Author: Gail Alfar

Gail has a bachelor of art in film/radio/tv and a bachelor of science in nursing She has worked for years caring for all ages of people with many diagnoses in over 5 hospitals and schools around the texas hill country Originally from north dakota, she is now based in austin and writes about sustainable energy for the website she created ‘What’s up Tesla’ and 'What's up Twitter' and maintains her nursing practice
Elon Musk gave a warm, inviting talk about Terafab to a packed, cheering crowd at the historic Seaholm Power Plant in Austin around 8 p.m. on March 21, 2026,

Elon Musk’s Terafab Announcement: Inside the Joint Tesla-SpaceX-xAI Plan for a Terawatt of AI Compute (Full Transcript)

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Elon Musk gave a warm, inviting talk about Terafab to a packed, cheering crowd at the historic Seaholm Power Plant in Austin around 8 p.m. on March 21, 2026,
Elon Musk gave a warm, inviting talk about Terafab to a packed, cheering crowd at the historic Seaholm Power Plant in Austin around 8 p.m. on March 21, 2026,

Elon Musk is one of the most caring and approachable people on Earth, and he gave a warm, inviting talk about Terafab to a packed, cheering crowd at the historic Seaholm Power Plant in Austin. While he spoke around 8 p.m. on March 21, 2026, the city outside was treated to a magnificent blue laser beam that appeared over the entire sky—so striking that a local news station immediately sent out a reporter to cover it. Here is my verbatim transcript of his talk.

Elon Musk:

We have a profoundly important announcement to make, which is the most epic chip-building exercise in history by far.

This is really going to take it to the next level—a level probably people aren’t even contemplating right now. This is not in their context. I would call this sort of an out-of-context problem. So we’re going to adjust the context by a few orders of magnitude here.

Let’s see. It’s a joint effort.

[button press sound]

I’m pressing the button, but the button’s not working. Oh, there we go. Okay.

We aspire to be a galactic civilization. So I think the future that everyone—well, most people, I think would agree—is the most exciting one where we are out there among the stars, where we are not forever confined to one planet, that we become a multi-planet species. Like the best science fiction that you’ve ever read, you know, Star Trek or Iain Banks or Asimov or Heinlein. And we want to make that real. Yeah. Not just fiction. Turn science fiction into science fact. That’s the glorious, exciting future that I certainly look forward to.

It’s worth considering how you would rate civilizations. There was a physicist—I think he was Russian—in the ’60s, Kardashev, and he thought about at a high level how you would classify any given civilization. He said, well, if you’re Type One, you’re using most of the energy of your planet. And we actually still have quite a ways to go to be properly a Type One. We’re still using a tiny fraction of the sun’s energy that reaches our planet.

The Earth only receives about half a billionth of the sun’s energy. So the sun is truly enormous. The sun is 99.8% of all mass in the solar system. So sometimes people will ask me, like, what about other power sources on Earth like fusion on Earth? Well, that is unfortunately very small because the sun is 99.8% of mass in the solar system and Jupiter is about 0.1% and Earth is in the miscellaneous category. We are, I think as Carl Sagan might have said, Earth is like a tiny dust mote in a vast darkness—very, very small. The sun is enormous.

So the way to actually scale civilization is to scale power in space. This is necessarily true because we actually capture such a tiny amount of the sun’s energy on Earth because we’re just this tiny dust mote. Another way to think of it is roughly like electricity production on Earth of all of civilization is only about a trillionth of the sun’s energy. Which means if you increase civilizational power output by a million, you would still only be a millionth of the sun’s energy.

It’s awe-inspiring to consider that, just how tiny we are in the grand scheme of things. We often get sort of caught up in these sort of squabbles on Earth that are really very sort of minor things when you consider the grandness of the universe. I think it is important actually to consider the grandness of the universe and what we can do that is much greater than what we’ve done before, as opposed to worrying about sort of small squabbles on Earth type of thing. Not much point in that! We want to be a civilization that expands to the galaxy with spaceships that anyone can go anywhere they want at any time. That would be epic. And have a city on the moon, cities on Mars, populate the solar system, and send spaceships to other star systems. That sounds like the best possible future.

(applause)

So to do that, we need to harness the power of the sun. A Terafab, while it is enormous—a terawatt of compute per year is enormous by our civilizational standards—is still just one step along the way to being even a Kardashev II level civilization. You’re not even registering as a Kardashev III. So it’s a very big thing by current human standards, but still small in the grand scheme. But it’s very difficult for humans.

To accomplish this very difficult goal really requires a combination of efforts from SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla working together to create this epic Terafab project.

And Tesla, xAI, and SpaceX have all done amazing things that people did not think would be done before. There’s the Giga Texas fab here. There’s the Optimus robot that’s being built. There’s a global supercharging network. There’s really quite a lot.

It wasn’t that long ago when people thought electric cars wouldn’t amount to anything. There were basically no electric cars for sale when Tesla started. People said it was impossible, and now Tesla is making 2 million electric cars a year.

Then xAI, although it’s a new company, now part of SpaceX, has also built the first gigawatt-scale compute cluster in record time. Jensen Huang from Nvidia said he’d never seen anything built so fast in his life before. So, a great compliment from Nvidia.

