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Tesla co-founder unveils electric garbage truck
The global transition from combustion engine to all-electric vehicle continues to move into new sectors as Wrightspeed has just released its first fleet of range-extended electric refuse trucks. The powertrain represents a new era in vehicle propulsion, repowering a generation of lighter, quieter, and more efficient vehicle fleets for urban streets.
Wrightspeed’s commercial application of the range-extended, turbine-electric powertrain is the heavy-duty Class 8 Freightliner, which will be delivered to The Ratto Group, a Sonoma County solid waste collection and recycling business. The Class 8 Freightliner is the first of at least fifteen electric vehicles that will be integrated into the trash company’s fleet over the next year, according to Tim Dummer, Wrightspeed’s chief business officer. Dummer, an engineering and commercialization executive, was brought into Wrightspeed in October, 2016 as part of the company’s ramp-up of its Range-extended Electric Vehicle (REV) powertrain systems.
Called The Route™, Wrightspeed’s REV powertrain is optimized for the refuse industry and can be customized to fit a variety of today’s heavy-duty truck platforms, replacing both the engine and the transmission. Much of the growing demand for the award-winning The Route is due to Wrightspeed’s founder, Ian Wright, one of the original co-founders of Tesla Motors. After his departure from Tesla Motors in 2003, Wright had a vision that electric vehicles could deliver high-performance without compromising intrinsic efficiency. Using turbines and applying electric vehicle principles to urban, heavy-duty trucks, The Route powertrain was the result.
The Wrightspeed system can power a 66,000-pound GVW truck, delivering up to 24 miles on battery power before the range extender kicks in. After that, range is nearly unlimited as long as there is fuel for the turbine. With fuel efficiency the equivalent of up to 7 mpg in combined electricity-liquid fuel operation, the powertrain can slash annual fuel consumption by 70 percent or more compared with the average diesel refuse truck. CEO Lou Ratto says he expects a fuel savings of at least 50 percent.
Eventually, all of Ratto’s 130 residential trash and recycling trucks may be retrofitted with the turbine-electric powertrain. This is an ambitious undertaking, as a refuse truck’s demanding duty cycle drains an electric powertrain’s batteries quickly. Think start, then stop. Start, stop. Wrightspeed’s electric powertrain drives more low-end torque to the wheels than conventional diesel engines, with less fuel, emissions, and noise.
Wrightspeed, in a sense, is recycling Ratto’s trash collection trucks. The Wrightspeed/ Ratto contract is thought to be in the range of $3 million to $5 million.
A new refuse truck that meets all California air quality standards costs more than $500,000, so Wrightspeed’s retrofit of Ratto’s existing trucks makes the system more cost-effective, Van Amburg relates. Sonoma County officials like the trash fleet electrification program because they see it as a means of improving local air quality, says Efren Carrillo, chairman of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors. Ratto concurs. “Here in Sonoma County there is a lot of environmental consciousness, and we are always looking for ways to be cleaner, environmentally friendly, and help the bottom line. And the idea that [by electrifying the trucks] we can do this and get off the air quality rollercoaster and stop battling to meet California emissions requirements— that makes it all worthwhile.”
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ALSO SEE: The Tesla Semi will shake the trucking industry to its roots
Wrightspeed featured its powertrain technology alongside Mack Trucks at Waste Expo 2016 in Las Vegas and signed a $30+ million agreement with NZ Bus, symbolizing multinational and multimodal demand for Wrightspeed’s powertrain technology. In June, the company was named a Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum (WEF), and CEO Wright was an invited presenter to the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum. He will be a keynote speaker at the upcoming SAE 2016 Range Extenders for Electric Vehicles Symposium in Knoxville, 2-3 November, 2016.
Tesla just officially confirmed it has built its 10 millionth car, a major milestone for the company that started producing sustainable electric powertrains less than two decades ago.
In that time, Tesla has truly revolutionized the automotive industry, disrupting the idea of what a car should be, how it should be fueled, and how it truly impacts day-to-day life.
10 million vehicles produced globally.
Congrats to all Tesla teams! pic.twitter.com/JkcraR63bs— Tesla Manufacturing (@gigafactories) July 30, 2026
Tesla achieved this feat across four production facilities: the Fremont Factory in Fremont, California, Gigafactory Shanghai in China, Gigafactory Berlin in Germany, and Gigafactory Texas in Austin, Texas.
The 10 millionth vehicle was a Diamond Black Model Y.
Over the course of the past roughly 18 years, Tesla has evolved its lineup from a sporty sedan built on a Lotus body to a lineup of various body styles, performance metrics, and other characteristics that make each one unique.
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This is an incredible achievement for a company that is young compared to what it goes up against. When Tesla entered the automotive market, Ford, GM, and Stellantis widely dominated the playing field. Since then, Tesla has caused such a disruption that these three massive brands had to scramble to create EV projects of their own.
