Connect with us

Lifestyle

Tips on how to make the most of a Tesla road trip

Published

on

Anti-Tesla law

Long road trips are one of the biggest sources of enjoyment a Tesla can bring. This coming from a former road trip hater who just wanted to get to whatever big city or beach she was traveling to quickly and at 39,000 feet. Really. I once flew from Philly to Pittsburgh. So why then, did I just knowingly and happily embark on 2,100 mile trip? Because road tripping in a Tesla is amazing.

I now much prefer Tesla road trips over flying. Veterans and new Tesla owners alike are well aware of the joys of the Supercharger network. Once you’ve mastered managing your battery range and using Superchargers, all that’s left is to enjoy the ride. I’d like to share with you some ways that I made the most of my recent trip. Each one greatly enhanced the experience.

Pack a water cooler

I have this 2-gallon jug and it has honestly revolutionized road travel. When most folks reach for coffee, I reach for cold water. Keeping hydrated has a myriad of benefits and only one downfall: needing facilities. Fortunately, you’re stopping every 2 hours or so to charge anyway so drink away. Pair this with one reusable water bottle per traveler and you’ll not only save money refilling, but reduce waste as well. This jug, filled generously with ice and water from home stayed cold from 6:30am on Day 1 until we finished it the evening of Day 2. We filled up or topped off our individual bottles for every meal, as well as before check in to get us through one night at a hotel without having to buy bottled water.

Make use of the frunk

While we’re talking about packing, go ahead and make use of the frunk. Our S85 has the larger variety, so we were able to put a small, empty duffel bag in there to store clothes as they had become dirty and thus lessen the load carried in our suit cases each day. We also had plenty of room for a cooler full of booze. More on that later. A few days into the trip, I also realized that the empty “microwave” space on rear wheel drive cars holds several pairs of shoes neatly in place.

Advertisement

BYOB

Okay, so this is a tip to save money on any road trip but hello! Enjoy a cocktail at your destination before or after (or both) going out to dinner. Why double the cost of the meal when buying a bottle at home costs a fraction of what it does at a restaurant.

Immerse yourself

This is another tip applicable to any means of transportation but check out websites like AirBnB or HomeAway to find digs right in the midst of your destination. Depending on our trip, you can make use of the ever-growing network of Superchargers and not even  have to think about destination charging. We used exactly zero destination chargers on this trip.

Downtown Chicago Tesla Store

Downtown Chicago Tesla Store [Street View]

Stop at more chargers for shorter periods of time

Some people would rather take the long way home and keep moving than take the most direct highway and sit in traffic. Moving just feels better. The same logic applies here. If your route gives you the option to skip chargers, consider not doing so. Consider stopping at every charger along your route, for a shorter amount of time at each stop to minimize sitting and waiting. In addition to being fun to “collect” Supercharger visits, this speaks to the aforementioned hydration peril. Charge rates are slower at the high and low ends of the battery anyway, so this may save time. It also speaks to one of the best parts of choosing to road trip over flying. That is…

red-tesla-michigan-supercharger

See things along the way

I’ve always wanted to go to Chicago. It was the last of the top 5 (by population) cities in the US I hadn’t been to. I always assumed I’d fly there. If I had, I would not have had the great pleasure of seeing Touchdown Jesus and the gold dome at the University of Notre Dame. It was only a few miles away from a charger and well worth a short detour. The same goes for The Big House, the University of Michigan’s football stadium. That one was right along the way to eating lunch in Ann Arbor, a town I had wanted to see but probably would have never visited on its own.

Meet people along the way

Much in the same way that some of this trip’s best memories were stopping near or on the way to chargers, a great highlight was meeting a fellow owner at a charger. On purpose. If you use Twitter, Facebook, any Tesla forums, Reddit or other virtual communities, mention your travels to other users. You may be invited to meet up at one of your charge stops and be blessed with good company. Actually, there may be good company at any charge stop so after your visited your 100th restroom, say hello to fellow owners. One might just be the reason that particular location exists. (I’m talking to you Meijer logistics guy!)

Advertisement

Plan a multi-destination trip

Since you’re driving anyway, and your Tesla can fit lots of luggage, make it a multi-destination trip. Check out the Supercharger maps and trip planning tools then draw a line from home to an intended destination. See which other places are accessible. Make a big, grand loop. While I don’t recommend trying to experience Florence, Rome and Venice in 3 just days total – speaking from experience – you can certainly enjoy many small American cities or national parks in just one day.

Plan ahead for charging

Even if it’s informal, jot down the chargers you plan to hit. Tesla’s trip planning software may or may not take you the way you wish to go. And it may skip chargers. A little planning ahead and looking at a map will give you a better sense of your travel time, intended chargers to hit and potential sightseeing detours.

Share driving responsibilities

This is a biggie. If there is more than one healthy, licensed driver in the vehicle, give up the fob! I’ll never understand why some people insist on being the primary drivers in a family, but now’s not the time. At every charge stop switch. You’ll both feel more relaxed physically and mentally. For all of you couples out there, you already know that vacationing together can be stressful. Why not stack the deck in favor of taking some of the fatigue and stress of the equation? You’re getting out to plug in, stretch, use the facilities and possibly eat. When you get back in, pick another seat. Simple as that.

Okay so this is a child's car... but I had no pictures of us driving

Okay so this is a child’s car… but I had no pictures of us driving

 

Document

Tesla owners make one heck of a great community, and are a wealth of knowledge. Download Teslarati’s app (iOS | Android) and see what others are recommending at each charge location. You may find useful information such as discounted restaurants, or be able to add your own tips to share with others. It’s also great to be able to share your stats later. Below you will see the final stats for my trip:

Advertisement
  • Days: 8
  • Distance: 2,143 miles
  • Superchargers visited: 21
  • Destination cities (sleep over): 5 (Pittsburg, Chicago, Kenosha, Detroit, Toronto)
  • Destination cities/towns (non-sleeping): 3 (South Bend, Ann Arbor, Wilkes-Barre)
  • Average energy use: 289 Wh/mi
  • Level of enjoyment: Where can we go next?

 

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