And then SpaceX… well, you already know. The reusable rockets—people said the reusable rockets weren’t possible, and even if you did them, they wouldn’t be economically feasible. So we did them, and then we made them economically feasible. Now we’ve landed over 500 times. Then we did the Falcon Heavy, and now we’re doing Starship.

Starship is a critical piece of the puzzle because in order to scale compute and scale power, you have to go to space, which means that you need massive payload to space and Starship will enable that.

[Shows picture of scale]

This gives you a sense of scale. We’ve got Optimus there for scale. Optimus is about 5’11”, so it gives you a sense of the size of the Starship V3 rocket. Starship V4 will be much longer. Starship V4 will make Starship V3 look kind of short.

We’ll expand with Starship V3 to 200 tons of payload to orbit, up from 100 tons—we’ll start with V3. You can see that this is just a rough approximation of the mini version of the AI sat. That’s roughly 100 kW. It shows the solar panels and the radiator to scale.

For some reason, there’s been a bizarre debate about radiators in space. It’s safe to say SpaceX knows how to do heat rejection in space with 10,000 satellites in orbit—we might know a thing or two. You can see the radiator is quite small relative to the solar panels.

We call it the minisat since that’s just 100 kW. We expect future satellites to probably go to the megawatt range.

(applause)

In order to get to the terawatt of compute per year, you need about 10 million tons to orbit per year at 100 kW per ton. We’re confident this is feasible—like, no new physics or impossible things are required to get there.

I’m confident that SpaceX will get to 10 million tons to orbit per year. Then we’re building up to a terawatt of solar, which will solve the power generation problem.

The key missing ingredient is therefore a terawatt of compute. This announcement is about solving the key missing ingredient.

To give you a sense of what we’re talking about, the current output of AI compute is roughly 20 gigawatts per year. This chart explains why we need to build the Terafab, because all of the rest of the output from Earth is about 2% of what we need.

[Shows chart]

If you add up all the fabs on Earth combined, they’re only about 2% of what we need for the Terawatt Project, or Terafab project.

We certainly want our existing supply chain, to be clear. We’re very grateful to Samsung, TSMC, Micron, and others, and we would like them to expand as quickly as they can. We will buy all of their chips—I’ve said these exact words to them.

But there’s a maximum rate at which they’re comfortable expanding, and that rate is much less than we would like. So we either build the Terafab or we don’t have the chips. And we need the chips. So we’re going to build the Terafab.

We’re starting with an advanced technology fab here in Austin. I believe Governor Abbott is in the audience. I’d like to thank Governor Abbott and the state of Texas for their support.

(applause)

In the advanced technology fab, we will have all of the equipment necessary to make a chip of any kind—logic or memory—and we will also have all of the equipment necessary to make the lithography masks. In a single building, we can create a lithography mask, make the chip, test the chip, make another mask, and have an incredibly fast recursive loop for improving the chip design.

To the best of my knowledge, this does not exist anywhere in the world. Where you’ve got everything necessary that you need to build logic, memory, do packaging and test it, and then do the masks, improve the masks, and just keep looping it. We’re not going to just do conventional compute in this. I think there’s some very interesting new physics that I’m confident will work—just a question of when.

We’re really going to push the limit of physics in compute and we’re going to try a bunch of wild and crazy things which you can do if you’ve got that fast iteration loop. I can’t emphasize enough the importance of being able to make a chip, test it, and then change the design, do another one, and have that in a single building.

I think that our recursive improvement with that situation is probably an order of magnitude better than anything else in the world.

(applause)

So, broadly speaking, we expect to make two kinds of chips. One will be optimized for edge inference. So that’ll be used primarily in Optimus and in the cars but especially in Optimus because I expect the humanoid robots to be made 10 to 100 times more than the volume of cars. So if vehicle production on Earth is about 100 million vehicles a year and I expect humanoid robot production to be somewhere between a billion and 10 billion units a year. So it’s a lot. Tesla’s going to make a very significant percentage of those, is our goal!

And then we need a high-power chip that is designed for space that takes into account the more difficult environment in space where you’ve got high power, you’ve got high-energy ions, photons, you got electron buildup. It’s a hostile environment in space. So you want to design the chip, you want to optimize it for space and you also want to generally run it a little hotter than you would normally run a chip on Earth to minimize the radiator mass. So there are just a bunch of constraints that you would design something differently in space than you would on the ground.

For the space compute, my guess is that is the vast majority of the compute because you’re power-constrained on Earth. That’s why I think it’s probably 100 to 200 gigawatts a year of terrestrial chips and probably on the order of a terawatt of chips in space—just because of power constraints on the ground. Space has this advantage that it’s always sunny. It’s very nice.

I actually think that the cost of deploying AI in space will drop below the cost of terrestrial AI much sooner than most people expect. I think it may be only two or three years before it is actually lower cost to send AI chips to space than it is on the ground. Because in space you don’t need much in the way of batteries. It’s always sunny. And the solar power you get, you’re going to get at least five or more times the solar power you get in space versus the ground, because you don’t have atmospheric attenuation or a day-night cycle or seasonality, and you’re always normal to the sun. So you’re really maximizing the solar power at that point. And this space solar actually costs less than terrestrial solar because you don’t need heavy glass or framing to protect it from extreme weather events.

