Tesla has always been a company that caused both great excitement, through the products they promised, and of great disappointment, through the long time it takes to make those promises a reality. That happened with almost all the tech they planned on releasing over the years, but the long time part seems to be particularly strong when it comes to the Semi.
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Shown for the first time in 2017, the all-electric Class 8 semi-truck should have been on the roads in great numbers by now. It was first supposed to hit the assembly lines in 2019 but, in the usual Elon Musk-style, it was pushed one year back, and then another, and then another…

At an industry level, the interest in what the company plans to offer with the Semi is very high, with several high-profile companies announcing their interest in it: DHL, FedEx, or Pepsi, among others.

The food, snack, and beverage mammoth reserved its first Tesla Semis from all the way back in 2017, saying it wants 100 of them. To this day, it’s yet to receive a single one.

That may change this December, if we are once again to trust what Musk is saying. The billionaire broke the news on Twitter a few hours ago, when he said production of the truck has commenced, and Pepsi should get delivery of its first electric Semis on December 1. Just in time for Christmas, you could say.

The trucks to be delivered are of the “500 mile range & super fun to drive” variety, according to Musk. That’s the basic Semi, as shown right now on the company’s website, the one that offers naught to sixty acceleration times of 20 seconds, fully loaded.

On its end, like most other companies seeking to switch some of their hauler fleets to electric power, Pepsi is looking to cut down and fuel costs and emissions. As per Fleettrax, back in 2015 Pepsi had the largest fleet of vehicles in the world, which included “8,000 tractors, nearly 12,000 trailers and nearly 15,000 straight trucks.”

The North Collier Fire Rescue District along with Florida's Chief Financial Officer & State Fire Marshal Jimmy Patronis stated that electric vehicles are spontaneously catching fire in Florida because their batteries suffered water damage after the floods caused by Hurricane Ian.
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In the social media posts, they show and explain how difficult it was to put out the fire from the batteries of a Tesla Model X. The most worrying thing they said was that this issue isn’t isolated to this particular vehicle. And that authorities are dealing with EVs catching fire all over Southwest Florida.

It’s a well-established fact that lithium and water aren’t friends. If you look at videos about the chemical reaction between a simple AA battery submerged in a bowl of water, you’d be amazed. Now bring that up to scale with the massive batteries inside any EV, add tons of salt water that do extensive damage to them, and you end up with a recipe for disaster.

Luckily this time, the damages were only in material form, and no one got injured. Part of the firefighters stayed on the scene for a couple of hours after initially putting out the Tesla, to make sure it didn’t spontaneously combust again.

This isn’t the first case when an electric vehicle catches fire in the wake of a flood or under similar circumstances. There have been numerous accounts in the past that even had less apparent reasons for bursting into flames.

Four months ago, a damaged Tesla Model S suffered a similar fate in a junkyard, three weeks after it crashed. Other cases were documented in Germany, Shanghai, San Francisco, and Hong Kong, all from 2019.

The firefighters are facing a real problem here with the actual method of putting the fire out. Given that lithium batteries are set ablaze by water alone, some changes within the fire departments are sure to occur in the future, regarding the substance used for dousing the fire.

To avoid similar incidents, state officials are asking EV owners that had their cars flooded in salt water to get them towed away from structures, where damage to other property could occur.

When Tesla was building Giga Grünheide, it wanted a 4680 cell factory there as well. After all, the German plant would test a “lot of new technology,” as Elon Musk tweeted in 2020. On November 26, 2021, Tesla withdrew its application for subsidies for a battery plant there: it would not be eligible, and the process slowed the factory approval. Now the EV maker is moving the machines to make cells from Germany to Texas.
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The reason is not that the company gave up on the cell plant there for good or that it wants to seize the new federal tax credit created in the U.S. by the Inflation Reduction Act. The energy crisis in Germany also would not explain the decision. According to Handelsblatt, it has only postponed the factory because the dry battery electrode coating (DBE) technology is still not ready for production – which is a lame excuse if you consider the bigger picture.

We have already told our readers about that: all teardowns made of the 4680 cell show that it is just a large and ordinary NMC 811 cell. If the lack of the DBE tech were enough to prevent them from hitting production lines, the Texan Model Y would not have these cells in the first place. If it is suitable for American customers, why is it not the right choice for Europeans?

Handelsblatt spoke to five experts, two of whom are close to Tesla, and heard that DBE is “running quite successfully, but that implementation in large series is lacking.” That is like saying something is ready for the market, but you have no idea how to manufacture it in volumes that will make it economically feasible. In practical terms, you are still far from having a product.

That said, Tesla could be waiting to be eligible for German subsidies to make its factory. Elon Musk could also be afraid of the nuclear bombs Vladimir Putin is threatening to use to attack Ukraine even more and is placing expensive battery manufacturing machines in a safer location. Tesla could also be willing to put all efforts into the new American federal tax credit or to save some money in doing so.

At this point, only Tesla could answer its reason for carrying these machines to Texas. What matters to European buyers is that the German Model Y will have Chinese cells, which the Chinese vehicles they used to buy already presented. Will it make sense to have a factory just to make a few units of the Model Y? Perhaps Giga Grünheide will remain as a “gigantic money furnace” for more time than new factories usually do.

