Lifestyle
Unplugged Tesla Model S and Model 3 win double podium finishes at Gridlife Laguna
A Tesla Model S Plaid and a reengineered Model 3 Performance from EV tuning house Unplugged Performance participated in the Gridlife Laguna Festival at the Weathertech Raceway Laguna Seca. The twin Teslas ended the event with a rare double podium finish.
The Gridlife Laguna Festival did not have a lot of electric vehicles that participated in the event. In a comment to Teslarati, Unplugged Performance development driver and experienced EV racer Craig Coker mentioned that there were fewer than five electric cars at Gridlife Laguna. Both vehicles competed in Gridlife’s TrackBattle series, which features practice, qualifying, and a final podium sprint. The team’s Model S Plaid, a Pikes Peak sub-10-minute club member called Dark Helmet, competed in the Unlimited Class, and the Model S Performance, called Red Rocket, competed in the Street GT Class.
Unique Racers
What is interesting about Unplugged Performance’s twin Tesla racers is the fact that they are very different from what one might expect from a vehicle that’s built to be competitive in a racing event. While Dark Helmet features aggressive aero and a stripped-out interior, it still features a stock drivetrain, battery, and software from Tesla. Conventional racecars powered by the internal combustion engine are typically modified so they can put out more power.
Such a statement is even more accurate for Red Rocket. The reengineered Model 3 Performance competed in the Street GT Class, which is a category for production cars with restrictions on tire width and factory aero components. Similar to Dark Helmet, whose modifications are mostly comprised of Unplugged Performance’s Apex-S Model S series, Red Rocket’s modifications are comprised of the EV tuner’s Ascension-R parts.
In a comment to Teslarati, Craig Coker noted that Red Rocket is easily daily driven, so much so that the vehicle was driven by the Unplugged team to the event, unlike Dark Helmet, which was transported to Laguna Seca via trailer pulled by a Tesla Cybertruck. That speaks to the reengineered Model 3 Performance’s capabilities, and it also highlights how the EV tuner’s parts could still be useful for everyday use.
“The 2024 Model 3 Performance we competed with, I would definitely take to the streets, get groceries and take my kids to school. In fact, we drove it to Laguna Seca from LA. Then we competed in it and then drove it back to LA,” Craig Coker said.
The Podium Sprint
The twin Teslas both qualified for the podium sprint in their respective classes, despite some challenges such as Dark Helmet spinning out in one lap. Despite spinning out, Dark Helmet still qualified for the event’s podium sprint. Red Rocket accomplished the same thing, placing second in its class and qualifying for the podium sprint. The Model 3 Performance’s podium sprint ended with a 1:35.666 lap, allowing the vehicle to place second overall in the Gridlife Street GT Class. Dark Helmet completed its podium attempt lap in 1:28.465, allowing the all-electric racer to place third overall in the Unlimited Class. Both vehicles also set all wheel drive records for Street GT for Red Rocket and the Unlimited Class for Dark Helmet.
Craig Coker shared a comment about this year’s Gridlife event, as well as the performance of the twin Unplugged Teslas. “These events are always interesting as we are one of the few EV’s to compete. There are 100’s of vehicles on track over the weekend but less than five EVs in the mix. Sometimes we are hated, sometimes we are made fun of, and sometimes people love what we do.
“But there is one thing no one can deny. When we show up to the track we are consistent in setting records, or a podium, or occasionally both. At Gridlife Laguna this year we went beyond and surprised many with not one but two podiums with two different vehicles in two separate classes. This is a very rare achievement. It could only be achieved with a hardworking and talented pit crew by my side,” he said.
Unplugged Performance CEO Ben Schaffer celebrated the twin Tesla’s achievements at the event.
“The UP Race team, along with our development driver Craig Coker, did a fantastic job. We brought out two Laguna Seca record-holding vehicles: the production EV lap record-holding Model S Plaid, ‘Dark Helmet,’ and our 2024 Model 3 Performance, ‘Red Rocket,’ which holds the lap record for the Model 3 Performance class. Both cars performed reliably against a highly competitive grid of the fastest ICE vehicles and drivers in the country.
