Lifestyle
What an Electric NASCAR series can learn from Formula E/Rally Cross
NASCAR might be exploring an electric series, and they can learn much from Formula E and electric Rally Cross.
After news broke earlier this year that NASCAR may be pursuing an electric version of their series as soon as next year, I was incredibly interested and received a flood of emails from both eager viewers and quick critics alike. But one message was clear from everyone; NASCAR might only have one shot at this, so they better do it right.
Looking at two very predominant electric racing series, Formula E and Rally Cross, there are a lot of lessons that can be learned, especially as both series came from pre-existing racing systems with gas cars, much like NASCAR today. And in short, five key takeaways could easily apply to NASCAR’s first attempt at electrification.
Shorter Races –
Formula E might be onto something with its racing structure, all racing is complete in a single day, and the actual race event only takes 45min. In a world of ever shorter attention spans, this differentiation has allowed the European racing series to establish a significantly younger audience, something that NASCAR desperately needs.
This style of racing also means that the racecars can run the batteries at 100% the whole time, drivers don’t have to lift off, nor do teams have to organize “car switches”; Formula E has had to learn this lesson the hard way, NASCAR would be wise to learn as well.
Make the Cars as Fast as Possible –
When people talk about Formula E, the sad reality is that many look at the cars as cleaner, greener, slower, and less exciting F1 cars. And sadly, to a degree, these people are correct. While Formula E has learned a lot from its debut, this is still a lesson, or perhaps a challenge, that they have not been able to overcome.
So what does this mean for NASCAR? This means that NASCAR has a unique opportunity to make their vehicles even faster with electric drivetrains and even to be faster than some of their arch-rivals. Imagine an ad where the new electric NASCAR is lined up with a current, hybrid drivetrain Formula 1 car. How successful would that ad be if the stock car was faster? Throw in a couple of screaming_eagle.mp3’s and a guitar solo or two, and you’ve got the return of NASCAR to greatness.
Give Manufacturers Some Freedom –
As someone who has worked in Formula E, I can tell you precisely what many manufacturers are looking for and why some have even chosen to leave FE; not enough design freedom. Manufacturers, now more than ever, want to test charging, battery chemistry, tire compounds, motor architectures, battery management systems, and everything in between. And sadly, they can’t get that amount of freedom at Formula E or Rally Cross. NASCAR could be the first!
The premise of modern Nascar is the uniformity of the cars, but even if the teams were allowed to mess with just one of the components I listed above, they would be tripping over themselves to join the sport.
Use New Technology to Show the Race –
Rally Cross has done a fantastic job putting their races on TV. The (relative) quiet nature of the electric drivetrains means they can place music throughout the broadcast. Furthermore, they make every race look like a Ken Block gymkhana video from five years ago! Drones get within inches of the cars as they rocket around corners; there are more jumps and drifting areas on the courses than ever before. All this adds to a more exciting race to watch in person and on a screen.
NASCAR has already mastered the art of driver cams for years now, but adding music and drones could make the experience even better. Allow the viewers to feel like the race is a movie, and help them feel the speed and violence of the racing happening around them!
Lean into Driver Character –
This may be due to NASCAR’s American nature, or perhaps my own, but the passion-filled drivers and their numerous quirks give NASCAR a unique appeal. Don’t just watch racecars go around a circuit, watch a battle between the punky newcomer who swears a lot and the old timer who just needs one good final race and who smokes in his car (both during and after the race). While Formula E has attempted to create this aspect, going as far as allowing drivers to get voted on for performance boosts (DON’T do that, NASCAR), their polished European drivers don’t offer the same excitement as Roy “Buckshot” Jones or Dick Trickle.
More, More Exciting Racing –
Along the same line as shorter races, you also need more good racing in that condensed driving time. I’ve watched my fair share of Formula 1, and I love the excitement of seeing a driver go from last to first (Sergio Perez) or even the reverse (also, Sergio Perez). Rally Cross and Formula E have ensured that there is ALWAYS excitement to watch. Overtakes are constantly happening, and this is not an accident. Both electric series have rules that temporarily force drivers off the racing line (Formula E’s Attack Mode is the best example). At the same time, the cars have been shrunk to allow more space on the track, once again encouraging overtakes.
If NASCAR can encourage more action per minute, drivers and viewers alike will have much more to pay attention to.
Needless to say, I’m excited about electric NASCAR, and I hope it becomes a reality. At the same time, a dedicated focus on improving the racing and viewing experience could yield outstanding results for the heritage racing series and could ultimately resuscitate NASCAR as a top-tier racing series once more.
