Lifestyle
Tesla extends gratitude to employees with ‘Cars 3’ family movie night at Gigafactory 1
As an expression of gratitude to its employees for their hard work in Q3 2018, Tesla has issued an invitation for a family night featuring a screening of the Pixar movie Cars 3 at Gigafactory 1 in Sparks, Nevada. The event, which is extended to employees and their family members, will be set up like an outdoor film outing, with the movie being projected on the side of Gigafactory 1. Food trucks and fun, kid-friendly activities will also be available.
Tesla’s invitation for the family movie night reveals that the event will be held this coming Saturday and Sunday. The event is completely free of charge, though attendees are advised to bring their own blankets and chairs for maximum comfort while watching the movie. Following is the text of Tesla’s email to its employees.
“In recognition of your hard work of the last year, we would like to celebrate with you.
“Join us for movie night– Pixar’s Cars 3 will be projected on the side of the Gigafactory, along with food trucks for dinner, bouncy houses for the kids, and concessions.
“This is all free of charge for you and your family as our way of saying thanks.
“Please pick one of two nights (Starting 7:00 pm: Saturday, October 6th or Sunday, October 7th) and RSVP by the link below. Bring blankets or chairs to get comfortable for the movie. Looking forward to seeing you there!”
Tesla’s employees have been on full throttle over the course of the third quarter. That said, their hard work has produced results, as Tesla achieved yet another record quarter in Q3 2018, producing a total of 80,142 electric vehicles including 53,239 Model 3. The company also delivered a total of 83,500 vehicles, comprised of 55,840 Model 3, 14,470 Model S, and 13,190 Model X. Tesla even noted in its Q3 2018 vehicle deliveries and production report that in the third quarter, it delivered 80% of 2017’s entire delivery figures.
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https://twitter.com/_wongc/status/1046609449291370496
It was not easy getting to this point. Q3 saw Elon Musk sleeping inside the Fremont factory once more to address issues as they arise, and during the final weeks of the quarter’s delivery blitz, even the company’s executives were reportedly doing their part handing over vehicles to reservation holders. A day before Q3 ended, Elon Musk even rallied Tesla’s workers, stating that profitability was within reach while encouraging everyone to work extra hard on the quarter’s final day. Considering Tesla’s Q3 delivery and production numbers, it appears that the company’s workers dug deep and pulled through.
Being led by a man who made his fortune in Silicon Valley, Tesla’s work culture is quite similar to tech companies. Workload-wise, Tesla is known for its intense work culture and hyper-aggressive targets. This does not mean that Tesla is all work and no play, though. In true Silicon Valley style, Tesla is also known to adopt a “Work Hard, Play Hard” culture. Elon Musk’s employee parties are no joke, with one event at SpaceX involving the conversion of the private space agency’s factory floor to a full-blown carnival.
Back in 2016, Tesla also rented out a stadium for a massive employee party. Last year, Tesla hosted a family day for Gigafactory workers that included a waterpark outing and games that were paid for by the company. After achieving its then-elusive 5,000/week Model 3 production goal in Q2 2018, Tesla also gave a treat to workers at the Fremont factory, featuring a free concert from 12-time Grammy Award-winning musician Jack White.
Firmware
Tesla unlocks in-car web conferencing to extend Google Meet, Teams and beyond
Tesla’s Summer Update lets owners join Google Meet, Teams, and Discord calls via cabin camera.
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, which just began rolling out to customer vehicles, now links the built-in web browser with the in-cabin camera feed and microphone input, thereby letting owners join video calls on nearly any browser-based service instead of just Zoom.
The change appears in Tesla’s own release notes for software version 2026.26 under “Web Browser,” which states that the vehicle can now use its interior camera and cabin microphone when a website requests access, with permission granted the same way a desktop browser handles it. As NotATeslaApp notes, this feature opens the door to Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and other webcam-enabled sites to activate the in-car cabin-facing camera. The feed automatically crops and zooms to center the driver in frame.
Tesla has offered in-car video calling before, but only through a dedicated Zoom app that launched at the end of 2022, a stripped-down browser preloaded with Zoom’s own web client and gated behind Premium Connectivity. Opening the full browser to any camera-requesting site removes that walled garden. Elon Musk first called video conferencing “definitely a future feature” back in 2020, when the pandemic pushed remote meetings into daily life, so this update effectively finishes something Tesla has been promising for six years.
Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features
The feature keeps the same restrictions that applied to Zoom on Tesla vehicles. It only works while the car is parked; shifting into Drive disables the camera feed, according to the release notes. It is also limited to vehicles running Tesla’s AMD Ryzen infotainment hardware, meaning older Intel-based Model S and Model X units, along with early Model 3 and Model Y builds, don’t get it.
Turning the browser into a general entry point for the in-cabin camera, rather than routing everything through one local app, widens the number of third-party sites that can ask for access, even though Tesla’s permission prompt.
With the Summer update only days into its rollout, be sure to stay with us on TikTok and X to see the latest video demonstrations.
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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.
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