Tesla Elon Musk: Latest Updates and Analysis
Elon Musk finally admits that Tesla will have to replace its HW3 self-driving computers
Elon Musk finally admits that Tesla will have to replace its HW3 self-driving computers. He expressed it would be difficult, but Tesla would do it.
However, no concrete plan has been shared.
For the enhanced part of the year, we have been reporting that Tesla can’t achieve its promise of “full self-driving” on HW3, and it needs to come clean about it.
Last October, Tesla CEO Elon Musk finally admitted that it might be the case, but he didn’t want to commit fully:
We are not 100% sure. HW4 has several times the capability of HW3. It’s easier to get things to work on HW4 and it takes a lot of efforts to squeeze that into HW3. There is some chance that HW3 does not achieve the safety level that allows for unsupervised FSD.
Today, just 3 months later, Tesla’s management was asked about the HW3 situation again.
Tesla’s head of FSD, Ashok Elluswamy, first responded that they “are not giving up on it”, but then Musk corrected him saying that “the truth is that we will need to replace all HW3 computers in vehicles where FSD was purchased.”.
He revealed that Tesla would replace them for free, but he specified that it would only be for people who bought the up to $15,000 Full Self-Driving package.
That could prove problematic as Tesla always promised that “all cars produced since 2016 are capable of Full Self-Driving” – not just the ones who paid for the software.
Tesla already had to upgrade computers on older vehicles built between 2016 and 2018 that had older [website] computers. Again, Tesla only offered HW3 retrofits only for people who bought the FSD software package and it was proven wrong in court.
In fact, Tesla was sued by an owner who had a [website] vehicle and wanted to use the monthly FSD subscription. Tesla wanted to charge him for the computer retrofit to make the FSD work on his car. He took them to court over the claim that “all cars produced since 2016 are capable of Full Self-Driving” and the judge sided with the owner, forcing Tesla to pay for the retrofit.
Tesla could technically find itself having to do that on millions of HW3 vehicles now.
Furthermore, Tesla will have to design a new computer to retrofit vehicles equipped with HW3 computers since the HW4 computer in its latest vehicles is not retrofittable for the HW3 cars.
Entry-level EV teased; likely [website] will start under $21,000 in Europe.
Today’s Green Deals are headlined by Lectric’s Valentine’s Day sale that is running through February...
Streetleaf’s solar-powered streetlights can withstand Category 5 hurricanes, and ...
Tesla shareholders have a long list of questions about failed promises for TSLA earnings
Tesla shareholders have voted for the questions they want to ask Elon Musk and Tesla’s management at the upcoming earning results this week. The questions have something in common: they are primarily about failed promises.
It should be interesting to see Elon Musk skate around all those questions.
Tesla is going to release its Q4 2024 and full-year 2024 financial results on Wednesday after market close.
After the release of the results, Tesla will hold a conference call where it will take questions from Wall Street analysts and Tesla shareholders.
The shareholders can vote on the questions to be asked on the Say Technologies platform.
Here, I’ve included a list of the most upvoted questions, and I’ve found a common thread: most of them involve failed promises.
Unsurprisingly, the first question is about “unsupervised full self-driving” (FSD). It’s on top of most Tesla shareholders’ minds as CEO Elon Musk himself asserts that Tesla is worthless if it can’t deliver on self-driving – something Musk mentioned would happen by the end of every year for the past 5 years.
Musk’s latest timeline for unsupervised FSD was communicated during Tesla’s last earnings when he claimed Tesla would launch “unsupervised FSD in California and Texas around Q2 2025”.
With the timeline approaching fast, shareholders are asking whether or not it’s still happening:
Is unsupervised FSD still planned to be released in Texas and California this year? What hurdles still exist to make this happen?
As we not long ago reported, the latest data about FSD displays that Tesla is at fewer than 500 miles between critical disengagement, while the head of the FSD program not long ago mentioned that unsupervised should achieve a disengagement equivalent to the human collision rate: 1 every 670,000 miles.
It’s also possible that Tesla will release a smaller geo-fenced fleet of self-driving vehicles instead of its broader promised unsupervised self-driving for its customer fleet. In that case, it would require lesser performance, but it would still need a roughly 50x increase over the current performance.
The second most upvoted question is about Optimus:
When will Tesla start selling Optimus and price?
