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Review: Tesla Model S J1772 Charger Lock

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Driving a Model S is a terrific experience but it does come with new territory from time to time. Things that you never had to deal with as a gas car owner. Charging for example. An overwhelming majority of the time I charge my Model S inside my own garage with a 240v 40amp outlet. But there are times when I need to charge away from home and don’t have access to a Supercharger oasis from Tesla. It also means that there are extended periods of time where I’m away from my car while a charging cable is attached to it. You never leave your gas car with a running fuel pump inserted in the tank intake.

Tesla Model S J1772 Charger

Image source: wikimedia.org

Here in the Chicagoland area we have a pretty healthy number of ChargePoint stations. A couple of years ago you would see most of these spaces empty, but now it’s unusual to see one not in use. On occasion I work in our downtown office and although I could take the train, I prefer to drive. Yeah, you know why. Parking garages in Chicago are very expensive but are also abundant, and so savvy owners have installed free ChargePoint stations and reserved spaces for EV’s. Sweet.

Also see: Using public EV charging stations with your Tesla Model S

Are you comfortable leaving your car parked in a public lot all day with a charge cable attached to it? Well, Power 12 has developed a simple product, the CapturePro CP1, designed to provide a greater peace of mind while you’re away from your charging Model S. It’s a hard plastic ring designed to sit between your Model S J1772 adapter and the charge handle. It’s singular purpose is to help protect from unwanted charging disconnections.

CapturePro CP1

I tested one yesterday. I drove into the city and wheeled into a rock star EV reserved spot in a Chicago River North parking garage. The CapturePro was easy to use. I simply slipped it onto my Tesla Model S J1772 adapter and connected the ChargePoint handle to the adapter.

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Tesla Model S J1772 Charger Lock (CapturePro CP1)

The handle snaps onto the adapter to make a solid connection. But anyone can remove it. Here is where the CapturePro CP1 comes in. It slides over the connection, preventing purposeful or accidental disconnection.

Functionality

The ring has six different size notches so you can find just the right one to secure the handle to the adapter. Once you return to your Model S you simply disconnect the adapter from your charge port and slide off the ring. Once in place I applied some pretty serious pressure to try and dislodge it. I could not do so.

Tesla Model S J1772 Charger Lock (CapturePro CP1)It would likely require significant force or a cutting tool to completely compromise the structure.

In other words someone would have to have strong purpose to break the connection. The CP1 requires no assembly and has a label for recording contact information, like a cell phone number, you can attach to the ring.

ChargePoint TextI plugged into ChargePoint at 8:00 and at 10:00 am my Model S was fully charged. I knew because ChargePoint has an excellent alert system that texted me when it was charged.

They also text you when the plug has been removed. Had removal occurred during the day I would have simply walked the two blocks to my car and assessed the situation. My Tesla iPhone app would tell me that my car is still parked, locked and in the same place I parked it.

Conclusion

Should you have one in your Model S at all times? That depends entirely on your level of risk acceptance. Do you buy insurance or extended warranties for your electronics? Do these types of things reduce stress? If so, then the CapturePro might be for you.

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At $39.99 it’s not an impulse buy. It worked exactly as advertised, but in my opinion if you’re going to do this I think it should be made out of something significantly stronger. I know it adds to the cost, but it also increases security. Do you opt for the cheap bicycle helmet that will shatter or is your brain worth top shelf protection?

 

RELATED: Tesla Charging Etiquette: SuperchargerQR App, Paper Note and Google Voice

 

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Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”

Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.

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Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.

While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure

The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.

Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet

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Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.

Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.

As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.

Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.

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SpaceXAI just launched into your kitchen with their new app

SpaceXAI just powered its first consumer app and it predicts what you want to buy.

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SpaceXAI just made its first move into consumer AI, and it involves your grocery cart. On June 3, 2026, Gopuff and SpaceXAI announced the launch of Go, a Grok-powered shopping assistant built directly into the Gopuff app that predicts what you need before you even start searching for it.

