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Tesla rumored to use BYD ‘Blade’ battery days after $25k car speculation swirls

Credit: Alwinart/Twitter

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Tesla could use Chinese automotive company BYD’s new, ultra-safe “Blade” battery design in some of its vehicles in 2022. The rumors that associate the Blade battery from BYD being paired with Tesla’s successful electric models in China follow a report from just days ago when Tesla was rumored to have already completed a prototype for its $25,000 EV.

Multiple Chinese media sources, including the Associated Press, have reported that people familiar with BYD’s supply chain and plans for the blade battery have indicated that the company will supply Tesla with the pack design as soon as Q2 2022. According to the initial reports, Tesla is already testing its vehicles with the blade batteries, which could have fueled the speculation from several days ago that an affordable $25k car prototype is in the works at Giga Shanghai, Tesla’s Chinese production facility.

The reports stated that Tesla has already entered the “C-sample test phase” with vehicles with the blade battery installed.

BYD’s Blade battery has been developed for several years, but the automotive entity unveiled the design in March 2020. The company began the development to mitigate concerns about battery safety in EVs, a growing concern as the industry began to take off a few years ago.

The design is different than current battery pack designs. In the Blade battery, singular cells are arranged together in an array, then inserted into a battery pack. It eliminates unnecessary space due to arrangement optimization, and the space within the pack is increased by over 50% compared to block batteries, BYD said.

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Credit: BYD

The battery pack underwent extensive testing to ensure safety and efficiency with its design. The Blade pack passed nail penetration tests by not emitting smoke or fire after the pack’s main housing was punctured. Additionally, surface temperatures only reached between 30 and 60 degrees Celsius (86 to 140 Fahrenheit). Traditional pack designs for LFP block batteries did not catch fire, but temperatures reached 200 to 400 degrees Celsius. Additionally, ternary lithium batteries exceeded 500 degrees Celsius and “violently burned,” BYD stated.

Interestingly, several days ago, it was rumored that Tesla might have already completed some prototypes of its $25k sedan that it targets for the Chinese market. The report revealed that Tesla might have already lined up the suppliers for this vehicle. Now that rumors of BYD’s blade battery could be installed in the car to help reach the affordable price point, there is certainly some momentum behind the speculation. Tesla has attempted to develop the $25k car in China for some time, and it will eventually be a global offering from Tesla. However, the company has been ramping production of the Model 3 and Model Y and attempting to keep up with demand in China with those two vehicles.

The $25k Tesla could launch as early as next year. With suppliers beginning to reveal themselves, it is not a long shot to think that Tesla could capture some more of China’s EV market share with a sub-$30,000 vehicle.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below, or be sure to email me at joey@teslarati.com or on Twitter @KlenderJoey.

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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Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s X goes down as users report major outage Friday morning

Error messages and stalled loading screens quickly spread across the service, while outage trackers recorded a sharp spike in user reports.

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Credit: Linda Yaccarino/X

Elon Musk’s X experienced an outage Friday morning, leaving large numbers of users unable to access the social media platform.

Error messages and stalled loading screens quickly spread across the service, while outage trackers recorded a sharp spike in user reports.

Downdetector reports

Users attempting to open X were met with messages such as “Something went wrong. Try reloading,” often followed by an endless spinning icon that prevented access, according to a report from Variety. Downdetector data showed that reports of problems surged rapidly throughout the morning.

As of 10:52 a.m. ET, more than 100,000 users had reported issues with X. The data indicated that 56% of complaints were tied to the mobile app, while 33% were related to the website and roughly 10% cited server connection problems. The disruption appeared to begin around 10:10 a.m. ET, briefly eased around 10:35 a.m., and then returned minutes later.

Credit: Downdetector

Previous disruptions

Friday’s outage was not an isolated incident. X has experienced multiple high-profile service interruptions over the past two years. In November, tens of thousands of users reported widespread errors, including “Internal server error / Error code 500” messages. Cloudflare-related error messages were also reported.

In March 2025, the platform endured several brief outages spanning roughly 45 minutes, with more than 21,000 reports in the U.S. and 10,800 in the U.K., according to Downdetector. Earlier disruptions included an outage in August 2024 and impairments to key platform features in July 2023.

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Tesla wins top loyalty and conquest honors in S&P Global Mobility 2025 awards

The electric vehicle maker secured this year’s “Overall Loyalty to Make,” “Highest Conquest Percentage,” and “Ethnic Loyalty to Make” awards.

