Lifestyle
Why the Tesla Model X 60D is a big deal
My husband sort of wondered why I was so thrilled when Tesla announced the Model S 70 last year, since we already had a S 85 and certainly were not in the market for a second Tesla. “Because it increases the size of the circle of people who can afford a Tesla!” A status-driven owner may shudder at the thought, but a true enthusiast knows this is a good thing. In fact, a buddy recently asked me if I was pissed that after spending so much on a car, there’s a new, cheaper version coming out. Uh, no! Quite the opposite. Aside from the fact that the Model 3 will make it financially feasible for my own household to be able to go all Tesla, it will make it financially feasible for hundreds of thousands more households to add their first Tesla. And this is a good thing.
One of the fears we had when making the big decision to order a Model S in 2014, aside from the price tag, was that this company would fold, and getting our car serviced would be difficult. With every new success Tesla registers, that fear becomes a more distant memory. Another fear was that the Supercharger network would either cease to exist or, at least, cease to expand if the company didn’t do so well. Again, poof! One look at the map and that fear is gone.
So why is the Model X 60D a big deal to me? The circle gets bigger. Actually, another circle gets bigger. Plenty of folks, especially here in the US, swear they “need” an SUV. My own mother is one of them. (All of 5’1″, driving a rather large 2001 Trailblazer.) When the Model X came out and provided that option, it was still out of the realm of possibility for all but those with the very largest vehicle budgets. Just like the newly released Model S 60, adding the Model X 60D brings the starting price point down and thus brings it closer to being within reach.
I’ve tried to sell my insurance agent on getting a Tesla. He has several kids and drives the largest Nissan SUV. He drives a ton of miles and spends well more between gas and his payment than we do for electricity and our Model S payment. Well more. I even sent him an email when the Model S 60 came back, because fitted with the optional rear facing seats, it could meet his needs. The problem, I suspect, is that he “needs” an SUV. (Read in most cases: likes to sit up high.) Surely there are plenty of people out there like him, who either dismiss the idea of spending six figures for a car, or who dismiss that a sedan could possible suit their needs. Now what’s the argument? A true cost of ownership comparison between an Model X 60D and Nissan Armada would be pretty eye-opening I bet. If anyone has time, work it out and add it to the comments.
The above is the obvious part. Making the car more attainable is good for us all. A more successful car company means growth, more Superchargers, and hopefully plenty more service centers.
What’s not so obvious is how proud I am of Tesla for doing their best to make the car affordable. They could easily stick to leaving the Model S and Model X as their premium line, without adding more affordable configurations, but they aren’t. They could easily get away with having the Model 3 start at $35,000 and go all the way up to $70,00, then making every Model S and X start at $80,000. They can do this and say “tough cookies” because demand is still pretty great from what I can see. They could do a lot of things that they don’t, like cower when the media picks on them or admit fault when there is none. But Tesla is a special company is so many more ways than I can write. (Wait But Why does an excellent job of this.) I can, however, boil it down to one conclusion:
This is what happens when a company is driven by its mission and not the other way around.
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Firmware
Tesla unlocks in-car web conferencing to extend Google Meet, Teams and beyond
Tesla’s Summer Update lets owners join Google Meet, Teams, and Discord calls via cabin camera.
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, which just began rolling out to customer vehicles, now links the built-in web browser with the in-cabin camera feed and microphone input, thereby letting owners join video calls on nearly any browser-based service instead of just Zoom.
The change appears in Tesla’s own release notes for software version 2026.26 under “Web Browser,” which states that the vehicle can now use its interior camera and cabin microphone when a website requests access, with permission granted the same way a desktop browser handles it. As NotATeslaApp notes, this feature opens the door to Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and other webcam-enabled sites to activate the in-car cabin-facing camera. The feed automatically crops and zooms to center the driver in frame.
Tesla has offered in-car video calling before, but only through a dedicated Zoom app that launched at the end of 2022, a stripped-down browser preloaded with Zoom’s own web client and gated behind Premium Connectivity. Opening the full browser to any camera-requesting site removes that walled garden. Elon Musk first called video conferencing “definitely a future feature” back in 2020, when the pandemic pushed remote meetings into daily life, so this update effectively finishes something Tesla has been promising for six years.
Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features
The feature keeps the same restrictions that applied to Zoom on Tesla vehicles. It only works while the car is parked; shifting into Drive disables the camera feed, according to the release notes. It is also limited to vehicles running Tesla’s AMD Ryzen infotainment hardware, meaning older Intel-based Model S and Model X units, along with early Model 3 and Model Y builds, don’t get it.
Turning the browser into a general entry point for the in-cabin camera, rather than routing everything through one local app, widens the number of third-party sites that can ask for access, even though Tesla’s permission prompt.
With the Summer update only days into its rollout, be sure to stay with us on TikTok and X to see the latest video demonstrations.
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Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”
The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”
Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.
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Cybertruck
Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love
Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.
Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.
The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”
The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.
Custom wraps via mobile app https://t.co/5OydZ26g9p pic.twitter.com/uexU0ZePxu
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
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It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.
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