Lifestyle
Will Tesla Model 3 Have Free Supercharger Access?
![Redondo Beach Supercharger [Source: EVA_2015 via Teslarati App]](https://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_2547.jpg)
![Tesla Supercharger network across North America [Source: Tesla Motors]](http://www.teslarati.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Tesla-Supercharger-Map-March-2016.jpg "Tesla Supercharger network across North America [Source: Tesla Motors]")
Tesla Supercharger network across North America [Source: Tesla Motors]
When the Tesla Model S first went on sale in 2012, access to the company’s quick-charging Supercharger network was a $2,000 option at the time of ordering. Since then the company has decided to include Supercharger access directly into the base cost of every new Model S and Model X produced. Will Supercharger access also be a standard feature on the upcoming Model 3 or will Tesla be offering it as an extra cost option?
One theory is that Tesla could very well include free Supercharger access as a standard item on the Model 3, but offer a discount for those that remove the feature, bringing the vehicle price down to $35,000 before incentives. The theory comes after members within the Tesla forum community made references to a story that appeared on Inside EVs two years back. The outlet states that Elon Musk gave a speech in Munich and announced that Model 3 owners (known as Gen 3 at the time) would receive free access to Superchargers, just like every other Tesla owner. Having Supercharger access baked in as a standard feature on the Model 3 would make for a good story to tell – every Tesla owner can drive free, for life.
On the other hand, some believe that Supercharger access will be an extra cost option for Model 3 buyers, some going as far as speculating that Tesla may offer a Supercharger subscription plan priced according to how often a Model 3 driver intends to use the charging network.
Ask any existing Tesla owner how they feel about the Supercharger and they’ll likely tell you that it’s the best thing to have happened since the advent of sliced bread. Tesla owners and enthusiasts are happy to see the company grow and flourish, but success also means an increasing number of Teslas on the road leading to capacity strains across popular Supercharger locations. With already a hundred thousand Teslas on the road and presumably several hundred thousand more over the next few years, congestion at Supercharger locations could become chronic. Free access is only a benefit if a Supercharger is available when needed.
By having a $2,000 upgrade option, and assuming the company converts reservations to 100,000 orders with the Supercharger upgrade, Tesla can raise $200 million to be used for further expansion of its global charging network.
We’re two days away from seeing the official unveiling of Tesla’s 200 mile mass-market Model 3. It’s unclear whether Tesla will discuss Model 3’s availability to the company’s quick charging network, but one should expect Supercharger access will be an extra cost option when it comes time to place that order.
Feature image: Redondo Beach Supercharger via EVA_2015
More Tesla Model 3 News
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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