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Shares of Tesla Inc. are enjoying a premarket upswing on Friday as they head into their first trading day of 2026. The rising stock price (Nasdaq: TSLA) comes despite low expectations for the EV maker’s fourth-quarter 2025 deliveries, which are expected to show a significant decline when compared to the previous quarter. Here’s what you need to know: Tesla stock is starting 2026 on a high note In premarket trading on Friday, shares of Tesla were up around 2% as of this writing. The stock has been on an upswing for the last several months since CEO Elon Musk stepped back from his controversial job-slashing activities at the Department of Government Efficienc…

It’s been another bad week for Tesla shares so far. After closing down again yesterday, as of the time of this writing, TSLA shares are down over 5% in early morning trading on Tuesday. The stock’s decline this week comes after the company shed nearly 15% of its value in a single day last week. Much of Tesla’s recent stock declines have been attributed to the public souring of the company as its CEO, Elon Musk, has become increasingly involved in politics in both America and Europe. Since Musk’s political engagements, including his role in the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the United States and his support of the far-right party Alternative for German…

On Wednesday, October 22, Tesla released its third-quarter earnings with a side of begging from CEO Elon Musk. The report and subsequent investors’ call was pretty standard. Tesla announced $28.1 billion in revenue, a 12% increase year-over-year (YOY) from $25.2 billion. A majority of Tesla’s revenue came, unsurprisingly, from automotive sales, which grew 6% YOY to $21.2 billion. Quarter three was the last push for U.S. customers to buy Tesla vehicles before the federal EV tax credit expired. However, it wasn’t enough. Tesla failed to meet Wall Street’s predicted $26.4 billion in total revenue, according to consensus estimates cited by CNBC. Its reported ear…

Too late. Too expensive. Too bland. Too antiquated. Too much of the same. There are just too many toos when it comes to Tesla’s new “cheap” cars, which the company announced on Oct. 7. Its highly anticipated “affordable models” are just stripped-down Model 3 and Model Y variants that come in at a more expensive price point than the current 2025 models. Some marketing genius labeled them as “Standard,” but judging the cars against cheaper, better models from automakers around the world, Tesla’s newest offerings can’t even claim that benign adjective. The truth is, these cars are terrible news for the company. With its reputation in tatters thanks to Musk’s bra…

“Mad Max mode” may sound like something out of a video game, but it is a real-life setting for cars currently plying America’s streets. And it poses genuine danger. In an homage to the main character from George Miller’s dystopian 1979 film and its sequels, originally portrayed by current The President supporter Mel Gibson, Tesla created Mad Max mode as an option for vehicles equipped with its “Full-Self Driving” (FSD) system. The Mad Max icon is a mustachioed smiley face wearing a cowboy hat, bearing less of a resemblance to the film’s titular vigilante than to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal. (Warner Bros., which released the films, has not filed suit.) De…

Greetings, salutations, and my thanks—as always—for reading Fast Company’s Plugged In. Me: “Are you here just to monitor for safety?” Guy sitting in the driver’s seat of the Tesla Model Y I’m riding in: “I can’t specify.” That was the extent of the conversation during a recent trip I took using Tesla’s Robotaxi service. I was curious why the car that picked me up had a human in it: After all, Tesla bills its service as “the future of autonomy,” and the car did, in fact, drive itself for the entirety of my 4.5-mile journey. But I didn’t get any answers from this guy—or Tesla the corporate entity, which prides itself on ignoring the media and didn’t reply to my …

Tesla’s sales of its China-made electric vehicles dropped 49.2% in February from a year earlier to 30,688 cars, the lowest since August 2022, as the U.S. automaker faces pressure from Chinese rivals in a relentless smart EV price war. Tesla, which makes its Model 3 and Model Y vehicles in China, sold 93,926 Chinese-made vehicles worldwide in the first two months, down 28.7% year-on-year, according to data from the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA). January-February sales were distorted by the Lunar New Year holiday shifting from February last year to late January this year and due to a partial suspension of Model Y production for upgrade work. Still, Chin…

We’ve known since launch that the Cybertruck is a flop. Sales have been residual after they peaked at 5,175 units registered in July 2024, gradually falling to just 2,000 units sold in April 2025. The dip has been so deep that the Boring Company would have a hard time reaching the bottom of its sales chart pit, which has totaled 46,000 units since production started in late 2023. Now we have learned that things are getting worse for Cybertruck owners: The Cybertruck has depreciated by 45% after only one year, according to Car Guru. The depreciation is so bad that Tesla wasn’t accepting its own children as trade-ins until three days ago, as the Cybertruck Owners Club …

New Tesla car sales plunged across Europe in April even as sales of other electric vehicle brands soared, in part due to backlash against CEO Elon Musk’s support for Europe’s far-right politics, as well as growing competition from both European and Chinese EV carmakers, according to Reuters. Last month, Tesla’s new car sales in the U.K. and Germany tanked to their lowest in over two years, falling 62% and 46% year on year, respectively, even as demand in both countries rose for EVs. And in Spain, there was more bad news for Tesla, with new sales falling 36% in April 2025 compared with the the same month a year earlier, according to data from ANFAC, the Spanish Ass…