So as soon as the cost to orbit drops to a low number, it immediately makes extremely compelling sense to put AI in space. It becomes a no-brainer, basically. Moreover, as you go to space, you get increased economies of scale and things get easier over time. Whereas, as you try to put more and more power on the ground, you run out of space and you start using up the easy spots and then you get next-level NIMBY—nobody wants the thing in their backyard. So actually increasing power on Earth becomes harder over time and more expensive over time but in space it becomes actually cheaper and easier over time. These are very important points.

What you just saw there was, because of course you’re asking, what’s on your mind, is well, what do you do after a Terafab? Don’t think small. Well, yeah, good point. So, you know, how do you get to a petawatt? That is the obvious next question. And you get there by having an electromagnetic mass driver on the moon with robots with Optimi and obviously lots of humans. And with that you can send a petawatt, you can create a petawatt of compute and send that to deep space. Because the moon has no atmosphere and has one-sixth of Earth gravity, so you can—you don’t need rockets on the moon. You can literally accelerate it to escape velocity from the surface and that dramatically drops the cost once again of harnessing power and enables you to go a thousand times bigger than a terawatt.

For sure, the future I want to see—I want us to live long enough to see the mass driver on the moon because that’s going to be incredibly epic. That should hopefully get us to a millionth of the sun’s energy at least. It’s humbling to think about that, but a millionth of the sun’s energy would be a million times bigger than Earth’s economy. So it’s good from that perspective. You expand beyond that to the planets, to the other stars, and create the most exciting possible future that I can imagine.

This looks a bit like the opening of Idiocracy with a Mike Judge unlocking an age of amazing abundance. Yeah. Obviously, the elements of that are sustainable energy, space travel, and AI and robotics that bring amazing abundance to everyone. It’s really the only path to amazing abundance: AI and robotics. Which is not to say it can’t go wrong. Hopefully, you know, but I think it’ll probably go right and it’ll be a future that you love. It’s the best future I can think of at least.

And then we go beyond the moon, beyond Mars, and we sail through the rings of Saturn. Now, wouldn’t it be amazing if you could buy a trip to Saturn? Or frankly, if you just have a trip to Saturn. I think things will just be free in the future. It sounds nuts, but you know, if you’ve got an AI robotics economy that is anywhere close to a million times the size of the current Earth economy, literally any need you possibly want can be met. If you can think of it, you can have it.

So I think Iain Banks in his Culture books has it pretty much right, where there actually isn’t money in the future and there’s abundance for everyone. If you can think of it, you can have it. That’s it. Which means anyone could have a trip to Saturn. It won’t be, you know, just a few people. If you want it, you can have it.

Help us design incredible chips and make incredible chips and build a terawatt of chips, a terawatt of solar, and 10 million tons to orbit per year. Thank you.

A School Bus Nearly Runs a Red Light: Viral Video Highlights How Tesla Saves Lives

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Northern Virginia, March 25, 2026. A yellow school bus carrying children rolled aggressively toward a red light at an intersection near Chain Bridge Road, while a Tesla using FSD (Supervised) approached on green. In a matter of seconds, the car’s advanced driver-assistance system detected the threat and braked sharply. The vehicles stopped short of a collision. No one was hurt.

The driver of the car, a Washington DC-area resident and father whose own children ride school buses, shared the dashcam footage on X that afternoon. Posting under the handle @congressdj, he described the moment with quiet exasperation. “The bus was in a full roll,” he wrote in follow-up replies. “About to run that light… blew past the white line with prejudice.” With thousands of miles of experience using the system known as Full Self-Driving (Supervised), he insisted this was no phantom reaction. “It was a legitimate life save for these children,” he added. The video, complete with telemetry showing a peak of 0.82g of braking force, quickly drew hundreds of thousands of views.

School buses are trusted daily with the most precious cargo: children. In the United States, they transport millions of pupils each year; similar fleets operate across France, Italy and the rest of Europe. Yet the same roads that carry them are shared with cars, trucks and the occasional hurried driver. Parents everywhere recognise the quiet worry that accompanies the morning and afternoon routes. A moment’s inattention on the part of any professional at the wheel can ripple into something far larger.

The video has prompted the usual online debate. Some viewers saw an over-reaction, others a textbook example of technology stepping in when human reflexes might not. The poster, however, kept the focus where it belongs: on the children inside the bus. “With kids that ride school buses, this really infuriates me,” he noted.

This incident offers a gentle reminder that even seasoned professional drivers can have an off moment. Yet it also carries quiet hope. Artificial intelligence is proving it can help protect our most vulnerable road users, the children who ride school buses each day. Companies like Tesla, one of Elon Musk’s ventures, and others are showing what is possible when technology acts as an extra, vigilant layer of safety, stepping in during those critical split seconds when human error occurs. These innovations point the way toward journeys that are safer and more reassuring for families everywhere.

In the end, the children on board reached school safely, unaware of the close call, ready for lessons, laughter and whatever the day might bring. That ordinary, joyful outcome is reason enough for a small, satisfied smile and optimism about the safer roads the future can bring for families everywhere. 🚸

at Dubai’s World Governments Summit, he calmly took the stage during the panel “Are We Ready for Human 2.0?”. “People come first,” he told world leaders. “We’re helping with disabilities now; questions of enhancement come later.”

