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Will the Gigafactory put Tesla at odds with Panasonic?

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[avatar user=”nicolas@teslarati.com” size=”thumbnail” align=”right”]Yesterday’s future, now![/avatar]

Tesla Motors’ Gigafactory should send chills down the spines of most technology, alternative energy producers. The white elephant in the room with Tesla’s Gigafactory is where does this leave Panasonic, its battery supplier?

Tesla Motors sheds light on its Gigafactory

Tesla Motors sheds more information on its Gigafactory. For one thing, it plans to open it around 2017. In and of itself, this is important news, since Tesla and its partners are investing anywhere from $4 to $5 billion in this project. It will also spread out this investment through 2020. We can deduce the factory won’t be fully functional until that date. We also have more information as to how much Tesla will invest, around $2 billion, as per its statement. Click here for the PDF version.

Tesla is wasting no time, as usual, and plans to break ground this year with the manufacturing plant. The factory is stated to produce 500,000 battery packs for vehicles by 2020. While we assume these packs will go entirely into its electric vehicles (EV), nothing stops it from building it for other carmakers. It has already done so with Mercedes, who also partners with the company and holds some stakes in it. In fact, the Mercedes B Class electric car has a Tesla electric motor and battery pack powering it. It has also created the rolling platform for Toyota’s second generation RAV4 EV. To put this number into perspective, it is more than to the total amount of lithium batteries produced worldwide in 2013.

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Where does this leave Panasonic?

This is the unanswered question. Will Tesla alienate its current lithium-ion battery partner, Panasonic, or will Panasonic seek the opportunity to further its partnership with the EV juggernaut?

One thing is for certain, Tesla rarely suffers anyone standing in its way. You can either work with the company, or it will build a way to replace your product.

Stay tuned for more.

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Elon Musk’s X sees outage on Monday as users report issues

Monday’s outage follows a similar issue that befell the social media platform in mid-January.

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Credit: Linda Yaccarino/X

X experienced an outage on Monday morning, with tens of thousands of users reporting that the platform failed to load across both desktop and mobile. The disruption began around 8:02 a.m. ET, as per Downdetector data, and quickly escalated in the U.S. and U.K.

Monday’s outage follows a similar issue that befell the social media platform in mid-January.

Shortly after 8 a.m. ET, Downdetector showed a sharp rise in incident reports. At one point, U.S. complaints exceeded 40,000, while U.K. reports climbed past 6,000. Earlier in the outage, filings had already crossed 11,000 in the U.S. and 3,300 in the U.K., as noted in a TechRadar report. X users in other locations, such as the Philippines and Costa Rica, also reported similar issues.

Users attempting to access X were met with a “something went wrong” message. Feeds did not refresh, posts failed to appear, and both the social media platform’s app and web versions appeared affected by the issue. The outage struck during peak weekday usage, amplifying its visibility across regions worldwide.

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X has not issued an official explanation for the latest outage or confirmed what caused the service disruption. The scale of complaints drew comparisons to the platform’s major outage in November 2025, which resulted in users being met with “Internal server error / Error code 500” messages, as well as Cloudflare-related error notices.

The incident also comes just weeks after X experienced a similar downtime in mid-January. That outage seemed more notable, however, with more than 100,000 users reporting issues with the social media platform on Downdetector.

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New details emerge on The Boring Company’s Universal tunnel plans

The materials outline staffing, construction timelines, tunnel configuration, and operational details that were not previously public.

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Credit: Grok Imagine

Newly released bidding documents have shed light on how Elon Musk’s Boring Company plans to connect Universal Orlando Resort’s north campus to Universal Epic Universe. 

The materials outline staffing, construction timelines, tunnel configuration, and operational details that were not previously public about the planned Loop system.

The Shingle Creek Transit & Utility Community Development District voted Feb. 11 to begin contract negotiations with The Boring Company after ranking it the top bidder for the Universal Orlando transport project. Now, evaluation documents obtained by local news media reveal how the company intends to execute the project, according to Attraction Insight.

The proposal describes a twin-tunnel configuration, with one tunnel in each direction. It also noted that permitting, design, and construction could take roughly a year and a half once approvals are secured. The company indicated it could deploy multiple tunnel boring machines and install temporary support infrastructure, including muck storage pits and stormwater systems, during construction.

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Bid documents list eight internal specialists assigned to the project, including tunnel engineers, structural engineers, and tunnel boring machine experts. Six subcontractors would handle fire protection, communications, soil treatment, and concrete work.

The company stated it “has the necessary internally produced tunneling equipment and personnel immediately available to complete this project for the district as quickly as permits and approvals can be obtained.”

Operationally, the system would mirror the company’s Las Vegas Loop model, using Tesla vehicles to provide point-to-point transport rather than fixed-route buses. The proposal frames the concept as “on-demand, express transportation,” with vehicles dispatched as needed and capacity adjustable in real time.

Stations could be built underground or above ground with ramp access into tunnels. The documents also referenced potential future integration of a configurable Robovan for passengers and cargo, though capacity projections for the Orlando tunnels have not yet been disclosed.

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The proposal states that the Loop can integrate “easily into environmentally sensitive areas,” but it does not provide detailed mitigation plans for Central Florida’s high water table and limestone geology, which is susceptible to sinkholes. The company has stated that it intends to hire an Orlando-based geotechnical firm to evaluate soil conditions.

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Tesla Giga Berlin dispute against IG Metall union leads to investigation

As per a report from rbb24, police seized a laptop belonging to an IG Metall member at Tesla Giga Berlin on Tuesday afternoon.

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Credit: Tesla Manufacturing/X

German authorities have opened an investigation into an IG Metall union representative following allegations that a confidential works council meeting at Tesla’s Gigafactory Berlin was secretly recorded. The probe follows a criminal complaint filed by Tesla management last week.

As per a report from rbb24, police seized a laptop belonging to an IG Metall member at Tesla Giga Berlin on Tuesday afternoon. Prosecutors in Frankfurt (Oder) confirmed that an investigation is underway into a possible unauthorized audio recording of an internal works council meeting.

Under German law, recording a non-public meeting without consent may constitute a criminal offense.

Tesla stated that Gigafactory Berlin employees alerted management after allegedly discovering that an external union representative, who was attending the event as a guest, had recorded the session. Plant manager André Thierig stated in a post on X that the representative was “caught in action,” prompting the company to contact police and file a criminal complaint.

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The seized device is now part of the investigation, and authorities will determine whether any unlawful recording had indeed occurred.

IG Metall has denied the accusation. In comments to German media, representatives rejected Tesla’s claim and described the electric vehicle maker’s allegation as an election campaign tactic ahead of upcoming works council elections.

The election at Tesla’s Grünheide plant is scheduled for March 2–4, 2026, with about 11,000 employees being eligible to vote. Regular works council elections in Germany are held every four years between March and May.

The incident comes amid tensions between Tesla and organized labor in Germany. While works councils operate independently from unions, IG Metall has been active at the plant and has previously criticized Tesla’s labor practices. Authorities, for their part, have not yet announced whether charges will be filed, though the investigation remains ongoing.

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