Hey everybody Rob Bauer here and today we are talking about an exciting production milestone for Tesla and some interesting implications out of that. We also have updates on Gigatexis, Gigamexico and a few other items as well including some interesting information on Elon's efforts in AI. Alright starting off with the stock Tesla today down 1 3.25% closing at $251.92. The NASDAQ down about 1.1% so not a bad performance from Tesla and a little bit of a recovery throughout the day today which was nice to see.
We are going to start off with an update from Tesla Asia on X. They posted today, almost said tweeted, they posted today at Gigafactory Shanghai. They have produced 1 million cars within 33 months and they just reached their second million milestone in 13 months. So just over 1 year to produce that second million after taking almost 3 years to produce the first million vehicles.
Whenever we get these production updates aside from it being very exciting for the company and a sign of the progress they have made especially how much quicker the progress is happening these days. It's always nice to take a look and see what other insights we can glean from these updates like we did the last time this happened which was back in August of 2022.
So as we can see from Elon's post here that was when Tesla crossed this millionth car out of Gigashang high. So again just over 1 year from that date to produce this second million. So what's interesting here is if we look back at Tesla's production with us now knowing that they've hit 2 million vehicles today, presumably September 6th in China. That tweet was about, that post was about 12 hours ago. Because they've now hit that we can go back and do some math on production numbers that we know from the CPCA reports back through the beginning of Tesla's started production at Gigashang high and kind of figure out what production through August in the first week of September may have looked like based on those numbers.
So we already talked about the really good wholesale sales figure that we saw for August. We could be looking actually at a really good production number which could be surprising given that we expect some production downtime right now for the changeover for Project Highlands. So looking at those numbers, Tesla through the end of July based on the CPCA numbers to the best of my knowledge. I would love if people can double check on this, there's always a possibility that I could have made an error. But through the end of July 2023 based on these numbers that I've got, Tesla had produced 1,910,279 vehicles again through the end of July.
So that means in the 37 remaining days from August, the beginning of August to September 6th, you got 37 days there that would mean that Tesla produced just about 89,700 vehicles during those 37 days. So that is actually a much higher number than I would have probably guessed given what we know about Project Highland and Tesla's announcement of that vehicle. You would assume that there's production downtime taking a significant chunk of production away from Model 3. Of course we still expect the Model Y to be operating but you can see the last couple of months, those have only come in at 80,000. So for us to be at about 90,000 for a month and a week suggest that they're really, you know, if these numbers are correct, really hasn't been such a significant impact to production at least as of yet, which again I find pretty interesting.
So if we look at July, 80,345 vehicles produced, that would be an average of I think it was like 25 or 20, 24 to 2600 today. I'd have to do the math again. I've got the extrapolation here. If we use that same production rate that July came in at and you look at the 37 days from August 1st week of September, that would suggest that Tesla's production over that period at that same rate would have been 95,900 vehicles. So about 6,000 vehicles more than what Tesla ended up producing.
But although it's a little bit more, again, you would expect a much more significant drop in production for, you know, complete retooling potentially of the Model 3 production line. You'd expect, you know, something like 25,000, maybe even 30,000 vehicles to sort of be quote unquote missing from that production number based on the rate of the Model 3. So for us to only have like 6,000 missing from the extrapolated rate from July. That would suggest that there's probably been at least a significant chunk of production happening in August on the Model 3.
So we're going to get the August numbers in a few days and that would then give us another point to extrapolate from to kind of tell us what the first week of production here in September has been specifically. But so far, based on these numbers, it looks like production in August has been, you know, pretty strong and maybe in that 75,000-ish range, perhaps even a little bit higher depending on how this kind of falls between August and September.
So you know, we always love doing the math on these. Hopefully that kind of makes sense. But I was a little bit surprised to see that. I'm almost even a little bit skeptical that the numbers are correct. So again, we'd love some double checking on it. But if that's the case, we could be in for at least a surprise at a giga Shanghai for production for this quarter. And obviously, that just means more vehicles for Tesla to sell supporting numbers like we saw here for August for wholesale sales, which again, probably a little bit higher than what people would have expected.
So I'm pretty excited to see that. And hopefully means we're, you know, seeing at least a little bit less or minimal impact, at least in Shanghai. I'm sure there will be more once they, you know, try to convert over Fremont, however, that happens. But at least in Shanghai, potentially not as significant of an impact as what one might think initially. So we'll see where things go from this.
We've gotten a rumor from Tesla Shanghai on X saying that starting from September 11th, the daily production capacity of the new Model 3 has reached 1200 units. That basically be back to where it was before, even potentially a little bit higher. So I am skeptical of this at this point in time. You know, obviously this could be working days, could be six days a week. We don't know how that would translate to calendar days units per calendar day. So you got to keep those things in mind. You got to continue. You got to keep in mind that this could be the production capacity, not necessarily the production rate. Obviously things can vary in translation.
