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Ford F-150 Lightning to lead NASCAR Cup Series to green flag this weekend

A fully-electric truck that is helping change the future of Ford Motor Company will be on track at Martinsville Speedway as the 2022 F-150 Lightning makes its debut as a pace vehicle for the NASCAR Cup Series on April 9.

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The Ford F-150 Lightning has been chosen as the official Pace Car for this weekend’s NASCAR Cup Series race at Martinsville Speedway in Virginia. Ford’s introductory electric pickup will be the first electric truck to lead the pack of cars to the green flag Saturday night but will be featured at the half-mile track all weekend.

The Pace Car does a few things in a NASCAR race. It leads the cars to the first lap, but it is also required to lead the vehicles around the track under caution laps, ensuring safety and proper speed during the delay in racing.

While NASCAR still utilizes high-horsepower gas engines for their competition vehicles, one thing all stock car fans love is speed. Thanks to the electric powertrain featured in the F-150 Lightning, the pickup will undoubtedly turn the heads of racing enthusiasts with its instant torque. Regardless, the Ford-loyal race fans who have followed what was once the nation’s fastest-growing sport will undoubtedly take a peek at the automaker’s newest and latest technology, which packs efficiency, utility, and sustainability in a single pickup.

“We can’t wait to show our Ford fans how capable the F-150 Lightning is,” Darren Palmer, VP of Ford’s electric vehicle programs, said. “With 563 horsepower, 775 lb.-ft. of near-instantaneous torque and a 0-60 mph time in the mid-4-second range, I think it will turn some heads out on the track.”

“Ford is fully invested in electrification, and the response to Lightning has been so overwhelming that it was an easy decision to bring it to a NASCAR event,” Jeannee Kirkaldy, Ford Performance’s Motorsports Marketing Manager, said. “One thing we definitely know is that our fans love trucks, and we’re confident that feeling will only grow when they see Lightning out on the track leading the field to green.”

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Ford F-150 Lightning Range, efficiency revealed in Monroney sticker leak

Ford’s Mustang Mach-E was the Pace Car for the spring race at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama, where the only thing that keeps the cars from reaching speeds of 250+ MPH is a restrictor plate. The Mustang Mach-E made Ford the first OEM to use an electric vehicle as a Pace Car for a NASCAR race.

Driver Ryan Blaney, who is looking for his first career series win at Martinsville, said the Mustang Mach-E offered a fun experience, which has him looking forward to Ford’s first-ever all-electric pickup. “I haven’t driven the Lightning yet, but if it’s anything like the Mustang Mach-E, it’s going to be a blast,” Blaney said. “I hope it ends up being the only thing in front of me once the race starts.”

Blaney drives the no. 12 Ford Mustang for Penske Racing. Blaney overtook Ross Chastain for the number one spot in NASCAR’s power rankings, so expect to see him near the front of the pack on Saturday night.

The F-150 Lightning has already accumulated nearly 200,000 reservations since being unveiled in May 2021 and is the third all-electric vehicle in Ford’s lineup, joining the Mustang Mach-E and the E-Transit.

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The race, which is the Blue-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 500, will start at 7:30 PM eastern on Saturday night.

I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please email me at joey@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.

Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Tesla is coming to Estonia and Latvia in latest European expansion: report

Tesla seems to be accelerating its regional expansion following its recent launch in Lithuania.

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Credit: Grok Imagine

Recent reports have indicated that Tesla has taken a step toward entering the Baltic states by registering new subsidiaries in Latvia and Estonia.

Filings suggest that Tesla is accelerating its regional expansion following its recent launch in Lithuania, with service centers likely coming before full sales operations.

Official entities in Latvia and Estonia

Tesla has established two new legal entities, Tesla Latvia SIA and Tesla Estonia OÜ, both owned by Tesla International B.V., as noted in an EV Wire report. Corporate records show the Estonian entity was formed on December 16, 2025, while the Latvian subsidiary was registered earlier, on November 7.

Both entities list senior Tesla executives on their boards, including regional and finance leadership responsible for new market expansion across Europe. Importantly, the entities are registered under “repair and maintenance of motor vehicles,” rather than strictly vehicle sales. This suggests that Tesla service centers will likely be launched in both countries.

