Lifestyle
Tesla Model 3 takes on Pikes Peak hill climb in performance and range test
An unmodified Tesla Model 3 took on the famed climb to the 14,000-ft summit of Pikes Peak, the site of one of the most intense hill climb events in the automotive world. As noted by the Model 3’s owner, the compact electric car handled the 12.42-mile climb flawlessly, with no signs of performance degradation.
The man behind the wheel of the Model 3 was Peter Lafford, who was featured in a previous article for his stunning and clever mod to his vehicle’s 18-inch Aero Wheels. Peter had taken on Pikes Peak multiple times in the past, several of them driving an internal combustion vehicle. In a conversation with Teslarati, Peter recalled an instance when he and his father had to slow down their car to a crawl just to reach the summit, leaving behind vehicle after vehicle that were stalled on the side of the road.
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- The Tesla Model 3 at the top of Pikes Peak. [Credit: Peter Lafford]
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- A photo taken during the drive up to Pikes Peaks summit. [Credit: Peter Lafford]
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- The Tesla Model 3s Summit Pass for Pikes Peak. [Credit: Peter Lafford]
Being the go-to track for uphill endurance races, Pikes Peak features 156 turns and a change of elevation of almost 5,000 feet. This means that as the car climbs higher, the vehicle gets less oxygen from the thinner air, effectively sapping performance from both vehicle and its driver. In this sense, electric vehicles, whose electric motors do not get affected by low oxygen levels, have an inherent advantage in Pikes Peak. This was proven recently when Volkswagen’s I.D. R vehicle — an electric supercar designed to tackle the hill climb — shattered the all-time record for the Pikes Peak Challenge, reaching the summit in just 7:57.148.
While Peter Laffords’ Pikes Peak run in the Model 3 was limited by speed restrictions for civilian drivers in the area, a video of the drive shows just how well the compact electric car took the turns and the steep climb without breaking a sweat. As could be seen in footage from his run, Peter drove his car spiritedly. He began the hill climb with an 80% battery state of charge and reached the summit with 60%. Using the vehicle’s regenerative braking (set to Standard), he was able to regain 8% worth of range, returning with a 68% state of charge by the time he reached the toll booth at the bottom.
Peter’s climb up to the summit of Pikes Peak stands as yet another feat for Tesla’s compact electric car. Over the past months, the vehicle has started gaining a reputation as a solid electric car that can handle spirited driving for extended periods of time. Just recently, a Model 3 with aftermarket suspension and brakes took the pole position at the Canadian Sport Compact Series Time Attack series, beating a Porsche Boxter and a Mazda RX-8 and finishing 5th overall from a lineup of more than a hundred vehicles.
What’s particularly impressive, however, is the fact that all Model 3 currently on the road today are non-Performance Long Range RWD versions of the electric car. Thus, the automotive world is yet to witness the true capability of a Model 3 that is built from the ground up to be a performance vehicle.
Watch Peter’s silver Model 3 take on the final miles of the Pikes Peak hill climb in the video below.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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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