“The Model 3 set the Gridlife Laguna Seca fastest lap record for Street Class AWD, while the Model S continues to hold the Unlimited Class AWD lap record. Craig secured two podium finishes, demonstrating the true driving performance of Tesla engineering when paired with the same Unplugged Performance catalog parts our clients enjoy worldwide. EVs deserve a place in motorsports and we remain thrilled to be a rare representative of EV performance in challenging the fastest ICE vehicles at events globally,” Schaffer stated.
The Next Stop
With Gridlife Laguna now complete, the Unplugged Performance team is now focused on the upcoming race at Thunderhil, which is expected to be held next month.
“Gridlife announced a new west coast championship for 2024 called FCP Euro Pacific Championship. It’s a 3 stop event. Willow Springs, Laguna Seca and Thunderhill. So far we have captured 1st at Willow Springs Raceway, 3rd at Laguna Seca in the Unlimited Class. We are currently P1 in overall points. If we do well at Thunderhill next month we can win the championship. That would be a huge accomplishment for an EV to win this inaugural championship!” Coker said.
There are only a few cars in the hyper-competitive world of automotive racing that are capable of changing the perception of what is possible for a production car. At the track, where victory and defeat are separated by milliseconds, few cars could make an impact large enough that even critics are silenced. As it turns out, the Model S Plaid and the Model 3 Performance—improved by bolt-on parts—could be these vehicles.
Watch a video of the Unplugged Tesla team at the Gridlife Laguna Seca event below.
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Investor's Corner
Tesla Robotaxi gets a massive upgrade in Nevada
Nevada regulators just approved a massive expansion of Tesla’s robotaxi fleet across the entire county.
Tesla’s robotaxi footprint in Nevada just grew by roughly 500 times in a single regulatory vote.
The Nevada Transportation Authority approved Tesla’s full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit on Thursday, clearing the way for the company to deploy up to 5,000 driverless vehicles across Clark County over the next 12 months. The decision came during a four hour general session meeting that Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt watched live and reported on X, noting the vote replaces the interim order that had limited Tesla to just 10 robotaxis on a narrow stretch of the Las Vegas Strip.
EXCLUSIVE: Tesla has just officially received approval for its full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit in Nevada, clearing the way for Tesla to launch a paid public Robotaxi service in Las Vegas.
This officially allows @Tesla to deploy up to 5,000 robotaxis over the next… pic.twitter.com/DPs5UtUlrE
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) August 20, 2026
That earlier cap, covered here after it surfaced on August 13, came with restrictions that looked stricter than what Tesla runs in Austin: a 45 mph speed ceiling, no airport pickups, and a geofence confined to the Strip corridor. The new approval extends Tesla’s operating authority to all of Clark County, with room to request an even wider geofence across the state.
Tesla representatives at the meeting said they have no intention of putting 5,000 cars on the road right away. Commercial rides are expected to start within 30 days, pending vehicle inspections, insurance filings, and fare approval, the standard steps every robotaxi operator in Nevada has had to clear.
Tesla’s own Robotaxi account replied to the news with a short line, The golden future is upon us.
The timing lines up with Tesla’s broader robotaxi push this month. The company is preparing to open Cybercab rides to the public in Austin as soon as this month, and it opened a sweepstakes for riders to win a seat at the launch event. Tesla filed its original application for a 5,000 vehicle Nevada fleet back in June, a request regulators trimmed to 10 vehicles when they issued the interim order in July. Thursday’s vote effectively grants the number Tesla asked for from the start.
Zoox, the Amazon owned robotaxi operator, has run in Nevada since 2025 and was capped at 100 vehicles before Thursday’s decision. Tesla’s new ceiling puts it well ahead of that comparison on paper, though the company has said its actual fleet size will depend on how quickly FSD v15 rolls out, the software update executives have called the gateway to scaling unsupervised robotaxi operations nationwide.
Elon Musk
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
Elon Musk says X now exposes government censorship, but India’s secrecy laws complicate that promise.
