Lifestyle
Tesla advocate fighting cancer greeted by Elon, Franz, in special tour of Fremont factory
In a recently shared story on Facebook, a man diagnosed with cancer was given what could only be described as the best experience a Tesla owner and advocate could possibly wish for – meet Elon Musk and Franz von Holzhausen following a special tour of the Fremont factory.
The heartwarming tale was shared by Alan Miller, whose friend, Dr. Matthew Chan, was recently diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. Heeding the advice given to him by his wife – “When people have cancer they go to a dark place and they don’t want you to pretend or ignore them, they just want to know when they’re in that place that you’ll be with them, by their side.” – Alan did exactly that by giving Matt an experience that would remind him that there will always be people by his side.
Matt is a Tesla superfan, and during one conversation, Alan asked him what he would like to do. After being prodded to think bigger, Matt stated that it would be awesome if he could meet Tesla CTO JB Straubel or Chief Designer Franz Von Holzhausen, the team behind Tesla’s iconic powertrain and vehicle design. “I want to meet the man behind the man – the one who is told to get the job done and has to figure out how to do it. Because that’s who I am,” said Matt.
Alan went on a social media crusade to make Matt’s wish come true, and he was floored by the response from the Tesla community. After numerous emails, conversations, and an anonymous phone call which supposedly provided the personal mobile number of JB Straubel’s cell phone, Matt’s personal tour of the Fremont, CA factory and a meet-and-greet with Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen were arranged.
The initial plan for Matt’s tour was quite simple. He would get a personal tour of the Fremont facility, meet Franz, and go home. When the tour actually happened, however, things began to take an interesting turn. It didn’t take long before Matt, his sister Danielle, his brother-in-law Billy, and Alan realized that this tour was something far more special than what they were expecting.
Photos courtesy of Alan Miller via Facebook
After getting the VIP treatment in his tour of the Fremont facility, Matt sat for an hour with Franz, who talked about how much passion goes into the creation of Tesla’s vehicles. Franz conversed with Matt about various aspects of the cars’ design, as well as his goal of making “people fall in love with the car, but (they) not know why.” According to Alan’s Facebook post about the tour, Matt was utterly awestruck the entire time.
Following the meeting with Franz, Matt was invited to test drive a car with the Tesla designer. Before Matt could get into the car with Franz, however, a fully-loaded Model S rolled up, and Elon Musk emerged. According to Alan, Musk was incredibly polite and cordial, speaking to Matt for a few minutes before disappearing into the Fremont factory.
Courtesy of Alan Miller via Facebook
Matt’s Fremont experience was capped off by Franz personally signing his Model X 90D’s dashboard. By this time, Alan noted that his friend was on Cloud 9.
Stories such as these are not usually publicized by Tesla, and it is only through the online community that these tales are shared. Back in December, veteran Tesla owner and active community member Bonnie Norman also shared the story of a terminally-ill man who was bumped up the Model 3 reservation line to fulfill one of the last items on his bucket list.
Tesla proved once more that it isn’t just a company with a vision, it is also a company with a huge heart.
“Matt, you are a great friend and your parents, family and friends will always be there for you – whatever place, dark or not, you are in,” says Alan.
Cybertruck
Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love
Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.
Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.
The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”
The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.
Custom wraps via mobile app https://t.co/5OydZ26g9p pic.twitter.com/uexU0ZePxu
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.
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
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
