Former Tesla co-founder JB Straubel’s battery recycling startup Redwood Materials announced recently that it had come to terms with Envision AESC for cell recycling efforts. After CNBC initially reported the partnership yesterday, Teslarati spoke to the battery recycling startup, indicating there are plenty of details that make the pairing ideal for the entire EV sector.
While Redwood’s most recent announcement sheds light on a partnership with AESC, it is not the only contributor to the batter recycling efforts that Straubel’s company is working on. With the conglomerate’s announcement, Redwood now works with the two largest battery manufacturing companies in North America. Along with AESC, Redwood is also working with Panasonic, Tesla’s supplier at its factory in Sparks, Nevada, known as the Tesla Gigafactory. While Envision AESC works out of Tennessee, Redwood has established two battery cell producers in separate regions of the United States, working on expanding its footprint of possible EV manufacturers who need assistance in responsibly disposing of their batteries.
Resuing battery materials will eliminate some criticism regarding mining, which can be hazardous to the environment. Ultimately, Redwood aims to give EV manufacturers the ability to reuse their materials, and it has gotten to the point that the difference between new and recycled materials is relatively “indistinguishable,” Straubel said.
However, Bill Williams, Envision AESC’s Director of Business Development, also chimed in on the partnership with Redwood. The two companies’ goals of sustainability and cost-effectiveness will help the development of the electric vehicle sector, along with the ongoing production of energy storage products that are becoming more popular.
Williams said:
“Envision AESC’s partnership with Redwood Materials will allow all production scrap from our US factory to be recycled, and, eventually, for Redwood to supply material for AESC. This circular supply chain supports Envision AESC’s deep commitment to sustainability and already creates substantial cost savings for Envision AESC that will be passed down to future electric vehicles and energy products.”
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Two Tesla Execs linked to advanced recycling startup Redwood Materials
Batteries from AESC’s facility in Smyrna, Tennessee, are being used to power electric buses, energy storage units, and the Nissan LEAF, among many other products, a Redwood spokesperson told Teslarati. Additionally, the material being received by Redwood from both the Tesla Gigafactory makes up for more than 1 GWh of material from Panasonic alone. This is ultimately fueled by the expansion of the Gigafactory, and the material received by Redwood will return to Panasonic and be put into new batteries, according to Redwood’s spokesperson.
Redwood will recycle all production scrap from any of its partners, including cathode and anode materials and cells or battery modules that don’t pass validation and are past the point of repair. The goal of its partnership with AESC is to produce material that could eventually be returned to the supplier as a part of a fully circular supply chain, eliminating the need for massive mining pushes or extensive contracts with battery material suppliers, the spokesperson added.
Redwood’s development of recycled goods will eventually turn the EV sector into an even more sustainable industry that could lead to the complete phase-out of combustion engines altogether. If batteries are sourced properly as the EV sector continues to grow, many of the cars on the road could contain recycled materials thanks to Redwood’s initiative, turning the already Earth-friendly EV sector into one of the most sustainable industries globally.
Elon Musk
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla confirmed HW3 vehicles cannot run unsupervised FSD, replacing its free upgrade promise with a discounted trade-in.
Tesla has officially confirmed that early vehicles with its Autopilot Hardware 3 (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving, while extending a path forward for legacy owners through a discounted trade-in program. The announcement came by way of Elon Musk in today’s Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call.
🚨 Our LIVE updates on the Tesla Earnings Call will take place here in a thread 🧵
Follow along below: pic.twitter.com/hzJeBitzJU
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
The history here matters. HW3 launched in April 2019, and Tesla sold Full Self-Driving packages to owners on the understanding that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. Some owners paid between $8,000 and $15,000 for FSD during that period. For years, as FSD’s AI models grew more demanding, HW3 vehicles fell progressively further behind, eventually landing on FSD v12.6 in January 2025 while AI4 vehicles moved to v13 and then v14. When Musk acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 simply could not reach unsupervised operation, and alluded to a difficult hardware retrofit.
