News
Tesla partner Panasonic shares details of Gigafactory Nevada’s major expansion
It appears that Tesla’s battery partner, Panasonic, is preparing for a massive ramp in Gigafactory Nevada, with an executive stating that the Japanese firm will be rolling out a major expansion of its operations on the site. These include the installation of new equipment and the hiring of more workers, which would allow Giga Nevada to produce battery cells at higher rates than before.
Panasonic’s expansion was recently confirmed by Carl Walton, vice president of production engineering and facilities for Panasonic Energy of North America, who shared the updates in a conversation with the Reno Gazette-Journal. According to Walton, some of the expansion should take place within the next few months, and it will likely continue all the way to next year.
“There’s some construction work that needs to take place over the next couple of months. Then early next year, we’ll be installing new equipment with production starting shortly after that,” he said.
The additional capacity will be coming from a 14th battery production line that Panasonic will be adding to Giga Nevada. Walton declined to give the exact number of GWh that the planned expansion will add to the facility’s capacity, though he noted that Panasonic expects the facility’s capacity to increase by about 10% with the upgrades in place. It should be noted that currently, Gigafactory Nevada has a capacity of about 35 GWh per year.
Walton further noted that with the expansion in place, Panasonic will be hiring more employees for Giga Nevada. That being said, the executive noted that the planned hiring ramp will only include about 100 new positions, hinting at the possibility of the 14th line being heavily automated. “The expansion will increase our staffing by about 100 positions. We’re excited to continue our investment in the Northern Nevada community and our people here,” Walton stated.
While speaking with the Gazette-Journal, Walton added that the expansion plans for the Tesla site will not be limited to the new battery cell production line, since existing lines will also be receiving significant upgrades. These upgrades, the exec explained, are necessary to accommodate a new generation of battery cells. “That work is starting now and we’ve already started to convert current equipment to be able to make those batteries for us,” Walton remarked.
Interestingly enough, the Panasonic executive provided some details about the next-generation battery cells that will be produced at Gigafactory Nevada. According to Walton, Panasonic’s latest battery improves energy density by 5% compared to its previous cells. The company also claimed that its new cells are 1.4x denser than competing iron phosphate batteries, making them the world’s highest energy density batteries. These improvements are but a step, however, as Panasonic is reportedly looking to increase the energy density of its battery cells by 20%.
Panasonic’s confirmation of its planned expansion in Gigafactory Nevada highlights the Japanese firm’s strong working relationship with Tesla. Last year, a report from the Nikkei Asian Review, which cited very little sources, alleged that Panasonic was freezing its expansion plans in Giga Nevada. Panasonic Chief Executive Officer Kazuhiro Tsuga also commented on Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s “unpredictable” behavior on Twitter. Musk, for his part, noted that Panasonic has been the reason behind Giga Nevada’s battery supply constraints.
With the recent statements from Walton, however, it appears that both companies now stand on much firmer ground. Panasonic’s expansion of its Gigafactory Nevada operations seems to be a strong strategy this year, after all, especially since its battery business in the Tesla facility has proven profitable even from January to March 2020, a time that is marred by the start of the pandemic. And with electric cars becoming more popular, the Japanese firm will likely have its hands full trying to meet the battery demand for Tesla’s electric vehicles.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk follows Trump’s lead, says a SpaceX name change is coming
Elon Musk says SpaceXAI will become SpaceXSI, marking its second rebrand in under three months.
Elon Musk wants to rename his artificial intelligence company again, less than three months after its last rebrand.
In a string of posts on X early Sunday morning, Musk wrote “No more AI,” followed by “SI” and “It’s better.” He then added, “SpaceX is a super intelligence company.” When a user asked whether SpaceXAI could become SpaceXSI, Musk replied, “Yes, we will make that change.”
The posts extend a terminology push that began at the White House last week. On September 29, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” and “AI” with “Super Intelligence” and “SI” on government websites, policy documents and press releases. The same day, Musk sat beside Trump as the heads of the largest AI companies signed a voluntary safety accord, as Teslarati reported. Speaking to reporters afterward, Musk caught himself mid sentence: “I think it is worth highlighting the positive benefits of A.I. … S.I., pardon me.”
Elon Musk and Trump are closer than ever, and Tesla could be the big winner
SpaceXSI would be the third name for the business since February. SpaceX acquired xAI on February 2 in a deal that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion. In May, Musk said xAI would be dissolved as a separate company, and on July 6 the division adopted the SpaceXAI name and a new logo that placed the xAI letters inside the SpaceX identity.
Musk gave no timeline. He did not say whether SpaceXSI would be a legal name change or a branding update, whether the @SpaceXAI handle on X would change, or how the shift would apply to products like Grok. The company had not issued a formal announcement as of Sunday morning.
The change would reach well beyond a chatbot. SpaceXAI now houses Grok, the X platform, the Colossus training clusters in Memphis and the coding tool Cursor, which SpaceX acquired in August. It also runs the orbital compute effort SpaceX is building around Nvidia hardware, which Musk said during the company’s first earnings call would be exclusive to Nvidia.
It’s unclear if rivals like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta and Nvidia have plans to also rename their companies or products. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has continued to say “AI” in public, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has gone partway, describing data centers as “super intelligence factories.”
