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S in the City: Model S Owner Experience in the Big City

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Whether you live or work in the city, or drive in for entertainment, there are notable nuances with driving a Tesla Model S into a busy metropolitan area. Finding parking, navigating tight streets, locating public charging stations and learning etiquettes with charging overnight are areas that I’m quickly adjusting to.

Driving into the City

Post office Square parkingI drive my Model S as much as humanly possible and under most circumstances. Whether it’s taking long road trips or navigating through narrow city streets, there hasn’t been many situation which I’ve shied away from. Driving into the city (Boston) for dinner was no different.

Since I didn’t know the city streets very well, I posted to the local New England forum on TMC and asked for help. TMC is a great resource for Tesla owners that are looking for advice from other Tesla owners. My quest to find a “Tesla owner approved” local parking spot directed me to a garage not too far from the restaurant – Boston’s Post Office Square.

Parking was tight, as expected, but I managed to find comfort knowing that I parked next to another Model S owner. I plugged the car into a ChargePoint unit, went off to my long dinner and came back to an extra 60 miles of range. Best of all this was all free since Massachusetts law prohibits re-sale of electricity.

I didn’t need the extra 60 miles of extra range to get home, but because there were several open EV spots available, I didn’t feel as bad using one for a longer duration of time. It’s important to note that this wouldn’t be the case during the day when charging stalls are a more sought after commodity. Keep this in mind and don’t occupy an EV charging stall when there’s only one available and you’re not in need of a charge.

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Overnight in the City

Seaport parkingMy second experience with the Model S in the city came by way of a conference held at the Boston Seaport Hotel. The conference required me to stay overnight so I did my own research via Plugshare and found a charging location with five J1772 chargers. It turned out there were only three Chargepoint systems installed for the five EV parking spots. Parking was extremely tight but I was able to take my time, as there was no other cars around, and get the Model S placed perfectly into the parking spot.

I couldn’t help but wonder why there were three ChargePoint systems but five EV specific parking spaces. The ChargePoint system claimed to have two chargers on each post. There was clearly a J1772 plug on each of the systems but they were all in use.

J1772 Hang Port

Upon further inspection I could see a label for “Charger #2” but unfortunately I had no adapter that would work for it. I later realized that this was just the receiving end for the J1772 plug and meant to be a holder for the plug. I poked around a bit more and swiped my ChargePoint card on the scanner for “Charger #1”. A secret door popped open and provided a standard NEMA 5-15 outlet (standard US wall charger).

NEMA 5-15 Chargepoint

Fortunately I came prepared with an extra UMC. I didn’t have much of a choice with my charging options so I decided to plug into the very slow charging NEMA 5-15 and leave it overnight. I’m not quite sure why ChargePoint decided to name the higher power charging solution “Charger #2”, or why the  NEMA 5-15 is hidden, but having a sticker or signage explaining these details could go a long way.

Lessons Learned

Driving into the city with a Model S comes with a few lessons learned as follows:

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  • ChargePoint seems to be the prevailing charging network provider (at least for much of Boston).
  • Charging can be free depending on local laws governing re-sale of electricity.
  • EV parking spaces are generally placed at very premium locations and reside on the floor your entering the parking garage from.
  • City parking spots are tight to begin with so the additional size and width of the Model S makes it even more difficult to maneuver. Be careful when parking!
  • City parking structures are usually underground so cell phone service is generally inaccessible. Don’t rely on keyless entry when parking in the city.

Do you have your own strategy when taking the Model S into the city? I’d love to hear it in the comments below.

"Rob's passion is technology and gadgets. An engineer by profession and an executive and founder at several high tech startups Rob has a unique view on technology and some strong opinions. When he's not writing about Tesla

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Elon Musk

Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO

SpaceX has secured an option to acquire Cursor AI for $60 billion ahead of its historic IPO.

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SpaceX announced today it has struck a deal with AI coding startup Cursor, securing the option to acquire the company outright for $60 billion later this year, while committing $10 billion for joint development work in the interim. The announcement described the partnership as building “the world’s best coding and knowledge work AI,” and comes just days after Cursor was separately reported to be raising $2 billion at a valuation above $50 billion.

The move makes strategic sense given where each company currently stands. Cursor currently pays retail prices to Anthropic and OpenAI to the same companies competing directly against it with Claude Code and Codex. That means every dollar of revenue Cursor earns partially funds its own competition. With SpaceX bringing computational infrastructure to the Cursor platform, that could reduce Cursor’s dependence on OpenAI and Anthropic’s Claude AI as its providers. Access to SpaceX’s Colossus supercomputer, with compute equivalent to one million Nvidia H100 chips, gives Cursor the infrastructure to run and train its own models at a scale it could never afford independently. That one change restructures the entire unit economics of the business.

Elon Musk teases crazy outlook for xAI against its competitors

Cursor’s $2 billion in annualized revenue and enterprise reach across more than half of Fortune 500 companies gives SpaceX something its xAI subsidiary currently lacks, which is a proven, fast-growing software business with real enterprise distribution.

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For Cursor, SpaceX’s $10 billion in joint development funding is transformational. Cursor raised $3.3 billion across all of 2025 to reach that $2 billion in revenue. A single $10 billion commitment from SpaceX, even as a development payment rather than an acquisition, dwarfs everything Cursor has raised in its entire existence. That capital accelerates product development, enterprise sales infrastructure, and proprietary model training simultaneously.

The timing is deliberate. SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC on April 1, 2026, targeting a June listing at a $1.75 trillion valuation, in what would be the largest public offering in history. The company is expected to begin its roadshow the week of June 8, with Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley serving as underwriters. Adding Cursor to the portfolio before that roadshow gives IPO investors a concrete enterprise software revenue story to price in, alongside rockets and satellite internet.

The deal also addresses a weakness that became visible after February’s xAI merger. Several xAI co-founders departed following that acquisition, and SpaceX had already hired two Cursor engineers, signaling where its AI talent strategy was heading. Cursor, for its part, faces a pricing disadvantage competing against Anthropic’s Claude Code.

Whether SpaceX exercises the full acquisition option before its IPO or after remains the open question. Either way, this deal reshapes what investors will be buying into when SpaceX goes public.

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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

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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Tesla Cybercab Golden Era is Here (Credit: Tesla)
Tesla Cybercab Golden Era is Here (Credit: Tesla)

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.

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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.

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