The near-term offering is more concrete. Tesla’s head of Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed on today’s call that a V14-lite will be coming to HW3 vehicles in late June, bringing all the V14 features currently running on AI4 hardware. That is a meaningful software update for owners who have been frozen at v12.6 for over a year, and it represents genuine effort to keep older hardware relevant. Unsupervised FSD for vehicles is now targeted for Q4 2026 at the earliest, with Musk describing it as a gradual, geography-limited rollout.
For HW3 owners, the over-the-air V14-lite update is welcomed, and the discounted trade-in path at least acknowledges an old obligation. What happens next with the trade-in pricing will define how this chapter ultimately gets written. If Tesla prices the hardware path fairly, acknowledges what early adopters are owed, and delivers V14-lite on the June timeline it committed to today, it has a real opportunity to convert one of the longest-running sore subjects among early adopters into a loyalty story.
Elon Musk
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Tesla’s Optimus factory in Texas targets 10 million robots yearly, with 5.2 million square feet under construction.
Tesla’s Q1 2026 Update Letter, released today, confirms that first generation Optimus production lines are now well underway at its Fremont, California factory, with a pilot line targeting one million robots per year to start. Of bigger note is a shared aerial image of a large piece of land adjacent to Gigafactory Texas, that Tesla has prominently labeled “Optimus factory site preparation.”
Permit documents show Tesla is seeking to add over 5.2 million square feet of new building space to the Giga Texas North Campus by the end of 2026, at an estimated construction investment of $5 billion to $10 billion. The longer term production target for that facility is 10 million Optimus units per year. Giga Texas already sits on 2,500 acres with over 10 million square feet of existing factory floor, and the North Campus expansion is being built to support multiple projects, including the dedicated Optimus factory, the Terafab chip fabrication facility (a joint Tesla/SpaceX/xAI venture), a Cybercab test track, road infrastructure, and supporting facilities.
Credit: TESLA
Texas makes strategic sense beyond the existing infrastructure. The state’s tax structure, lower labor costs relative to California, and the proximity to Tesla’s AI training cluster Cortex 1 and 2, both located at Giga Texas and now totaling over 230,000 H100 equivalent GPUs, means the Optimus software stack and the factory producing the hardware will share the same campus. Tesla’s Q1 report also confirmed completion of the AI5 chip tape out in April, the inference processor designed specifically to power Optimus units in the field.
As Teslarati reported, the Texas facility is intended to house Optimus V4 production at full scale. Musk told the World Economic Forum in January that Tesla plans to sell Optimus to the public by end of 2027 at a price between $20,000 and $30,000, stating, “I think everyone on earth is going to have one and want one.” He has previously pegged long term demand for general purpose humanoid robots at over 20 billion units globally, citing both consumer and industrial use cases.
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 miss on vehicle deliveries for the first quarter, delivering 358,023 vehicles and building 408,386 cars during the three-month span.
As Tesla transitions more toward AI and sees itself as less of a car company, expectations for deliveries will begin to become less of a central point in the consensus of how the quarter is perceived.
Nevertheless, Tesla is leaning on its strong foundation as a car company to carry forward its AI ambitions. The first quarter is a good ground layer for the rest of the year.
Tesla Q1 2026 Earnings Results
Tesla’s Earnings Results are as follows:
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.41 Reported vs. $0.36 Expected
- Revenues – $22.387 billion vs. $22.35 billion Expected
- Free Cash Flow – $1.444 billion
- Profit – $4.72 billion
Tesla beat analyst expectations, so it will be interesting to see how the stock responds. IN the past, we’ve seen Tesla beat analyst expectations considerably, followed by a sharp drop in stock price.
On the same token, we’ve seen Tesla miss and the stock price go up the following trading session.
Tesla will hold its Q1 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.
Q1 2026 Earnings Call at 4:30pm CT https://t.co/pkYIaGJ32y
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 22, 2026
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
