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 EV deliveries from Tesla, Rivian, and others, Toyota’s electric pickup truck, and more.

The national average gas price hit $4.09 per gallon this week — up 33% from a year ago — as yet another oil crisis hammers American drivers. But this time, the math on switching to electric is so overwhelmingly clear that millions of drivers are doing the calculation and reaching the same conclusion: they can’t afford not to drive electric.

Electrified vehicle consideration jumped to 23.8% of all car shopper research activity in mid-March, the highest weekly level of 2026, according to Edmunds data. Online searches for EVs surged 17% in a single week as gas prices spiked.

Stellantis is in early talks to assemble electric vehicles from its Chinese partner Leapmotor at the idled Brampton, Ontario plant, according to Bloomberg — a factory that was supposed to be retooled for Jeep production with over $500 million in Canadian government subsidies.

The proposal has already drawn fierce opposition from Ontario Premier Doug Ford and the Unifor union, which represents about 3,000 laid-off workers at the plant.

Mercedes-Benz has confirmed it will introduce steer-by-wire technology in 2026, becoming the first German automaker to bring the system to production. The facelifted EQS electric sedan will be the first model to get it.

Along with the new steering system, Mercedes is ditching the traditional round steering wheel for a flat-bottomed yoke design — and it’s a look that will divide opinion.

Tesla released its Q1 2026 production and delivery results today, confirming 358,023 vehicle deliveries — about 7,600 units below the Wall Street consensus of 365,645 vehicles.

More concerning than the miss itself is the gap between production and deliveries. Tesla produced 408,386 vehicles during the quarter but only delivered 358,023, adding over 50,000 vehicles to inventory in a single quarter.

Elon Musk confirmed today that Tesla has stopped producing the Model S and Model X. Custom orders are no longer accepted, and only about 600 vehicles remain in inventory worldwide.

The CEO shared a throwback photo from the original Model S production launch at the Fremont factory in June 2012, writing on X: “Custom orders of the Tesla Model S & X have come to an end. All that’s left are some in inventory. We will have an official ceremony to mark the ending of an era. I love those cars.”

Xiaomi has recruited Kong Yanshuang, formerly Tesla’s General Manager for the China region, to take charge of its growing automotive sales operations. The hire signals a significant professionalization of Xiaomi’s EV retail strategy as the company targets 550,000 deliveries in 2026.

Kong joined Xiaomi in early March and is currently in a work handover phase, replacing Li Xiaorui, the former director of Xiaomi’s automotive division, according to a report from Jiemian News.

Elon Musk announced today that Tesla “Full Self-Driving” v14.3 is currently in employee beta testing and will “probably go to wide release end of week.” Musk has described v14.3 as the version that will make your car “feel like it is sentient.”

If that sounds familiar, it should. Musk has promised that the “next update” will be the transformative one for about a decade now — and the most recent v14.2 updates have actually been degrading in key areas.

Tesla has expanded the geofence for its unsupervised “Robotaxi” service in Austin, Texas, growing the area where vehicles can operate without a safety monitor inside the car.

But social media sightings indicate that only a handful of vehicles — somewhere between 4 and 8 Model Ys — are actually running without a human safety monitor. And even those still operate under remote supervision from Tesla.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has named Tesla among 18 US companies whose Middle East operations it is threatening to attack in retaliation for the killings of Iranian military leaders. The threat carries an explicit deadline: 8:00 PM Tehran time on April 1.

Tesla has been rapidly expanding across the Gulf over the past year, with showrooms, service centers, and more than 30 Supercharger stations now operating in the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar — all directly in the crosshairs.

General Motors has shut down production at Factory Zero in Detroit for the second time in less than three months, temporarily laying off 1,300 workers. The plant won’t restart until mid-April.

The idling, which began on March 16, marks the latest in a string of production cuts at the facility GM once positioned as the flagship of its electric vehicle future — a $2.2 billion showcase that has become a symbol of the company’s rapid EV retreat.

A Tesla showroom in Parramatta, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, was set ablaze in an overnight attack that destroyed three vehicles and damaged the building. Jerrycan lids were found at the scene.

The fire is being investigated as a suspected arson — the latest in a global wave of attacks on Tesla facilities that has been going on for over a year now.

Tesla (TSLA) has lost another senior leader as Jose del Corral, the automaker’s head of product for customer experience, announced today that he is leaving after almost eight years to join Coinbase.

Del Corral’s departure lands on the same day as yet another Cybercab production leader’s exit, extending a talent drain that has now stripped Tesla of institutional knowledge across virtually every critical function of the business.

Mark Lupkey, the manufacturing operations leader who oversaw Cybercab assembly and end-of-line ramp at Giga Texas, has announced his departure from Tesla. He is the third senior leader directly involved in bringing the Cybercab to production to leave the company in just over a month.

Lupkey spent nearly eight years at Tesla across two separate stints, working his way through some of the automaker’s most demanding production programs before taking on the Cybercab assembly role in Austin.

Tesla North America’s official account on X promoted a video interview of a new Cybertruck owner who says his ophthalmologist recommended he buy a Tesla with “Full Self-Driving” because he is losing his eyesight.

The problem is that Tesla itself classifies FSD as a Level 2 driver-assist system that requires driver monitoring at all times — and the driver is responsible for the vehicle at all times. Those two things are fundamentally incompatible.

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 Tesla coming with minivan but cooler?, used EV sales rising, sodium batteries are coming, and more.

The US electric vehicle market has split into two diverging realities. New EV sales cratered 28% year-over-year in Q1 2026 to just 212,600 units, according to new data from Cox Automotive — but used EV sales surged 12% to 93,500 units, with prices now within $1,300 of equivalent gas cars.

The data, presented in Cox Automotive’s Q1 2026 Industry Insights call on March 25, reveals the clearest picture yet of how the federal tax credit’s expiration is reshaping the EV market — and creating what may be the best buying opportunity in the history of electric vehicles.

Tesla published its company-compiled Wall Street consensus for first-quarter 2026 deliveries on Thursday, and the number — 365,645 vehicles — paints a picture of a company still struggling to return to meaningful growth after two straight years of declining sales.

The consensus, drawn from 23 sell-side analysts, implies an 8% increase from the 336,681 vehicles Tesla delivered in Q1 2025. But that comparison is misleading, and the market knows it.

France’s Finance Minister confirmed that between 30% and 40% of Gulf refining capacity has been damaged or destroyed by Iran’s retaliatory strikes, leaving a shortage of 11 million barrels per day on global oil markets. The destruction is now pushing consumers toward electric vehicles at a pace not seen since the 2022 gas crisis.

With gas prices approaching $4 per gallon nationally and already past $5 in California, data from multiple sources shows EV interest surging across the board — from Google searches to dealership inquiries.

California’s top transportation regulator has made it explicit: Tesla is not operating an autonomous vehicle service in the state. The company holds the same permit as a limousine company.

Pat Tsen, the deputy executive director for consumer policy, transportation, and enforcement at the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), confirmed that Tesla’s ride-hailing operation is classified as a standard chauffeur service — not a “robotaxi” — and is subject to none of the safety reporting and data transparency requirements imposed on actual autonomous vehicle operators like Waymo and Zoox.