Lifestyle
Scoring an Invite to the Model 3 Unveiling
For months I have been half joking about scoring an invite to the Model 3 unveiling event by becoming a “famous” YouTube star. In fact, I started wondering how I could pull this off before Tesla even announced details, and without knowing much about how Tesla handled invites for other events. When the D event was announced, our Model S was on order but I hadn’t yet experienced the buzz surrounding events as an official enthusiast. Most of this joking was made on the Forum section of the Tesla Motors website. In fact, on January 8th, this post was started, shouting into the void in case anyone from Tesla management was listening. A fellow forum user was cheering me on, despite none of us at the time really knowing how one would be able to be invited, outside of making 10 or more qualified sales in the second referral contest.
On March 15th, Tesla announced official details about the upcoming Model 3 unveiling event. It would be held at 7pm on March 31st in the Los Angeles area and be an ‘intimate’ event. To show appreciation to existing owners, a lottery system would be used to fill 650 of the fewer than 800 spaces available for the event.
As soon as the email inviting owners to register for the lottery came through, I urged my husband that we should do it. He worried what would happen if we actually got selected, and was convinced it would happen. We had plans to take off work and arrive at our local service center bright and early to make our reservation for a Model 3. I want nothing more than to get it as soon as possible to be rid of our second car – my ICE Hyundai – and planned to reserve as early as physically possible.
In the hours and day to follow, I started to get nervous. ‘What if we get selected?’ I thought. That would mean an unexpected trip, un-budgeted airfare, and missing the chance to reserve in store the minute it opens. I can’t say whether or not I officially regretted entering the lottery at that moment, but I knew that in the extremely unlikely event of getting selected, I’d have a lot of thinking to do.
March 17th came and went without hearing anything. There was not yet any chatter about owners getting selected by the time I went to sleep on the East Coast and I assumed the word would come down overnight. By the time my alarm sounded at 6:30am, my better half was already nearly done his workout at the gym. He sent me this email, “Obviously we need to chat ….”
Yes, it happened. Just as he predicted it would, we got selected to attend the event. I squealed a little. I jumped out of bed. I ran right to my computer and for reasons unbeknownst to me at this moment, I posted a video of my face sharing in the excitement.
I texted my husband the words “Yes, yes, yes!” I started searching flights. To be honest I had already searched flights and saved an itinerary two days prior which would get us a direct flight at a semi-reasonable price. Back in January, I took first place in one of my fantasy football leagues. $281 in winnings were set aside “just in case” I had a plane ticket to buy in late March. This was supposed to be the week I spent it on something stupid, since by now I’d know that there was no chance I would be at the Model 3 event.
$860. Each. That was the price of the exact flight that was only five-something two days earlier. No way that was going to work. I started to realize that in the few times I had searched flights for the day, anything under $600 was pretty rare, unfortunately. Flights are meant to be booked well in advance and we just didn’t have that luxury.
Maybe we should drive to LA. Shoot, I’m going to be late for work. I drove the whole way with my head buzzing trying to figure out how best to get my butt to LA in two weeks. “We’re still young, we can do this”, I thought. It’s probably only two days of driving. Per the EV Trip Planner, it’s 55 hours each way. Wait, that’s not going to work. There were only 24 hours in a day last time I checked, and we’d need to sleep. (I googled a notable EV cross country trip and realized they had three drivers, took turns sleeping, and had more backup drivers following in an ICE. It took meticulous planning.)
For a few hours I took a mental break. Little did I know the Mister was at searching flights. Once he told me about one he found, a feeling of urgency started setting in. My tone got a bit frantic and I ended up booking before he could give me his blessing.
Breathe. We’re going. What’s $1056 at a time like this? This is the beauty (downfall?) of credit cards, I don’t really have to think about it until the due date next month. In my mind tens of thousands of owners signed up for a chance to be at this event and passing up on an RSVP (that we volunteered for) wasn’t an option.
