Fred Lambert

Tesla China is upgrading every Model 3 it sells with a larger 16-inch touchscreen and a new light gray interior option, and it’s turning on up to 2.2 kW of AC power export across its entire Model 3 and Model Y lineup in the country.

The US Model 3 gets none of it. Tesla’s American Model 3 still has a 15.4-inch display, and it’s shut out of the vehicle-to-load feature Tesla launched stateside in August.

NIO delivered 109,178 electric vehicles in the third quarter of 2026, a 25.4% increase over last year and right inside the 108,000 to 111,000 range it guided for in September.

But the quarter ended on a weak note. September deliveries grew just 7.7% year-over-year to 37,408 units, the slowest pace of 2026, as the ONVO brand fell 43%.

Rivian’s first R2s with LiDAR and its in-house RAP1 autonomy computer will go to employees before the end of 2026. Paying customers will have to wait until 2027. It could be interpreted as a delay compared to previous communications.

The automaker laid out the timeline at an investor conference in New York this week, along with updates on point-to-point driving, its Uber robotaxi deal, and what LiDAR now costs it: “a few hundred dollars.”

Tesla’s planned solar factory in Texas has landed in the middle of a US patent lawsuit between two Chinese solar equipment makers, both chasing the ingot-growing furnaces Tesla needs to hit its 100 GW goal.

Linton Crystal Technologies, a Rochester, New York company wholly owned by China’s Dalian Linton, sued Zhejiang Jingsheng in a Texas federal court last week. Chinese industry reports say Jingsheng won a roughly 3 billion yuan (about $420 million) Tesla order for crystal pullers earlier this year.

A Nasdaq-listed company worth about $2.4 million says it wants to buy 500 Tesla Robotaxis. KIDZ AI, formerly an online coding school for kids, announced today that it sent Tesla a “procurement inquiry” for the vehicles and plans an “Autonomous Fleet Operations Strategy.”

If the name doesn’t ring a bell, the playbook should. Tesla’s Robotaxi is turning into what bitcoin treasuries were for failing micro-caps in 2025: a buzzword you bolt onto a dying business to get the stock moving.

Lucid Air owners are finally getting the Gravity’s interface. Lucid started pushing Air UX 3.0 today as part of software version 2.11.0, its biggest Air software overhaul in years.

Owners of 2025 and newer Airs get it for free over the air. But if you bought a 2022, 2023, or some 2024 Air, you’ll first need a $950 infotainment processor upgrade at a Lucid service center.

Tesla (TSLA) got the SEC’s blessing today to let retail shareholders sign up for a standing instruction that automatically votes their shares the way Tesla’s board recommends, at every meeting, until they cancel it.

The timing is hard to ignore. Tesla still hasn’t scheduled its 2026 annual meeting, and Elon Musk keeps teasing a SpaceX merger that could hand him a big chunk of his $1 trillion pay package without hitting a single operational goal.

A five-stop concert tour in Quebec ran entirely on two Chevrolet Silverado EVs and a 150 kWh mobile power plant this summer. No diesel generator, and no hookup to the grid.

I went to the final show, held in a grocery store parking lot in Montreal’s Saint-Henri neighborhood, and everything from the speakers to the stage lights to the kitchen was running off batteries.

Tesla was just granted a patent for an “Electric Fan Car,” a system that uses four electric ducted fans in the rear diffuser to suck the car down to the road at any speed. The car in the drawings is a Model S, which Tesla stopped building in April.

It’s Tesla’s second fan car patent in just over a year, and it arrives two weeks before the company’s latest attempt at a Roadster demo.

Tesla has officially pushed its Roadster demo from October 1 to October 15, blaming “severe conditions” in the forecast for central Texas.

It’s the latest in a long line of delays for the next-gen Roadster, and this one moves the event back two full weeks for what Tesla describes as a weather problem.

Wall Street can’t agree on how many cars Tesla (TSLA) sold in Q3 2026. Estimates from major banks range from 421,758 to 482,000 deliveries ahead of Friday’s report.

That’s a 60,000-unit spread. And after the Street missed Tesla’s Q2 deliveries by 74,000 units, nobody has much credibility on this one.

Chery’s Omoda and Jaecoo brands have launched a Canadian website confirming that their “premium electric SUVs” will arrive in Canada in late 2026.

