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Tesla’s next-gen Roadster will have a rival when it enters production, and it’s German-bred
Just like the Model S and the Model 3, Tesla’s next-generation Roadster has the potential to disrupt an industry. In the case of the Roadster, this would be the supercar market — a segment dominated mainly by premium, high-performance vehicles from Europe. With its specs and its price, the Roadster would likely start making waves among supercar enthusiasts once it enters production sometime in 2020.
If recent reports from Germany are any indication, though, a legitimate rival to Tesla’s “hardcore smackdown” to gasoline cars would be waiting for it when it starts rolling off the production floor. In an announcement earlier this month, German automaker Audi noted that it would be bringing its next-generation PB18 e-tron all-electric supercar to low-volume production. With just around 50 units of the vehicle expected to be built, the PB18 e-tron would likely arrive at the market just in time, or even ahead, of the next-gen Tesla Roadster.
Audi’s PB18 e-tron supercar was unveiled last summer, with the German carmaker hyping the vehicle as a car equipped with the best technologies available today, such as an 800-volt charging system and solid-state batteries that can be fully charged in 15 minutes. At the recently-held Mission Zero Event in Amsterdam, Audi boss Bram Schot announced that the supercar, which was initially speculated to be a one-off prototype, would actually be entering low-volume production.
In a press release for the PB18 e-tron, Audi noted that the supercar would be equipped with three electric motors that deliver a power output of 150 kW to the front axle and 350 kW to the rear. Maximum output for the vehicle is 500 kW, though drivers can boost this to 570 kW during operation. Thanks to the electric motors’ combined torque of up to 830-newton meters (612.2 lb-ft), the German-bred electric supercar can accelerate from 0-60 mph in “scarcely more than 2 seconds.”
While certainly impressive, though, Audi’s upcoming all-electric supercar does fall short when compared to some of the next-generation Tesla Roadster’s specs. The Audi PB18 e-tron, for one, comes with a 95 kWh battery pack, which the company states will give the vehicle 500 km (310 miles) of range per charge. The next-generation Tesla Roadster, on the other hand, is equipped with a 200 kWh battery pack that gives the vehicle a range of 1000 km (620 miles) per charge. That said, Audi’s upcoming all-electric supercar is also capable of 350 kW charging, which should make up for the vehicle’s otherwise average range.
Tesla’s next-generation Roadster. (Photo: Tesla)
Performance figures aside, the Audi PB18 e-tron would likely be priced higher than the Tesla Roadster. With a limited production of just 50 vehicles, Audi could charge top dollar for its all-electric supercar. Thus, it would not be surprising if the PB18 e-tron ends up commanding a price closer to the Rimac C_Two (also a low-volume all-electric supercar priced at $2.1 million) than its Silicon Valley-bred rival. In this sense, the next-generation Tesla Roadster would still be far more attainable than the PB18 e-tron, considering the vehicle’s starting price of $200,000 for the base variant.
Elon Musk notes that the next-generation Tesla Roadster is a supercar designed to take away the halo effect that gas cars have in the performance segment. In classic Elon Musk form, though, the Tesla CEO has announced some pretty crazy ideas for the upcoming vehicle, including a “SpaceX package” that would allow the Roadster to have “hovering” abilities. The base version of the next-gen Tesla Roadster already boasts a 0-60 mph time of 1.9 seconds and a top speed above 250 mph. With the SpaceX package, the vehicle’s specs would likely look, quite literally, out of this world.
Watch Audi’s teaser for the PB18 e-tron supercar in the video below.
https://youtu.be/el-4dupoIWg
Elon Musk
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Elon Musk told investors Semi self-driving should start working by early 2027, per today’s earnings.
During Wednesday’s’ Tesla Q2 earnings call, an analyst asked Elon Musk when Tesla would look at autonomy for the Semi. His answer set a real timeline for the first time, noting that self-driving on the Tesla Semi is expected to start working “around the end of this year or early next year”.
