Latin America’s electric mobility transition is kicking into high gear, and Brazil-based Vammo is emerging as its battery-swapping champion. The São Paulo startup just closed a $45 million Series B funding round led by Ecosystem Integrity Fund, with backing from Qualcomm Ventures, 2150, Construct Capital, and others – positioning the company to expand across the region’s megacities and build what it calls the backbone of Latin America’s clean transport network.

Founded in 2022, Vammo has rapidly become the region’s leading battery-swapping platform, offering riders an all-in-one ecosystem that bundles electric motorcycles, financing, maintenance, and a growing network of 150 swap stations. Its fleet of 5,000 electric motorcycles already serves riders working for major delivery platforms like Uber, 99, Rappi, and iFood – with a waiting list still forming.

The company says its subscription model lets users access a vehicle and unlimited swapping at 30% lower cost than gasoline alternatives.

It’s a story we’re seeing playing out around the world, with similar cost-savings for battery-swapping electric motorcycles being reported in Asia, Europe, and Africa. Now Vammo is leading that charge in Latin America, and is set to significantly expand operations on the back of its latest funding round.

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Earlier this year, Vammo surpassed its one millionth battery swap milestone.

Unlike many competitors that depend on off-the-shelf components, Vammo builds everything in-house – from battery packs and charging hardware to its own IoT-enabled software platform. That proprietary technology, designed specifically for Latin American conditions, gives Vammo a major head start in the region’s still-nascent battery-swapping race.

With this new funding, the company plans to expand manufacturing and R&D in Brazil, investing more than R$500 million to ramp up production in Manaus and develop new hybrid ethanol-electric motorcycles that combine two of Brazil’s cleanest energy sources.

For riders, the economics are compelling: energy costs per kilometer are about 80% lower than gasoline, and maintenance savings reach 50%. Add Brazil’s 90% renewable electricity grid – the cleanest among G20 countries – and each swapped battery delivers a climate dividend few regions can match.

Electrek’s Take

Battery swapping makes perfect sense in cities where riders need constant uptime and limited space makes charging tricky. Vammo is proving the model can scale in Latin America – and not just in theory. Thousands of riders are already using it daily. As more countries follow Brazil’s example, expect battery swapping to become a cornerstone of clean urban mobility across the continent. São Paulo may soon do for battery-swap bikes what Taipei did for Gogoro – turn a smart idea into an unstoppable movement.

Now, if North America could just catch up with the more developed markets like South America, Africa, and Asia, that’d be really something.

Tesla is recalling 6,197 Cybertrucks with the “Off Road Lightbar” attachment, citing incorrect use of adhesives which could lead the accessory to fall off during vehicle operation.

It’s about 10% of the 63,619 Cybertrucks in existence, which we know about due to another recall from last week (though that one was fixed by a software update).

The Cybertruck has been marketed all along as an off-road capable vehicle, with dedicated off-roading modes and certain available accessories for those owners who want to get out and adventure.

A desirable off-road accessory available on many vehicles are large, overhead lights which offer better and wider visibility of the terrain ahead, getting around rocks or brush or other things that might cast shadows from lower static headlights.

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In the Cybertruck’s case, this takes the form of a wide light bar across the top of the truck’s windshield, right at the “point” in the roof.

It doesn’t come with every truck, and isn’t even available as an option. It’s also not even listed as an accessory on Tesla’s online shop. It’s only available as a retrofit through Tesla’s service network, for which you have to make a service request to get it installed.

Despite that, it looks like a whole lot of Cybertruck owners have gotten it installed. With the information in this new recall stating that potentially 6,197 vehicles are affected, it looks like nearly 10% of existing Cybertrucks have the light bar, which is quite a high take rate for a retrofit item like this.

We know this 10% number because of another recent recall, last week, which recalled every Cybertruck for having too-bright headlights. That one was fixed by a software update, but did tell us that a total of 63,619 Cybertrucks had been sold in total.

But the lightbar recall isn’t such an easy fix, as it’s an actual physical issue, rather than a software one.

It seems that the adhesives Tesla used may have been applied incorrectly by service personnel, leading to a substandard bond to the surface of the vehicle. Tesla updated its service instructions several times to try to fix the problem, but it seems that none of these updates were enough.

In total, Tesla says it found 619 warranty claims related to this issue, and had one field report of the glue not working correctly – though it is not aware of any collisions or injuries associated with the issue. But, conceivably, this could lead to a light bar falling off the vehicle and creating a road hazard for other drivers, so a recall is in order.

To fix the problem, Tesla will inspect any installed lightbars on Cybertrucks and if it finds any indication that the adhesive isn’t bonded fully, it will replace the lightbar with a new one adhered with tape and a “positive mechanical attachment” (that is, bolting it down).

While Cybertruck owners with the light bar installed should make a service appointment to get their light bar inspected, it’s possible to tell if yours suffers from this issue. Tesla says that light bars exhibiting this issue “may create a noise detectable from inside the cabin” or that the light bar may feel loose when touched or have a visible gap between it and the windshield. If your lightbar exhibits any of these issues, then you’ll probably want to make that service appointment sooner rather than later.

Electrek’s Take

This isn’t the first attachment-related problem Tesla has had with the Cybertruck. It’s seen wheel covers fly off (which led to a pre-manufacturing redesign which caused more tire wear and was subsequently subject to a recall), accelerator pedals that can slip off and were fixed by drilling a screw into the pedal, and even detaching pieces of the car’s “exoskeleton” trim (which… isn’t actually an exoskeleton). A lot of (un)sticky situations happening with this truck.

As for the headlight recall from last week, we didn’t report on it because, as is the case with many of Tesla’s “recalls,” it was relatively minor and was fixed by a software update. NHTSA really does need another word to distinguish real recalls from ones that are already fixed by an OTA update by the time the recall notice goes out.

But, this lightbar recall today is more serious and needs an actual physical fix, and thus is more deserving of being reported on.

However, last week’s headlight update did still have an interesting piece of information (which we probably should have reported, and so now are reporting here): the total number of vehicles out on the road. That recall covered 63,619 vehicles produced between November 13, 2023 and October 11, 2025. That’s nearly two years, and yet the truck which had been hailed as the harbinger of the future of the automotive industry has averaged just over 30k sales per year in that time period.

While that would be an impressive number for a new manufacturer, it’s quite a bit lower than the millions of preorders the Cybertruck had, Musk’s 250,000+/year prediction, and the current >125,000 yearly production capacity that Tesla claims it has for the truck.

At a current run rate of around 5,000 trucks sold per quarter, that’s over 80% of Tesla’s claimed production capacity sitting idle.

While the Cybertruck was the best-selling electric truck for a time after its introduction, it no longer has that title. And, in the last last quarter, the F-150 Lightning, Silverado EV, Sierra EV and R1T all saw rising sales. The Cybertruck, in contrast, is the only electric truck in America that saw lower sales last quarter than in the year prior, despite a big spike in EV sales due to the retirement of EV tax credits.

It’s part of a wider trend of EV sales increasing around the globe, but Tesla sales being left behind – and the reason is mostly due to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s negative influence.

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