Policy

From 29 November 2026 Euro 7 sets the EU's first legal limits on brake particulate emissions: 3 mg/km for battery-electric cars against 7 mg/km for combustion and hybrid ones. Regenerative braking already delivers it. Tyre abrasion, where heavy electric cars genuinely lose, is measured but not capped.

An XPeng Group vice president confirmed on 29 September 2026 that the company's carbon-credit agreements with Porsche AG and other international carmakers are worth more than 1 billion yuan in total, with over 500 million yuan of it due in 2026, covering the EU, the UK and Australia. Leapmotor's parallel deal with Stellantis is larger: 1.11 billion yuan in 2025, with the 2026 cap raised to 2.8 billion. Tesla's own regulatory-credit revenue fell to $146 million in Q2 2026.

DIW Wochenbericht 40/2026 analyses Germany's electric car grant across 52,473 approvals worth 230 million euros to 1 September 2026. Tesla is the biggest brand beneficiary at 16 per cent of subsidised battery-electric cars, German brands take 21 per cent of subsidies against 47 per cent of the market, and the authors say roughly a third of the cars would have been bought anyway.

The European Parliament's transport committee has postponed its 5 October vote on the EU auto package by about two weeks. The dispute is not over the 90% CO2 target itself but over the conditions the Commission attached to it — including a super-credit for electric cars under 4.20 m that Tesla sells nothing small enough to claim.

Transport & Environment's 1 October analysis concludes the EU will have enough locally made battery cells by 2030 to cover every EV touched by the Industrial Accelerator Act's local-content rules, directly contradicting an ACEA-commissioned study published six days earlier. More than 85% of active European capacity belongs to non-European companies.

Germany's Bundesnetzagentur published the final MiSpeL determination on 1 October 2026, changing the draft that BMW, Ford, Elli, E.ON, Octopus Energy, The Mobility House and Enpal had jointly attacked in September. Households without their own solar array can now use the Abgrenzungsoption with a single intelligent meter instead of installing a second one, and the buffer zone — the band of exported electricity earning neither feed-in payment nor grid-fee refund — drops from a factor of 0.5 to 0.2. Tesla did not sign the letter and cannot yet use the rule: no Tesla car exports to a German home or grid, and the Model 3 gained vehicle-to-load only in China.

NHTSA Administrator Jonathan Morrison signed a final rule revising CAFE standards for model years 2022 to 2031, announced by the Department of Transportation on 28 September 2026. The fleetwide target for 2031 falls to 34.9 mpg. From model year 2028, manufacturers may no longer buy compliance credits from one another; credits earned through model year 2027 stay tradable for five years. NHTSA's justification describes an unnamed high-volume BEV manufacturer that earned about 116 million credits in model year 2021 — and Tesla's regulatory credit revenue has already fallen to $146 million a quarter.

On 29 September 2026 the SEC's Office of Mergers and Acquisitions issued Tesla a no-action letter clearing its Issuer Voluntary Retail Voting Program, under which retail shareholders can opt in once and have their shares voted with the board at every meeting thereafter. Participants may exclude contested director elections and M&A, override any vote, or leave at no cost. Broadridge data in Tesla's request shows retail voted just 28% of shares in 2025 against 76.6% for institutions.

From 1 October 2026 Tesla raises pay at Grünheide by 5% for production staff and 4% plus a performance bonus for skilled workers, the second increase since December 2025. Entry pay in production is about €45,750 a year across a workforce of roughly 12,000. IG Metall district leader Jan Otto welcomed the rise but called it 'a drop in the ocean', noting Tesla pays no holiday or Christmas money and still refuses a collective agreement — while the plant recruits for 3,500 new production and battery-cell jobs.

On 28 September 2026 China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and six other authorities published a five-year plan for the battery industry. It targets solid-state cells at larger industrial scale by 2030, lithium-ion good for 15,000 cycles, defect rates at parts-per-billion level, and obliges cell makers to build recycling and take-back capacity matching their sales — including in key export markets.

On Thursday 24 September 2026 unknown persons sprayed an "X" and the word "Tesla" on a Berlin-Rummelsburg office building used by Tesla, smashed glass and set office chairs on fire inside. A security guard raised the alarm and nobody was hurt. Berlin's Staatsschutz, which handles politically motivated crime, is investigating and says a political motive cannot be ruled out. The building is an office block around 30 km from the Grünheide factory, so production was unaffected - but the 2024 Vulkangruppe pylon arson that halted Giga Berlin for days is why German investigators treat attacks like this seriously.

