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Tesla’s ‘Roadrunner’ facility gets a neighbor working on tech beyond the million-mile battery
As the wait for Tesla’s Battery Day continues, more and more speculations are abounding about what the electric car maker might reveal during the highly-anticipated event. Elon Musk has stated that Battery Day’s announcements will be mind-blowing, and based on apparent clues recently observed by the Tesla community, it appears that the CEO may be right on the money.
Recent reports have indicated that Amprius, a battery company currently working on silicon nanowire tech, recently relocated its headquarters to a site that’s just a few hundred feet away from Tesla’s Roadrunner battery facility in Kato Road, Fremont. Considering the firm’s focus, its new headquarters’ rather convenient location, and Elon Musk’s previous references to the use of silicon in batteries, there seems to be a fair chance that Amprius’ move to Fremont may be more than a coincidence.
Amprius notes that it is working on creating silicon nanowires for battery anodes that dramatically improve battery weight and density. The company’s website notes that silicon generally has about 10x the capacity of graphite (carbon), but it has a big drawback in the way that it swells when it’s charged, causing the silicon to fracture. To address this, Amprius utilizes silicon nanowires, which keeps the silicon from fracturing and breaking apart even when it swells.
As noted by EV enthusiast and YouTube host Driving Delta, Elon Musk himself appears to be teasing the use of advanced silicon tech on Twitter last month. In one of his posts, Musk shared some lyrics of the song “Lithium” by Nirvana, whose refrain includes sections that state “I’m not gonna crack.” Granted, Musk may simply be trolling the Tesla community with his posts, but it should be noted that he also talked about the increasing use of silicon anodes five years ago.
“We’re shifting the cell chemistry for the upgrade battery pack to partially use silicon in the anode. This is just a sort of baby step in the direction of using silicon in the anode. We’re still primarily using synthetic graphite, but over time, we’ll be using increasing amounts of silicon in the anode,” Musk noted during a 2015 conference call.
As noted by Amprius’ on its website, the use of 100% silicon paves the way for batteries with the highest energy density, perhaps even at the 500 Wh/kg level. That’s enough to start exploring electric VTOL projects, a topic that Elon Musk has admitted is something that truly interests him. That being said, Professor in Energy Materials and Technologies Ying Shirley Meng, who has made significant contributions to Maxwell Technologies’ battery tech herself, believes that challenges still remain in the use of silicon nanowires.
“We should pay attention to the cost per kg. Even (if) those nanowires work (which I doubt), to produce consistent quality in metric ton scale at 10$ per kg it will be sci-fi for now,” she noted.
Elon Musk, for his part, recently stated that the technology that could allow 400 Wh/kg with a high life cycle and volume production is not too far away. Musk gave a rough timeframe for the technology, stating that such milestones could be achieved in about three to four years.
Tesla’s Battery Day event is expected to introduce the company’s next-generation lithium-ion cells, though speculations suggest that these batteries — which are expected to last a million miles — are based largely on Maxwell Technologies’ dry electrode tech. Maxwell itself has previously noted that it could offer batteries with 300 Wh/kg while stating that it had also identified a path to 500 Wh/kg. With this in mind, it appears that Tesla may already be setting the stage for cells that will likely go even beyond the million-mile battery.
Granted, Amprius’ move to Fremont may be unconnected to Tesla. That being said, the two companies’ goals to align with each other, and Elon Musk’s own references to the use of silicon suggests that Tesla will likely get a lot of value from Amprius’ tech. If speculations prove true, the path to batteries that go even further than the million-mile mark may be feasible in the near future. Such innovations are key to Tesla’s goal of accelerating the transition to sustainable energy, after all.
Watch these recent takes on the Amprius rumors in the videos below.
Tesla has initiated Cybertruck deliveries in a new region for the first time, as the all-electric pickup has officially made its way to the United Arab Emirates, marking the newest territory to receive the polarizing truck.
Tesla launched orders for the Cybertruck in the Middle East back in September 2025, just months after the company confirmed that it planned to launch the pickup in the region, which happened in April.
I took a Tesla Cybertruck weekend Demo Drive – Here’s what I learned
By early October, Tesla launched the Cybertruck configurator in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, with pricing starting at around AED 404,900, or about $110,000 for the Dual Motor configuration.
This decision positioned the Gulf states as key early international markets, and Tesla was hoping to get the Cybertruck outside of North America for the first time, as it has still been tough to launch in other popular EV markets, like Europe and Asia.
By late 2025, Tesla had pushed delivery timelines slightly and aimed for an early 2026 delivery launch in the Middle East. The first official customer deliveries started this month, and a notable handover event occurred in Dubai’s Al Marmoom desert area, featuring a light and fire show.
Around 63 Cybertrucks made their way to customers during the event:
First @cybertruck deliveries in the UAE 🇦🇪 pic.twitter.com/sN2rAxppUA
— Tesla Europe & Middle East (@teslaeurope) January 22, 2026
As of this month, the Cybertruck still remains available for configuration on Tesla’s websites for the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other Middle Eastern countries like Jordan and Israel. Deliveries are rolling out progressively, with the UAE leading as the first to see hands-on customer events.
