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Tesla’s S3XY range updates show how ridiculously far legacy auto has fallen in the EV race
Anyone that has followed the Tesla story over the past few years would know that one of the primary talking points against the electric car maker is the impending competition that’s coming from more experienced, more competent carmakers. Critics argued that once legacy automakers get serious in their electric car efforts, a company as inexperienced as Tesla would easily be overwhelmed. This scenario has not happened at all — and if Tesla’s recent range updates to its S3XY lineup are anything to go by, it is becoming evident that legacy auto has fallen ridiculously behind in the electric car race.
Tesla’s recent range updates, which were rolled out together with the “refresh” of the Model 3, further cemented the company’s place at the top of the EV market. With the new updates, the Model 3 Long Range Dual Motor AWD was able to hit an EPA-estimated range of 353 miles per charge, and even its heftier, heavier sibling, the Model Y, was able to achieve a range of 326 miles. The Model X, an incredibly heavy tank of a vehicle, reached 371 miles per charge, and even the power-hungry Tesla Model S Performance is nearing 400 miles at 387 miles per charge.
It should be noted that Tesla was able to accomplish these improvements without any of the big updates that it announced during Battery Day. During the highly-anticipated event, Tesla revealed its batteries’ new 4680 form factor, which has 5x the volume of the Model 3 and Model Y’s 2170 cells. Tesla also announced a new vehicle manufacturing system that prioritizes single-piece casts and a structural battery pack. Other innovations, such as the use of high-nickel cathodes and silicon anodes, were discussed as well.
None of these innovations are in Tesla’s recently-updated vehicles.
Ultimately, Tesla’s recent updates highlight just how far the company has gone ahead of the pack in the electric vehicle sector. The fact that the electric car maker was able to achieve a 371-mile range for the Model X Long Range Dual Motor AWD with the same 100 kWh battery pack and the same 18650 cells as its Model X 100D predecessor is almost ridiculous. This is especially notable considering that the Audi e-tron, which has a battery pack that’s almost the same size as the Model X, has a range of 222 miles, and that’s the variant with the improved range already.
Tesla’s lead in range becomes even more significant when one considers the Model 3 and the Model Y, both of which utilize a battery pack that pretty much tops up at 75 kWh. A comparison of the two vehicles against the competition shows a stark contrast, with the Polestar 2, a car that’s largely considered as a legitimate rival to the Model 3, having an EPA-estimated range of 233 miles from a 78 kWh battery pack. The Jaguar I-PACE, a crossover that’s pretty close in size to the Model Y, follows the same pattern, having an EPA-estimated range of 246 miles per charge from a 90 kWh battery.
There are likely numerous reasons behind Tesla’s insane lead in the electric car sector today, but a good part of it likely has a lot to do with the company’s intense focus on battery tech and development. Tesla has been focused on improving and optimizing its batteries since Day 1, and as could be seen in the recent range updates of the S3XY lineup, this obsessive pursuit of optimization matters a lot. These efforts are not emulated at all with most legacy automakers, as veterans seem typically content with using off-the-shelf batteries from suppliers for their EV programs.
Yet perhaps the most uncomfortable reason behind legacy auto’s distance from Tesla’s vehicles today is something far simpler: hubris. While legacy automakers have been stating for years that they are serious about their future shift to electric cars, their actions have largely been far less tangible than their words. Today, it is almost as if Tesla’s competitors in the EV sector were far too comfortable just watching the electric car maker improve over the years. And now that Tesla has turned into a force that’s very difficult to ignore, they are scrambling to catch up.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult to catch a moving target. By the time legacy automakers can catch up to where Tesla is today, it is almost certain that the electric car maker will be even further ahead. This distance will likely be even farther, too, as Tesla’s next-generation battery technology is yet to enter the picture. Once Tesla’s 4680 cells are in production and its vehicles are being built with structural battery packs, the gap between the electric car maker and its competitors will most definitely be even more significant. And that, at least for legacy auto, is a scenario worthy of the final act of a tragedy.
Tesla Cybercab is set to launch in Austin, Texas, on September 3, as the company has officially started sending out invitations to a dedicated event it will hold in the city where its headquarters is located.
The Cybercab is Tesla’s dedicated ride-sharing vehicle: it features just two seats and has no steering wheel or pedals. It is aimed at fully autonomous passenger transport, and will operate in the Robotaxi fleet alongside the Tesla Model Y, which has been performing driverless rides for real-world passengers for more than a year.
Thank you so much @Tesla for inviting us to the Cybercab launch in Austin! 🤠 pic.twitter.com/F1rAR8zd5O
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 22, 2026
The launch of the Cybercab marks the next chapter in Tesla’s autonomy story. The company has been developing autonomous transport for years with its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) platform, which is available in any vehicle the company has built with the proper hardware and software capabilities.
Its capabilities vary by hardware and software version, but Tesla says its latest hardware version, known as AI4, can deliver full autonomy. However, future vehicles will operate with even more robust hardware packages, as Tesla will develop AI4.5 and AI5 for even more capability in its vehicles.
