Lifestyle
Tesla “Loaner Wheels” program and Tire Hazard Protection saved the day
This winter Los Angeles has received an enormous amount of rainfall, sorely needed, as the Governor comes close to finally declaring the drought “finished.” One negative effect of the large rainfall is the huge number of potholes that now need fixing across the Los Angeles basin.
My Flat Tire
On January 25, 2017, I experienced the issue first hand: on the way back home from Montebello, CA, I hit a pothole that was about 1.5 feet wide and 5 inches deep. The “thump” noise sounded enormous when my left rear tire hit the pothole. My tire immediately went flat. The onboard alert immediately told me that I had to stop. I had hit a double whammy: the pothole and a large nail. I was quite fortunate that a Shell station was near where I found enough space to park safely.
Tire Damage due to pothole
Next I called the Tesla Roadside Assistance toll free number 877-79-TESLA. This service is available during the first 4 years or 50,000 miles, whichever occurs first for vehicles covered by the New or Pre-Owned Vehicle Limited Warranty at the time of the occurrence.
In all markets, Tesla will arrange for your vehicle to be transported to the nearest Tesla Service Center. Tesla will cover up to 50 miles for a trained tow provider to assist you with a flat tire.
Notice that wheel and tire damage is not covered by the New or Pre-Owned Vehicle Limited Warranty.
In some markets, and that includes the Los Angeles area, Tesla has contracted with trained tow providers that carry a limited number of loaner wheels to quickly exchange for the damaged wheel so one can continue his or her journey.
After about 5 minutes of muzak, I was finally connected with a Tesla Roadside Assistance representative that immediately offered me the “loaner wheel” service. After about a 45-minute wait, a small van showed up, which had inside an entire set of all available tires for Tesla Model S and X, all mounted on wheels. My flat tire was a MICHELIN PILOT SPORT PS2 XL, 265/35ZR-21. The tow provider took no more than 15 minutes to do the tire and wheel swap, and put the damaged tire, still mounted on my 21” Turbine grey wheels, inside a large plastic bag and then in my trunk. In less than an hour I was back on the road.
The tow provider told me that he was also servicing Mercedes, Lexus and other luxury cars, but Tesla was the only one providing the loaner wheels.
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My next steps were to simply arrange with my local Tesla Service Center a good time to drop in within a few days to exchange the loaner wheel for a new original wheel. I e-mailed my service center in Torrance, CA that I already had purchased a new replacement tire and was able to get an appointment for the next day at the opening time of the center.
Looking at several messages in the official Tesla forum, the “loaner wheel” service is not available in all markets, so you may want to call your local Tesla Service Center and inquire if your area is covered by the program.
TIRE RACK
In case of a flat tire, if you have not purchased a tire yourself, Tesla will sell you the tire at the time you get you flat tire replaced. There are two issues with that transaction. First, Tesla will sell you the tire at a relatively high price ($440 in the case of the MICHELIN PILOT SPORT PS2 XL, 265/35ZR-21 that I needed replaced), but more importantly tires purchased from a Tesla Service Center do not come with any “hazard warranty”, just the basic OEM warranty (from Michelin in this instance) that does not cover any type of road hazards.
When I purchased my Tesla Model S P90D I wanted to have at least one spare tire ready for each of my staggered tires and I found tirerack.com to offer OEM tires for all Tesla models at discounted prices, and provided “Tire Road Hazard protection”.
For example the MICHELIN PILOT SPORT PS2 XL, 265/35ZR-21 that I needed to replace is available from TIRE RACK for $344, a 22% discount on Tesla’s price.
Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 “staggered” tires
According to TIRE RACK (emphasis added), “road hazard damage is damage that occurs when a tire fails as a result of a puncture, bruise or impact break incurred during the course of normal driving on a maintained road. Nails, glass and potholes are the most common examples of road hazards. These types of road hazards are not typically covered under tire manufacturers’ warranties.”
During the year that I owned my Tesla Model S, I had experienced a flat from both nails and potholes, and this time I was going to test the TIRE RACK program.
