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I’ve been on this sub for years, shitposting in the daily, pretending to be zen when in a rocket that could take off at any minute. I was convinced that smarter minds than mine had figured out how to punish those who had destroyed the American economy to enrich themselves, and I could be along for the ride. This morning I had an epiphany: we’ve been wrong all along. This whole gambit, the big eBay takeover, the Canadian CEO, it all finally makes sense, and all you regards are wrong about it all. All this Canadian wants to do is to turn this great American company GameStop, into a lame Canadian version, EBGames. We are going back to EBGames. That’s what this whole thing was about. JK, GM, GME to the moon

## Brief from [theteslathesis.com](https://theteslathesis.com) — see the site for daily briefs
- Texas Level 4 self-certification live; Ashok signals Cybercab "reporting for duty" in Austin imminently.
- FSD daily miles hit 26.7M/day — up 44% in one month per Morgan Stanley.
- Reuters: Tesla's "10x safer" FSD claim inflates true ratio ~3x; NHTSA has 4 open investigations.
- June 30 IR commitment: five new robotaxi cities must launch within days.
- Optimus factory steel erection begun at Giga Texas; Fremont pilot line visible.
- China FSD fraud trial opens; 1M+ HW3 vehicles face triple-damage exposure.
- Musk pay "change in control" clause waives all operational milestones upon a merger.
---
## Unsupervised Robotaxi Fleet
| City | Now | 7D | 30D |
|:-----|----:|---:|----:|
| Austin | 28 | 0 | +8 |
| Houston | 6 | 0 | +3 |
| Dallas | 5 | 0 | +2 |
| **Total** | **39** | 0 | +13 |
Source: Robotaxi Tracker
---
## Robotaxi
- **Texas Level 4 authorization is the week's structural unlock.** New Texas law took effect May 28–30, allowing manufacturer self-certification for driverless commercial operation. Tesla certified Cybercab as Level 4 on day one — the regulatory gate bears had called years away is now cleared. Tesla simultaneously pre-staged Cybercabs at hubs in all three Texas cities the same week.
- **Ashok Elluswamy's "reporting for duty" post is the clearest internal signal yet.** Tesla's head of AI quote-tweeted Musk's factory self-drive video (15M views) and stated Cybercab would soon "drive itself into Austin city, reporting for duty." The brighterwithherbert analysis: because Ashok controls FSD version, safety data, and route validation, "soon" implies real-world weeks, not months. The ~20-mile public-road drive from Giga Texas to Austin would let the fleet grow itself without human transport drivers.
- **June 30 city-launch deadline is a hard IR commitment, not a Musk tweet.** Tesla's Q4 2024 investor relations document committed to robotaxi coverage in Las Vegas, Tampa, Orlando, Miami, and Phoenix by June 30, 2026. Nationwide AI safety operator hiring across 15+ states simultaneously (per Tesla Yoda, May 27) reads as an operational pre-launch signal with roughly 30 days left on the clock.
- **Cybercab production running ~30–36 units/day per Bhakdi**, citing Tegtmeyer drone footage — implying roughly 1,000 units/month. Starlink Mini units confirmed on Cybercabs in Austin and Houston, providing redundant connectivity for dead zones and fleet-scale OTA updates. All three Giga Texas production lines (Model Y, Cybertruck, Cybercab) confirmed running simultaneously for the first time in six to eight months.
- **Staged ≠ deployed; real gaps remain.** Staged Cybercabs still have steering wheels attached. RobotaxiTracker.com shows no growth in the unsupervised count for the full week. Bhakdi estimates ~1,000 Cybercabs produced to date but acknowledges his prior April–May target of 1,800 unsupervised units was missed by roughly a year. The repricing threshold he cites begins above 1,000 deployed unsupervised units — not staged.
---
## Autonomous Driving
- **FSD daily miles hit 26.7M/day, up 44% month-over-month**, per Morgan Stanley's May note — from 18.5M/day in April. The metric is Morgan Stanley's explicit proxy for subscriber growth and engagement, and drew the highest investor engagement of the week.
- **European mutual recognition is now a copy-paste process.** Lithuania approved supervised FSD in under 40 days by leveraging the Netherlands' 18-month, 1.12M-mile evaluation; Greece is next via the same mechanism. FSD Supervised is now confirmed in three European countries, with Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Austria preparing for unsupervised approval. Combined Netherlands + Lithuania FSD mileage hit 12.5M miles, with ~3M added in under 72 hours.
- **FSD 14.5 and 14.6 confirmed in internal testing.** FSD V14 Light — delivering all V14 features to HW3 vehicles — is targeted for late June 2026 per Ashok's Q1 earnings commentary. A reasoning model is already running in FSD V14.x on production vehicles, per Ashok's October 2025 ICCV paper. A transcontinental zero-intervention Canada drive completed at 3,760 miles — the first on record.
