Hardware

Tesla and independent energy firm NatPower have agreed to deploy 25 GWh of Megapack battery storage in Italy and the UK, the first phase of a programme worth up to $5 billion that aims to exceed 100 GWh and deepen Tesla's footprint in Europe's grid-storage market.

Tesla's Grünheide plant near Berlin plans to raise Model Y production to around 6,200 cars a week from July, roughly a fifth more than before, as European demand for the refreshed Model Y recovers. The ramp is backed by new hiring at the site.

A refreshed Tesla Semi has been photographed carrying ground-truth FSD validation equipment, the first public sign that engineers are actively testing self-driving on the electric truck. It points to where Tesla's autonomy work is heading next, even though the Semi is not yet sold in Europe.

Honda has opened UK order books for the Super-N electric city car at £18,995, with a 29.6 kWh battery, 128-mile WLTP range and showroom deliveries in July — one of the cheapest new EVs on sale in Britain.

Tesla has filed a USPTO trademark for 'Megapod,' modular data-center hardware for AI computing — a self-contained compute system it may sell, filed less than a year after it shut down its Dojo supercomputer.

Tesla has unlocked its multi-camera grid view so it now works while driving, not just in Park. The feed layout shows all the car's cameras live at road speed, with tap-to-expand full-screen views.

A newly granted Tesla patent describes a motor-driven strut that can retract a wheel before it strikes a pothole, working alongside the company's fleet road-roughness mapping to smooth the ride and trim energy use.

Greater Manchester Police seized a Tesla Cybertruck in Whitefield because the vehicle has never been type-approved for UK or EU roads. The case is a reminder that the few Cybertrucks in Europe are private US imports that cannot be legally registered or driven here.

EPA certification documents reveal the production Cybercab's full specifications for the first time: a single front-mounted 219 HP motor, a 48 kWh battery, a 3,113 lb curb weight and class-leading 165 Wh/mi efficiency. Tesla separately cleared a key US regulatory hurdle that readies the two-seat robotaxi for public roads.

NAF and Motor drove 24 EVs from Oslo until empty on 3 June 2026. BMW iX3 went furthest at 781 km (+1.4% vs WLTP), Xpeng X9 over-delivered by 11.4%, MG IM6 under-delivered by 11.7% — and for the first time in years Tesla didn't enter a single car.

At WWDC 2026 Apple unveiled Route Sharing, a feature that lets an iPhone feed live navigation straight into a car's screen — removing the FSD map-sync problem that had stalled Tesla CarPlay. It ships in iOS 26.4, so Tesla need not wait for iOS 27.

UK owners have voted the Tesla Model 3 the best car to own in Auto Express's 2026 Driver Power survey. It scored 88.55% overall, won Engine & Gearbox, Safety Features and Quality & Reliability, and took the survey's only 100% rating for drivetrain smoothness.

A newly surfaced Tesla patent replaces the electronics inside a matrix headlight with a thin light-reactive film, a design that could slash the cost of both building and repairing adaptive headlights.

Tesla has opened its first full Center in Slovakia, combining sales and service in Bratislava and ending years in which Slovak owners had to drive to Vienna for official support.

In Edmunds' independent real-world test, the entry-level 2026 Model 3 RWD drove 393 miles (about 632 km) — 30 miles beyond its EPA rating — and posted the best efficiency figure of any production EV the outlet has tested, beating the Mercedes CLA 350 and Audi A6 e-tron on the same route.

Tesla has reportedly pushed its long-awaited next-generation Roadster demonstration to August or later, blaming continued work on the SpaceX cold-gas thruster system. It is the latest in a string of slipped dates for a car first shown in 2017.

Tesla has added a new metallic shade, Coastal Blue, to the entry rear-wheel-drive Model Y in Europe. Built at Gigafactory Berlin, it costs €1,300 in the configurator and is the fourth paint choice for the base car.

Tesla has made the 16-inch centre touchscreen and the darker Alcantara-style headliner standard across every Model Y trim in North America, and the refreshed interior has also reached the entry European RWD car — with no price increase attached.

Drone footage on 27 May 2026 captured the first standing steel of Tesla's dedicated Optimus humanoid-robot factory at the Giga Texas North Campus. Tesla is adding more than 5.2 million square feet of new building space by end of 2026 at an estimated $5–10 billion investment, with high-volume Optimus production targeted for 2027.

Tesla has issued two service bulletins, SB-26-31-003 and SB-25-31-005, dated 8 May 2026, to address persistent front suspension creaks and knocks on the refreshed Model Y. The fix replaces front upper control arm mounts and, on Premium and Performance trims, the front dampers, and removes wiper-bracket braces that were channelling noise into the cabin.

Xiaomi launched the YU7 Standard Edition in China on 21 May 2026 at RMB 233,500 (~$32,400) — RMB 30,000 ($4,350) cheaper than the Tesla Model Y RWD and with 50 km more CLTC range. The same launch unveiled a 1,003 PS YU7 GT that took the Nürburgring SUV lap record from the Audi RS Q8 by 14 seconds.

Tesla handed over the last-ever Model S and Model X Signature Editions in Garnet Red at a Fremont farewell event on 20 May 2026. Elon Musk, Franz von Holzhausen and Lars Moravy walked owners through the cars' 18-year history before confirming the Fremont line will now pivot to Cybercab and Optimus production.

Electrek reported on 19 May 2026 that Tesla is building its first solar panel manufacturing operation at Empire West Business Park in Brookshire, Texas, about 35 miles west of Houston and co-located with its Megapack Megafactory. Tesla already leases Buildings 9 and 10 totalling 1.65 million sq ft and is planning a further 600,000 sq ft. It is the first concrete site tied to Musk's January 2026 Davos target of 100 GW per year of US solar manufacturing capacity at Tesla.

New cabin footage of the production Tesla Semi reveals a two-display cockpit unlike any other Tesla — a dedicated instrument cluster on the left, and a navigation and media display on the right. The split is a clean break from the single-centre-screen layout Tesla has stuck to since 2012. The footage surfaced 5 May 2026, two weeks before Tesla kicked off high-volume production at its Sparks, Nevada plant on 18 May 2026.