What about my plans to reserve in store at the first possible moment? I’ll be in the air. There are no scenarios where I can be at a store (even one in California) anywhere near the first hour. I called my local service center and asked for someone in sales to call me back.
“I understand you have a question about reserving a Model 3.”
“I promise you won’t have gotten this question from anyone yet. Wanna bet? No, that’s stupid, let me just tell you… I planned on coming by and waiting around, maybe bringing coffee and donuts to hang out with you guys and place my deposit at the first possible moment. But I can’t. I’ll be in the air. On my way to Hawthorne!”
A very pleasant and supportive voice congratulated me. He reminded me that owners would be prioritized over non-owners. I told him of my crazy theory that even reserving at the event, 9 hours after in-store reservations started, could mean 6 months or more of production wait. He chuckled and mentioned getting roughly 15 visits or phone calls every day last week asking about reserving. And that’s in Pennsylvania, where only a previous few EV owners live.
Reservation worries aside, I’m pretty pumped about the event. Do you have any speculation about what to expect? Or for that matter, what the dress code will be? Let me know in the comments section!
See recent posts from Electric Jen.
More Tesla Model 3 News
Elon Musk
The FCC just said ‘No’ to SpaceX for now
SpaceX is fighting the FCC for spectrum that could put satellites inside every smartphone.
SpaceX was dealt a new setback on April 23, 2006 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after the U.S. government agency dismissed the company’s petition to access a Mobile Satellite Service spectrum that would allow direct-to-device (D2D) capabilities.
The FCC regulates communications by radio, television, wire, and cable, which also includes regulating D2D technology that lets your existing smartphone connect directly to a satellite orbiting Earth, the same way it would connect to a cell tower.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been building toward this through its Starlink Mobile service, formerly called Direct-to-Cell, in partnership with T-Mobile. The service officially launched on July 23, 2025, starting with messaging and expanding to broadband data in October of that year.
T-Mobile Starlink Pricing Announced – Early Adopters Get Exclusive Discount
It’s worth noting that SpaceX is not alone in this race. AT&T and Verizon have their own satellite texting deals with AST SpaceMobile, while Verizon separately offers free satellite texting through Skylo on newer phones.
The regulatory foundation for all of this dates to March 14, 2024, when the FCC adopted the world’s first framework for what it called Supplemental Coverage from Space, allowing satellite operators to lease spectrum from terrestrial carriers and fill gaps in their coverage. On November 26, 2024, the FCC granted SpaceX the first-ever authorization under that framework, approving its partnership with T-Mobile to provide service in specific frequency bands. SpaceX then went further, completing a roughly $17 billion acquisition of wireless spectrum from EchoStar, which gave it the ability to negotiate with global carriers more independently.
Starlink’s EchoStar spectrum deal could bring 5G coverage anywhere
This recent ruling by the FCC blocked SpaceX from going further, protecting incumbent spectrum holders like Globalstar and Iridium. But the market momentum is already in motion. As Teslarati reported, SpaceX is targeting peak speeds of 150 Mbps per user for its next generation Direct-to-Cell service, compared to roughly 4 Mbps today, which would bring satellite connectivity close to standard carrier performance.
With a reported IPO targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation on the horizon, each spectrum fight, carrier deal, and regulatory win or loss now carries weight beyond just connectivity. SpaceX is quietly becoming the infrastructure layer underneath the phones of millions of people, and the FCC’s next move will help determine how much further that reach extends.
FCC Satellite Rule Makings can be found here.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk talks Tesla Roadster’s future
Elon Musk confirmed the Roadster as Tesla’s last manually driven car, with a debut coming soon.
During Tesla’s Q1 2026 earnings call on April 22, Elon Musk made a brief but notable comment about the long-awaited next generation Roadster while describing Tesla’s future vehicle lineup. “Long term, the only manually driven car will be the new Tesla Roadster,” he said. “Speaking of which, we may be able to debut that in a month or so. It requires a lot of testing and validation before we can actually have a demo and not have something go wrong with the demo.”
