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 a very telling Tesla Optimus fail, Rivian’s AI/Autonomy day, Mercedes GLB EV, and more.

Tesla board member and Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal Musk, is back to selling Tesla (TSLA) stocks. According to a new SEC filing, Kimbal has cashed out over $25 million worth of shares and donated a few more as the stock rides high in late 2025.

Tesla’s US sales have taken a significant hit in November, dropping to just 39,800 units according to new data. This comes as the market adjusts to the expiration of the federal tax credit, despite Tesla’s attempt to mitigate the blow with more discounts.

In a massive shakeup for the US electric vehicle supply chain, Ford and South Korean battery giant SK On announced today that they are ending their massive “BlueOval SK” joint venture.

Consumer Reports is out with its latest study on used car reliability, and the headlines are already circulating: Tesla has landed at the very bottom of the list.

The study, which examines 5-to-10-year-old vehicles, ranks Tesla 26th out of 26 brands, placing it behind Chrysler, Dodge, and even Jeep – brands known for decades for their reliability issues.

While critics will undoubtedly use this as ammo to attack the brand, a closer look at the data reveals a much more nuanced picture, one that highlights just how recent an automaker Tesla still is.

BMW is the latest major automaker to officially gain access to the Tesla Supercharger network in North America. Starting today, BMW EV drivers in the US can access over 25,000 Tesla Superchargers, adding a massive boost to the charging options for owners of the i4, iX, and other electric models from the German automaker.

It follows a wave of other automakers gaining access over the last year as the industry transitions to NACS (North American Charging Standard), Tesla’s proprietary connector that has now become the standard.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk took to X (formerly Twitter) this morning to dismiss Waymo’s progress in autonomous driving, claiming that the Alphabet-owned company “never really had a chance against Tesla” and that this will be “obvious in hindsight.”

The comment came as a direct response to a discussion about Waymo’s newly released safety data—a level of transparency that Tesla has yet to match.

Tesla’s November numbers out of China are in, and they confirm what we’ve been suspecting for a while now: the growth story in the world’s most important EV market has officially stalled for the year.

While Giga Shanghai is still churning out vehicles, the local appetite for them seems to have hit a ceiling, and the company is now facing a mathematical impossibility if it wants to avoid a year-over-year decline in 2025.

The Tesla Semi program is gaining momentum with another major logistics player officially joining the fleet. German logistics giant DHL confirmed that it has taken delivery of its first Tesla Semi.

Tesla is pulling every demand lever available as we head into the final weeks of the year. The automaker has launched a new set of aggressive incentives in the US, including free upgrades on inventory vehicles, 0% APR financing, and $0 down leases.

It’s the end of the quarter (and year), and as per usual, Tesla is trying to empty its inventory, but it’s more difficult this year due to the end of the tax credit in Q3 pulling a lot of demand away from Q4.

A new video surfacing from a Tesla demonstration in Miami this weekend shows the Optimus humanoid robot taking a nasty fall. But it’s not the fall itself that is raising eyebrows, it’s the specific hand movements the robot made on its way down, which strongly suggest it was mimicking a remote operator frantically removing a VR headset.

Tesla has officially announced its 2025 Holiday Update, and this year, the automaker is not using the usually bigger update for any groundbreaking stuff, but there are a few interesting new smaller features.

You will find the release notes in this article.

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 allowing texting and driving on FSD v14, Trump killing CAFE’s MPG standard, an Aptera update, and more.

Tesla has officially launched new “Standard” trims for both the Model 3 and Model Y in Europe after launching them in North America. The automaker is aggressively positioning these stripped-down models to undercut competitors and arrest a painful sales slump in the region, with the Model 3 now starting at an impressive €36,990 in Germany.

Elon Musk has confirmed that Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system now allows drivers to text and drive, though he added a caveat that it depends on the “context of surrounding traffic.”

This comes just a month after the CEO promised the feature was coming, despite the obvious legal and safety concerns surrounding it.

Does the law agree with this?

For years, the loudest and most persistent argument coming from the Tesla camp, including Elon Musk himself, against Waymo has been simple: “Sure, it works, but it can’t scale.”

The narrative, usually pushed by those heavily invested in the promise of Tesla’s “generalized Full Self-Driving”, was that Waymo was a geofenced parlor trick. They argued that Waymo’s reliance on lidar, radar, and, specifically, high-definition (HD) mapping would mean it would take years to launch in every new city.

But the narrative is now dying, as Waymo went from testing to fully autonomous in a couple of Texas cities in just a few months.

Tesla’s registration numbers for November 2025 are starting to roll in for European markets, and they paint a stark picture: demand is still collapsing in nearly every major market, with one massive exception that is propping up the entire region.

According to registration data tracked by Electrek, Tesla’s volumes in key European markets are down 12.3% year-over-year.

Tesla has received a brutal reality check from Germany this week. The country’s closely watched TÜV Report 2026 has not only ranked the Tesla Model Y as the absolute worst car for reliability in its age group but noted that it has the highest defect rate of any vehicle tested in the last ten years.

It’s a tough look for the world’s best-selling car, though the details paint a more nuanced picture than just “the car is falling apart.”

Tesla is quietly but significantly expanding its Tesla Semi sales team, bringing on two seasoned veterans from the electric trucking industry as the company prepares for volume production at Gigafactory Nevada.

Solar electric vehicle startup Aptera Motors released a new update today, giving us a first look at its validation vehicle assembly line, along with progress on battery production and efficiency testing as it moves closer to its goal of low-volume production.

Tesla appears to be preparing to introduce yet another new camera sensor to its hardware suite, according to code found in the automaker’s latest firmware. While hardware improvements are generally good news, this latest discovery adds to the mounting evidence that Tesla is continuously moving the goalposts for self-driving, potentially leaving millions of owners with “older” hardware in the dust… again.

A prominent European EV repair specialist is sounding the alarm on Tesla Model 3 and Model Y vehicles equipped with LG battery cells manufactured in China, claiming they are seeing “catastrophic” failure rates and significantly shorter lifespans compared to Panasonic packs.

Michael Burry, the investor made famous by The Big Short, is back to criticizing Tesla (TSLA). In a new article, Burry takes aim at the “tragic algebra” of stock-based compensation (SBC), which focused primarily on NVIDIA, but the famed investors also specifically highlight Tesla’s high dilution rate and argue that the company’s pivot to robotics is just the latest narrative shift to prop up a “ridiculously overvalued” stock.

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 a big Tesla Robotaxi setback, the new Mercedes-Benz CLA EV, Bollinger is over, and more.

Today’s episode is brought to you by Climate XChange, a nonpartisan nonprofit working to help states pass effective, equitable climate policies. Sales end on Dec. 8th for its 10th annual EV raffle, where participants have multiple opportunities to win their dream model. Visit CarbonRaffle.org/Electrek to learn more.