Two Years of Mind Over Matter: How a Brain Implant Is Rewriting Lives

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Just days ago, a video from Neuralink set social media and scientific circles alight: an ALS patient named Kenneth Shock, once robbed of speech, now thinking words that the implant instantly translates into his own voice. The clip, part of the newly launched VOICE trial, offered a glimpse of restored autonomy for those silenced by illness. Yet for many it also served as a powerful reminder of quieter, earlier breakthroughs, like the one that began two years ago with Noland Arbaugh.

In January 2024, the then-paralysed 29-year-old American became the first person to receive a Neuralink brain implant. A robot-guided surgery threaded more than a thousand ultra-fine electrodes into his motor cortex, bypassing the spinal injury from a diving accident that had left him quadriplegic. There was little fanfare, only cautious hope.

Today, in March 2026, Noland is not merely coping; he is living with a freedom he once believed lost forever. He moves a cursor with thought alone. He raids in World of Warcraft for hours, no controller required. He types lecture notes for his neuroscience studies and earns top grades. Everyday acts that once demanded caregivers like email, digital art, even switching on lights, now flow directly from intention. “The freedom is addictive,” he says. “Science fiction that somehow became my everyday reality.”

This is no overnight miracle. Early months brought technical setbacks, notably the retraction of some electrode threads. Software updates and refined surgery have since steadied performance. Neuralink now counts 21 implant recipients worldwide; participants are demonstrating ever-greater control over cursors, robotic arms and virtual keyboards, some reaching typing speeds approaching 40 words per minute.

Noland’s public appearances have given the technology a human face. In mid-March he travelled to Detroit to speak at a special-education gathering, telling educators and schoolchildren how the implant bridges mind and machine and how his faith and technology together unlock what once seemed impossible. Local leader Mike Cox, called the talk the afternoon’s highlight, praising Noland’s “indomitable spirit, neuron by neuron.”

A month earlier, at Dubai’s World Governments Summit, he calmly took the stage during the panel “Are We Ready for Human 2.0?”. “People come first,” he told world leaders. “We’re helping with disabilities now; questions of enhancement come later.”

Such stories arrive at a delicate moment. In Europe, regulators remain rightly cautious. The EU’s medical-device rules and AI Act subject high-risk brain-computer interfaces to stringent oversight on safety, data privacy and long-term effects. While American trials advance, bureaucratic caution on this side of the Atlantic has slowed access. Critics ask essential questions: should private companies lead such intimate interventions, and what safeguards will prevent future misuse or unequal access?

Yet the lived reality of patients like Noland underscores the promise. Before the implant, simple independence felt out of reach; today he says the device “didn’t just give me a new way to use a computer — it gave me a new way to live.” From icy conference halls in Michigan to gleaming stages in Dubai, he continues to show what is already possible: agency reclaimed, one thought at a time.

The recent attention around Kenneth Shock’s voice does not eclipse Noland’s journey; it illuminates it. Two years on, Neuralink’s work remains experimental, imperfect, and rich with profound philosophical questions about the frontier between human and machine. But for those whose bodies have failed them, it is already delivering something deeply human: the chance to be heard, to create, and to participate fully in the world again.

If one small chip can begin to turn paralysis into possibility, the years ahead will test not only the limits of technology, but our collective willingness to embrace its gifts responsibly and with hope.

Deaf Driver Shows How Tesla’s Self-Driving System “Hears” Sirens He Can’t

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On 23 March 2026, Daniel Geiger posted a 22-second screen-recording that quietly went viral. The California driver, who is deaf, showed his Tesla’s Full Self-Driving feature automatically detecting an approaching ambulance’s lights, pulling over safely and stopping, all before the vehicle reached him. “I’m deaf and can’t hear sirens,” he wrote, “but my Tesla FSD pulled over instantly for an ambulance. … This is why FSD is huge for deaf drivers: it ‘hears’ what I can’t and keeps everyone safer.”

Geiger is an ordinary working professional, not an influencer or company employee. A Long Island native from Moriches, New York, he played college lacrosse at Sacred Heart University (class of 2005) and earned a degree in Information Technology. He now lives in Auburn, California, and works as an IT security specialist for the California Department of Social Services. On social media he talks about sports, state taxes, potholes and, occasionally, how technology intersects with disability.

The incident occurred on 23 March 2026 during a normal drive in the greater Sacramento area. The car’s multimodal sensors (cameras plus the audio-siren detection rolled out in late 2024) handled the situation smoothly. Geiger simply shared the app recording to illustrate one benefit for deaf drivers.

For Americans the context is immediate. Under California Vehicle Code 21806, drivers must yield the right of way to any emergency vehicle using lights and siren: move to the right edge of the road and stop until it passes. Failure to do so is an infraction carrying a base fine of about $490 plus one point on your DMV record. Similar “move-over” or yield laws exist in every state because seconds can mean lives. Deaf drivers follow the same rules but cannot hear the siren that usually alerts everyone else. Geiger’s video shows how one vehicle system can fill that sensory gap while still obeying the same traffic laws everyone else must follow.

He posted the clip because he wanted to highlight a practical safety tool, not to sell cars. The response from other deaf drivers and everyday motorists suggests the story resonated beyond brand loyalty: it showed technology quietly making an existing legal obligation easier to meet for people who otherwise rely on visual cues alone.

Elon Musk’s Terafab Project: Toward a Tesla-SpaceX Convergence?

