Fred Lambert

In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss the Tesla Roadster actually happening, the Kia EV3 coming to the US, gas pumps being replaced by EV chargers, and more.

Today’s episode is sponsored by GM. GM EV charging made easy, with Energy Pass and Plug and Charge. Learn more at https://gmenergy.gm.com/energypass

Waymo says California regulators have signed off on the biggest expansion of its robotaxi service yet, covering 18 counties from Sonoma down to San Diego.

The California Public Utilities Commission approval clears Waymo to charge for fully driverless rides across the whole Bay Area and Los Angeles, and to open two brand-new markets in Sacramento and San Diego.

Tesla is planning to finally show its new Roadster as early as this month, and the event is supposed to include a stunt where the car lifts off the ground, according to a new report from The Information (paywall).

There’s a catch. The car will be operated remotely with nobody in it, and spectators will be kept several hundred yards back because the SpaceX-developed cold gas thrusters are loud enough to damage their eardrums.

Ferrari rolled out a new one-off at Monterey called the CZ26, and the face of it looks a lot like the brand’s first electric car. Underneath, it’s an SF90 Stradale plug-in hybrid with a 7.9 kWh battery and 25 km of electric range.

So Ferrari built something that wears the Luce’s design language on top of a twin-turbo V8. Basically, what you’d get if the Luce and the SF90 had a baby.

Tesla is now renting out whole-home backup for about $35 a month in Texas. The catch: you lease two Powerwalls and sign up for Tesla Electric.

Tesla Energy announced the new “Powerwall Lease” today, bundling the battery hardware with its own retail electricity business to push the effective monthly cost far below what a normal battery lease would run.

Sweden’s largest industrial union, IF Metall, is calling off its strike against Tesla after 1,021 days, the longest labor conflict in modern Swedish history. The union says it’s stopping because Tesla bought out every one of its striking members, leaving the walkout with nothing left to withhold.

The dispute started in October 2023 over a single demand: that Tesla sign a Swedish collective bargaining agreement for its mechanics. Nearly three years later, Tesla still hasn’t signed one. And now the union is standing down.

Rivian is rolling out its 2027 model year R1S and R1T, and the headline change is one owners have been asking for since day one: second-row captain’s chairs on the R1S.

The automaker calls it the single most-requested feature since the R1S launched. It arrives alongside a simplified trim structure, a new standard wheel for the R1T, a new paint color, and higher starting prices across the board.

Tesla wants to build one of its biggest Superchargers yet right in the middle of San Francisco. Planning permits have been filed for a 124-stall V4 station on the city’s south side.

The site is a yellow-cab storage lot at the corner of Alemany and Bayshore, wedged against the US-101 freeway. The permits also call for a 400-square-foot amenity building on the property.

Waymo has 684 of its new Ojai robotaxis finished and ready to deploy at its factory in Mesa, Arizona, according to the latest aerial count of the site.

That’s out of 953 Ojai vehicles on the lot in total, or 72% already converted. It’s the clearest sign yet of how much driverless capacity Waymo is stockpiling.

Tesla has filed for a $10.1 billion solar cell factory in Fort Bend County, Texas, under the codename “Project Crystal Sun,” according to a tax-incentive application posted by the Texas Comptroller.

The filing pegs the plant at 9,712 permanent jobs, roughly 3,050 acres near Richmond, and commercial production starting in the first quarter of 2029. It’s the largest US manufacturing investment Tesla has ever put on paper.

Sinopec, China’s biggest fuel retailer, just gutted one of its Shanghai gas stations and swapped the pumps for BYD’s 1,500 kW flash chargers.

And this wasn’t a case of bolting a couple of chargers onto the edge of the forecourt. Sinopec pulled the underground gasoline tanks out of the ground and turned the whole site into an EV-only charging hub.

Samsung SDI is taking full control of its Indiana battery plant. The South Korean cell maker is buying out General Motors’ 49.99% stake in their joint venture, according to a regulatory filing, ending GM’s ownership in the $3.5 billion factory.

That turns the New Carlisle, Indiana plant into Samsung SDI’s first wholly owned battery factory in North America.

