Lifestyle
‘EVTripping’ launches app to enhance the Tesla road trip planning experience
Planning a road trip with the Model S and Model X is as easy as plugging in a destination address through the vehicle’s onboard Nav, getting in the car, and then going. At least that’s what Tesla’s Trip Planner aims to do, but the truth of the matter is, it falls short on some areas that I find critical when planning for a long distance all electric road trip.
Having gone through a busy summer of traveling, with one Tesla road trip taking me as far as Boston to South Florida, and another trip to Alaska – though this one I flew to, I’ve had time to think about additional features that I myself would like to have access to when planning for an EV trip. I figured that if these are features I felt a need for, there certainly has to be other folks within the Tesla community sharing the same sentiment.
So I decided to build it. EVTripping.com
North to Alaska! Picture of Denali, the highest mountain peak in North America
Existing EV Planning Tools
Let’s start by highlighting some of the popular services out there: PlugShare, Teslarati’s Interactice Supercharger Map, OpenChargeMap, and the popular EVTripPlanner. Each service has its own specific purpose, and they all provide a wealth of information for trip planning. But still I wished I can somehow combine features from each service into one app, but also add to it with additional features.
I’ve compiled a wish list of features that I hope to address with EVTripping.
- At present time no app or service that I know of, outside of the existing Tesla navigation system, is able to predict charge times needed for charging stops. Tesla does it but they tend to be overly optimistic about how much charge time is needed. (EVTripPlanner has since added more realistic charge times which is very helpful)
- We need to be able to see true elapsed time for the trip in order to better predict where one will be at any given time
- It would be nice to be able to see points of interest along the journey such as destinations for food.
- Being able to export the trip planning details in digital form or print it out as a PDF would be a nice to have.
- Weather is a variable that can change along your journey. This should be reflected when planning for a Tesla road trip.
Creation of EVTripping
I’m proud to announce that less than 6 months after I conceived the idea for a new online trip planner, EVTripping.com was born.
If you want to learn more about the sequence of events that led to the launch of EVTripping.com, follow along and check out the timeline which describes everything that’s being worked on.
Response to the site has been overwhelmingly positive despite very limited coverage so far. We’ve added over 200 1000 registered users in less than a week and routed almost a quarter million miles on the production site.
I’ll speak of the site in terms of “we” and “our” because, while I’m the chief cook and bottle washer for the site, I see this as a project for and by the community. Many of you are already helping by filing bug reports, suggesting feature requests and sharing ideas.
We’ve been busy this first week of launch. We’ve fixed bugs, added international support, adjusted time based on a user’s geography, built multi-language support, added foreign character support, and continue to refine the routing intelligence. Early users of the app have been super helpful and supportive so I’d like to thank each and every one of them.
Free Tesla Monitoring
I’ve written an open-source tool before that allows me to take control of my Tesla while also monitoring my SolarCity production. EVTripping adds much of the same functionality when it comes to notifications. The app will monitor your Tesla and remind you when it’s time to rotate your tires, how much you’re driving, the efficiency you’re getting, and more.
I’m focussed on building the tools I need for my Tesla lifestyle and will share them with the community along the way.
The Future
We’re not done yet with EVTripping. I call this stage the “minimum viable product”. Where we go from here will depend on you and others within the EV community. Though I have plenty of product level ideas, we can decide on these together.
One of my big dreams for the site is to add support for other EVs beyond Tesla. I’m defining an EV as an electric vehicle capable of taking a road trip using Superchargers, CHAdeMO, CCS, etc, versus one that you can take trips in, but have to plug in for many hours each time you stop.
There’s no shortage of media outlets covering Tesla, and fantastic podcasts like Ride the Lightning and Talking Tesla, but my focus since I began writing was to talk about the lifestyle component of owning, and living, with a Tesla. It’s been a fun journey thus far and I’m excited about what the future holds as I continue to build out EVTripping for you and the greater EV community.
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.
