Lifestyle
Tesla community comes together to witness Falcon Heavy’s first commercial flight
As Elon Musk’s private space company, SpaceX, prepares to launch the first commercial mission of Falcon Heavy, a number of Tesla community members are preparing for an experience of a lifetime. Tesla’s previous referral program included a number of secret levels that hold special rewards, among them being an invitation for the Falcon Heavy launch today. Owners who qualified for the reward were given the opportunity to witness the gigantic rocket’s flight with a guest of their choosing.
For some Tesla community members, the Falcon Heavy launch today is worth the long trip to Launch Complex 39A of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, FL. Several electric car owners who sent messages to Teslarati noted that the upcoming flight of SpaceX’s largest operational rocket is something that is not just a lot of fun; it is also something that could be a source of inspiration.
Tesla Model S owner Jim McPherson noted that he resolved to witness the next Falcon Heavy launch after he watched SpaceX propel Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster to space last year. Bringing his family with him to Florida, the Tesla owner noted that he believes the event is a good way to inspire his daughter to like STEM, and at least, “be excited about the future.” The family drove from Washington D.C., using Tesla’s Supercharger Network along the way. “The supercharger network is so well built out on I95 that you really don’t have to worry much about where you will stop. It’s kind of weird it’s so easy compared to how it used to be,” he said.
Fellow Tesla Model S owner Bruce (last name not given) traveled with his daughter from Atlanta. The father-daughter team drove Monday night until Tuesday to get to Florida, camping in the back of their Model S as needed. Just like McPherson, Bruce noted that he wishes for his daughter to be inspired by the Falcon Heavy launch, particularly as she is already in love with rockets. Tesla Model 3 owner Mark (last name also not given) added that he also decided to come and see the Falcon Heavy’s next launch after last year’s maiden flight. During that time, he did not even have a Tesla. Mark drove his Model 3 all the way to Florida for today’s launch, using Navigate on Autopilot most of the way.
Some Tesla owners mentioned that the Falcon Heavy’s launch is something that can simply bring families closer to each other, particularly since events that are experienced together rarely fade from memory. “This is something that me and my kids will remember for the rest of our lives,” Kim, the host of popular Tesla-themed YouTube channel Like Tesla said.
This is also a motivator for Model 3 owner Sofiaan Fraval, who flew in from California with his wife and child for the event. The Model 3 owner noted that the delays in Falcon Heavy’s launch actually worked in his family’s favor, as the experience turned out to be a mini-vacation. Fraval stated that seeing the Falcon Heavy in person, and interacting with other Tesla enthusiasts, has made the experience amazing — and the rocket hasn’t even launched yet.
For some Tesla owners, Falcon Heavy is simply something that inspires awe and thus must be experienced firsthand. “I am here to feel the power of the worlds largest operational rocket in person,” Will Fealey, President of Tesla Owners Club UK, said. Others, such as Model S owner Eli Burton, see Falcon Heavy’s upcoming commercial flight as a “major milestone” for humanity as a whole. “This is the beginning of a sustainable path for humans to return to space, go to the Moon, and eventually go to Mars. This is now the beginning of private enterprise being the engine that drives humans to becoming a multiplanetary species,” he said.
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For now, the Tesla owners at Cape Canaveral remain waiting, hoping that within the next few hours, they can literally witness a moment that will be etched in history. For referring friends to Tesla’s electric cars and energy products, this particular rewards is definitely well worth the journey.
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.
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.
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
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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