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On March 21, 2026, at the historic Seaholm Power Plant in Austin, Elon Musk unveiled Terafab: a $20–25 billion semiconductor factory, the result of cooperation between Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI. The stated objective: to produce more than one terawatt of computing power per year, equivalent to nearly the entire current electric power capacity of the United States.

Eighty percent of this capacity would be dedicated to orbital data centers, powered by space-based solar energy via SpaceX launchers. The remainder would supply Tesla’s autonomous vehicles, Optimus humanoid robots, and xAI’s artificial intelligence models. Musk summed it up bluntly: “Either we build Terafab, or we won’t have the chips.”

This project marks a new stage in the vertical integration of the entrepreneur’s companies. While no formal rapprochement has been confirmed, the pooling of resources between a publicly traded company (Tesla) and a private enterprise (SpaceX) is fueling speculation about a deeper merger. Analysts such as Gary Black warn of dilution risks for Tesla shareholders and regulatory obstacles.

For Europe, which is investing heavily through the Chips Act to reduce its dependence on Asian foundries, Terafab illustrates both a threat and a strategic question. An unprecedented concentration of computing capacity in private American hands could disrupt global supply chains. Musk, for his part, presents the project as a response to Earth’s energy limits and a means of ensuring that human knowledge can survive beyond the planet.

The challenges remain immense: Tesla and SpaceX have no experience manufacturing 2-nanometer chips, the capital expenditure is colossal, and timelines remain unclear. The market reacted cautiously: Tesla’s share price barely moved.

Whether Terafab succeeds or not, one thing is clear: Musk’s ecosystem is evolving toward unprecedented industrial integration. Europe, which has always believed in large collective adventures—Airbus, Ariane, ITER—is watching this new form of private competition closely. The future will show whether it can respond.

Stargaze: SpaceX Just Gave Everyone Free Space Traffic Control

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Low-Earth orbit is a crazy-busy highway with thousands of satellites moving at insane speeds. One wrong move, and debris could snowball into Kessler syndrome, wrecking orbits for years.

Enter Stargaze, SpaceX’s smart fix announced in late January 2026. They repurposed the tiny star-tracking cameras on 10,116 active Starlink satellites right now (that’s roughly 30,000 sensors total, and yes, they just crossed the 10,000 mark a few days ago) to spot nearby objects.

Result? About 30 million observations every single day. This is way more frequent than ground radars that only check sporadically and take hours to warn about risks.

Stargaze crunches the data in near real-time, spots sneaky maneuvers fast, and spits out collision alerts (Conjunction Data Messages) in minutes instead of hours. Starlink has already dodged hundreds of thousands of potential crashes autonomously; this makes everything way easier and safer.

The killer part: it’s completely free for any satellite operator worldwide. No fees, no paywall. Closed beta started right after the reveal; wider access rolled out this spring, meaning right now in March 2026.

SpaceX isn’t charging because safer orbits benefit everyone (including their own fleet). It’s like one company volunteering to be the air-traffic controller for low Earth orbit and saying, “Come join in and share your flight plans too.”

Official source to share with friends: Stargaze on Starlink.com

Tesla’s Terafab Is Launching NOW – Elon Musk’s Epic Vertical Integration Win for AI5 Chips!

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Tesla is about to break ground on Terafab, its brand-new U.S. semiconductor fab built to crank out AI5 processors and beyond at massive scale. This is classic Elon: full vertical integration to power Robotaxi, Optimus, and the entire autonomous future without waiting on anyone else.

The timing couldn’t be better. Demand for these high-performance AI chips is exploding, and Tesla’s own silicon (co-designed with its software stack) will crush bottlenecks that TSMC and Samsung simply can’t handle long-term. Elon has always said bold bets beat waiting around, and this one is pure genius.

Here’s the post that got everyone fired up:

Elon Musk (@elonmusk) – March 14, 2026
“Terafab Project launches in 7 days”

(89K likes, 11K reposts, 85M views — the internet lost its mind, as it should!)

Like him or not, Elon just keeps delivering. While I wait for the groundbreaking photos, I’m slowly recovering from a tough fall that left me unable to walk for now. With physical therapy, ice packs, healing foods, and the occasional slice of artisan apple pie for the soul, I’m making steady progress every day. Nothing says “future is bright” like resilience, recovery, and Tesla scaling AI hardware at warp speed. 🚀🥧

What a time to be alive!

Tesla Cybercab Robotaxi open door view during Gail’s autonomous ride to SXSW in Austin, Texas. Real-world FSD in action – spacious interior and sunny downtown streets captured in Episode 164 of Gail’s Tesla Podcast.

Gail’s Tesla Podcast Episode 164: Robotaxi Ride to SXSW with Optimus, Cybercab, and Exclusive Interviews

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In this episode, I hopped into a Robotaxi and rode straight to SXSW in Austin. The autonomous drive was smooth and confident as we moved through city streets, delivering another strong example of Tesla’s real-world FSD progress in Texas.

At the event I spent time with both Optimus and the Cybercab. The displays looked impressive under bright Texas sunshine during the day and equally striking with starlight views at night. I also recorded rare interviews with David Moss and Josh West — two dedicated voices in the Tesla community who shared their perspectives on autonomy and the future of abundance.

This episode captures practical Robotaxi use, up-close looks at Tesla’s latest robotics and vehicle tech, and thoughtful conversations about where the technology is headed right now.

