Connect with us

Lifestyle

Tesla owners are catching the #frunkpuppy fever: Here’s the story behind the trend

[Credit: Earl Banning/Twitter]

Published

on

Every Friday, an increasing number of Tesla owners are taking photographs of pets in their electric cars’ frunks. Fondly dubbed as #frunkpuppyfriday, the adorable, lighthearted trend has started spreading across the Tesla community, reaching even high-profile owners such as Maye Musk herself. With the Friday photo sessions almost becoming routine among Tesla owners, it appears that the frunkpuppy fever will be around for quite some time.

This the story of the frunkpuppy trend — a look behind the frunk, if you will.

Tesla Model 3 owner Earl Banning works as an active duty Air Force neuropsychologist. As part of his work, he performs cognitive testing for active duty military personnel and retirees. The neuropsychologist opted to start a Twitter account in May to follow Tesla updates from Elon Musk, and before the month was over, he took delivery of his Model 3 — a black Long Range RWD variant that’s fully loaded with Autopilot and Full Self-Driving. In June, his Model 3 received software update v8.1(2018.24.1), and with it, his vehicle gained the capability to be summoned through the Tesla app.

Earl posted a short video of his Model 3 pulling into his garage without a driver. The clip was picked up by Tesla’s official Twitter account, and later, retweeted by Elon Musk himself. As his following grew due to Elon Musk’s retweet, the neuropsychologist and pet enthusiast started posting images of his dog in his Model 3’s frunk. Things started taking off, and Norman, his labradoodle, even became a sponsor of an accessory for the Model 3. Earl also began to make connections in the TSLA Twitter community, all the while dealing with the TSLAQ group, some of whom were accusing him of faking his Model 3’s Summon video or being a paid Tesla supporter.

Tragedy struck in July. The neuropsychologist’s wife encountered a sudden and severe health issue, resulting in her being rushed to the ER and almost passing away. Doctors were not optimistic, stating that the likely outcome would either be death or severe cognitive impairment. Banning stayed in the hospital with his wife for around a month as she battled her illness, distracting himself by interacting with the online Tesla community. At one point, he opted to share his situation and his fears with other Tesla owners, and he found both support and catharsis. As luck would have it, the #frunkpuppy trend started gaining ground at this time as well.

Earl’s wife would eventually beat the odds. Though recovery will take a year, her life was no longer in danger. Earl’s frunkpuppy pictures started gaining ground online as well. Eventually, Trevor from the Model 3 Owners Club, who has a strong social media following, tweeted a picture of his cat in his car. Other social media influencers started picking up the trend. Dogs were followed by birds, rabbits, guinea pigs, and cats. One Tesla owner even shared an image of a snake inside a frunk.

Advertisement
-

On October, the frunkpuppy trend struck gold. Maye Musk retweeted a frunkpuppy photo, promising that she would do a shoot with her dog as soon as she is able. Late October, she did just that, posting a rather fashionable picture of her rescue dog inside her electric car’s frunk. Her image was voted by the Tesla community as the best #frunkpuppyfriday photo of the week.

Earl admits that he doesn’t really know where the frunkpuppy trend will go. He dreams of eventually getting enough referrals to get a Roadster, then using the car for charity. At some point in the future, he hopes to start a nonprofit that helps veterans, stroke survivors, and traumatic brain injury (TBI) victims, or even one that gives people with disabilities access to Teslas with Full Self-Driving capabilities. In a message to Teslarati, the Model 3 owner notes that while such a scenario is unlikely, it doesn’t hurt to be optimistic.

“Will all this happen? Odds are not likely. But my amazing wife beat all odds, survived and will fully recover. My two daughters love frunkpuppy and Teslas, and they get to keep their mom in their life. This thought brings tears of joy, so I’m here dreaming big. Tesla’s mission is sustainable energy and less pollution. I want that for them,” he said.

There is no denying that Tesla is a polarizing company, attracting an equal number of avid supporters and aggressive skeptics. Amidst the volatility of the company’s stock and the drama surrounding Elon Musk, though, there is a community of owners that are simply happy and content with their electric cars — a community that is warming up to the idea of Friday pet photoshoots in their vehicles’ frunk.

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.

Advertisement
Comments

Lifestyle

Tesla Cybertruck targets job site crews with new Tailgate Utility Track and Bed Gear Box accessory

Tesla launched a $350 tailgate track and a $985 lockable Bed Gear Box for Cybertruck.

