Lifestyle
My Friend has had 34 Cars. He’s only kept his Tesla Model 3.
My friend Travis has had 34 cars in 11 years of having a license. A Tesla Model 3 is the only one he has kept in his driveway for more than a few months. He’s now going on his fifth year of Tesla ownership.
In 2018, we were playing Xbox together when told me he was buying a Tesla Model 3. In the four years since, he has had numerous vehicles, from Jeeps to pickup trucks, to performance vehicles, to muscle cars.
“I have owned 34 vehicles. There have only been two vehicles I have kept for a decent amount of time,” he told me. “My first car was a Nissan Sentra, and my 2018 Tesla Model 3. I kept the Nissan for 2 years and the Tesla I had for four years. There have been many vehicles that I have purchased and sold in a short period of time. I have sold 3 vehicles before even getting them registered and getting a new title, so they were bought by me and sold by me within 4 days to 15 days.”
Our friendship has spanned many years. We grew up playing Little League together, and we eventually went from teammates to rivals competing for different high schools on the soccer field. Now that we’re both out of the military for him and college for me, we have transitioned to golf and we spend many weekends on the course together with other friends.
Credit: Joey Klender | Teslarati
The Tesla always comes up in conversation.
It only occurred to me recently that Trav gets rid of cars like I do socks. In fact, just four weekends ago, I met up with him for an early round of golf on a beautiful Sunday morning. He shows up in this red Corvette I’ve never seen and tells me he just picked it up from a man in Annapolis the previous day.
Fast-forward to last weekend: Travis sends me a Snapchat of the Corvette driving down the street. He had just sold it to someone else. He just loves driving different cars.
But the Tesla is a different story. Only getting a new Tesla because of the used car market right now, Travis has kept a Model 3 in his driveway for four years; a significantly longer period of time than any other car previously.
“One reason is the cost of ownership alone,” he said. “You save so much money in the Tesla. After four years of ownership, I never visited a service center, and the only maintenance I did was windshield washer fluid and two sets of tires in 92,000 miles. The App is super convenient for so many reasons. Being able to see where the car is parked in the middle of a city or a busy parking lot makes it very easy to find. Also, being able to heat the car or cool the car with the touch of one button on your phone is super nice, as well as venting the windows on a hot day.”
Travis traded in the 2018 LR AWD Model 3 earlier this year and picked up a 2022 Midnight Silver Metallic version in the same configuration.
“The only reason I traded my old Model 3 was just that the used car market is high right now,” he said. “If the market for used cars wasn’t so high, I would have kept it. I bought a 2022 Tesla Model 3 and picked a different color just to have some change. I always said I would never sell my Tesla unless it was for a newer one that was either faster, had more range, or someone was willing to pay a lot for it, and that’s what I did.”
As a realtor selling houses in our home state of Pennsylvania and in nearby Maryland, one of the biggest advantages of having the car is not having to spend money on gas. Prices in the U.S. are incredibly high, and in PA, they reached $5 a gallon for the first time in our lifetime. Even back in 2018, he was spending considerably less than others.
When Travis got out of the Air Force a few years ago and moved back to PA, he drove the Tesla here. “I drove my Model 3 from Colorado to Pennsylvania and spent $47 at Superchargers along the way. My friend making the same trip spent $527 on gas.”
Now that he’s a relator and is driving around for open houses or to close a deal, the savings alone are making his job even easier and less financially stressful.
As for other drivers, Trav says an EV is absolutely the best option for those who are in the market for a new car. “I ABSOLUTELY would encourage others to purchase an EV. The best part about all the trips I have taken: to Maine, to Tennessee, and to the beach, is I do not even plan the trip out. I just get in my Model 3 and put the address in, and start driving. The screen tells me where to stop to charge, which normally is no more than a half mile out of the way.”
As for those who are skeptical of whether the Model 3 will stick around in Trav’s repertoire, I wouldn’t count on it going anywhere anytime soon. “I will always have one,” he said.
I’d love to hear from you! If you have any comments, concerns, or questions, please email me at joey@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @KlenderJoey, or if you have news tips, you can email us at tips@teslarati.com.
