Tesla laid out an updated timeline for Full Self-Driving, its Cybercab, and the Optimus robot in a recent meeting with JPMorgan at its Fremont factory. The bank walked away with claims that FSD v15 is a “step-change,” that today’s HW4 computer can handle unsupervised driving, and that Optimus could go on sale to outside buyers as soon as the second half of 2027.
Most of it repeats promises Tesla has made, and missed, before.
FSD v15: a “step-change,” according to Tesla
Tesla told JPMorgan that FSD v15 is a major jump in capability, built on seven “core technologies,” with about 40% of them already running in the robotaxi fleet in Austin. Early feedback is “encouraging,” per the note.
Tesla shipped FSD v14 in October 2025, its first big update in roughly a year, and Elon Musk called v14.3 the “last piece of the puzzle” back in April. So v15 is at least the third version in a row pitched as the one that finally gets there.
And “there” is the same place Tesla has been selling since 2016: unsupervised Full Self-Driving on a car you own. Every version has been a “step-change.” Customers are still supervising.
HW4 can handle it — the same thing Tesla said about HW3
Tesla told the bank that its current HW4 computer, which it calls AI4, is enough to run v15 and unsupervised FSD. At the same time, Tesla is rolling out AI4.5, a new version of the chip with roughly 10% more compute and about twice the memory.
Tesla made that exact promise about the previous computer, HW3, for years before quietly walking it back. HW3 cars are now getting a stripped-down FSD v14 “Lite” instead of the real thing, and we recently reported on rising HW3 computer failures tied to that software.
There’s also the chip roadmap. Tesla delayed its next-gen AI5 chip to mid-2027 and confirmed the Cybercab would launch on AI4, or now AI4.5? The goalpost for “the hardware that finally does unsupervised driving” keeps sliding to the next chip.
Cybercab scaling: confidence, not cars
On the robotaxi program, Tesla told JPMorgan it’s confident it can scale the Cybercab in the near term. It’s deliberately holding back further Model Y robotaxi conversions because of that confidence, using an “unboxed” manufacturing process, and targeting a long-run cost of around $0.30 per mile, with fleet expansion accelerating from late 2026 into early 2027. If safety levels can allow it, which has been the case more than a year into the Robotaxi program.
Tesla’s actual driverless service in Austin still runs on a handful of cars more than a year after launch. And there are still frequent issues with Tesla’s Robotaxis despite the extremely low mileage. Tesla recently disclosed only 380,000 unsupervised miles since launching.
For comparison, Waymo is at over 200 million.
Meanwhile, Tesla is already mass-producing a Cybercab it can’t legally sell or drive itself. “Confidence in scaling” and a scaled service are not the same thing.
Optimus Gen 3: on sale in 2027, reveal still MIA
Tesla also told JPMorgan that the Optimus Gen 3 design is finalized, the supply chain is “essentially locked in,” and a production line is going into the old Model S/X facility in Fremont. External commercial sales could start “as early as” the second half of 2027, with long-term capacity ambitions of about 1 million units at Fremont and 10 million in Texas.
Two things undercut that. Tesla has pushed the Gen 3 reveal repeatedly, and Musk himself admitted no Optimus robots are doing useful work at Tesla after claiming otherwise.
Musk had previously claimed that Tesla would have 5,000 Optimus robots last year. The reality is still only a few robots for testing.
So the pitch is: a robot Tesla hasn’t shown, that can’t yet do a job inside its own factory, on sale to outside customers in under two years. Sure.
The analyst relaying all this
Worth knowing who’s carrying the message. JPMorgan replaced Ryan Brinkman, one of Wall Street’s longest-running Tesla bears, with Rajat Gupta, who upgraded the stock to Neutral and set a price target around $445. Gupta came to Tesla off a bullish call on Carvana. The note mostly relays Tesla’s own guidance from the Fremont visit without much pushback.
Electrek’s Take
The useful part of this note isn’t JPMorgan’s rating. It’s the rare, specific look at what Tesla is telling investors behind closed doors at Fremont right now. Read it that way, and every line is a Tesla claim, filtered through an analyst who just sell stocks.
Stack the four claims against Tesla’s own record and the pattern is hard to miss. FSD v15 is a “step-change,” just like v14 and v13. HW4 does unsupervised driving, just like HW3 was supposed to. The Cybercab is about to scale, into a service, Robotaxi, that has been stuck in neutral for a year. Optimus goes on sale in 2027, despite Tesla showing nothing about the program in half a year.
We’ll believe unsupervised FSD on HW4 when a customer car does it, and Tesla takes responsibility, which might never happen.
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