For Better Or Worse, GM Is Going Hybrid The Only Way It Knows How

Rio Tinto wants to put Australia’s cheap midday electricity to work at its Yarwun alumina refinery – by storing it in hot bricks and using that heat battery to make steam after the sun sets. The global mining giant and California-based Rondo Energy have started engineering and design work on a huge heat battery near Gladstone, Queensland. Rondo calls it Australia’s largest planned thermal energy storage project and says it would be a first for the alumina industry.

Tesla said today it will sell Cybercab to consumers by the end of this year, raising questions of what end users would do with a vehicle with no steering wheel and no self-driving software. During Tesla’s Q3 conference call today, a question was asked about when Tesla will deliver unsupervised FSD to customer cars.

Tesla now says unsupervised “Full Self-Driving” in customer-owned cars will arrive in Q2 2027. It’s the latest date on a promise Elon Musk has been making to FSD buyers for the better part of a decade. But there’s a catch. On Tesla’s Q3 2026 earnings call today, AI chief Ashok Elluswamy described it as owners adding their own vehicles to Tesla’s managed Robotaxi fleet, not owners getting a car that drives them anywhere they want to go.

Chris joined CarBuzz in June 2025. He's held positions at Ford and Motor1, and contributed to Autoblog, Car Throttle, Auto Trader, and many other motoring outlets during his 28-year career. Chris holds a BA in English from Western Michigan University and an AA in Journalism. Growing up in the 1980s in the shadow of Detroit, Chris didn't realize he was witnessing a turning point in automotive history. He just thought digital dashes and pop-up headlights were cool, and no car could ever be as awesome as KITT from Knight Rider. He also came from a car-crazy family, so when he graduated from college with English and Journalism degrees, he applied his communication talents to the wild world of cars.

Tesla published its third-quarter 2026 financial results this afternoon. Earlier in October, it reported its sales and deliveries for the three-month period, selling fewer cars than in the same quarter in 2025, yet it still beat analyst projections. Now we can see how those sales translate to the bottom line. Tesla brought in $28 billion in revenue in Q3, almost the same as in 2025. Automotive revenues were $20.6 billion, a 3 percent decrease year over year. Perhaps more troubling is the decline in revenue from solar panels and storage batteries—this line of business had been growing, but for Q3 revenue fell 16 percent year over year to $2.9 billion. Services and other revenues, though, which include parts and Supercharger use, grew by a third to $4.6 billion.

Fifty bucks for an organizer that sits in your console? Look, I’m involved with manufacturing, so I get why things cost what they do. That doesn’t make these costs any easier to swallow. That’s why I’m excited to see car makers providing custom-designed accessories for their cars that take advantage of the storage space already available, provide useful ways to carry cargo, or even give the owners some cool toys to go along with their new ride. What’s even better is that these companies are providing these goodies for free. Well, sort of free. You see, you have to 3D print them. Still, that’s hardly that big a deal anymore. If you don’t own a 3D printer, you probably know someone or someone’s brother who has one, or you can hit your local library, which may have a crafting space with such a device. Or maybe it’s time for you to get into 3D printing yourself – there are excellent options under $250.