Elon Musk
Tesla is sending its humanoid Optimus robot to the Boston Marathon
Tesla’s Optimus robot is heading to the Boston Marathon finish line
Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot will be stationed at the Tesla showroom at 888 Boylston Street in Boston, right along the final stretch of the Boston Marathon today, ready to cheer on runners and pose for photos with spectators.
According to a Tesla email shared by content creator Sawyer Merritt on X, Optimus will be at the Boston Boylston Street showroom on April 20, coinciding with Marathon Monday weekend. The Boston Marathon finishes on Boylston Street, and the surrounding area draws hundreds of thousands of spectators along with international broadcast coverage. Placing Optimus there puts it in front of a massive public audience at zero advertising cost.
Just got this email. @Tesla’s Optimus robot is coming to Boston.
“Join us from April 19 to 20, 2026, at Tesla Boston Boylston Street showroom to meet Optimus, our humanoid robot, for Marathon Monday. Optimus will be cheering with you on the sidelines and posing for photos.” pic.twitter.com/chxoooO2xV
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) April 18, 2026
The Tesla showroom is at 888 Boylston Street, between Gloucester Street and Fairfield Street. The final mile of the marathon runs directly along Boylston Street, with runners passing the big stores before reaching the finish line at Copley Square.
Optimus was first announced at Tesla’s AI Day event on August 19, 2021, when Elon Musk presented a vision for a general-purpose robot designed to take on dangerous, repetitive, and unwanted tasks. In March 2026, Optimus appeared at the Appliance and Electronics World Expo in Shanghai, where on-site staff stated that mass production of the robot could begin by the end of 2026. Before that, it showed up at the Tesla Hollywood Diner opening in July 2025 and at a Miami showroom event in December 2025.
Tesla’s well-calculated display of Optimus gives the public a low-pressure first encounter with a robot that Tesla is preparing to soon deploy at scale. The company has previously indicated plans to manufacture Optimus robots at its Fremont facility at up to 1 million units annually, with an Optimus production line at Gigafactory Texas targeting 10 million units per year.
Tesla showcases Optimus humanoid robot at AWE 2026 in Shanghai
Musk has said that Optimus “has the potential to be more significant than the vehicle business over time,” and separately that roughly 80 percent of Tesla’s future value will come from the robot program. Whether that holds depends on production execution. For now, Boston gets a preview of what that future looks like, standing at the finish line on Boylston Street while 32,000 runners pass by.
Elon Musk
Tesla’s golden era is no longer a tagline
Tesla “golden era” teaser video highlights the future of transportation and why car ownership itself may be the next thing to change.
The golden age of autonomous ridesharing is arriving, and Tesla is making sure we can all picture a future that looks like the future. A recent teaser posted to X shows a Cybercab parked outside a home, and with a clear message that your everyday life may soon look like this when the driverless vehicles shows up at your door.
Tesla has begun the rollout of its Robotaxi service across US cities, and the production of its dedicated, fully-autonomous Cybercab vehicle. The first Cybercab rolled off the Giga Texas assembly line on February 17, 2026, with volume production now targeted for this month. Additionally, the Robotaxi service built around it is already running, without human drivers, in US cities.
Tesla Cybercab production ignites with 60 units spotted at Giga Texas
The Cybercab is built without a steering wheel, pedals, or side mirrors, designed from the ground up for unsupervised autonomous operation. Musk described the manufacturing approach as closer to consumer electronics than traditional car production, targeting a cycle time of one unit every ten seconds at full scale.
Drone footage from April 13, 2026 captured over 50 Cybercab units on the Giga Texas campus, with several clustered near the crash testing facility. Musk has noted that Tesla plans to sell the Cybercab to consumers for under $30,000, and owners will be able to add their vehicles to the Tesla robotaxi network when not in personal use, potentially generating income to offset the vehicle’s purchase cost. That model changes the math on vehicle ownership in a meaningful way, making a car something closer to a depreciating asset that can also earn by paying itself off and generate a profit.
During Tesla’s Q4 earnings call, the company confirmed plans to expand the Robotaxi program to seven new cities in the first half of 2026, including Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, Orlando, Tampa, and Las Vegas. The service already runs without safety drivers in Austin, and public road testing of the Cybercab has expanded to five states, including California, Texas, New York, Illinois, and Massachusetts.
Golden era pic.twitter.com/AS6pX2dK8N
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) April 16, 2026
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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