Fred Lambert

Tesla has taped out its next-generation AI5 self-driving chip, CEO Elon Musk said overnight, a key milestone that sends the final design to the foundry for fabrication.

The tape-out comes nearly two years after Tesla originally promised AI5 would be in vehicles, and it still leaves volume production more than a year away.

Aptera co-CEO Steve Fambro posted a data point this morning that neatly illustrates what his company has been trying to build for more than a decade: his solar electric vehicle was generating more electricity from the sun than his house was.

Just after 8 a.m., Fambro said his home rooftop was producing 136 watts of solar power while the Aptera sitting outside was putting more than 300W — more than double.

Obviously, this is a particular example highlighting different solar optimization strategies, but neat nonetheless.

Rivian is partnering with Redwood Materials, the battery company founded by Tesla co-founder JB Straubel, to build a second-life battery energy storage system at its EV manufacturing plant in Normal, Illinois.

The initial deployment will use more than 100 used Rivian battery packs stitched together into a 10 MWh system that can feed power back into the factory during peak demand.

Tesla’s long-awaited Full Self-Driving launch in Europe is already running into the same reckoning that blew up in Australia last year: HW3 owners are realizing they paid for something Tesla has now admitted it can’t deliver, and they’re starting to organize.

A Dutch Model 3 owner who paid €6,400 for FSD back in 2019 has launched a collective claim website to bundle HW3 + FSD owners across the EU.

Mercedes-Benz has unveiled a heavily overhauled EQS electric sedan with a WLTP range of up to 926 km (575 miles), a 13% improvement over the outgoing model. The update represents the biggest upgrade to the flagship EV since it launched in 2021.

The new EQS gets an entirely new 800-volt electrical architecture, up to 350 kW DC charging, steer-by-wire technology — a first for any German automaker in a production car — and the new MB.OS operating system. Orders open in Germany starting at €94,403 (~$103,000).

Tesla is rolling out its Spring Update 2026 software, bringing over a dozen new features to its fleet. The highlights include a redesigned Self-Driving subscription app, voice-activated Grok, and a long-requested auto-install feature for software updates.

The update also adds some fun touches, like a new “Cyberhog” Pet Mode character and custom virtual wraps for Model S and X owners.

New photos of the Rivian R2 parked next to the Tesla Model Y are making the rounds on social media, and they offer a great look at how these two critical electric SUVs actually compare in size. The R2 is shorter in length but noticeably taller, with a boxier, more rugged profile.

We decided to dig into the numbers and put together a full dimension-by-dimension breakdown — and the efficiency comparison is where things get really interesting.

Someone stole a critical piece of evidence from a Tesla Model Y involved in a violent crash in Bergen, Norway — the network card responsible for storing and transmitting crash data to Tesla’s servers.

The revelation raises serious questions about the integrity of the investigation into the 2023 crash, in which the Tesla taxi accelerated to 90 km/h and launched into the air before slamming into a kiosk.

Tesla is producing a final limited-edition “Signature Series” run of the Plaid Model S and Model X — 350 vehicles total — as a farewell to its flagship programs before they shut down for good. The Model X Signature starts at $159,420.

The invite-only program, which is being offered exclusively via email to select Tesla owners, features an exclusive Garnet Red paint color and gold accents throughout the vehicle.

The Dutch vehicle authority RDW has granted Tesla a type approval for its “Full Self-Driving” Supervised system in the Netherlands, marking the first European country to officially approve the driver-assist technology.

The approval, which falls under the UN R-171 regulation for Driver Control Assistance Systems, comes after more than 18 months of testing and is currently valid only in the Netherlands. Other EU member states can choose to recognize it nationally, but that process is not automatic.

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’s cheaper EV model coming and going in the same week, FSD v15, Rivian R2 EPA numbers, and more.

Tesla China has denied a Reuters report claiming the automaker is developing a new compact electric SUV. The denial comes just one day after we reported on the original Reuters exclusive citing four sources.

The denial was reported by Chinese financial wire Cailian Press (财联社), a major and well-established Chinese business news service. Tesla China told the outlet that “market information claiming that Tesla is developing a new, smaller, and cheaper electric SUV is inaccurate.”

Tesla has added Sunwoda (also known as Xinwangda) as its fifth global power battery cell supplier, with LFP cells already shipping on Shanghai-built vehicles destined for export markets.

