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Porsche Taycan wheel and tire size revealed in pre-production prototype sighting

Porsche Taycan winter testing. (Photo: Tye/TaycanForum.com)

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Porsche has stated that one of the Taycan’s primary characteristics will be its capability to be driven hard on the track. In order to do this, the upcoming all-electric four-door would have to be equipped with powerful motors, a well-balanced, hefty battery, and capable, high-performance wheels. It takes some serious rubber, after all, to ensure that the Taycan stays planted on the road when it’s ripping through a closed circuit. 

So far, Porsche has kept the Taycan’s tire size secret. Even the camouflaged prototypes of the vehicle that have been deployed across the globe and spotted in numerous countries have mostly been equipped with unmarked tires. Fortunately, St00k, a moderator at TaycanEVForum.com, was recently able to capture a rare image one of the Taycan’s wheels that just happens to be marked.  

What the TaycanEVForum.com moderator found was quite surprising. Looking at the Taycan prototypes that are being tested across the globe, it is easy to see that the all-electric vehicle is equipped with massive, wide tires.

The Porsche Taycan’s tires. (Photo: St00k/TaycanForum.com)

As could be seen in the recently-shared photo, the Taycan prototype was equipped with 305/30/ZR21 Goodyear Eagle tires. That’s incredibly wide for a four-door sedan that’s the size of the Taycan, especially considering that the larger Tesla Model S P100D (now dubbed as the Model S Performance), only comes with 265/35/21 rear tires. 

These large, wide tires hint at serious track performance for the Taycan. Large wheels such as 305/30/ZR21s, after all, provide exceptional handling for the upcoming all-electric car. This is particularly important for the Taycan, considering that one of its key selling points is its capability to be driven hard for extended periods of time without losing power.

So far, the Tesla Model 3 Performance is the benchmark when it comes to electric four-door sedans that can handle track driving, thanks to its dedicated Track Mode. With this in mind, Porsche would have to dig deep to make sure that the Taycan, which is significantly more expensive than the Model 3 Performance, will feature closed circuit driving capabilities that justify its Model S-level price. 

While the Taycan’s 305/30/ZR21 tires confirm that the vehicle will be a monster around the track, the large tires also bring up some concerns about the vehicle’s range and efficiency. Larger, wider tires usually give optimum performance at the cost of range. This could be seen in the Model S, as a pre-“Raven” 100D equipped with 245/45/19 tires was listed with more range than a P100D fitted with 265/35/21 tires. 

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Hopefully, Porsche could balance the Taycan’s performance with its range well. This would allow the highly-anticipated vehicle to avoid the pitfalls of other premium EVs from European automakers such as Audi and Jaguar, both of whom have released otherwise great electric cars that are, unfortunately, the zero-emissions equivalent of gas-guzzlers.

Watch a preview of the Porsche Taycan’s track capabilities in the video below.

Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s Grok can basically control anything in your Tesla now

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Credit: Tesla

Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update turns Grok from a talking companion into a true in-car controller, with considerably expanded capabilities. Where the assistant once answered questions and handled navigation, it can now operate hardware and software through ordinary speech, including several requests at the same time.

Grok has become incredibly robust over the past few quarters, and this new ability that Tesla has included with its Summer Update is perhaps the clearest sign of just how capable it has become.

You can issue many commands to Grok at once, and each will be taken care of: anything from headlight control to climate adjustments to mirror folding can now all be taken care of with a simple sentence spoken toward Grok:

Here’s another example I used in my Model Y:

Tesla’s official Release Notes list the core powers of Grok’s new capabilities: Grok can place phone calls from a paired phone, search a streaming service and queue music, adjust climate, and search the Controls panel. Drivers can also ask it questions about the vehicle or the latest features included in a recent software update.

It can also take care of driving settings, dynamics, and other relevant preferences that deal with how the car operates and handles.

Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features

It’s also more of a use case than a novelty feature. Grok was great for learning about something that was being pondered while Full Self-Driving was taking care of the major automotive responsibilities, but it did have some useful functionality when it came to navigation.

Another less-noted improvement is the swift transition that Grok has from thinking of its answer to giving you one. In the past, it would take a few seconds for Grok to truly come up with a valuable response. It now seems that it is improving, at least slightly.

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Tesla is fixing Full Self-Driving’s pothole problem

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Tesla Model Y L in a field
Credit: Tesla

Tesla Full Self-Driving is set to get a major fix with pothole avoidance, a feature that CEO Elon Musk said recently was “coming soon.” The feature has been included within the FSD v14 release notes for some time as an upcoming improvement.

Potholes come in all shapes and sizes, but one thing is universal about them, and that is the fact that every driver wants to avoid them. Driving into or over a pothole can cause tire and wheel damage, alignment issues, and even, in some more severe instances, injury to occupants or major damage to a vehicle in despair.

Tesla Cybercab uses a unique strategy for picking up the right rider

Musk said late last night in a post that pothole avoidance while utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite is “coming soon.”

Full Self-Driving, even in its most recent and robust forms, still has its shortcomings. While the suite has performed exceptionally well with avoiding on-road obstacles like cardboard boxes, horse droppings, car parts, and other debris, it still seems to struggle with recognizing certain things.

Potholes and other abrupt changes in a road’s layout are things that FSD still tends to struggle with. Perhaps the suite’s 3D modeling is still in need of some additional data or some sort of script that will help it to avoid a potentially destructive pothole or bump in the road that would be easily recognizable by the human eye.

Musk has mentioned pothole avoidance for some time, with the initial idea coming in April 2019 when an owner first requested the feature. Musk said that Tesla would “definitely” develop pothole avoidance.

In August 2020, Musk said Tesla was in the process of labeling bumps and potholes so cars can either slow down or steer around them altogether.

Tesla to utilize micro maps for pothole-detection in future update

Avoiding major disturbances in the road is a necessary feature for Full Self-Driving to have, especially as Tesla is working toward a fully autonomous program that will eventually allow every occupant in the vehicle to sleep, work, or enjoy leisure time while traveling.

That truly begins this week with the launch of Cybercab on Thursday.

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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.

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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.

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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