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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
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
SpaceX’s Starship flew successfully Friday, landing both stages and deploying its first Starlink V3 satellites.
Starship’s thirteenth test flight delivered exactly what SpaceX needed with a clean liftoff, two successful stage recoveries, and the first real payload the vehicle has ever carried to space. Booster 20 and Ship 40 lifted off at 5:51 p.m. CT from Starbase, and by the time the mission wrapped roughly an hour later, both halves of the rocket had done exactly what they were supposed to do.
Booster 20 separated from Ship 40 a few minutes into the flight and stuck a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico about six minutes after liftoff. That is a meaningful turnaround from Flight 12 in May, when the booster lost several engines during its boostback burn before a hard water landing attempt.
Starship as seen from Starlink satellites pic.twitter.com/e2hvfmnewh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 25, 2026
Starship 40’s performance was arguably the bigger win. The vehicle deployed the first 20 operational Starlink V3 satellites Starship has ever carried, then flew a suborbital arc to a landing in the Indian Ocean that SpaceX commentator Dan Huot called the company’s softest splashdown yet. “This is a dream scenario for this team that’s trying to get this heat shield data,” Huot said on the live broadcast, according to Space.com’s live coverage. “I’m a little over the moon right now. Wow. Lucky number 13.”
Unlike the mass simulators SpaceX flew on Flight 12, these were production Starlink V3 satellites, meant to extend solar arrays and antennas and attempt to link with the broader constellation before reentering minutes later. Getting real hardware through a full deploy sequence on only the second flight of the V3 generation keeps Starship on schedule for the payload work NASA is counting on for future Artemis lunar landings.
What an awesome launch, really seems like everything went super well and it was all incredibly smooth.
SpaceX is awesome. Very interested to see how the market will respond on Monday pic.twitter.com/KSHmyBfV55
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 25, 2026
The flight also arrives at a moment when SpaceX needed a win. SPCX has traded below its $135 IPO price since mid-July, as Teslarati reported when the mission slipped to Friday, and short interest has climbed to roughly a third of the tradable float. A clean flight will not fix a balance sheet, but it does answer the one question SpaceX absolutely needed answered this week: whether the fixes made after the July 16 abort would hold up under real flight conditions. They did, on both stages, on the first try after the redesign.
SpaceX has not set a target date for Flight 14, though the company has said it wants to push toward an orbital attempt on the next mission. After Friday, that goal looks a lot more within reach.
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner in Los Angeles dominated the company’s global usage rankings after just one year, proving the concept is more than just a one-off novelty location that will fade away.
The performance could incite the company to build more locations, something that CEO Elon Musk has hinted at for some time.
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner delivered 21.2 GWh of energy in its first year of operation, the company’s head of Charging, Max de Zegher, revealed on X. Of the top 10 most utilized Supercharger locations in Tesla’s global infrastructure, the Diner in Los Angeles was the most used by drivers, and it wasn’t particularly close:
Tesla Diner opened exactly 1 year ago. Inspiring that futuristic places like this exist.
It’s our highest usage Supercharger in the world: 21.2 GWh delivered in a year, 1.6k sessions/day.
Top 10 Superchargers by energy delivered: https://t.co/9YvJ8lw696 pic.twitter.com/koB3AUJHws
— Max (@MdeZegher) July 21, 2026
On its launch day one year ago, nobody was too sure what the Tesla Diner would be about. It seemed like an interesting concept, and considering it had been in the works for years, it was a highly anticipated launch that many were looking forward to.
Based on its success, we could see additional Diners with Superchargers built throughout the United States, and potentially beyond. Musk has said on several occasions that the company would be willing to bring the Diner idea to more markets.
Tesla makes major change at Supercharger Diner amid epic demand
Of the markets that Musk has mentioned, both Palo Alto and Austin have come to be perceived as ideal selections. However, there are no concrete plans as of now to build new Supercharger Diners anywhere; the location on Santa Monica Boulevard will remain the exclusive spot to pick up Tesla-inspired eats, at least for the time being.
Tesla short sellers won big following the company’s massive fall on Wall Street after it reported subpar Earnings on Wednesday.
Tesla short sellers collected about $4.12 billion in single-day profits on Thursday, according to Bloomberg. Shares fell as much as 15 percent during Thursday’s session. It closed as one of the worst days for Tesla on Wall Street in the past three years.
Investors sold off the stock after Tesla said it would aggressively direct its spending toward AI and its Optimus robot project. The company had record revenues, which were driven by one of the strongest quarters in terms of vehicle deliveries in company history.
However, it missed EPS estimates by reporting just $0.33, a far cry from the $0.53 analysts expected.
S3 Partners reported that about 3 percent of Tesla’s outstanding stock is sold short. Managing Director at S3, Ihor Dusaniwsky, provided the short seller’s potential profit, as well as another figure: shorts have likely had paper gains of $8.92 billion this year, as Tesla shares are down 30 percent in 2026.
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
Tesla has burned short sellers many times in the past, but the company’s latest Earnings Call was a chance for those skeptics to taste some payback. Although the company gave some very transparent information regarding future projects, the rollout of Robotaxi, Optimus, and Semi, many investors took their profits on Thursday.
Notable short sellers like Michael Burry have been transparent about their skepticism around Tesla shares. Burry just revealed three weeks ago that he had opened up a new short on the stock, stating he shorted Tesla shares at $416.22. “Happy it jumped back to this level,” he said in a blog post.
At the time of publication, Tesla shares were down about 3 percent and the stock was trading at $309.92.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner probably just secured more locations