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
Lifestyle
NTSB findings on fatal Tesla crash tell a very different story
The NTSB confirmed the driver, not Tesla’s FSD, caused the fatal Texas house crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board released preliminary findings Wednesday confirming that a Tesla driver, not the vehicle’s software, caused a fatal crash in Katy, Texas in June. The driver, 44-year-old Michael Butler, had engaged Full Self-Driving Supervised mode on Rose Hollow Lane, a residential street with a 30 mph speed limit, before manually overriding the system by pressing the accelerator pedal all the way to 100%. Data recovered from the 2025 Tesla Model 3 showed the vehicle was traveling over 70 miles per hour when it struck a home and killed 76-year-old Martha Avila, who was inside. Weather was clear, the road was dry, and it was daylight.
Texas man charged in fatal Tesla crash where he blamed Autopilot
Butler told authorities he had passed out at the wheel. But security camera footage obtained by the NTSB told a different story, and showed the car accelerating through an intersection before leaving the road entirely. Police also found that Butler’s phone had Google searches including the terms “Tesla FSD not aggressive enough 2026” and “Tesla FSD too timid,” raising serious questions about how he was using the system before the crash. Butler has since been charged with manslaughter. The victim’s family has filed a lawsuit against both Butler and Tesla, alleging negligence.
The NTSB findings aligned directly with what Tesla VP of AI Software Ashok Elluswamy had already stated publicly on X in the weeks after the crash, writing that “the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100%.” The data confirmed his account.
Yup. In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area. They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash.
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 22, 2026
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Texas ranch to showcase the lifelong work that changed the world
Elon Musk is building a product gallery at his Texas ranch spanning his lifelong inventions.
Elon Musk took to X earlier today, noting “Am putting together a product gallery at my ranch in Texas.” in response to a resurfaced famous quote from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s wherein he draw parallels of the Tesla CEO to legendary physicist Albert Einstein.
Dimon made the remark at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland back in January 2025, telling CNBC at the time, “SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, I mean, the guy is our Einstein.” The remark seemingly ended a long-time feud between the two high profile execs.
While details are thin about the exact location of Elon Musk’s Texas ranch and any pending projects that would serve as a gallery and homage to his portfolio of revolutionary product inventions spanning from 1984 to 2025, land acquisition records point to roughly a location of several thousand acres in Bastrop County, east of Austin near the Colorado River and held through an LLC called Horse Ranch LLC that’s managed by Musk’s longtime personal friend and family wealth manager Jared Birchall. Birchall also serves as the CEO of Neuralink.
Tesla’s “ecological paradise” in Giga Texas may be larger than expected
The broader Bastrop County footprint surrounding the ranch has grown significantly. Entities tied to Musk have accumulated approximately 2,000 acres in Bastrop County as of mid-2026, up from 700 acres earlier in the year, with possibly as much as 6,000 acres acquired in total across Bastrop and Travis counties based on deed records.
No completion date for the gallery has been announced and Musk has not confirmed whether it will be open to the public. As Teslarati has reported, SpaceX just completed the largest IPO in history raising $75 billion, a milestone that makes this particular moment in Musk’s career a natural inflection point for looking back at what he has built through the years.
Am putting together a product gallery at my ranch in Texas https://t.co/xQf5FRy4uz
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2026
Starting with Blastar, a simple space shooter game Musk coded at 12 years old and sold to a South African magazine for $500. From there the timeline moves through a commercial career that started with Zip2 in 1995, a city guide software company sold to Compaq for roughly $300 million in 1999. That was followed by X.com in 1999, which merged with Confinity to become PayPal, acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. SpaceX came in 2002, Tesla in 2003, SolarCity in 2006, the Supercharger network in 2012, Neuralink in 2016, The Boring Company in 2016, OpenAI co-founded in 2015, X acquired in 2022, xAI in 2023, Optimus in 2024, the Cybercab in 2026, and most recently SpaceXAI following the SpaceX and xAI merger. The gallery will also likely include items that blur the line between product and cultural artifact, among them The Boring Company’s Not-a-Flamethrower from 2018, Tesla Short Shorts from 2020, and Burnt Hair perfume released under X in 2022.
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