Tesla tops 40,000 Superchargers; new site to have four solar canopies

Tesla's Quartzsite Supercharger will have four solar canopies

Tesla

Tesla now has 40,000 Supercharger stations worldwide, and more are in the works, including a massive 88-stall facility in a small town in Arizona. @MarcoRPTesla, who has a knack for finding Supercharger plans, tweeted the detailed construction project. The drawings show 20 prefabricated Supercharger units, two trailer-friendly stalls, and four solar canopies.

Quartzsite, Arizona, with a population of 2,413, is the location of the huge Supercharging station. Incredibly, it is being built right across the road from a 36-stall Supercharger. So why is there now one Supercharger for every 20 people in Quartzsite? Interstate 10 runs through the small town, which is at the intersection of U.S. Route 95 and Arizona State Route 95 with I-10.

Tesla's Quartzsite Supercharger will have four solar canopies

Tesla

This location is approximately three and a half hours away from Las Vegas, Nevada, San Diego, California, and Los Angeles, California. It is also two hours from Phoenix, Arizona. Tourism is the main economic driver of the small town.

Tesla recently asked followers of its @TeslaCharging Twitter account to submit locations where Superchargers are needed. This location makes sense with the amount of traffic going through the area. It also has very little precipitation, which means those solar canopies will be powered up by the sun. That is another long-term vision of the company, to have solar and battery packs at Supercharging locations.

Also, the company plans to allow non-Teslas at its Supercharger locations. That alone will increase the demand at hubs like Quartzsite.

It’s hard to believe the Supercharger network was launched in 2012. A decade later, they are turning into a more common sight around the world. According to the company: Superchargers can add up to 200 miles (322 kilometres) of range in just 15 minutes.

In September, 420 Tesla projects were announced, including a 164-stall Supercharger hub on the I-5 corridor located in Coalinga, California. That will be the world’s largest Tesla Supercharger location. But that is nothing compared to reports of the largest EV charging location in the world, located in China’s hi-tech city of Shenzhen. There is an electric taxi charging station with a total of 637 fast chargers.

The largest EV charging location in the world with 637 stalls

@DKurac/Twitter

Tesla Building Cortex 2.0 Supercomputer at Giga Texas to Power FSD

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FSD’s insatiable appetite for AI compute is taking shape once again at Giga Texas, where Tesla is building out Cortex 2.0 — its second large-scale GPU supercomputer cluster — on the facility’s north side.

This confirmation comes thanks to the detailed research and findings by Giga Texas drone pilot Joe Tegtmeyer, who shared his findings on X.

For months, there has been some speculation on what this new site would be - new storage, the Optimus production line, preparation for the Cybercab’s unboxed assembly process, and more. Now, thanks to permits filed by Tesla, we know that this new area is destined to become the second supercomputer destined for FSD training. 

Cortex 2.0

There are some key details we can unpack from what we’ve learned about Cortex 2.0. The new facility will be on the north side of Giga Texas, opposite Cortex 1.0, which is on the south side. The permits explicitly tie the usage of this expansion to Cortex 2.0, namely through the fact that it is a data center.

This is actually a change from Tesla’s original plans - the northern section was intended to be used as a central campus support facility, with three smaller facilities and water storage tanks. Now, it has been redesignated as Cortex 2.0 and is one large structure.

The permits that have been filed have already been approved and cover the foundations, underground water mains, and building itself. The steel structure is actively being put together on the concrete foundations, and about 50% of the roof decking is already complete, bringing the exterior shell closer to completion.

Fueling FSD’s Brain

The deployment of Cortex 2.0 is the latest in Tesla’s massive and ongoing investment in the computational power required to train FSD. While this primarily covers FSD for cars, this will also eventually apply to Optimus, which is powered by the same AI4 computer and also runs a variant of FSD.

This isn’t Tesla’s first foray into large-scale AI infrastructure and won’t be their last. Alongside Dojo, their home-grown AI supercomputer, Tesla has been partnering closely with Nvidia to ensure they have the GPUs necessary to do all the hard work. Cortex 2.0 is the next iteration, and once it's fully online, we can expect that Tesla’s work on FSD will accelerate even further.

Especially since Elon is planning something truly outrageous once again:

Been thinking about the fastest way to bring a terawatt of compute online.

That is roughly equivalent to all electrical power produced in America today.

— gorklon rust (@elonmusk) May 12, 2025

You can check out Joe’s full video below:

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Tesla FSD in Europe: Highway Approval Expected to Arrive in September

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With European Tesla owners eagerly awaiting any news on FSD in Europe, we’ve seen Tesla tease FSD, and also point out exactly what the barrier has been - regulatory approval. Now, following the latest meeting of UNECE, new regulatory amendments are set to unlock “System-Initiated Maneuvers” (SIM) on highways across participating European nations.

This development, highlighted by Kees Roelandschap on X, notes that the latest documents from the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) center on amendments to UNECE regulation 171. These changes were formally adopted into UNECE during the WP29 World Forum in March 2025.

Now, the amendment that will enable SIM will come into force on September 26, 2025. This six-month period after approval is standard UNECE procedure and allows objections from party states that would halt the implementation. Objections to UNECE amendments are genuinely rare, with 95% of amendments passing without objection once the World Forum adopts them.

What This Means for FSD in Europe

System-initiated maneuvers will allow your Tesla to perform actions autonomously, such as changing lanes on a highway, while the driver remains fully responsible for supervision. This is a substantial step up from current regulatory standards that only allow for suggested maneuvers or require explicit driver initiation for every automated maneuver. 

This inches towards the more normal “hands-off, eyes-on” approach that Tesla has taken with FSD Supervised in North America and China. This regulatory change will help to provide the legal frameworks needed to deploy more advanced autonomy capabilities in Europe, at least matching what’s available on highways in North America.

Tesla is waiting for EU approval (sigh)

— gorklon rust (@elonmusk) May 12, 2025

Highways Only

The UNECE regulation will apply to all countries that adopt its standards, including the European Union, Japan, and South Korea - unless they specifically block it. This is a relatively positive development, but there are some hiccups.

This regulation only allows for system-initiated maneuvers on highways, not low-speed roadways. That means the city streets portion of FSD’s capabilities - including handling ‘Start FSD from Park` and reaching your destination’s parking spot - still won’t be available in Europe. 

In addition, the UNECE framework has stricter requirements for driver monitoring and attentiveness - which means that some nags, including the dreaded wheel nag, are likely to remain a key portion of the experience.

Progress on autonomous driving regulations in Europe has been fraught with indecision and caution, which has been a source of frustration for many who are watching the everyday progress of FSD in North America, and more recently, in China. Even with individual countries recently approving testing of FSD on public roads, harmonized UNECE regulations are the key to wider, consistent deployment, which will allow everyday customers to use it as well.

While the path to full parity with North America may be long and involve even more regulatory machinations, the upcoming implementation of System-Initiated Maneuvers is a big step forward for Tesla owners in Europe. It is a key piece of the puzzle that will help Tesla bring some more features of FSD to Europe, assuming the September timeline holds.

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