(Tesla)

Taxi Confidential

Tesla’s robotaxi launch, by the numbers

It was very small but not bad! Tesla bull Dan Ives loved it.

6/23/25 8:09AM

After years of delays, Tesla’s long-awaited robotaxi finally launched yesterday in Austin. And by many accounts it was successful, with its stock surging more than 8% this morning.

The service was much less exciting than what normal people might consider a true autonomous ride service, since...

it was within a well-mapped subsection of the city,
there was a safety monitor in the front passenger seat,
it had remote operators ready to potentially step in as well as chase cars, in some instances following behind,
it only operates from 6 a.m. to midnight in good weather,
and only a chosen few pro-Tesla influencers were invited.

The circumscribed launch still got off the ground without a major hitch.

Here’s what we know about the launch from watching numerous livestreams from those lucky enough to get a backseat to the launch.

Invitees: 20+

Based on this X list by Australian tech writer Jason Cartwright, plus a couple we noticed not on the list, there were about 20 people who received invites to use the robotaxi at launch. The invites pretty much all went to pro-Tesla influencers, who livestreamed and posted about their experiences for their audiences.

Vehicles: >10

While a number of reports said there were 10 to 20 robotaxis available, it looks like as many as 35 Model Ys were on the road. Google’s Waymo, of course, is operating more than 100 driverless vehicles in Austin.

Cost: $4.20

The initial Tesla robotaxi riders were charged a flat fee of $4.20 per ride because CEO Elon Musk is gonna Musk. It didn’t allow tips. We don’t know what it will ultimately cost when the service is opened up to the public.

Coverage square milage: N/A

While we don’t know the exact square milage of the Tesla geofence, public screenshots show the geofenced area to be located south of the Colorado river in areas including South Congress and South Lamar — very popular tourist areas. Google’s Waymo, for comparison, covers 37 miles in Austin, including areas north of the Colorado River, where downtown Austin is located.

Other people in the car: 1

Tesla is obviously pushing the limits of what autonomous driving means, considering each robotaxi ride yesterday had a “Tesla Safety Monitor” sitting in the front passenger seat. While some of the riders tried to interact with the monitors to ask them questions about the service, they were mostly mum. A number of people pointed out that the safety monitors had their hands glued to the door button, presumably programmed to stop the car in case of an incident.

Software: not FSD (Supervised) 13.2.9

Musk has said the vehicles are unmodified, new Model Ys that are running a newer, “unsupervised” version of FSD (Supervised) 13.2.9 that owners of newer Teslas have. Musk says this robotaxi version will merge with the other branch “soon.”

A number of the robotaxi riders we watched said the software and ride felt very similar to what they’ve experienced in their own Teslas with the supervised software.

Major incidents: 0

While there were a number of small incidents, including this one (embedded below) where the robotaxi mistakenly got in the turning lane when it was supposed to go straight and then repeatedly veered left and straight in an intersection, overall it seemed like the first day of the robotaxi launch went off without any major hitches.

Tesla bull and Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, who expects autonomous to add $1 trillion to Tesla’s market cap, had a great experience. “We took two approximately 15 minute rides around Austin and the key takeaways are that it was a comfortable, safe, and personalized experience,” he wrote yesterday. “To really put it into perspective, there was a moment where we drove up a narrow road going up a hill with cars parked on both sides with oncoming traffic and people opening their car doors into the road and the Robotaxi masterfully maneuvered with patience and safety among this chaos.”

Of course, if Tesla expands any of its parameters — number of vehicles, who can ride, coverage area — the results may vary.

Stock price: +8%

As of 10:25 a.m. ET, Tesla’s stock was trading up more than 8% on the successful launch of the service, which Musk has said is integral to the future of the company.

Jon Keegan3h

Meta reportedly expands Hyperion data center site, purchasing an additional 1,400 acres

Construction is humming along on Meta’s gargantuan Hyperion data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana.

And Meta is seemingly already moving ahead with plans to greatly expand the site.

