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EV adoption spurs updated guidance on parking structure design
As electric vehicles (EVs) become increasingly common on roads around the world, many infrastructural changes will be needed to accommodate them. One example includes the design of parking garages, which some say will require updated fire safety protocols and additional modifications to accommodate the heavy weight of EVs.
The United Kingdom’s Institution of Structural Engineers released a new design guidance for parking garages earlier this year, pointing out a broad range of topics related to the structures, from EV weight, charging access and reduced noise levels to fire safety considerations (via CNBC). The guidance includes suggestions for the design of garages that are multi-story, underground or simply located inside offices or residential buildings.
Perhaps the most pressing topic included in the guidance for parking garages — called multi-story car parks in the U.K. — is the battery hardware used in EVs, which makes them much heavier than internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. With increased range models and a wider span of vehicle classes, EV weights will likely continue getting heavier in the future.
“This extra load and the changing fire safety requirements are all considerations not just for new car parks, but for existing structures too,” the institution writes in the report.
According to the group, average vehicle weights have increased from 1.5 metric tons (3,307 pounds) in 1974 to almost 2 metric tons (4,409 pounds) this year. As one example, Tesla’s forthcoming Cybertruck is a stainless steel behemoth, expected to weigh somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 pounds (2.3 to 3.6 metric tons).
Institution fellow and co-author of the guidance Chris Whapples also notes that some newer EVs are well over 3 metric tons (6,614 pounds).
“The thing to bear in mind is that the ones that cause the damage, if you like, are the heavy vehicles — not the vehicles that are heavier than they were 40 years ago but still within the capacity of the design for car parks,” Whapples explained in an interview with CNBC. “We’re seeing increasing numbers now of SUVs, large executive cars — both fossil-fueled and battery ones — and pickup trucks, which are immensely heavy.”
Whapples details a handful of potential solutions for heavy vehicles, primarily including the need to retrofit older garages with increased structural support, either in specific spots that are determined to be weaker or in their entirety. He also notes that heavy vehicles could stay on ground floors to park, and garages could even screen the weights of cars as they enter.
“If one pickup is significantly overloaded and that car park is weak, that’s a potential disaster waiting to happen,” Whapples added. “We said, as an industry, we must actually check our car parks out and make sure that that’s not going to happen. Because what we want is the public to maintain confidence in our car parks and structural engineers.”
Another top concern detailed in the guidance was improving fire safety protocols in parking garages. Whapples notes that fire risks aren’t exclusive to EVs, adding that gasoline cars can also start fires and make situations more complicated. While EV fires aren’t considered more common than ICE vehicle fires, they can be especially tough to put out, he explains.
“To actually extinguish an EV fire is very, very difficult — particularly if the battery is on fire, because you’ve got so much energy that’s locked in,” Whapples said.
As for potential solutions, Whapples says that sprinkler systems could be an important way to mitigate fire spread, especially in underground car parks.
“Although the sprinkler system will not put out the car fire, it will reduce the rate of spread within the car park, so it’s constantly … ‘quenching’ the car next to the one that’s on fire, and stopping that one from catching fire,” Whapples explains.
All of these and more points will need to be considered ahead of mass EV adoption, both for existing garages and newly built construction. The International Energy Agency (IEA) expects EVs, buses, vans and heavy trucks to reach as many as 145 million units globally by 2030, though government ramp-up efforts could boost that number even more. In 2022, 10 million EVs were sold, including plug-in hybrids and battery-electric vehicles.
The discussions come ahead of Tesla’s initial release of the Cybertruck, which has been widely discussed for its large size, among other details. If many EVs are physically larger than ICE vehicles in the future, it could also require garages to be built with similarly larger parking spaces. Tesla has rolled out some wider and longer parking spaces at its Supercharger stations for the Cybertruck, a move that may be necessary for all parking structures down the road.
What are your thoughts? Let me know at zach@teslarati.com, find me on X at @zacharyvisconti, or send your tips to us at tips@teslarati.com.
Elon Musk
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Elon Musk told investors Semi self-driving should start working by early 2027, per today’s earnings.
