Tesla has some of the most technologically advanced and sustainable vehicles consumers can buy on the market today. However, as Tesla Raj notes in one of his newest videos, his Tesla Model 3, along with other vehicles in the company’s lineup, are missing some of the most basic features that are available on models from other companies that are several years old. This begs the question: Would Tesla vehicles be even better with the five basic features Raj requests?
Cross-Traffic Alert System
One of the most important features that Raj lists is the Cross-Traffic Alert System. Noting that his wife’s 2016 Toyota RAV4 Hybrid has the system, which is highly effective in alerting the driver of an oncoming obstacle that is out of sight, Raj said his Model 3 lacks this somewhat basic safety feature.
While the Model 3 does offer wide-angle views from both rear quarter panels that could assist in a little more of a view, it still does not utilize any sort of system to sense objects, people, or vehicles that may be moving toward the Model 3. In a crowded Supermarket parking lot, Cross-Traffic Alert Systems are highly effective in keeping the driver vigilant as others look for a spot or shoppers head in or out of the store, perhaps with a heavy cart full of food. This simple addition could keep the car undamaged and could even save a life. Raj’s daughter, who was riding a scooter in the demonstration, was below the vehicles on either side of the Tesla. She was impossible to see until she entered the vehicle’s repeater camera view, which would likely give the driver a fraction-of-a-fraction of a second to stop.
As you can see in the pictures below, smaller obstacles, like shopping carts, as well as small children, are hidden by the vehicles parked next to Raj’s Model 3. A child is not seen until they are right behind the vehicle. These would be solved with basic sensors, which Tesla already has installed in their vehicles.
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- The Tesla Model 3’s rear-view cameras lack a Cross-Traffic Alert System, which would help drivers see smaller obstacles that could be hidden by nearby vehicles (Credit: Tesla Raj)
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- The Tesla Model 3’s rear-view cameras lack a Cross-Traffic Alert System, which would help drivers see smaller obstacles that could be hidden by nearby vehicles (Credit: Tesla Raj)
360-Degree Camera Views
Raj’s wife’s 2016 RAV4 Hybrid also equips a 360-degree camera, which the Model 3 also lacks. In October 2020, Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that a Birds-Eye, 360-degree view of the vehicle would be coming with Full Self-Driving. It has not been released with the current iteration of Tesla’s semi-autonomous driving program, but Musk may have meant that the feature would not be released until FSD is actually complete, which would activate the company’s plans for a Robotaxi Fleet. However, so many vehicles have this feature already, which would activate full-range views of every obstacle around the car. The wide-range perspective would even help complement the previously-mentioned Cross-Traffic Alert System.
Vector-space bird’s eye view coming with FSD
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2020
Tesla does offer those repeater cameras to help with a wider view of the car. However, they do not show a Birds-Eye angle, nor do they show the sides of the car.
Apple Music + CarPlay
If you follow Raj and Elon Musk on Twitter, you will know that Raj has requested the Tesla CEO to add this feature on many occasions, and for good reasons. While Tesla does currently offer Spotify, the world’s largest streaming platform for music and podcasts, and Tidal, another streaming app, the cars do not feature Apple Music support. Spotify does offer high-quality streaming, granted you are connected to a network that can support high download speeds. Tesla’s sound system, which has been noted as high quality by many, including Musk himself (surprise, surprise), is not getting used to its full capabilities without high-quality streaming services.
Apple Music supports Dolby Atmos’ spatial audio, which allows for high-quality streaming.
It would also support a lot of Tesla owners, as a poll Raj conducted showed 74 percent of the 2,292 votes received came from Apple owners utilizing iOS.
Tesla Owners what operating system is on your phone?
— Tesla Raj (@tesla_raj) July 28, 2022
Apple’s CarPlay is also highly intuitive, easy to use, and is supported by most automotive brands. I’m not sure if this comes down to some tech-based rivalry or just the fact that Tesla is not willing to license Apple’s software, but it would be a huge upside if these features were compatible with the vehicle.