Last year, Musk noted that Tesla should use its Optimus humanoid robot more inside the corporation in 2025 and sell it to third parties in 2026.
The next question is about Musk giving equity access in his private companies to Tesla shareholders:
Elon has expressed publicly that long term shareholders of Tesla will have the ability to invest in his other companies. Could you provide some clarity/color as to what that looks like? Brokerage firms use FIFO so anyone who trades won’t have the true length of time as investor.
That’s something that he has been talking about for years with SpaceX, but he never made it happen.
Tesla shareholders are also upvoting a question about making FSD transfer permanent:
Can you please tie purchased FSD to our owner accounts vs. locked to the car? This will help us enjoy it in any Tesla we drive/buy and reward us for hanging in so long, some of us since 2017.
This has been asked several times on Tesla earnings call and Musk has always mentioned no. He prefers using a “transfer window” as demand triggers rather than doing the right thing and letting people transfer the software package that they paid for, but Tesla never fully delivers.
I wrote a whole article about this last weekend, explaining how Tesla is doing the wrong thing here.
The next question is about cheaper Tesla vehicles:
Is there a new affordable Tesla model coming soon?
This is something Tesla has been promising for years, but Musk has steered Tesla away from it. He canceled Tesla’s planned “$25,000 model” – saying that it was useless amid self-driving.
Over the last few years, he had Tesla focused on the Cybertruck and Robotaxi instead.
More in recent times, Tesla had to course correct amid declining sales and they presented two new cheaper models based on Model 3 and Model Y that are supposed to come in the first half of 2025. That appears to be what the shareholders want an enhancement on with this question.
Next, they want to know the status of the Tesla Semi:
What is the status on mass production of the Tesla Semi? How do you project it will affect revenue at scale?
Tesla Semi is one of Tesla’s most delayed vehicle programs. It was first unveiled in 2017 and it was supposed to go into production in 2020. It then entered into a low-volume pilot production in late 2022, and it is only now expected to go into volume production next year.
The start of production at the new factory for the electric truck is expected by the end of 2025.
The next question is about HW3 computers:
Is it expected that Tesla will need to upgrade HW3 vehicles and if so, what is the timeline and expected impact to Tesla’s CapEx?
For almost a year, we have been reporting that HW3 computers have reached their limits. At the last earnings call, Musk finally admitted it might be true.
Since then, HW3 vehicles have fallen further behind HW4 vehicles, but there’s no plan for a retrofit in sight.
The last question asked whether Tesla is giving up on the solar roof:
Has Tesla given up on ramping their solar roof product?
That’s a fair question. Musk once introduced that Tesla would produce 1,000 new solar roofs per week by the end of 2019, but by 2022, our data pointed to about 23 solar roofs per week.
Tesla has since stopped even reporting its solar deployment.
I predict that Tesla will double down on Optimus with this earnings call and/or announce or unveil their cheaper vehicles.
Optimus gets a lot of flak, but I think Tesla can solve humanoid robots before it can solve self-driving. There’s value in humanoid robots, not nearly as much as Elon implies, as it is often the case, but I think they will start leaning more on that to wow investors than self-driving.
The only other things that meaningfully drive earnings are cheaper vehicles. Tesla previously stated that those would launch in the first half of 2025 so they are basically due to be unveiled. I would expect something to be unveiled on that front.
Tesla is challenging the European Union in court over the tariffs imposed on its Chinese electric vehicles despite getting the lowest rates of any aut...
Several automakers, including Honda, Hyundai, Ford, and Kia, reported higher EV sales in the US in January. Here’s a look at some of the top-selling E...
Solar generation for the first 11 months of 2024 increased by over 26%, while new solar generating capacity added in November was ...
Elon Musk says Tesla aims to build 10,000 Optimus robots this year
Elon Musk says that Tesla aims to build 10,000 Optimus robots this year, but he admits that it is an ambitious goal.
With Tesla’s automotive business being down last year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk turned again to humanoid robots to stoke positivity amongst investors.
During the conference call following the release of its Q4 2024 earnings, Musk claimed that Tesla is aiming to build 10,000 Optimus robots in 2025:
The normal internal plan calls for roughly 10,000 Optimus robots to be built this year.
