News
Toyota, Stellantis, Ford, and other OEMs begin serious battery production push
It seems like legacy automakers, including Toyota, Stellantis, Ford, and General Motors, are starting to embrace the EV transition. Detroit’s Big 3 and Toyota all announced investments in battery plants these last few weeks. These indicate that veteran automakers are taking a serious step toward mass electric vehicle production.
Toyota’s US Battery Plant
On Monday, Toyota announced plans to invest $3.4 billion in battery development and production within the United States. The Japanese automaker plans to strengthen its position in North America with the investment, including a $1.3 billion EV battery plant to produce in-house cells under a new company.
The battery facility will initially produce batteries for hybrids. It will work with Toyota Tsusho Corporation, which has a Metals Division that focuses on vehicle weight reduction and electrification functionalities. Toyota expects the battery plant to start production in 2025 and expand through 2031, offering about 1,750 jobs.
Stellantis & LG’s Partnership
On the same day Toyota announced its North American investment, Stellantis made one of its own. In a press release, Stellantis announced a joint venture with LG Energy Solution to produce lithium-ion batteries in North America. The automaker plans to start building a new battery plant by Q1 2024.
Stellantis expects its new battery plant to have an annual production capacity of 40 GWh. The cells produced at the plant will supply Stellantis assembly plants in the United States, Canada, and Mexico to produce electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids.
The remaining two automakers that make up the Detroit 3—Ford and General Motors—announced battery investment plans a few weeks before Stellantis.
Ford plans to invest $11.4 billion in electric vehicle production, and most of the investment will go towards battery development. Along with SK Innovation, the legacy automaker plans to invest in three battery plants in Tennessee and Kentucky.
Meanwhile, General Motors announced it would be building a battery cell research and innovation facility in Michigan called the Wallace Battery Cell Innovation Center. The facility is already under construction. GM expects the center to be entirely built by mid-2022.
Legacy auto and the EV transition
The announcements mentioned above are a significant step for legacy OEMs in terms of the EV transition. It was only recently that traditional automakers even took the electric vehicle market seriously. Even now, some automakers are unsure about the future of EVs in the global car market.
“All of us are trying to get a fix on how customers will accept electric vehicles,” said Chris Reynolds, chief administrative officer for Toyota in North America, to The Associated Press. “We don’t know for sure, but we have to be ready.”
However, consumers are showing more interest in new energy vehicles. According to consulting firm Alix Partners, EV sales could increase by 11% in 2025 and 24% in 2030. Currently, electric vehicles sales make up only ~4.8% of about 80 million new vehicles sales worldwide, based on LMC Automotive research.
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Elon Musk
SpaceX pursues 5G-level connectivity with Starlink Mobile V2 expansion
SpaceX noted that the upcoming Starlink V2 satellites will deliver up to 100 times the data density of the current first-generation system.
SpaceX has previewed a major upgrade to Starlink Mobile, outlining next-generation satellites that aim to deliver significantly higher capacity and full 5G-level connectivity directly to mobile phones.
The update comes as Starlink rebrands its Direct-to-Cell service to Starlink Mobile, positioning the platform as a scalable satellite-to-mobile solution that’s integrated with global telecom partners.
SpaceX noted that the upcoming Starlink V2 satellites will deliver up to 100 times the data density of the current first-generation system. The company also noted that the new V2 satellites are designed to provide significantly higher throughput capability compared to its current iteration.
“The next generation of Starlink Mobile satellites – V2 – will deliver full cellular coverage to places never thought possible via the highest performing satellite-to-mobile network ever built.
“Driven by custom SpaceX-designed silicon and phased array antennas, the satellites will support thousands of spatial beams and higher bandwidth capability, enabling around 20x the throughput capability as compared to a first-generation satellite,” SpaceX wrote in its official Starlink Mobile page.
Thanks to the higher bandwidth of Starlink Mobile, users should be able to stream, browse the internet, use high-speed apps, and enjoy voice services comparable to terrestrial cellular networks.
In most environments, Starlink says the upgraded system will enable full 5G cellular connectivity with a user experience similar to existing ground-based networks.
The satellites function as “cell towers in space,” using advanced phased-array antennas and laser interlinks to integrate with terrestrial infrastructure in a roaming-like architecture.
