Recent developments including the Cybercab event, robo-taxi expansion, and lower-cost Model 3 are viewed as decently bullish for TSLA.

Not only a potential 25 or 26,000 dollar Model 3, but not where you think. The Cybercab event coming on Thursday. We've got to talk about that and some weird things going on around the event.

We'll talk about how that could actually play out for Tesla and where the margins are for company, Number one, the Model uh 3 in China expected to sell now for 26,000 dollars. The Model 3 expected now to come out for 205 Hong Kong dollars.

Uh which if you translate that, that works out to about 26,100 dollars.

It is being called a quote-unquote simplified Model 3 in Hong Kong and Macau. I mean, I guess technically you could say Elon's almost got the 25,000 dollar car out.

Uh but on August 31st, so that's today, Tesla well, it was the news really came out late yesterday, but it was on the 31st their time, announced the launch of a more affordable version of the Model 3 in Hong Kong and Macau priced at a lower uh than in mainland China.

The strategic move aims to capture a larger market share in those regions. Keep in mind, that's where the competition is. It is really, really competitive to sell vehicles in the Asian market, and you're seeing a lot of exports go from Tesla Shanghai to Europe, mostly because that's where you now have BYD also competing with European manufacturers.

That said, that has had people excited about maybe increasing sales in Asia for Tesla. Something that Tesla would really like to get back to is more growth for Tesla vehicle sales.

I think that's the core of my valuation for the company with Optimus as optionality and FSD as optionality for the future. Core component of this company is still vehicle sales and getting people into that Tesla ecosystem.

So, once you buy the car, you're more likely to want to buy the solar panels and the batteries.

We're installing some Tesla solar panels, I think in 2 days, actually. As well as some Tesla mega Not mega packs. You know, Tesla Powerwalls. Mega packs are for cities and big infrastructure projects. Powerwalls. So, we're excited about that.

But, moving on from this Model 3, we've got to talk about the Tesla Cybercab. So, we've got the Cybercab event coming up on Thursday. And the Cybercab event is reportedly going to cover this, Uh, you know, new improved future of full self-driving and robo-taxis.

And it comes conveniently right after we've seen Tesla lock in a 5,000 capped permit for robo-taxis in Clark County, which is Vegas. That was announced last week. The original interim approval only permitted 10 robo-taxis in Vegas itself for Tesla, which is kind of lame, and capped at 45 miles an hour, and banned from doing airport trips.

That 10 limit was removed, though, and the airport ban does still remain in place, and the 45 mile per hour limit remains in place. So, these are really more local, downtown kind of Vegas robo-taxi rides.

But, in my opinion, that's actually a really big step forward for Tesla, and I think Tesla's cybercab event might be purposefully coming on the back of that 5K permit announcement for Vegas, because Vegas is kind of a tough spot for ride-hailing.

It's a place where you have to be at certain locations. You can't be anywhere on the streets, otherwise traffic slows into a crawl. It already does often. And then, taxi drivers actually get cited for stopping at the wrong places to pick up passengers.

So, I'm really interested to see how robo-taxis could end up evolving in an area like Vegas, which I think is going to be a lot more challenging than an area like Austin.

And Tesla's now indicating that paid rides could occur within 30 days, which kind of perfectly aligns with this cybercab event that's coming up. Uh, you know, Teslarati posted their cybercab invitation for the September 3rd event, which is exciting that it's coming.

And so, a lot of people are wondering, "Well, what are they going to announce at this event?" Personally, I think it also has to do with the fact that we are now coming out of production on the cyber caps.

So, potentially moving away from using the Model Y as the robo taxi and focusing on the actual cyber cab itself without the steering wheel, without the pedals. We actually end up pushing cyber cabs onto the road, uh not just in Vegas, but in Texas, in Florida, and other areas where Tesla's operating.

And maybe we can actually see this start scaling because the scaling so far has been on the weak side. You know, we've been at between 42 maybe a high of about 85 robo taxis on the road now.

Uh the official stats are somewhere around 40 to 42 registrations in Texas. Uh Bloomberg's counted 59 including three Texas cities and then a little bit in Florida. Uh Tesla's hinting that it could actually be as high as 85 now.

So, somewhere in that range. But, it's obviously a far cry from thousands of Teslas on the road uh that are robo taxis.

So, there's a lot of hope that hey, this September 3rd event uh coming nearly 2 years after the we robot event is actually the catalyst where we start scaling. So, it wouldn't surprise me that this event is look, we just rolled the cyber cab off production lines.

Uh we can now officially scale. We've done our testing for the last uh you know, year as robo taxis have been out uh and and since we really said we were going to prioritize this 2 years ago, now is the time for scale.

So, if I were working at Tesla, that's what I would be harping on because I think that would really give a boost to the stock even more so than what we're already seeing.

