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Tesla’s Most Ironic Supercharger Yet

By any normal definition of irony, a Tesla Supercharger powered by diesel generators should not exist in 2026. And yet here we are, standing in the snowy Swedish mountain town of Vansbro, watching electric cars quietly refill their batteries from a bank of lithium cells that were, moments earlier, topped up by the gentle clatter of combustion engines. Welcome to the strangest Tesla charging station ever built.

For years, photos of EVs plugged into diesel generators have floated around the internet, usually as relics of the awkward early days of electrification or as gotcha memes aimed at climate-conscious drivers. Tesla’s new Supercharger in the Dalarna region is something else entirely: a deliberately engineered, semi-off-grid, diesel-fed charging outpost, installed not because it made sense—but because Tesla had no other choice.

A Supercharger by force, not by cable

Vansbro sits on the road to some of Sweden’s most popular winter tourist destinations, the kind of place where range anxiety becomes real when temperatures drop and mountain passes loom ahead. Tesla wanted a Supercharger here as a last safe haven before drivers head into the highlands. Normally, that would mean connecting a few cabinets to the local electrical grid and calling it a day.

But Tesla isn’t operating under normal circumstances in Sweden.

For nearly two years, the company has been locked in a bitter standoff with IF Metall, Sweden’s powerful metalworkers’ union. Tesla refuses to sign collective bargaining agreements for its service and sales employees, insisting on individual contracts instead. That position puts Tesla alone among major employers in Sweden, a country where collective agreements are the bedrock of labor relations. While Tesla has accepted such arrangements elsewhere in Europe, it has dug in its heels here—and triggered a uniquely Scandinavian response.

The quiet power of organized refusal

Under Swedish law, unions are allowed to support one another through so-called solidarity actions. In practice, that has turned Tesla’s Swedish operations into a game of corporate whack-a-mole.

Postal workers stopped delivering license plates for Tesla vehicles. Tesla tried to bypass them by sending lawyers to request the plates, only for the postal service to recognize and block those requests as well. Eventually, Tesla employees resorted to having plates sent to their private homes and even to the addresses of relatives, a logistical workaround that felt more like espionage than car sales.

Then came the electricians. Unionized electrical workers refused to connect new Tesla Superchargers to the grid. That was already causing headaches last winter, slowing Tesla’s network expansion across the country. Vansbro, it seems, was the point where Tesla decided to stop asking and start improvising.

Battery buffers and diesel backup

Since the Supercharger couldn’t get a permit to hook into the grid, Tesla installed a large on-site battery pack instead—essentially a miniature power plant. The chargers draw energy from that battery, just as they would from the grid. The only problem? Batteries don’t make electricity. They just store it.

So Tesla parked diesel generators next to them.

When the station’s batteries run low, the generators automatically kick in, charging the battery bank. That energy then flows, via the usual sleek white Supercharger posts, into Model Ys, Model 3s, and the occasional Cybertruck on winter holiday duty. From the driver’s seat, nothing looks unusual. Behind the scenes, however, electrons are being born in a very un-Tesla way.

It’s a technological Rube Goldberg machine: diesel fuel to generator, generator to battery, battery to car. Efficient? Not particularly. Effective? Apparently yes.

The green asterisk

Tesla is keenly aware of how bad this looks. To soften the optics, the company points out that the generators run on HVO—hydrotreated vegetable oil. Chemically similar to diesel, HVO is produced from plant-based raw materials and waste fats. Because the plants used to make it absorb CO₂ as they grow, the lifecycle emissions are theoretically lower than those of fossil diesel.

That may be true on paper, but the sight of generators humming away beside a Supercharger still feels like something from an Onion headline.

Tesla insists the Vansbro station is only a seasonal installation, designed to handle the winter tourist rush. The generators, it says, are a temporary measure until a proper grid connection can be arranged. When—or if—that happens will depend less on engineering and more on labor politics.

A very 2026 kind of contradiction

The Vansbro Supercharger isn’t just a quirky footnote in EV history. It’s a reminder that the clean-energy transition doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It runs through labor laws, social contracts, and sometimes through diesel engines parked in the snow.

In an era when electric cars are supposed to represent a clean break from the past, Tesla’s Swedish outpost feels like a surreal compromise with it. You plug in, you charge, you drive away emissions-free—never mind the generators quietly working in the background, burning fuel so your car doesn’t have to.

Only in 2026 could the future of electric mobility depend on a tank of vegetable-based diesel in the mountains of Sweden. And only Tesla could turn a labor dispute into a Supercharger that runs on irony as much as electricity.

Source: Tesla

NEW CARS

The Ram Dakota Is Back

For more than a decade, Ram has been glaring at the booming midsize pickup market from the sidelines, watching rivals cash checks while the Dakota nameplate gathered dust. That drought is finally coming to an end. At a closed-door dealer showcase during this year’s NADA Show in Las Vegas, Stellantis pulled the cover off a new Dakota—one slated to hit showrooms in 2028—and the early word from the people who actually sell these trucks is loud and clear: Ram might be back in a big way.

Official specs are still locked in Stellantis’ vault, but dealers who saw the truck came away impressed by what they did get to see. According to Automotive News, several described the new Dakota’s styling as “rough” and “aggressive”—two adjectives that fit Ram’s blue-collar image like a well-worn pair of work gloves.

