Fred Lambert

Tesla (TSLA) released its financial results and shareholders’ letter for the first quarter (Q1) 2026 after market close today.

We are updating this post with all the details from the financial results, shareholders’ letter, and the conference call later tonight. Refresh for the latest information.

Rivian officially started production of its R2 electric SUV at its Normal, Illinois plant today, marking the most critical milestone in the company’s history.

The production launch comes just five days after an EF-1 tornado ripped through the same facility, collapsing a section of the roof in Building 2 — the very area dedicated to R2 operations.

Xpeng’s flying car division Aridge invited media to tour its massive new factory in Guangzhou, and it’s clear the Chinese automaker is pouring serious resources into making manned electric aircraft a commercial reality.

I saw about 20 aircraft at various stages of production inside the plant — from bare carbon fiber bodies to completed units in quality checks — as Aridge validates its manufacturing process ahead of planned deliveries later this year.

SERES Group’s Huawei-powered AITO brand is joining IONCHI, the premium charging joint venture between BMW and Mercedes-Benz in China, as an equal 33.3% shareholder. The deal restructures what was a 50:50 German partnership into a three-way collaboration with one of China’s fastest-growing luxury EV brands.

The move signals a significant shift in China’s EV charging landscape, where German and Chinese automakers are now directly collaborating on premium infrastructure rather than competing on separate networks.

General Motors has indefinitely suspended plans to refresh its full-size electric truck and SUV lineup, putting the future of the Chevrolet Silverado EV, GMC Sierra EV, Hummer EV, and Cadillac Escalade IQ in limbo beyond the current generation.

The move marks yet another retreat from GM’s once-ambitious electric vehicle strategy, as the automaker doubles down on gas-powered trucks instead.

Independent lab testing has found traces of hexavalent chromium — a known carcinogen — along with arsenic and elevated levels of lithium in wastewater discharged from Tesla’s nearly $1 billion lithium refinery in Robstown, Texas.

The Nueces County Drainage District No. 2, which manages the ditch receiving Tesla’s 231,000-gallon daily discharge, has issued a cease-and-desist letter demanding the company halt its wastewater flow pending further discussion.

Tesla’s registrations in California crashed 24.3% in the first quarter of 2026, with the automaker selling over 10,000 fewer vehicles in the state compared to the same period last year.

The data comes from the California New Car Dealers Association’s (CNCDA) Q1 2026 Auto Outlook report, which also reveals that the state’s overall zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) market share has plunged to just 13.7% — the lowest level since Q4 2021.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk claims the long-awaited next-generation Roadster will finally be unveiled by the end of the month, which is days away. If it actually happens, it would come nearly nine years after the original prototype was first shown in November 2017.

We’ve been down this road before — many, many times. Here’s the latest on where things stand and how we got here.

Tesla has submitted permit applications for two private Supercharger stations in Arizona that would be dedicated exclusively to its Robotaxi fleet — marking the first time the automaker has planned charging infrastructure specifically for autonomous vehicles.

The filings, discovered in municipal records in Chandler and Mesa, call for V4 Supercharger stalls that will not be open to the public.

A new SEC filing reveals that Uber Technologies has become a major shareholder of Lucid Group, holding 37.7 million shares of Class A common stock — an 11.5% ownership stake that makes the ride-hailing giant one of Lucid’s largest investors outside the Saudi Public Investment Fund.

The filing, a Form 3 submitted to the SEC on April 20 with an event date of April 14, confirms that Uber has crossed the 10% ownership threshold after pouring a total of $500 million into the struggling EV maker as part of their expanding robotaxi partnership.

Tesla (TSLA) will release its first-quarter 2026 financial results tomorrow (April 22) after the market close, with a conference call to follow. Despite leadership continuing to push the narrative that Tesla is now an “AI and robotics company,” the automotive business still drives the vast majority of Tesla’s financial performance.

Let’s look at what Wall Street and retail investors are expecting.

PG&E and Tesla have announced that the Cybertruck is now approved to sell power back to California’s grid through the utility’s residential Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) pilot program. The approval comes with up to $4,500 in incentives toward equipment and installation costs.

What makes this notable: it’s the first time California has approved an AC-based vehicle-to-grid system for residential use — a technically simpler and cheaper approach than the DC-based setups that Ford and GM rely on in the same pilot.

Tesla has settled a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of an 18-year-old passenger killed in a 116 mph crash in Fort Lauderdale.