So if they're at this level, obviously that would be extremely exciting, but definitely not counting on that, my guess is that more of this is more of just a target of where they're going to build to from this September 11th date. Still we'll keep an eye on that. And you know, when we do get that September number eventually for production, which won't happen till early October, it'll be interesting to see how that comes in. But exciting for this update. And you know, it seems like Tesla's production is actually tracking still quite strong. At Shanghai.
All right, moving on to Gigataxis. We've got a couple updates from the drone flyover crews. So this from Joe Tagmire. He's noticed that the outbound logistics lot at Gigataxis has seen a lot less activity for the last day or two fewer cyber trucks, but more probably at least importantly in terms of volume certainly fewer model wise appearing in the outbound logistics lot. So it seems like there might be some sort of a production halt or stoppage going on.
And the speculation is that that could be due to some production upgrades. Joe spotted a number of different crates being shipped into Gigataxis that were stamped on the side with Tesla automation. So that would be potentially from Gromen engineering, which Tesla acquired became Tesla like, you know, Tesla automation could be more manufacturing equipment being imported. And then being installed at Gigataxis, which could be relating to the fewer vehicles that we're seeing in the outbound logistics lot. So somebody to keep an eye on.
I think Gigabra Lin and Gigataxis while Gigashang High may be a little bit above expectations from what we can tell so far, those production rates like we talked about with Berlin previously, but maybe at Texas as well, probably a little bit lower than what we might have hoped for based on continued production rate increases. So both those worth keeping an eye on as we get those production numbers at the end of the quarter.
All right, we do also have a report on Gigamexico. I call this Gigataxis when I'm doing reports, but Gigamexico here, we're talking about a report from reforma covered by Reuters and the reforma article is paywalled. So we'll look at the Reuters report here, but they say that this reforma report is saying that according to some Tesla suppliers, they're looking actually at 2026 or 2027 to potentially begin production at Gigamexico. And again, like we just talked about with this other post talking about Shanghai production rates, it's always worth considering what the true beginning of production means.
Sometimes Tesla were to volume production, which I think no one would be too surprised by the dates in that case. So it's worth keeping that in mind. But the other part of this report is that the suppliers apparently said that there may be a delay and that two or three months ago, there was a lot of rush. We talked about reports of that where they, you know, these Chinese suppliers were told to basically build or run the risk of being cut out. So a lot of rush, lots of pressure to look for a location, but one month later, they told us to wait as the end of the quote. So a little bit perplexing.
Hopefully we get an official update from Tesla on Gigamexico. I think this would be a great question for the Q3 call when we do get there in about six weeks from now, if we don't know anything more at that point, but it could be, you know, potentially a little bit later. There's also a possibility that these suppliers are, you know, maybe Tesla's looking at cutting them out if they didn't move quickly enough. That could be a reason that then Tesla says, all right, well, you know, hold off for now. So I don't want to, you know, overemphasize that too much, but definitely worth keeping an eye on since we, you know, Gigamexico at this point, at least, is a little bit of a black box.
All right. Next, we've got an interesting update here. The Detroit Auto Show has announced that Tesla is actually going to be participating this year. So this will begin a week from today, run through September 24th in Detroit. So kind of interesting. We generally don't see Tesla participate, at least in North America in automotive shows. It's pretty rare occurrence. This could indicate that Tesla is doing a little bit more, you know, promotional activity than they've done previously, which I think would make sense. The other interesting thing is they are going to be offering street course rides and drives. So rather than just, you know, having their vehicles there on display, they're going to be doing a little bit more of an interactive experience at the Auto Show. And it's also interesting, given that we are coming up now on Cybertruck, we don't know when those dates are going to be. But this is in Detroit, kind of right in the heart of truck country and of course of the big three automakers and also interesting that it is perhaps coincidentally around the time of the UAW contract ending. So there's going to be a lot going on. And again, the timing is pretty interesting with the potential for Tesla to at least bring the Cybertruck to that event, even if we don't necessarily have a delivery date or an event like that quite yet. So we'll see what Tesla is playing there, but I wouldn't be shocked if the Cybertruck kind of shows up at the Auto Show.
All right. Next, we've got a report from a time, I guess an article here written by Walter Isaacson. Of course, the Musk biography is going to be coming out a little less than a week from today, September 12th. So definitely keep an eye out for that. But in the meantime, we've gotten a couple of articles that have posted excerpts, I believe, of that book. This one is posted in time talking a little bit about OpenAI and Musk's thoughts on AI as it's developed over the years and where things currently sit. We won't go through the whole article, just go to time.com, you can read there. But a couple of highlights that tie into Tesla, Musk actually talked when splitting up with OpenAI in 2018 about that being folded into Tesla, interestingly. You may remember when Musk officially left OpenAI back then that one of the reasons that was given at the time was because Tesla was getting more heavily involved in AI. So not necessarily super surprising, but I think interesting that it was even considered that maybe OpenAI could be folded into Tesla. So I think that's pretty interesting and kind of makes you think how different things would be if that had actually happened at this point in so many different regards.
