Lifestyle
The Ultimate Tesla Model S Autocross Enduro Race
5 laps of pure adrenaline – Tires and brakes cooking, power limiter kicking in – just a final push to the finish line and…breath again!
Enduro racing, when autocross just isn’t enough. How about 5 continuous laps of autocross? Do you want to see when your car starts to overheat the tires go gooey and brakes begin fading? Experience it all in Enduro!
RELATED: Autocross in a Tesla Model S
There have been complaints about power limitation when tracking a Model S. During the typical ~1 min autocross course the car will not become power limited no matter how hard you punish it. The tires just barely get warm and brakes keep tight, no worries about overheating. A 5 lap Enduro is a different beast entirely. Turbos break, hoses rupture, I have seen brakes glowing and smelled the death scents of tortured ICE cars. This is the Kart Track at the Jackson County Sports Park in southern Oregon and the last autocross event of the year put on by the Siskiyou Sports Car Club (SSCC) is the Fall Enduro.
Jackson County Sports Park- Kart Track
This event is a clockwise 5 lap race around the outside of the track, roughly 3.3 miles total. The ‘grid’ where cars line up to race is near the lower left corner, cars are launched from the green mark and the start/finish line is at the red line. A 2 second penalty is added to your time for toppling a cone (very few out there to worry about) and 10 seconds for putting all 4 wheels in the grass – don’t do that! Racers have the opportunity to practice several laps at a time on Friday and/or Saturday and then just 1 shot at the full 5 lap time trial on Sunday.
The track record for this Fall Enduro event is 3:39.12 set by a TUI formula in the A Modified class, an average of 43.824s per lap and 54mph! My best laps during practice were in the 52.0xxs range but I wasn’t that quick in the race. I drove a different race line from what I had practiced and feel that it was better but I just wasn’t faster (you can watch a set of practice laps here). Earlier this year in the Spring Enduro race I ‘drove’ off of the track once during practice laps so I became a little overly cautious about my braking points during the actual races. With such a heavy car the margin of error is pretty tiny when going from floored at 75mph+ to full brakes and into a turn.
This last fall I managed to break the F Street track record of 4:25.195 by over 2 seconds but then I was ‘ICEd’ by a mere 3/10ths of a second- so close! My local F Street class competition comes from a CTS-V and an M3 . The CTS-V driver has raced for years so I guess I feel ok about ‘letting’ him beat me (technically he was my ‘teacher’ at the race driving school I did, go figure.)
Vehicle Lap1 Lap2 Lap3 Lap4 Lap5 total time
’13 Cadillac CTS-V Coupe 53.146 52.684 52.265 52.502 51.976 4:22.573
’12 Tesla Model S 52.145 52.318 53.033 52.712 52.704 4:22.912
’13 BMW M3 53.393 53.026 53.264 53.400 53.091 4:26.174
During the race I was pushing close to 75 mph on the straight and used 6.5 kWhr at an average rate of 1.99 kWhr/mi. The S didn’t seem to become noticeably power limited until somewhere around the 4th straight. Through the first 3 laps there was enough power that I could spin the wheels on most of the track so keeping just at the edge of slipping and not dropping too much power can be tricky. Power limiting kicked in on the straights for the last 2 laps and the brakes lost a little confidence by the last lap. For these last laps I pretty much just mashed the throttle to the floor on corner exits, surprising how similar my lap times were…think it means I need to do a bit better in the first 3 laps, read:drive smoother and tighter lines! Driving faster isn’t always faster, taking smooth lines without a lot of slop is usually faster but from an observer it may look slow.
Before I headed out to the track I tried sketching a race line and checking turn radii. After practice and speaking with some locals I tweaked my planned line a bit and ended up with something a little different. My goal was to try and hit all of the apex points that I could on the backside, hopefully something like this
Next Siskiyou Sports Car Club event and the first race of 2015 is the SSCC Spring Enduro, Counter clockwise around the wide curve at the top, past the start line then a hard left and right into the lower loop clockwise up the gut and back around to the finish…
See you there!
Lifestyle
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.
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.
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
Elon Musk
NASA’s first human outpost on the Moon starts now – SpaceX on deck
NASA named the rovers, landers, and vendors that will build America’s first Moon Base.
NASA has laid out its most detailed Moon Base plan to date, describing a permanent outpost near the Moon’s south pole that the agency intends to build over the coming decade as a direct stepping stone to Mars. “The Moon Base will be America’s and humanity’s first outpost on another celestial world,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said, adding that every mission crewed and uncrewed “will be a learning opportunity as we return to the lunar surface, build the infrastructure to stay, and master the skills required to live and operate in one of the most demanding and dangerous environments imaginable.”
