News
Tesla opens Erie Supercharger connecting west PA with NY
After years of not-so-quiet desperation, the “missing link” Supercharger in Erie, PA has finally powered up! The location is a vital link for Tesla owners going multiple directions and one that has been near the top of regional owners’ requests.
While you might not think of Erie as a transportation hub, it quickly became a desirable charging stop as the Supercharger network has been built out, much like railroad stations and crossroads have historically become vital only after their peripheral arteries grew.
Emails to and from Tesla suggesting locations had always centered around the busy Peach Street commercial district. Indications were strong that Tesla had found a site long ago only to have it fall through for unknown reasons– a story that would seem to mirror the same timetable and complications that long plagued the Harrisburg, PA Supercharger.
The one-two punch of having two strategically located Pennsylvania charging sites fall through must have hit the team hard after the relative ease of building Somerset and Cranberry locations near Pittsburgh. Harrisburg was another long-bemoaned missing link that made travel across the state problematic at best. Eventually, a welcoming property was found and construction in Harrisburg and Erie have been nearly simultaneous, with Harrisburg coming online just a few weeks earlier.
With Erie now powered up, the hosting businesses in Erie are hoping to attract some new guests. My own observations from frequent travels up and down I-79/90 would suggest they’re going to be pleasantly surprised. Ontario license plates make semi-annual appearances in large numbers as the “Snowbirds” transit western Pennsylvania. They’re also common sights around Pittsburgh year-round, with a good majority of them coming from Toronto.
The largest city in Ontario is its provincial capital, Toronto– indeed, it might surprise many to find out that Toronto has long been the largest city in Canada, more than double the size of Vancouver. It also barely nudges Chicago out of the top four on the continent, with only Mexico City, New York City and Los Angeles claiming more residents. So when the city of Toronto goes on vacation… a good many of them wind up in western Pennsylvania.
For Tesla owners in Ontario, the Erie Supercharger is a reasonable half-day’s drive away. Straight drive-time is about 4 hours, but add in border crossings, charging stops and some meals and those driving from Canada will find the proximity of the Erie hotels to be an ideal overnight rest– regardless of which way they’re going. It’s also an ideal overnight from Washington, DC (among others) and a more ambitious day away from Chicago or Boston. The “jump” from Pittsburgh/Cleveland to Buffalo is history!
More importantly, the addition of Erie makes these trips less butt-clenching. Hyper-miling the stretch from Ohio or Pittsburgh to Buffalo, New York, was always doable in warm weather with careful planning and discipline. Winter brings brutally cold weather from across Lake Erie and strong headwinds (particularly for south/west bound traffic), often laden with snow and ice. With that comes a dramatically shortened range and the trip becomes very questionable in even an 85/90 kWh Tesla. Several drivers have found themselves limping through bad weather conditions with cabin heat exchanged for heart-pounding images of impending doom. Erie makes these worries all go away and four-season travel around the lake should be no less difficult than in a gas-powered car… and certainly much more pleasurable!
If you have destination charging as an option, the Erie Supercharger also partially plugs a large hole in rural New York and Pennsylvania. With a modest 200 mile (as the crow flies) radius centered on the charger you could hypothetically now reach deep into the less populous parts of both states to enjoy their many parks. Or… admittedly, you could drive into the middle of Lake Erie and have range enough to make it back (assuming you’ve first activated submarine mode).
The Hilton Garden Inn, which hosts the Supercharger, is part of a larger facility called the Ambassador Banquet and Conference Center, which includes a Courtyard by Marriott and the Safari Grille. The entire facility is ideal for any road-weary snow birds making their seasonal migration or wedding parties/business meetings full of Tesla owners.
Within easy walking distance of the Supercharger there a lots of food options. A Cracker Barrel beckons for those needing a longer charge, while an Applebee’s and Burger King split the medium and short charging crowd. If you’re willing to brave the pedestrian lights on Peach Street, you can also easily walk to our usual stops, Quaker Steak and Lube. Widen your search zone a little more and the world is your oyster: Steak n’ Shake, Golden Corral, Krispy Kreme, Texas Roadhouse, Eat n’ Park– they’re all accessible by sidewalk. Or you can drive to many more within a mile radius, like our other frequent stop: Famous Dave’s Bar-B-Que.
Other nearby shopping opportunities and amusements are nearly endless. All the big box store companies are represented as well as a movie theater and a family-oriented water park called Splash Lagoon, which is owned by the same parent company as the Hilton Garden Inn.
One of the initial unknowns was how Tesla would lay out the chargers themselves. I’d speculated that given the proximity to campgrounds and the lake that Tesla might make the slots pull-through to allow Model X’s with trailers an easier charge.
Turns out that was wrong, but there is an advantage to the way Tesla has situated these chargers versus most other locations. They ran a curbed peninsula out into the parking lot between two rows of pre-existing parking spots, which effectively gives access to the chargers from both sides. I’m not a math expert, but to me that at least halves the chances of any given charger being blocked by a gas car.