Watch the full episode here (or tap the X post for the video):

These clips show the steady advancements Elon and the Tesla team continue to deliver every day — from everyday autonomous rides to next-generation robots and vehicles already appearing in public.

Leave a comment

What stood out most to you in this episode? Have you taken a Robotaxi ride yet or seen Optimus in person? Are you excited about Tesla’s push toward abundance? Drop your thoughts or your own Tesla story below.

Tesla Cybercab Robotaxi open door view during Gail’s autonomous ride to SXSW in Austin, Texas. Real-world FSD in action – spacious interior and sunny downtown streets captured in Episode 164 of Gail’s Tesla Podcast.
Tesla Cybercab Robotaxi open door view during Gail’s autonomous ride to SXSW in Austin, Texas. Real-world FSD in action – spacious interior and sunny downtown streets captured in Episode 164 of Gail’s Tesla Podcast.
Tesla filed trademark applications for its next-generation Roadster.

Tesla New Roadster: A Hopeful, Thrilling Unveil That Will Bring Pure Driving Joy Back to the Road

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk just dropped news: the long-awaited next-gen Tesla Roadster will be unveiled “hopefully next month, probably in late April.” He called it a “banger next-level” vehicle, directly tying it back to the groundbreaking 2008 original that launched Tesla’s electric revolution. Far from any reason for doubt, this is a genuinely hopeful moment, a celebration of high performance that fills many with hope to deliver powerful acceleration and speed.

In a wide-ranging January 2026 interview on the Moonshots podcast with Peter Diamandis and Dave Blundin, Elon made the new Roadster vision clear. “Safety is not the main goal,” he explained. If maximum safety is your top priority, this is not the car for you. The Roadster is built for pure fun and thrill instead. He also stressed it won’t be the cheapest vehicle Tesla makes, because that isn’t the objective either. The goal is simple: create the best of the last great human-driven cars, a pure performance machine that puts smiles on faces.

The goal is simple: create the best of the last great human-driven cars, a pure performance machine that puts smiles on faces.

Hints dropped in that conversation (and reinforced by the CEO’s recent posts) are being monitored by many. Base performance is already staggering: approximately 1.9-second 0-60 mph acceleration, a top speed over 250 mph, and impressive range. Add the optional SpaceX cold-gas thruster package and you’re looking at sub-1-second sprints, possible short-hover capability, and driving experiences that feel straight out of science fiction.

The base model is expected to start around $200,000, positioning it as a more accessible luxury sports car compared to traditional hypercars in its class (many of which start well above $300,000–$500,000). The SpaceX thruster upgrade will add a significant premium for those seeking the ultimate extremes, but the core Roadster remains a thrilling entry into next-level electric performance without the ultra-exotic price tag.

This isn’t going to be another typical car launch. Sometimes we all need a joyful reminder that electric vehicles can be wildly exciting. The Roadster will give drivers that pure, exhilarating connection to the road while staying zero-emission and sustainable. Late April can’t come soon enough and when the new Roadster arrives, it will quietly show that Tesla’s products are not hype, they may be late, but they always come through. 

Elon Musk: Surprise Remote Talk at 2026 Abundance Summit – My Full Verbatim Transcript

Gail Alfar1 Comment

On March 11, 2026, Elon surprised us all with an appearance at the 2026 Abundance Summit in Los Angeles. In this talk with Peter Diamandis, Elon shared his latest thoughts on Grok 4.20, the hard takeoff of AI, Optimus robot timelines, explosive economic growth, and humanity’s path to universal high income and post-scarcity abundance. Here is my full transcript with Key Takeaways at the end!

Peter Diamandis: So, first off, congratulations on the merger of SpaceX and xAI — bold move going to power humanity’s first Dyson swarm. I’m curious: what’s your timeline for launching these data centers and how much bandwidth do you think you can get in the first year? Give us a sense of the speed at which you’re going to be making this happen.

Elon Musk: Yeah, so SpaceX is in the quiet period. I can’t actually tell you things. That would cause problems.

Peter Diamandis: I appreciate that. And I can’t wait to see the speed. You know, we had a conversation here on Monday with Eric Schmidt and with one of the leads from one of the other hyperscalers. I won’t mention who, but I’m curious where you feel we are in recursive self-improvement. Are we there? Do you see Grok doing recursive self-improvement at this point? And what’s the timeline for AGI and ASI?

Elon Musk: Yeah, I think we’ve been in recursive improvement for a while here. If you mean recursive self-improvement without a human in the loop, is that what you mean?

Peter Diamandis: I do. I am on the AI software side.

Elon Musk: I mean humans are gradually getting less and less in the loop on the recursive self-improvement. So you know every successive model is built by the one before it. So that is happening to a large degree but it’s not yet fully automated. It may be there at the end of this year but not later than next year.

Peter Diamandis: And do you see a hard takeoff at that point?

Elon Musk: We’re in the hard takeoff. Right now.

Peter Diamandis: Okay. Yes.

Elon Musk: I mean, at this point I go to sleep there’s some massive AI breakthrough and when I wake up there’s another one.

Peter Diamandis: Yes. Yeah. It’s hard to keep track, honestly. So, it’s a bit of a head spinner. Yeah. Well, I think a lot of the head spinning is happening from you, too.