- **Grok Build actively accelerating FSD and Cybercab development.** Tesla AI VP Yantasai confirmed Grok Build is in active use for both programs; Tesla AI engineers have effectively unlimited token access within the Musk ecosystem's compute stack. Separately, thin-barrier detection (tape or chains across a parking lot entrance) remains an open edge case, flagged via repeated employee testing in Austin.
---
## Optimus
- **Giga Texas Optimus factory has entered steel erection phase.** Beams and columns are being staged at the North Campus site, which targets at least 10M units/year across two phases — Phase 2 reclaiming an adjacent mining site to nearly double the footprint. A realistic production-ready estimate from on-site observers is end of 2027 or 2028, not 2026.
- **Fremont pilot production line is further along than public disclosures suggested.** Footage from the Model S/X Signature Edition event showed manufacturing cells, some enclosed in glass (indicating automated steps), with workers present. Lars Moravy confirmed the Model S/X discontinuation and Optimus line conversion were explicitly linked decisions. Bhakdi expects a V3 reveal in approximately 4–6 weeks (late June–early August); Elon's April 22 earnings call placed it ~90 days out.
- **Macrohard (Digital Optimus) disclosed in the SpaceX S-1**, described as a joint Tesla-SpaceX agentic AI replicating computer-based human work via vision rather than APIs. Elon targets a product launch by end of 2026. Ashok is confirmed lead engineer; his ICCV paper states the same video generation models powering FSD "also work for Optimus robots navigating the Tesla Gigafactory" — shared AI stack confirmed in writing.
- **Cortex 2 partially operational since April; full capacity targeted end of summer/fall 2026.** Roughly half capacity is live, training both FSD and Optimus. Approximately 130 Megapacks installed at Cortex 2 today; ~400 planned across all Giga Texas sites.
---
## Energy
- **SpaceX purchased ~$500M in Megapacks from Tesla in 2025**, up from ~$200M in 2024 — driven by AI data center power stabilization. Meta is confirmed as an additional Megapack customer for Wyoming AI data centers ($200M order). Tesla's Megapack is cementing a position as critical AI infrastructure.
- **Megapack 3 Belgium deployment: 180 units, 700 MWh, >$116M**, on the site of a former power plant; grid connection scheduled November 2026, commissioning by end of 2027 — one of the first large-scale Megapack 3 deployments in Europe.
- **Limondale BESS in Australia coming online: 144 Megapacks, $145M**, configured for 100 MW charge / 50 MW discharge. Tesla Energy vertical integration expanding simultaneously: Corpus Christi lithium refinery Line 1 running 24/7, Line 2 equipment arriving; cathode plant at Giga Texas receiving new equipment; 4680 area has active permit filings and new equipment installation underway.
---
## Electric Vehicles
- **Lower-cost Cybertruck ($59,990 Dual-Motor AWD) VINs assigned; deliveries mid-to-late June 2026.** Joe Tegtmeyer describes demand as "pretty big." Q1 2026 Cybertruck sales were 4,186 units, down from ~7,000 in Q1 2025 — the original $39K price promise vs. ~$95K launch price cited as the primary demand suppressor.
- **Tesla Europe April 2026: +46.5% YoY, 10,654 units** (EU-only growth exceeded 67%) — third consecutive month of YoY growth following +84% in March. YTD EU/EFTA/UK: 89,429 units, +45.8%. France and Spain reportedly at record highs.
- **Tesla Roadster confirmed for Giga Texas production** per Lars Moravy on the Ride the Lightning podcast; alpha prototypes in testing. Elon's framing from Q1 earnings: "Long-term, the only manually driven car will be the new Tesla Roadster" — positioning it as the last great driver's car, not a performance halo.
- **Model S/X final production completed** with a Giga Texas sendoff event. Lifetime sales: 755,000 units (400K Model S, 355K Model X).
---
## Financials
- **Piper Sandler 17-business DCF yields ~$400/share, excluding Optimus and distributed inference.** At ~$450s, the market is effectively pricing Optimus at zero. Robotaxi becomes ~45% of Tesla revenue and roughly half of gross profit by 2045 in the model; FSD licensing modeled at ~$400B revenue by 2045. Potter's conservatism is explicitly regulatory, not technical: "You can't see second place with a telescope."
- **Musk pay "change in control" clause waives all operational milestones upon merger.** Electrek analysis flags that the 2025 performance stock agreement language states "the Operational Milestones shall be disregarded" upon a buyout — meaning targets including 1 million commercial robotaxis and 1 million Optimus bots could be bypassed for some or all of 12 tranches of stock. The article is opinion-editorial, but the clause language is sourced from the agreement.
- **Tesla capex-to-revenue ratio cited at ~9–10x** vs. 3–5x for Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, per Cern Basher's analysis using Q1 2016-onward data. The robotaxi and Optimus periods ahead are framed as the direct test of whether that ratio holds under a >$25B annual capex regime.
