Lifestyle
Tesla Model 3 surpasses 600-mile mark in hypermile Guinness attempt
Less than a couple of weeks since setting a hypermile run record for the Model 3, Denver Tesla Club president Sean Mitchell, accompanied by Erik Strait, a fellow Tesla owner and host to a popular YouTube channel, managed to push the compact electric car 606.2 miles on a single charge, possibly setting a new Guinness World Record in the process.
Sean and Erik’s hypermile run stands as the first time a Tesla Model 3 has breached the 600-mile barrier. The trip lasted 32 hours, almost double the 18 hours that Mitchell took during his previous hypermile attempt. According to the duo in their livestream of their Guinness Record attempt, their speed this time averaged around 20-35 mph, slightly different than the 30 mph that Mitchell adopted during his first run.
The Tesla enthusiasts posted updates to their social media accounts during the duration of the trip. On Saturday evening, Mitchell posted an update informing his Twitter followers that they have hit the 500-mile mark. During this time, the Model 3’s battery was down to 12%. The Model 3 had used up 55 kWh of its battery as well.
- The Tesla Model 3 used in the latest hypermile attempt. [Credit: Sean Mitchell/Twitter]
- The Tesla Model 3 used in the latest hypermile attempt. [Credit: Sean Mitchell/Twitter]
- The final stats of the Model 3 at the end of its hypermile run. [Credit: Sean Mitchell/Twitter]
By late Saturday evening, the pair crossed the 600-mile barrier. The Tesla Model 3 ultimately ran out of battery 606.2 miles (975 km) into the trip. According to an update posted by Mitchell on his Twitter page after the run, the electric car averaged 110 Wh/mi and consumed 66 kWh during the long, 32-hour journey. This is considerably longer than the 515.7 miles driven by Mitchell in his previous hypermile attempt.
The journey did not come without its challenges. During dinnertime on Saturday evening, Mitchell and Strait did not even stop for a meal. Instead, one of the pair’s friends decided to do a special burrito delivery, which Mitchell received through a fishing net he stuck out from the vehicle’s window. The pair also did not turn on the Model 3’s air conditioning, causing temperatures in the vehicle’s cabin to reach 108F at one point during the trip.
Mitchell and Strait’s hypermile run was sponsored by Boulder-based solar energy funding firm Wunder Capital. Wunder covered the costs of the trip and the Guinness Record submission. Stuttgart Auto Body, Colorado Detail, & Fyin.com also supported the hypermile run.
Guinness currently only has a listing for the longest distance traveled by an electric vehicle. The record, which was set in October last year, was established using a modified BMW 5-series that was specifically designed for the Guinness Attempt. A Tesla Model S P100D driven by Tesla Owners Italia managed to hit 670 miles on one charge last August 2017 as well — a feat that warranted a tweet from Elon Musk.
Officially verified as the first production electric car to exceed 1000km on a single charge! Congratulations Tesla Owners Italia!! https://t.co/r8fFZIFEP2
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 5, 2017
In a statement to Teslarati, Mitchell and Strait described their experience during the recent hypermile run.
“It was amazing to me to see the support of the Tesla community. They were so supportive and encouraging of our efforts. They only did they support us by tuning into the livestream but they also, to our surprise, donated money through YouTube. The Model 3 is such a new car. This hypermile shows that not only is the Model 3 amazingly engineered for the masses, but EVs are a viable option for everyone,” Mitchell noted.
“It certainly brought attention to EVs in general and helped bring awareness about Teslas. We hopefully helped discourage range anxiety, even though we were an extreme case. We showed what Teslas are truly capable of. Also, by livestreaming the entire event, we had a lot of people tune in and ask a lot of good questions related to Tesla that we were able to help answer and clarify,” Strait stated.
The Model 3’s battery capacity and range have become some of the biggest advantages of the vehicle. Consumer Reports, which did not give the Model 3 a “Recommended” rating due to its braking distance, still stated that their car broke their records for range, managing to travel 350 miles on one charge.
Watch the final leg of Mitchell and Strait’s record-setting hypermile run in the video below.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s answer to Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey got way more specific
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




