Tesla Model S
1,500+ Miles in a Tesla Model S
I knew that when I signed out our Tesla Model S, I had a lot of weekend traveling in front of me. I left the office with 240 miles showing on the projected range, but I was confident the Tesla wouldn’t hinder my plans.
I headed about 9 miles east to Riswick’s house for a quick little hangout. It also gave traffic a chance (albeit slim) to die down for a later destination. After shooting the breeze there, I headed home to feed the pet and pack for the night. I pointed the car north to Valencia to spend the night with the girlfriend. Without traffic, it’s a 45-minute trek. But it was Friday night, just before St. Patrick’s Day, and a sobriety checkpoint brought traffic flow through Hollywood to a crawl.
I finally got on the highway and up to speed, then more traffic. Ugh. I had traveled about 20 miles, but the range was showing that I’ve used up 30 miles worth of charge and there was still a big hill to climb. This was not how I thought it’d go.
The next afternoon I drove back home and the range was estimating 140 miles left, with actual miles coming to about 95. A couple of smaller trips to a taco stand on Sunset and the Petersen Automotive Museum kept chipping away at the range.
I wouldn’t call it range anxiety, maybe range awareness by the time Sunday morning rolled around. The L.A. Marathon kept me from making my direct route back up to Valencia, so I had to drive through Downtown to head north. Luckily, Ikea was on my weekend to-do list and they just so happened to have a charging station nearby.
With 80 miles of range showing, I parked and plugged in as we headed into Ikea in Burbank, or as I like to call it, “the place where couples go to fight.” We had no such disagreements in the store so we resorted to fabricating an argument about curtain rods to keep our sanity in the rat maze. We were out of there in only 30 minutes, which wasn’t nearly enough time to get a decent charge. It was close enough to lunchtime, so I proposed we grab a bite in the dreaded mall food court.
As we ate, I texted Magrath to get an update on the charging. He has the Tesla app and I don’t. He said I was at 105 miles of range, then asked how Burbank was. It’s creepy having someone with the ability to shadow me, so I shut the remote access feature off as soon as I got back in the car.
A quick stop in Valencia and then back to L.A. The range was down to the 50s so I had the girlfriend look up charging stations in my neighborhood. There was one just a mile away in Beverly Hills, so she hopped in her car and followed me over. Another plug-in and we left in her car for a few hours. Honestly, this last charge was probably unnecessary, but I wanted more than 25 miles of a buffer zone to get back to work Monday morning.
We picked up the Tesla just before dinner, then swung by my sister’s place a few miles south and dragged her kids to dinner in West L.A. Back up to my place to pick up out iPads and then back to my sister’s to keep the kids from burning the house down for at least a few hours. When we finally got back to CasaHashi, I had 50 miles left on the range. Good enough for the 7-mile drive to Santa Monica in the morning.
Now that I’ve thoroughly bored you with what a Takahashi weekend is like, there’s a moral to the story. The Tesla was able to handle the many destinations with ease. In L.A., there are plenty of charging stations to facilitate buzzing all over the county, and I’m sure more stations are on the way.
If I owned this car, and I didn’t have to log every time I charged-up, I’d probably charge at every available station (movie theatres, supermarkets, Home Depot, etc.) whether or not I really needed to. A few miles added here or there give me that added security and, hey, you get rockstar parking in front! Then there’s the cool factor. Once you get out of L.A.’s westside, Teslas are a rarity. I spotted a lot of people stopping to check out the car as it charged and there was no shortage of looks while on the road.
Yup. I like it. The Tesla Model S represents the first electric car that I consider aspirational. At some point, I’ll take it into the canyons to see if it’s inspirational, too.
Mark Takahashi, Automotive Editor @ 1,641 miles
Elon Musk
Trump’s invite for Elon just reshuffled Tesla’s big Signature Delivery Event
Tesla rescheduled its final Model S farewell to May 20 after Musk joined Trump in China.
Tesla has rescheduled its Model S and Model X Signature Edition delivery event to Wednesday, May 20, 2026, after abruptly calling off the original May 12 celebration. The event will take place at Tesla’s factory at 45500 Fremont Boulevard in Fremont, California, the same location where the Model S first rolled off the line in 2012. Invitees received a follow-up email asking them to reconfirm attendance and download a new QR code ticket, with Tesla noting that all travel and accommodation expenses remain the buyer’s responsibility.
The reason behind the original cancellation came into focus the same day it was announced. President Trump invited Elon Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook, BlackRock’s Larry Fink, Boeing’s Kelly Ortberg, and executives from Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, Citigroup, and Meta to join his trip to China this week for a summit with President Xi Jinping. The agenda covers trade, artificial intelligence, export controls, Taiwan, and the Iran war, following weeks of escalating friction between Washington and Beijing over AI technology, sanctions, and rare earth exports. Trump wrote on Truth Social, “I am very much looking forward to my trip to China, an amazing Country, with a Leader, President Xi, respected by all.”