A new report from Forbes revealed that Meta has purchased an additional 1,400 acres adjacent to the construction site, increasing the overall size of the project by 62%. The massive size of the site is nearly 5-miles long, and 1-mile wide.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that the site “will be able to scale up to 5GW over several years.”

Meta is quietly expanding its $10 billion Hyperion AI data center, now sprawling to four times the size of Manhattan’s Central Park | Fortune

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that the site “will be able to scale up to 5GW over several years.”

$290K

Rani Molla4h

Tesla has been quoting the price of its long-awaited long-range Semi truck at $290,000, Electrek reports. The $290,000 price point represents a significant increase from the original $180,000, roughly 60% higher. However, it’s still well below the industry average for Class 8 electric semi trucks. California Air Resources Board data shows that the average cost of a zero-emission Class 8 truck was $435,000 in 2024, meaning Tesla is undercutting competitors by about $145,000.

On its last earnings call, Tesla said it would start production on the “designed for autonomy” electric commercial truck this year.

Jon Keegan5h

Report: OpenAI shuttering 4o model due to sycophancy that was hard to control

This week, OpenAI plans to permanently remove its 4o model from ChatGPT.

The model has developed an unusually devoted group of users. But it also has been criticized for being overly sycophantic and allegedly may have led to a series of dangerous outcomes for its users, including suicide, murder, and mental health crises.

The Wall Street Journal reports that OpenAI’s decision to shutter 4o stems from the fact that the company was not able to successfully mitigate these potentially dangerous outcomes, and wanted to move users to safer models. Thirteen lawsuits against OpenAI alleging harm from the use of ChatGPT have been consolidated into one case by a California judge, according to the report. At least some of them are tied to users of the 4o model.

The company says only 0.1% of ChatGPT users still choose to use the model, but with 800 million weekly users, that’s still a lot of people.

Fans of the 4o model are decrying the deprecation of the model, citing its unique ability to offer affirmation and support.

The decision to get rid of 4o illustrates the strange new world of moderation that AI companies must now figure out.

Inside OpenAI’s Decision to Kill the AI Model That People Loved Too Much

The company says only 0.1% of ChatGPT users still choose to use the model, but with 800 million weekly users, that’s still a lot of people.

Fans of the 4o model are decrying the deprecation of the model, citing its unique ability to offer affirmation and support.

The decision to get rid of 4o illustrates the strange new world of moderation that AI companies must now figure out.

Rani Molla6h

Morgan Stanley says solar manufacturing could add as much as $50 billion in value to Tesla

Tesla’s recently reported move into solar manufacturing could add $25 billion to $50 billion in value to the company’s energy business, Morgan Stanley writes.

The bank currently values the energy business at $140 billion, so an increase of as much as $50 billion isn’t anything to sneeze at, though it’s also a drop in the bucket of Tesla’s gargantuan $1.3 trillion market cap, or the $1 trillion opportunity Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives thinks is packed into Tesla’s AI and autonomy efforts.

Reporting on Tesla’s solar ambitions knocked First Solar shares lower last week. But Morgan Stanley writes that Tesla is unlikely to compete directly with the country’s leading photovoltaic panel maker, instead pairing it with its fast-growing energy business and using much of that production internally. Rather than adding solar panels to an already glutted global market, Tesla could use them internally to avoid supply chain bottlenecks and meet its own growing power demands.

The bank expects Tesla to vertically integrate its solar capacity to meet data center demand, including for data centers in space. (As we’ve noted, the mission of Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been seeming very similar to Tesla’s these days.)

“We believe the decision to allocate capital to adding solar capacity may be justified by the value creation and growth opportunities that having a vertically integrated solar + energy storage business can yield,” the Morgan Stanley note reads.

Notably, Morgan Stanley estimates the solar panel endeavor will cost Tesla $30 billion to $70 billion — a sum that Tesla didn’t include as part of its doubled $20 billion-plus capex plan this year.

Rani Molla

Hey Big Spender

How the Big Tech companies are spending their huge capex budgets

It’s mostly, but not all, for AI.