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Credit: Tesla Malaysia/X

Tesla emerged as one of the standout winners in the 2025 S&P Global Mobility Automotive Loyalty Awards, capturing top honors for customer retention and market conquest.

The electric vehicle maker secured this year’s “Overall Loyalty to Make,” “Highest Conquest Percentage,” and “Ethnic Loyalty to Make” awards.

Tesla claims loyalty crown

According to S&P Global Mobility, Tesla secured its 2025 “Overall Loyalty to Make” award following a late-year shift in consumer buying patterns. This marked the fourth consecutive year Tesla has received the honor. S&P Global Mobility’s annual analysis reviewed 13.6 million new retail vehicle registrations in the U.S. from October 2024 through September 2025, as noted in a press release.

In addition to overall loyalty, Tesla also earned the “Highest Conquest Percentage” award for the sixth consecutive year, highlighting the company’s continued ability to attract customers away from competing brands. This achievement is particularly notable given Tesla’s relatively small vehicle lineup, which is largely dominated by just two models: the Model 3 and Model Y.

Ethnic market strength and conquest

Tesla also captured top honors for “Ethnic Market Loyalty to Make,” a category that highlighted especially strong retention among Asian and Hispanic households. According to the analysis, Tesla achieved loyalty rates of 63.6% among Asian households and 61.9% among Hispanic households. These figures exceeded national averages.

S&P Global Mobility executives noted that loyalty margins across categories were exceptionally narrow in 2025, underscoring the significance of Tesla’s wins in an increasingly competitive market. Joe LaFeir, President of Mobility Business Solutions at S&P Global Mobility, shared his perspective on this year’s results.

“For 30 years, this analysis has provided a fact-based measure of brand health, and this year’s results are particularly telling. The data shows the market is not rewarding just one type of strategy. Instead, we see sustained, high-level performance from manufacturers with broad portfolios. In the current market, retaining customers remains a critical performance indicator for the industry,” LaFeir said.

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Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft is heading to jury trial

The ruling keeps alive claims that OpenAI misled the Tesla CEO about its charitable purpose while accepting billions of dollars in funding.

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Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

OpenAI Inc. and Microsoft will face a jury trial this spring after a federal judge rejected their efforts to dismiss Elon Musk’s lawsuit, which accuses the artificial intelligence startup of abandoning its original nonprofit mission. The ruling keeps alive claims that OpenAI misled the Tesla CEO about its charitable purpose while accepting billions of dollars in funding.

As noted in a report from Bloomberg News, a federal judge in Oakland, California, ruled that OpenAI Inc. and Microsoft failed to show that Musk’s claims should be dismissed. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers stated that while the evidence remains unclear, Musk has maintained that OpenAI “had a specific charitable purpose and that he attached two fundamental terms to it: that OpenAI be open source and that it would remain a nonprofit — purposes consistent with OpenAI’s charter and mission.”

Judge Gonzalez Rogers also rejected an argument by OpenAI suggesting that Musk’s use of an intermediary to donate $38 million in seed money to the company stripped him of legal standing. “Holding otherwise would significantly reduce the enforcement of a large swath of charitable trusts, contrary to the modern trend,” Judge Gonzalez Rogers wrote.

The judge also declined to dismiss Musk’s fraud allegations, citing internal OpenAI communications from 2017 involving co-founder Greg Brockman. In an email cited by the judge, fellow OpenAI board member Shivon Zilis informed Musk that Brockman would “like to continue with the non-profit structure.”

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Just two months later, however, Brockman wrote in a private note that he “cannot say that we are committed to the non-profit. don’t want to say that we’re committed. if three months later we’re doing b-corp then it was a lie.”

Marc Toberoff, a member of Musk’s legal team, said Judge Gonzalez Rogers’s ruling confirms that “there is substantial evidence that OpenAI’s leadership made knowingly false assurances to Mr. Musk about its charitable mission that they never honored in favor of their personal self-enrichment.”

OpenAI, for its part, maintained that Musk’s legal efforts are baseless. In a statement, the AI startup said it is looking forward to the upcoming trial. “Mr. Musk’s lawsuit continues to be baseless and a part of his ongoing pattern of harassment, and we look forward to demonstrating this at trial. We remain focused on empowering the OpenAI Foundation, which is already one of the best-resourced nonprofits ever,” OpenAI stated.

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