Autonomous Vehicles

Win Texas governor approval and pick the Crystal Sun site

Lamar CISD voted 7-0 on September 15, 2026 to advance Tesla's $10.1 billion Project Crystal Sun JETI application for a Fort Bend County solar-cell and module factory. Construction is targeted for 2026-2028 with commercial operations in Q1 2029 if Texas wins. Watch whether the governor signs on, whether Tesla picks Fort Bend over the unnamed out-of-state alternative, and whether the 10-year school-district tax limitation actually closes.

Open Tesla Motors Vietnam into commercial auto sales

Tesla Motors Vietnam LLC was registered September 11, 2026 in Ho Chi Minh City with about $3 million of charter capital for auto wholesale, retail, import and distribution. Tesla has not commented and has not set a sales-start date, showroom plan, or model lineup. The watch item is whether the entity becomes a live importer and retailer versus remaining a paper registration.

Grow FSD and software monetization

Active FSD subscriptions reached 1.48M in Q2 2026, up 56% year over year and the largest quarterly add in Tesla's history, generating roughly $791M of annualized software revenue with over 55% of new North American deliveries attaching FSD at purchase. FSD (Supervised) is now cleared in six EU markets after Slovenia approved the system on September 8, 2026 (Netherlands, Lithuania, Estonia, Denmark, Belgium, Slovenia); Tesla Europe said the Slovenian rollout will begin soon. Italy has filed to adopt the Dutch approval, while Germany, France, Spain, and the Czech Republic are holding out for a coordinated EU-wide decision rather than a national clearance Brussels could later overturn. Germany's KBA is not relying solely on the Dutch paperwork and received a dedicated Tesla vehicle in July 2026 for its own independent evaluation, with the Autobahn speed offset a specific sticking point. The next qualified-majority TCMV vote is still preliminarily expected around October 6, 2026, though industry trackers warn continued disagreement over specifics like the speed offset could push a final decision into late 2026 or 2027; separately, reporting around August 6 indicated Dutch approval authority RDW is withholding the underlying FSD safety and evaluation documentation from public view at Tesla's request, adding controversy ahead of the vote. In the United States, Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi wrote Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on September 9 asking what NHTSA is doing about Autopilot and FSD after 43 publicly posted sleeping-driver videos, citing engineering analysis EA26002 on about 3.2 million vehicles and setting a September 30 reply deadline. The next step is sustaining subscription growth, winning that EU-wide vote, answering the US safety questions, and turning the same AI stack into Robotaxi revenue.

Convert ZET SCALE primary-OEM selection into named Tesla Semi deliveries

Build the restructured Georgia plant

Keep the roughly 2,000-acre Stanton Springs North facility on track for production in late 2028 under the restructured plan: an initial-phase capacity of 300,000 vehicles per year supported by a renegotiated DOE loan of up to $4.5B that Rivian expects to begin drawing in early 2027. On August 5, 2026 Rivian released detailed site plans and renderings, unveiled at a press briefing at its new East Coast HQ in Atlanta, showing primary factory structures fully enclosed by 2027 to allow tool installation ahead of production, surrounded by a public-facing 63,550-sq-ft visitor build-out (museum, walking trails, cabins, campsites, and an off-road test track) rolled out in three phases. The plant is set to build R2, the upcoming R3/R3X, robotaxis and delivery vans, and could reach full capacity by the end of the decade. By late August 2026 Rivian said site construction was 'progressing well,' with crews grading roads and installing water and sewer infrastructure across the property.

Roll out the Gen 2 autonomy roadmap toward eyes-off driving

CEO RJ Scaringe said in June 2026 that Rivian will bring supervised, Tesla-FSD-like point-to-point driving to its Gen 2 vehicles within 2026, followed by eyes-off autonomy in 2027. Rivian's own Autonomy+ roadmap page, still current as of September 16, 2026, no longer names Universal Hands-Free 2.0 as a Q3 milestone. It lists Universal Hands-Free on 3.5 million miles of US and Canadian roads plus Lane Change on Command on any marked-line road, then jumps to Point-to-Point assisted driving (limited rollout later in 2026, widespread customer rollout targeted for 2027). A footnote still says Universal Hands-Free will not stop or slow for traffic lights or stop signs. The 2026.31 RivianOS 2 update that shipped September 4 was a UI and AI overhaul, not a surface-street driving upgrade. A late-2026 hardware upgrade begins shipping Rivian's ACM3 (Autonomy Compute Module 3) plus a roof-mounted lidar sensor on R2. The stack underpins the performance milestones tied to Uber's up-to-$1.25B investment and the planned 2028 robotaxi rollout in San Francisco and Miami, expanding to 25 cities by 2031. On its Q2 2026 earnings call Rivian said it also still expects an additional $250M Uber equity tranche - one of several milestone-based investments inside the up-to-$1.25B commitment - later in 2026, subject to completion of certain conditions; it had not yet been received as of mid-September.