Tesla Model 3
Tesla Gigafactory 3 starts coming to life as construction begins in China [Updated]
It’s been barely a week since Tesla CEO Elon Musk attended Gigafactory 3’s groundbreaking ceremony, but the location for the upcoming battery and electric car factory is now ablaze with life. As could be seen in footage taken on Thursday local Shanghai time, work on Gigafactory 3 is already going full throttle, as evidenced by the sheer number of heavy equipment operating on the site.
The recent footage of the upcoming facility was shared with Teslarati by Tesla owner-enthusiast Vincent Yu, who is currently visiting Shanghai. Taken using a drone, the short footage shows heavy machinery busily working on a section of Tesla’s 864,885-square meter plot of land in Shanghai’s Lingang Industrial Zone. Vincent also shared some images taken around the land on Twitter, showing trucks seemingly moving dirt from the site.
(Pictures) Tesla Shanghai Lingang Gigafactory 3- Jan 17th 2019 $TSLA #Tesla #China #TeslaChina #GF3 pic.twitter.com/Yp7mhfLGLM
— vincent (@vincent13031925) January 17, 2019
The recently shared footage from Gigafactory 3 is but a few seconds long, but it does prove one notable point — once the groundbreaking ceremony for the site was done, the construction of the facility would likely proceed at an extremely rapid pace. China’s construction workforce, after all, is known for its fast, almost surgically-precise buildouts. Just last year, for example, Elon Musk lauded the country’s workforce on Twitter, sharing a report about Chinese workers building a railway station in just nine hours. In his post, Musk noted that “China’s progress in advanced infrastructure is more than 100 times faster than the US.”
In a country such as China, though, these rapid buildouts are usually accomplished with support from the government. Fortunately for Tesla, this appears to be the case, as evidenced by the state’s warm reception to Elon Musk during his visits to the country, as well as the help the electric car maker has received in securing partial funding for Gigafactory 3 (to name a few).
Tesla, for one, was allowed to become the sole owner of Gigafactory 3 — something that was not granted to other automakers operating in the country. Reports have also emerged pointing to local banks competing to grant Tesla low-interest loans to fund part of Gigafactory 3’s construction. The government’s favor was evident when Tesla placed its bid on the 864,885-square meter plot of land in Shanghai’s Lingang Industrial Zone as well, as the company was able to secure the land without any rival bidders. Lastly, China Construction Third Engineering Bureau Co., Ltd, the company building the facility, is a subsidiary of China Construction, which is owned by the government.
This favor on Tesla was no more evident during Elon Musk’s recent visit to the country, though. After the groundbreaking ceremony for Gigafactory 3, Musk met with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing, who is widely considered as the country’s #2 after President Xi Jinping. During their talk, which was held at the Tower of Violet Light in Beijing — a place reserved for distinguished guests — Li openly listened to Musk’s ideas for Gigafactory 3, even the more ambitious ones such as making a facility that behaves similar to a “living being.” Li even lightly suggested that China can just issue Musk a “Chinese Green Card,” so that he can pursue his ideas in the country.
The timeframe for the construction of Gigafactory 3 is ambitious. Tesla aims to complete the initial construction of the facility by summer’s end. The company also intends to start the production of affordable Model 3 variants in the battery and electric car factory by the end of the year. Now that work has commenced on the factory’s site, though, Tesla’s aggressive timetable just became more feasible.
Watch the most recent footage of Gigafactory 3 in the video below.
Update: Vincent has provided a more extensive video from his recent drone flyover of Gigafactory 3.
Tesla headlights have caused a recall of over 20,000 of the company’s two most popular vehicles, the Model 3 and Model Y, due to the low-beam bulb exceeding the maximum allowed intensity according to federal standards.
Tesla initiated the recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) this morning, stating that the low-beam output “exceeds the maximum allowed intensity in the outer upper-right and outer upper-left areas of the 10U and 90U zone, as prescribed in FMVSS No. 108.”
Tesla sourced the impacted headlights from Marelli Automotive Lighting, a Mexico-based company. The recall impacts 2020-2023 Model Y vehicles and 2017-2023 Model 3 vehicles. It is estimated that every VIN in this recall is impacted by the defect.
🚨 Tesla is recalling 20,349 2020-23 Model Y vehicles and 2017-23 Model 3 vehicles due to an excessively bright headlamp low beam.
Currently, there is no remedy plan in place, as it is still being developed. pic.twitter.com/y34cIO2U0B
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 11, 2026
Typically, Tesla would remedy recalls of this nature through an Over-the-Air software update, which has been a major focus of criticism by the company and its supporters because the NHTSA still refers to it as a “recall,” even though it requires no action by the vehicle owner. The fix is shipped over the internet and downloaded to the car.
