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Rivian’s community growth is driven by a focus on sustainability
Rivian only officially entered the auto manufacturing scene last November, but you’d hardly know it by the headway the company has made in terms of branding and enthusiasm for its upcoming all-electric R1T pickup truck and R1S SUV. The startup’s flurry of marketing activity in the months since launching is largely to thank for the growing, nascent community. However, Rivian now has its sights set on earning even more respect from the clean energy crowd that’s already excited about electric vehicles via energy storage projects.
Last week, Rivian announced a new partnership with rock climber Alex Honnold and the Honnold Foundation to use the car maker’s used vehicle batteries for microgrid energy storage in underserved areas. The first project will take place in Adjuntas, Puerto Rico working with Casa Pueblo, a local organization committed transitioning their city’s energy grid to solar power. In the wake of Hurricane Maria, the Adjuntas community is ready for sustainable, independent energy sources, and Rivan’s batteries have substantial capacity – even after their vehicle life cycle is expended – to help with that transition.
The batteries Rivan is designing for its vehicles are purpose-built to have second-life storage applications, and the Adjuntas microgrid project will enable the company to implement the first steps of this broader plan. While the first R1T and R1S vehicles have yet to be delivered to patiently awaiting customers, spending time on environmentally-focused projects has been part of Rivian’s plans since its inception. “It’s the central motivation for the business,” CEO RJ Scaringe explained in a recently live streamed conversation about the joint microgrid initiative.
Many thanks to everyone who traveled near and far to be with us Saturday night in Denver. Such an amazing community is forming. To @casapuebloorg , @honnoldfound , @AlexHonnold, @RichRoll – exciting things to come . See more https://t.co/0XXhEqf5wk pic.twitter.com/yjjAThdzen
— Rivian (@Rivian) June 18, 2019
Scaringe is a self-described car enthusiast, but as his awareness and concern for the environmental issues surrounding gas-powered vehicles grew, he eventually made the decision to start a new car company that matched his values.
“The [cars] that I really loved were simultaneously making the planet worse, whether it’s geopolitical or air quality or climate change, and it really bothered me,” Scaringe admitted. “So…the way I thought I could have the most impact was to start a company. In starting Rivian, the goal was to create products that are exciting and built with passion and deliver real performance, but at the same time are deeply sustainable… The decisions we make as a company are absolutely made from the vantage point of how do we have the most impact.”
Alongside energy projects, Rivian has also made several appearances at trade shows, auto shows, and outdoor vendor events to continue building a network of business and consumer relationships that grow its community. New features and options have been announced as well, such as vehicle-to-vehicle charging and a portable kitchen set for the R1T gear tunnel, all of which have helped keep up enthusiasm for the company.
The attention Rivian has already garnered for the high-tech and performance stats of its upcoming R1T truck and R1S SUV is well deserved. Both vehicles have four electric motors with 750-800 total horsepower that can reach highway speeds in around 3 seconds, and 147 kW of independent power at each wheel also provides for torque vectoring. Rivian’s high-density battery packs have a thermal control system that adapts according to charging and driving behavior, and they’re tightly encased using advanced materials science to be capable of wading up to three feet of water. The 180 kWh “megapack” option is expected to give around 400 miles of range.
Rivian already has plenty to offer future customers as an all-electric car manufacturer full of innovative ideas, and their new sustainability initiative adds to the startup’s promising outlook. Production is slated for 2020 and pre-orders are available on the official website.
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Tesla pulls back the curtain on Cybercab mass production
Tesla’s Cybercab drives itself off the Gigafactory Texas line in a striking new production video.
Tesla has provided a first look from inside a production Cybercab as it drove itself off the assembly line at Gigafactory Texas. The video footage, posted on X, opens on the factory floor with robotic arms and assembly equipment visible through the Cybercab windshield, and follows the car through a branded tunnel marked “Cybercab”, before autonomously navigating itself to a holding lot.
The first Cybercab rolled off the Giga Texas production line on February 17, 2026, with Musk writing on X, “Congratulations to the Tesla team on making the first production Cybercab.” April marked the official shift to volume production. The Giga Texas line is being prepared to produce hundreds of units per week, with 60 units already spotted on the Gigafactory campus earlier this month.
Purpose-built for autonomy
Cybercab in production now at Giga Texas pic.twitter.com/Y9qG3KyWBa
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 23, 2026
The Cybercab was first revealed publicly at Tesla’s “We, Robot” event in October 2024 at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California, where 20 pre-production units gave attendees rides around the studio lot. Musk said he believed the average operating cost would be around $0.20 per mile, and that buyers would be able to purchase one for under $30,000. The two-seat design is deliberate. Musk noted that 90 percent of miles driven involve one or two people, making a compact two-passenger vehicle the most efficient configuration for a fleet-scale robotaxi. Eliminating rear seats also removes complexity and cost, supporting that sub-$30,000 target.
