Lifestyle
This Tesla Model S Plaid+ concept car is covered in gold, and you can buy one
The Tesla Model S is one of the most revolutionary vehicles in recent memory. While Tesla first released the Roadster in its early days, the Model S was the first car the automaker released that was readily available to the public upon its initial production push in 2012. Over the years, the Model S has been revised several times by Tesla, but third-party customization companies, like Caviar Royal Gift, have also put their own spin on the all-electric flagship sedan. This one is covered in 24 karat, 999 gold (indicating a gold content of 999.9 parts per thousand – the purest form of gold that is available to consumers), matching the $299,999 price tag that will keep this ride reserved for the rich.
Caviar has spent the better part of its established presence creating customized iPhones that also sell for a pretty penny. However, the company took on a new project that goes past the Smartphone sector, but still lies within the broad technology industry by customizing a brand new Model S sedan, rocking the brand new Plaid+ powertrain that retails for $168,990. While the Plaid+ Model S has the best performance specifications to ever be released for a production vehicle with a less than 1.9-second 0-60 MPH time, a 200 MPH top speed, and range ratings that go over 520 miles, the vehicle is already impressive in its own right.
However, there are some owners who don’t only want the performance, but they want the cosmetics too. While the Model S is a sharp vehicle on its own, owners and aftermarket companies have put their own spins on Tesla cars in the past, coming up with some wildly creative designs.
Caviar took it up a notch. “The World’s best electric car is turned into a truly luxury item. Black gloss and dazzling gold. This is how Caviar designers present a high-tech luxury vehicle,” the company writes about the custom Model S. Designed by a team of Caviar artists, the Model S concept car is covered in 999 gold through the Double Electroplated technique that bonds and protects the gold to the car.
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- Credit: Caviar Royal Gift
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- Credit: Caviar Royal Gift
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- Credit: Caviar Royal Gift
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- Credit: Caviar Royal Gift
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- Credit: Caviar Royal Gift
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- Credit: Caviar Royal Gift
The company writes:
“The brand’s artists have created an exclusive Tesla Model S concept car. The electric car is presented in black and adorned with decorative elements covered with 999 gold in Double Electroplated technique. The radiator grille, side skirts, discs, rear-view mirrors and elements of the rear and front bumpers are in the gold color.
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Imagine yourself driving this car: a respectable high-quality oil-colored body and a dazzling glow of gold. You are not just driving the car of the future. This is a new word in luxury car modding. If you think that they will turn after you and look with an admiring glance, you are not mistaken. That is exactly what the Caviar Model Excellence 24K is made for.
We are confident that the synthesis of high technology and luxurious materials is exactly what you need. It’s not just a car. It is the quintessence of sophistication, luxury, and self-confidence. Dare to walk such a beast along the main streets of the city? Be careful, you can dazzle those around you with your splendor.”
Caviar requires anyone interested to submit a request for the vehicle, but the timeline on when the car will be delivered ultimately falls on Tesla. The Model S Plaid+ variant, while announced earlier this year, will not be available until at least mid-2022, according to Tesla’s online design studio.
Regardless, the Model S Excellence 24K, as it is being called, isn’t just about the exterior. Caviar also threw in some renders of the gold-plated Yoke Steering wheel and dash screen, which are new additions to the revised Model S design.
If you’re thinking about getting one of these for yourself, Caviar said it will only produce 99 of these, so get it while you still can!
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.
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.
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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 Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features
Tesla briefly offered this Robotaxi part for your personal car
