Lifestyle
Tesla Model S, X, 3 up for grabs as Climate XChange takes carbon fight nationwide
The UN has warned us of the serious and irreversible consequences of global warming if we do not enact “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” A crucial policy that will, according to the report, drive the move towards a low-carbon economy and help us reduce emissions, is putting a price on carbon pollution. Doing so captures externalities from emissions the public pays for in other ways, including property damage from floods, healthcare costs, and economic losses.
Climate XChange, a Boston-based organization aiming to tackle global warming by researching and advocating for methods to curb carbon pollution, has been fighting for carbon pricing legislation since 2013. With the help of Tesla owners, electric vehicle enthusiasts and clean energy advocates, the team was able to successfully push through a carbon pricing bill which passed the Massachusetts State Senate unanimously. Now, Climate XChange is setting its sights in other states across the U.S. that are looking to support carbon pricing efforts and research.
In order to fight carbon emissions and see through its successes in Massachusettes but on a national scale, the organization needs to raise additional funds and aims to do so by raffling off three brand new Teslas (Model 3 Performance, Model S, and Model X) on New Year’s Day. For context, the non-profit first raffled off a Tesla Model S – a car that symbolizes the industry’s shift towards renewable energy – in previous years, and the success of the initiative led to this year’s biggest Tesla raffle yet.
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- Make a difference. Help Climate XChange take the fight against carbon emissions on a national level
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- Make a difference. Help Climate XChange take the fight against carbon emissions on a national level
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- Make a difference. Help Climate XChange take the fight against carbon emissions on a national level
Make a difference. Help Climate XChange take the fight against carbon emissions on a national level and win a Tesla
The organization is offering a limited 4,000 tickets in their third annual Carbon raffle, as they take the ongoing fight against carbon emissions across the United States. Climate XChange will be covering the Prize Taxes associated with the vehicles, allowing the lucky winners of the premium electric cars to acquire their prizes completely hassle-free.
Details of the fundraiser/Carbon-raffle are as follows:
1st Prize – Tesla Model 3 Performance, Model S or Model X
First prize winners of this year’s Carbon Raffle can select between a Tesla Model S, Tesla Model X, or a fully-loaded Tesla Model 3 Performance. The organization estimates the cost of the vehicle to be $89,763 on its own. Considering that Climate XChange is paying the vehicle’s total tax payments of $38,470, the total cost of the grand prize for this year’s raffle is worth $128,233.
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2nd Prize – Dual Motor Long Range Tesla Model 3
Second prize winners are set to receive a Long Range Tesla Model 3 with Dual Motor AWD that’s worth $58,950. The organization will cover the vehicle’s taxes as well, which is worth an extra $25,625.
3rd Prize – Tesla Model 3 RWD
Climate XChange has committed to giving away a Standard Range RWD Model 3 and set aside $39,825 for the car, as well as total tax payments of $17,068.
New Year’s Day, January 1, 2019 @ 3 p.m. ET: Drawing
The Carbon Pricing Awareness Raffle Drawing will be conducted at 3 p.m. Eastern Time at Climate XChange’s headquarters, located at:
Old West Church
131 Cambridge Street
Boston, MA 02114
All ticket holders are invited to be present for the drawing but need not be present to win. The Drawing will be streamed over the Internet; instructions for locating and joining the stream will be published on the website a few days before the Drawing is held.
Winners of the raffle who do not wish to acquire a Tesla could instead opt for a cash prize. Those that choose to take delivery of a Tesla, will be given the opportunity to fully configure the vehicle to their liking. Deliveries for the electric cars are set to be conducted in centers closest to the homes of the raffle’s winners, where a representative from Climate XChange will facilitate the handover.
“We don’t believe that climate action and business interests are at odds with each other, and we are doing our research to prove that. We have spent the past five years sharpening our tools on a campaign in Massachusetts and finally this year, our legislation passed the State Senate unanimously … we have already set our sights in other states across the country and are looking to support carbon pricing efforts and research in as many states as possible. – Climate XChange”
Please consider helping and make a difference.
Following Climate XChange’s success in Massachusetts when the State Senate unanimously voted in favor of the carbon pricing bill, the organization contacted Teslarati and asked for support in taking their fight against carbon emissions to a national level.
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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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