The rename would also line up SpaceX’s AI branding with the federal government’s language as Musk takes on a new advisory role at the Pentagon, where he is helping lead the Project Meridian study on the future of warfare.
Starlink is launching a new beta path for ordinary property owners and local operators to turn a single Starlink kit into a small shared-access business for passive income.
Under the Starlink for Communities program, a host installs one dish and router setup in a location with nearby demand: an apartment complex, campground, rural crossroads, or event site. Neighbors or local users can buy short-term passes rather than full individual subscriptions, giving the Starlink provider a potential path to passive income.
Hour, day, and week passes cover one device. A month pass covers up to four. Starlink handles account creation, payments, access controls, and the satellite link itself. The host’s role is mainly placement, power, and basic upkeep, with earnings tied to each paid connection.
Big news! SpaceX is introducing a new @Starlink for Communities program that lets you earn money by providing Starlink internet to your neighbors or people nearby, who can pay for access by the hour, day, week, or month.
Neighbors pay for the access they need, while the person… pic.twitter.com/DtOUs0Ekvt
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) October 1, 2026
The model echoes the passive-income vision long attached to Tesla’s Robotaxi plans, and it seems like it’s something Musk has hinted toward in the past as he believes AI will make the need to work relatively optional. In both cases, the platform owns the hard parts of matching, billing, and network management, while an individual supplies a physical asset that sits idle much of the time.
A Starlink host’s dish can serve multiple nearby users without each household buying and installing its own terminal. A Tesla owner, under the stated Robotaxi concept, would leave a vehicle enrolled in the fleet during unused hours so the car generates rides while the owner is at work or asleep.
Both arrangements convert under-utilized hardware into a revenue stream. They also let the company scale coverage or capacity without owning every endpoint.
Differences are practical. A Starlink kit is a fixed, relatively low-cost terminal whose main constraint is local congestion and line-of-sight. A Tesla Robotaxi is a mobile, high-value vehicle whose earnings depend on demand density, utilization rates, insurance, cleaning, and charging.
Starlink’s program is already accepting host applications in multiple countries and describes the revenue split as ongoing. Tesla’s owner-network version remains more aspirational.
The company currently operates a limited company-controlled robotaxi service in select areas and has solicited interest from fleet buyers for Cybercab vehicles, while private Full Self-Driving owners have not yet been able to dispatch their own cars for paid rides at scale.
Tesla primes Cybercabs for 4K streaming and high bandwidth gaming with Starlink integration
Starlink is a satellite broadband service operated by SpaceX that uses a constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to deliver internet to locations where terrestrial broadband is slow, expensive, or absent. It has grown to millions of subscribers worldwide by selling direct residential, mobile, and enterprise terminals, and have become widely available at a wide array at retail locations like Target and Best Buy.
The Communities program extends that reach by letting hosts resell short bursts of capacity to people nearby, while also providing high-speed internet access to those who are simply around a Starlink user.
Tesla just upgraded its headlights through a software update, making them even better without any physical or hardware upgrade.
Tesla’s latest software update is quietly improving nighttime driving for a small number of owners. Version 2026.38 includes a new capability called Dynamic Headlight Leveling.
The feature automatically adjusts the aim of the low beams in response to driving conditions and nearby traffic, with the goal of giving the driver more usable light on the road while reducing glare for oncoming vehicles and traffic ahead.
2026.38 just dropped.
Model 3 gets Dynamic Headlight Leveling — low beams auto-aim around traffic for max visibility, less glare. Model 3 / Y (AMD HW3) also pick up sharper Tesla visuals + an enhanced park scene on the center display.
Legacy Intel cars get Supercharger Site… pic.twitter.com/45ac4AH6Vs
— Frunk To Trunk (@FrunkToTrunk) September 30, 2026
Unlike Tesla’s matrix high-beam system, which selectively dims individual LED segments to create shadows around other cars, Dynamic Headlight Leveling physically tilts the low-beam projectors. Internal motors respond to changes in vehicle pitch.
When the car accelerates hard, climbs a steep grade, or carries extra weight in the rear, the headlights can otherwise point higher than intended. The software counters that movement in real time so the beam stays aimed at the road surface rather than into the eyes of other drivers.
Early indications reveal the update is reaching a limited set of vehicles, including certain Model 3 and Cybertruck examples in the United States and the United Arab Emirates. The rollout does not appear tied to a single hardware revision, and Tesla has not published a broader schedule. It is simply a common waiting game until your car receives it.
The change arrives against a backdrop of wider complaints about headlight glare. Some earlier Model 3 and Model Y vehicles were the subject of an NHTSA recall related to excessive low-beam glare; the software adjustment offers a potential mitigation for cars equipped with the necessary leveling hardware. It does not replace adaptive high beams where those are already available, nor does it alter the basic low-beam pattern itself.
Instead, it keeps an existing beam pointed where it is most useful.
For drivers who have received the update, the system requires no new settings or user input. The headlights simply respond as road conditions and traffic change. As the feature reaches more vehicles, it adds another example of Tesla using over-the-air software to refine existing hardware rather than waiting for a new model year. Nighttime visibility and reduced glare for others are the practical results owners are expected to notice first.
Elon Musk follows Trump’s lead, says a SpaceX name change is coming
Starlink launches Communities Program for passive income through internet sharing
