

News
Tesla China on track for blockbuster quarter as weekly insurance registrations hit over 18k
Tesla China is poised for a blockbuster quarter. This comes amidst the company’s strong weekly insurance registrations, which hit over 18,000 units during the week of March 13-19, 2023.
Industry watchers in China have released their data for the domestic automotive market’s weekly insurance registrations. As per tracked data, insurance registrations for China’s NEV sector were at 113,000 last week, a 4.6% improvement from the 108,000 units from the week prior.
As per industry data, Tesla China saw 18,712 insurance registrations in the week ending March 19, a 9.8% improvement compared to the previous week’s 17,032 registrations. Considering that Tesla China also saw 13,266 registrations during March’s first week, the electric vehicle maker has sold around 49,000 vehicles domestically this month so far.
A quick look at Tesla China’s performance in the domestic automotive market over the past month shows that the week ending March 19 was the best week for the electric vehicle maker since late November. The week ending March 19 also represents the second-best week ever in terms of insurance registration data, falling just behind the week of September 19-25, 2022, when a total of 23,109 units were registered.
Considering these results, Tesla China’s insurance registrations have already passed about 106,000 units for the first quarter with a week and a half to spare. Provided that Tesla China maintains its momentum during the final days of March, the electric vehicle maker may have a shot at posting record quarterly numbers for domestic sales. This is incredibly impressive as the Chinese New Year also affected domestic sales this quarter.
Other carmakers in the country’s NEV sector saw mixed results. Similar to previous weeks, BYD saw the most insurance registrations in China with 38,414 units last week, a 3.4% improvement from the 37,141 registrations it saw in the previous week. This number, however, includes vehicles that are not purely battery-electric. NIO, on the other hand, saw an 18% drop in registrations, from 2,170 in March’s second week to the past week’s 1,775 units.
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News
Tesla expands Robotaxi operation to California’s Bay Area
Tesla now has Robotaxi operation in two areas in the United States, as it has officially expanded to the Bay Area of California.

Tesla has expanded its Robotaxi platform to California’s Bay Area, marking the second major region it will be operating a ride-sharing service in the United States.
The Bay Area is the second area within the U.S. where Tesla has launched the Robotaxi platform, joining Austin, Texas.
However, there are some slight differences between how Tesla Robotaxi is operating in Austin compared to the Bay Area.
Last night, Tesla sent out an update to its Robotaxi app, showing there is now availability to catch a ride from a Model Y in the Bay Area. We received the update on our app:
🚨 Tesla has officially launched Robotaxi in the Bay Area with invites heading out now! pic.twitter.com/YMDWbs1hdJ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 31, 2025
The geofence for the Bay Area is significantly larger than what Tesla is offering in Austin. In the Bay Area, the geofence spans north of San Francisco and extends south, even below San Jose. In total, it’s about an hour and fifteen minutes from top to bottom, and it is roughly 65 miles in length.
There are some differences between Tesla’s Robotaxi offering in the two cities. In Austin, there is nobody in the driver’s seat of the vehicle, just a Safety Monitor in the passenger seat who is there to take over only in the most extreme circumstances.
In the Bay Area, there will be a human in the driver’s seat, and they will operate a version of Full Self-Driving (Supervised), but current requirements maintain that a human needs to be able to take over.
Tesla is still considering it a portion of its Robotaxi operation, but it is referring to it as a “ride-hailing service.”
Invites to our Bay Area ride-hailing service are going out now pic.twitter.com/4Ql4XfSLvC
— Tesla AI (@Tesla_AI) July 31, 2025
Tesla Robotaxi has been in operation in Austin since June 22. Just over a month later, the company is moving forward with a new region and has plans to bring even more cities into the mix in the coming months. Recently, Musk said that he expects half of the U.S. population to have access to Robotaxi by the end of the year.
News
Tesla takes first step in sunsetting Model S and X with drastic move
Tesla won’t be taking custom orders of the Model S or Model X in Europe any longer.

Tesla has seemingly taken the first step in sunsetting two of its older vehicles, the Model S and Model X, by ending international orders.
The flagship sedan and SUV from Tesla are the two oldest cars in the company’s lineup. They account for a very small portion of overall sales, and several years ago, CEO Elon Musk admitted that Tesla only continues to build and sell them due to “sentimental reasons.”
Earlier this year, there were calls for Tesla to end the production of the two cars, but Lars Moravy said that the Model S and Model X were due to get some love later in 2025. That happened, but the changes were extremely minor.
Tesla launches new Model S and Model X, and the changes are slim
Some took this as an indication that Tesla has kind of moved on from the Model S and Model X. A handful of people seemed to think Tesla would overhaul the vehicles substantially, but the changes were extremely minor and included only a few real adjustments.
In Europe, customers are unable to even put a new order in on a Model S or Model X.
We noticed earlier today that Tesla pressing the ‘Order’ button on either of the flagship vehicles takes you to local inventory, and not the Design Studio where you’d configure your custom build:
🚨 Tesla has removed the Model S and Model X Design Configurators from European customers
It will now bring up available inventory for those two vehicles instead of allowing you to build your own config pic.twitter.com/sMnGAr2kuu
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) July 30, 2025
Tesla simply does not make enough Model S or Model X units to justify the expensive logistics process of shipping custom orders overseas. It almost seems as if they’re that they will essentially build a bunch of random configurations, send them overseas every few months, and let them sell before replenishing inventory.
Inversely, it could also mean Tesla is truly gearing up to sunset the vehicle altogether. It seems unlikely that the company will fade them out altogether in the next couple of years, but it could absolutely think about ending international orders because volume is so low.
Energy
Tesla inks multi-billion-dollar deal with LG Energy Solution to avoid tariff pressure
Tesla has reportedly secured a sizable partnership with LGES for LFP cells, and there’s an extra positive out of it.

Tesla has reportedly inked a multi-billion-dollar deal with LG Energy Solution in an effort to avoid tariff pressure and domesticate more of its supply chain.
Reuters is reporting that Tesla and LGES, a South Korean battery supplier of the automaker, signed a $4.3 billion deal for energy storage system batteries. The cells are going to be manufactured by LGES at its U.S. factory located in Michigan, the report indicates. The batteries will be the lithium iron phosphate, or LFP, chemistry.
Tesla delivers 384,000 vehicles in Q2 2025, deploys 9.6 GWh in energy storage
It is a move Tesla is making to avoid buying cells and parts from overseas as the Trump White House continues to use tariffs to prioritize domestic manufacturing.
LGES announced earlier today that it had signed a $4.3 billion contract to supply LFP cells over three years to a company, but it did not identify the customer, nor did the company state whether the batteries would be used in automotive or energy storage applications.
The deal is advantageous for both companies. Tesla is going to alleviate its reliance on battery cells that are built out of the country, so it’s going to be able to take some financial pressure off itself.
For LGES, the company has reported that it has experienced slowed demand for its cells in terms of automotive applications. It planned to offset this demand lag with more projects involving the cells in energy storage projects. This has been helped by the need for these systems at data centers used for AI.
During the Q1 Earnings Call, Tesla CFO Vaibhav Taneja confirmed that the company’s energy division had been impacted by the need to source cells from China-based suppliers. He went on to say that the company would work on “securing additional supply chain from non-China-based suppliers.”
It seems as if Tesla has managed to secure some of this needed domestic supply chain.
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