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

[Credit: Earl Banning/Twitter]

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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.

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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.

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.

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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 answer to Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey got way more specific

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Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”

In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.


When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”

The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”

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Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.

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Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love

Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.

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Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.

The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”

The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.

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The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.

Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more

It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.

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Elon Musk

Tesla Diner is throwing a birthday party with a Franz-signed special treat

Tesla Diner turns one on July 21 with Optimus, roller skates, and a Franz-signed hat.

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tesla diner

Tesla is throwing its Hollywood Diner a first birthday party on July 21 and the celebration comes with a guest list of unique items, including a limited run of Tesla Diner birthday hats personally signed by Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen for the first 50 customers who place an in-car order at midnight.

One year after lines wrapped around the block on Santa Monica Boulevard for a diner that most of the restaurant industry did not take seriously, Tesla is making the case that the concept was worth the years it took to build. The concept had been in Musk’s head since at least 2018, when he floated the idea of “an old school drive-in, roller skates and rock restaurant” on X, describing it years later as “‘Grease’ meets ‘The Jetsons’ with Supercharging.”

Tesla Optimus Gen 3 is coming to the Tesla Diner with new ambitions

 

What made the diner genuinely different from any restaurant that came before it was not the menu or the nostalgia. It was the ordering model. Tesla owners could place food orders directly from their vehicle’s touchscreen before arriving, a small feature that hints at something much larger on the horizon. As the Cybercab and unsupervised FSD expand across major cities, the diner model becomes a template for an entirely new kind of commerce. A robotaxi pulling in to charge does not need a human to walk up to a counter. The vehicle places the order, the food is ready on arrival, and the passenger never interrupts the experience of being driven somewhere else. It is the first glimpse of what drive-through commerce looks like when the car is doing the driving.

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As Teslarati has reported, Musk signaled immediately after opening that the Hollywood location was only the beginning, posting that Tesla would expand the concept to major cities worldwide and along Supercharger corridors on long-distance routes if the first location proved successful. One year in, the birthday celebration on July 21 makes a strong case that it has. Tesla announced a full day of events including a Cybercab on display, a birthday menu, Optimus in attendance, face painting, a photo booth, roller skating servers, a light show, a Skypad DJ, and complimentary collectibles.

If Musk’s ambition holds, the Hollywood diner is year one of something much bigger. The birthday party is the proof of concept. The robotaxi fleet is the business model waiting behind it.

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