Fred Lambert

Donut Lab has now released five independent test reports from Finland’s VTT Technical Research Centre on its solid-state battery — and not a single one addresses the two claims that actually matter: the 400 Wh/kg energy density and the 100,000-cycle life.

The Q1 2026 deadline that Donut Lab set for delivering production batteries inside Verge Motorcycles is eight days away. The latest report, a cycling test dated March 13, adds another data point — but the overall picture remains unchanged.

Tesla and SpaceX have unveiled “Terafab,” a joint $25 billion chip fabrication facility in Austin, Texas, that Elon Musk claims will produce 1 terawatt of computing power annually. It would be the largest semiconductor fab ever built — by an absurd margin.

Musk took the stage at the defunct Seaholm Power Plant in Austin on March 21 to officially launch the project, calling it “the most epic chip building exercise in history by far.”

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 turning to energy, BMW i3 EV making a splash, Donut Lab update, and more.

Tesla’s European arm announced today that it has completed all vehicle testing for Full Self-Driving (Supervised) in the Netherlands — but the expected approval date has slipped yet again, from March 20 to April 10.

The announcement, which Tesla framed as progress, also reveals that a broader EU-wide approval is now not expected until the summer.

Elon Musk’s plan to build 100 GW of solar manufacturing capacity in the United States just got its first major price tag: $2.9 billion in equipment from Chinese suppliers, according to a Reuters exclusive.

If the deal closes, it marks the biggest concrete investment yet in Musk’s solar ambitions, and a stunning reversal for a company that effectively abandoned its solar business just two years ago.

NHTSA has escalated its investigation into Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” system’s inability to handle reduced visibility conditions, upgrading the probe to an Engineering Analysis covering an estimated 3,203,754 vehicles — the step that typically precedes a recall.

The agency found that FSD’s degradation detection system fails to warn drivers when cameras are blinded by common road conditions like sun glare and fog, and that Tesla may be under-reporting related crashes.

Xiaomi is officially launching the next-generation SU7 electric sedan today with a sweeping set of upgrades — up to 902 km of CLTC range, standard LiDAR across all trims, and an 897V charging architecture on the top model.

The updated sedan starts at 229,900 yuan (~$33,000), still undercutting the Tesla Model 3 in China by about 5,600 yuan (~$800) despite a price increase of 10,000-14,000 yuan over the outgoing model. Xiaomi racked up nearly 89,000 pre-orders in the first 24 hours when reservations opened in January.

A growing number of states and federal lawmakers are pushing flat annual fees of $200 to $250 on electric vehicles, amounts that charge EV owners two to three times more than what the average gas car driver pays in federal fuel tax. The proposals are being framed as a way to fund road infrastructure, but the math doesn’t add up.

At a time when EVs represent roughly 10% of new car sales in the US and deliver billions in health, environmental, and energy security benefits, these blanket fees are a punitive approach that discourages adoption rather than fairly distributing road costs.

A viral dashcam video shows a Tesla Cybertruck slamming into a concrete overpass barrier on a Houston highway while allegedly using “Full Self-Driving.” Elon Musk responded by saying Tesla’s logs show the driver disengaged the system 4 seconds before impact.

Tesla fans jumped on this as yet another example of the media spreading FUD about the company. But watching the actual video tells a more nuanced — and more concerning — story about the real problem with FSD.

Travis Kalanick, the former CEO of Uber who helped pioneer the ride-hailing industry, says Waymo is “obviously” ahead of Tesla in the robotaxi race, and that Elon Musk’s company needs a “ChatGPT moment” for its vision-based autonomous driving to catch up.

The comments came during an appearance on the All-In podcast this week, where Kalanick also revealed he’s jumping back into the self-driving game himself with a new robotics venture called Atoms.

Washington state legislators just voted overwhelmingly to allow Rivian and Lucid to sell electric vehicles directly to consumers, ending a 12-year arrangement that gave Tesla exclusive access to direct sales in the state.

Senate Bill 6354 passed the House 84-9 and the Senate 47-2 — a bipartisan blowout that now heads to Governor Bob Ferguson’s desk for signature.

Raffi Krikorian, Mozilla’s CTO and the former head of Uber’s self-driving car division, totaled his Tesla Model X while using “Full Self-Driving” on a residential street. His kids were in the back seat.

In a new essay published in The Atlantic, Krikorian breaks down the accident and offers what might be the most informed critique yet of the fundamental problem with Tesla’s approach to “supervised” autonomy — from someone who literally built self-driving systems for a living.