That single statement is the entire Roadster update from yesterday’s call, and while it represents another timeline shift, it comes as no surprise with Tesla heads-down-at-work on the mass rollout of its Robotaxi service across US cities, and the industrial scale production of the humanoid Optimus.
The fact that Musk specifically framed the Roadster as the last manually driven Tesla is significant on its own. As the rest of the lineup moves toward full autonomy, the Roadster becomes something rare in the Tesla-sphere by keeping the driver in control. Driving enthusiasts who buy a $200,000 supercar are not doing so to be passengers. They want the physical connection to the road, the feel of acceleration under their own input, and the experience of controlling something with that level of performance. FSD, however capable it becomes, removes that entirely. The Roadster signals that Tesla understands this distinction and is building a car specifically for the people who consider driving itself the point.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
The specs for the Roadster Musk has teased over the years are genuinely unlike anything in production. The base model targets 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, and up to 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery. The optional SpaceX package takes it further, rumored to add roughly ten cold gas thrusters operating at 10,000 psi, borrowed directly from Falcon 9 rocket technology. With thrusters, Musk has claimed 0 to 60 mph in as little as 1.1 seconds. In a 2021 Joe Rogan interview he went further, stating “I want it to hover. We got to figure out how to make it hover without killing people.” Tesla filed a patent for ground effect technology in August 2025, suggesting the hover concept has not been abandoned. The starting price remains $200,000, with the Founders Series requiring a $250,000 full deposit. Some reservation holders placed those deposits in 2017 and are approaching a full decade of waiting.
With production now targeted for 2027 or 2028 at the earliest, the Roadster remains Tesla’s most audacious promise and its longest-running delay. But if what Musk is testing lives up to even half of what he has described, the demo alone should be worth waiting for.
Elon Musk says the Tesla Roadster unveiling could be done “maybe in a month or so.”
He said it should be an extraordinary unveiling event. pic.twitter.com/6V9P7zmvEm
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
Elon Musk
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Tesla’s Optimus factory in Texas targets 10 million robots yearly, with 5.2 million square feet under construction.
Tesla’s Q1 2026 Update Letter, released today, confirms that first generation Optimus production lines are now well underway at its Fremont, California factory, with a pilot line targeting one million robots per year to start. Of bigger note is a shared aerial image of a large piece of land adjacent to Gigafactory Texas, that Tesla has prominently labeled “Optimus factory site preparation.”
Permit documents show Tesla is seeking to add over 5.2 million square feet of new building space to the Giga Texas North Campus by the end of 2026, at an estimated construction investment of $5 billion to $10 billion. The longer term production target for that facility is 10 million Optimus units per year. Giga Texas already sits on 2,500 acres with over 10 million square feet of existing factory floor, and the North Campus expansion is being built to support multiple projects, including the dedicated Optimus factory, the Terafab chip fabrication facility (a joint Tesla/SpaceX/xAI venture), a Cybercab test track, road infrastructure, and supporting facilities.
Credit: TESLA
Texas makes strategic sense beyond the existing infrastructure. The state’s tax structure, lower labor costs relative to California, and the proximity to Tesla’s AI training cluster Cortex 1 and 2, both located at Giga Texas and now totaling over 230,000 H100 equivalent GPUs, means the Optimus software stack and the factory producing the hardware will share the same campus. Tesla’s Q1 report also confirmed completion of the AI5 chip tape out in April, the inference processor designed specifically to power Optimus units in the field.
As Teslarati reported, the Texas facility is intended to house Optimus V4 production at full scale. Musk told the World Economic Forum in January that Tesla plans to sell Optimus to the public by end of 2027 at a price between $20,000 and $30,000, stating, “I think everyone on earth is going to have one and want one.” He has previously pegged long term demand for general purpose humanoid robots at over 20 billion units globally, citing both consumer and industrial use cases.
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