Lifestyle
Tesla Model 3 wireless charger: Factory-look and it’s fast
A big thanks to Nomad for providing me with this Model 3 wireless phone charger. This isn’t a mandatory glowing review – you can find those on YouTube. Rather, this was an opportunity for me, a product person, to inspect the design of a product that I needed/wanted and photograph it. I like photos. A lot.
The Tesla Model 3 is full of forward-thinking technology and amazing performance stats, but if I’m being honest, its built-in elements for phone charging have some room for improvement.
In a car that requires neither gas nor keys to operate, wireless phone charging seems like a natural fit, but it isn’t a factory option (yet anyhow). Thankfully, a company called Nomad has recognized the void in charger options and now offers a product specifically designed for the Model 3.
I got a hold of one and had a look for myself.
The Nomad Wireless Phone Charger for the Tesla Model 3 is basically what it sounds like – a pad for charging your compatible iPhone or Android device (7.5 W charge output or Qi-enabled) simply by setting it down in your car’s center console. An LED indicator confirms the process is working: amber while charging, and white when fully charged. Since Nomad’s charger supports two phones, your passenger can enjoy the same wire-free perks that you do. My passenger definitely appreciated it when I was trying the device out.
Even though I was looking for an improvement to my Model 3’s factory phone charging options, I’m still a huge fan of the Tesla aesthetic and wince at the idea of interfering with the look and feel of my car. That said, I was really pleased with how Nomad’s charger matched my Model 3’s design. It’s actually one of the core reasons I chose their charger over the many other wireless chargers that I saw were available on Amazon.
Photo by me.
Since there’s obviously a lot of motion involved while driving, Nomad’s pad has a matte black, soft rubber coating to keep your phone from sliding around. For small phones, spacers are included for extra stability which is a pretty cool compatibility consideration in my opinion. The specs of the charger say that some larger phones won’t fit into the charging space with their cases on, but my iPhone fits perfectly.
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I did look at other wireless pads on the market that utilize a horizontal charging position, but personally didn’t like that look, and found Nomad’s upright mount to simulate more of the Tesla look and feel that’s similar to the Model S and Model X. Also, this is a minor detail to some, but it’s worth noting that I finally reached out to Nomad for a charger after seeing online reviews indicating that their charging was faster than the competition.
In terms of installation? Easy peasy. Open the top center console; remove the non-slip pad and USB cables inside Nomad’s Apple-like packaging; feed Nomad’s wires through the cable hole and plug into the Model 3’s USB ports. Not much to write about beyond that.
Photos by me.
While the standard setup of the Nomad charger worked great for my needs now, I also liked that there’s flexibility with the product in case my needs change in the future. For example, two USB splitters are included in the box if I have an audio device that requires a USB port or I want to record video from my dashcam.
Overall, I’m pretty satisfied with Nomad’s wireless phone charger in my Tesla Model 3. If you’re in the market for a factory-looking wireless charger, that charges quickly and has a solid, premium build, I recommend giving this phone charger a go. Full specs and pricing details can be found on Nomad’s website.
Thanks for listening and happy charging!
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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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