Tesla launches 200mph Model S “Gold” Signature in invite-only purchase
The vehicles at the center of all this are the last Model S and Model X units Tesla will ever build. Priced at $159,420 each, the 250 Model S and 100 Model X Signature Edition units come finished in Garnet Red with a one-year no-resale agreement, giving Tesla right of first refusal if the owner decides to sell. As Teslarati reported, the Model S defined Tesla’s early identity as a serious luxury automaker, and the Fremont factory line that built it is now being converted to manufacture Optimus humanoid robots.
Musk’s inclusion in the China delegation drew attention given his very public relationship with Trump, and the invitation signals the two have moved past and past grievances. Trump originally brought Musk on to lead the Department of Government Efficiency following his inauguration, and despite a sharp public dispute in mid-2025, the two have appeared together repeatedly in recent months. A seat on the China trip, the most diplomatically consequential visit of Trump’s current term, puts Musk back at the table on U.S. economic policy at a moment when Tesla’s China revenue remains one of the company’s most important financial pillars.
Elon Musk
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla confirmed HW3 vehicles cannot run unsupervised FSD, replacing its free upgrade promise with a discounted trade-in.
Tesla has officially confirmed that early vehicles with its Autopilot Hardware 3 (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving, while extending a path forward for legacy owners through a discounted trade-in program. The announcement came by way of Elon Musk in today’s Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call.
🚨 Our LIVE updates on the Tesla Earnings Call will take place here in a thread 🧵
Follow along below: pic.twitter.com/hzJeBitzJU
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
The history here matters. HW3 launched in April 2019, and Tesla sold Full Self-Driving packages to owners on the understanding that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. Some owners paid between $8,000 and $15,000 for FSD during that period. For years, as FSD’s AI models grew more demanding, HW3 vehicles fell progressively further behind, eventually landing on FSD v12.6 in January 2025 while AI4 vehicles moved to v13 and then v14. When Musk acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 simply could not reach unsupervised operation, and alluded to a difficult hardware retrofit.
The near-term offering is more concrete. Tesla’s head of Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed on today’s call that a V14-lite will be coming to HW3 vehicles in late June, bringing all the V14 features currently running on AI4 hardware. That is a meaningful software update for owners who have been frozen at v12.6 for over a year, and it represents genuine effort to keep older hardware relevant. Unsupervised FSD for vehicles is now targeted for Q4 2026 at the earliest, with Musk describing it as a gradual, geography-limited rollout.
For HW3 owners, the over-the-air V14-lite update is welcomed, and the discounted trade-in path at least acknowledges an old obligation. What happens next with the trade-in pricing will define how this chapter ultimately gets written. If Tesla prices the hardware path fairly, acknowledges what early adopters are owed, and delivers V14-lite on the June timeline it committed to today, it has a real opportunity to convert one of the longest-running sore subjects among early adopters into a loyalty story.
Tesla announced its Spring 2026 software update, and it’s the most feature-dense seasonal release the company has put out. The update covers twelve named changes spanning FSD, voice AI, safety lighting, dashcam storage, and pet display customization, among other things.
The centerpiece for owners with AI4 hardware is a redesigned Self-Driving app. The new interface lets owners subscribe to Full Self-Driving with a single tap and view ongoing FSD usage stats directly in the vehicle.
Grok gets its biggest in-car upgrade yet. The update adds a “Hey Grok” hands-free wake word along with location-based reminders, so a driver can now say “remind me to pick up groceries when I get home” without touching the screen. Grok first arrived in vehicles in July 2025, but each update has pushed it closer to genuine daily utility. Musk framed the broader vision clearly at Davos in January, saying Tesla is “really moving into a future that is based on autonomy.”
On safety, the update introduces enhanced blind spot warning lights that integrate directly with the cabin’s ambient lighting, building on the blind spot door warning that arrived in update 2026.8.
Dog Mode has been renamed Pet Mode and now lets owners choose a dog, cat, or hedgehog icon and add their pet’s name to the display.
Dashcam retention now extends up to 24 hours, up from the previous one-hour rolling loop, with a permanent save option for any clip. Weather maps now show rain and snow with better color differentiation and include the past hour of precipitation data along the route.
Tesla has now established a clear rhythm of two major OTA pushes per year. As with last year’s Spring update, that cycle started taking shape in 2025 with adaptive headlights and trunk customization. The 2025 Holiday Update then added Grok to the vehicle for the first time. This Spring follows that structure: the Holiday update introduces new architecture, and the Spring update broadens it across the fleet.
Two notable features still did not make it. IFTTT automations, which launched in China earlier this year, were held back from this North American release for unknown reasons, and Apple CarPlay remains absent, reportedly still delayed by iOS 26 and Apple Maps compatibility issues.
Below is the full list of feature updates released by Tesla.
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 13, 2026
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