More Tesla FSD Expansion, & More “Interesting” Comments on Robots & AI – CleanTechnica

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Last night I wrote the article “Tesla’s Hail Mary — Signs of Progress vs. Recent Sales Concerns,” but I wasn’t really happy with how I wrote it and the core points I wanted to make. Well, there’s a bit more news from Tesla on FSD (Full Self Driving), Optimus (Tesla’s humanoid robot), and AI (xAI specifically), so it gives me the opportunity to be more clear.

My overarching points are as follows:

• I don’t know what is going to happen at Tesla, but for that matter, neither does Elon Musk, who has made numerous huge predictions in the past decade that have been way off the mark, in addition to others that have been on the mark.
• Tesla’s vehicle sales have been declining for a couple of years (global sales in Q1–Q3 2023 were 1,324,074, in Q1–Q3 2024 were 1,293,656, and in Q1–Q3 2025 were 1,217,902). Without something significant happening, it seems highly likely that the downward sales trend will continue or even accelerate.
• However, for the past 7+ years, Elon Musk’s focus for long-term vehicle sales growth at Tesla has been trying to achieve full self-driving capability and robotaxi deployment. Musk has missed numerous deadlines and forecasts over these years, but it is true that a lot of progress has also been made.
• The question is simply whether Tesla can achieve key capabilities and deployments that genuinely lead to commercial robotaxi operations and that actually grow Tesla sales again — potentially by a lot.
• (And then there’s a whole sideshow on humanoid robots.)

We have focused a lot on Tesla’s declining sales in recent years, because that’s a clear, firm result that can be measured, and because there is a lot to consider and discuss regarding why sales have been declining and how to address that. We have also covered Elon Musk’s robotaxi statements and Tesla’s FSD development, including from personal testing and experience with FSD for the past 6+ years. In the coming months or year, though, it seems we are reaching a critical juncture. Tesla’s story either gets a lot more negative or a lot more positive, depending on what happens with FSD, robotaxis, and potentially robots.

I know there are various reasons why many people now despise Elon Musk and don’t want to see Tesla succeed, and there are also still many people who want to see the company reach new heights (including people who love Elon Musk and people who hate him). I am simply trying to lay out the facts here on what is happening in order to objectively consider whether, as I said, Tesla’s story gets a lot more negative or gets a lot more positive in the coming year.

So, on to some more news on these topics:

• Tesla has announced that FSD Supervised is coming to Korea soon.
• Tesla may buy/merge with xAI. Adam Jonas of Morgan Stanley said: “We don’t think investors understand just how important xAI is to Tesla and the broader Muskonomy. Tesla’s relationship with xAI (financially and strategically) is deterministic to the long-term success of Tesla due in part to the natural synergies of data, software, hardware, and manufacturing in recursive loops. The values (and value systems) of both Tesla and xAI are endowed by the values of their shared creator. We believe this co-determination becomes more obvious in the next phases of physical AI/ autonomy for Tesla in the year ahead.” And Elon Musk responded: “My companies are, surprisingly in some ways, trending towards convergence.” Will Musk have Tesla merge with (i.e., buy/bail out) xAI? Is this SolarCity 2.0?
• Tesla Optimus could be your personal stalker cop? I swear, Elon Musk is competing with himself for the most ridiculous ideas for how Optimus could be used in a fantastical future. At Tesla’s 2025 Shareholder Meeting, Musk said: “If somebody’s committed a crime, we might be able to provide a more humane form of containment of future crime. You now get a free Optimus, and it’s just going to follow you around and stop you from doing crime. Other than that, you get to do anything; it’s just going to stop you from committing crime. That’s really it. You don’t have to put people in prisons and stuff. It’s pretty wild to think of all the possibilities, but I think it’s clearly the future.” Ah, yes, that sounds wonderful — Optimus following me around everywhere to check if I am committing any crimes. Sounds lovely. And you get an Optimus stalker cop! And you get an Optimus stalker cop!

Which of these things will happen? Well, #1 seems essentially certain, but it’s still just FSD Supervised; #2 is anyone’s guess, but maybe more likely than not if you’ve been following the company since SolarCity was a company; and #3 is absolutely whackjob crazy and not going to happen. What’s for dinner?