Gopuff is an instant delivery platform that operates more than 400 micro-fulfillment centers across the U.S., delivering everyday essentials, snacks, drinks, and household items in as little as 15 minutes. It is not a restaurant delivery app or a marketplace. It owns its inventory, controls its warehouses, and handles its own logistics, which means it has built one of the most detailed consumer behavior datasets in retail over its 13-year history.

Go combines SpaceXAI’s advanced reasoning, voice, and image generation models with Gopuff’s dataset of hundreds of millions of orders and real-time cultural signals from X to prepare a suggested cart the moment a customer opens the app. It learns each shopper’s habits and automatically builds a personalized cart based on time of day, location, order history, and real-time indicators. Returning customers can check out with a single tap.


Rather than searching for specific items, users can describe a situation like a game-day party or the desire for a healthy breakfast and Go will assemble a cart automatically. It can also predict when shoppers are running low on items like coffee or paper towels and have them packed and delivered in under 15 minutes. Grok voice integration lets users talk to the app in plain conversational language and check out completely hands-free.

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Gopuff co-founder and co-CEO Yakir Gola said: “Today, we believe the greatest friction left in commerce is not delivery or instantaneous access to the essentials customers need. It’s the moment before: the thinking, the deciding, the remembering. We’re combining Gopuff’s demand intelligence with xAI’s frontier reasoning to create an everyday shopping experience that feels like a true extension of you.”

Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO

The timing carries context beyond the product launch. SpaceXAI was formed after SpaceX completed an all-stock merger with Elon Musk’s xAI earlier this year, folding one of the most advanced AI labs in the world into the same corporate structure as the company preparing what could be the largest IPO in history. SpaceXAI is dipping into consumer-focused AI just as it prepares for its public debut, and while Musk has openly discussed building an everything app, this launch uses Grok to power another company’s product rather than launching a standalone consumer platform. Every consumer-facing deployment of Grok ahead of the IPO roadshow adds tangible evidence that SpaceXAI is not just an infrastructure play but a direct competitor in the AI application layer where OpenAI and Google are already fighting for dominance.

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Tesla saves its passengers again – This time after a 300-foot cliff fall in Malibu

A Tesla Model 3 fell 300 feet off a Malibu cliff and both passengers survived.

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A Tesla Model 3 plunged roughly 300 feet off a cliff on Mulholland Highway in Malibu on Friday morning, May 29, 2026, and both occupants survived. The crash was reported at approximately 7:30 a.m. near the 2500 block of Mulholland Highway, triggering a multi-agency rescue operation involving Malibu Search and Rescue, the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the California Highway Patrol, and McCormick Ambulance.

When first responders arrived, the male driver was outside the vehicle shouting for help while the female passenger remained pinned inside the Tesla. Rescue crews rappelled down the cliffside on ropes to reach the wreckage. A flight medic was lowered by helicopter to begin treating both victims, and the driver was hoisted up to the roadway before crews used the Jaws of Life to free the trapped passenger. Both were airlifted to a local trauma center with moderate injuries despite a remarkable result for a fall that steep.

The outcome is not surprising, considering Model 3 earned an overall 5-star rating from NHTSA in every category and sub-category, and recorded the lowest probability of injury of any car ever evaluated by the U.S. New Car Assessment Program. The absence of a traditional engine in the front of the vehicle creates a longer crumple zone that absorbs impact energy before it reaches occupants, and the battery pack running along the floor gives the car an unusually low center of gravity that reinforces structural rigidity.

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This is not the first time a Tesla has kept passengers alive after going off a cliff. A Tesla Model Y carrying a family of four survived a plunge off a cliff at Devil’s Slide near San Francisco in January 2023, with two adults and two children walking away from a 250-foot fall. That incident drew widespread attention to how the structural integrity of Tesla’s electric platform performs in extreme crash scenarios that most vehicles would not survive.

Tesla Model Y driver who drove off cliff with family attempts to avoid criminal conviction

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