---
## Market & Competition
- **SpaceX IPO targeting ~$1.75–$2T valuation, expected June 12 (ticker: SPCX).** Merger odds: Wedbush's Ives at "80–90%" by early 2027; Kalshi at 33% before May 2027. NASDAQ rule change reportedly compresses index inclusion to 10 days post-IPO, forcing passive funds to buy at peak — with dilution risk for Tesla shareholders if an all-stock merger follows.
- **BYD EU/EFTA/UK YTD: 101,000+ units, +144% YoY.** Chery Auto grew 338% YoY in the same markets. EU full BEV share reached 19.7% YTD vs. 15.3% a year ago. GM/Samsung fully paused their $3.5B Synergy Cells battery plant; GM simultaneously directed $6B+ toward ICE investments including sixth-generation V8 engines.
- **Grok fell from second to fifth most-popular AI chatbot globally** by April 2026, per Electrek; monthly active users dropped 12.5% to 12.2M versus Claude's 23M (+44%). In enterprise, only 7% of companies reported using Grok vs. 48% for Claude. xAI's 62 unpermitted gas turbines in Memphis and Southaven face NAACP/Earthjustice emergency court action.
---
## Bear Case of the Week
- **Reuters investigation: Tesla's "10x safer" FSD claim overstates the true ratio by ~3x.** University of Michigan researcher Marco Benedetti corrected Tesla's methodology — which compared airbag-deployment crashes in Tesla's newer-than-average fleet against federal data including all tow-truck crashes — and found the corrected ratio is ~3x farther between crashes, not 10x. Ten of 11 traffic-safety researchers who reviewed the methodology told Reuters it amounted to misleading marketing. NHTSA has 4 active FSD/Autopilot investigations open, including a probe into dozens of cases where FSD ran red lights or turned into oncoming traffic. Tesla was also hit with a $243M verdict after an Autopilot crash in Florida killed a 22-year-old woman.
- **Reuters documented weeks of intensive pre-launch mapping in Austin**, directly contradicting Musk's repeated claim that Tesla's approach requires no "laborious local mapping." Utah labeling staff doubled to ~300 in the six months before the Austin launch. One former employee: "You can't get creative outside of that." The operational reality — a carefully mapped geofence — is structurally different from the vision-only generalization narrative used with investors.
- **Seven of nine former Tesla data labelers told Reuters they wouldn't trust FSD to drive them.** Labelers described FSD routinely failing to yield to emergency vehicles, give motorcyclists adequate space, brake on freeway off-ramps, and avoid construction zones. FSD was also reported regularly exceeding speed limits by 20–30 mph in "Mad Max" mode, with one instance of 60 mph in a 25-mph zone. One labeler: he wouldn't ride in a Tesla robotaxi "if you fucking paid me."
- **China FSD fraud trial opened May 30; triple-damage exposure on 1M+ HW3 vehicles.** Ten owners seeking $583K allege they paid ~$7,800 each for FSD between 2019 and 2021 and were excluded when Tesla's Chinese rollout supported only HW4. Under China's Consumer Rights Protection Law, triple damages are available. Tesla renamed the system "Tesla Assisted Driving" nine days before the hearing — a move Electrek characterizes as a tacit admission the original "Full Self-Driving" branding was misleading. Total global FSD/Autopilot-related litigation: $14.5B.
- **Unsupervised fleet count has not grown in over three weeks.** RobotaxiTracker.com shows no change from the May 9 snapshot across all three Texas cities. Cybercab production is running at ~30–36 units/day, vehicles are staged, Texas Level 4 authorization is live — yet the count of vehicles operating commercially without a human remains static. Bhakdi's own prior target of 1,800 unsupervised units by April–May 2026 missed by approximately a year, and his current projection of 1,000+ by end of June faces the same structural tension between production cadence and actual deployment pace.
- **Musk pay package "change in control" clause waives all operational milestones upon a Tesla–SpaceX merger.** If a merger occurs, Tesla need not deliver 1 million commercial robotaxis, 1 million Optimus bots, 20 million vehicle deliveries, or 10 million FSD subscriptions for Musk to collect some or all of 12 compensation tranches. Merger probability is actively debated at 33–90% depending on the source; the clause creates a direct structural conflict between Musk's financial incentive and Tesla shareholder interest in hitting the milestones that justify the current valuation.

I'm in high school and have been slowly investing in stocks since January (when I turned 18). I've put in about $40 and so far have made about $20-21 profit in individual companies such as Ford, GM, CF Industries, and a nuclear company called Nucor.
Recently, I've been wanting to invest more, so my main question is: what should I invest in?
Also, what's the difference between index funds and ETFs? I hear they're smart investments, but I'm not sure what they are.
Additionally, I use Robinhood, if that's relevant.