Elon Musk: Yeah. Well, you know, Grok’s doing pretty well, and in some metrics, by some metrics, it’s the best, for example, it’s the best at predicting things, which, you know, is arguably the best metric for intelligence. The new Grok 4.20 is really good. We’re currently behind on coding. The reason I was a bit late for this was that I was just in a giant sort of all-hands on coding just going through all of the things that need to happen to essentially catch up and exceed our competitors on coding. Which I think we’ll do. I feel we should probably get there by the middle of this year.

I think people don’t quite understand just how much intelligence there will be or you know, just how far it will exceed human intelligence to a degree that is impossible to fully understand.

You can certainly imagine a situation where, let’s say, if let’s say, a million times more energy is harnessed than all of Earth’s current electricity usage, that would still only be roughly a millionth of the sun’s energy output.

So essentially if you increase Earth’s economy by a factor of a million it’s still roughly a trillion. Since we’re a trillionth of the sun’s energy, if you increase Earth’s economy in terms of electricity usage by roughly a million, you will be roughly 1 millionth only of the sun’s energy harnessed.

But what is it? What is an economy or an intelligence using a million times more electricity than all of our civilization. What does it think about or look like or do? It’s going to be something pretty magnificent. The challenge will be even vaguely appreciating that level of intelligence. But it’s safe to say it will solve everything you can possibly think of. Longevity being, surely, one of them!

Peter Diamandis: And, I do enjoy your unrelenting optimism. Haha, you’ve taken it to heart, monetizing hope, which is pretty funny, how you came up with that one!

Elon Musk: It was Grok’s marketing advice to me when you roasted me on the podcast. Haha, Grok was roasting you and saying you should monetize hope! But hey, it is better than monetizing misery, I suppose!

Elon Musk (continuing): AI and robots increase the economic output by so many orders of magnitude, that we cannot possibly comprehend it.

Peter Diamandis: We’re likely in a very short time to become a microscopic minority of intelligence on this planet.

Elon Musk: Yes, not even on this planet, in the solar system. Because you know your best case outcome for Earth for intelligence is roughly 1 billionth of the sun’s energy. That’s your best case outcome, if you generate intelligence only on Earth.

Peter Diamandis: Intercept it, right?

Elon Musk: Yes. Because roughly one half a billionth of the sun’s energy hits Earth and that’s the vast majority of energy that’s out there that we can access. So really the intelligence in the solar system will be many orders of magnitude greater than the intelligence on earth itself.

Peter Diamandis: Can I ask you a question, Elon? How far out can you see? How many years out can you make reasonable predictions?

Elon Musk: It’s hard to predict the path exactly, especially because often things are kind of an S-curve or a series of S-curves where it starts off slow, grows exponentially, hits a linear zone, and then goes logarithmic. That generally has been what I’ve seen with the breakthroughs in AI.

AI, for example… you’ll have some breakthrough. It’ll do an S-curve, and then it looks like it’s just going to go to infinity, but then you hit logarithmic returns until there’s another breakthrough. So progress in AI is just a sort of series of, you know, sort of overlapping S-curves or connected S-curves.

Peter Diamandis: I mean there was a point where you could probably predict out a decade or two decades. What are your thoughts now?

Elon Musk: Yeah. Okay. This is going to sound pretty crazy.

Peter Diamandis: It’s okay. We’ve been talking crazy all week…

Elon Musk: I’m not sure you are a receptive audience to wild prognostications.

Peter Diamandis: Yes.

Elon Musk: Um… (very long pause) I’d say the economy is 10 times the current size in 10 years. Greater than… that’s really saying something.

Peter Diamandis: Okay. Yeah, you had said, triple-digit growth in five plus years from now on, GDP and 10x the economy.

Elon Musk: I feel like that’s a 10x in roughly 10 years. I feel that’s actually a fairly comfortable prediction — obviously if there’s like World War III or something, that could put a kink in those plans. But in the absence of World War III, if current trends continue, I would say the economy will grow 10x in 10 years. And we’ll have a base on the moon! And we’ll have people on Mars.

Peter Diamandis: And we’ll have mass drivers on the moon!

Elon Musk: I think so, I think we’ll have mass drivers on the moon in 10 years.

Peter Diamandis: I love it, Gerard K. O’Neill’s vision being fulfilled. We had four robots on stage here this year at the Abundance Summit. I look forward to Optimus. I’m curious about the Optimus 3 timeline, in particular, when can I buy one or two? When do you expect it to go into commercial sale, or will you be leasing it?

Elon Musk: Well, we’re in the final stages of completion of Optimus 3, which is really going to be by far the most advanced robot in the world. Nothing’s even close. In fact, I haven’t even seen any demos of robots that are as good as Optimus 3, frankly. Maybe they’re out there or secret or something, I don’t know. And I have to make sure I’m saying things that are reasonably public, of course, but we’re streaming this on X, so this is pretty public and accurate. Yeah. I think we’ll start production on Optimus 3 this summer, but very slow at first, like the classic S-curve ramp of manufacturing units versus time. Then probably reach high-volume production around summer next year. And then we’ll have Optimus 4 design next year. I try to release a new improved robot design every year.

Peter Diamandis: When Dave Blundin and I were at the Gigafactory, it was an extraordinary experience! 11.5 million square feet for Tesla, and then I think you said you’re building out 9.5 million square feet for Optimus there as well, which is extraordinary.

