When Elon Musk unveiled the next-generation Tesla Roadster back in November 2017, he shocked the electric car community by revealing that the all-electric supercar has a range of 620 miles per charge. That’s 1,000 kilometers between charges. The figures are pretty much insane, even by today’s standards.
There are now indications that the next-generation Tesla Roadster will go even farther in between charges. Elon Musk mentioned this on Twitter, stating that the range of the upcoming vehicle will be “above 1,000 km.” Musk was responding to Ride the Lightning podcast host Ryan McCaffrey then, who was inquiring if the efficiencies recently introduced to the Model S and X will make it to the all-electric supercar.
A lot has happened since Tesla unveiled the next-generation Roadster. In true Silicon Valley fashion, Tesla never really stopped innovating since then, particularly in terms of its battery technology. Tesla Automotive President Jerome Guillen mentioned this in a previous interview, stating that the company’s batteries are never frozen since they are always in a state of improvement. The same is true for the vehicles’ other components, such as their electric motors.
These efficiencies and improvements were showcased recently when Tesla rolled out updates for the Model S and Model X, its two flagship vehicles. The premium sedan and SUV received several enhancements, such as better charging speeds and adaptive suspension. More importantly, the new Model S and Model X were given more range despite retaining the size of their battery packs. As revealed by Tesla, the 100 kWh variants of the Model S now have 370 miles of range per charge, while the 100 kWh versions of the far heavier Model X now has 325 miles of range.
These are incredibly impressive figures for Tesla’s vehicles. Rivian’s acclaimed R1T and R1S pickup and SUV are capable of going 400 miles per charge, but the vehicles require a 180 kWh battery pack. Motor Trend‘s test of the updated Model S showed that the 100 kWh sedan could probably reach the 400-mile mark in normal driving conditions. So how do these relate to the Roadster and its range? Well, the all-electric “hardcore smackdown to gasoline cars” is equipped with a 200 kWh pack.
Coupled with Tesla’s latest efficiencies, one can only imagine how much farther the Roadster could go with its monster battery. This range will likely be a big difference-maker for the next-gen Roadster, considering that conventional supercars are not exactly known for their fuel-efficiency. The Lamborghini Aventador gets up to 11 mpg in the city and 18 mpg on the highway, which gives it a range of around 428.4 miles of range on the highway and 261.8 miles in the city on a full tank. Higher-end cars like the Bugatti Veyron Grand Sport consume even more gas, only lasting 51 miles on a tank at top speed.
Tesla’s electric motors are expected to last a million miles, and Elon Musk himself has mentioned that the company is developing batteries that also last a million miles. With these, it appears that the next-gen Roadster might not only be an electric car that can outrun gasoline-powered supercars; it might be a vehicle that will far outlast the best supercars on the market as well.
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Elon Musk is, in many respects, one of the biggest and most influential figures in modern-day artificial intelligence.
Given that Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI are all looked at in their respective fields as leaders to an extent, each of them has a heavy influence on the future of AI, even though two of them are not thought of, at face value, as AI companies.
Musk has grand expectations for what is to come with AI, not only as a form of assistance to make human lives easier, but to make humans multiplanetary and solve some of the biggest issues that face us today. But even he is astounded by AI’s pace of progress.
He believes that in two years, AI will be so mind-blowing it might be unrecognizable.
Given that AI from 2 years ago feels so old that it should be in a museum, then obviously AI 2 years from now will be mind-blowing https://t.co/TcsKZ8o8OE
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 30, 2026
This progress can be seen in a variety of ways, but perhaps the most popular way people have shown AI’s progress, especially on social media, is through an incredibly arbitrary way of watching Will Smith eat spaghetti:
The progression in AI of Will Smith eating spaghetti (2023 – 2026) pic.twitter.com/VDv82mB5gs
— internet hall of fame (@InternetH0F) February 10, 2026
This is a great way to show people how AI is improving, especially from a perspective that examines how it can manufacture images and video from prompts. AI is an incredibly complex concept, however, and it goes much deeper than Will Smith eating Italian food.
Musk’s most widely adopted method of AI is likely Tesla Full Self-Driving, which impacts millions of people as they utilize it to increase safety with their travel. Musk has routinely pushed incredibly aggressive timelines for self-driving, especially unsupervised.
Perhaps this perspective is why he feels that things will be solved in a timeframe that is much more aggressive than most of us would think. Regardless, the progress of AI is moving fast, and it seems that Musk’s expectations for it could be high.
But if it can actually achieve full-length motion pictures and even more realistic production value, it will be hard to distinguish between reality and AI very soon.
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.
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.
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 has a crazy prediction about AI in two years
Tesla just built it 10 millionth car