Tesla’s “Terafab” semiconductor ambitions to launch this week carry an estimated price tag of $25-40 billion. The math is getting hard to reconcile with a company that generated just $6.2 billion in free cash flow last year while its earnings crashed.

Tesla hasn’t raised capital through a stock offering since December 2020, when it completed the last of three at-the-market offerings that brought in roughly $12 billion in a single year. The Terafab changes the equation entirely.

Elon Musk is once again promising the long-delayed next-generation Tesla Roadster is just around the corner. This time, he says an “unveil” is coming next month — April 2026.

The Tesla CEO made the claim on X today while quote-tweeting a post about the anniversary of the original Roadster’s production start in 2008. He wrote: “New Roadster unveil hopefully next month. It will be a banger next-level.”

The US government has officially confirmed that Tesla is the customer behind LG Energy Solution’s massive $4.3 billion lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery supply contract — ending months of speculation since LG first disclosed the deal last July.

The three-year agreement will see LG produce LFP prismatic cells at its Lansing, Michigan factory starting in 2027, feeding directly into Tesla’s next-generation Megapack 3 energy storage systems assembled at the Houston Megafactory.

Tesla filed one new “Robotaxi” crash report with NHTSA in its February submission, bringing the total to 15 incidents since the program launched in Austin in June 2025. That’s a significant drop from the five crashes reported in the last report, but without specific mileage data from Tesla, there’s no way to determine whether the fleet is actually getting safer.

The new incident involved a Model Y hitting a fixed object at 9 mph in January 2026 with the autonomous driving system engaged. No injuries were reported.

Elon Musk announced on Saturday that Tesla’s “Terafab Project”, a plan to build what he envisions as the world’s largest semiconductor fabrication plant, will launch within seven days.

The problem is that Tesla has absolutely zero experience manufacturing semiconductors, and its track record in the closest comparable venture, building its own battery cells, should give anyone pause.

Donut Lab, the Finnish solid-state battery startup that has faced intense skepticism since its CES 2026 debut, released its first pack-level charging test results today. The 18 kWh battery pack sustained over 100 kW of charging power — a 5C rate — for five minutes straight inside a Verge TS Pro electric motorcycle.

The test marks the first time Donut Lab has demonstrated its technology beyond individual cells, moving to a full battery pack in what the company calls “a real vehicle environment.”

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 Rivian R2, Lucid’s counterattack, and Tesla’s ‘Digital Optimus’.

Elon Musk admitted today that xAI, his artificial intelligence venture, “was not built right first time around” and “is being rebuilt from the foundations up.” The admission comes just six weeks after he had Tesla pour $2 billion of shareholder money into the company.

The timing is remarkable. Tesla disclosed the $2 billion xAI investment in its Q4 2025 earnings report on January 28. Days later, SpaceX acquired xAI in a deal valuing the combined entity at $1.25 trillion. Now Musk is telling the world the thing he just sold to his own public and private investors was broken.

BYD’s Executive Vice President Stella Li confirmed the world’s largest EV maker is studying the Canadian market for a wholly owned manufacturing plant, and signaled it could acquire a struggling legacy automaker to accelerate its global expansion.

The comments, made during an interview in São Paulo, mark BYD’s most aggressive public posture yet toward North American production and consolidation of weaker rivals in the global auto industry.

Canadian electric powersports company Taiga is launching three new electric snowmobiles with a 33% jump in power output to 120 kW and CCS fast charging to 80% in 20 minutes — bringing the same charging standard used by electric cars to the backcountry.

The most interesting addition might be the onboard power system: a 3 kW output at 120V and 220V that turns the snowmobile into a mobile generator, capable of powering a remote cabin through a winter storm.

Tesla’s next-generation AI6 chi, the processor designed to power its autonomous vehicles, Optimus robots, and AI data center, has been delayed by approximately six months. The setback stems from Samsung’s 2-nanometer production line, where a postponed multi-project wafer (MPW) run is pushing the chip’s mass production timeline into late 2027.

The delay adds to a growing pattern of chip timeline slippage for Tesla, which is still waiting on its AI5 chip to reach volume production after Elon Musk said the design was “almost done” in January — six months after claiming it was “finished.”

Tesla Energy Ventures has secured a licence from Ofgem, the UK energy regulator, to supply electricity directly to households and businesses across England, Wales, and Scotland. The licence, effective March 11, marks a significant milestone in Tesla’s six-year push to become a full energy provider in Britain.

The approval comes despite thousands of public comments opposing the application, and it positions Tesla to replicate its Texas-based retail electricity model across the Atlantic.