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Should I get a Tesla Model S now or wait for the Model 3?

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If you’ve been a follower of my posts, you’ll know that I’m an early Model S adopter who’s been salivating over every new feature Tesla has released since 2014. At the top of my list is all wheel drive (I live in New England) followed by Autopilot (I’m a geek who loves technology and I also drive a lot) and a nice-to-have such as automatic high beams.

I’ve been fighting the urge to upgrade my Model S for 2.5 years now and it certainly doesn’t help that Tesla has been so kind to remind me of all the newest features I don’t have.

I feel bothered by this for a couple of reasons:

  1. Tesla has repeatedly said they’re supply-constrained. They are supposed to have plenty of demand. So why chase existing owners repeatedly with a proposal that doesn’t seem to make sense? As an investor in $TSLA, this has me concerned.
  2. It doesn’t make economic sense for me to upgrade.

Let me explain.

Bear in mind that my scenarios may different from yours or someone else, but nevertheless I thought it’s worth sharing.

Scenario 1 – Upgrade now to a new Model S

If I were to get a new Model S I’d want one with at least the amount of range, if not more, than what I already have (85 kWh). This makes the Model S 90D my preferred choice. Features I opted out of from my first purchase could remain off. Smart Air Suspension: not needed. High Fidelity Sound System: nope. More power: tempting, but no thanks. However, I do want dual motor all-wheel drive and Autopilot, but you already knew that.

Had I purchased late in 2014 (versus early in 2014) I wouldn’t have any appetite for a Model S or Model 3 at this point.

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Configuring a new Model S 90D with my bare minimums costs approximately $110,000.

model-s-90d-price-list

Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving Capability” is one of the most questionable choices here and an option that could be skipped for a later time. My main question on this upgrade is whether hardware is bundled upfront and the feature gets “turned on” as a software upgrade at a later date or is the hardware a completely separate upgrade in itself. For me, I want all possible hardware upfront whether it be a  Model 3 or Model S.

My current Model S is at 70,000 miles, 2.5 years old and in perfect shape. Its value? $49,000 according to Tesla, as a trade-in. It could be a bit less now since the trade-in quote is several months old. What this means is that it would cost me nearly $60,000, out of pocket or through financing, to upgrade to the latest and greatest.

This excludes any benefits or tax incentives which may or may not be available for Scenario 2 below.

Scenario 2 – Wait for Model 3 and trade in my Model S

Everything we’ve seen and heard about the Model 3 thus far implies that it will have all the same capabilities as the Model S but through add-ons.

The Model 3 appears to be 80-90% of the size of the Model S. The Model 3 seats 5 comfortably. The Model 3 will have the option for dual motors and all-wheel drive. And Tesla will obviously put a heavy emphasis on Autopilot and autonomous driving features on the Model 3.

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If we take a look at the pricing model for the Model S and Model X, a fully loaded version of each vehicle is just over twice the base price. For example, the most basic Tesla Model S 60 today is $66,000 and a fully loaded P100DL is $160,000 (2.4 times the base). Since I would not want a fully loaded Model 3, I’ll use twice the base price for my sample calculation.

If the Model 3 truly starts at a base price of $35,000 and we double that to a “reasonably equipped” version, we can assume the price for the Model 3 can jump to $70,000 and beyond. Since there’s no question that my trade-in value will be less a year from now, and dropping from $49,000 to likely $40,000, my net out of pocket would be $30,000, or half the cost of upgrading now. That is a pretty wide gap!

So I wait

Each time Tesla contacts me with an upgrade opportunity, I ask the representative to provide a cost benefit on such an upgrade. And each time they ignore my reply. I personally think Tesla should at least respond to their current customers and provide an answer to a very reasonable question.

Tesla is an amazing company, has great products and holds a bright future, but their sales team could do a better job in communicating the benefits for existing owners to upgrade. The recent price hike in the Model S also doesn’t help convince existing owners the value of upgrading versus waiting it out for the Model 3.

I question – Is there enough product differentiation between the Model S and the Model 3? From where I sit right now, no, there isn’t.

Are you a Model S owner getting the same emails? Are you a new buyer thinking about the Model S now versus waiting on the Model 3? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave me a comment.

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"Rob's passion is technology and gadgets. An engineer by profession and an executive and founder at several high tech startups Rob has a unique view on technology and some strong opinions. When he's not writing about Tesla

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Lifestyle

Tesla Cybertruck targets job site crews with new Tailgate Utility Track and Bed Gear Box accessory

Tesla launched a $350 tailgate track and a $985 lockable Bed Gear Box for Cybertruck.

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Tesla Cybertruck construction site

Tesla’s Cybertruck team added two more items to the Tesla Shop, targeting job site crews and owners who use the truck bed for actual work rather than just showing it off. The official Cybertruck X account posted the Tailgate Utility Track and the Bed Gear Box within minutes of each other, part of a five item batch that also included a reflective jacket, a spray paint hat and an updated reflective tee.

The Tailgate Utility Track runs $350 and turns the folded down tailgate into another mounting surface. It’s a single aluminum track with a T-slot for sliding accessories and two L-track attachment points, plus two load stops included in the box. The pitch is straightforward: strap down oversized cargo, like lumber or a cooler, that hangs off the back of the bed without it sliding out mid-drive. It bolts onto the existing tailgate and works on every Cybertruck trim.