Plaintiffs alleged that a Tesla technician disabled a speed limiter without parental consent.

The settlement, with undisclosed terms, was confirmed Monday just as jury selection was set to begin in Broward County court.

Tesla launched its “Robotaxi” service in Dallas and Houston yesterday — expanding to two new cities for the first time since Austin. There’s just one problem: there are virtually no cars available.

Data from Robotaxi Tracker shows that Tesla’s new Houston and Dallas deployments have had 0% to 2% availability over the past 24 hours, with only brief spikes to around 50% during a narrow morning window before dropping back to zero. It looks like Tesla deployed a car or two in each city and called it a launch.

A YouTuber driving a Tesla Model X the entire length of the Americas ran out of battery in Chile’s Atacama Desert — the driest place on Earth — and had to deploy emergency solar panels on the side of the highway to survive.

The whole ordeal, captured on video, is a fascinating look at both the promise and the very real challenges of long-distance EV travel in regions where charging infrastructure remains sparse.

Tesla announced today that its “Robotaxi” service is now rolling out in Dallas and Houston, marking the company’s first expansion beyond Austin and San Francisco. The company shared maps of the two new service areas, which appear to cover small slices of each city.

The Houston geofence covers approximately 25 square miles, according to early user analysis of the maps, while the Dallas zone appears to center around the Highland Park area. For context, Tesla’s Austin geofence has grown to roughly 245 square miles after months of gradual expansion — but that took nearly a year to reach from an initial 20-square-mile footprint.

A YouTuber bought a completely stripped-down Tesla Model 3 for just $2,000 — no body panels, no windshield, no seatbelts — and took it off-roading, drifting, and even jumping it. The wildest part? It still showed 212 miles of range on a full charge.

The video, posted by Remmy Evans, is a testament to both the durability of Tesla’s drivetrain and the questionable decision-making that makes YouTube entertaining.

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 Tesla having its HW3 reckoning, Ford reshuffling its EV unit, Donut Lab being in hot water, and more.

The Dutch Tesla owner who launched a collective claim against Tesla over FSD on HW3 cars called Tesla to ask about the €6,400 he paid for “Full Self-Driving” in 2019. After 7 years of waiting, Tesla’s answer was to “just be patient.”

It’s an almost comically tone-deaf response that perfectly encapsulates Tesla’s approach to the HW3 problem — and it’s only going to fuel the growing legal pressure in Europe.

Tesla is currently fighting on more than 20 active litigation fronts, ranging from Autopilot wrongful death suits to securities fraud and racial discrimination — with total potential financial exposure reaching as high as $14.5 billion. The company’s “hardcore litigation department” and its “corporate puffery” defense strategy have failed to stem the tide.

The situation is not stabilizing, it is accelerating. And what makes it truly alarming for Tesla is that the most dangerous lawsuits are still to come.

Tesla is requiring buyers of its limited Signature Edition Model S and Model X to sign a “No Resale Agreement” that threatens $50,000 in liquidated damages, or the full resale value, whichever is greater, if they flip the vehicle within the first year.

An invited buyer shared the agreement with Electrek, revealing that Tesla is reviving the same anti-flipping strategy it tried and ultimately abandoned with the Cybertruck back in 2023-2024.

New registration data confirms what Electrek has been reporting for six months: Tesla’s Cybertruck sales are being propped up by Elon Musk’s other companies. SpaceX alone bought 1,279 Cybertrucks in Q4 2025 — 18% of every Cybertruck registered in the US that quarter.

Without those inter-company purchases, Cybertruck registrations would have fallen 51% year-over-year instead of the numbers Tesla reported.

Ford is reorganizing its standalone electric vehicle division — and losing the executive who built it. The automaker said today that Doug Field, its chief EV, digital, and design officer, will leave the company next month after nearly five years leading Ford’s push into software-defined EVs.

In his place, Ford isn’t bringing in another Silicon Valley hire. It’s folding the EV, digital, and design group into its global manufacturing operations under COO Kumar Galhotra, in a new unit called Product Creation and Industrialization.

Updated: the article’s lead was updated from Ford ‘dissolving’ its EV unit to ‘reshuffling’.

A Texas Tesla owner says he punched the accelerator to outrun an oncoming train after his car on “Full Self-Driving” drove itself through a lowered railroad crossing arm as the train closed in on the tracks.

Joshua Brown, who says he has logged more than 40,000 miles using Tesla’s driver assist, described the incident as the first time FSD has ever “let me down.”