The move continues Tesla’s aggressive push to diversify its battery supply chain and squeeze costs as automotive gross margins remain under pressure — down to roughly 15% from a peak of 27% in 2021.

Tesla’s actual retail sales in China crashed 16% year-over-year in Q1 2026, with March alone plunging 24% — despite several media outlets reporting that Tesla’s China numbers were up for the quarter.

The discrepancy comes down to the difference between wholesale and retail numbers. Tesla’s wholesale figures include vehicles produced at Giga Shanghai and exported to other markets, masking a significant decline in actual Chinese consumer demand.

Elon Musk is once again promising that the next version of Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” software will “far exceed human levels of safety.” This time it’s V15. The problem is that he made virtually identical claims about Version 12 in 2023 and V14 in 2025 — and neither came close to delivering.

Musk posted the claim today in response to a user’s detailed review of FSD v14.3 after 600+ miles of testing. He acknowledged that “point releases will bring polish” to the current version before projecting that V15, the next major release, will achieve what every previous version was supposed to achieve.

Tesla is hitting back at a growing gray market of unauthorized devices that unlock Full Self-Driving (FSD) in regions where the software hasn’t been approved. The automaker has been remotely disabling FSD on affected vehicles — permanently revoking access without warning.

Reports are surfacing from owners in Europe, South Korea, China, and Turkey that Tesla remotely woke their vehicles, detected the unauthorized CAN bus devices, and stripped FSD entirely — reverting them to basic Autopilot.

Tesla is reportedly developing an all-new smaller, cheaper electric SUV — two years after CEO Elon Musk killed the company’s affordable EV program and called building cars for human drivers “pointless.”

Reuters reports that four people familiar with the matter say the new compact SUV would be produced at Tesla’s Shanghai factory, priced substantially below the Model 3’s $34,000 starting price in China and $37,000 in the US.

Tesla has quietly switched on a public configurator for its Supercharger for Business program, and the numbers tell us exactly what it now costs a third party to buy into the network: $500,000 in hardware and roughly $940,000 all-in for a standard V4 8-stall site.

The tool also spits out ROI estimates that swing wildly by location — from a 4-year payback in San Francisco to 7 years in Manhattan — and effectively prices Tesla’s own cut at a flat $0.10/kWh.

Elon Musk claimed this week that Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” is so much safer than human drivers that it could save 90% of the roughly one million lives lost in car crashes globally each year — a 10X improvement in safety.

The problem is that Tesla has never released the data that would support anything close to that claim, and Musk is already using it to pre-frame the lawsuits Tesla is facing over FSD crashes as an unavoidable cost of progress.

Tesla stock is down roughly 20% year-to-date in 2026, and JPMorgan thinks the bleeding is far from over. Analyst Ryan Brinkman reiterated his Underweight rating this week and stuck with a $145 price target — implying another ~60% downside from where TSLA trades today.

The note landed days after Tesla disclosed a Q1 delivery miss and the largest single-quarter inventory build in company history.

Tesla has started rolling out Full Self-Driving (Supervised) v14.3 to HW4 vehicles, and the headline change is under the hood: Tesla rewrote the AI compiler and runtime from scratch on MLIR, which the automaker says delivers a 20% faster reaction time.

The update, shipping as software version 2026.2.9.6, also brings a new parking spot pin on the map, better behavior around emergency vehicles and school buses, and Tesla’s first public acknowledgement that it’s leaning on MLIR — the compiler infrastructure built by Chris Lattner, who briefly led Tesla Autopilot back in 2017.

Tesla is not actually going to build its own chip fab. Intel is going to do it for them.

That’s the real takeaway from Intel’s announcement today that it is joining the “Terafab” project alongside Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI — the $25 billion Austin chip factory Elon Musk unveiled with great fanfare last month.

A Tesla driver was found passed out behind the wheel of his car as it drove itself through busy streets in Vacaville, California. Police caught up with the vehicle and arrested the driver on suspicion of driving under the influence of both alcohol and marijuana.

It is the latest in a long string of incidents where Tesla owners have treated the automaker’s driver-assist systems as if they were a designated driver — and it keeps happening because Tesla keeps marketing them that way.

NHTSA has closed its investigation into Tesla’s “Actually Smart Summon” feature after documenting 159 incidents, all involving minor property damage.

The agency found zero injuries and zero fatalities linked to the feature, and determined that Tesla’s six over-the-air software updates adequately addressed the issues. No recall was issued.