“I think generally all input is error,” said Tesla CEO Elon Musk when he explained the Model S Plaid’s Auto Shift feature. Tesla removed the stalks when reinventing the Tesla Model S Plaid’s design. “If you have to do something that the car could have done already, that should be taken care of; the software should just do it,” Musk remarked.
This approach was evident in the Model S Plaid’s Auto Shift feature, which uses software to determine if the vehicle should be in Drive, Park, Neutral, or Reverse. The new Tesla Model S manual goes further into detail about Auto Shift and the vehicle’s gears.
Touchscreen Gear Shift
For drivers who would still prefer shifting gears manually, the new Model S has a gear strip available on the car’s touchscreen under “Controls.” The gear strip will be displayed on the left side of the touchscreen when a driver presses the brake pedal while parked.
- Drive – Swipe up on the gear strip on the touchscreen. Drivers can only shift into “D” when the Model S is stopped or moving less than 5 mph or 8 km/h in Reverse.
- Reverse – Swipe down on the gear strip. Drivers can only shift into “R” when the Model S is stopped or moving less than 5 mph or 8 km/h in Drive. Drivers can manually close the park assist view on the touchscreen by touching the “X” in the upper corner.
- Neutral: To shift into Neutral, drivers should touch the “Controls,” then press and hold the Neutral icon until the Model S engages the “N” gear. When the Model S is traveling over 5 mph or 8 km/h and swipes up or down on the gear strip, a Neutral icon will appear at the top of the gear strip that drivers can engage.
Model S Park
The Park button is only displayed when the brake pedal is pressed. Shifting into Park is allowed when the vehicle’s driving speed is less than 5 mph or 8km/h.
The Model S will automatically shift to Park when it observes signs that drivers are about to exit the vehicle, like when the driver unbuckles his/her seat belt and the car is stopped. Other instances the Model S will shift into Park would be when the driver’s door is open or the vehicle hasn’t moved within one minute of shifting into Drive gear.
Auto Shift Out of Park
Auto Shift Out of Park allows the Model S to shift out of Park on its own, providing more convenience. In the Model S owner’s manual, Tesla notes that Auto Shift out of Park is a BETA feature and is disabled by default.
“When Auto Shift out of Park is enabled, Model S is designed to use inputs from various sensors to automatically select a driving gear when you are ready to drive. The selected gear is displayed on the instrument panel when the driver’s door is closed, and the seatbelt is buckled,” said the manual.
Drivers can override the selected gear by pressing the brake pedal, then use the touchscreen to choose the gear they prefer. Drivers must always press the brake pedal to shift out of Park.
Tesla cautions drivers to follow the instructions on the panel before pressing on the accelerator after confirming their gear selection. The Model S will not shift out of Park if it is still plugged into a charging port.
Model S in Drive Gear
The Model S automatically selects the driving gear when the following conditions are met:
- Auto Shift out of Park is enabled (touch Controls > Pedals & Steering > Auto Shift out of Park).
- The vehicle is in Park.
- The driver’s seat belt is fastened.
- The brake pedal is pressed.
- All doors and trunks are closed.
- The gear selector on the center console is not activated.
Emergency Gear Shift Controls
Drivers can use the gear selector on the center console in the unlikely event that the touchscreen is unavailable and the gear shift is unaccessible. The letters “P,” “R,” “N,” and “D” are displayed in the center console and can be activated when pressed. The frunk, trunk, and doors must be closed to select a gear in the center console.
Tesla notes that the gear selector in the center console activates when the touchscreen is unavailable or the Model S in Valet or Transport Mode. Otherwise, drivers must press the letter buttons to activate the gear selector.
“If you try to shift into a gear that the current driving speed prohibits, the instrument panel displays an alert, a chime sounds, and the gear does not change,” Tesla states in the manual.
As a side note, Tesla stated that drivers could also activate the gear selector by briefly pressing the scroll buttons on the yoke steering wheel simultaneously. Holding the scroll buttons for a longer time would activate the gear selector in the center console and restart the touchscreen as well.
Model S Owners Manual North America en Us by Maria Merano on Scribd
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Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Boring Company has big plans for Las Vegas by year’s end
Elon Musk’s Boring Company says Vegas Loop stations will double by year end once again.
The Boring Company says the Vegas Loop’s station count will double by the end of the year, tying the target to a hiring push for drivers and operations managers in Las Vegas. “Vegas Loop is getting bigger – the station count will double by end of year!” the company wrote in a post on X, attaching listings for a Loop driver and a senior Loop operations manager.
The number checks out against what’s already public, with the Vegas Loop currently running 14 operational stations, while the Boring Company’s own project page lists 28 as the target for the end of 2026.
Vegas Loop is getting bigger – the station count will double by end of year!
Urgently hiring exceptional and enthusiastic Drivers and Ops Managers.
Apply here!
Driverhttps://t.co/ZUPXBYTONb
Senior Loop Ops Managerhttps://t.co/mV6V22V8jH pic.twitter.com/IZ9FqIw8WY
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) September 14, 2026
Much of that growth is tied to tunnels that are already built and waiting on an opening date. A roughly two-mile dual tunnel system under Paradise Road, connecting Westgate to a planned station at 4744 Paradise Road, is expected to open in stages over the coming weeks, Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority chief executive Steve Hill told the Review-Journal last week. New stations at 4744 Paradise, Virgin Hotels Las Vegas, and the former Gordon Biersch site would come online with it, several of them built to speed up rides to Harry Reid International Airport ahead of Formula 1’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Clark County entitled Vegas Loop for 123 stations after approving 19 more in August, as Teslarati reported at the time. Entitlement and construction move at different speeds on this project, so county approval alone does not guarantee a station opens on any particular schedule.
