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 Ford Fathom cheap pickup EV, Audi A2, Trump on EVs, and more.

Today’s episode is sponsored by GM. GM EV charging made easy, with Energy Pass and Plug and Charge. Learn more at https://gmenergy.gm.com/energypass

Tesla has officially acknowledged that the power conversion system (PCS) in pre-2026 Cybertrucks is defective, and it’s extending the warranty on those trucks to 8 years or 150,000 miles.

The reversal comes after months of owners paying up to $7,200 to replace a part Tesla now admits “does not meet our reliability standards.” The automaker sneakily tried to let the clear manufacturing defect pass warranties.

Telo is raising the tow rating on its Mini-sized electric truck to 8,000 lbs, up from the 6,600 lbs it previously advertised.

The startup says months of real-world towing convinced it the little MT1 can safely pull more than a truck that size looks like it should. That new number puts a 152-inch pickup roughly on par with a base Ford F-150.

Tesla and SpaceX have confirmed where they’ll build Terafab, the semiconductor megafactory Elon Musk first teased in March. It’s going to Grimes County, Texas, about an hour northwest of Houston.

The companies put the initial phase at roughly $16.8 billion and said the finished site will span more than 100 million square feet, which they’re calling the largest chip manufacturing facility on the planet.

A police department in Parker, Colorado, pulled over a Tesla going 64 mph in a 45 mph zone whose driver insisted they weren’t responsible, because the car was running “Full Self-Driving.”

Of course, Tesla will never take responsibility for that incident, but the frustrating part is that Tesla already has the solution and yet it refuses to implement it.

Tesla has started building its next-generation Megapack 3 grid battery, with the first units rolling off the line at the company’s new Megafactory in Brookshire, Texas.

The plant went from groundbreaking to production in 16 months and is designed to build 50 GWh of Megapack 3 a year. That’s the version Tesla says packs roughly 28% more energy into the same footprint as the Megapack it replaces.

President Trump went on another rambling tangent about electric cars at a Las Vegas rally Wednesday night, telling the crowd he “ended the electric mandate” and mocking EV owners for worrying about range – claiming they have a “disease.”

Out of the entire unhinged rant, Trump did say one accurate thing: the EV take rate in the US is roughly 7%. The problem is that he said it proudly while the rest of the world is rapidly moving to electric transport.

The FCC added foreign-made connected power inverters to its Covered List on July 28, cutting off the federal authorization new models need to be imported, marketed, or sold in the US.

It’s aimed at the radios inside modern inverters, not the power electronics. And it lands on a market where US factories are on track to supply just 40% of combined solar and battery demand next year, according to testing firm Intertek CEA.

Tesla is suing the Canadian province of Manitoba for cutting the automaker out of its electric vehicle rebate program, and the fight has now reached a courtroom.

The province is asking Manitoba’s Court of King’s Bench to throw out the challenge. Tesla says the ban has already cost its Canadian customers at least $560,000 in lost rebates.

Waymo co-CEO Dmitri Dolgov laid out the clearest technical case yet for why cameras alone can’t take a self-driving system to full autonomy, arguing that “weak sensing” hits a safety ceiling long before it reaches superhuman performance.

He never said the word Tesla. But camera-only is Tesla’s entire bet, and this was a direct shot at it.

Tesla’s sales inside China fell 19% in the first half of 2026 compared to its peak in 2023, dropping to the lowest level in years, according to new data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).

At the same time, exports out of Giga Shanghai surged 127%. Tesla’s China plant is increasingly building cars to ship somewhere else.

A growing number of Tesla owners running the new Full Self-Driving v14 “Lite” build on Hardware 3 (HW3) vehicles are reporting Autopilot computer overheating alerts — and, in some cases, outright computer failures.

The reports have stacked up in the two weeks since Tesla pushed v14 Lite to wide release, and four owners have contacted Electrek directly about the same problem.

After a gunman opened fire at a Twin Falls, Idaho, In-N-Out with an attached Tesla Supercharger last week, EV owners flooded social media with the same suggestion: buy an EVject.

The breakaway charging connector lets you drive off while still plugged in. It sounds like an obvious fix for a horrifying scenario — but it’s a controversial device that doesn’t actually solve the problem, and it points to something Tesla and every other automaker should be building instead.

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 rumors of a Tesla/SpaceX merger, Rivian’s earnings, R2 progress, and efficiency test, new Mercedes GLA, and more.

The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has opened an investigation into roughly 1.2 million Tesla vehicles after receiving 156 complaints of a front suspension component detaching while driving.

The probe covers 2018-2020 Model 3 and 2021-2023 Model Y vehicles, and it centers on the front lower lateral link separating from the car.

Tesla is looking at cutting loose its China business to clear a path toward a merger with SpaceX, according to a new Wall Street Journal report.

If true, it would be a massive deal in the auto industry. Tesla’s Shanghai factory builds more than half of all Tesla vehicles, so any separation would carve out the single biggest piece of Tesla’s car operation.

Update: Elon Musk has denied the WSJ report, but as usual, that should be taken with a grain of salt.

Rivian reported its second-quarter 2026 earnings today, and there are improvements across the board. It’s a car. The company started delivering the R2, its first vehicle priced under $50,000, to customers on June 9.

The financials came in strong too. Revenue reached $1.658 billion, up 27% year-over-year, and Rivian posted a record $179 million gross profit while beating Wall Street on revenue, earnings, and adjusted EBITDA.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has spent 2026 turning his X feed into a problem no investor relations team can fix. His posts have escalated from trolling into open white nationalism, and this week his AI company sued the state of Minnesota to block a law targeting nonconsensual sexual deepfakes.

The board of a public company would have fired the CEO for just a fraction of the stuff Musk is posting these days. However, Tesla is not a normal company. Shareholders have given full control to Musk and now, they have to live with it.

Tesla has built its 10 millionth vehicle, the company announced this week. Ten million all-electric cars is a real milestone, and no other automaker has done it.

But it’s arriving later than Tesla once promised, and the company is now building well under the capacity it already has.

Ferrari has already sold every Luce it plans to build in 2026. The automaker’s first electric car hit its full-year sales target — just under 500 units — in less than two months, the Financial Times reported.

That’s despite a brutal wave of design criticism and a €550,000 (~$640,000) starting price that lands the EV near the top of Ferrari’s lineup.