So interesting to see that. And then just a couple other points here, particularly to Tesla and their AI endeavors, a little bit of a data point here. Tesla, apparently according to Isaacson is collecting 160 billion frames of video per day from the cameras on its cars. So we know it's a lot, but that kind of puts it into context. Elon did comment on this on X saying that managing the data is extremely difficult. We ignore and don't store all or delete almost all of it. The training videos that matter are rare ones like weird or busy intersections. So less than 1% of these videos is what Tesla actually ends up storing and training on. And then he reiterated that Tesla is limited again by AI training and compute, but NVIDIA and Dojo should fix that hopefully pretty soon. As Musk had previously mentioned. Nevertheless, interesting to get that data point.
And then this isn't super Tesla specific, but just kind of one other interesting point in here on XAI. That's about sort of the product roadmap to an extent. And you know, Elon has said that they're trying to ship a product very quickly. Apparently the team has three major goals. The first to make an AI bot that could write computer code, basically extrapolate from any code that a programmer gives it, and then kind of continue it out to complete the code is sort of what they're thinking there. The second product, competitor to shadgpt. And then the third product, which is really more of just the overarching goal, I think of XAI as they've communicated it, would be to create a form of general intelligence, artificial general intelligence that could reason, think and pursue truth as it's guiding principle. So that was more specifically talked about Musk previously, but interesting to see sort of the first two goals on here.
All right, a couple other Tesla things. Tesla has increased the price of the yoke steering on the Model S and Model X. This was obviously initially included standard as the only option, then it was included optionally as the steering wheel. You could pick either. I think they were the same price. Then the yoke moved up to $250 and now the yoke is up to $1,000. So kind of interesting to see the evolution of that over time. I actually still think I prefer the yoke, but that would be, you know, tough to justify, especially when it, you know, was previously free. But I'm glad to see that it is still being offered as an option.
And kind of an interesting one here. Maybe the pinnacle of Sawyer Merritt's career here, he's broke some news to Elon actually. So the news was of a Tesla joint partnership, I guess, promotional activity with McDonald's to offer a cyber spoon with a McFlurry. So it's kind of interesting, you know, cyber aesthetics got the dome panic text imprinted on there. So Sawyer posted about this, Elon replied saying it's fake news as far as he knows. But McDonald's also posted about it. So this was on Tesla, Tesla China's Waybo account first. McDonald's also posted about it as well. So you know, pretty clearly looks legitimate. Then Elon replied to that also saying in that case, I will definitely have some. So kind of fun to see that story play out. Obviously nothing too major here, but interesting again to see Tesla doing, you know, some more of that promotional type of stuff though. Tesla China has always, you know, operated a little bit more on its own in that regard. And obviously in this case, very much during that without Elon's even knowledge of the partnership there. So interesting to see that.
And then a couple of other things, drive Tesla candidate today posting about the economic minister of innovation and energy. I think specifically in Quebec, but maybe off Canada, not sure on that one, had an announcement that there's going to be an announcement of the largest investor ever in Quebec, the largest investment ever in Quebec in the next three to four weeks, which could mean it's larger than the $1.2 billion investment from Ford. Sounds like it's going to be involving a sellmaking plant amongst other things and then they'll talk about it when it comes. So whether or not that's Tesla, obviously that would be very much in Tesla's wheelhouse if it were to be, could be many other companies as well. So we'll just kind of have to keep an eye on it. Whether it's Tesla or another company definitely will be interesting to see what that announcement is in the next few weeks.
And then just a couple quick things on SpaceX. So SpaceX, a article from the Wall Street Journal today talking about how SpaceX had loaned Musk a billion dollars around the time of the Twitter acquisition. Personally, I think it's not really a story at all, but obviously I always get some attention. So the loan was approved back by SpaceX stock, which I think most people will probably leave out when they talk about the story, was asset backed by his SpaceX stock and also paid back with interest in about a month. So to me, again, not really a story, borrowed some money, paid it back with interest. It was asset backed by the stock, kind of just cutting out the middleman of the banks, which obviously no one would even bat an eye at. So I fall into that category for this story for sure. So we'll move on from that.
And then the more exciting SpaceX story is that Starship is now ready to launch. It's been stacked, I think SN25 on SN9 booster. I've got those numbers right, but Starship, ready to go awaiting FAA license approval. So it could be a couple of weeks, I think, around the first orbital test flight. It was about two weeks from the actual launch attempts that this ended up, Elon posted something similar. So that could be roughly the timing that we see this time, obviously that can vary on a lot of things, but very exciting that we are now getting close to this four or five months after that first test. So lots look forward to there, but that'll wrap it up for today.
So as always, thank you for listening. Make sure you subscribe to and sign up for notifications. You can also find me on X at Tesla podcast and we'll see you tomorrow for the Thursday, September 7th episode of Tesla Daily. Thank you.