Ease of Access to the Frunk
The lack of an engine in electric vehicles allows the Frunk – or Front Trunk – to exist. It gives owners just a little bit more room to store things like luggage or groceries, and it varies from vehicle to vehicle. The F-150 Lightning, for example, has a sizeable Frunk, basically adding a sedan-sized trunk to the already large bed area.
Ford F-150 Lightning unveiled: Price, Release date, Range, Features and more
The Model 3 Frunk is not easy to access, at least in Raj’s opinion. He would like to see an exterior Frunk access button or sensor that could remove the need to open the hood with the Tesla App or from the interior touch screen. Some vehicles have a sensor for trunks located underneath the rear bumper. It can be tapped with a foot to open and comes in handy when your hands might be full of groceries.
Tesla Model 3 frunk cargo space [Source: PTFI via Twitter]
The Frunk is one of the most underrated parts of an electric vehicle, in my opinion. It should be easier to access, and you should not need a screen to do so.
Fleet-based User Generated Content
This is perhaps one of the most practical ideas Raj included in his video and is something that navigation apps like Waze and Apple Maps have included in their platforms. Alerting other drivers of hazards, police, accidents, stoppages, and other important occurrences on the road would be ideal to share between Tesla drivers. Reporting things like road debris or an officer shooting radar would most certainly be advantageous to the safety of drivers. It has allowed people to communicate with road conditions and is constantly updated by asking future drivers whether the hazard or obstacle is still present.
Credit: Apple
What do you think about Tesla Raj’s list? Be sure to let him know on Twitter @tesla_raj, and be sure to comment your thoughts below.
News
SpaceX just locked up a NASA record no other U.S. spacecraft can touch
SpaceX’s Crew-13 Dragon reached the ISS in under eight hours, and NASA confirmed a record.
SpaceX now owns every spot on the list of the five fastest trips a U.S. spacecraft has ever made to the International Space Station, and its newest entry beat the old mark by more than four hours.
Crew Dragon Grace docked to the forward port of the station’s Harmony module at 7:05 p.m. ET on October 1, just 7 hours and 55 minutes after lifting off from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral. NASA confirmed the milestone in a space station blog update, writing that the flight “marked the fastest launch‑to‑docking of a U.S. spacecraft in the history of the International Space Station.”
The previous U.S. record also belonged to Dragon. SpaceX’s uncrewed CRS-31 cargo mission reached the station in a little over 12 hours in November 2024. The fastest crewed trip before last week was Crew-11, which took 14 hours and 43 minutes in August 2025, according to Space.com.
A post that Elon Musk reposted on Monday filled out the rest of the ranking. Behind Crew-13, CRS-31 and Crew-11 sit Axiom’s Ax-2 mission at 15 hours and 35 minutes and NASA’s Crew-4 at 15 hours and 44 minutes. All five flew on Dragon.
SpaceX turned a heralding moment for Starship into its greatest
Crew-13 carried NASA astronauts Jessica Watkins and Luke Delaney, Canadian Space Agency astronaut Joshua Kutryk, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Sergey Teteryatnikov. NASA had projected a docking around 8 p.m. ET, as Teslarati reported the day before launch, and Dragon arrived nearly an hour early. Our launch day coverage noted that the flight was lined up to be the quickest Crew Dragon transit yet.
The speed came from timing more than hardware. SpaceX’s Julianna Scheiman said the station “was in an opportune spot in space,” which let Dragon start closing the gap almost immediately after reaching orbit. “This is close to the fastest it could be,” she added. Most Crew Dragon flights still take close to a day, using a series of Draco thruster burns to raise and phase their orbit before arrival.
Dragon’s next job at the station is a departure. NASA said Monday it is targeting 8:05 a.m. ET on Wednesday, October 7, for Crew-12 to undock, setting up a splashdown off the coast of California around 11:34 a.m. on Thursday. Clearing that port makes room for CRS-35, a cargo Dragon carrying the final set of iROSA solar arrays.
Dragon remains NASA’s only operational ride to the station while Boeing’s Starliner stays grounded, and the agency recently added Crew-15, Crew-16 and Crew-17 to SpaceX’s contract in a $946 million modification.