I called TIRE RACK prior to my visit to the Tesla Service Center and was told that:
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- Tires are covered for 24 months from the date of purchase or until 2/32″ or less of tread remains, whichever occurs first;
- Repairs are reimbursed up to $25 per tire per occurrence;
- During the 24 month benefit period, I would be reimbursed for 100% of the original cost of the tire covered by the Tire Road Hazard Protection, if the tire could not be repaired;
- To demonstrate that the tire could not be repaired, I could either send pictures or alternatively have the Tesla Service center call them with the details. In the first case, TIRE RACK could ask to have the tire returned to them, at their expense;
- I would have to first purchase a replacement tire from TIRE RACK and/or pay for the repair.
Since I always wanted to keep a spare around, I went ahead and purchased a new tire from TIRE RACK.
I then went to the Tesla Service Center, where they took back the wheel loaner, and for $50 installed my replacement Michelin tire. They also called TIRE RACK and confirmed that my tire could not be repaired. Incidentally, I was told at the Tesla Service Center that when the “loaner wheel” program was started, waiting times used to be in 2-3 hours range, which made quite a few Tesla owners upset, but lately the wait time was less than an hour and comparable to the wait time when using AAA roadside service.
TIRE RACK accepted my claim and sent me a check for the full price of the original tire plus shipping.
In the end my whole experience of having a flat tire was the best I ever had in probably 40+ years of driving. Between the Tesla “wheel loaner” and the TIRE RACK “Road Hazard Protection,” I had spent just about 2 hours of my life on the issue and no money at all. Not a bad deal.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s driverless Cybercab just passed a big test with State Governor
Florida’s governor rode Tesla’s Cybercab at a closed test track and called the experience impressive.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rode in a Tesla Cybercab on a closed test track this week and came away impressed, posting on X that the vehicle “successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.” He called the ride “impressive.”
The stop was part of a broader event Monday at SunTrax, a 775 acre state owned proving ground in Auburndale that Florida built specifically to test autonomous and connected vehicles before they reach public roads. Standing next to a gold Cybercab, DeSantis described the car in plain terms: “You go in there and you just sit. You have a screen. There’s no steering wheel, no pedals. Clearly these things could be very beneficial.”
We took a ride on a robotaxi on the Suntrax course and it successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.
Impressive! https://t.co/FVAkzFLz3r
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) August 11, 2026
DeSantis paired the praise with a caveat that has followed autonomous vehicles since the category existed. “You don’t want to be in an autonomous vehicle and it drives you into a ditch. That would not be good,” he said, framing safety validation as the gate before wider deployment.
SunTrax, the 2.25 mile oval which the state calls the only high speed autonomous vehicle test track in the Southeast, can simulate rain, pedestrian crossings, hills and crowded urban conditions at highway speeds, letting companies push a car past what an early public rollout would risk. Tesla, Waymo and Beep all use the facility, and Florida’s regulatory approach, among the most permissive for autonomous vehicles in the country, doesn’t require a human operator inside a fully autonomous car.
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Tesla has reason to want the blessing of Florida and states beyond, as the Cybercab entered volume production at Gigafactory Texas this spring and has since self certified as SAE Level 4 under Texas law. Public road testing so far has kept a safety monitor in the passenger seat, and Florida is where Tesla has been expanding its existing Model Y based Robotaxi service instead, adding Miami in July and then Orlando and Tampa two weeks later. A closed track endorsement from a sitting governor doesn’t change any of that, but it does put Tesla’s newest hardware in front of a state that has already shown it will move fast on rules.
Elon Musk
The real reason Elon Musk wants every car connected to space
Elon Musk says all cars will eventually need Starlink to handle massive AI bandwidth demand.
Elon Musk is making the case that satellite internet, not fiber or cellular towers, will end up wired into every car on the road. In a string of posts on X, the SpaceX CEO wrote that all cars will have Starlink in the future and called satellite connectivity the only way to get super high bandwidth to billions of vehicles.
The posts started with Musk endorsing a Cloudflare forecast that traffic generated by autonomous AI agents will soon dwarf traffic generated by humans browsing the internet, a shift he described as not a close call at all. From there he narrowed the argument to infrastructure, writing that the only system that can support the insanely fast bandwidth growth needed by AI is Starlink, before extending the logic to cars specifically.
