Fred Lambert

Tesla’s poorly handled Powerwall 2 recall is now turning into a potential class action lawsuit over for leaving people with bricked batteries until Tesla replaces them.

The Boring Company, Elon Musk’s tunneling startup, is reportedly facing significant issues with its new project in Nashville, Tennessee. A key subcontractor has walked off the job, alleging that the company has failed to pay for work completed on the “Music City Loop,” claiming they have received only 5% of what they are owed.

Elon Musk announced last night that Tesla is planning to “roughly double” its Robotaxi fleet in Austin next month. While an expansion of the pilot sounds positive on the surface, a look at the actual numbers reveals that Tesla is missing its own “end of year” target by a massive margin.

Just last month, Musk explicitly stated that Tesla aimed to have 500 Robotaxis in Austin by the end of the year. Now, “doubling” the current estimated fleet suggests the actual number will be closer to 60.

The race for autonomous driving has three fronts: software, hardware, and regulatory. For years, we’ve watched Tesla try to brute-force its way to “Full Self-Driving (FSD)” with its own custom hardware, while the rest of the automotive industry is increasingly lining up behind NVIDIA.

Now that we know Tesla’s new AI5 chip is delayed and won’t be in vehicles until 2027, it’s worth comparing the two most dominant “self-driving” chips today: Tesla’s latest Hardware 4 (AI4) and NVIDIA’s Drive Thor.

After years of teasing that other automakers would license Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system, Elon Musk has now admitted that no other automakers want to license it.

“They don’t want it!” He says.

Tesla’s AI and robotics divisions are facing a significant “brain drain” as a stealth startup called Sunday Robotics emerges with a roster of engineers from Tesla’s Optimus and Autopilot teams.

For the first time in what feels like forever, Tesla has put a hard date on the arrival of Full Self-Driving (Supervised) in Europe. The automaker confirmed that the Dutch vehicle authority (RDW) has committed to granting national approval for the system in February 2026, which is just a few months away.

Update: RDW has denied that it has told Tesla it plans to grant approval in February.

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 electricity becoming the base currency, Tesla Robotaxi crashes, the new Porsche Cayenne EV, and more.

For most of human history, currency was a direct claim on tangible, productive output. Before the abstraction of government fiat or cryptocurrency, value was stored in things that required real work and resources, bushels of grain, livestock, gold, assets with their own direct productive output: horses, and tragically, slaves.

These were the foundational assets of economies, representing a direct link between labor, resources, and stored value.

As we accelerate into an all-electric, all-digital age, this fundamental link is re-emerging, but with a new unit of account. The 21st-century economy, defined by automated industry, robotic, electric transport, and now power-hungry artificial intelligence, runs on a single, non-negotiable input: electricity. In this new paradigm, the real base currency, the ultimate representation of productive capacity, is the kilowatt-hour (kWh).

Tesla has officially deployed its first Supercharger station owned by a third party in the US, a step in the automaker’s effort to accelerate the charging infrastructure growth while reducing capital expenditure.

While everyone has been hyper-focused on Elon Musk’s latest “gaudy” pay package, the one the board just awarded him to compensate for the previous package canceled by a judge in Delaware is turning into a financial time bomb ticking that could blow up Tesla’s income statements.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that the automaker’s next-generation self-driving computer, known as AI5, will not be available in volume until mid-2027.

The new timeline confirms that Tesla’s upcoming Cybercab, scheduled for 2026, will launch on current-generation AI4 hardware – raising more questions about the capability of the vehicle, which isn’t supposed to have pedals or a steering wheel.

The General Motors EV1 has a vital place in electric vehicle history. It mainly served to show two things:

1. Show a viable path for battery-electric vehicles back in the 1990s.
2. Some forces are clearly at play to suppress electric cars.

GM only leased the EV1, never sold any, and prevented almost anyone from keeping them when it killed the vehicle program.

The automaker ended up crushing the vast majority of them. While a few empty shells exist in museums, they are strictly prohibited from ever driving again. But a new project has surfaced involving what appears to be the only legally owned EV1 in private hands, and the new owner plans to put it back on the road with a modern battery pack.

A YouTube channel called Electrek Garage (no relation to us, though we like the name) posted a fascinating video detailing the acquisition and restoration plan for this unicorn of an EV.

Tesla has been granted a Transportation Network Company (TNC) permit by the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT), enabling the company to operate a paid ride-hailing service in the state officially.

This will allow Tesla to launch its ‘Robotaxi’ similarly to how it does in California – meaning with Uber drivers using Full Self-Driving Supervised (FSD).

After watching every other major automaker, Ford, GM, Mercedes, Hyundai-Kia, and even the famously cautious Toyota, and just last week Volkswagen, jump ship from the clunky CCS standard to the elegant, proven, and reliable NACS connector, Stellantis was the last major legacy holdout.

Well, the last domino has fallen, but the most interesting thing is that the NACS connector, which stands for North American Charging Standard, is going global – beyond North America.

Waymo is significantly accelerating its rollout. After years of slow and methodical expansion, the Alphabet-owned company is now moving at a faster speed, announcing today that it is bringing its autonomous driving technology to five new major cities, starting with Miami.

This comes just days after the company finally unlocked driverless freeway rides for passengers in its core markets.

A Tesla Robotaxi ‘safety driver’ in San Francisco was caught on video sleeping in the middle of a drive with a customer.

The good news is that the system did wake him up, but certainly a bit late.

Tesla reported three more crashes involving its Robotaxis in Austin, Texas – now bringing the total to 7 incidents despite low mileage and in-car supervisors preventing more accidents.

Tesla has settled another lawsuit involving its Autopilot driver-assist system, which is alleged to have caused a crash. This time, a 2020 Model Y on Autopilot crashed into a stationary police vehicle in Texas.

This is Tesla’s fourth known settlement in lawsuits involving Autopilot crashes since losing its first trial earlier this year.

Tesla is reportedly telling its suppliers to remove all China-made components from parts bound for its US-based factories, a significant acceleration of its effort to decouple its US supply chain from China.

Billionaire investor Peter Thiel’s fund, Thiel Macro LLC, has significantly cut its position in Tesla (TSLA), according to a new Q3 2025 13F filing.

Thiel, who is close to Musk, is retreating from his Tesla investment at a time when the CEO told shareholders to “hold on” to their stocks and warned TSLA shorts.

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 Apple CarPlay possibly coming to Tesla cars, VW getting access to Superchargers, a Toyota electric pickup, and more.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk threw shade at Waymo for having “rookie numbers” amid Tesla’s own disappointing autonomous-driving performance, raising the question: Is Elon Musk delusional or simply lying about Tesla’s Full Self-Driving?

An entire fleet of 24 Tesla cars burned down in a fire at a Tesla store in the South of France last night.

The fire is currently under investigation.