And you know, it could use a little bit of love. Uh so, a 4.6% bounce right here does come right on top of the 347 line, which is, you know, a very common line for Tesla to revert back to and it's a very strong line.

We've been on this line for a while here. So, this news hopefully gives it a more permanent, you know, support over this line. We'll see.

Tesla is a at a one week high now up now 4.6% and you know comes on the back of both this cyber cab event and the $26,000 Model 3 in Hong Kong and Macau and of course the news that more affects SpaceX regarding manufacturing turbines but usually what we find is when SpaceX goes up Tesla goes up when Tesla goes up SpaceX goes up.

They correlate about 67% of the time. So 67% of the days these stocks move in the same direction. So it sort of implies it's a little bit more of an Elon trade and and how related these companies are when it comes to trading but that's useful to know if if if you are trading.

Then of course there's the turbine news which we'll talk more about in just a moment but just think about that for a moment. Uh first just finishing the thought on Vegas uh Waymo and Zoox operate in Vegas already.

Uh Tesla getting into this space could really and hopefully expand them not only in popularity because these this is a very popular vacation destination for people to travel to obviously Vegas.

Uh and it'd be a great testing ground for a very busy area with limited pick up and drop off areas that are highly restricted and highly regulated and if Tesla can crush it in Vegas my thesis is they could probably do it anywhere.

Now Tesla's cyber cab chief engineer argues it's Eric Early argues that hopefully they can get to 2500 units within a year. That's his goal even though they're technically authorized up to 5000 shooting a little bit more of a realistic target if you will.

So all of that obviously pretty exciting news for Tesla

and then we move on to what's going on with this turbine news with Elon Musk. So Elon Musk is now apparently and reportedly per the information there were a couple pieces on this in the the over the weekend with some follow-up information coming through.

But, Tesla's reportedly, sorry, Elon Musk via SpaceX is talking about them at the same time. It's so hard. So, I'm just going to mix up the words. But, the information reported an exclusive that SpaceX is laying the groundwork for a turbine blade factory to solve the data center power crunch.

Basically, Elon argues that, "Hey, if we get into the limiting factor of doing blades and veins, hopefully we can remove the limiting factor and actually get turbine gas power production up 18 months sooner, given that the blades and veins are the slowest portion of the process."

Though, in fairness, SpaceX is green today on the news, and therefore so is Tesla. They're kind of operating together and both have news here. >> Like the turbines are sold out through 2030.

>> Have you guys considered making your own? >> I think in in order for in order to uh bring enough power online, um I think uh SpaceX and and Tesla will probably have to make the turbine blades um the vanes and blades uh internally.

>> For just the blades or the turbines? >> Uh and the the the the limiting factor You can get everything except the the the blades. They're called the blades and vanes. Um you can get that uh 12 to 18 months before the vanes and blades are limiting factor.

So, Elon's argument is, "Hey, well, you know, I know these are causing a delay, so if I get those, will that maybe get me ahead of the line? TBD. Keep in mind, Elon has experience with SpaceX in building Raptor engines, but Raptor engines are different from turbine engines.

So, turbine engines, the the point of a gas turbine is to get you continuous power for a long period of time to where you're not relying on a local grid. You're basically setting up your own uh natural gas facility, like a peaker plant almost.

Problem is the following. Rocket engine versus gas turbine. So, a rocket engine not a gas turbine. Rocket engines pump massive fuel for a few minutes. Turbines run continuously for hours.

Gas turbines are aerodynamically super complex, super hard to make, and turbines uh or or I should say the turbo pump blades in a Raptor engine are very different than what you get inside of one of these.

So, SpaceX has experience making rocket engines where they run for a few minutes and then they stop. Uh you know, the whole goal is basically thrust. And you basically take it all apart and reassemble it after each launch.

Whereas a gas turbine is supposed to land run basically continuously 8,000 hours a year. Uh and uh you know, the the goal is you don't have to overhaul them for 25,000 years. So, these metals that you're trying to fabricate or that Elon wants get into fabricating by building a plant in Texas.

It's not the easiest thing to do well. So, yes, Tesla has some experience and that credibility shouldn't be shorted. Uh but I don't know how much that's going to translate. Or how quickly they can even get a foundry up and running for casting these blades and veins.

Like the very time he's trying to save to get ahead of this supply shortage could be offset by the time it actually takes them to get to scale. Which isn't great.

And anytime there's money to be made somewhere, you know, Elon tends to like to vertically integrate. And he's not wrong often with his predictions. In fact, in May of 2025, he sort of predicted this, you know, energy wall that was coming.

In fairness, he's like at the bleeding edge of investment into artificial intelligence, so it'd kind of be weird if he didn't kind of see these walls coming. But, I mean, when we listen to this from a year almost a year and a half ago, he's pretty right on.

Yeah, I think we're I mean, a few years ago, I made a very obvious prediction, which is that the limitation on AI will be chips and um and it's still chips, kind of chips today.

