Connect with us

Lifestyle

‘Sleeper’ Tesla Model 3 Performance dominates Infiniti G35 Coupe in drag race battle

[Credit: Chill Cars/YouTube]

Published

on

Save for a thin carbon fiber spoiler, a red-underlined Dual Motor badge at the rear, and 20″ Sport tires; the Model 3 Performance is virtually indistinguishable from the rest of Tesla’s Model 3 lineup. This was something addressed in Motor Trend‘s review of the vehicle, when the publication described the Model 3 Performance as a “highway assassin dressed in Banana Republic.” Couple this with the fact that the aforementioned spoiler, badge, and wheels are part of Tesla’s optional $5,000 Performance Upgrade, and owners could easily end up with an electric sedan that is way faster than it looks.

Sleepers are cars that look unassuming on the outside but are equipped with high-performance components on the inside. A Model 3 Performance that fits this bill recently competed in a drag race, where it ended up being matched with an unfortunate victim — an Infiniti G35 Coupe.

The Infiniti G35 Coupe is arguably one of the most popular sports coupes developed by the high-end Japanese carmaker. Sharing the platform of Nissan’s legendary 350Z, the Infiniti G35 is a representation of a vehicle that features a perfect balance between performance and luxury. The G35 features Nissan’s FM (front midship) platform, where the engine is moved towards the rear of the engine bay to improve the car’s weight distribution. Just like the Nissan 350Z, the Infiniti G35 is equipped with a 3.5-liter VQ35DE V6 engine, which is paired with either a 5-speed automatic transmission or a 6-speed manual transmission.

The G35 was only in production from 2002-2007 before it was replaced by the Infiniti G37, but it still garnered several notable awards during its tenure. It won Motor Trend‘s Car of the Year award in 2003, and was nominated for the North American Car of the Year award in the same year. The vehicle also made it to Car and Driver‘s Ten Best list for 2003 and 2004.

Advertisement

Unfortunately for the Infiniti G35, it recently found itself beside the Model 3 Performance on the drag strip. A video of the two vehicles’ competition was uploaded by Chill Cars, an auto enthusiast channel on YouTube. The Model 3 Performance in the run was pretty much a sleeper, as the vehicle did not seem to have a spoiler or a Dual Motor badge. The vehicle was also fitted with 18″ Aero Wheels, making it look completely identical to a non-performance Model 3. The only giveaway to the electric car’s Performance moniker were its white seats, which are so far only offered for the Dual Motor AWD and Performance variants.

The race between the Infiniti G35 and the “sleeper” Model 3 Performance was brief. As soon as the light turned green, the all-electric car shot off into the distance, thoroughly dominating its gas-powered competitor. The Model 3 Performance finished the quarter mile in 11.77 seconds while traveling at 113.55 mph. The Infiniti G35 finished the race in 15.46 seconds at 93.88 mph.

The Model 3 Performance, together with the Dual Motor AWD variant, are proving to be quite popular among Tesla’s reservation holders. In the company’s Q2 2018 earnings call, Tesla’s global head of sales Robin Ren stated that the combined orders for the Dual Motor AWD and the Performance Model 3 now exceed the number of orders for the Long Range RWD version.

Watch the Model 3 Performance duel the Infiniti G35 in the video below.

Advertisement

Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

Advertisement
Comments

Investor's Corner

Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”

Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.

Published

on

By

Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.

While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure

The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.

Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet

Advertisement

Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.

Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.

As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.

Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.

Advertisement

Continue Reading

Elon Musk

SpaceXAI just launched into your kitchen with their new app

SpaceXAI just powered its first consumer app and it predicts what you want to buy.

Published

on

By

SpaceXAI just made its first move into consumer AI, and it involves your grocery cart. On June 3, 2026, Gopuff and SpaceXAI announced the launch of Go, a Grok-powered shopping assistant built directly into the Gopuff app that predicts what you need before you even start searching for it.

