Lifestyle
Tesla Model 3, S become first EVs to complete One Lap of America rally event
A Tesla Model 3 Performance and Model S P100D became the first all-electric vehicles to compete in the Tire Rack One Lap America road rally event, completing 18 track races at 9 locations for a total of about 3,500 miles over seven days. Thanks to Tesla’s vast Supercharger Network, the built-in performance features of their cars, and some great planning, both teams finished successfully and even took home a few wins. This year’s event took place from May 3rd through the 11th, marking its 36th year running.
Driving the Model 3 Performance was Team Panel Gap Racing (PGR) with Andrew Dekoning and Chad Martin behind the wheel. Andrew previously took part in the 2006 One Lap driving a Mazda RX-7, and as a veteran of the event and Tesla enthusiast, he knew there were advantages the Model 3 had that would make it competitive against other gas-powered vehicles.
“We had a few things that made us think this year was the year for a Tesla. #1 is that no one has ever completed the One Lap in an electric car, and we thought with the introduction of the Model 3 that it was possible,” he told us while the team was on the road. “With a performance model and Track Mode, it would actually be a pretty good car. This event is part road rally, part transit, and part on-track competition – the best cars excel at all three.”
The Tire Rack One Lap of America road rally event’s history dates back to the Cannonball Run, a not-quite-legal American highway race from New York City to Redondo Beach, California. It was created by Brock Yates, former senior editor of Car and Driver Magazine, to prove the point that competent, well-trained drivers could safely compete on highways while having a good time reminiscent of barnstorm piloting days. After a few revisions, One Lap was eventually organized into the format it has today. Drivers travel to nine places located in several different states to compete at 18 timed track events including time trials, skid pads, and drag races.
To meet their battery power needs, Team PGR used 27 Superchargers and 22 plug-ins either at the track or hotels they stayed at for a total of 1,500 kWh used to complete the event. Along with the availability of Superchargers and other power sources, the Model 3’s Track Mode gave the team a competitive edge.
“Without Track Mode we likely wouldn’t have made the attempt,” Andrew explained. “We had faith from the development story with Randy Pobst that they had the feature dialed in fairly well…Track Mode (and AWD) allow you to turn with the accelerator which is a fun new challenge and very fast when done right.”
Only minimal aftermarket swaps were made to Team PGR’s midsize sedan before taking on the One Lap challenge to keep the car within “Stock” class requirements. They upgraded the Model 3’s front brake pads and rotors with Racing Brake parts, used racing brake fluid, and opted for Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires. Aftermarket rear brake pads weren’t available, however, and the stock versions used on the car melted during one of the time trials.
One other hiccup reported was the loss of cruise control, Autopilot, the speed limit display, and automatic wipers about two-thirds of the way into the trip, but those issues only impacted convenience. Tesla’s support service indicated a software bug may have caused the losses, and the issue was fixed after completion of the One Lap with a system reboot.
The tweaks and detailed planning paid off in the end for Andrew and Chad. Team PGR finished first in the Alternative Fuel category, 2nd in the Stock Touring class, and 17th in the One Lap overall out of 77 vehicles competing.
As Tesla enthusiasts, there was more than winning with an all-electric car that motivated Team PGR’s decision to join One Lap this year, namely in sharing everything that comes with the Tesla ownership experience.
“We wanted to show a whole new set of people (enthusiasts) that this was possible, and that the car was very good. At least half the field didn’t know that Superchargers were as prevalent as they are, so they didn’t know how we’d make it. They didn’t know about Track Mode, how well the car works to control the power, cornering, braking, etc. That said, there were a number of people who were very excited/interested to see how we did, who know the performance potential of the car, and [were] rooting for us,” Andrew explained.
#teamPGR photo – with our awesome #Tesla #racecar. #Tirerack #GRM #OLOA2019 pic.twitter.com/yW1Urk1oXK
— teamPGR (@team_pgr) May 12, 2019
The Tesla Model S driving team named Hyliion joined the event as a last-minute entrant after their gas-powered vehicle options became unavailable for the One Lap. The father and son team of Thomas and Brian Healy have their own alternative fuel creds aside from racing their 2017 P100D via Hyliion, their semi truck manufacturing company that’s developing a diesel-electric hybrid Class 8 long hauler. The Model S performed well for the team, although the lack of Track Mode’s thermal protections required adjustments to their driving techniques to compensate during timed trials.