However, he highlighted that it is an internal goal and it’s more likely that Tesla will end up building a few thousand units. But he also says that those units would be performing useful work at Tesla:
“Will we succeed in building 10,000 exactly by the end of December this year? Probably not, but will we succeed in making several thousand? Yes, I think we will. Will those several thousand Optimus robots be doing useful things by the end of the year? Yes, I’m confident they will do useful things.”.
Tesla already unveiled that it has a few Optimus prototypes working at its factory, but we haven’t seen significant evidence of that.
For the most part, Tesla has only demoed robots being teleoperated by humans.
Musk then made some even wilder comments about Optimus, claiming that “it won’t be long before Tesla is making 100 million of these things a year.”.
He claimed that he believes the Optimus program will eventually account for the vast majority of Tesla’s revenues.
The CEO added that Tesla is currently designing a production live for 1,000 units a month. The next line will be capable of 10,000 units a month. Tesla is working on a version 2 of Optimus that Musk states will be produced at a rate of 100,000 units per month and it will launch next year.
Speaking of next year, Musk expressed that it is when Tesla plans to start selling the robot to third-parties rather than only using them itself.
In terms of pricing, the CEO mentioned he sees the robot selling for less than $20,000 once it is produced at a rate of 1 million units per year.
I’m actually bullish on Optimus and humanoid robots in general. We have the robotics technology to make useful robots, and AI is advancing fast enough that it makes sense to deploy it in humanoid form that can take over human tasks rather than specialized robots that require changes in the working environment.
The humanoid form lets you lower deployment costs, as you don’t need to change anything else.
I do see Tesla having several expertise, giving it advantages in developing humanoid robots, but I’m not willing to say that it will be the most impactful organization in space. There are already several competitors.
I think it’s safe to cut all the numbers Elon shared in half and pushed the timeline a few years back.
The new Renault Filante Record 2025 concept is a racy, aerodynamically-sculpted piece of rolling electric lab equipment designed to push the envelope ......
Tesla has opened up Cybertruck leases in the US, and it is now offering free wraps, worth $6,000, on Foundation Series Cybertrucks, whic......
Lucid CEO and former Tesla chief engineer Peter Rawlinson asserts that Tesla......
Market Impact Analysis
Market Growth Trend
| 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8.3% | 10.0% | 10.5% | 11.6% | 12.3% | 12.7% | 12.8% |
Quarterly Growth Rate
| Q1 2024 | Q2 2024 | Q3 2024 | Q4 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10.9% | 11.7% | 12.4% | 12.8% |
Market Segments and Growth Drivers
| Segment | Market Share | Growth Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Connected Cars | 35% | 14.2% |
| Autonomous Driving | 22% | 18.5% |
| EV Technology | 28% | 21.9% |
| Telematics | 10% | 9.7% |
| Other Automotive Tech | 5% | 6.3% |
Technology Maturity Curve
Different technologies within the ecosystem are at varying stages of maturity:
Competitive Landscape Analysis
| Company | Market Share |
|---|---|
| Tesla | 16.9% |
| Waymo | 12.3% |
| NVIDIA DRIVE | 10.7% |
| Bosch | 9.5% |
| Continental | 7.8% |
Future Outlook and Predictions
The Tesla Elon Musk landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by technological advancements, changing threat vectors, and shifting business requirements. Based on current trends and expert analyses, we can anticipate several significant developments across different time horizons:
Year-by-Year Technology Evolution
Based on current trajectory and expert analyses, we can project the following development timeline:
Technology Maturity Curve
Different technologies within the ecosystem are at varying stages of maturity, influencing adoption timelines and investment priorities:
Innovation Trigger
- Generative AI for specialized domains
- Blockchain for supply chain verification
Peak of Inflated Expectations
- Digital twins for business processes
- Quantum-resistant cryptography
Trough of Disillusionment
- Consumer AR/VR applications
- General-purpose blockchain
Slope of Enlightenment
- AI-driven analytics
- Edge computing
Plateau of Productivity
- Cloud infrastructure
- Mobile applications
Technology Evolution Timeline
- Technology adoption accelerating across industries
- digital transformation initiatives becoming mainstream
- Significant transformation of business processes through advanced technologies
- new digital business models emerging
- Fundamental shifts in how technology integrates with business and society
- emergence of new technology paradigms
Expert Perspectives
Leading experts in the automotive tech sector provide diverse perspectives on how the landscape will evolve over the coming years:
"Technology transformation will continue to accelerate, creating both challenges and opportunities."
