Elon Musk hosts Tesla's 'Cyber Rodeo' party featuring a drone display, flashing blow-up cacti, and a vehicle hung from the ceiling of its $1.1 billion new Texas factory

• Tesla threw an opening party on Thursday night at its new Gigafactory in Texas.
• CEO Elon Musk hosted the event, arriving on stage in the first production car that Tesla made.

Drone displays, flashing inflatable cacti and a stetson-wearing Elon Musk all featured at Tesla's "Cyber Rodeo" on Thursday, celebrating the completion of the electric vehicle manufacturer's new Gigafactory in Austin, Texas.

Tesla CEO Musk was the main speaker at the live streamed event which was attended by more than 15,000 people.

Prior to Musk's entrance, attendees were shown a 10-minute video featuring Tesla's factories, vehicles, machines, and battery packs and flashing the firm's milestones such as "Tesla owners avoided 8.0 million metric tons of CO2 last year" and "Tesla has 6 factories worldwide."

Then followed a drone display in the skies near the factory, which changed positions to form outlines of the shapes of Texas state, Tesla vehicles – including the Cybertruck and Model Y car – and a Shiba Inu dog, a reference to cryptocurrency Dogecoin and Musk's pet, Floki.

The camera in the livestream then panned over the factory, giving a bird's eye view of what was happening at the event. There were food trucks and stalls, as well as multi-colored, flashing blow-up cacti.

—Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 8, 2022

A Tesla vehicle hung from the ceiling in one of the rooms of the factory.

Musk then drove onto the stage in what he said was the first production car that Tesla ever built.

"Welcome to Cyber Rodeo," Musk, sporting a black cowboy hat and sunglasses, said after he emerged from the vehicle.

In addition to outlining the size of the Texas factory and its contribution to production capacity – the firm plans to build the Model Y compact SUV at Giga Texas, as well as the first Cybertrucks, which, Musk said will go into production next year – Musk also revealed to the crowd that Tesla's humanoid robot, Optimus, has "a shot at being in production for version one hopefully next year."

Tesla is also working on "a dedicated robo-taxi," said Musk, which is going to look "quite futuristic."

At the end of Musk's speech, Franz von Holzhausen, Tesla's chief designer, joined the CEO on stage. They joked about smashing the window of the Cybertruck parked behind them — a reference to von Holzhausen's ill-fated metal ball stunt at the unveiling of the electric pickup in 2019.

The livestream wrapped up with a fireworks display above the factory, but the Cyber Rodeo party continued into the night.