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Mercedes breaks ground on new battery recycling facility in Germany
Mercedes has broken ground on a new battery recycling facility in Germany, focusing on “closing the loop” and allowing the automaker to source more battery materials sustainably.
Two of the biggest challenges in the industry of electric vehicles are the price of battery materials and what happens with batteries when they are at the end of their useable lives. Yet more and more manufacturers are finding that these two problems can help solve each other through the use of battery recycling. In efforts to source more materials more sustainably and cheaply, Mercedes has broken ground on its first battery recycling facility that will slowly ramp to help meet the automaker’s material demand.
Mercedes’ new facility in Kuppenheim, Germany, aims to achieve a remarkable 96% recovery rate for four key materials; lithium, cobalt, nickel, and eventually graphite. It will have an annual recycling capacity of 2,500 tons and aims to begin processing by the end of this year.
“This foundation symbolizes the decisive step towards closing the material cycle for batteries from Mercedes-Benz,” says Jörg Burzer, Member of the Board of Management at Mercedes-Benz. “With a recycling rate of more than 96 percent, a ‘mine of tomorrow’ is being created here in Kuppenheim. The innovative technology approach enables us to incorporate the valuable raw materials into new Mercedes-EQ vehicles. We are consistently expanding our expertise of the battery value chain and are taking an important step in our strategy towards ‘Electric Only.’”
Mercedes also specifies that the new facility will be 100% carbon neutral as part of the German automaker’s continuing efforts to decarbonize its production facilities in the coming years. This is achieved through a mix of solar energy installed at the facility and green energy purchased from the grid.
German regulators were quick to point out that the new facility will also be a vital part of the country’s efforts to limit dependence on rare earth imports, which were particularly affected on the European continent due to the COVID pandemic, COVID restrictions in China, and the Rissian invasion of Ukraine.
“This is of particular importance in view of the limited availability of important and highly sought-after raw materials such as lithium, cobalt or nickel,” noted Thekla Walker, Minister for the Environment, Climate Protection and the Energy Sector Baden-Württemberg. “Crises such as the corona pandemic or the brutal Russian war of aggression against Ukraine have clearly demonstrated our dependence on supply chains and primary raw materials. Increased recycling can help to reduce this dependence on critical raw materials and thus strengthen the resilience of the economy.”
Mercedes joins the likes of Tesla, General Motors, and many others, establishing battery recycling capabilities worldwide. Tesla has already announced that it would make recycled materials a bigger part of its production with the help of Redwood materials. General Motors has worked closely with Lithion to establish battery recycling as part of its planned introduction of numerous EVs in the near future. While at the same time, national governments are also incentivizing many of these projects to help reduce the waste that could become an issue in a wholly electrified future.
Late last month, the U.S. Department of Energy granted one of its first-ever lithium battery recycling loans to a battery recycler in Upstate New York, LiCycle. And with the growing need for this infrastructure, the agency is expected to continue to invest in the future.
As Mercedes rapidly grows the number of electric vehicles it sells globally over the coming years, battery recycling plants like this will be critical to its growth and success. Hopefully, it can pose as an example for other manufacturers moving forward, helping to make EVs increasingly more sustainable.
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Tesla released the Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite to owners of Hardware 3 or AI3 vehicles today, adding several new features to the vehicles that were once believed to be capable of unsupervised self-driving.
Now, Tesla has released this modified suite to older Tesla vehicles, adding plenty of new features and capabilities.
Here are the full release notes for the suite:
- Distilled the intelligence from HW4 V14 into HW3. This allows HW3 to directly learn how to handle scenarios using HW4 V14 as a guide. This process unlocks the improvements that have been made to HW4 including Reinforcement Learning (RL) and offline models for HW3.
- Improved both proactive and reactive responsiveness across a wide variety of categories including navigation handling, merges and forks, pedestrian interactions, traffic lights, and vehicle cut-in scenarios.
- Improved general comfort in nominal scenarios through fewer false slowdowns, smoother steering and more consistent lane centering.
- Introduced parking, unparking, and reversing capabilities.
- Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, or at the Curbside.
- Speed Profiles are now available at all times, to further customize driving style preference.
These improvements, according to Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, help distill the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of AI3.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ for older cars finally gets released
He added:
“It includes destination options and speed profiles on city roads, but more importantly significantly improved safety. We hope you’ll enjoy it, once the build ships wide.”
