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Ford launches new E-Transit Enhanced Range

New for 2024 E-Transit, Ford Pro enhances range capability by up to 32% with an estimated range of 159 miles on cargo van low-roof models with an enhanced range high-voltage battery, keeping your business running farther. (Available late 2024.)

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Ford has launched its new E-Transit and has started shipping the vehicle across North America to customers.

Yesterday, Ford officially started getting the new E-Transit, which has a better range rating, lower cost of ownership, and better charging than ever before, to customers as it continues to be a leader in commercial EVs.

The E-Transit is one of the best-selling commercial electric vans in the country, and is truly only challenged by the Mercedes-Benz eSprinter.

Ford felt it necessary to continue refining the E-Transit as it has already been a suitable choice for business owners who want to cut down on fuel consumption and help with sustainability.

The 2024 E-Transit with Enhanced Range now provides up to 159 miles of driving with 89 kWh of usable energy. This will help support work over longer distances and more capability for use cases like refrigeration.

These types of specific needs consume energy and deplete range. Ford aimed to fix that with the new Enhanced Range version.

There is a 32 percent increase in range, and now, thanks to dual onboard chargers, there are faster charging times, helping you get back to work quicker.

Additionally, there is 2.4 kW of Pro Power Onboard, which is now operable while the E-Transit is in motion.

Ford did a rundown of some of the E-Transit Enhanced Range’s new features:

  • Enhanced-Range Battery: Enhanced range capability provides an estimated range of up to 159 miles with 89 kWh of usable energy, supporting work over longer distances and more capability for new use cases, like refrigerated delivery.
  • Cutting-Edge Charging Capabilities: Now featuring dual onboard chargers delivering a charge time that’s 22% faster than before when using Ford Pro’s 80A Series 2 charger and available Ford Pro charging software to help identify the best times to charge and more.
  • Lower Total Cost of Ownership: E-Transit helps fleets reduce their total cost of ownership, championed as the Best Fleet Value in America in its category by Vincentric for the third consecutive year thanks to reduced fuel, maintenance and operating costs.
  • Sustainability Powerhouse: E-Transit has saved over 3 million gallons of gas and reduced CO2 emissions by more than 25 million kilograms, the equivalent of planting 413,377 tree seedlings and letting them grow for 10 years.

The E-Transit has been one reason Ford has been able to garner a reputation as one of the best-selling EV brands in the country.

As the F-150 Lightning and Mustang Mach-E continue to lead the way, Ford’s E-Transit is truly one of the most suitable commercial EVs on the market.

Despite the company scaling back some of its EV plans and prioritizing hybrids alongside pure electric cars, Ford still remains committed to delivering a great product with its sustainable powertrains.

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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 will launch Cybercab on September 3

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Credit: TechOperator | X

Tesla Cybercab is set to launch in Austin, Texas, on September 3, as the company has officially started sending out invitations to a dedicated event it will hold in the city where its headquarters is located.

The Cybercab is Tesla’s dedicated ride-sharing vehicle: it features just two seats and has no steering wheel or pedals. It is aimed at fully autonomous passenger transport, and will operate in the Robotaxi fleet alongside the Tesla Model Y, which has been performing driverless rides for real-world passengers for more than a year.

The launch of the Cybercab marks the next chapter in Tesla’s autonomy story. The company has been developing autonomous transport for years with its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) platform, which is available in any vehicle the company has built with the proper hardware and software capabilities.

Its capabilities vary by hardware and software version, but Tesla says its latest hardware version, known as AI4, can deliver full autonomy. However, future vehicles will operate with even more robust hardware packages, as Tesla will develop AI4.5 and AI5 for even more capability in its vehicles.

Following a report from The Information that surfaced earlier this week, the writing was on the wall that Tesla was set to launch Cybercab in the near term. The report stated Tesla could launch Cybercab as soon as the end of August. Tesla came close and has booked it for September 3.

Tesla Cybercab launch preparations have begun

The big thing with this event being scheduled is not necessarily that Tesla is launching a new vehicle, but instead that it is launching a vehicle that has no steering wheel or pedals and will operate exclusively on a self-driving program that is evidently nearing full autonomy. If the event allows vehicles to take passengers on public roads and drop them off wherever they please within the City of Austin, it will be a drastic advancement in the company’s self-driving story.

