Lifestyle
Tesla owners ready for track day as Tesla Corsa expands its racing community
Tesla Corsa is back for its third Tesla-only racetrack experience on Sunday, March 31 at Buttonwillow Raceway Park in California. Having completed two successful track events this past January and October, Tesla Corsa looks to fill a few remaining open slots that would give Tesla owners the opportunity to experience the all-electric performance benefits of their vehicles in a safe, controlled environment.
Tesla owners looking to have some fun on the track will be matched by driving experience and also by their vehicle’s power and handling characteristics. The event encourages Roadster, Model S, Model X, and Model 3 owners to fully enjoy the unique track experience while providing a sense of community and platform for exchanging tips and techniques.
“This is a scenario where it’s a lot easier for drivers from a safety perspective, but also a lot easier for drivers to learn from each other, compare notes, and improve their driving,” Unplugged Performance Co-Founder Avi Fisher told Teslarati. Unplugged is Tesla Corsa’s sponsor and organizer.
Tesla drivers on the racetrack during Tesla Corsa’s inaugural event in October 2018. | Credit: Tesla Corsa
Tesla owners are generally aware of the great performance specs their vehicles offer but lack the opportunity to fully experience them, thus missing out on so many opportunities the ownership experience can bring. Even highway speeds can’t legally and safely provide a venue for a Model S Performance to unleash Ludicrous Mode’s maximum potential, for example. Similarly, Tesla’s Track Mode optimizes their electric cars’ performance and handling so drivers can push the limits of their vehicles in the same types of environments offered by Tesla Corsa.
The experience of pushing a Tesla to high-performance levels on the track has the added potential bonus of delivering a driving skill set that enhances overall safety, something Fisher was sure to mention to us.
“For anyone, the opportunity to explore the car in a safe environment is incredibly fun and rewarding. It’s a whole side of your Tesla that many never get to experience…A natural byproduct of this is that if you are ever in an emergency avoidance type of scenario your ability to control your car under adverse conditions is significantly improved.”
Anyone wanting to simply be a spectator during the Tesla Corsa event is also welcome with no fee required besides the $10 gate fee, something which also applies to drivers to gain access to Buttonwillow’s track.
“Like any Tesla-owner event, there is a great chance to network. In the case of the last event, it was especially cool for attendees because Tesla sent a lot of their own staff there to interact with and interview Tesla owners. There were also a lot of SpaceX people there running their own cars or hanging out,” Fisher detailed. He also told us that Tesla Corsa has a private Facebook group for attendees where a lot of daily discussion takes place.
A racetrack event like Tesla Corsa’s involves plenty of memory making, and that’s also been factored into the whole experience. As part of the participation fee, drivers are given access to everything produced by the professional photographers and videographers present on behalf of Tesla Corsa, both on and off track. Fisher explained to us that Tesla Corsa purchases the photos and videos produced and gives attendees full rights to them.
The long-term plans for Tesla Corsa’s organizers are to bring its racetrack events to Tesla drivers and enthusiasts worldwide and possibly get Tesla in on the action as a sponsor.
Watch the below video for more about Tesla Corsa’s prior events and dreams for the future
To participate, drivers can signup via Tesla Corsa’s website. Both beginner and advanced drivers are welcome and will be grouped accordingly.
Lifestyle
Tesla wins over Netflix’s Selling Sunset star, who’s now ditching his Bentley
Selling Sunset’s Jason Oppenheim swapped his Bentley for a Tesla and promised ten for employees.
Jason Oppenheim, the luxury real estate broker best known as the star of Netflix’s Selling Sunset, has parked his Bentley for good and moved into a Tesla Model Y, and he says Full Self-Driving (Supervised) is the reason.
Oppenheim, who founded The Oppenheim Group, the Los Angeles brokerage at the center of the show, posted a video to X on Saturday evening that he called “the most important video I’ve ever posted.” In it, he rides from Newport Beach to his firm’s Los Angeles office, a trip he put at roughly an hour and 15 minutes, while FSD handles the drive and parks the car without him touching the wheel or the accelerator. He said he handed the Bentley to his father because he no longer has any use for it.
Tesla shared the clip from its main account on X about two hours later, pulling out the quote that has since spread well beyond the Tesla community:
“[FSD Supervised] is life-changing. I was on the phone with my brother last night, and I made him buy one. He literally bought one while we were talking. I’m buying 10 of my employees a Tesla with FSD. It’s 8x safer than the average driver. There’s nothing more important than the safety of you and your loved ones.”
Oppenheim was candid about why the safety pitch landed with him. He admitted in the video that he is a distracted driver who answers emails and texts behind the wheel, and framed the employee purchases as a way to keep his team off their phones while driving. Elon Musk posted “Tesla FSD feels like magic” less than half an hour after the video went live.
The endorsement lands at a convenient moment for Tesla. The company delivered 486,532 vehicles in Q3, beating Wall Street’s estimates and marking its best quarter ever without the $7,500 federal EV tax credit.
