Fred Lambert

Tesla has increased the price of the new Cybertruck AWD from $59,990 to $69,990 — a 17% price hike that took effect today, just 10 days after the trim was introduced.

The price increase follows what might be one of the most cynical new trim introductions in the history of the auto industry: launch at a low price, create urgency by announcing the price will increase in 10 days, then claim the price hike is justified by the inflated demand you just created.

Xiaomi just revealed a Vision Gran Turismo concept supercar at MWC 2026 in Barcelona, making it the first Chinese automaker to participate in the iconic racing game’s concept car program in its 28-year history.

The electric supercar concept sits on Xiaomi’s own 900V Silicon Carbide (SiC) platform and features a radical low-slung design with scissor doors, a massive carbon fiber rear wing, and center-lock wheels hiding carbon-ceramic brakes.

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 Cybercab being dead on arrival, Donut Lab’s miracle battery, Waymo expanding, and more.

Tesla has launched the seven-seat option for the Model Y Juniper in Europe, adding a €2,500 third-row option to the Long Range All-Wheel Drive configuration. Deliveries are expected to begin in April.

The problem is that no one was really asking for this. The Model Y’s third row remains comically small, and with the stretched Model YL, which has an actual usable third row, in China, the timing of this launch is questionable at best.

Tesla’s estimated delivery times for all models in China have fallen to just 1-3 weeks, a dramatic reduction from the several weeks to two months quoted late last year. The collapse in wait times signals that Giga Shanghai has cleared its order backlog and has ample production capacity sitting idle.

At the same time, Tesla announced it is extending its 7-year ultra-low-interest and 5-year zero-interest financing programs through March 31, marking the second time the automaker has pushed back the expiration of these aggressive incentives in 2026.

The financing incentives are rapidly becoming the new standard as Tesla’s demand issues are growing.

Victor Nechita, who served as Tesla’s vehicle program manager for the Cybercab, has announced he is leaving the company. The departure comes just days after the first Cybercab production unit rolled off the assembly line at Giga Texas, adding to an accelerating exodus of senior program managers at the automaker.

Elon Musk sent a pre-recorded video message to Tesla’s 10,700 workers at Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg in Grünheide, warning that the planned expansion of the plant will not happen if IG Metall gains influence in the upcoming works council election.

The threat comes days before the critical vote and amid an escalating conflict between Tesla management and Germany’s most powerful industrial union.

A new study shows that used Tesla prices have climbed 4.3% since the federal EV tax credit expired on September 30, while nearly every other used electric vehicle has dropped an average of 3.6%. Used EV market share has plunged 20% over the same period.

The data, from iSeeCars’ analysis of over 1.7 million used cars, paints a stark picture of a two-tier EV market emerging in the wake of the credit’s elimination, one where Tesla holds pricing power and everyone else scrambles to compensate.

However, it appears to be a correction after Tesla’s used car prices were in free fall last year.

A federal judge has ruled that Tesla must face a class-action lawsuit alleging the automaker systematically discriminated against American workers by preferring H-1B visa holders for engineering positions, even as it laid off more than 6,000 US employees in 2024.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria said the plaintiff had offered “just enough facts” for the case to proceed, though he expressed skepticism about the strength of the claims.

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Tesla has escalated its fight over the “Cybercab” name, filing a 167-page, 5-count formal opposition at the USPTO’s Trademark Trial and Appeal Board against UNIBEV, a French beverage wholesaler that has been squatting on the trademark. The filing, obtained by Electrek, accuses UNIBEV of fraud, bad faith, and trademark dilution, just weeks before Tesla plans to ramp Cybercab production at Gigafactory Texas.

The move comes less than two weeks after Tesla secured a 30-day extension to oppose UNIBEV’s trademark application, signaling it wasn’t ready to walk away from the name. Now, Tesla has made clear it intends to fight for it.

Tesla has updated its “Find Us” map with 64 new Megacharger locations across 15 states, giving the clearest picture yet of the charging network it is building to support the Tesla Semi.

Combined with 2 sites already operational, the map now shows 66 total locations covering major freight corridors from the West Coast to the East Coast.

New data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) confirms that Tesla registered just 8,075 vehicles across the EU, EFTA, and UK in January 2026, a 17% decline from the same month last year.

The drop is particularly damaging because January 2025 was already a weak month for Tesla, during the production transition to the refreshed Model Y. The broader battery-electric vehicle market, meanwhile, grew 13.9%, making Tesla’s collapse increasingly difficult to explain away as a timing issue.

