Elon Musk is once again thinking bigger than the auto industry, proposing the idea of transforming idle Tesla vehicles into a massive “distributed inference fleet,” suggesting that the collective computing power of millions of cars could eventually rival that of some of the world’s largest data centers.
During Tesla’s Q3 2025 earnings call, Musk said the idea came from realizing that Tesla’s vehicles, equipped with powerful onboard AI computers, spend much of their time parked and unused. “One of the things I thought: if we got all these cars that maybe are bored… we could actually have a giant distributed inference fleet,” he said.
The Tesla CEO estimated that with 100 million vehicles each contributing roughly one kilowatt of compute capacity, the company could potentially unlock “100 gigawatts of inference” across the global fleet.
The concept, in essence, would see parked Teslas lending their computing resources to perform AI workloads when not in use — a system that Musk described as a “significant asset” for the company’s future. Power and cooling would already be handled by the cars’ existing systems, making the idea theoretically efficient and scalable.
As with many of Musk’s forward-looking statements, the distributed AI fleet idea has drawn a variety of responses. Supporters see it as a revolutionary way to monetize idle vehicle hardware, while critics question whether owners would agree to let their cars participate in such a system.
If the opportunity arose, would you be comfortable letting your car become part of a global computing network while it sits in your driveway? Let us know in the comments below.
I am increasingly confident that this idea could work https://t.co/ibi6QmSUYT
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 29, 2025