Following a report from The Information that surfaced earlier this week, the writing was on the wall that Tesla was set to launch Cybercab in the near term. The report stated Tesla could launch Cybercab as soon as the end of August. Tesla came close and has booked it for September 3.
The big thing with this event being scheduled is not necessarily that Tesla is launching a new vehicle, but instead that it is launching a vehicle that has no steering wheel or pedals and will operate exclusively on a self-driving program that is evidently nearing full autonomy. If the event allows vehicles to take passengers on public roads and drop them off wherever they please within the City of Austin, it will be a drastic advancement in the company’s self-driving story.
People have ridden in Cybercab previously: Tesla had the “We, Robot” event in October 2024, which allowed people to experience fully autonomous rides in a closed circuit at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank.
🚨 Ride in a Tesla Cybercab with us
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) May 11, 2025
Additionally, Tesla launched employee rides in Cybercab in July.
It’s a drastic step forward for Tesla, whose CEO, Elon Musk, has promised for years that the company would release a fully autonomous vehicle and platform capable of allowing drivers to relinquish any responsibility behind the wheel.
Elon Musk put a number on where he thinks SpaceX’s Starship program is headed by 2030, replying on X a day after President Trump signed a memo pushing the country toward 1,000 space launches and reentries a year.
The exchange started when Aaron Burnett, co-founder of propulsion startup Mach 33, posted that “1,000 launches/reentries is the goal,” quoting White House science adviser Michael Kratsios on the newly signed National Space Transportation Policy. Burnett noted that the FAA’s own bull-case forecast reached only 385 annual launches by 2030, while his firm’s conservative model already put SpaceX alone near 940. Musk responded, “We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized. Still tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!”
We’re aiming to reach 30+ Starship launches/day in 2030, which is ~10k annualized.
TESLARATI Premium Membership
$19.99 USDStill tiny numbers compared to airplane flights!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 21, 2026
That figure is specific to Starship, the rocket SpaceX is still developing for orbital and lunar missions, not the Falcon 9 fleet that carries most of the company’s current launch volume. Starship has flown twice this year, a slower pace than the four and five flights SpaceX managed in 2024 and 2025. Getting from two flights a year to 30 a day is the scale of jump the new federal policy is meant to clear regulatory room for.
Trump’s memo, signed Thursday, directs agencies to identify new launch and reentry sites on federal land, including a new reentry site within 90 days, and to speed up the permitting and environmental reviews that have long slowed cadence growth. It also sets a goal of returning American astronauts to the moon by 2028 and placing initial lunar base elements by 2030, tying the launch buildout directly to NASA’s Artemis program.
SpaceX has already been pushing the FAA toward higher numbers on its own. The agency approved up to 44 annual Starship launches from Kennedy Space Center in February, on top of a 2024 review that raised the cap at Starbase in Texas to 25 a year. Those approvals cover a fraction of the 10,000 annual flights Musk is now describing, which shows how far current permitting still sits from the administration’s stated target.
The near-term test of all this is more modest. SpaceX cleared a full-duration, six-engine static fire on its next Starship vehicle this week, the last major hardware checkpoint before Flight 14, which is targeting no earlier than August 28 and is expected to attempt the vehicle’s first full orbital mission. Musk said last week that a tower catch of the upper stage is still probably months away, a reminder that the immediate roadmap remains far more incremental than the daily launch numbers he just posted.
Tesla will resolve its massive recall of nearly three million vehicles in China with stickers and a software update.
On Friday, Chinese regulators filed recall plans against Tesla, Xiaomi, Leapmotor, Xpeng, Chery, Geely, Dongfeng, Arcfox, and FAW to resolve what is essentially a carbon-copy issue throughout each of the companies’ vehicle models: emergency door release latches are simply not visible enough.
Tesla door handle saga gets its latest chapter and a big change is coming
The companies will be required to add things that will make these latches, which will open the door in the event of an emergency, more visible. Of the 7 million vehicles impacted, Tesla accounts for 2,975,910 units. More than 1.9 million of those are Model Y vehicles, with the rest, just over 970,000, being Model 3s.
To resolve the issue, Tesla is going to add warning labels to the emergency latches free of charge, and then utilize an Over-the-Air update to add a post-crash window-lowering strategy, according to CNEVpost.
This massive effort to fix the all-electric Model Y and Model 3’s emergency latch system comes just months after several probes across various markets identified the trouble some had identifying this latch. Those who had gotten involved in car accidents that stripped the vehicle of its power were not aware that every Tesla has emergency door latches.
China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) said that severe crashes that disable a vehicle’s low-voltage system could not only hinder occupants from getting out, but also make it more difficult for emergency response workers to gain entry.
SAMR is starting to tighten the regulations it has on door handles on vehicles. A new mandatory national standard will take effect for all models starting January 1, 2027, and will require all doors to be equipped with mechanical release mechanisms. This will effectively end purely electronic door handles. Models already on sale with type approval have been granted a two-year transition period, which will enable things to change until January 2029.
Tesla will launch Cybercab on September 3
SpaceX and a new Trump order that could rewrite the next decade of launches
