Lifestyle
Tesla Model 3 makes BMW racer squeal in delight while riding shotgun in hot lap
BMW enthusiast and AR-G Motorsports boss Daniel Rose had spent a great weekend at the Laguna Seca Raceway, with his team proving victorious at the United States Touring Car Championship (USTCC). After the event, one of his AR-G BMW M3 race car drivers, Doug Makishima, decided to take his personal Tesla Model 3 Performance for a couple of laps around the track. Just for fun, he invited Rose to ride shotgun.
After intense driving sessions in the team’s racecars, Makishima and Rose’s lap using the Model 3 Performance was supposed to be a lighthearted, fun lap. The Model 3 owner even fired up the electric car’s music. And then the Tesla shot off the line, and before he knew it, the seasoned BMW enthusiast and motorsports boss felt himself getting pushed back into his seat. As the Model 3 Performance smoothly glided and accelerated in full force out of a curve, Rose started laughing. No, squealing is the more accurate word, as he graciously noted in a later Facebook comment.
-
- A Tesla Model 3 at the Laguna Seca Raceway. (Photo: Doug Makishima)
-
- A Tesla Model 3 at the Laguna Seca Raceway. (Photo: Doug Makishima)
-
- A Tesla Model 3 at the Laguna Seca Raceway. (Photo: Doug Makishima)
A Tesla Model 3 at the Laguna Seca Raceway. (Photo: Doug Makishima)
Over the course of the Tesla Model 3 Performance’s two laps around the track, Rose sounded almost as if he was in a roller coaster — just having fun with the car’s insane acceleration and quickness, and marveling at how planted the Model 3 was despite its weight. As could be seen in the video, both driver and passenger had a grand time ripping through the track. Rose’s wife, who later viewed the video, even commented that she has never heard her husband react that positively to a vehicle before.
Being racecar drivers, the two men actually ended up setting a new record for stock electric cars in Laguna Seca. Prior to the run, the record for a stock EV in the course was 1:46.8. Makishima and Rose recorded 1:46.1 and a 1:46.5 in the Model 3 Performance, with a passenger, and with the music on. What is quite remarkable is that the two men managed an impressive lap with a bone stock vehicle. The Model 3 Performance had OEM tires, and its tire pressure wasn’t even adjusted for closed circuit driving. Since the run was conducted late, the temperature on the track was also lower than preferred. The vehicle did not run into problems either, save for a brake temperature warning.
Quite interestingly, Makishima’s winning run in his custom-built AR-G BMW M3 racecar was tagged at 1:37.9 in the USTCC’s Super Touring (ST) class. That’s a hair slower than the time set by a Tesla Model 3 Performance with upgraded brakes and suspension that was driven by Mountain Pass Performance owner Sasha Anis, which completed a lap in 1:37.5. Granted, the record-setting Model 3 Performance was fitted with slick tires while Makishima’s AR-G BMW M3 racecar was not, but the performance of the two vehicles seemed to be incredibly close.
It appears that Elon Musk was not kidding when he said that Teslas are, beyond being incredibly safe and well-designed vehicles, instruments of fun.
-
Watch a longtime BMW enthusiast and racer experience the Tesla Model 3 Performance around the track in the video below. Please do play the video with the sound on (It’s really worth it).
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.
Elon Musk
Tesla Diner is throwing a birthday party with a Franz-signed special treat
Tesla Diner turns one on July 21 with Optimus, roller skates, and a Franz-signed hat.
Tesla is throwing its Hollywood Diner a first birthday party on July 21 and the celebration comes with a guest list of unique items, including a limited run of Tesla Diner birthday hats personally signed by Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen for the first 50 customers who place an in-car order at midnight.
One year after lines wrapped around the block on Santa Monica Boulevard for a diner that most of the restaurant industry did not take seriously, Tesla is making the case that the concept was worth the years it took to build. The concept had been in Musk’s head since at least 2018, when he floated the idea of “an old school drive-in, roller skates and rock restaurant” on X, describing it years later as “‘Grease’ meets ‘The Jetsons’ with Supercharging.”
Tesla Optimus Gen 3 is coming to the Tesla Diner with new ambitions
What made the diner genuinely different from any restaurant that came before it was not the menu or the nostalgia. It was the ordering model. Tesla owners could place food orders directly from their vehicle’s touchscreen before arriving, a small feature that hints at something much larger on the horizon. As the Cybercab and unsupervised FSD expand across major cities, the diner model becomes a template for an entirely new kind of commerce. A robotaxi pulling in to charge does not need a human to walk up to a counter. The vehicle places the order, the food is ready on arrival, and the passenger never interrupts the experience of being driven somewhere else. It is the first glimpse of what drive-through commerce looks like when the car is doing the driving.
As Teslarati has reported, Musk signaled immediately after opening that the Hollywood location was only the beginning, posting that Tesla would expand the concept to major cities worldwide and along Supercharger corridors on long-distance routes if the first location proved successful. One year in, the birthday celebration on July 21 makes a strong case that it has. Tesla announced a full day of events including a Cybercab on display, a birthday menu, Optimus in attendance, face painting, a photo booth, roller skating servers, a light show, a Skypad DJ, and complimentary collectibles.
If Musk’s ambition holds, the Hollywood diner is year one of something much bigger. The birthday party is the proof of concept. The robotaxi fleet is the business model waiting behind it.
-
Tesla Diner is turning 1 on July 21st, so we’re throwing a party
Come swing by for a day full of fun:
– Cybercab on display
– Birthday menu
– @Tesla_Optimus
– Face painting for kids & adults
– Photo booth
– Servers on roller skates delivering your order
– Light show
– Skypad DJ… pic.twitter.com/TD8pOjihYs— Tesla North America (@tesla_na) July 18, 2026
Tesla claims supplier is holding Cybertruck production hostage
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3.6 review: a rare regression, but some bright spots
