Lifestyle
Tesla Roadster celebrates 10-year production anniversary
The original Tesla Roadster is celebrating its 10th anniversary today, with the Elon Musk-led firm declaring the official start of the car’s production on March 17, 2008. Back then, everything was different for Tesla, but some of the problems it was facing were quite similar to those the company is facing now.
Ten years ago, Tesla, then a small electric car startup, was struggling to meet the demand for its first and only offering — a high-performance electric car dubbed the Roadster. The car proved popular enough that Tesla had a list of reservations for the vehicles. During that time, Tesla’s target was producing one Roadster per week; and even then, there were delays in the production of the vehicle.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk would later state that the Roadster “broke down all the time and really didn’t work.” Despite this, however, the original Roadster was pivotal in shifting the public’s perception of electric cars. No longer were electric vehicles glorified golf carts that run out of charge after a few miles. The Roadster was fast, sleek, and it had decent range — a combination that Tesla would ultimately adopt for the rest of its lineup.
In a statement to the San Francisco Chronicle, filmmaker Chris Paine, who directed the 2006 film Who Killed the Electric Car and its sequel, the 2011 follow-up titled Revenge of the Electric Car, was one of those who placed reservations for the original Tesla Roadster. According to the director, he was not even sure if he would ever get the car or get a refund for his reservation, considering Tesla’s startup status.
Paine described a meeting with then-Tesla chairman Elon Musk, where they visited the Roadster’s assembly plant at Menlo Park. The building had a number of Roadsters in it, but Tesla could not ship because they had issues. Paine had a camera crew with him, and in front of the camera, Musk approached Roadster No.23 and asked about the car’s problem. A Tesla employee told Musk that the vehicle’s drivetrain was acting up. Paine then realized that the white No.23 Roadster was his own reservation. Musk, for his part, found the situation quite humorous.
“This is your car? This is actually your car? OK! Well, you’ve heard the explanation now. So I guess hopefully it’ll have a powertrain tomorrow. It’s a nice car. I was just thinking; actually, it’s a nice choice of colors,” Musk said.
Paine eventually got his Roadster, albeit at a later than expected date. Despite Musk’s statement that the car “broke down all the time,” the filmmaker told the publication that the electric car actually turned out to be reliable. Ten years down the road, Roadster No.23 is still around, and still as fast and fun as before. Paine also noted that today, his car has turned into a novelty, even when he visits a Tesla Service Center.
“You drive the car in for service, and all the technicians come out and look at it — ‘Hey, that’s a Roadster!’ Yes, it is a weird feeling,” Paine said.
Golden Gate Electric Vehicle Association president Dan Miller also holds a special place for his original thunder gray Tesla Roadster, which he purchased back in 2011. He currently owns a Model S, but states that the first-generation Roadster is a true high-performance electric vehicle that he can actually drive like a real sports car.
“The Roadster is really driving, and the S does everything for you, especially with Autopilot. If you really want to drive, you drive the Roadster.”
Current Model X owner Tom Saxton also has fond memories of his Roadster. According to Saxton, the Roadster was not a very practical vehicle. It was small, and its luggage space was tiny. Despite this, however, Saxton noted that he just gets reactions from people when he drives the Roadster — something that he does not experience with his Model X.
“It is a very impractical car — it only holds two people and a very small amount of luggage — but it’s a lot of fun. The X is a lot more comfortable and sophisticated, but I don’t get people cheering and waving when they see me in the X,” Saxton said.
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- Credit: Casey_S
The Roadster is and will always be the car that started it all for Tesla. Now a 10-year veteran in the electric car industry, Tesla is trying to meet a far more ambitious goal than its one vehicle per week target back in 2008, with the company trying to manufacture 5,000 Model 3 per week by the end of Q2 2018. Considering its humble beginnings, Tesla’s progress in the automotive world is truly impressive.
If any, the original Tesla Roadster will likely live on longer than most automobiles. After all, just last month, Elon Musk’s space firm, SpaceX, launched the Falcon Heavy on its maiden voyage, carrying a unique payload — Musk’s own Tesla Roadster — into space. The car is now orbiting the solar system as we speak.
The Roadster is also set to have a successor too, with Elon Musk announcing late last year that the next-generation Roadster is now under development. The next-gen Roadster is everything the original was, and more, boasting a 0-60 mph time of 1.9 seconds and a top speed of more than 250 mph, as well as 620 miles of range.
Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”
The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”
Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.
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
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Tesla to open source Model S and Model X designs and software