FSD v14 Lite is now rolling out to AI3 early-access customers. Based on the feedback, will rollout to more customers over the next few weeks.
This build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute config of AI3. It includes destination…
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 29, 2026
Tesla will continue to roll out the v14 Lite suite more widely in the coming weeks, the company said.
Tesla has finally released its Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite for older cars that equip the Hardware 3 or AI 3 chip, which have not been able to handle the newest versions of the company’s driver assistance software.
Tesla officially started releasing the v14 Lite suite to owners in the Early Access Program last night. The company’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said that the rollout will continue over the next few weeks. The build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of an AI3 car.
🚨 Tesla is releasing v14 Lite for AI3 owners who are in early-access
This will give AI3 cars the ability to experience new FSD features like parking preferences. https://t.co/pp6Q5FOKoz pic.twitter.com/tqexMB8SVy
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 29, 2026
It also includes a variety of new features that were available to AI4 cars running v14, including:
- Start Self-Driving from Park
- Arrival and Parking Options
- Speed Profiles
The release is highly anticipated because those owners with AI3 vehicles were early adopters into the FSD platform and were promised that their cars would be capable of achieving Full Self-Driving.
However, Tesla CEO Elon Musk admitted during the company’s recent Q1 Earnings Call that these vehicles would not be capable of achieving unsupervised Full Self-Driving, which is what Tesla had originally said.
Owners were not pleased with this answer, or the idea that their commitment to buying the suite outright for thousands of dollars would not yield the ability to drive without operating the car. Tesla gave some solutions for this, including a discount on a new car, or an upgrade to an AI4 or AI5 self-driving computer and new, upgraded cameras.
Tesla owners do not seem pleased with these options, as they require giving the company more money.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that Tesla came through for owners here by releasing v14 Lite before the end of Q2, something it had promised owners during the previous Earnings Call. Tesla has had trouble keeping up with timelines, but this is a big achievement for the team.
Tesla released what analysts believe the company will report in terms of deliveries and energy deployments for Q2, but the figures seem to confirm a long-standing theory on the company’s vehicle division.
For years, Tesla was just looked at as a car company. Now that it has established itself as a powerhouse in energy, AI, and tech as a whole, the company is now less hellbent on achieving quarterly growth, on a sequential basis, at least from a major standpoint.
Tesla topped out its annual deliveries in 2023 at 1.81 million, and in the two years since, the company has reported a decrease in deliveries for the entire 12-month term both times.
With Tesla delivering 358,023 cars in Q1, a 6.3 percent increase over Q1 2025, but falling short of Wall Street expectations at 365,000-370,000 units, the narrative around vehicle deliveries and their importance continued to change earlier this year. Some might say it is convenient, but others might say it is the typical evolution of a company that continues to change over time.
For Q2, Tesla’s delivery consensus estimates sit at 406,024 units, analysts believe. They were surveyed from Daiwa, DB, Wedbush, Cowen, Canaccord, Baird, Wolfe, BMP Paribas, Goldman Sachs, RBC, Evercore ISI, Barclays, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Truist, UBS, Jefferies, JPM, Needham & Co., HSBC, and William Blair.
Credit: Tesla
Tesla is also expected to report deployments of 13.8 GWh this quarter.
The change to Tesla’s overall narrative now leans less on vehicle deliveries and more on its other projects. Most notably, Tesla’s Robotaxi project has taken the priority over most of its other business ventures, and investors and the public are more concerned about the deployment of vehicles into the fleet, the operation of a driverless ride-hailing service, Cybercab production and operation, and expansion into new cities.
Tesla analyst realizes one big thing about the stock: deliveries are losing importance
This big narrative switch happened when Tesla indicated it was looking at making transportation a service by launching a ride-hailing service that will operate using Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite. Once unsupervised operation begins, Robotaxi could be a new way for people to get around, all without a driver in their car.
Instead, they will rely on the billions of miles Tesla has accumulated from its real-world fleet.
It is important to note that Tesla remains significant in the automotive sector, and deliveries must continue as they have for years. Tesla still has a strong automotive business and needs to execute further on all facets to keep its investors happy.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ Release Notes: new capabilities and features
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ for older cars finally gets released