A public service announcement. https://t.co/NYa1IpKwBX
— Jason Oppenheim (@OppenheimJason) October 4, 2026
Tesla FSD has been subscription only in the U.S. since February at $99 per month, and Tesla said in its Q2 update that active subscriptions hit 1.48 million, up 56 percent year over year, with more than 55 percent of new North American deliveries leaving with FSD attached. That attach rate is the figure Ron Baron cited last month when he told CNBC “the time to buy the stock is now.” At current pricing, Oppenheim’s 10 employee cars alone would add $990 a month, or about $11,880 a year, in FSD revenue.
Tesla AI head Ashok Elluswamy said in July that FSD had logged more than 12 billion miles while going roughly twice as far between collisions as manual driving. FSD also remains a supervised system, so Oppenheim and his employees are still required to watch the road, even as Tesla rolls out v14.3.10 with Automatic Collision Evasion, which can steer or brake on its own to avoid a frontal crash.
Lifestyle
Tesla teases “Halloween Mode” update with Optimus rising from a graveyard
Tesla’s Halloween teaser hides a covered vehicle and an Optimus hand rising from the ground.
Tesla has started teasing a Halloween software update for its vehicles, with a short clip on X that reads, “Halloween is coming.” The clip opens on a glowing pumpkin before pulling back to the car’s center touchscreen, where the usual parked visualization has been replaced by a graveyard scene, and the vehicle draped with a white sheet so it reads as a cartoon ghost.
Halloween is coming pic.twitter.com/lM3ASUeOqX
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 1, 2026
The second detail is a robotic hand clawing its way out of the dirt like a zombie, which looks to be the hand of Tesla’s latest Optimus V3 humanoid robot. While Tesla still has not formally shown Optimus Gen 3 walking around in service, renders pulled from Tesla’s Android app last month gave the clearest look yet, including far more refined hands that Tesla has said carry 22 degrees of freedom. The hand has been the hardest part of the program. Musk has called it the majority of the robot’s engineering difficulty, and Tesla’s patents describe a design driven by tendons with the actuators moved into the forearm.
Tesla Optimus V3 hand and arm details revealed in new patents
Optimus also has a Halloween track record. Last October the robot handed out candy in Times Square, and a costumed “zombie” Optimus shuffled around the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles on Halloween night.
On the software side, Tesla’s 2025 Holiday Update expanded Santa Mode with a Santa sleigh, snowmen, snow effects, and a festive lock chime, so it wouldn’t be too far fetched if we saw something similar but themed for a Halloween Mode.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s newest feature lets you floor it out of a Supercharger while plugged in
Tesla’s new Emergency Drive Away feature lets owners flee a Supercharger while still plugged in.
Tesla has given drivers a way to escape while a vehicle is plugged-in at a Supercharger, in the event of an emergency. The company’s charging team announced a new feature on X called Emergency Drive Away, which lets a driver shift into Drive and pull away while the charging cable is still connected to the car.
Until now, a Tesla would not leave Park with a charge cable plugged in. Drivers had to release the latch from the touchscreen, the Tesla app, or the button on the charge handle, then wait for the port to let go. Emergency Drive Away removes that lockout, but Tesla is clear that it comes at a cost. “Use of this feature will damage your vehicle and the Supercharger,” the company wrote, adding that the function is meant for emergencies only and that deliberate misuse will lead to “additional penalties.” Tesla did not say what those penalties are.
Emergency Drive Away lets you shift into Drive while still plugged into a Supercharger pic.twitter.com/40GSzyP4lG
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) October 1, 2026
The in-car prompt is just as direct, with the warning reading: “Driving with the cable connected will cause damage to your vehicle and the Supercharger. Short camera recordings will be shared with Tesla.” That footage gives Tesla a way to separate a real emergency from someone who simply did not want to wait for the latch.
The feature requires software update 2026.38.3, and Tesla said in replies to owners that it works at every Supercharger in the United States without new stall hardware. Model S and Model X vehicles built before 2021 are not supported, and the company says the feature applies to U.S. Superchargers “for now,” leaving Canada and other markets out at launch.
Tesla Supercharger argument leads to tragic shooting incident
Tesla did not tie the announcement to any specific event, but it arrives two months after a gunman opened fire at an In-N-Out in Twin Falls, Idaho, on August 1, targeting three people in two Teslas at the neighboring Supercharger. One of them, a 66 year old man from Salt Lake City, was killed. Superchargers have been the scene of violence before, including a fatal shooting at a station near Denver in 2023.
In the weeks after Twin Falls, owners pushed Tesla for a native way to escape a stall, and many pointed back to EVject, the aftermarket breakaway connector Tesla sued in 2024 over claims it lacked overtemperature protection. The two companies later reached an agreement that led EVject to recall its earlier connectors in favor of a version with thermal sensors.
Our mission has always been about providing peace of mind and eliminating sitting duck scenarios.
We patented the built-in breakaway charger tip on Feb 15, 2023. Awarded Jan 30, 2024. Then shared the designs with @TeslaCharging
Thank you @Tesla for rolling out a solution. This… https://t.co/djOzswLw9N
— EVject (@EVject) October 2, 2026
Tesla Model 3 and Model Y can now do what only Cybertruck could
Tesla ships ‘spooky’ Halloween Mode with creepy and fun features
