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 primes Cybercabs for 4K streaming and high bandwidth gaming with Starlink integration
Tesla is now shipping Cybercabs from Giga Texas with Starlink hardware built in as standard.
Tesla’s Cybercabs are now leaving Gigafactory Texas with Starlink hardware on the rear hatch in significant numbers, according to drone footage captured Tuesday by longtime Austin drone observer Joe Tegtmeyer. Production at the factory ramped back up after the Labor Day weekend, and his flyover of the outbound lot showed rows of gold Cybercabs alongside Model Y Long Wheelbase units, many carrying the satellite module for the first time as standard equipment rather than a one off retrofit.
Giga Texas today is busy with production coming back up following the long weekend. Of interest today in the outbound lot is the appearance of hundreds of Mode; YL’s and many more Cybercabs and for the 1st time equipped with the Starlink module one the hatch in big numbers.
At… pic.twitter.com/G9yl6s51m4
— Joe Tegtmeyer 🚀 🤠🛸😎 (@JoeTegtmeyer) September 8, 2026
Tesla first showed Starlink built into an actual Cybercab on August 10, when the Robotaxi account posted images of a single gold unit with the antenna integrated into the roofline above the taillights and called it the first Cybercab with Starlink integration. That followed a July reveal where Tesla and Starlink jointly posted a cutaway diagram of the antenna placement without a working vehicle to back it up. Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla’s VP of AI software, said at the time that the connection isn’t required for the car to drive itself. It exists mainly for navigation, customer service and keeping tabs on the fleet.
Musk has made a different case in public. During Tesla’s Q2 earnings call, he said the company can’t afford robotaxis stranded in what he called “Bermuda Triangles of lack of cellular connectivity,” and he separately claimed on X that Starlink will eventually reach every Tesla built, calling it the only way to deliver high bandwidth to billions of vehicles. He has also pitched the antenna as an entertainment upgrade, telling riders they would be able to stream 4K video or play games during a trip.
The rollout has moved fast since. Robotaxi service opened to the public in Austin on September 3, and Cybercabs had already been spotted with Starlink hardware in Houston and near Miami International Airport in the weeks before Tuesday’s factory footage showed the module shipping at volume rather than on scattered test units. Whether the satellite link earns its keep is still an open question. Tesla’s unsupervised service currently runs in dense metro geofences in Texas and Florida, markets where cellular coverage is already strong, which is not where the rural dead zones Musk describes tend to show up.
Lifestyle
Tesla Cybertruck targets job site crews with new Tailgate Utility Track and Bed Gear Box accessory
Tesla launched a $350 tailgate track and a $985 lockable Bed Gear Box for Cybertruck.
Tesla’s Cybertruck team added two more items to the Tesla Shop, targeting job site crews and owners who use the truck bed for actual work rather than just showing it off. The official Cybertruck X account posted the Tailgate Utility Track and the Bed Gear Box within minutes of each other, part of a five item batch that also included a reflective jacket, a spray paint hat and an updated reflective tee.
The Tailgate Utility Track runs $350 and turns the folded down tailgate into another mounting surface. It’s a single aluminum track with a T-slot for sliding accessories and two L-track attachment points, plus two load stops included in the box. The pitch is straightforward: strap down oversized cargo, like lumber or a cooler, that hangs off the back of the bed without it sliding out mid-drive. It bolts onto the existing tailgate and works on every Cybertruck trim.
Tailgate Utility Trackhttps://t.co/PCAYXlFBvS pic.twitter.com/sCV2NVxf1W
— Cybertruck (@cybertruck) September 3, 2026
The Bed Gear Box costs $985 and is a different kind of accessory. It’s a lockable aluminum storage box, 55.78 inches long, 19.8 inches wide and 7.79 inches tall, that mounts to the bed’s L-track rails and comes with two internal bins for smaller items. According to Tesla, at just over 57 pounds empty, it’s meant to stay in place rather than come in and out with each trip, giving owners a factory-fit alternative to loose totes for tools, recovery gear or emergency supplies. Tesla’s listing notes that Long Range and Dual Motor AWD Cybertrucks need the L-Tracks accessory installed separately before the Gear Box will mount, since L-tracks come standard only on certain configurations.
Tesla Cybertruck bed gear box accessory
Both accessories lean on the idea Tesla has been building toward since Elon Musk first described the Cybertruck’s third-party attachment strategy at the 2023 shareholder meeting, when he said the truck would ship with mounting points so outside companies, and Tesla itself, could keep adding gear without redesigning the bed. That’s the same L-track backbone underneath the tailgate shield and jumpseats Tesla launched last year, and the off-road armor package that arrived through the same X account in 2025.
Owners looking to round out the rest of the L-track ecosystem, cargo dividers, MOLLE panels, bed racks and similar gear, can find a wider range of options through our Cybertruck accessories collection.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk says he knows how to save Earth for a billion years
Elon Musk says sentient AI satellites launched from the Moon could keep Earth livable forever.
Elon Musk spent part of his weekend describing a plan to keep the planet livable for roughly a billion years, and it starts with satellites that can think for themselves.
In a post on X, Musk argued that swapping fossil fuels for solar and wind power will not be enough to protect humanity from what he called extremely severe extinction events, the kind that occur roughly every 100 million years. His fix is what he called sentient satellites, or solar-powered satellites, controlled by AI, that would sit in a fixed spot between Earth and the Sun after being launched off the Moon using a giant electromagnetic catapult instead of rockets.
The satellites’ onboard AI would make continuous, small adjustments rather than waiting on human instructions. The mass driver is Musk’s proposed way of getting the raw material there cheaply by using an electromagnetic launch track built on the Moon, where lower gravity and no atmosphere make it far easier to fling cargo into space than it is from Earth.
But we do need to act much faster than that if people still want to live where the beach is today. We have about 50 years or so to take action, which should be more than enough time for the space satellites to solve any heating problems. https://t.co/xhrVQALwQw
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 30, 2026
Musk shared a Grok generated estimate suggesting roughly 5 percent of Florida’s land, or about 1.68 million acres, could face regular flooding by 2070 under a high sea level rise scenario, and said humanity has about 50 years to act before coastal living looks very different than it does today.
This is not the first time Musk has floated the idea. He raised a similar concept in November, describing a solar powered AI satellite constellation that could make tiny adjustments to incoming sunlight to fine tune Earth’s temperature. Musk has also tied planetary risk to his broader vision at SpaceX, where his compensation package is explicitly linked to establishing a self-sustaining Mars colony, one he has described as an insurance policy against the kind of extinction event he referenced this weekend, and where he has said humans could set foot within five to seven years.
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