Tesla’s chief designer says the new Roadster is coming “very soon.” We are talking about the same car Tesla revealed in 2017 and promised to build by 2020.

Franz von Holzhausen said it on the latest episode of Jay Leno’s Garage. When Leno pressed him on it, he doubled down: “very soon.” Leno’s deadpan reply, “10 years… just shy of 10 years,” said the rest.

Tesla ran through its entire share of California’s new MyFirstEV rebate program in just five days.. The rebate only went live for Tesla buyers on August 3.

Buyers claimed roughly half of Tesla’s allocation in the first three days and drained the rest by August 8, spending an estimated $18 million in state and matching rebates on Tesla vehicles alone.

Tesla’s robotaxi account posted photos today of what it’s calling the first Cybercab with a Starlink antenna built into the vehicle.

The pictures show a gold Cybercab parked at Gigafactory Texas, with a low-profile satellite antenna integrated into the roof. It’s the physical version of an integration Tesla teased with a diagram last month.

San Francisco 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan crashed his Tesla Model S on July 14 while the car was running on Autopilot. He was reaching for a phone that had dropped out of reach, and he took his eyes off the road.

The crash left him with a concussion, a broken nose, three broken ribs, a broken left hand, and 40 stitches over his right eye. And to his credit, he isn’t blaming the car.

Archer Aviation is buying three of Boeing’s aerospace subsidiaries: autonomous air-taxi developer Wisk Aero, military drone maker Insitu, and airspace-software firm SkyGrid. The deal also hands Boeing a stake in Archer.

Investors loved it. Archer (ACHR) stock jumped more than 20% on Monday, and the acquisition instantly turns a pre-revenue eVTOL startup into a company with a profitable defense business behind it.

It could accelerate Archer’s eVTOL plans.

SpaceX confirmed it will power Terafab, its $16.8 billion chip megafactory in Texas, with its own natural gas power plants and “very large battery arrays.” Tesla solar isn’t in the plan.

That’s despite Tesla being a partner on the project, and despite Tesla selling solar panels, Powerwalls, and grid-scale batteries built for exactly this kind of load.

In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss the Ford Fathom cheap pickup EV, Audi A2, Trump on EVs, and more.

Today’s episode is sponsored by GM. GM EV charging made easy, with Energy Pass and Plug and Charge. Learn more at https://gmenergy.gm.com/energypass

Tesla has officially acknowledged that the power conversion system (PCS) in pre-2026 Cybertrucks is defective, and it’s extending the warranty on those trucks to 8 years or 150,000 miles.

The reversal comes after months of owners paying up to $7,200 to replace a part Tesla now admits “does not meet our reliability standards.” The automaker sneakily tried to let the clear manufacturing defect pass warranties.

Telo is raising the tow rating on its Mini-sized electric truck to 8,000 lbs, up from the 6,600 lbs it previously advertised.

The startup says months of real-world towing convinced it the little MT1 can safely pull more than a truck that size looks like it should. That new number puts a 152-inch pickup roughly on par with a base Ford F-150.

Tesla and SpaceX have confirmed where they’ll build Terafab, the semiconductor megafactory Elon Musk first teased in March. It’s going to Grimes County, Texas, about an hour northwest of Houston.

The companies put the initial phase at roughly $16.8 billion and said the finished site will span more than 100 million square feet, which they’re calling the largest chip manufacturing facility on the planet.

A police department in Parker, Colorado, pulled over a Tesla going 64 mph in a 45 mph zone whose driver insisted they weren’t responsible, because the car was running “Full Self-Driving.”

Of course, Tesla will never take responsibility for that incident, but the frustrating part is that Tesla already has the solution and yet it refuses to implement it.

Tesla has started building its next-generation Megapack 3 grid battery, with the first units rolling off the line at the company’s new Megafactory in Brookshire, Texas.

The plant went from groundbreaking to production in 16 months and is designed to build 50 GWh of Megapack 3 a year. That’s the version Tesla says packs roughly 28% more energy into the same footprint as the Megapack it replaces.