The U.S. auto safety regulator said on Wednesday it has opened a defect investigation into Tesla Model 3 compact sedans over concerns that emergency door release controls may not be easily accessible or clearly identifiable in an emergency. The Office of Defects Investigation said the probe covers an estimated 179,071 model year 2022 vehicles. The investigation was opened on December 23 after the agency received a defect petition alleging that the vehicles’ mechanical door release is hidden, unlabeled, and not intuitive to locate during emergencies. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company’s vehicles rely primarily on electro…

Tesla is getting into the rental car market. Drivers can now rent a Tesla in two Southern California locations—San Diego and Costa Mesa—for three to seven days, starting at $60 daily, according to Electrek. Tesla will be renting, not leasing its EVs, and plans to continue rolling out additional U.S. locations starting this month. Fast Company has reached out to Tesla for comment. The news comes as the electric vehicle (EV) maker looks for new ways to head off further declines in U.S. sales following the expiration of its federal tax credits, and comes amid continued backlash against the company for CEO Elon Musk’s role in the U.S. government, coupled with gro…

Lidar has long been considered the gold standard of self-driving technology. Most car companies use the technology, alongside cameras, radar, and AI, to fully assess a vehicles’ environment. Except for one notable exception: Tesla. Elon Musk has always had it out for Lidar, calling it a “a crutch,” “a loser’s technology” and “too expensive.” After experimenting with Lidar in early autonomous driving prototypes, Musk went a different direction. He ditched radar from Tesla’s production models in 2021, against the criteria of his own engineers, opting instead for his camera-based AI “Tesla Vision” system, which relies on cameras and AI alone. This has proven to be one o…

Pipeline safety regulators on Monday assessed their largest fine ever against the company responsible for leaking 1.1 million gallons of oil into the Gulf off the coast of Louisiana in 2023. But the $9.6 million fine isn’t likely to be a major burden for Third Coast to pay. This single fine is close to the normal total of $8 million to $10 million in all fines that the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration hands out each year. But Third Coast has a stake in some 1,900 miles of pipelines, and in September, the Houston-based company announced that it had secured a nearly $1 billion loan. Pipeline Safety Trust Executive Director Bill Caram said this spill …

PECOS, Texas—Extreme drought has diminished the flows of the Rio Grande and Pecos River, two of the most iconic waterways in Texas. The advocacy group American Rivers recently named the Lower Rio Grande one of its most endangered rivers, describing a “near-permanent human-induced megadrought threatening all life that depends on it.” On the Pecos River, there hasn’t been enough water to distribute to irrigation districts below the Red Bluff Reservoir in recent years. While farmers and cities face increasing water scarcity, oil and gas companies use billions of gallons of water from these rivers annually. An exclusive Inside Climate News analysis found that driller…

There’s not a more fairy-tale story in business. Nike CEO Elliott Hill began as an intern. Worked about every job imaginable at the company. Was passed up as a fave for the CEO role in 2020 when John Donahoe was brought in from Bain. And then, finding himself retired, and charter member of a silver fox baseball league in Austin, the swoosh boomeranged in from the clouds and Hill hitched a ride back to Beaverton. Now, after a year at the helm, Hill’s still dealing with Nike’s COVID hangover, brought about (at least in part) by Donahoe, who bolstered profits by selling waves of retro sneakers to people at home, all while reorganizing the core innovation team structure t…

Sahil Lavingia has had just three jobs over a 15-year career in tech. The first was as the second employee of Pinterest. The second was by founding the startup Gumroad, a successful, famously lean company that makes it easy for content creators to sell digital goods. The third? As an unpaid contractor supporting the Department of Veterans Affairs in a role facilitated by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a fact recently revealed in a Wired piece. One of these things is not like—and is far more controversial than—the others. But Lavingia, who chose not to speak to Wired but reached out to me after I drew attention to the piece, makes no excuses fo…

The Thanksgiving travel period is in full swing. Today is the last day before Thanksgiving, which means millions of Americans will be taking to the skies to reach their holiday destinations. And myriad more will also be traveling to airports to pick up their incoming loved ones. But on one of the busiest travel days of the year, flight delays and cancellations are inevitable. Here are some tools to track delays, along with information on which airports are currently experiencing the worst delays and cancellations. FAA says this is the busiest Thanksgiving travel period in 15 years Earlier this week, Fast Company reported on the American Automobile Association (…

The Thanksgiving holiday is nearly upon us, which means tens of millions of Americans will be traveling nationwide this week to visit their loved ones and celebrate around the dinner table with them on Thursday. The majority of that travel both to and from Turkey Day destinations is expected to kick off tomorrow, Tuesday, November 25, and run through Monday, December 1, which are the dates the American Automobile Association (AAA) defines as the 2025 Thanksgiving holiday period. It’s the busiest travel period for Americans, even beating out holidays like the Fourth of July and Christmas. While several million Americans are expected to make their Thanksgiving…