News
Exploring Details Behind the Tesla Model S Update
After four years on the market, Tesla has quietly released a new styling update for the Model S aligning it with the design found on the Model X and Model 3 prototype.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has once said that Tesla continues to improve on their vehicles making sometimes twenty engineering design changes per week, with many of them being released via over-the-air software updates, but major redesigns are few and far between.
Let’s take a closer look at what the new Model S “refresh” introduced.
Exterior Design Updates
The most noticeable exterior update is the new front-end of the Model S which looks most like the front-end of the Model X.
- 2016 Tesla Model S revised front end
- Red Tesla Model X with Silver 20″ Wheels
Though they look very similar in design, the Model S looks even sleeker due to the lower profile over the Model X. The revised look keeps the Model S modern in appearance, but subtle enough that it still remains true to its original contour and body lines.
One update that easily goes unnoticed is the relocation of the front facing radar. Because of the new grill-less design of the Model S, the Tesla design team had to move the radar up from the bottom grill to the open space behind the Tesla emblem. This not only helps with functionality because of a higher mounting position with potentially less obstruction, but the new hidden location makes the car look a heck of a lot better.
Also improved on the exterior are the headlights which are now adaptive LED headlamps that adjust according to the curvature of the road. This is standard equipment found on the Model X but also seen on the Model 3 prototypes.
Interior Design Updates
The interior treatment of the Model S received a few new updates as well. Tesla has included a standard center console that looks to be the same one from the Model X.
- Revised Tesla Model S center console
- Tesla Model X Front Interior
Tesla Model S (left) vs Model X (right) interior
Tesla has also added a Figured Ash as an available interior trim. This trim has been very popular among Model X buyers, but it also happens to be a personal favorite of mine.
Additional Features
The Model S onboard charger has been upgraded from a 40A standard charger to a 48A standard charger, with an option to further increase charging rate by opting for a 72A “high amperage” charger. The older Model S configurations offered a 40A charger standard with an option to upgrade to 80A (‘dual chargers‘).
Tesla also made the automatic lift gate now a standard option which makes sense for a premium vehicle in this price range.
Included in the premium upgrade package is the BioWeapon defense mode air filtration system, as well as ambient interior lighting (previously an optional upgrade).
Pricing
While there were many rumors of a Model S price increase leading up to this design refresh, the new updates do not seem to be reflected in the price.
“The new Model S may actually be less expensive than before”
I priced out the latest Model S with options that I chose from before, and compared the new price side by side with one I previously saved.
The price from before was $98,450 and the new price is $104,450, but despite the price difference there are a couple of key differences which makes for the price disparity. Let me explain.
The last time I configured a Model S I couldn’t locate a high amperage/dual charger option so my $98,450 does not include that option. On the other hand, the updated Model S comes with a 48A charger as a standard feature. This is included in the base price of the vehicle.
Tesla also no longer offers the S85D which I priced-out back then, so this new price is for the 90D. In the past the extra 5 kWh was a $3,000 option.
If you back both of those out to the new price you get to a price difference of $99,950 or a price increase of $500. Keep in mind that the updated Model S also comes with a center console (previously a $650 extra charge) and the new air filtration system. Depending on how you look at it, the new Model S may actually be less expensive than before.
One could easily make the case that the new offering is an improvement over what Tesla offered before and is actually less expensive.
Summary
It’s great to see Tesla keeping the Model S design fresh and current despite all of the activity going on within the company, let alone conquering challenges with launching the Model X and preparing for the Model 3. Being able to pull off this current update – factoring in changes to production, logistics, service, etc – Tesla continues to defy naysayers and show the world what ingenuity and perseverance can accomplish in such a short amount of time.
Lifestyle
Tesla wins over Netflix’s Selling Sunset star, who’s now ditching his Bentley
Selling Sunset’s Jason Oppenheim swapped his Bentley for a Tesla and promised ten for employees.
Jason Oppenheim, the luxury real estate broker best known as the star of Netflix’s Selling Sunset, has parked his Bentley for good and moved into a Tesla Model Y, and he says Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is the reason.
Oppenheim, who founded The Oppenheim Group, the Los Angeles brokerage at the center of the show, posted a video to X on Saturday evening that he called “the most important video I’ve ever posted.” In it, he rides from Newport Beach to his firm’s Los Angeles office, a trip he put at roughly an hour and 15 minutes, while FSD handles the drive and parks the car without him touching the wheel or the accelerator. He said he handed the Bentley to his father because he no longer has any use for it.
Tesla shared the clip from its main account on X about two hours later, pulling out the quote that has since spread well beyond the Tesla community:
“[FSD Supervised] is life-changing. I was on the phone with my brother last night, and I made him buy one. He literally bought one while we were talking. I’m buying 10 of my employees a Tesla with FSD. It’s 8x safer than the average driver. There’s nothing more important than the safety of you and your loved ones.”
Oppenheim was candid about why the safety pitch landed with him. He admitted in the video that he is a distracted driver who answers emails and texts behind the wheel, and framed the employee purchases as a way to keep his team off their phones while driving. Elon Musk posted “Tesla FSD feels like magic” less than half an hour after the video went live.
The endorsement lands at a convenient moment for Tesla. The company delivered 486,532 vehicles in Q3, beating Wall Street’s estimates and marking its best quarter ever without the $7,500 federal EV tax credit.
A public service announcement. https://t.co/NYa1IpKwBX
— Jason Oppenheim (@OppenheimJason) October 4, 2026
Tesla FSD has been subscription only in the U.S. since February at $99 per month, and Tesla said in its Q2 update that active subscriptions hit 1.48 million, up 56 percent year over year, with more than 55 percent of new North American deliveries leaving with FSD attached. That attach rate is the figure Ron Baron cited last month when he told CNBC “the time to buy the stock is now.” At current pricing, Oppenheim’s 10 employee cars alone would add $990 a month, or about $11,880 a year, in FSD revenue.
