Lifestyle
Winter Driving in the Tesla Model S
We’re hit with record breaking snow in the north eastern part of the US but that hasn’t stopped me from taking my Tesla Model S (non-AWD) out for some winter driving. My Nokian Hakkapeliitta R2 winter tires have seen wet, snowy and icy conditions and I’m here to tell you about how the experience has been thus far.
Traction and Stability Control
Before I go into details on how the winter tires perform I need to touch on traction control first. The Tesla Model S has both stability and traction control, something I reviewed in a previous post, which are designed to help a driver maintain control of the vehicle. You’ll really get to see traction control take effect when driving through a mix of wet slushy snow.
RELATED: Tesla Model S Winter Tires and Wheels Preparation
The Model S is able to respond to tire slippage much faster than other cars due to the super-fast response time between the traction control unit and the electric motor driving the wheels. Traction control allows the Model S to quickly shift power between wheels via an open differential. It will back off power to those wheels that slip.
With traction control enabled you can literally pull onto a patch of snow and floor the “go pedal”without losing control. The Model S will begin picking up speed as long as the wheels aren’t slipping. It’s been a fun and bizarre experience to try this and so far it hasn’t gotten old.
Tires
Traction control is great however in order for braking to be effective, the tires essentially need to be able to grip onto the road. It doesn’t matter how much sophistication is built into traction control since at the end of the day you’ll still need a good set of winter tires that can bite into the slipper winter surface.
Last year here in Boston there were reports of Model S owners that couldn’t drive up small hills found across the city. This all comes down to tires. The factory 21″ performance tires won’t get you up the hills during a Boston winter.
The Nokian tires on the other hand are designed specifically for the winter. They’re designed to grip on snow, ice and at very low temperatures. I tried the tires in a number of different conditions ranging from a few inches of snow, to a foot of slush to ice/snow mixes, to extremely cold weather and in each case the tires were able to grab hold.
Be Safe
Traction control and winter tires aside, the most important tip for winter driving is to exercise caution. Here are a few more winter driving tips for the Tesla Model S:
- Assuming your regenerative braking isn’t limited due to extreme weather conditions, you may want to change the regenerative braking option to low. The aggressive deceleration of full regenerative braking isn’t good for traction when dealing with slippery conditions.
- The Model S is low to the ground so I’d think twice before driving through more than 6″ of snow regardless of your setup.
- Be extra careful around turns and give yourself plenty of stopping distance by leaving enough space between you and the car ahead of you.
- Watch those behind you and make sure they’re capable of stopping in time.
- Stay home and work at home if you can. The Model S is really efficient, but not commuting at all is even more efficient. You can still go sit in your Model S if you miss it!
AAA has a great guide for winter driving which is a good read to help you prep your Model S for winter.
Stay warm and be safe out there!
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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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