Uh then it will be electrical equipment uh for the because

I wish he would have told us it would have been chips, then memory, then electricity, so we could have all YOLO'd memory a little bit earlier. You need to take power at uh that might be at 300,000 V all the way down to 400 V for the for the computer.

Um so, it needs you need step-down transformers and uh a lot of them and a lot of you know, cabling and wiring and fuses and like real uh you know, it's a it's a lot a lot a lot of transformers essentially.

And the the the electrical transformer industry is not used to big changes in demand.

No, there's a shortage of transformers. Actually, there's a shortage of of transformers. And then This is where we get into something that's worth kind of following just because of the lulls of it.

But, shortage of electrical transformers, also a shortage of AI transformers. And look where Elon goes with it.

Uh funnily enough, the AI algorithm is called a transformer. Um and then our Optimus robot is named after Optimus Prime, that's a transformer robot. It's a what?

So, we have transformers for transformers. Right. Right. But, it's the one transformer, it's the one in shortage. The others need And are we there yet? Or are we going to be there soon?

there soon. My guess is people will start hitting challenges with power generation maybe in the like middle of next year, end of next year. Even with So, like if we put all of this together, there are a lot of really exciting things sort of in the world of Elon going on.

You've got the prediction of an electrical shortage, which maybe the writing was on the wall for that to everybody. But, the point is he's weaponizing the classic vertical integration that he does at Tesla and SpaceX and applying it to both of the businesses as usual.

And of course, in the long term, there's a really good shot that these companies end up merging. So, there's a lot of enthusiasm for both of them. Now, the turbine play, I personally think it's a little bit of a shot side show.

I think there's a lot more enthusiasm around, you know, potentially massive scale coming to the robo-taxis.

And I think that's really what Thursday's going to be all about is this is an announcement that robo-taxis are now going to massive scale. They're going to be everywhere. It's not just going to be Texas or Florida anymore, Vegas.

That's just the recent catalyst. Now that we're in production, we can really crank.

And of course, you know, seeing the cheaper model simplified Model 3 in China, hopefully that could be a boost to some of our delivery numbers as well. But overall, you know, when you put all of that together, that's a lot of Elon, Tesla, and SpaceX related news that sounds overall decently bullish.

Obviously, there are risks at every level. You've got to get clean air permits for those turbines. That could take 6 to 9 months. You've got a whole other set of components for the turbines that Elon isn't actually going to manufacture in his foundry.

So, you're still kind of balls tied, if you will, to some other manufacturing company.

Uh you might be able to go quickly with your clean air permits in Texas because those usually only take 6 to 9 months, whereas California or New York will probably be like 18 to 24 months.

Uh and overall, we're coming off a really low base and a lot of pessimism for robo-taxis because it's been so slow to scale. And, you know, the question around, "Oh, how do we scale if we have to map and validate every area?"

And now we're geofenced. This isn't great. Could there be a breakthrough announcement? These are all things that'll be talked about.

Now, something else that's interesting about the Tesla Ratti post uh was the invitation itself suggested that only people invited can go to the event and that if you bring a plus one, which you're allowed to bring a plus one, you will not be allowed to use a content creator as your plus one.

Now, this I just thought was a very interesting like Apple style manner of trying to control the narrative, but it hasn't been uncommon in the past that Tesla will handpick their favorite Uber bull Tesla content creators.

They prefer getting news out with Uber bulls over legacy media. We already know that.

But then you take an Uber bull or even just a visitor or guest or investor or whatever who then invites an influencer that's a little bit more critical of Elon or even just brings a little bit of a level of realism, then all of a sudden you get Tesla's like, "Wait a minute. We didn't want them here.

They're going to ask hard questions, right?" And so they are now imposing the restriction that you're allowed to bring an additional guest, but they cannot be a content creator.

Now, they don't specify what they mean by that. Like a certain number of subscribers, like you look like a content creator, or you're not allowed to film or whatever, but it is an interesting way for Elon to maintain this Uber control over their their releases and their events, and it is right up the same alley as what Apple does. So, it's really not a surprise.

You know, Apple does it, so I'm not saying that Elon or Tesla are wrong for doing it. Hey, they're trying to put their best foot forward, so you can't really blame them for that. But uh always find that very interesting.

So, bottom line, excited about the Cybertruck event, excited about these Teslas coming off of the production line. Uh in fact, there was a photo on X about the Cybertruck coming off the production line. We'll go ahead and pull that up.

Uh and there was also, I want to say, a note about Uh no, I can't seem to find it right now. Uh it doesn't matter. Anyway, Cybertruck is coming off the production line. That's exciting.

We've got uh probably no updates expected on Optimus. That's that's not a big deal. So, you're coming off a very low base for robo-taxis. Turbines not heavily excited for me, but just sort of another reiteration of vertical integration.

Uh and overall, all of this is good news for both companies. Neither of it is particularly bad news.