Clark County approved 18 additional stations back in 2023, part of a plan that pushed the system’s target to 69 stations across 65 miles, doubling the network on paper for the first time. The target kept climbing after that, to roughly 93 stations by the end of that year and 104 by last year, before August’s vote pushed it to 123. This week’s announcement is the first time that doubling language has been attached to stations actually running rather than stations merely approved on a county map.
Ridership gives some sense of what a denser network could carry. Boring Company executive Mike Baier said in July that the Vegas Loop already moves around 40,000 passengers on busy convention days, a total that tops most light rail systems in the country despite the system running on a fraction of its planned tunnel mileage. Company leadership has projected ridership could triple or quadruple once the airport connector tunnels fully open.
Boring Company did not say which stations beyond those already under construction would open by year end, or whether the hiring push points to a fleet expansion alongside the new stops.
Tesla is looking to expand into a new Asian market, strengthening its presence in a region that has been bullish on electric vehicles as a whole.
Tesla officially filed to establish a subsidiary of its business in Vietnam, a report from Reuters suggests. Tesla named the entity “Tesla Motors Vietnam Limited Liability Company.”
The planned entrance into the Vietnamese market is a good sign and move for Tesla, as it has become one of the fastest-growing EV markets in Southeast Asia. It is already among the leaders in the region in both volume and electrification rate. In the first half of this year, Vietnam led Southeast Asia in battery-electric passenger car sales at about 116,000 units, up about 71 percent year over year.
Currently, Vietnamese EV drivers rely on VinFast’s V-Green network, which has about 150,000 ports, but these are primarily reserved for VinFast vehicles. Public third-party charging is fragmented and unreliable for those who do not own chargers that are dedicated to a certain manufacturer’s vehicles.
Tesla has had mixed results in Asia as a whole, and as China remains the core part of its story in Asia, the company is evidently working on expanding its footprint on the continent. Tesla’s domestic retail deliveries fell about 12 percent year over year through the first eight months of 2026.
Model Y remains a standout individual product, holding its position as one of, if not the, best-selling vehicles in the world. However, Model 3 has been weaker than it has been in past years.
Gigafactory Shanghai, the company’s Chinese production facility, still performs very well. Wholesale volumes in terms of exports have more than doubled and now exceed domestic retail sales; Giga Shanghai builds vehicles for Europe, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and other markets. South Korea has been an explicit bright spot, with registrations doubling year-to-date and Tesla frequently appearing as the top imported brand.
Tesla just did something in South Korea that no foreign carmaker has ever done
Tesla’s entrance into Vietnam signals a broader effort to take over the Asian market and grab more market share from rivals.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s companies made up with Apple but OpenAI still on the hook
Elon Musk’s X Corp and SpaceXAI dropped their Apple antitrust suit, leaving OpenAI as defendant.
X Corp and SpaceXAI, Elon Musk’s social platform and AI venture, have dropped Apple from the antitrust lawsuit that they filed against the iPhone maker and OpenAI last year. In a filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, attorneys for X and SpaceXAI moved to dismiss the Apple portion of the case, first reported by Reuters. The filing does not explain why the companies are dropping Apple or say whether a settlement was reached.
X and SpaceXAI say they intend to keep pursuing the case against OpenAI, which remains a defendant. That resolves the dispute with one company while leaving the core allegation intact against the other, with no public accounting of what changed in between.
The lawsuit dates to August 2025, when xAI and X sued Apple and OpenAI, arguing that Apple’s decision to make ChatGPT the only generative AI chatbot built into iOS gave OpenAI an unfair structural advantage. The complaint claimed ChatGPT controlled roughly 80 percent of the chatbot market at the time, while Grok held only a few percent. It sought billions of dollars in damages and asked the court to unwind the arrangement.
Elon Musk’s xAI and X file antitrust suit against Apple and OpenAI over AI exclusivity
The filing followed weeks of Musk publicly complaining that Grok and X weren’t appearing in Apple’s “Must Have” App Store section, though Grok ranked second in the Productivity category and X ranked first in News at the time. He accused Apple of “playing politics” and warned of immediate legal action before following through days later.
Apple and OpenAI tried to get the case thrown out, but a federal judge denied both motions in November, ruling the dispute was better suited to summary judgment than an early dismissal. That decision sent the case into discovery, which is presumably what led to Monday’s filing.
Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either 𝕏 or Grok in your “Must Have” section when 𝕏 is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps?
Are you playing politics? What gives? Inquiring minds want to know. https://t.co/3wenLZGtwG
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 11, 2025
The timing is notable given how Musk’s sentiment toward Apple has shifted, with Musk noting that he was open to letting Grok power a revamped Siri after a user suggested Apple replace its aging assistant with xAI’s model.
xAI, the AI venture Musk folded into X Corp last year, has since combined with SpaceX under the SpaceXAI brand. That structure now puts X, Grok and SpaceX’s rocket and satellite businesses under one roof as Musk pushes his AI ambitions beyond chatbots.
OpenAI remains the sole defendant going forward, and Musk’s companies have not said if there’s any changes to those original claims. Apple and OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the filing.
Elon Musk’s Boring Company has big plans for Las Vegas by year’s end
Tesla looks to expand into new Asian market, strengthening presence