Much like Team PGR, the Hyliion drivers were able to take advantage of Tesla’s extensive Supercharger network to participate successfully in the One Lap and they finished 34th overall.
“The most surprising thing was the abundance of Superchargers that are out there in order to keep the car charged. We weren’t sure going into the event how manageable it was going to be, getting from one track to the next, and being able to do it in the allotted time… Tesla’s done a great job of getting these Superchargers located around the US, where finding a destination to stop at and charge up for 45 minutes is a really feasible thing,” the team told CNET’s Roadshow in comments about the event.
As for Andrew and Chad, they plan to participate in future One Lap events with other Tesla vehicles and also expect more of the all-electric cars to meet them on the tracks.
“Because we are newer to running this car on track, and the car is new overall, we believe it has a lot more potential! We are already scheming about how to improve the car and how to find someone with one of the first [Next Generation] Roadsters when it is released so we can ‘borrow’ it for the One Lap…I think by completing the events we will go a ways toward changing some minds toward electric cars in the performance driving community and it will not surprise me if there’s 5 Model 3’s here next year,” Andrew concluded enthusiastically.
For more about TeamPGR, watch their video below with some updates and highlights from the One Lap of America 2019.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk drops a surprise update on Boring Company’s next big dig
Musk says Boring Company could shrink the Austin to San Antonio drive to just minutes.
Elon Musk says The Boring Company is working on what he called “a simple, precursor Hyperloop” tunnel connecting Austin and San Antonio, targeting speeds above 200 mph and cutting a drive that can take up to two and a half hours down to a consistent under 30 minutes. Musk posted the idea on X Sunday, in a reply to a repost of an AI generated video imagining a science fiction future with human colonies on other worlds, which he shared with the line “This is the future we shall bring into being.”
This is the future we shall bring into being pic.twitter.com/8aD0w8MDVc
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 20, 2026
The Boring Company’s own account picked up the idea in the same thread, adding a detail about how the trip would actually work: “Because Loop/Hyperloop is express (i.e. no intermediate stops), one could travel from an Austin parking lot to a favorite San Antonio restaurant in about 30 minutes. As long as they both have Loop stations.” That framing ties the proposed intercity link to the same station model the company already runs in Las Vegas, where riders enter the tunnel network through small, garage style stops rather than one central terminal.
This is not the company’s first run at the Austin to San Antonio corridor. Boring Company floated tunnels between the two cities as far back as 2021, and later competed for a separate San Antonio Loop project tied to the airport before that specific bid stalled. Pitches for tunnels in Chicago, Los Angeles, and a New York to Washington corridor have followed a similar pattern of big announcement without a shovel in the ground.
What is different this time is the balance sheet, especially since The Boring Company closed a 3 billion dollar funding round led by investors in the United Arab Emirates earlier this month at a valuation near 23 billion dollars, giving the tunneling company more capital to chase speculative projects than it had during its earlier Texas pitches. The company is also mid-build on two other intercity systems it has actually broken ground on, inc;luding a Nashville tunnel linking downtown to the airport, where a second boring machine finished commissioning in June, and its Las Vegas network, where the station count keeps climbing on paper faster than tunnels get dug.
That gap between announcement and execution is the reason to treat Sunday’s post as an opening bid rather than a project. A tunnel spanning roughly 80 miles between two metro areas, running at speeds Boring Company has not demonstrated over any real distance, would dwarf anything the company has built. For now, the Austin to San Antonio Hyperloop exists as a caption under an AI generated space video.
Elon Musk
Tesla eyes supply partners for Optimus mass production
Tesla certified three Chinese suppliers for Optimus mass production, signaling its robot timeline is accelerating.
Tesla’s robotics team traveled to Ningbo, in China’s Zhejiang province, on September 16 and spent the following day auditing component suppliers for Optimus, according to a Bloomberg report cited by RobotAIGeek. The visit moved three manufacturers from provisional status to certified mass production partners: Tuopu Group, which handles actuators and chassis components, Ningbo Joyson Electronic, a sensor supplier, and Zhejiang Sanhua Intelligent Controls, which builds thermal management systems. All three already supply parts to Tesla’s electric vehicles, and the audit reportedly came with fresh orders that supply chain reports put at an initial batch of roughly 5,000 units.