During Wednesday’s’ Tesla Q2 earnings call, an analyst asked Elon Musk when Tesla would look at autonomy for the Semi. His answer set a real timeline for the first time, noting that self-driving on the Tesla Semi is expected to start working “around the end of this year or early next year”.
Musk framed the delay as a matter of priority, not capability. Tesla’s self-driving team is currently focused on Model 3, Model Y, and Cybercab, the vehicles that make up the overwhelming majority of Tesla’s fleet. Since Semi trucks on the road remain a small fraction of that total even after the recent Nevada factory ramp, Musk said it made more sense to keep the software team’s attention on what he called “the march of nines of safety” for the higher volume vehicles first. Autonomous Semi development is “taking a bit of a backseat for the next six months or so,” he said, before adding that it “will definitely be working next year and in time for the scale-up to high production of the Tesla Semi.”
Tesla Semi’s official battery capacity leaked by California regulators
The timeline lines up with what’s already been showing up on public roads. In June, a Tesla Semi was spotted in Sunnyvale wearing a full validation rig, the same rooftop sensor array Tesla mounts on vehicles ahead of an FSD milestone.
A second unit was seen near Fremont days later with a matching camera suite and lens washers. Separately, Tesla analyst Nic Cruz Patane posted video this month of the production Semi’s exterior camera array, ten AI4 based units built directly into the truck rather than added later.
Tesla Semi AI4 cameras. The production version has 10 cameras on its exterior.
These trucks are designed to be autonomous. pic.twitter.com/GH3BamxIBQ
— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) April 14, 2026
Musk also gave the reason autonomy on the Semi matters in the first place, a persistent shortage of qualified truck drivers. “There is a really serious shortage of truckers,” he said on the call, framing a self-driving Semi as important both for addressing that shortage and for improving safety and comfort for the drivers running the truck today.
The timing also tracks with the Semi’s production reality. Tesla’s Q2 shareholder letter, dropped language promising the Semi would reach volume production this year. Musk pointed to 4680 battery cell output as the near-term constraint on Semi and Cybercab production. A software timeline landing in early 2027 gives Tesla’s autonomy team room to work while the hardware ramp catches up behind it.
It’s worth nothing that this isn’t necessarily a promise the Semi ships driverless next year. Musk’s own language, self-driving “working” by early 2027, describes internal validation catching up to hardware already riding on every production truck, not a public unsupervised rollout.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.
This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.
Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
- Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
- Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
- Profit -$ 4.751B
Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.
Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.
In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.
Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q2 2026 Earnings Call https://t.co/zZS6ii2TWK
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Tesla is about to make parking in busy parking lots at businesses and other points of interest less stressful than ever by allowing drivers more control over where they park and how, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X.
Tesla has been working to improve the parking performance of vehicles utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite, but now it is looking to add more customization, allowing drivers to choose the specific space they park in, but also potentially the orientation the car pulls into the spot:
It’s coming soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
Musk has reiterated on X twice over the past several weeks that Tesla is working to make things with the FSD suite based more on the driver’s specific preferences and behaviors that were seen in past drives.
Essentially, it sounds like if you tend to park away from a business to avoid other vehicles, Tesla FSD will soon recognize that preference of yours and start parking further away as well. Additionally, the prospect of assigned parking spaces has been something many owners have voiced concerns about.
Living in a community with assigned parking spaces makes using FSD incredibly difficult as it will rarely park in the correct spot when there are so many to choose from. This is also pertinent in work settings where there are sometimes assigned parking spaces.
The updates to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite in terms of listening to driver preferences with parking are also extending to routing. Tesla announced yesterday that with the release of its 2026 Summer Update, it was adding Automatic Navigation and Preferred Routes:
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
Tesla has always maintained the idea that any human input is bad input, and that, ideally, Tesla Full Self-Driving will always make the right decision. Of course, this is all in theory, but the issue is that so many of Tesla’s interventions have come because it does something that is not necessarily wrong, but perhaps not what the driver would prefer.
Taking these preferences into account will help Tesla alleviate some of the potentially unnecessary interventions that drivers perform.
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
