Lifestyle
Tesla owners rally in powerful statement against human trafficking
“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”
Those words were said by Tesla CEO Elon Musk when speaking about the struggles that his companies faced in dire times of adversity. They were also spoken by Eliza Bleu, a victim of human trafficking who was lucky enough to be rescued after 9 years. Bleu was at the Longest Tesla Parade on Saturday, where an estimated 340 Tesla owners rallied in Atlanta, Georgia, to combat human trafficking in a massive parade of electric vehicles.
“When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor.”
– Elon MuskThe odds of ending human trafficking are not in our favor, but it’s important that 40.3 million get an opportunity to be free, so we must do it! pic.twitter.com/RRxJXkOFmj
— 𝔈𝔩𝔦𝔷𝔞 (@elizableu) December 13, 2020
The Miles Through Time Automotive Museum, in conjunction with Tesla Owner’s Club Atlanta, coordinated the largest parade of all-electric vehicles from the Silicon Valley-based automaker in an attempt to raise awareness about the issues of human trafficking. The parade took place on Saturday, December 12, and a total of 340 Tesla cars checked in to the event, making it the largest parade of Teslas ever. The previous record was set in 2017 in Beijing, China, where 145 Teslas lined up in an attempt to set a Guinness World Record.
While the Miles Through Time Automotive Museum provides an in-depth timeline of automotive history and development within their facility, their mission was to raise money for Operation Underground Railroad, commonly known as O.U.R. According to its website, the organization intends to rescue children from sex trafficking and sexual exploitation and has saved thousands of people in 28 countries and 26 U.S. states.
-
The Longest Tesla Parade, as it was labeled by the Miles Through Time Museum, was coordinated by Sean Mathis, the founder of the museum. “Days before discovering the Guinness record, Atlanta had just had sting that resulting in the rescue of 30+ kids from human trafficking,” Mathis told Teslarati. “My wife apparently followed Tim Ballard on social media who is the founder of O.U.R. and suggested we turn the world record attempt into a fundraiser to help save kids from human trafficking and O.U.R. was going to be the perfect nonprofit that is already set up to help make a difference.”
The total route of the parade stood at 15.2 miles, mostly down Highway 400 in Atlanta. The parade required some assistance from local Georgia Public Service Commissioner Tim Echols, who assisted in shutting down Highway 400 to help iron out the traveling process of the parade.
WOW. 340 Tesla’s in 10 seconds.
Credit: Georgia Drone Pilots pic.twitter.com/rpJT0Uh1SF
— Tesla Owners Atlanta (@TeslaAtlanta) December 13, 2020
By the time the parade had wrapped up, 340 Teslas had checked in. Sean and his wife, Torie, did indicate in a YouTube video after the fact that 340 would not be the official number; it would likely be less. “At some point, the parade was broken, but it isn’t a big deal. We only needed 146 to actually officially take the record,” Sean said in a video. The official number, which will need to be confirmed by Guinness World Records to take the world record status officially, will be validated shortly.
It is estimated that 50,000 people are trafficked into the United States each year, from Mexico and the Phillippines most often, according to bedbible.com. More than half of these cases involved children under the age of 18. Additionally, 40.3 million people are estimated to be victims of human trafficking globally.
-
The message was simple: raise awareness for human trafficking, and it worked. A total of $8,197 was raised at the event, Johanna Crider of CleanTechnica, who donated and attended the parade, said. Although the parade has concluded, there is still time to donate. $7,209.20 of the $10,000 goal has been raised so far, and 17 days remain in the online fundraiser. To donate, we’ve included the link here.
Tesla community raised $8197 for @OURrescue $tsla @elonmusk @elizableu @seanmathis @Milesthrutime pic.twitter.com/OtEtl2jrEC
— Johnna (@JohnnaCrider1) December 12, 2020
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.
Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most
The Boring Company’s newest Vegas Station has a permit quietly waiting behind it