People have ridden in Cybercab previously: Tesla had the “We, Robot” event in October 2024, which allowed people to experience fully autonomous rides in a closed circuit at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank.

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Additionally, Tesla launched employee rides in Cybercab in July.

It’s a drastic step forward for Tesla, whose CEO, Elon Musk, has promised for years that the company would release a fully autonomous vehicle and platform capable of allowing drivers to relinquish any responsibility behind the wheel.

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SpaceX and a new Trump order that could rewrite the next decade of launches

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Elon Musk put a number on where he thinks SpaceX’s Starship program is headed by 2030, replying on X a day after President Trump signed a memo pushing the country toward 1,000 space launches and reentries a year.

The exchange started when Aaron Burnett, co-founder of propulsion startup Mach 33, posted that “1,000 launches/reentries is the goal,” quoting White House science adviser Michael Kratsios on the newly signed National Space Transportation Policy. Burnett noted that the FAA’s own bull-case forecast reached only 385 annual launches by 2030, while his firm’s conservative model already put SpaceX alone near 940. Musk responded, “We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized. Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!”

That figure is specific to Starship, the rocket SpaceX is still developing for orbital and lunar missions, not the Falcon 9 fleet that carries most of the company’s current launch volume. Starship has flown twice this year, a slower pace than the four and five flights SpaceX managed in 2024 and 2025. Getting from two flights a year to 30 a day is the scale of jump the new federal policy is meant to clear regulatory room for.

Trump’s memo, signed Thursday, directs agencies to identify new launch and reentry sites on federal land, including a new reentry site within 90 days, and to speed up the permitting and environmental reviews that have long slowed cadence growth. It also sets a goal of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2028 and placing initial lunar base elements by 2030, tying the launch buildout directly to NASA’s Artemis program.

SpaceX has already been pushing the FAA toward higher numbers on its own. The agency approved up to 44 annual Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center in February, on top of a 2024 review that raised the cap at Starbase in Texas to 25 a year. Those approvals cover a fraction of the 10,000 annual flights Musk is now describing, which shows how far current permitting still sits from the administration’s stated target.

The near-term test of all this is more modest. SpaceX cleared a full-duration, six-engine static fire on its next Starship vehicle this week, the last major hardware checkpoint before Flight 14, which is targeting no earlier than August 28 and is expected to attempt the vehicle’s first full orbital mission. Musk said last week that a tower catch of the upper stage is still probably months away, a reminder that the immediate roadmap remains far more incremental than the daily launch numbers he just posted.

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Tesla will resolve massive China recall with stickers and a software update

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tesla frozen door handle
Credit: YouTube | HMKARKI

Tesla will resolve its massive recall of nearly three million vehicles in China with stickers and a software update.

On Friday, Chinese regulators filed recall plans against Tesla, Xiaomi, Leapmotor, Xpeng, Chery, Geely, Dongfeng, Arcfox, and FAW to resolve what is essentially a carbon-copy issue throughout each of the companies’ vehicle models: emergency door release latches are simply not visible enough.

Tesla door handle saga gets its latest chapter and a big change is coming

The companies will be required to add things that will make these latches, which will open the door in the event of an emergency, more visible. Of the 7 million vehicles impacted, Tesla accounts for 2,975,910 units. More than 1.9 million of those are Model Y vehicles, with the rest, just over 970,000, being Model 3s.

To resolve the issue, Tesla is going to add warning labels to the emergency latches free of charge, and then utilize an Over-the-Air update to add a post-crash window-lowering strategy, according to CNEVpost.

This massive effort to fix the all-electric Model Y and Model 3’s emergency latch system comes just months after several probes across various markets identified the trouble some had identifying this latch. Those who had gotten involved in car accidents that stripped the vehicle of its power were not aware that every Tesla has emergency door latches.

China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said that severe crashes that disable a vehicle’s low-voltage system could not only hinder occupants from getting out, but also make it more difficult for emergency response workers to gain entry.

SAMR is starting to tighten the regulations it has on door handles on vehicles. A new mandatory national standard will take effect for all models starting January 1, 2027, and will require all doors to be equipped with mechanical release mechanisms. This will effectively end purely electronic door handles. Models already on sale with type approval have been granted a two-year transition period, which will enable things to change until January 2029.

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