By Al Root

Tesla investors need to brace for some big manufacturing news in the coming days.

How do we know? Tesla. What is the news? We aren't sure.

Lars Moravy, Tesla's vice president of vehicle engineering, recently spoke with investor Herbert Ong. The near one-hour conversation, posted on Ong's YouTube channel, covered a variety of topics — including building robust manufacturing and supply-chain capabilities for producing cars and robots.

"Tesla's competitive advantage is manufacturing," said Moravy.

Tesla's ability to build products at scale at lower cost than competitors is a key enabler of value creation, according to the executive. It's a little like Elon Musk's other company, SpaceX, which pioneered reusable rockets that lowered the cost of reaching space by roughly 95% compared with the Space Shuttle. The rockets are amazing, but the low costs enable space applications. They are why SpaceX's Starlink space-based broadband business has some 10,000 satellites in orbit and profit margins above 60%.

That is the dynamic that Tesla is after, too. Take robo-taxis. Cheap Tesla Cybercabs will enable Tesla to populate America with self-driving cars that are too inexpensive, relative to car ownership, for travelers to ignore.

Moravy also said at one point in the interview: "So a week from Tuesday [on July 7] there will be some cool news about things happening on the [Austin, Texas] campus and I can't talk about it right now, but it's part of the scaling effort."

Tesla didn't respond to a request for comment about what the news could be.

It sounds like manufacturing news. It could be Cybercab related. Cybercab is Tesla's purpose-built robo-taxi, which the company recently began producing. Tesla launched a robo-taxi service in Austin, Texas, about a year ago using Model Y vehicles.

Tesla might announce a new production rate for Cybercabs, or regulatory approval to use the cars, which don't have pedals or steering wheels, on roads in Texas. The manufacturing news could also have to do with humanoid robots, or Tesla's semitruck, or the existing car business.

Investors will just have to wait for Tuesday to see what Moravy was talking about.

Maybe the news can give shares a boost. Tesla stock had a volatile start to the year. Shares traded as high as $458.34 and as low as $337.24 in the first half of 2026. Shares ended the second quarter at $420.60, down about 6% year to date. Investors appear to be waiting for progress on Tesla's AI efforts, including robo-taxis and robots.

Moravy thinks Tesla is making headway on AI. "I think the amount of real world AI that's going to be around you because of [Tesla] is going to be mind-blowing."

He was talking about the next five years. Many investors agree, which is why Tesla has a near-$2 trillion valuation, based on fully diluted shares outstanding.

Write to Al Root at allen.root@dowjones.com

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