In other markets, most notably Europe, there are still plenty of regulatory hurdles that Tesla is hoping to work through, but they may never be resolved. The issues come from the unique design features that conflict with the European Union’s (EU) stringent safety standards.
These standards include pedestrian protection regulations, which require vehicles to minimize injury risks in collisions. However, the Cybertruck features sharp edges and an ultra-hard stainless steel exoskeleton, and its rigid structure is seen as non-compliant with the EU’s list of preferred designs.
The vehicle’s gross weight is also above the 3.5-tonne threshold for standard vehicles, which has prompted Tesla to consider a more compact design. However, the company’s focus on autonomy and Robotaxi has likely pushed that out of the realm of possibility.
For now, Tesla will work with the governments that want it to succeed in their region, and the Middle East has been a great partner to the company with the launch of the Cybertruck.
Tesla has officially launched public Robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas, without a Safety Monitor in the vehicle, marking the first time the company has removed anyone from the vehicle other than the rider.
The Safety Monitor has been present in Tesla Robotaxis in Austin since its launch last June, maintaining safety for passengers and other vehicles, and was placed in the passenger’s seat.
Tesla planned to remove the Safety Monitor at the end of 2025, but it was not quite ready to do so. Now, in January, riders are officially reporting that they are able to hail a ride from a Model Y Robotaxi without anyone in the vehicle:
I am in a robotaxi without safety monitor pic.twitter.com/fzHu385oIb
— TSLA99T (@Tsla99T) January 22, 2026
Tesla started testing this internally late last year and had several employees show that they were riding in the vehicle without anyone else there to intervene in case of an emergency.
Tesla has now expanded that program to the public. It is not active in the entire fleet, but there are a “few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors,” Ashok Elluswamy said:
Robotaxi rides without any safety monitors are now publicly available in Austin.
Starting with a few unsupervised vehicles mixed in with the broader robotaxi fleet with safety monitors, and the ratio will increase over time. https://t.co/ShMpZjefwB
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) January 22, 2026
Tesla Robotaxi goes driverless as Musk confirms Safety Monitor removal testing
The Robotaxi program also operates in the California Bay Area, where the fleet is much larger, but Safety Monitors are placed in the driver’s seat and utilize Full Self-Driving, so it is essentially the same as an Uber driver using a Tesla with FSD.
In Austin, the removal of Safety Monitors marks a substantial achievement for Tesla moving forward. Now that it has enough confidence to remove Safety Monitors from Robotaxis altogether, there are nearly unlimited options for the company in terms of expansion.
While it is hoping to launch the ride-hailing service in more cities across the U.S. this year, this is a much larger development than expansion, at least for now, as it is the first time it is performing driverless rides in Robotaxi anywhere in the world for the public to enjoy.
Tesla has scheduled its Earnings Call for Q4 and Full Year 2025 for next Wednesday, January 28, at 5:30 p.m. EST, and investors are already preparing to get some answers from executives regarding a wide variety of topics.
The company accepts several questions from retail investors through the platform Say, which then allows shareholders to vote on the best questions.
Tesla does not answer anything regarding future product releases, but they are willing to shed light on current timelines, progress of certain projects, and other plans.
There are five questions that range over a variety of topics, including SpaceX, Full Self-Driving, Robotaxi, and Optimus, which are currently in the lead to be asked and potentially answered by Elon Musk and other Tesla executives:
- You once said: Loyalty deserves loyalty. Will long-term Tesla shareholders still be prioritized if SpaceX does an IPO?
- Our Take – With a lot of speculation regarding an incoming SpaceX IPO, Tesla investors, especially long-term ones, should be able to benefit from an early opportunity to purchase shares. This has been discussed endlessly over the past year, and we must be getting close to it.
- When is FSD going to be 100% unsupervised?
- Our Take – Musk said today that this is essentially a solved problem, and it could be available in the U.S. by the end of this year.
- What is the current bottleneck to increase Robotaxi deployment & personal use unsupervised FSD? The safety/performance of the most recent models or people to monitor robots, robotaxis, in-car, or remotely? Or something else?
- Our Take – The bottleneck seems to be based on data, which Musk said Tesla needs 10 billion miles of data to achieve unsupervised FSD. Once that happens, regulatory issues will be what hold things up from moving forward.
- Regarding Optimus, could you share the current number of units deployed in Tesla factories and actively performing production tasks? What specific roles or operations are they handling, and how has their integration impacted factory efficiency or output?
- Our Take – Optimus is going to have a larger role in factories moving forward, and later this year, they will have larger responsibilities.
- Can you please tie purchased FSD to our owner accounts vs. locked to the car? This will help us enjoy it in any Tesla we drive/buy and reward us for hanging in so long, some of us since 2017.
- Our Take – This is a good one and should get us some additional information on the FSD transfer plans and Subscription-only model that Tesla will adopt soon.
Tesla will have its Earnings Call on Wednesday, January 28.
Tesla begins Cybertruck deliveries in a new region for the first time
BREAKING: Tesla launches public Robotaxi rides in Austin with no Safety Monitor
