News
Ford F-150 Lightning to lead NASCAR Cup Series to green flag this weekend
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.”
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.
The race, which is the Blue-Emu Maximum Pain Relief 500, will start at 7:30 PM eastern on Saturday night.
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Tesla Robotaxi ride-hailing without a Safety Monitor is proving to be a difficult task, according to some riders who made the journey to Austin to attempt to ride in one of its vehicles that has zero supervision.
Last week, Tesla officially removed Safety Monitors from some — not all — of its Robotaxi vehicles in Austin, Texas, answering skeptics who said the vehicles still needed supervision to operate safely and efficiently.
BREAKING: Tesla launches public Robotaxi rides in Austin with no Safety Monitor
Tesla aimed to remove Safety Monitors before the end of 2025, and it did, but only to company employees. It made the move last week to open the rides to the public, just a couple of weeks late to its original goal, but the accomplishment was impressive, nonetheless.
However, the small number of Robotaxis that are operating without Safety Monitors has proven difficult to hail for a ride. David Moss, who has gained notoriety recently as the person who has traveled over 10,000 miles in his Tesla on Full Self-Driving v14 without any interventions, made it to Austin last week.
He has tried to get a ride in a Safety Monitor-less Robotaxi for the better part of four days, and after 38 attempts, he still has yet to grab one:
Wow just wow!
It’s 8:30PM, 29° out ice storm hailing & Tesla Robotaxi service has turned back on!
Waymo is offline & vast majority of humans are home in the storm
Ride 38 was still supervised but by far most impressive yet pic.twitter.com/1aUnJkcYm8
— David Moss (@DavidMoss) January 25, 2026
Tesla said last week that it was rolling out a controlled test of the Safety Monitor-less Robotaxis. Ashok Elluswamy, who heads the AI program at Tesla, confirmed that the company was “starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader Robotaxi fleet with Safety Monitors,” and that “the ratio will increase over time.”
This is a good strategy that prioritizes safety and keeps the company’s controlled rollout at the forefront of the Robotaxi rollout.
However, it will be interesting to see how quickly the company can scale these completely monitor-less rides. It has proven to be extremely difficult to get one, but that is understandable considering only a handful of the cars in the entire Austin fleet are operating with no supervision within the vehicle.
Tesla has given its biggest hint that Full Self-Driving in Europe is imminent, as a new feature seems to show that the company is preparing for frequent border crossings.
Tesla owner and influencer BLKMDL3, also known as Zack, recently took his Tesla to the border of California and Mexico at Tijuana, and at the international crossing, Full Self-Driving showed an interesting message: “Upcoming country border — FSD (Supervised) will become unavailable.”
FSD now shows a new message when approaching an international border crossing.
Stayed engaged the whole way as we crossed the border and worked great in Mexico! pic.twitter.com/bDzyLnyq0g
— Zack (@BLKMDL3) January 26, 2026
Due to regulatory approvals, once a Tesla operating on Full Self-Driving enters a new country, it is required to comply with the laws and regulations that are applicable to that territory. Even if legal, it seems Tesla will shut off FSD temporarily, confirming it is in a location where operation is approved.
This is something that will be extremely important in Europe, as crossing borders there is like crossing states in the U.S.; it’s pretty frequent compared to life in America, Canada, and Mexico.
Tesla has been working to get FSD approved in Europe for several years, and it has been getting close to being able to offer it to owners on the continent. However, it is still working through a lot of the red tape that is necessary for European regulators to approve use of the system on their continent.
This feature seems to be one that would be extremely useful in Europe, considering the fact that crossing borders into other countries is much more frequent than here in the U.S., and would cater to an area where approvals would differ.
Tesla has been testing FSD in Spain, France, England, and other European countries, and plans to continue expanding this effort. European owners have been fighting for a very long time to utilize the functionality, but the red tape has been the biggest bottleneck in the process.
Tesla Europe builds momentum with expanding FSD demos and regional launches
Tesla operates Full Self-Driving in the United States, China, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea.
Elon Musk
SpaceX Starship V3 gets launch date update from Elon Musk
The first flight of Starship Version 3 and its new Raptor V3 engines could happen as early as March.
Elon Musk has announced that SpaceX’s next Starship launch, Flight 12, is expected in about six weeks. This suggests that the first flight of Starship Version 3 and its new Raptor V3 engines could happen as early as March.
In a post on X, Elon Musk stated that the next Starship launch is in six weeks. He accompanied his announcement with a photo that seemed to have been taken when Starship’s upper stage was just about to separate from the Super Heavy Booster. Musk did not state whether SpaceX will attempt to catch the Super Heavy Booster during the upcoming flight.
The upcoming flight will mark the debut of Starship V3. The upgraded design includes the new Raptor V3 engine, which is expected to have nearly twice the thrust of the original Raptor 1, at a fraction of the cost and with significantly reduced weight. The Starship V3 platform is also expected to be optimized for manufacturability.
The Starship V3 Flight 12 launch timeline comes as SpaceX pursues an aggressive development cadence for the fully reusable launch system. Previous iterations of Starship have racked up a mixed but notable string of test flights, including multiple integrated flight tests in 2025.
Interestingly enough, SpaceX has teased an aggressive timeframe for Starship V3’s first flight. Way back in late November, SpaceX noted on X that it will be aiming to launch Starship V3’s maiden flight in the first quarter of 2026. This was despite setbacks like a structural anomaly on the first V3 booster during ground testing.
“Starship’s twelfth flight test remains targeted for the first quarter of 2026,” the company wrote in its post on X.
Tesla Robotaxi ride-hailing without a Safety Monitor proves to be difficult
Tesla gives its biggest hint that Full Self-Driving in Europe is imminent