Tuopu, Joyson, and Sanhua built their manufacturing base serving the automotive industry, where tolerances and volume requirements are already close to what a mass produced humanoid robot demands. Sanhua in particular has history here. Teslarati reported last October that the company had received a roughly $685 million order for linear actuators tied to Optimus, a volume industry watchers estimated could cover around 180,000 robots once production ramped.
Supply chain reports tied to this week’s audit put Tesla’s near term production goal at about 1,000 Optimus units a week by late September, rising to 2,000 to 2,500 units a week by the end of the year. That pace would put real weight behind the timeline Tesla has been building toward since May, when it wound down Model S and Model X production at Fremont to convert that floor space into a dedicated Optimus line targeting one million units annually. JPMorgan analysts who toured the factory in August confirmed the conversion took roughly four months, a pace Musk has called unprecedented for a facility that size.
New drone video shows Tesla’s Optimus Factory reaching a turning point
Fremont is only the first phase. A second, larger Optimus plant is rising at Gigafactory Texas, where drone footage shared by Joe Tegtmeyer last week showed the structural steel nearing completion on the north end of the building. Tesla has said that facility is meant to eventually support production of up to 10 million units a year, though volume output there is not expected before 2027.
Commercial sales of Optimus are still targeted for the second half of 2027, but production is expected to start well before then. JPMorgan analyst Rajat Gupta has said Tesla’s “Optimus Academy” program, which uses early units to collect real world training data inside Tesla’s own facilities, is expected to be running later this year. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Ian Ma described the Ningbo audits as “a positive commercialization signal for China’s humanoid supply chain,” noting that sentiment could improve further if the visit leads to confirmed supplier nominations and larger orders. The Solactive China Humanoid Robotics Index rose about 1.4% on the news, though it remains down roughly 30% for the year.
Elon Musk
Tesla primes Cybercabs for 4K streaming and high bandwidth gaming with Starlink integration
Tesla is now shipping Cybercabs from Giga Texas with Starlink hardware built in as standard.
Tesla’s Cybercabs are now leaving Gigafactory Texas with Starlink hardware on the rear hatch in significant numbers, according to drone footage captured Tuesday by longtime Austin drone observer Joe Tegtmeyer. Production at the factory ramped back up after the Labor Day weekend, and his flyover of the outbound lot showed rows of gold Cybercabs alongside Model Y Long Wheelbase units, many carrying the satellite module for the first time as standard equipment rather than a one off retrofit.
Giga Texas today is busy with production coming back up following the long weekend. Of interest today in the outbound lot is the appearance of hundreds of Mode; YL’s and many more Cybercabs and for the 1st time equipped with the Starlink module one the hatch in big numbers.
At… pic.twitter.com/G9yl6s51m4
— Joe Tegtmeyer 🚀 🤠🛸😎 (@JoeTegtmeyer) September 8, 2026
Tesla first showed Starlink built into an actual Cybercab on August 10, when the Robotaxi account posted images of a single gold unit with the antenna integrated into the roofline above the taillights and called it the first Cybercab with Starlink integration. That followed a July reveal where Tesla and Starlink jointly posted a cutaway diagram of the antenna placement without a working vehicle to back it up. Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s VP of AI software, said at the time that the connection isn’t required for the car to drive itself. It exists mainly for navigation, customer service and keeping tabs on the fleet.
Musk has made a different case in public. During Tesla’s Q2 earnings call, he said the company can’t afford robotaxis stranded in what he called “Bermuda Triangles of lack of cellular connectivity,” and he separately claimed on X that Starlink will eventually reach every Tesla built, calling it the only way to deliver high bandwidth to billions of vehicles. He has also pitched the antenna as an entertainment upgrade, telling riders they would be able to stream 4K video or play games during a trip.
The rollout has moved fast since. Robotaxi service opened to the public in Austin on September 3, and Cybercabs had already been spotted with Starlink hardware in Houston and near Miami International Airport in the weeks before Tuesday’s factory footage showed the module shipping at volume rather than on scattered test units. Whether the satellite link earns its keep is still an open question. Tesla’s unsupervised service currently runs in dense metro geofences in Texas and Florida, markets where cellular coverage is already strong, which is not where the rural dead zones Musk describes tend to show up.
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