Musk framed the delay as a matter of priority, not capability. Tesla’s self-driving team is currently focused on Model 3, Model Y, and Cybercab, the vehicles that make up the overwhelming majority of Tesla’s fleet. Since Semi trucks on the road remain a small fraction of that total even after the recent Nevada factory ramp, Musk said it made more sense to keep the software team’s attention on what he called “the march of nines of safety” for the higher volume vehicles first. Autonomous Semi development is “taking a bit of a backseat for the next six months or so,” he said, before adding that it “will definitely be working next year and in time for the scale-up to high production of the Tesla Semi.”
Tesla Semi’s official battery capacity leaked by California regulators
The timeline lines up with what’s already been showing up on public roads. In June, a Tesla Semi was spotted in Sunnyvale wearing a full validation rig, the same rooftop sensor array Tesla mounts on vehicles ahead of an FSD milestone.
A second unit was seen near Fremont days later with a matching camera suite and lens washers. Separately, Tesla analyst Nic Cruz Patane posted video this month of the production Semi’s exterior camera array, ten AI4 based units built directly into the truck rather than added later.
Tesla Semi AI4 cameras. The production version has 10 cameras on its exterior.
These trucks are designed to be autonomous. pic.twitter.com/GH3BamxIBQ
— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) April 14, 2026
Musk also gave the reason autonomy on the Semi matters in the first place, a persistent shortage of qualified truck drivers. “There is a really serious shortage of truckers,” he said on the call, framing a self-driving Semi as important both for addressing that shortage and for improving safety and comfort for the drivers running the truck today.
The timing also tracks with the Semi’s production reality. Tesla’s Q2 shareholder letter, dropped language promising the Semi would reach volume production this year. Musk pointed to 4680 battery cell output as the near-term constraint on Semi and Cybercab production. A software timeline landing in early 2027 gives Tesla’s autonomy team room to work while the hardware ramp catches up behind it.
It’s worth nothing that this isn’t necessarily a promise the Semi ships driverless next year. Musk’s own language, self-driving “working” by early 2027, describes internal validation catching up to hardware already riding on every production truck, not a public unsupervised rollout.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.
This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.
Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
- Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
- Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
- Profit -$ 4.751B
Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.
Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.
In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.
Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q2 2026 Earnings Call https://t.co/zZS6ii2TWK
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Tesla is about to make parking in busy parking lots at businesses and other points of interest less stressful than ever by allowing drivers more control over where they park and how, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X.
Tesla has been working to improve the parking performance of vehicles utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite, but now it is looking to add more customization, allowing drivers to choose the specific space they park in, but also potentially the orientation the car pulls into the spot:
It’s coming soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
Musk has reiterated on X twice over the past several weeks that Tesla is working to make things with the FSD suite based more on the driver’s specific preferences and behaviors that were seen in past drives.
Essentially, it sounds like if you tend to park away from a business to avoid other vehicles, Tesla FSD will soon recognize that preference of yours and start parking further away as well. Additionally, the prospect of assigned parking spaces has been something many owners have voiced concerns about.
Living in a community with assigned parking spaces makes using FSD incredibly difficult as it will rarely park in the correct spot when there are so many to choose from. This is also pertinent in work settings where there are sometimes assigned parking spaces.
The updates to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite in terms of listening to driver preferences with parking are also extending to routing. Tesla announced yesterday that with the release of its 2026 Summer Update, it was adding Automatic Navigation and Preferred Routes:
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
Tesla has always maintained the idea that any human input is bad input, and that, ideally, Tesla Full Self-Driving will always make the right decision. Of course, this is all in theory, but the issue is that so many of Tesla’s interventions have come because it does something that is not necessarily wrong, but perhaps not what the driver would prefer.
Taking these preferences into account will help Tesla alleviate some of the potentially unnecessary interventions that drivers perform.
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
