
Unbelievable.
Kiss the Ring.
$TSLA
Congratulations to all HW3 Tesla owners!
Today marks the end of a journey that began back in 2019.
Tesla sold HW3 with the promise that it had the hardware needed for Full Self-Driving. Many owners believed in that vision early, purchasing FSD outright for $8,000-$15,000, years before it could deliver its full potential. Those purchases helped fund the continued development of Tesla’s FSD program.
As AI models rapidly evolved, HW3’s limited memory bandwidth became a real engineering challenge. Millions of owners watched HW4 continue advancing while their cars remained on FSD v12.6.4 for more than 15 months.
Instead of abandoning roughly 3-4 million HW3 vehicles, Tesla built a new solution.
Using model distillation, Tesla compressed the intelligence of FSD v14 into a purpose-built model optimized specifically for HW3.
Today, FSD v14 Lite officially began rolling out to early-access HW3 (AI3) owners.
The result:
• Near-feature parity with FSD v14 in supervised driving
• Smoother, more responsive driving
• Parking, reversing, and arrival options
• Improved comfort and safety
• Wider rollout over the coming weeks
This timeline I made tells the story of one of Tesla’s biggest software engineering challenges - from an ambitious promise, through hardware limitations and years of development, to delivering a meaningful upgrade that will impact 4+ million legacy Tesla vehicles.
Major win for the @Tesla_AI team! 👏