“Starlink Mobile works with existing LTE phones wherever you can see the sky. The satellites have an antenna that acts like a cellphone tower in space, the most advanced phased array antennas in the world that connect seamlessly over lasers to any point in the globe, allowing network integration similar to a standard roaming partner,” SpaceX wrote.
Starlink Mobile currently operates with approximately 650 satellites in low-Earth orbit and is active across more than 32 countries, representing over 1.7 billion people through partnerships with mobile network operators. Starlink Mobile’s current partnerships span North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Oceania, allowing reciprocal access across participating nations.
News
Tesla FSD (Supervised) fleet passes 8.4 billion cumulative miles
The figure appears on Tesla’s official safety page, which tracks performance data for FSD (Supervised) and other safety technologies.
Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system has now surpassed 8.4 billion cumulative miles.
The figure appears on Tesla’s official safety page, which tracks performance data for FSD (Supervised) and other safety technologies.
Tesla has long emphasized that large-scale real-world data is central to improving its neural network-based approach to autonomy. Each mile driven with FSD (Supervised) engaged contributes additional edge cases and scenario training for the system.

The milestone also brings Tesla closer to a benchmark previously outlined by CEO Elon Musk. Musk has stated that roughly 10 billion miles of training data may be needed to achieve safe unsupervised self-driving at scale, citing the “long tail” of rare but complex driving situations that must be learned through experience.
The growth curve of FSD Supervised’s cumulative miles over the past five years has been notable.
As noted in data shared by Tesla watcher Sawyer Merritt, annual FSD (Supervised) miles have increased from roughly 6 million in 2021 to 80 million in 2022, 670 million in 2023, 2.25 billion in 2024, and 4.25 billion in 2025. In just the first 50 days of 2026, Tesla owners logged another 1 billion miles.
At the current pace, the fleet is trending towards hitting about 10 billion FSD Supervised miles this year. The increase has been driven by Tesla’s growing vehicle fleet, periodic free trials, and expanding Robotaxi operations, among others.
With the fleet now past 8.4 billion cumulative miles, Tesla’s supervised system is approaching that threshold, even as regulatory approval for fully unsupervised deployment remains subject to further validation and oversight.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk fires back after Wikipedia co-founder claims neutrality and dubs Grokipedia “ridiculous”
Musk’s response to Wales’ comments, which were posted on social media platform X, was short and direct: “Famous last words.”
Elon Musk fired back at Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales after the longtime online encyclopedia leader dismissed xAI’s new AI-powered alternative, Grokipedia, as a “ridiculous” idea that is bound to fail.
Musk’s response to Wales’ comments, which were posted on social media platform X, was short and direct: “Famous last words.”
Wales made the comments while answering questions about Wikipedia’s neutrality. According to Wales, Wikipedia prides itself on neutrality.
“One of our core values at Wikipedia is neutrality. A neutral point of view is non-negotiable. It’s in the community, unquestioned… The idea that we’ve become somehow ‘Wokepidea’ is just not true,” Wales said.
When asked about potential competition from Grokipedia, Wales downplayed the situation. “There is no competition. I don’t know if anyone uses Grokipedia. I think it is a ridiculous idea that will never work,” Wales wrote.
After Grokipedia went live, Larry Sanger, also a co-founder of Wikipedia, wrote on X that his initial impression of the AI-powered Wikipedia alternative was “very OK.”
“My initial impression, looking at my own article and poking around here and there, is that Grokipedia is very OK. The jury’s still out as to whether it’s actually better than Wikipedia. But at this point I would have to say ‘maybe!’” Sanger stated.
Musk responded to Sanger’s assessment by saying it was “accurate.” In a separate post, he added that even in its V0.1 form, Grokipedia was already better than Wikipedia.
During a past appearance on the Tucker Carlson Show, Sanger argued that Wikipedia has drifted from its original vision, citing concerns about how its “Reliable sources/Perennial sources” framework categorizes publications by perceived credibility. As per Sanger, Wikipedia’s “Reliable sources/Perennial sources” list leans heavily left, with conservative publications getting effectively blacklisted in favor of their more liberal counterparts.
As of writing, Grokipedia has reportedly surpassed 80% of English Wikipedia’s article count.