Elon Musk’s promise to make government censorship requests on X “clearly visible” is running into a wall in India, where the law forbids the very disclosure Musk is promising.
On August 15, Musk responded to an update from X’s open-source algorithm team by writing “Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible.” The claim referred to a change X pushed two days earlier to its public xai-org/x-algorithm repository, which now includes a controversial filter written directly into the code. The filter suppresses posts from 665 accounts flagged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court from appearing in the For You feed of any viewer located in Brazil, unless the viewer already follows the account. The election tied to the filter is scheduled for October 4.
India’s government wasn’t as impressed, and responded on Monday that “X will have to follow the law of the land,” in response to Musk’s transparency push covered by the Times of India. The problem is structural rather than political. India issues content blocking orders under Section 69A of its IT Act, and Rule 16 of the accompanying 2009 Blocking Rules requires those orders to stay confidential. Publishing an India equivalent of the Brazil filter, naming specific accounts and citing specific government orders, would itself violate Indian law. Government use of Section 69A has grown from roughly 6,000 orders a year between 2018 and 2023 to about 24,300 in 2025, according to a Tech Times report.
The contrast puts Musk’s transparency pledge in an odd spot. It works largely as advertised in Brazil, where electoral law requires disclosure and X can point to specific account IDs and a specific court order in public code. It cannot work the same way in India, where the law requires the opposite. X users in India will keep seeing content disappear from search and their feeds without any public accounting of why, even as X tells the rest of the world that its censorship compliance is now inspectable.
This isn’t the first time X’s fights with a national government have shaped how the platform operates. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to suspend the accounts of sitting lawmakers and journalists in 2024, a standoff that cost X its Brazilian revenue for months and froze Starlink’s local accounts before the investigation into Musk and X was closed in March with no evidence of wrongdoing found. X also sued California over a state law requiring moderation disclosures, arguing the mandate itself violated the First Amendment.
Whether India’s government pursues anything beyond a public statement remains to be seen. For now, the mismatch between what X can legally publish and what different governments legally allow it to publish is the real story behind Musk’s seven word claim.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s driverless Cybercab just passed a big test with State Governor
Florida’s governor rode Tesla’s Cybercab at a closed test track and called the experience impressive.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rode in a Tesla Cybercab on a closed test track this week and came away impressed, posting on X that the vehicle “successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.” He called the ride “impressive.”
The stop was part of a broader event Monday at SunTrax, a 775 acre state owned proving ground in Auburndale that Florida built specifically to test autonomous and connected vehicles before they reach public roads. Standing next to a gold Cybercab, DeSantis described the car in plain terms: “You go in there and you just sit. You have a screen. There’s no steering wheel, no pedals. Clearly these things could be very beneficial.”
We took a ride on a robotaxi on the Suntrax course and it successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.
Impressive! https://t.co/FVAkzFLz3r
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) August 11, 2026
DeSantis paired the praise with a caveat that has followed autonomous vehicles since the category existed. “You don’t want to be in an autonomous vehicle and it drives you into a ditch. That would not be good,” he said, framing safety validation as the gate before wider deployment.
SunTrax, the 2.25 mile oval which the state calls the only high speed autonomous vehicle test track in the Southeast, can simulate rain, pedestrian crossings, hills and crowded urban conditions at highway speeds, letting companies push a car past what an early public rollout would risk. Tesla, Waymo and Beep all use the facility, and Florida’s regulatory approach, among the most permissive for autonomous vehicles in the country, doesn’t require a human operator inside a fully autonomous car.
Tesla has reason to want the blessing of Florida and states beyond, as the Cybercab entered volume production at Gigafactory Texas this spring and has since self certified as SAE Level 4 under Texas law. Public road testing so far has kept a safety monitor in the passenger seat, and Florida is where Tesla has been expanding its existing Model Y based Robotaxi service instead, adding Miami in July and then Orlando and Tampa two weeks later. A closed track endorsement from a sitting governor doesn’t change any of that, but it does put Tesla’s newest hardware in front of a state that has already shown it will move fast on rules.
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