AI agentic Internet traffic will obviously VASTLY exceed human usage. Not a close call at all.
Cloudflare’s forecast is accurate. https://t.co/VztgrinN5k pic.twitter.com/Wo4FiRKjPU
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 9, 2026
The timing lines up with Tesla’s own hardware decisions. On July 20, Tesla confirmed the Cybercab would ship with a Starlink V5 terminal built into its roof, the first time the company had put satellite hardware in a production vehicle. A day later, Tesla’s head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, explained the connection wasn’t there for safety and that Cybercab’s driving stack runs entirely on onboard cameras and compute, while the satellite link exists for navigation, customer service, and fleet management instead. Musk followed with his own post about the feature, saying riders would be able to watch 4K streaming video during rides.
By July 22, Musk had already said Starlink would extend beyond Cybercab to Tesla’s full lineup. Sunday’s posts push that same logic outward again, this time framed as a requirement across the industry rather than a feature specific to Tesla, and tied directly to the bandwidth AI systems are expected to consume.
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
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The AI argument has been building on SpaceX’s side for months. The company has an FCC filing pending for a third generation Starlink constellation, and it has separately proposed Starmind, a constellation of up to a million satellites designed to run AI computation directly in orbit rather than just relay data. Musk has said he expects space to become the cheapest place to deploy AI compute within two to three years. Starlink and Starmind serve different jobs inside that vision, one moving data and the other processing it, but Sunday’s posts treat vehicles as one more category of hardware that will eventually need both.
None of this changes anything for Tesla owners today. Cars already on the road keep running on LTE and Wi-Fi, and Tesla hasn’t outlined a retrofit path for existing vehicles. The July 22 commitment applies to future production, not the fleet already delivered. What Musk added on Sunday is the reasoning: satellite connectivity isn’t a Cybercab novelty, it’s a bet that ground based networks won’t keep up with how much data cars, robots, and AI systems are about to generate.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
The Boring Company’s new tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units.
The Boring Company just introduced a new piece of hardware, and it runs on parts pulled straight from a Tesla showroom. Liner Truck 3, unveiled in a post from the tunneling company’s official X account, is an all electric vehicle built around Tesla Model 3 battery packs and drive units, purpose built to move concrete tunnel segments to the boring machine face without a single person underground.
Introducing Liner Truck 3 — our latest fully electric tunnel vehicle.
– Tesla Model 3 battery and drive units
– Transports 22,000+ lb of concrete segments to the boring machine
– 28 miles of range
– 12 mph max operating speed
– Remotely piloted from Global OCC in Texas, with… pic.twitter.com/XB7FgSXnpy— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) August 7, 2026
The job itself is unglamorous but critical. Each precast segment run weighs more than 22,000 pounds, roughly the load of a full cement mixer, and Liner Truck 3 hauls that weight repeatedly between the surface staging area and wherever the Prufrock machine happens to be cutting.
The Boring Company said Liner Truck 3 is piloted remotely out of its Global Operations Control Center in Texas, extending the Zero-People-In-Tunnel approach the company has spent years building toward. An earlier version of a ZPIT liner truck was already tested at the company’s Bastrop, Texas research tunnels, and a factory tour released last month showed an employee flying a fully loaded liner truck with a PlayStation controller. Liner Truck 3 looks like the production version of that same idea, cleaned up and pushed into daily use.
The timing lines up with a company digging in more places than it ever has before. The Boring Company now has multiple Prufrock machines active or arriving in Nashville, where Music City Loop construction has been accelerating since February, and its Vegas Loop network keeps adding tunnel mileage on a near monthly basis. Every one of those projects depends on getting concrete segments to the cutting face fast enough to keep the boring machine from idling, which is exactly the bottleneck Liner Truck 3 is designed to remove.
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It also reinforces something Tesla owners have watched happen gradually across Musk’s companies: passenger car hardware finding a second life in heavy equipment. Model 3 drive units already move people through the Vegas Loop, and now the same components are hauling concrete underground in Nashville and wherever The Boring Company digs next. Whether that kind of component reuse extends further into TBC’s equipment lineup, or into other Musk owned industrial hardware, is the next thing worth watching.
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