Jason Feldman, a Houston-area dealer manager, said the proportions look spot-on for going toe-to-toe with the Toyota Tacoma and Ford Ranger. “As long as the pricing is in line, it’s going to be a huge hit,” he noted. That’s not faint praise in a segment where every inch of bed length and every dollar of sticker price is a battlefield.

Others were even more bullish. Adrian Gonzalez, general manager of Payne Edinburg Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram in south Texas, didn’t mince words: “It really did look nice. Toyota better be careful—we’re going to start competing with them when it comes to the Tacoma.” Ralph Mahalak Jr., who owns six Stellantis dealerships across three states, went so far as to call the Dakota a “game changer.”

Importantly, this Dakota isn’t the one Ram sells in South America. That truck, launched in late 2025, rides on a Chinese-sourced platform and uses a Fiat-derived diesel—hardly the recipe for a red-white-and-blue workhorse. The North American Dakota will be a different beast altogether, built on a ladder-frame chassis and powered by a combustion engine. So much for the unibody EV concept teased back in 2021.

Ram CEO Tim Kuniskis has been clear about the mission: this Dakota has to be a real truck, with the towing and payload numbers to prove it. A V-8 is off the table, but a hybrid powertrain is very much in the cards, a nod to both emissions realities and where the market is heading.

Production plans have also shifted. Instead of Illinois’ Belvidere plant, the Dakota will now be built at the Toledo Assembly Complex in Ohio, alongside the Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator. That move is part of Stellantis’ $13-billion push to modernize U.S. manufacturing—and, presumably, to ensure the Dakota is built with the scale and quality a volume player needs.

And volume is exactly what Ram is after. As Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa recently admitted, Ram is a “huge, strong pickup maker that is missing a midsize pickup truck.” The Jeep Gladiator may technically live in the same segment, but its off-road-first personality leaves a wide-open lane for a more conventional, utility-focused Ram.

By the time the Dakota arrives in 2028, the midsize truck field—Tacoma, Colorado, Canyon, Ranger, Frontier—will all be on their next turns of the product cycle. Ram is betting that showing up a little late, but with the right hardware and the right attitude, is better than not showing up at all.

If the early dealer buzz is anything to go by, the Dakota won’t just be back—it might finally be ready to fight.

Source: Ram

News

Wells Motor Cars increases production of Vertige Coupe

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By the time the modern sports car has finished booting up its infotainment system, the Wells Vertige is already three corners down the road, engine singing, steering alive, and nothing between driver and tarmac but four tires and a very clear idea of what a sports car should be.

Wells Motor Cars, a tiny Warwickshire outfit founded by Robin Wells, is quietly doing something radical in today’s tech-obsessed performance-car world: building a lightweight, mid-engined coupe that prioritizes feel, simplicity, and driver connection over software updates and glowing screens. Production is set to reach about 12 cars this year, doubling to roughly 24 in 2027—numbers that sound quaint, until you realize every one of them is built around a single-minded philosophy most mainstream manufacturers abandoned years ago.

The Vertige first appeared at the 2021 Goodwood Festival of Speed, already looking like a fully formed sports car rather than a concept. That’s no accident. Wells finalized the design before any engineering work began, then handed the challenge to veteran engineer Robin Hall, whose résumé spans everything from quirky electric buggies to serious stints at Mini and Jaguar Land Rover. The brief was clear: make the car real without ruining its proportions or its purpose.

The result is an 850-kilogram mid-engine coupe that lands right in the sweet spot between featherweight track toy and usable road car. Power comes from a familiar and refreshingly unpretentious source: a 2.5-liter Ford Duratec four-cylinder making 208 horsepower in standard trim. In an age of downsized turbos and hybrid assists, that’s almost rebellious. There’s also an R version with 250 horsepower, which bumps the power-to-weight ratio to a very serious 212.5 hp per ton—more than enough to keep supercars honest on a twisty road.

What makes the Vertige interesting isn’t just how quick it might be, but how little nonsense stands between the driver and the experience. Wells could have chased big numbers or exotic powertrains. Instead, he chose reliability, accessibility, and mechanical honesty. That’s a philosophy that feels straight out of Car and Driver’s golden age, when cars were judged less by their touchscreen size and more by how they made you feel at 7000 rpm.

Inside, the Vertige continues that theme. You get proper analog gauges, a small touchscreen with Apple CarPlay, and plenty of customization options for trim and upholstery. There’s technology here, but it’s supportive rather than intrusive. You don’t have to dig through menus just to turn off something that annoys you. You just drive.

Wells describes the Vertige as the antidote to modern complexity. He wants the sensation of something “alive and peppy” like a Caterham Seven, but with real structure, comfort, and day-to-day usability. So yes, it has a heated windscreen. Yes, it has Bluetooth and double glazing in the rear glass. You can drive it in the rain without feeling like you’re being punished for your enthusiasm.

That blend—raw driving feel paired with genuine livability—is what makes the Vertige stand out. It’s not trying to be a track-only weapon or a tech-packed grand tourer. It’s trying to be a great car, full stop.

And maybe that’s why it feels so refreshing. In a world where “luxury” usually means more screens, more layers, and more distractions, Wells is chasing something else entirely. Peace of mind, he says, is the new luxury. The Vertige is built around that idea: less clutter, more clarity, and a direct line from driver to road.

It’s a small, quiet rebellion—but one that might just be loud enough to be heard by people who still believe a sports car should feel like a beautiful instrument, not a complicated gadget.

Source: Wells Motor Cars