The move mirrors Tesla’s recent Baltic rollout strategy. When Tesla entered Lithuania, it first established a local entity, followed by a pop-up store within weeks and a permanent service center a few months later. It would then not be surprising if Tesla follows a similar strategy in Estonia and Latvia, and service and retail operations arrive as early as spring.

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Tesla’s European push

Tesla saw a drop in sales in Europe in 2025, though the company is currently attempting to push more sales in the region by introducing its most affordable vehicles yet, the Model 3 Standard and the Model Y Standard. Both vehicles effectively lower the price of entry into the Tesla ecosystem, which may make them attractive to consumers.

Tesla is also hard at work in its efforts to get FSD approved for the region. In the fourth quarter of 2025, Tesla rolled out an FSD ride-along program in several European countries, allowing consumers to experience the capabilities of FSD firsthand. In early December, reports emerged indicating that the FSD ride-along program would be extended in several European territories until the end of March 2026. 

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s X will start using a Tesla-like software update strategy

The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.

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Ministério Das Comunicações, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk’s social media platform X will adopt a Tesla-esque approach to software updates for its algorithm.

The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.

X’s updates to its updates

As per Musk in a post on X, the social media company will be making a new algorithm to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users. These updates would then be repeated every four weeks. 

“We will make the new 𝕏 algorithm, including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users, open source in 7 days. This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed,” Musk wrote in his post.

The initiative somewhat mirrors Tesla’s over-the-air update model, where vehicle software is regularly refined and pushed to users with detailed release notes. This should allow users to better understand the details of X’s every update and foster a healthy feedback loop for the social media platform.

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xAI and X

X, formerly Twitter, has been acquired by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI last year. Since then, xAI has seen a rapid rise in valuation. Following the company’s the company’s upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, estimates now suggest that xAI is worth tens about $230 to $235 billion. That’s several times larger than Tesla when Elon Musk received his controversial 2018 CEO Performance Award. 

As per xAI, the Series E funding round attracted a diverse group of investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group, among others. Strategic partners NVIDIA and Cisco Investments also continued support for building the world’s largest GPU clusters.

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Tesla FSD Supervised wins MotorTrend’s Best Driver Assistance Award

The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system.

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Credit: Grok Imagine

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system has been named the best driver-assistance technology on the market, earning top honors at the 2026 MotorTrend Best Tech Awards

The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system. And it wasn’t even close. 

MotorTrend reverses course

MotorTrend awarded Tesla FSD (Supervised) its 2026 Best Tech Driver Assistance title after extensive testing of the latest v14 software. The publication acknowledged that it had previously criticized earlier versions of FSD for erratic behavior and near-miss incidents, ultimately favoring rivals such as GM’s Super Cruise in earlier evaluations.

According to MotorTrend, the newest iteration of FSD resolved many of those shortcomings. Testers said v14 showed far smoother behavior in complex urban scenarios, including unprotected left turns, traffic circles, emergency vehicles, and dense city streets. While the system still requires constant driver supervision, judges concluded that no other advanced driver-assistance system currently matches its breadth of capability.

Unlike rival systems that rely on combinations of cameras, radar, lidar, and mapped highways, Tesla’s FSD operates using a camera-only approach and is capable of driving on city streets, rural roads, and freeways. MotorTrend stated that pure utility, the ability to handle nearly all road types, ultimately separated FSD from competitors like Ford BlueCruise, GM Super Cruise, and BMW’s Highway Assistant.

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High cost and high capability

MotorTrend also addressed FSD’s pricing, which remains significantly higher than rival systems. Tesla currently charges $8,000 for a one-time purchase or $99 per month for a subscription, compared with far lower upfront and subscription costs from other automakers. The publication noted that the premium is justified given FSD’s unmatched scope and continuous software evolution.

Safety remained a central focus of the evaluation. While testers reported collision-free operation over thousands of miles, they noted ongoing concerns around FSD’s configurable driving modes, including options that allow aggressive driving and speeds beyond posted limits. MotorTrend emphasized that, like all Level 2 systems, FSD still depends on a fully attentive human driver at all times.

Despite those caveats, the publication concluded that Tesla’s rapid software progress fundamentally reshaped the competitive landscape. For drivers seeking the most capable hands-on driver-assistance system available today, MotorTrend concluded Tesla FSD (Supervised) now stands alone at the top.

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