The Bed Gear Box costs $985 and is a different kind of accessory. It’s a lockable aluminum storage box, 55.78 inches long, 19.8 inches wide and 7.79 inches tall, that mounts to the bed’s L-track rails and comes with two internal bins for smaller items. According to Tesla, at just over 57 pounds empty, it’s meant to stay in place rather than come in and out with each trip, giving owners a factory-fit alternative to loose totes for tools, recovery gear or emergency supplies. Tesla’s listing notes that Long Range and Dual Motor AWD Cybertrucks need the L-Tracks accessory installed separately before the Gear Box will mount, since L-tracks come standard only on certain configurations.

Tesla Cybertruck bed gear box accessory

Tesla Cybertruck bed gear box accessory

Both accessories lean on the idea Tesla has been building toward since Elon Musk first described the Cybertruck’s third-party attachment strategy at the 2023 shareholder meeting, when he said the truck would ship with mounting points so outside companies, and Tesla itself, could keep adding gear without redesigning the bed. That’s the same L-track backbone underneath the tailgate shield and jumpseats Tesla launched last year, and the off-road armor package that arrived through the same X account in 2025.

Owners looking to round out the rest of the L-track ecosystem, cargo dividers, MOLLE panels, bed racks and similar gear, can find a wider range of options through our Cybertruck accessories collection.

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Elon Musk says he knows how to save Earth for a billion years

Elon Musk says sentient AI satellites launched from the Moon could keep Earth livable forever.

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Elon Musk spent part of his weekend describing a plan to keep the planet livable for roughly a billion years, and it starts with satellites that can think for themselves.

In a post on X, Musk argued that swapping fossil fuels for solar and wind power will not be enough to protect humanity from what he called extremely severe extinction events, the kind that occur roughly every 100 million years. His fix is what he called sentient satellites, or solar-powered satellites, controlled by AI, that would sit in a fixed spot between Earth and the Sun after being launched off the Moon using a giant electromagnetic catapult instead of rockets.

The satellites’ onboard AI would make continuous, small adjustments rather than waiting on human instructions. The mass driver is Musk’s proposed way of getting the raw material there cheaply by using an electromagnetic launch track built on the Moon, where lower gravity and no atmosphere make it far easier to fling cargo into space than it is from Earth.

Musk shared a Grok generated estimate suggesting roughly 5 percent of Florida’s land, or about 1.68 million acres, could face regular flooding by 2070 under a high sea level rise scenario, and said humanity has about 50 years to act before coastal living looks very different than it does today.

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This is not the first time Musk has floated the idea. He raised a similar concept in November, describing a solar powered AI satellite constellation that could make tiny adjustments to incoming sunlight to fine tune Earth’s temperature. Musk has also tied planetary risk to his broader vision at SpaceX, where his compensation package is explicitly linked to establishing a self-sustaining Mars colony, one he has described as an insurance policy against the kind of extinction event he referenced this weekend, and where he has said humans could set foot within five to seven years.

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Lifestyle

Police sergeant recounts his Neuralink journey with Elon Musk’s brain chip

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neuralink-patient-registry-volunteers

A former Vancouver police sergeant with ALS accounts his journey to become a patient for Elon Musk’s Neuralink wireless brain-computer interface technology.

“I’m texting you from my brain right now.” That was the first message Lee Marten sent after waking up from Neuralink surgery, five hours and one migraine after dozens of threads were stitched into his motor cortex.

Marten, a former Vancouver police sergeant, is one of the first Canadian ALS patients to receive Neuralink’s N1 brain implant, and the 26th recipient overall. He tells his story in a first-person account published by Maclean’s.

Marten recounts how he was a healthy, athletic Vancouver police sergeant until April 2022 when symptoms of muscle twitching and balance loss, were followed by a bad fall that broke his leg. He would eventually be diagnosed with ALS in early 2025 at the age of 47. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that progressively destroys the motor neurons controlling voluntary muscle movement, eventually taking away a patient’s ability to walk, speak, swallow and breathe. There’s no cure, and most patients live two to five years after diagnosis.

He describes the devastation of the diagnosis and how he began preparing for it while connecting with other young ALS patients through a WhatsApp group called Young Guns. Through that group he learned about a Neuralink clinical trial at Toronto Western Hospital and, after a roughly seven-month vetting process (physical assessments, psychiatric evaluation, a final interview with the Neuralink team), was accepted this past April as the trial’s 26th recipient and the first Canadian ALS patient to get the N1 implant. He recounts the May surgery in detail, including the robotic system that stitched 64 threads into his brain, and describes the app, Link, translating his neural signals into cursor control, which he was using within hours of waking up.

Marten walks through what daily use looks like, including weekly “brain training” exercises, a real-time neural-activity display, charging the implant via a beanie-mounted MagSafe charger, and using the implant for emailing, texting, social media, and gaming via a “Magic Box” that connects it to other devices. He also gives brief context on brain-computer interface history and quite candid about Musk, calling him “divisive” but saying he found him “easy to admire.

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The piece closes on a heavier note, with Marten seeking to pursue medical assistance in dying as his symptoms progressed, noting that he’ll be able to communicate his final words to his family through Neuralink rather than facing a silent decline. He expresses hope the data from his case will help future ALS patients, even without a cure in his own lifetime.

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