Tesla’s annual production goal is 2 million Cybercabs per year once several factories reach full design capacity. The Cybercab has no steering wheel, no pedals, and relies entirely on Tesla’s vision-based FSD system. What the video shows is the first evidence of that system working not as a demo, but as a production reality, driving itself off the line and into the world.
🚗 Our first ride in Tesla Cybercab last October: pic.twitter.com/kGqIqgJPRn https://t.co/BITCXFhbVd
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2025
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s last manually driven Tesla will do something no other production car will do
Elon Musk confirmed the Roadster as Tesla’s last manually driven car, with a debut coming soon.
During Tesla’s Q1 2026 earnings call on April 22, Elon Musk made a brief but notable comment about the long-awaited next generation Roadster while describing Tesla’s future vehicle lineup. “Long term, the only manually driven car will be the new Tesla Roadster,” he said. “Speaking of which, we may be able to debut that in a month or so. It requires a lot of testing and validation before we can actually have a demo and not have something go wrong with the demo.”
That single statement is the entire Roadster update from yesterday’s call, and while it represents another timeline shift, it comes as no surprise with Tesla heads-down-at-work on the mass rollout of its Robotaxi service across US cities, and the industrial scale production of the humanoid Optimus.
The fact that Musk specifically framed the Roadster as the last manually driven Tesla is significant on its own. As the rest of the lineup moves toward full autonomy, the Roadster becomes something rare in the Tesla-sphere by keeping the driver in control. Driving enthusiasts who buy a $200,000 supercar are not doing so to be passengers. They want the physical connection to the road, the feel of acceleration under their own input, and the experience of controlling something with that level of performance. FSD, however capable it becomes, removes that entirely. The Roadster signals that Tesla understands this distinction and is building a car specifically for the people who consider driving itself the point.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
The specs for the Roadster Musk has teased over the years are genuinely unlike anything in production. The base model targets 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, and up to 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery. The optional SpaceX package takes it further, rumored to add roughly ten cold gas thrusters operating at 10,000 psi, borrowed directly from Falcon 9 rocket technology. With thrusters, Musk has claimed 0 to 60 mph in as little as 1.1 seconds. In a 2021 Joe Rogan interview he went further, stating “I want it to hover. We got to figure out how to make it hover without killing people.” Tesla filed a patent for ground effect technology in August 2025, suggesting the hover concept has not been abandoned. The starting price remains $200,000, with the Founders Series requiring a $250,000 full deposit. Some reservation holders placed those deposits in 2017 and are approaching a full decade of waiting.
With production now targeted for 2027 or 2028 at the earliest, the Roadster remains Tesla’s most audacious promise and its longest-running delay. But if what Musk is testing lives up to even half of what he has described, the demo alone should be worth waiting for.
Elon Musk says the Tesla Roadster unveiling could be done “maybe in a month or so.”
He said it should be an extraordinary unveiling event. pic.twitter.com/6V9P7zmvEm
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
Elon Musk
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla confirmed HW3 vehicles cannot run unsupervised FSD, replacing its free upgrade promise with a discounted trade-in.
Tesla has officially confirmed that early vehicles with its Autopilot Hardware 3 (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving, while extending a path forward for legacy owners through a discounted trade-in program. The announcement came by way of Elon Musk in today’s Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call.
🚨 Our LIVE updates on the Tesla Earnings Call will take place here in a thread 🧵
Follow along below: pic.twitter.com/hzJeBitzJU
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
The history here matters. HW3 launched in April 2019, and Tesla sold Full Self-Driving packages to owners on the understanding that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. Some owners paid between $8,000 and $15,000 for FSD during that period. For years, as FSD’s AI models grew more demanding, HW3 vehicles fell progressively further behind, eventually landing on FSD v12.6 in January 2025 while AI4 vehicles moved to v13 and then v14. When Musk acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 simply could not reach unsupervised operation, and alluded to a difficult hardware retrofit.
The near-term offering is more concrete. Tesla’s head of Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed on today’s call that a V14-lite will be coming to HW3 vehicles in late June, bringing all the V14 features currently running on AI4 hardware. That is a meaningful software update for owners who have been frozen at v12.6 for over a year, and it represents genuine effort to keep older hardware relevant. Unsupervised FSD for vehicles is now targeted for Q4 2026 at the earliest, with Musk describing it as a gradual, geography-limited rollout.
For HW3 owners, the over-the-air V14-lite update is welcomed, and the discounted trade-in path at least acknowledges an old obligation. What happens next with the trade-in pricing will define how this chapter ultimately gets written. If Tesla prices the hardware path fairly, acknowledges what early adopters are owed, and delivers V14-lite on the June timeline it committed to today, it has a real opportunity to convert one of the longest-running sore subjects among early adopters into a loyalty story.
Tesla pulls back the curtain on Cybercab mass production
Elon Musk’s last manually driven Tesla will do something no other production car will do