Elon Musk has acknowledged that early discussions with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) could bring the company into his ambitious Terafab semiconductor project, signaling a possible partnership with the world’s leading contract chipmaker.
Musk confirmed that early talks are underway, but as of right now, they are “just discussions.” There is no confirmation of a deal nor dismissal of the possibility of one, leaving open the prospect of one of the largest advanced-chip collaborations under discussion in the U.S.
@wholemars Just discussions, but something may come of it
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2026
The report that speculated on potential discussions between Terafab and TSMC comes from Tim Culpan, who outlined a few ways the collaboration could operate. One is TSMC using the project as an “anchor customer” for future facilities in Texas, potentially contributing process expertise, operational know-how, or capacity while Terafab provides capital, long-term purchase commitments, or both.
Tesla and SpaceX jointly developed the Terafab project, with Intel already participating on the tech side. Elon Musk announced the project in March, and it intends to produce more than one terawatt of AI compute capacity annually once fully built.
Company statements place the first phase at approximately $16.8 billion in cost, with later filings pointing to a total that could reach well into the tens of billions across multiple stages.
Intel joined the effort in April 2026 and is expected to supply its 14A manufacturing process for the full-scale plant.
Musk has said existing suppliers, including Samsung and TSMC, remain important for near-term needs; Tesla already has production arrangements with Samsung for AI5 and AI6 chips, but that future demand from Optimus robots, Cybercab vehicles, and planned space-based data centers will eventually exceed what the global industry can currently deliver.
Terafab is positioned as the long-term answer to that projected shortfall, and Tesla did something similar during COVID to avoid a chip shortage. This is just a much larger-scale solution.
If the partnership were to materialize, it would add TSMC’s industry-leading strategies to a project that already combines Tesla’s and SpaceX’s capital and offtake with Intel’s process technology. For now, the only public confirmation is Musk’s brief acknowledgement that conversations are occurring.
Tesla’s early strategy for charging units operating within its Robotaxi fleet reveals that the company surely has not lost any of that scrappy DNA that took it from an unlikely success story to the most valuable carmaker in the world.
An observer at a Tesla Supercharger in Austin spotted ten total Robotaxi vehicles arrive: one Cybercab and nine Model Y units. A Tesla employee was waiting at the lot and allowed each unit to park itself; every car that arrived had nobody in it.
Tesla wins FCC approval for wireless Cybercab charging system
The Tesla employee would walk around and plug each car in, adjusting the parking if needed:
So look at what I found. This is how Tesla charges unsupervised robotaxis at a public supercharger. Here is a driverless Cybercab showing up with no one in it. There are 9 other Model Ys that showed up too. A Tesla employee is walking around and plugging each of them in. She also moves the cars if they are not positioned well enough to charge. I love this process. One person charges multiple robotaxis at once
— Abhimanyu Yadav (@WorldlyReviewer) October 3, 2026
It’s a very interesting strategy, but extremely understandable at this early point in the Robotaxi program. It’s only been out for about 15 months, and Cybercab just entered the fleet in early September.
On top of that, Tesla is still working tirelessly on its wireless charging apparatus, and a new patent was just published regarding that product last week.
However, this is just another example of how Tesla still has plenty of that scrappy DNA leftover from the “production hell” days, when CEO Elon Musk slept on the floor of the factory, employees were working crazy hours, Tesla was building Sprung Structures to build cars in, and the company was tiptoeing on the brink of bankruptcy.
@Teslarati Sheer magnitude of the entire production system is hard to appreciate. Almost every element of production is >75% automated. Only wire harnesses & general assembly, which are <10% of production costs, are primarily manual.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 12, 2020
For now, Tesla is utilizing a simple system for recharging its ride-hailing vehicles, and that is a Tesla employee doing it manually until another solution presents itself. Sure, it’s not the most high-tech thing, and it certainly is not what people might have expected at this point in time, but it works, and it’s keeping the entire suite running.
SpaceX just locked up a NASA record no other U.S. spacecraft can touch
Elon Musk teases TSMC as potential Terafab partner