Gopuff is an instant delivery platform that operates more than 400 micro-fulfillment centers across the U.S., delivering everyday essentials, snacks, drinks, and household items in as little as 15 minutes. It is not a restaurant delivery app or a marketplace. It owns its inventory, controls its warehouses, and handles its own logistics, which means it has built one of the most detailed consumer behavior datasets in retail over its 13-year history.

Go combines SpaceXAI’s advanced reasoning, voice, and image generation models with Gopuff’s dataset of hundreds of millions of orders and real-time cultural signals from X to prepare a suggested cart the moment a customer opens the app. It learns each shopper’s habits and automatically builds a personalized cart based on time of day, location, order history, and real-time indicators. Returning customers can check out with a single tap.


Rather than searching for specific items, users can describe a situation like a game-day party or the desire for a healthy breakfast and Go will assemble a cart automatically. It can also predict when shoppers are running low on items like coffee or paper towels and have them packed and delivered in under 15 minutes. Grok voice integration lets users talk to the app in plain conversational language and check out completely hands-free.

Advertisement

Gopuff co-founder and co-CEO Yakir Gola said: “Today, we believe the greatest friction left in commerce is not delivery or instantaneous access to the essentials customers need. It’s the moment before: the thinking, the deciding, the remembering. We’re combining Gopuff’s demand intelligence with xAI’s frontier reasoning to create an everyday shopping experience that feels like a true extension of you.”

Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO

The timing carries context beyond the product launch. SpaceXAI was formed after SpaceX completed an all-stock merger with Elon Musk’s xAI earlier this year, folding one of the most advanced AI labs in the world into the same corporate structure as the company preparing what could be the largest IPO in history. SpaceXAI is dipping into consumer-focused AI just as it prepares for its public debut, and while Musk has openly discussed building an everything app, this launch uses Grok to power another company’s product rather than launching a standalone consumer platform. Every consumer-facing deployment of Grok ahead of the IPO roadshow adds tangible evidence that SpaceXAI is not just an infrastructure play but a direct competitor in the AI application layer where OpenAI and Google are already fighting for dominance.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Lifestyle

Tesla saves its passengers again – This time after a 300-foot cliff fall in Malibu

A Tesla Model 3 fell 300 feet off a Malibu cliff and both passengers survived.

Published

on

By

A Tesla Model 3 plunged roughly 300 feet off a cliff on Mulholland Highway in Malibu on Friday morning, May 29, 2026, and both occupants survived. The crash was reported at approximately 7:30 a.m. near the 2500 block of Mulholland Highway, triggering a multi-agency rescue operation involving Malibu Search and Rescue, the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the California Highway Patrol, and McCormick Ambulance.

When first responders arrived, the male driver was outside the vehicle shouting for help while the female passenger remained pinned inside the Tesla. Rescue crews rappelled down the cliffside on ropes to reach the wreckage. A flight medic was lowered by helicopter to begin treating both victims, and the driver was hoisted up to the roadway before crews used the Jaws of Life to free the trapped passenger. Both were airlifted to a local trauma center with moderate injuries despite a remarkable result for a fall that steep.

The outcome is not surprising, considering Model 3 earned an overall 5-star rating from NHTSA in every category and sub-category, and recorded the lowest probability of injury of any car ever evaluated by the U.S. New Car Assessment Program. The absence of a traditional engine in the front of the vehicle creates a longer crumple zone that absorbs impact energy before it reaches occupants, and the battery pack running along the floor gives the car an unusually low center of gravity that reinforces structural rigidity.

Advertisement

This is not the first time a Tesla has kept passengers alive after going off a cliff. A Tesla Model Y carrying a family of four survived a plunge off a cliff at Devil’s Slide near San Francisco in January 2023, with two adults and two children walking away from a 250-foot fall. That incident drew widespread attention to how the structural integrity of Tesla’s electric platform performs in extreme crash scenarios that most vehicles would not survive.

Tesla Model Y driver who drove off cliff with family attempts to avoid criminal conviction

Continue Reading