Tesla has filed a lawsuit against the California Department of Motor Vehicles seeking to reverse the administrative ruling that found the automaker engaged in false advertising with its “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving” marketing.

The move comes just days after Tesla complied with the DMV’s demands to clean up its marketing language — raising the question of why the company is fighting a ruling it already capitulated to.

China is living in the future when it comes to EV charging. Instead of drivers hunting for an open charging spot in a parking garage, overhead rail-mounted charging robots now travel along ceiling tracks and come to the car. The concept, already deployed in garages across multiple Chinese cities, turns every parking space into a potential charging spot without the cost of installing individual chargers at each one.

Donut Lab has released the first independent test results for its controversial solid-state battery, and the data confirms at least one headline claim: the cell charged from 0 to 80% in just 4.5 minutes at an extreme 11C rate.

It doesn’t blow up, but it gets pretty damn hot.

The results come from Finland’s state-owned VTT Technical Research Centre, one of Europe’s leading research organizations. But the report only covers charging performance — leaving Donut Lab’s most extraordinary claims completely unverified.

Tesla has secured a second deadline extension from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the agency’s investigation into traffic safety violations committed by vehicles operating with “Full Self-Driving” (FSD). The new filing, dated February 20, pushes the deadline for Tesla to deliver critical crash data, including video, event data recorder (EDR), and CAN bus files, to March 9, 2026. The original deadline was January 19.

Today was supposed to be the day Tesla finally delivered all its data to NHTSA after a first five-week extension. Instead, Tesla asked for more time on February 19, the day before the deadline, and NHTSA granted it the next day.

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 the new Tesla (temporary) Cybertruck, Cybercab news, Ford wanting China in the US, and more.

A federal judge has rejected Tesla’s bid to overturn a $243 million jury verdict over a fatal 2019 Autopilot crash in Florida, dealing a significant blow to the automaker’s legal strategy as it faces a growing wave of lawsuits tied to its driver-assistance technology.

U.S. District Judge Beth Bloom in Miami ruled that the evidence at trial “more than supported” the verdict and that Tesla raised no new arguments to justify setting it aside. The ruling, made public on Friday, means Tesla’s last hope to avoid paying the massive judgment at the trial court level has been exhausted.

Tesla just launched the most compelling version of the Cybertruck it has ever offered — a dual-motor all-wheel-drive model starting at $59,990, and CEO Elon Musk is already signaling that it won’t last.

In a post on X, Musk responded to the announcement of the new AWD Cybertruck with a cryptic but damning three words: “Only for the next 10 days.”

Elon Musk has reiterated his claim that Tesla will sell the Cybercab directly to consumers for under $30,000 before the end of the year, following the first production unit rolling off the line at Giga Texas on February 17. The announcement immediately set Tesla fans ablaze, not with discussions about the vehicle’s autonomy challenges, but with AI-generated images of YouTuber Marques Brownlee sporting a freshly shaved head.

Calm down, everyone. You almost certainly won’t get to see MKBHD’s bare head.

Eight months ago, Tesla made headlines around the world when it claimed to have completed the “world’s first autonomous delivery of a car”, a Model Y that “drove itself” from Gigafactory Texas to a customer’s home about 30 minutes away. Tesla never did it again. Not once.

Tesla filed new comments with the California Public Utilities Commission that amount to a quiet admission: its “Robotaxi” service still relies on both in-car human drivers and domestic remote operators to function. Rather than downplaying these dependencies, Tesla leans into them — arguing that its multi-layered human supervision model is more reliable than Waymo’s fully driverless system, pointing to the December 2025 San Francisco blackout as proof.

The filing, submitted February 13 in CPUC Rulemaking 25-08-013, reveals the massive operational gap between what Tesla calls a “Robotaxi” and what Waymo actually operates as one.

Germany’s largest industrial union, IG Metall, is accusing Tesla of fostering a toxic working environment at its Gigafactory Berlin, claiming the automaker is overworking employees and pressuring sick staff. The accusations land just two weeks before a works council election that could reshape labor relations at Tesla’s only European factory.

The escalation marks the most serious labor confrontation Tesla has faced in Germany, a country where the automaker is already dealing with a 48% sales collapse.

Tesla has avoided a 30-day suspension of its dealer and manufacturer licenses in California after complying with a DMV order to stop using the term “Autopilot” in its vehicle marketing. The settlement closes a case that dragged on for nearly three years, and confirms what critics have argued all along: Tesla’s marketing of its driver-assist features was misleading.