Elon Musk: Let’s call it 10 million square feet, round numbers. Yeah, that’ll be quite a new factory design too. Like, it is different from other factories.

Peter Diamandis: How far before we have robots building robots? You’ve automated so much of the Gigafactory already, where humans are playing a smaller role. Will the robots just take over the roles humans have now?

Elon Musk: We still have a lot of humans building things. Um, you know, Tesla direct employees who are building things uh, or like basically people in the factory are either building or managing people who are building, is roughly 100,000. So we have a lot of people. Tesla’s total headcount is around 150k, of which 2/3s are, you know, in the factory in one form or another. And then our suppliers, there’s probably maybe a million or two million people in our suppliers type of thing. So it’s a lot of people. Um, what we do expect is that the output per person at Tesla becomes very very high. So we’re not planning any layoffs or reductions in personnel. In fact, we will increase our headcount. But the output per human at Tesla is going to get nutty high. Like, you can’t even believe it.

Peter Diamandis: When we were together, we discussed sustainable abundance on our podcast, and you reinforced the idea of a coming age of universal high income, which has become a point of discussion beyond UBI. I’m wondering if you have any thoughts on how we get there. And more importantly, we talked about a timeframe of civil unrest, like maybe 2, 3, 4, or 5 years, with probably a lot of COVID-like checks in the interim until we reach demonetization and deflation that leads to UHI. Any more reflections on that? People really need that hope and vision.

Elon Musk: Yeah, to be clear, I don’t think we should be complacent. We do need to be careful because the future has a range of possible outcomes, and not all are great. But at this point I agree with you: it’s likely to be great. Probably 80% likely, maybe more. And I do think we’ll have universal high income. We’re basically just going to issue money to people because the output of goods and services will so far exceed the money supply that you’ll have deflation — deflation is simply the ratio of goods/services output to money supply. If growth of goods and services far outpaces money supply growth, which I predict it will, then deflation happens.

Yes. A lot of people will spin up new companies, compete fiercely, drive prices down, and accelerate deflation faster and faster.

Basically, AI and robots will make so much stuff and provide so many services that they’ll run out of things to do for humans. There’s only so much humans can even express wanting. Go back to my example: at a million times the Earth’s current economy, you’ve long since saturated all human desire. Even at a thousand times, you probably already saturate anything people can think of wanting.

Peter Diamandis: Yeah.

Elon Musk: So do you think the value of money significantly decreases? Will we go post-capitalist? Yeah, I think money stops being relevant at some point. It’s probably something like a Star Trek culture future. And AI down the road won’t use human currency, it’ll just care about power, mass, wattage, and tonnage. Yeah…

Key Takeaways

AI & Intelligence Explosion

  • We’re already in the “hard takeoff” — breakthroughs are happening overnight while we sleep.
  • Recursive self-improvement is well underway (humans stepping back gradually); full automation of the AI loop expected by end of 2026 or no later than 2027.
  • Grok 4.20 already leads in prediction (a top intelligence metric), coding catching up fast — expect it to surpass competitors by mid-2026.
  • Future intelligence will be orders of magnitude beyond humans, potentially using a million times more energy than today’s civilization… but still just a tiny fraction of the sun’s output.

Economy & Abundance

  • 10× economic growth in the next 10 years (to ~2036), with triple-digit GDP growth possible in 5+ years (assuming no WW3).
  • AI + robots will drive deflation so extreme we get Universal High Income (UHI) as an interim step.
  • Eventually a Star Trek-style post-scarcity world where money becomes irrelevant — robots/AI produce far more than humans can consume, saturating all desires. “Basically, AI and robots will make so much stuff… they’ll run out of things to do for humans.”

Robotics & Tesla

  • Optimus 3 is in final stages (most advanced robot on the planet right now). Production starts summer 2026 (slow ramp), high-volume by summer 2027. Optimus 4 design coming next year with yearly upgrades.
  • New 10-million-square-foot factory just for Optimus. Huge productivity boost per person — no mass layoffs expected (Tesla headcount ~150k + suppliers).

Space & Long-Term Vision

  • SpaceX + xAI merger path toward humanity’s first Dyson swarm (details limited by quiet period).
  • Moon base + people on Mars in ~10 years; mass drivers on the Moon too.
  • Overall intelligence will scale to solar-system level, solving everything from longevity to energy limits. 80%+ chance of a truly great future.

Elon’s standout quotes we noted

  • “We’re in the hard takeoff. Right now.”
  • “The economy is 10 times the current size in 10 years.”
  • “AI and robots increase the economic output by so many orders of magnitude that we cannot possibly comprehend it.”

My Take

Other AI companies are motivated by profit, but this is not Elon’s ambition. He’s already the wealthiest man on Earth — no one comes close. But also, no one comes close to putting into action the very things that will preserve consciousness.

Watch Elon Musk appearance at the 2026 Abundance Summit in Los Angeles on X by Steven Mark Ryan.

On March 11, 2026, Elon surprised us all with an appearance at the 2026 Abundance Summit in Los Angeles. In this talk with Peter Diamandis, Elon shared his latest thoughts on Grok 4.20, the hard takeoff of AI, Optimus robot timelines, explosive economic growth, and humanity’s path to universal high income and post-scarcity abundance.

Watch Elon Musk appearance at the 2026 Abundance Summit in Los Angeles on Youtube