What do you think of the article? Do you have any comments, questions, or concerns? Shoot me an email at william@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @WilliamWritin. If you have news tips, email us at tips@teslarati.com!
Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
Elon Musk
SpaceXAI just launched into your kitchen with their new app
SpaceXAI just powered its first consumer app and it predicts what you want to buy.
SpaceXAI just made its first move into consumer AI, and it involves your grocery cart. On June 3, 2026, Gopuff and SpaceXAI announced the launch of Go, a Grok-powered shopping assistant built directly into the Gopuff app that predicts what you need before you even start searching for it.
Gopuff is an instant delivery platform that operates more than 400 micro-fulfillment centers across the U.S., delivering everyday essentials, snacks, drinks, and household items in as little as 15 minutes. It is not a restaurant delivery app or a marketplace. It owns its inventory, controls its warehouses, and handles its own logistics, which means it has built one of the most detailed consumer behavior datasets in retail over its 13-year history.
Go combines SpaceXAI’s advanced reasoning, voice, and image generation models with Gopuff’s dataset of hundreds of millions of orders and real-time cultural signals from X to prepare a suggested cart the moment a customer opens the app. It learns each shopper’s habits and automatically builds a personalized cart based on time of day, location, order history, and real-time indicators. Returning customers can check out with a single tap.
Rather than searching for specific items, users can describe a situation like a game-day party or the desire for a healthy breakfast and Go will assemble a cart automatically. It can also predict when shoppers are running low on items like coffee or paper towels and have them packed and delivered in under 15 minutes. Grok voice integration lets users talk to the app in plain conversational language and check out completely hands-free.
Gopuff co-founder and co-CEO Yakir Gola said: “Today, we believe the greatest friction left in commerce is not delivery or instantaneous access to the essentials customers need. It’s the moment before: the thinking, the deciding, the remembering. We’re combining Gopuff’s demand intelligence with xAI’s frontier reasoning to create an everyday shopping experience that feels like a true extension of you.”
Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO
The timing carries context beyond the product launch. SpaceXAI was formed after SpaceX completed an all-stock merger with Elon Musk’s xAI earlier this year, folding one of the most advanced AI labs in the world into the same corporate structure as the company preparing what could be the largest IPO in history. SpaceXAI is dipping into consumer-focused AI just as it prepares for its public debut, and while Musk has openly discussed building an everything app, this launch uses Grok to power another company’s product rather than launching a standalone consumer platform. Every consumer-facing deployment of Grok ahead of the IPO roadshow adds tangible evidence that SpaceXAI is not just an infrastructure play but a direct competitor in the AI application layer where OpenAI and Google are already fighting for dominance.
Lifestyle
Tesla saves its passengers again – This time after a 300-foot cliff fall in Malibu
A Tesla Model 3 fell 300 feet off a Malibu cliff and both passengers survived.
A Tesla Model 3 plunged roughly 300 feet off a cliff on Mulholland Highway in Malibu on Friday morning, May 29, 2026, and both occupants survived. The crash was reported at approximately 7:30 a.m. near the 2500 block of Mulholland Highway, triggering a multi-agency rescue operation involving Malibu Search and Rescue, the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the California Highway Patrol, and McCormick Ambulance.
When first responders arrived, the male driver was outside the vehicle shouting for help while the female passenger remained pinned inside the Tesla. Rescue crews rappelled down the cliffside on ropes to reach the wreckage. A flight medic was lowered by helicopter to begin treating both victims, and the driver was hoisted up to the roadway before crews used the Jaws of Life to free the trapped passenger. Both were airlifted to a local trauma center with moderate injuries despite a remarkable result for a fall that steep.
The outcome is not surprising, considering Model 3 earned an overall 5-star rating from NHTSA in every category and sub-category, and recorded the lowest probability of injury of any car ever evaluated by the U.S. New Car Assessment Program. The absence of a traditional engine in the front of the vehicle creates a longer crumple zone that absorbs impact energy before it reaches occupants, and the battery pack running along the floor gives the car an unusually low center of gravity that reinforces structural rigidity.
This is not the first time a Tesla has kept passengers alive after going off a cliff. A Tesla Model Y carrying a family of four survived a plunge off a cliff at Devil’s Slide near San Francisco in January 2023, with two adults and two children walking away from a 250-foot fall. That incident drew widespread attention to how the structural integrity of Tesla’s electric platform performs in extreme crash scenarios that most vehicles would not survive.
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