Despite their best efforts, they have not been able to match the prowess or the effectiveness of Tesla. They are all reliant on Tesla’s charging infrastructure, their software is inferior, and their self-driving projects are elementary in comparison.
Tesla felt its fair share of growing pains over the years as well. As recent at 2019, there were complaints about build quality, paint quality, and overall luxuriousness. These things have all been improved upon through the company’s maturity, and these strides in quality have led to this 10 million vehicle production achievement, something that other small-and-scrappy EV makers will hope to accomplish one day.
SpaceX just picked up another $1.6 billion from the Pentagon, with the U.S. Space Force awarding two task orders worth $1.6 billion to fly 18 Falcon 9 missions from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California through the end of 2027. The launches will carry satellites for the Space Based Sensing and Targeting portfolio, a set of programs meant to help the military detect and track airborne threats and relay that information across forces in near real time.
The award falls under National Security Space Launch Phase 3 Lane 1, the Space Force’s faster, commercial style procurement track for missions that do not require the military’s most demanding certification process. It is also the largest single order publicly disclosed under that program so far, and the first task order issued since the Space Force nearly tripled Lane 1’s contract ceiling from $5.6 billion to $17 billion on July 17.
SpaceX to become America’s Military data backbone for missiles, drones, and warfighters
Eric Zarybnisky, the Space Force’s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space access, said the entire process, from identifying the requirement to signing the contract, took about two months, including a month set aside for companies to prepare proposals.
SpaceX is not just launching these satellites. It already holds the contracts to build two of the programs within the same portfolio, $4.16 billion for the Space Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator system and $2.29 billion for the Space Data Network Backbone, which Teslarati covered in May. That means SpaceX is now responsible for both building key pieces of the military’s next generation sensing network and getting them into orbit.
With this latest award, SpaceX’s Pentagon contract total for 2026 alone tops $8 billion, adding to a defense portfolio that already includes the Golden Dome missile defense software group SpaceX joined in April and a string of GPS launches it inherited after ULA’s Vulcan rocket ran into a booster anomaly, which we detailed in March.
Lane 1’s vendor pool technically includes seven companies: SpaceX, ULA, Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Stoke Space, Impulse Space, and Relativity Space. In practice, SpaceX remains the only provider with the combination of launch cadence, flight proven Falcon 9 hardware, and West Coast infrastructure to support a campaign requiring roughly one Vandenberg launch a month for the next year and a half.
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Some lawmakers have flagged the growing concentration of national security launches with one company as a risk worth watching. For now, the Space Force keeps backing SpaceX, with it being the company that shows up ready to launch.
Elon Musk shed two new bits of detail on Starship following its 13th test launch, which was an overwhelming success.
SpaceX launched Starship for the 13th time last Friday after two delays: one on Monday when several Raptor engines did not ignite, and another on Thursday due to unfavorable weather conditions in Starbase, Texas.
The launch was overwhelmingly successful. SpaceX was able to complete a necessary test of the heat shield tiles by increasing the acceleration of Starship from launch throughout the flight; 20 Starlink v3 satellites were released with no issue; the Super Heavy Booster landed safely in the Gulf of America, Ship successfully reignited engines while in space; and it also splashed down without incident in the Indian Ocean.
SpaceX Starship just nailed something it’s never done before
Nevertheless, more details are coming out about Starship, and Musk is doing the talking.
Starship Will Be Retrieved in the Ocean
Musk revealed on Tuesday night that Starship would be recovered by a ship in the Indian Ocean. SpaceX routinely tries to recover Starship after splashdown in an effort to find out more about the flight by examining the spacecraft afterward.
We’re sending a ship out to recover Starship https://t.co/fUqUZTITO9
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 28, 2026
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This helps engineers find out more about why things might have happened, allows them to examine any potential damage or anomalies that might have occurred, and increases the chances of an even more successful flight next time thanks to the additional information recovered.
Ship Could Have Been Caught by Tower Arms, Musk claims
Musk has already indicated that SpaceX will plan to attempt a catch of Starship with the 14th test flight. While this would be a major accomplishment, it would be an expected next step, considering the fact that the Super Heavy Booster has already been caught by the chopsticks on numerous occasions.
The ship landing was precise, meaning that it would have been caught by the tower arms https://t.co/6nbNrRfX9P
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 29, 2026
A ship catch would be a great indication of where SpaceX stands in terms of reusability and launch cadence. A successful catch with relatively no incidents would be a good sign that SpaceX is nearing a more frequent launch of Starship, but also that the reusability of the massive rocket would be something many would expect in the near future.
It is a necessity to make life multiplanetary.
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Tesla just built it 10 millionth car
SpaceX scores another massive Pentagon deal to support military satellites
