Tesla Space #67: welcome to the White House Tesla Showroom

X OF THE WEEK

I enjoyed the way they put this one.

$TSLA

… is up 0.76% from our last week’s newsletter, now at $225.41/share before the market’s open and at a $704.59B market cap.

We dig deeper in this new section — every week from now on — for the Tesla Space Insider members. Join us?

TESLA, GLOBALLY

As I ranted in our last week’s newsletter on every trend having an anti-trend, it now seems the anti-anti-Tesla people and sentiments seem to start popping up more publicly, while the vandalism acts slow down. It’s too early to tell for the latter, and there are definitely some protests still going on, but today we celebrate some of the former.

First of all, as we teased last week, Donald Trump did indeed buy a Tesla. And not just that, he and Elon made a whole event out of it in front of the White House. Here’s a long video from the spot on what they said out there.

At the event, Trump also announced that he will label violence against Tesla showrooms/dealerships as domestic terrorism.

Trump praised Tesla throughout the whole event, with words like “I know people that have these cars; It blows them away. They love them.” and “Tesla’s a great company; They’re American cars, it’s American made. He employs thousands of people. He has the most modern plants in the world. I happen to love the product; I want to pay full price.”

All of it is for show — of course. However, if someone plays all this off as a weird car salesman type of thing, here’s a reminder this is nothing new. Remember Biden literally showcasing and driving Jeep & Hummer EVs on the White House lawn?

On the event, Elon announced that Tesla is going to double vehicle output in the United States within the next 2 years. I won’t comment too much on that for now, since this is a little vague — I believe we as Tesla followers already knew that’ll be the case.

That White House Dealership kind of event aside, there’s been other Tesla-positive popups as well, like CNN’s Michael Smerconish on TV:

“I'm a Tesla owner. Two, actually. I appreciate the technology, and I like that it's made in America. In fact among all automakers, Tesla is arguably the most American; I don't make my consumer decisions based on politics. I make them based on quality; When it comes Musk and Trump, I hope they broaden Tesla's appeal."

There are also some poses with the Ultra Red Plaid that should do decently:

Sean Hannity really went all in with his take:

Here are some signs that have been put up “all around Brownsville, TX”:

Meanwhile, Israel has officially asked Tesla to submit a bid to provide EVs for the Jewish state’s top officials. “We aren’t going to bow to woke trends,” the official said. “A car is a car is a car. And a great car is a great car is a great car."

Netanyahu shared this article on his X account, with Elon commenting “Much appreciated:

Even Business Insider ran a… checks notes to be sure… a positive story on Tesla covering the side of an owner supporting Tesla through it all?!

Meanwhile, while this is not a definitive measure for actual purchases, Google Search results for "Buy a Tesla" have surged in recent days to a multi-month high, with notable increases in Republican-leaning states such as Nevada and Florida.

Something wild from Germany:

The headlines from Germany recently said: “94% Germans are against buying a Tesla, according to a poll of 100k people!”

Reality: in that SAME poll today, 70.1% of now 441k voters instead say they'd have kein problem buying a Tesla!

Polls are always off. But this displays the media spin perfectly. We won't see any headlines from these four publications, especially known anti-Tesla ones like Jalopnik and Electrek, on the new poll results, will we?

The vandals have been largely caught, too — The Supercharging site arson guy got arrested, so did the Molotov cocktail guy, and it’s also great to see keying incidents also finding quick solutions. Like this one caught in San Jose in <24hrs after the Sentry video went viral.

Here’s a shower thought type of thing for you to end this section:

“Tesla owners don’t key people’s cars

…because we don’t have keys.”

Quick takes:

• 🇮🇳 Another step towards India: Tesla has reportedly initiated the process for the certification and homologation of the Model 3 and Model Y in India.

• Petter Winberg leaves Tesla. He helped engineer crash architectures for Cybercab, Semi, Model S, Model X, Model 3, Model Y and more.

Perhaps the best possible way to celebrate Petter’s legacy is to go over some of the c r a z y Tesla accidents that people have walked away from, in this thread.

VEHICLES

Munro Live launched two videos on Tesla’s Franz (Design Chief) & Lars (VP of Vehicle Engineering) — this video “Inside Tesla’s Future: Cybercab & Robovan with Franz & Lars”, and this video of them going through all New Model Y upgrades in detail.

Sadly, there weren’t too many new questions Sandy asked Franz and Lars on the first one so we can’t call that one much of an interview — Model Y video was a lot better on that. But I will, of course, also give you some of my notes on both:

1 — Cybercab

• Tesla is aiming to have close to 300 miles of real-world range on its Cybercab with a battery pack smaller than 50kWh.

• This would make it the most efficient EV on the road at ~6 miles/kWh.