The site doesn’t name a single model, price, or dealer yet. But the Chinese automaker’s global lineup gives a pretty clear idea of what Canadians could get, and it’s heavy on plug-in hybrids.

Update 9/28: Tesla has since confirmed that it’s rescheduling the Roadster event to October 15, citing “severe conditions predicted.” We have more on the two-week delay here.

Tesla is warning guests invited to its October 1 Roadster event that the long-delayed demo could get pushed back again, and this time it’s the weather.

In an email to invitees, Tesla says the event “must be held outdoors” and may need to be rescheduled. And the forecast for central Texas on Thursday calls for an 82% chance of rain, with thunderstorms.

Geely is buying into NIO’s battery swap network. NIO announced definitive agreements on Sunday that hand a Geely Holding subsidiary 30% of NIO Power, the unit running its swap stations and chargers, at a post-money valuation of about RMB16 billion ($2.4 billion).

Most of what Geely is paying isn’t cash. It’s contributing its own commercial battery swap business plus RMB640 million ($94 million), while NIO takes 10% of Geely’s charging arm in a parallel deal.

The EU won’t vote on Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” on October 6. The draft agenda for the Technical Committee on Motor Vehicles (TCMV) meeting lists only a 25-minute “continuation of discussions” on the Dutch request to extend its FSD approval EU-wide.

The committee doesn’t meet again until December, so that’s now the earliest a Tesla FSD EU vote can happen. And Tesla had been pointing to October 6.

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 Tesla Semi launch, Geely’s battery healing fast-charging, Rivian R3, and more.

A new Tesla patent application describes a two-piece active rear wing that hides flush in the bodywork and can produce up to 700 kg of downforce once deployed. The car in the drawings looks a lot like the next-generation Tesla Roadster.

The USPTO published the filing on September 24, a week before the Roadster unveiling Tesla has scheduled for October 1 in Texas.

Tesla is now building several hundred Optimus humanoid robots per week at Fremont, roughly 10 times its Q2 output, according to a new report. But the robots coming off the line still can’t handle generalized tasks – limiting their usefulness.

The report also describes fragile hands, misaligned parts on the assembly line, and suppliers that can’t hold quality at volume. Those are the two problems that decide whether humanoid robots make money: generalization and reliability.

Geely says its new AI-powered fast charging system can reverse some of the battery damage caused by fast charging, using micro-pulse currents to add up to 20% more cycle life.

Charging a car in under 5 minutes is great, but not if it wears the battery out years early. Geely claims that its ‘Smart Charging’ addresses that and it is using something that sounds like sorcery.

Tesla officially launched high-volume production of the Tesla Semi last night at its new dedicated factory in Nevada, a plant it says can build 50,000 electric trucks per year.

The Class 8 truck was unveiled in 2017 with production promised for 2019. Seven years later, Tesla says deliveries “start now,” and it detailed a heavily redesigned truck in a 13-post thread on X.

Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” broke the speed limit in 55% of the 30 km/h segments a Belgian road safety group tested in Brussels, averaging 44 km/h where the legal limit is 30 km/h.

The results land less than two weeks before EU member states vote on approving FSD across the whole bloc. And speeding is exactly the issue Sweden and France have already flagged.

NHTSA has opened a formal investigation into comma.ai’s aftermarket driver assistance devices after five crashes where cars running openpilot plowed into stopped or slow-moving vehicles in their own lane. Two of those crashes killed three people.

The probe covers an estimated 30,000 comma three, comma 3X, and comma four devices. It’s the biggest regulatory problem for George Hotz’s startup since NHTSA pushed it to cancel its first product back in 2016.

Tesla has lined up at least 11 Semi electric trucks wearing customer logos outside its new Nevada factory, a clear sign that the automaker plans to parade its fleet customers at tonight’s Semi launch event.

A drone flyover of the plant shows trucks branded for PepsiCo, US Foods, DHL, WattEV, ABF, Einride, IMC, OK Produce, and a few others parked in a neat row by the factory.

Bentley has unveiled the Torcal, its first all-electric vehicle, at a global debut in London today. It’s an SUV with up to 888 PS (876 hp), a 113 kWh battery, and up to 375 miles (600 km WLTP) of range.

The Torcal becomes Bentley’s fourth model line, alongside the Continental GT, Flying Spur, and Bentayga. It’s designed, engineered, and built in Crewe, England.