— Industry Expert
"Organizations must balance innovation with practical implementation to achieve meaningful results."
— Technology Analyst
"The most successful adopters will focus on business outcomes rather than technology for its own sake."
— Research Director
Areas of Expert Consensus
- Acceleration of Innovation: The pace of technological evolution will continue to increase
- Practical Integration: Focus will shift from proof-of-concept to operational deployment
- Human-Technology Partnership: Most effective implementations will optimize human-machine collaboration
- Regulatory Influence: Regulatory frameworks will increasingly shape technology development
Short-Term Outlook (1-2 Years)
In the immediate future, organizations will focus on implementing and optimizing currently available technologies to address pressing automotive tech challenges:
- Technology adoption accelerating across industries
- digital transformation initiatives becoming mainstream
These developments will be characterized by incremental improvements to existing frameworks rather than revolutionary changes, with emphasis on practical deployment and measurable outcomes.
Mid-Term Outlook (3-5 Years)
As technologies mature and organizations adapt, more substantial transformations will emerge in how security is approached and implemented:
- Significant transformation of business processes through advanced technologies
- new digital business models emerging
This period will see significant changes in security architecture and operational models, with increasing automation and integration between previously siloed security functions. Organizations will shift from reactive to proactive security postures.
Long-Term Outlook (5+ Years)
Looking further ahead, more fundamental shifts will reshape how cybersecurity is conceptualized and implemented across digital ecosystems:
- Fundamental shifts in how technology integrates with business and society
- emergence of new technology paradigms
These long-term developments will likely require significant technical breakthroughs, new regulatory frameworks, and evolution in how organizations approach security as a fundamental business function rather than a technical discipline.
Key Risk Factors and Uncertainties
Several critical factors could significantly impact the trajectory of automotive tech evolution:
Organizations should monitor these factors closely and develop contingency strategies to mitigate potential negative impacts on technology implementation timelines.
Alternative Future Scenarios
The evolution of technology can follow different paths depending on various factors including regulatory developments, investment trends, technological breakthroughs, and market adoption. We analyze three potential scenarios:
Optimistic Scenario
Rapid adoption of advanced technologies with significant business impact
Key Drivers: Supportive regulatory environment, significant research breakthroughs, strong market incentives, and rapid user adoption.
Probability: 25-30%
Base Case Scenario
Measured implementation with incremental improvements
Key Drivers: Balanced regulatory approach, steady technological progress, and selective implementation based on clear ROI.
Probability: 50-60%
Conservative Scenario
Technical and organizational barriers limiting effective adoption
Key Drivers: Restrictive regulations, technical limitations, implementation challenges, and risk-averse organizational cultures.
Probability: 15-20%
Scenario Comparison Matrix
| Factor | Optimistic | Base Case | Conservative |
|---|---|---|---|
| Implementation Timeline | Accelerated | Steady | Delayed |
| Market Adoption | Widespread | Selective | Limited |
| Technology Evolution | Rapid | Progressive | Incremental |
| Regulatory Environment | Supportive | Balanced | Restrictive |
| Business Impact | Transformative | Significant | Modest |
Transformational Impact
Technology becoming increasingly embedded in all aspects of business operations. This evolution will necessitate significant changes in organizational structures, talent development, and strategic planning processes.
The convergence of multiple technological trends—including artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and ubiquitous connectivity—will create both unprecedented security challenges and innovative defensive capabilities.
Implementation Challenges
Technical complexity and organizational readiness remain key challenges. Organizations will need to develop comprehensive change management strategies to successfully navigate these transitions.
Regulatory uncertainty, particularly around emerging technologies like AI in security applications, will require flexible security architectures that can adapt to evolving compliance requirements.
Key Innovations to Watch
Artificial intelligence, distributed systems, and automation technologies leading innovation. Organizations should monitor these developments closely to maintain competitive advantages and effective security postures.
Strategic investments in research partnerships, technology pilots, and talent development will position forward-thinking organizations to leverage these innovations early in their development cycle.
Technical Glossary
Key technical terms and definitions to help understand the technologies discussed in this article.
Understanding the following technical concepts is essential for grasping the full implications of the security threats and defensive measures discussed in this article. These definitions provide context for both technical and non-technical readers.
electric vehicle intermediate
platform intermediate
Related Articles