However, there appears to be a potentially different solution for this problem. Tesla has not developed a remedy for this issue, so it could potentially be on the way. The big issue appears to be the fact that these recalled lamps are out of production, and this is an old body style for both vehicles. The headlights and front-end designs are completely different.
Tesla switched to another supplier when the affected headlight design was discontinued. It plans to begin notifying owners of their remedy options by September 15.
Tesla filed a petition protesting the recall to fix the vehicles’ headlight issue, but the NHTSA denied it. Now, Tesla will come up with a solution to fix it.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
The Boring Company’s new tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units.
The Boring Company just introduced a new piece of hardware, and it runs on parts pulled straight from a Tesla showroom. Liner Truck 3, unveiled in a post from the tunneling company’s official X account, is an all electric vehicle built around Tesla Model 3 battery packs and drive units, purpose built to move concrete tunnel segments to the boring machine face without a single person underground.
Introducing Liner Truck 3 — our latest fully electric tunnel vehicle.
– Tesla Model 3 battery and drive units
– Transports 22,000+ lb of concrete segments to the boring machine
– 28 miles of range
– 12 mph max operating speed
– Remotely piloted from Global OCC in Texas, with… pic.twitter.com/XB7FgSXnpy— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) August 7, 2026
The job itself is unglamorous but critical. Each precast segment run weighs more than 22,000 pounds, roughly the load of a full cement mixer, and Liner Truck 3 hauls that weight repeatedly between the surface staging area and wherever the Prufrock machine happens to be cutting.
The Boring Company said Liner Truck 3 is piloted remotely out of its Global Operations Control Center in Texas, extending the Zero-People-In-Tunnel approach the company has spent years building toward. An earlier version of a ZPIT liner truck was already tested at the company’s Bastrop, Texas research tunnels, and a factory tour released last month showed an employee flying a fully loaded liner truck with a PlayStation controller. Liner Truck 3 looks like the production version of that same idea, cleaned up and pushed into daily use.
The timing lines up with a company digging in more places than it ever has before. The Boring Company now has multiple Prufrock machines active or arriving in Nashville, where Music City Loop construction has been accelerating since February, and its Vegas Loop network keeps adding tunnel mileage on a near monthly basis. Every one of those projects depends on getting concrete segments to the cutting face fast enough to keep the boring machine from idling, which is exactly the bottleneck Liner Truck 3 is designed to remove.
It also reinforces something Tesla owners have watched happen gradually across Musk’s companies: passenger car hardware finding a second life in heavy equipment. Model 3 drive units already move people through the Vegas Loop, and now the same components are hauling concrete underground in Nashville and wherever The Boring Company digs next. Whether that kind of component reuse extends further into TBC’s equipment lineup, or into other Musk owned industrial hardware, is the next thing worth watching.
Firmware
Tesla unlocks in-car web conferencing to extend Google Meet, Teams and beyond
Tesla’s Summer Update lets owners join Google Meet, Teams, and Discord calls via cabin camera.
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, which just began rolling out to customer vehicles, now links the built-in web browser with the in-cabin camera feed and microphone input, thereby letting owners join video calls on nearly any browser-based service instead of just Zoom.
The change appears in Tesla’s own release notes for software version 2026.26 under “Web Browser,” which states that the vehicle can now use its interior camera and cabin microphone when a website requests access, with permission granted the same way a desktop browser handles it. As NotATeslaApp notes, this feature opens the door to Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and other webcam-enabled sites to activate the in-car cabin-facing camera. The feed automatically crops and zooms to center the driver in frame.
Tesla has offered in-car video calling before, but only through a dedicated Zoom app that launched at the end of 2022, a stripped-down browser preloaded with Zoom’s own web client and gated behind Premium Connectivity. Opening the full browser to any camera-requesting site removes that walled garden. Elon Musk first called video conferencing “definitely a future feature” back in 2020, when the pandemic pushed remote meetings into daily life, so this update effectively finishes something Tesla has been promising for six years.
Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features
The feature keeps the same restrictions that applied to Zoom on Tesla vehicles. It only works while the car is parked; shifting into Drive disables the camera feed, according to the release notes. It is also limited to vehicles running Tesla’s AMD Ryzen infotainment hardware, meaning older Intel-based Model S and Model X units, along with early Model 3 and Model Y builds, don’t get it.
Turning the browser into a general entry point for the in-cabin camera, rather than routing everything through one local app, widens the number of third-party sites that can ask for access, even though Tesla’s permission prompt.
With the Summer update only days into its rollout, be sure to stay with us on TikTok and X to see the latest video demonstrations.
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