Tesla AI head Ashok Elluswamy said in July that FSD had logged more than 12 billion miles while going roughly twice as far between collisions as manual driving. FSD also remains a supervised system, so Oppenheim and his employees are still required to watch the road, even as Tesla rolls out v14.3.10 with Automatic Collision Evasion, which can steer or brake on its own to avoid a frontal crash.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk follows Trump’s lead, says a SpaceX name change is coming
Elon Musk says SpaceXAI will become SpaceXSI, marking its second rebrand in under three months.
Elon Musk wants to rename his artificial intelligence company again, less than three months after its last rebrand.
In a string of posts on X early Sunday morning, Musk wrote “No more AI,” followed by “SI” and “It’s better.” He then added, “SpaceX is a super intelligence company.” When a user asked whether SpaceXAI could become SpaceXSI, Musk replied, “Yes, we will make that change.”
The posts extend a terminology push that began at the White House last week. On September 29, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to replace “artificial intelligence” and “AI” with “Super Intelligence” and “SI” on government websites, policy documents and press releases. The same day, Musk sat beside Trump as the heads of the largest AI companies signed a voluntary safety accord, as Teslarati reported. Speaking to reporters afterward, Musk caught himself mid sentence: “I think it is worth highlighting the positive benefits of A.I. … S.I., pardon me.”
Elon Musk and Trump are closer than ever, and Tesla could be the big winner
SpaceXSI would be the third name for the business since February. SpaceX acquired xAI on February 2 in a deal that valued the combined company at $1.25 trillion. In May, Musk said xAI would be dissolved as a separate company, and on July 6 the division adopted the SpaceXAI name and a new logo that placed the xAI letters inside the SpaceX identity.
Musk gave no timeline. He did not say whether SpaceXSI would be a legal name change or a branding update, whether the @SpaceXAI handle on X would change, or how the shift would apply to products like Grok. The company had not issued a formal announcement as of Sunday morning.
The change would reach well beyond a chatbot. SpaceXAI now houses Grok, the X platform, the Colossus training clusters in Memphis and the coding tool Cursor, which SpaceX acquired in August. It also runs the orbital compute effort SpaceX is building around Nvidia hardware, which Musk said during the company’s first earnings call would be exclusive to Nvidia.
It’s unclear if rivals like Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta and Nvidia have plans to also rename their companies or products. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has continued to say “AI” in public, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has gone partway, describing data centers as “super intelligence factories.”
The rename would also line up SpaceX’s AI branding with the federal government’s language as Musk takes on a new advisory role at the Pentagon, where he is helping lead the Project Meridian study on the future of warfare.
News
Starlink launches Communities Program for passive income through internet sharing
Starlink is launching a new beta path for ordinary property owners and local operators to turn a single Starlink kit into a small shared-access business for passive income.
Under the Starlink for Communities program, a host installs one dish and router setup in a location with nearby demand: an apartment complex, campground, rural crossroads, or event site. Neighbors or local users can buy short-term passes rather than full individual subscriptions, giving the Starlink provider a potential path to passive income.
Hour, day, and week passes cover one device. A month pass covers up to four. Starlink handles account creation, payments, access controls, and the satellite link itself. The host’s role is mainly placement, power, and basic upkeep, with earnings tied to each paid connection.
Big news! SpaceX is introducing a new @Starlink for Communities program that lets you earn money by providing Starlink internet to your neighbors or people nearby, who can pay for access by the hour, day, week, or month.
Neighbors pay for the access they need, while the person… pic.twitter.com/DtOUs0Ekvt
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) October 1, 2026
The model echoes the passive-income vision long attached to Tesla’s Robotaxi plans, and it seems like it’s something Musk has hinted toward in the past as he believes AI will make the need to work relatively optional. In both cases, the platform owns the hard parts of matching, billing, and network management, while an individual supplies a physical asset that sits idle much of the time.
A Starlink host’s dish can serve multiple nearby users without each household buying and installing its own terminal. A Tesla owner, under the stated Robotaxi concept, would leave a vehicle enrolled in the fleet during unused hours so the car generates rides while the owner is at work or asleep.
Both arrangements convert under-utilized hardware into a revenue stream. They also let the company scale coverage or capacity without owning every endpoint.
Differences are practical. A Starlink kit is a fixed, relatively low-cost terminal whose main constraint is local congestion and line-of-sight. A Tesla Robotaxi is a mobile, high-value vehicle whose earnings depend on demand density, utilization rates, insurance, cleaning, and charging.
Starlink’s program is already accepting host applications in multiple countries and describes the revenue split as ongoing. Tesla’s owner-network version remains more aspirational.
The company currently operates a limited company-controlled robotaxi service in select areas and has solicited interest from fleet buyers for Cybercab vehicles, while private Full Self-Driving owners have not yet been able to dispatch their own cars for paid rides at scale.
Tesla primes Cybercabs for 4K streaming and high bandwidth gaming with Starlink integration
Starlink is a satellite broadband service operated by SpaceX that uses a constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to deliver internet to locations where terrestrial broadband is slow, expensive, or absent. It has grown to millions of subscribers worldwide by selling direct residential, mobile, and enterprise terminals, and have become widely available at a wide array at retail locations like Target and Best Buy.
The Communities program extends that reach by letting hosts resell short bursts of capacity to people nearby, while also providing high-speed internet access to those who are simply around a Starlink user.