Tesla owners in cold climate regions have complained about the frozen door handles preventing them from entering the car. Now, Tesla finally decided to offer a remote door opening via the Tesla app, which could prove a godsend in a blizzard.
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Tesla Model Y and Model 3 are especially prone to freezing door handles due to their shape. And when they freeze, they become stuck, making it impossible to unlatch the door and enter the cabin. Winter is coming, so Tesla chose the perfect timing to update their app with a very useful feature: remote opening of the driver’s door.

The new “Unlatch Door” function rolled out last week, and Tesla owner Trevor Page described how it could be used. First, the feature needs to be added to the quick controls panel in the Tesla app. After that, pressing the button will pop out the driver’s door, even when the door handle is frozen. Remember that the window might still be stuck due to ice, so a little care doesn’t hurt.

The new feature works with Tesla 2022.36 and newer software versions in the car, and version 4.14 on the phone. This is only available on iOS for now, but Android users should get it soon. The phone needs to be set up as a Bluetooth key and within the car’s range to use the feature. This ensures that the door unlatch is not triggered by accident when you’re not around the vehicle.

Another nice addition for iOS users is the new lock screen widget. There are actually two widgets to choose from, both of them displaying the battery level. The smaller one is a circle that fills in based on the car’s state of charge. The larger widget offers more information, including the remaining range in miles or kilometers, depending on the app settings. This is in addition to the bar showing the state of charge.

Tesla Full Self-Driving software started two years ago as a Beta program for selected owners, even though the FSD capability has been sold to many people. During the Q3 2022 earnings call, Elon Musk said that the FSD Beta wide release is slated for the end of the year.
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Of course, coming from Musk, this should be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, since Musk spoke to investors about that, we expect to have more weight than the previous “hopefully next year” vague timeline that Tesla CEO offered in the past. Musk was pretty specific this time, saying that the FSD’s wide release is scheduled “about a month from now.” That or “by the end of the year” is good enough for investors.

According to Tesla Shareholder Deck, there are 160,000 participants in the FSD Beta program. The cumulative miles driven with FSD Beta has skyrocketed in the past year to nearly 60 million miles since the program launched in October 2020. This is almost double the amount driven when Tesla released a similar report in July. The wide release to anyone who purchased the FSD capability would only make this grow exponentially during 2023.

Make no mistake, the wide rollout of the FSD Beta program does not equal FSD getting out of Beta and becoming the autonomous driving feature that Musk has promised for many years. Tesla still needs to prove to the regulators what the FSD software can do and get them on board. Until then, it will remain a beta program, and the drivers are fully-responsible for supervising FSD actions.

Nevertheless, Musk reiterated during the conference that he still believes Tesla can achieve full self-driving. The FSD software should be able to provide customers with a generally hands-free solution for driving, with very few, if any, interventions from the drivers. That is if they bought the Full Self-Driving capability when they ordered their Tesla. This costs now $15,000 in the U.S., although Musk has indicated that he is willing to raise the price once the FSD becomes production-ready.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has revealed new details about the company’s upcoming vehicle platform, which will be the third after the large one underpinning the Model S and X and the compact one used by the Model 3 and Y.

During Tesla's Q3 2022 earnings call Musk said that the next platform will be smaller in size than the Model 3/Y platform and roughly half the cost. Musk's comments came during the Q&A session (listen to the audio webcast in the video above), when Tesla executives were asked about any potential developments for the next generation of vehicles.

The question from a retail investor mentioned the spectacular drop in cost from the Model S/X platform to the Model 3/Y platform, which allowed Tesla to enter the much larger segment of more affordable vehicles.

In this context, the question was about when Tesla expects to release its third platform and what level of cost reduction the company thinks it can achieve. Elon Musk replied that while there are no exact dates for the launch yet, it is "the primary focus of the new vehicle development team."

He then went on to talk costs and production volumes, noting that the next-generation Tesla vehicle would be produced in volumes that outshine the Model 3 and Model Y—which made up 95 percent of the company's total deliveries in Q3 2022.
What's more, the executive added that the new model would surpass production of all other Tesla vehicles combined."The next-generation vehicle will be about half the cost of the 3/Y platform and it will be smaller. It will, I think, certainly exceed the production of all other vehicles combined."
The CEO explained that it will cost the same to build two units of the next-gen Tesla vehicle than it currently costs to build a single Model 3, and that "we do believe this can be done."

Musk's comments have obviously sparked discussions of the rumored $25,000 Tesla EV yet again. While production costs of the smaller model are expected to be half of Model 3/Y costs, that doesn't necessarily mean the vehicle will be priced 50 percent lower than the Model 3, which currently starts at $48,490 in the US. Still, given the cheaper platform, smaller dimensions and economies of scale, it should significantly undercut the Model 3.

The launch date is anyone's guess at the moment, but it's safe to assume the entry-level EV won't arrive until Tesla will have fully ramped up Cybertruck and Semi production. That may not happen before 2024—unless Tesla China, which is reportedly responsible for the project's development, gets the green light to bring the model to market sooner.

With more than a decade of use and 20 billion EV charging miles to its name, the Tesla charging connector is the most proven in North America, offering AC charging and up to 1 MW DC charging in one slim package. It has no moving parts, is half the size, and twice as powerful as Combined Charging System (CCS) connectors.

In pursuit of our mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy, today we are opening our EV connector design to the world. We invite charging network operators and vehicle manufacturers to put the Tesla charging connector and charge port, now called the North American Charging Standard (NACS), on their equipment and vehicles. NACS is the most common charging standard in North America: NACS vehicles outnumber CCS two-to-one, and Tesla's Supercharging network has 60% more NACS posts than all the CCS-equipped networks combined.