The plan is structured in three phases involving both uncrewed and crewed missions to deliver equipment, vehicles, and infrastructure to the surface, with the first three moon base missions targeted to launch before the end of 2026.
Moon Base I, targeting fall 2026, will use Blue Origin’s Blue Moon Mark 1 lander to deliver scientific instruments to the Shackleton Connecting Ridge, the same region where Artemis astronauts will land. Moon Base II will send Astrobotic’s Griffin lander carrying more than 1,100 pounds of cargo including Astrolab’s FLIP rover to begin developing mobility systems on the surface. Moon Base III will carry the Lunar Vertex science mission on Intuitive Machines’ Nova-C Trinity lander to study lunar swirls near the south pole, with ESA and Korean science payloads aboard.
On the rover side, NASA awarded Astrolab $219 million and Lunar Outpost $220 million to build the first phase of Lunar Terrain Vehicles, with both rovers targeted for deployment to the lunar surface by 2028. Astrolab’s crewed rover weighs roughly 2,000 pounds and can reach over 6 mph. Lunar Outpost’s Pegasus rover can operate autonomously or via remote control at over 9 mph. Blue Origin separately received $188 million with an option worth $280.4 million to deliver cargo landers for rover transport.
NASA also confirmed that MoonFall, a mission deploying four survey drones to scout Artemis landing sites, has selected Firefly Aerospace to build the transport spacecraft, with a 2028 launch target.
SpaceX sits at the center of that commercial layer. SpaceX holds the NASA Human Landing System contract for the Starship-derived lander that will put astronauts on the surface under Artemis IV, currently targeting 2028. Before that can happen, SpaceX must demonstrate in-orbit propellant transfer at scale, a process requiring multiple Starship tanker launches to fuel a single mission. Water ice at the lunar south pole is central to the base’s long-term viability, as it can be converted into drinking water, breathable oxygen, and rocket fuel, directly reducing dependence on Earth resupply. That resource loop becomes far more practical if Starship can land and be refueled on or near the Moon itself.
Elon Musk has publicly stated that Starship V3, which recently completed its first flight, should be capable enough for initial Mars missions. The Moon Base plan announced Tuesday is the infrastructure layer that connects everything between those two ambitions, and SpaceX is the only American company currently contracted to build the rocket that gets humans to either destination.
Elon Musk
Tesla ditches India after years of broken promises
Tesla has ditched its plans to build a factory in India after years of failed negotiations.
Tesla’s long-running effort to establish a manufacturing presence in India is officially over. India’s Minister of Heavy Industries H.D. Kumaraswamy confirmed on May 19, 2026 that Tesla has informed authorities it will not proceed with a manufacturing facility in the country.
Tesla first signaled serious interest in India around 2021, when it began hiring local staff and lobbying the Indian government for lower import tariffs. The ask was straightforward: reduce duties enough for Tesla to test the market with imported vehicles before committing capital to a local factory. India’s position was equally firm, with an ask of Tesla to commit to manufacturing first, then receive tariff relief. Neither side moved, and the talks quietly collapsed.
Tesla to open first India experience center in Mumbai on July 15
India had offered a policy that would reduce import duties from 110% down to 15% on EVs priced above $35,000, provided companies committed at least $500 million toward local manufacturing investment within three years. Tesla declined to participate. The tariff standoff was only part of the problem. Analysts pointed to significant gaps in India’s local supply chain, inadequate industrial infrastructure, and a mismatch between Tesla’s premium pricing and the purchasing power of India’s automotive market as additional factors that made the investment difficult to justify.
First signs of an unraveling relationship came in April 2024, when Musk abruptly cancelled a planned trip to India where he was set to meet Prime Minister Modi and announce Tesla’s market entry. By July 2024, Fortune reported that Tesla executives had stopped contacting Indian government officials entirely. The government at that point understood Tesla had capital constraints and no plans to invest.
The more fundamental issue is that Tesla’s existing factories are currently operating at approximately 60% capacity, making a commitment to building new manufacturing capacity in a new market difficult to defend to investors. Tesla will continue selling imported Model Y vehicles through its existing showrooms in Mumbai, Delhi, Gurugram, and Bengaluru, but local production is no longer part of the plan.
Tesla plans ingenious improvement to one of its best features
Tesla saves its passengers again – This time after a 300-foot cliff fall in Malibu