Published

on

By

Tesla Cybertruck construction site

Tesla’s Cybertruck team added two more items to the Tesla Shop, targeting job site crews and owners who use the truck bed for actual work rather than just showing it off. The official Cybertruck X account posted the Tailgate Utility Track and the Bed Gear Box within minutes of each other, part of a five item batch that also included a reflective jacket, a spray paint hat and an updated reflective tee.

The Tailgate Utility Track runs $350 and turns the folded down tailgate into another mounting surface. It’s a single aluminum track with a T-slot for sliding accessories and two L-track attachment points, plus two load stops included in the box. The pitch is straightforward: strap down oversized cargo, like lumber or a cooler, that hangs off the back of the bed without it sliding out mid-drive. It bolts onto the existing tailgate and works on every Cybertruck trim.

The Bed Gear Box costs $985 and is a different kind of accessory. It’s a lockable aluminum storage box, 55.78 inches long, 19.8 inches wide and 7.79 inches tall, that mounts to the bed’s L-track rails and comes with two internal bins for smaller items. According to Tesla, at just over 57 pounds empty, it’s meant to stay in place rather than come in and out with each trip, giving owners a factory-fit alternative to loose totes for tools, recovery gear or emergency supplies. Tesla’s listing notes that Long Range and Dual Motor AWD Cybertrucks need the L-Tracks accessory installed separately before the Gear Box will mount, since L-tracks come standard only on certain configurations.

Tesla Cybertruck bed gear box accessory

Tesla Cybertruck bed gear box accessory

Both accessories lean on the idea Tesla has been building toward since Elon Musk first described the Cybertruck’s third-party attachment strategy at the 2023 shareholder meeting, when he said the truck would ship with mounting points so outside companies, and Tesla itself, could keep adding gear without redesigning the bed. That’s the same L-track backbone underneath the tailgate shield and jumpseats Tesla launched last year, and the off-road armor package that arrived through the same X account in 2025.

Owners looking to round out the rest of the L-track ecosystem, cargo dividers, MOLLE panels, bed racks and similar gear, can find a wider range of options through our Cybertruck accessories collection.

Advertisement
-
Continue Reading

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.

Published

on

By

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.

Advertisement
-

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.

Continue Reading

Lifestyle

Police sergeant recounts his Neuralink journey with Elon Musk’s brain chip

Published

on

By

neuralink-patient-registry-volunteers

A former Vancouver police sergeant with ALS accounts his journey to become a patient for Elon Musk’s Neuralink wireless brain-computer interface technology.

“I’m texting you from my brain right now.” That was the first message Lee Marten sent after waking up from Neuralink surgery, five hours and one migraine after dozens of threads were stitched into his motor cortex.

Marten, a former Vancouver police sergeant, is one of the first Canadian ALS patients to receive Neuralink’s N1 brain implant, and the 26th recipient overall. He tells his story in a first-person account published by Maclean’s.

Marten recounts how he was a healthy, athletic Vancouver police sergeant until April 2022 when symptoms of muscle twitching and balance loss, were followed by a bad fall that broke his leg. He would eventually be diagnosed with ALS in early 2025 at the age of 47. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that progressively destroys the motor neurons controlling voluntary muscle movement, eventually taking away a patient’s ability to walk, speak, swallow and breathe. There’s no cure, and most patients live two to five years after diagnosis.

He describes the devastation of the diagnosis and how he began preparing for it while connecting with other young ALS patients through a WhatsApp group called Young Guns. Through that group he learned about a Neuralink clinical trial at Toronto Western Hospital and, after a roughly seven-month vetting process (physical assessments, psychiatric evaluation, a final interview with the Neuralink team), was accepted this past April as the trial’s 26th recipient and the first Canadian ALS patient to get the N1 implant. He recounts the May surgery in detail, including the robotic system that stitched 64 threads into his brain, and describes the app, Link, translating his neural signals into cursor control, which he was using within hours of waking up.

Marten walks through what daily use looks like, including weekly “brain training” exercises, a real-time neural-activity display, charging the implant via a beanie-mounted MagSafe charger, and using the implant for emailing, texting, social media, and gaming via a “Magic Box” that connects it to other devices. He also gives brief context on brain-computer interface history and quite candid about Musk, calling him “divisive” but saying he found him “easy to admire.

Advertisement
-

The piece closes on a heavier note, with Marten seeking to pursue medical assistance in dying as his symptoms progressed, noting that he’ll be able to communicate his final words to his family through Neuralink rather than facing a silent decline. He expresses hope the data from his case will help future ALS patients, even without a cure in his own lifetime.

Continue Reading