Lifestyle
Should I get a Tesla Model S now or wait for the Model 3?
If you’ve been a follower of my posts, you’ll know that I’m an early Model S adopter who’s been salivating over every new feature Tesla has released since 2014. At the top of my list is all wheel drive (I live in New England) followed by Autopilot (I’m a geek who loves technology and I also drive a lot) and a nice-to-have such as automatic high beams.
I’ve been fighting the urge to upgrade my Model S for 2.5 years now and it certainly doesn’t help that Tesla has been so kind to remind me of all the newest features I don’t have.
I feel bothered by this for a couple of reasons:
- Tesla has repeatedly said they’re supply-constrained. They are supposed to have plenty of demand. So why chase existing owners repeatedly with a proposal that doesn’t seem to make sense? As an investor in $TSLA, this has me concerned.
- It doesn’t make economic sense for me to upgrade.
Let me explain.
Bear in mind that my scenarios may different from yours or someone else, but nevertheless I thought it’s worth sharing.
Scenario 1 – Upgrade now to a new Model S
If I were to get a new Model S I’d want one with at least the amount of range, if not more, than what I already have (85 kWh). This makes the Model S 90D my preferred choice. Features I opted out of from my first purchase could remain off. Smart Air Suspension: not needed. High Fidelity Sound System: nope. More power: tempting, but no thanks. However, I do want dual motor all-wheel drive and Autopilot, but you already knew that.
Had I purchased late in 2014 (versus early in 2014) I wouldn’t have any appetite for a Model S or Model 3 at this point.
Configuring a new Model S 90D with my bare minimums costs approximately $110,000.
Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving Capability” is one of the most questionable choices here and an option that could be skipped for a later time. My main question on this upgrade is whether hardware is bundled upfront and the feature gets “turned on” as a software upgrade at a later date or is the hardware a completely separate upgrade in itself. For me, I want all possible hardware upfront whether it be a Model 3 or Model S.
My current Model S is at 70,000 miles, 2.5 years old and in perfect shape. Its value? $49,000 according to Tesla, as a trade-in. It could be a bit less now since the trade-in quote is several months old. What this means is that it would cost me nearly $60,000, out of pocket or through financing, to upgrade to the latest and greatest.
This excludes any benefits or tax incentives which may or may not be available for Scenario 2 below.
Scenario 2 – Wait for Model 3 and trade in my Model S
Everything we’ve seen and heard about the Model 3 thus far implies that it will have all the same capabilities as the Model S but through add-ons.
The Model 3 appears to be 80-90% of the size of the Model S. The Model 3 seats 5 comfortably. The Model 3 will have the option for dual motors and all-wheel drive. And Tesla will obviously put a heavy emphasis on Autopilot and autonomous driving features on the Model 3.
If we take a look at the pricing model for the Model S and Model X, a fully loaded version of each vehicle is just over twice the base price. For example, the most basic Tesla Model S 60 today is $66,000 and a fully loaded P100DL is $160,000 (2.4 times the base). Since I would not want a fully loaded Model 3, I’ll use twice the base price for my sample calculation.
If the Model 3 truly starts at a base price of $35,000 and we double that to a “reasonably equipped” version, we can assume the price for the Model 3 can jump to $70,000 and beyond. Since there’s no question that my trade-in value will be less a year from now, and dropping from $49,000 to likely $40,000, my net out of pocket would be $30,000, or half the cost of upgrading now. That is a pretty wide gap!
So I wait
Each time Tesla contacts me with an upgrade opportunity, I ask the representative to provide a cost benefit on such an upgrade. And each time they ignore my reply. I personally think Tesla should at least respond to their current customers and provide an answer to a very reasonable question.
Tesla is an amazing company, has great products and holds a bright future, but their sales team could do a better job in communicating the benefits for existing owners to upgrade. The recent price hike in the Model S also doesn’t help convince existing owners the value of upgrading versus waiting it out for the Model 3.
I question – Is there enough product differentiation between the Model S and the Model 3? From where I sit right now, no, there isn’t.
Are you a Model S owner getting the same emails? Are you a new buyer thinking about the Model S now versus waiting on the Model 3? I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Leave me a comment.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company just doubled its tunneling power in Nashville
The Boring Company’s Prufrock MB2 is commissioned and ready to mine beneath Nashville’s streets.
The Boring Company’s second tunnel boring machine, Prufrock MB2, is officially ready to dig in Nashville. The company confirmed the news on X, posting: “Prufrock-MB2 is ready to mine in Nashville! MB2 commissioning is complete, including the brief 11 rpm rotation shown here. Will MB2 catch up to MB1, who had quite the head start? And Prufrock-MB3 ships in August!”
MB2 arrives with meaningful improvements over its predecessor. Lessons learned from the launch and operation of MB1 have already been applied to MB2 to improve efficiency and prepare the machine for launch.
Traditional tunnel boring machines operate in a stop-and-go cycle, digging roughly five feet, halt, erect precast concrete segments to line the tunnel wall, then resume. That repeated interruption is one of the main reasons conventional tunneling is slow and expensive. Prufrock is designed to install the tunnel liner simultaneously with mining, eliminating the need to stop every five feet. The machine also skips the need for excavated launch pits. Prufrock arrives on a truck, tilts down, and launches into the ground within 24 hours. And when the tunnel is complete, it emerges from the ground and drives to its next launch site on a trailer, eliminating the need for expensive cranes or pit excavation. The machine is also fully electric and runs with zero people in the tunnel during normal operations, controlled remotely from a surface operations center.
Prufrock-MB2 is ready to mine in Nashville! MB2 commissioning is complete, including the brief 11 rpm rotation shown here.
Will MB2 catch up to MB1, who had quite the head start?
And Prufrock-MB3 ships in August! pic.twitter.com/TTrMql2aRg
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) June 17, 2026
It won’t be long before we hear of another major update on The Boring Company’s Music City Loop project – a planned underground transit network beneath Nashville that would move passengers in electric vehicles through a series of tunnels at highway speeds, and bypassing surface traffic entirely. Nashville was selected in part because of its strong rock conditions that suits the Prufrock machines well, and relatively less regulatory hurdles.
Progress has been steady on multiple fronts. All 37 permits and approvals required ahead of tunneling have been obtained, out of 45 total. Key wins include a fully executed TDOT tunnel permit authorizing 25 miles of tunnel, unanimous airport authority approval for a Nashville International Airport station, and the city’s first residential station agreement serving downtown tower residents.
With MB1 already tunneling, MB2 now commissioned, and MB3 shipping in August, Nashville is becoming something of a live proving ground for scaled tunnel boring. The broader ambition is not limited to one city. The Boring Company’s stated goal is to make underground transportation a practical alternative to surface roads across major metro areas. Nashville is one of many cities, including a successful Las Vegas tunnel system, where that idea is being put to the test at real speed.
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.
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
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.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
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.
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.
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.