The Bundesrat approved the removal of the Umweltplakette requirement for cars with a German E-Kennzeichen on 25 September 2026, amending the 35th BImSchV. The E-plate now serves as proof of entitlement in all 36 German low-emission zones, saving an estimated €6 million a year. The exemption is tied to the German plate, so foreign-registered electric cars still need the green sticker and still face the €100 fine without one.

EU member states must transpose Directive (EU) 2024/2853 by 9 December 2026. It redefines software, OTA updates and AI systems as products, makes unpatched vulnerabilities and missing updates capable of being defects, and shifts the burden of proof onto manufacturers through rebuttable presumptions. It applies only to products placed on the market after that date.

Slovenia has ended EV purchase subsidies worth up to €7,200 per car and will fund charging infrastructure instead. The money ran out in mid-August and the EU Recovery facility behind it expired in May. Slovenia's BEV share had just risen from 9.0% to 16.5% year on year, hitting 25.3% in June.

The Bundesnetzagentur publishes the final MiSpeL determination on 1 October, the rulebook that decides how bidirectional charging is metered and paid for in Germany. BMW, Ford, Elli, E.ON, Octopus Energy, The Mobility House and Enpal have written jointly to say the draft's 500 kWh threshold and its unpaid buffer zone make the business case impossible, and that drivers without solar get no workable route at all.

Audi confirmed on 21 September 2026 that it has begun legal proceedings against Auto China, the German importer offering the China-only AUDI E5 Sportback at 59,980 euros and the E7X at 72,900 euros. The claim rests on trademark and brand rights. No ruling has been issued, but both models have disappeared from the importer's site, along with Li Auto's.

California's Civil Rights Department took its 2022 race-discrimination case against Tesla's Fremont plant to trial on 21 September 2026. It is a bench trial before Judge Peter Borkon, scheduled to run to 30 October, and California law sets no ceiling on what he can award.

In a letter dated 17 September 2026, ACEA told EU leaders that the battery rules of origin taking effect on 1 January 2027 cannot be met. It estimates that 82% of the 520,000 electric cars and vans the EU expects to export to the UK next year — about 426,000 vehicles worth €17.9 billion — would miss the thresholds and attract the 10% tariff, a bill of €1.47 billion in 2027 alone. ACEA wants the current pack-assembly rules kept to the end of 2029.

A Florida judge acquitted Tesla driver Kevin Finley of fleeing police after his car's own footage showed the unmarked patrol car's lights were visible only briefly before curves and buildings hid it. In Europe the same recording sits on very different legal ground: Germany's Federal Court of Justice allows dashcam footage as evidence despite the data-protection breach, while an Austrian court has held that merely switching Sentry Mode on in public breaches GDPR.

Stacked national and Tokyo subsidies worth 1.97 million yen, plus a weak yen, put the Model Y at an effective 3,617,000 yen (about 22,900 dollars) and the Model 3 at 3,343,000 yen, making Tokyo the cheapest market in the world for both. It is a subsidy effect, not a Tesla price cut: the list price is unchanged, the grant depends on registering the car on or after 1 July 2026, and a buyer outside Tokyo gets only the national portion.

EU Recall Submission 2026_103555 covers 114,473 Model 3 Premium cars worldwide, 10,787 of them Dutch-registered, built between 30 June 2024 and 8 May 2026. In the UN R135 pole side-impact test the peak force on a front occupant's shoulder can exceed the 3.0 kilonewtons limit. Tesla's remedy changes the deployment strategy of the front centre airbag and arrives over the air in 2026.26.100.2, 2026.27.200, 2026.27.300, 2026.32.3 and later, with no workshop visit required.

On 15 September 2026 the US House passed the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, which would direct the Department of Transportation to require AM radio as standard in new passenger vehicles. Tesla is one of the carmakers that dropped it, citing motor interference. An industry-funded study puts the mitigation cost at $3.8 billion. The EU went the other way in 2020 and mandated digital terrestrial radio instead.

Tesla, SpaceX and xAI have asked a federal court to rule that their Terafab name does not infringe TERA-print's Tera-Fab trademark. TERA-print, a Skokie, Illinois firm making tabletop photolithography printers, expanded its mark into semiconductor categories four days after Tesla's trademark filings and sent a cease and desist the next day. Six settlement meetings between June and August 2026 failed. Terafab is the complex meant to make Tesla's AI chips.

On 18 September 2026 UK Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds ruled out new tariffs on Chinese cars, arguing that trade protections invite retaliation against an export-led industry. Britain keeps a flat 10% import duty while the EU charges BYD 27% and SAIC/MG 45.3%. Chinese brands reached 15% of UK registrations in the first eight months of 2026 - 223,000 cars - against 4% and 83,000 in 2023. Nissan's regional boss argued Britain will have to align with Europe.