• Lars says: Tesla Cybercab production equipment is already being installed at Giga Texas, with first prototype builds slated to start this summer. Tesla is aiming for general mass production to start in early 2026.

• Lars on Cybercab’s casting “We have a big rear casting, a big front casting. We have two hot stamped door rings that will be laser welded together; The castings aren’t even gonna be painted on this. We’ve done work with our materials team, we got corrosion under control. The only area you are going to see some paint is the hot stamped door rings."

This is another aspect that shows us the the Cybercab will be ridiculously cheap to build…

2 — New Model Y

Tesla’s Manufacturing account on X brings one of the point home about casting improvements:

“Conformal cooling enables even heat removal across complex parts throughout the casting, avoiding limitations of traditional straight cooling channels. This helps bring down cycle time – minimizing the time the casting is in a semi-solid state, thus reducing deformations & internal stress. Results in lighter, more precise & more repeatable castings.”

The 2025 Tesla Model Y adopts a redesigned Rear Underbody Gigacasting which is 7kg lighter than the old design (65-67kg) and requires 50% less machining.

In a very interesting development, though, the New Model Y does not have a front gigacasting. Our friend Luca Greco, the best gigacasting expert we know, has analyzed this is most likely due to a combination of Tesla’s current supply chain and the 5 production lines built since 2020 have currently used their “traditional” stamped front underbody, and the equipment is not really depreciated yet for the switch to make sense. This way, Tesla currently saves finances and time, but we can expect them to still switch to the front gigacast over time.

Tesla’s new Model Y has an updated heat pump with more cooling capacity. Lars also says that version 2 of their supermanifold is coming over the next year (depending on where and when you buy your vehicle). It’s not in every new Model Y at the start.

Quick bites:

• Tesla has now officially discontinued the old Model Y in the US and Canada.

• Wes Morrill weighs in on the JerryRigEverything video we showed you last week where they snapped the Cybertruck aluminum frame. Also says “At 10,000 lbs of tongue weight the vehicle would be so grossly misloaded the front wheels would no longer be on the ground. And to answer a common question - no, a pothole will not transfer this much vertical force to the hitch.”

• Tesla released a minute-long video compilation yesterday from the New Model Y delivery events. Giga Texas… just wow. Tell me you’ve noticed the ‘plaid’ look on the entrance:

Some fun stuff: see this video where a CT owner attached an Elon figure to the back of their Cybertruck, making it pop up remotely to say hi:

FSD & SOFTWARE

See this video of Tesla FSD absolutely acing a water-cup-on-window test in China. Elon reposts this with: “Tesla self-driving is smooth.”

Meanwhile, this is the scariest road I've ever seen FSD handle — also in a video from China, and it surprisingly well. Tesla is launching a free trial of FSD in China from March 17 to April 16, so that leads us to think it’s ready for prime time.

By the way, Tesla is reportedly working with Baidu, the Chinese tech giant, to improve FSD performance in China.

Meanwhile, our eyes are also on the potential European launch — our friend Kees from MrGreen (they have ~5k Teslas in Europe) put together a great analysis article of where we’re at with FSD in Europe in terms of regulation and potential rollout. It seems we might see the start in the Netherlands soon.

On the “regular software features” side, with software update 2025.8.3, Tesla gives you the ability to a run a Battery Health Test to measure your battery’s energy retention.

MUSKONOMY

SpaceX & Starlink

Quick recap of Starship Flight 8, since we didn’t fit in this section last week: third catch of the booster & the Starship blew up. Elon says: “Today was a minor setback. Progress is measured by time. The next ship will be ready in 4 to 6 weeks.”

Elon yesterday, on humans occupying Mars:
“Yes. That will happen on either the 2nd or 3rd Earth-Mars launch window, so roughly 5 to 7 years from now. The key question is whether Earth’s current civilizational technology level will last long enough to ensure that Mars can grow by itself, even if supply ships from Earth stop coming. Otherwise, Mars will die out.
We must do whatever it takes to strengthen civilization to keep that window of opportunity open as long as possible.”

Then, Elon also confirmed Optimus will be involved for the first run towards Mars. Actually, since the official Optimus’ account reply was so funny, I’ll show the whole thing:

Oh, and here’s Crew-10 Dragon docking to the ISS — real video from the ISS.

𝕏

Wow. 𝕏 is offering a trip to Mars on Starship if you get a perfect March Madness bracket!

Do note that the odds of winning this are like 1 in 102 billion, but… go for it if you’re in the US!

D.O.G.E

Musk joined Ted Cruz's podcast for a 30-minute discussion about DOGE, the challenges Elon faces in this new role, and his views on the future of space travel.

Optimus x Kim

We’ll finish this section off today with a new set of Kim’s photoshoot with Optimus for the PERFECT magazine which she posted to just her 357M followers... A selection:

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