By powering up the Erie Supercharger, Tesla has essentially completed two major routes that touch all four compass points. With the elimination of cold weather as a range concern, Tesla tourists can now whoosh around the northeast with relative ease… with two regional holes yet to fill (and hopefully next): I-80 in Pennsylvania and I-86 in upstate New York.
Maps courtesy of Supercharge.info
Please note: We are not specifically authorized, sponsored by, or otherwise directly associated with Tesla Motors and make no claims to be so.
Tesla Hardware 3 owners are set to get a new Full Self-Driving version this month as the company plans to release what it is referring to as v14 Lite.
The rollout is not yet confirmed for June, but Tesla executives have stated on several occasions that this more refined FSD iteration will work with their cars and increase its capabilities.
This comes after Tesla admitted during its last Earnings Call that these Hardware 3 vehicles would not be able to achieve Full Self-Driving, something that they did not know when they bought these cars. We regularly receive messages from Hardware 3 owners asking when v14 Lite will come out, what they should expect, and whether it is worth it to upgrade the self-driving computer or buy a new car altogether.
Following future rollout of FSD V14 Lite for HW3 vehicles in the US, we plan on expanding V14 Lite to additional international markets.
This update ensures that HW3 vehicle owners will continue to benefit from ongoing software updates.
Since international rollout is subject to…
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 29, 2026
It is hard not to feel for them; Tesla CEO Elon Musk said at the company’s 2019 Autonomy Day that all vehicles produced at the time, including Hardware 3 cars, had “all the hardware necessary, compute and otherwise, for Full Self-Driving.”
Musk also said in March of that year that, “Anyone who purchased Full Self-Driving will get FSD computer upgrade for free.”
Anyone who purchased full self-driving will get FSD computer upgrade for free. This is the only change between Autopilot HW2.5 & HW3. Going forward “HW3” will just be called FSD Computer, which is accurate. No change to vehicle sensors or wire harness needed. This is v important. https://t.co/lICMpT7xnX
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 29, 2019
However, during the Q1 2026 Earnings Call, Musk admitted that Hardware 3 vehicles would not be capable of FSD, as “It has only 1/8th the memory bandwidth of Hardware 4, and memory bandwidth is one of the key elements needed for unsupervised FSD.”
Tesla has made some effort to remedy these Hardware 3 owners by offering:
- Discounted trade-ins toward AI4 cars
- Hardware retrofits, which would replace the self-driving computer and upgrade all cameras
- Full Self-Driving v14 Lite
The issue is that many of these owners were led to believe their cars would be capable of unsupervised self-driving. Now, they’re left scrambling for options, and while there are several, they will all require more money out of their pockets.
Expectations for Tesla v14 Lite for Hardware 3 Owners
The big differences between the AI4 v14 and v14 Lite for Hardware 3 owners will stem primarily from hardware constraints. Tesla developed v14 Lite with an optimized frame of mind; the v14 neural nets are toned down to run on an HW3 computer.
Tesla v14 will use the same behavior, but its limits will be hardware-related, especially given that the cameras on HW3 vehicles are lower-resolution.
Tesla reveals its plans for Hardware 3 owners who are eager for updates
This will result in potentially more edge cases due to the lower quality perception and less long-range detection, but reaction time and overall confidence should be more refined.
There should also be a handful of additional features that are available on AI4 cars, such as:
- Starting Full Self-Driving from Park
- Auto Shift
- Streaks
- Speed Profiles
- Improved Dynamics, like Pulling Over for Emergency Vehicles
Tesla plans to release v14 Lite this month, but we are all familiar with how the company can be with timelines. Additionally, if v14 Lite has not proven to be ready for a wide release, Tesla will slam the brakes on the rollout.
We would anticipate that Tesla is testing v14 Lite internally, and likely has been for several months.
Elon Musk
SpaceXAI just launched into your kitchen with their new app
SpaceXAI just powered its first consumer app and it predicts what you want to buy.
SpaceXAI just made its first move into consumer AI, and it involves your grocery cart. On June 3, 2026, Gopuff and SpaceXAI announced the launch of Go, a Grok-powered shopping assistant built directly into the Gopuff app that predicts what you need before you even start searching for it.
Gopuff is an instant delivery platform that operates more than 400 micro-fulfillment centers across the U.S., delivering everyday essentials, snacks, drinks, and household items in as little as 15 minutes. It is not a restaurant delivery app or a marketplace. It owns its inventory, controls its warehouses, and handles its own logistics, which means it has built one of the most detailed consumer behavior datasets in retail over its 13-year history.
Go combines SpaceXAI’s advanced reasoning, voice, and image generation models with Gopuff’s dataset of hundreds of millions of orders and real-time cultural signals from X to prepare a suggested cart the moment a customer opens the app. It learns each shopper’s habits and automatically builds a personalized cart based on time of day, location, order history, and real-time indicators. Returning customers can check out with a single tap.
Rather than searching for specific items, users can describe a situation like a game-day party or the desire for a healthy breakfast and Go will assemble a cart automatically. It can also predict when shoppers are running low on items like coffee or paper towels and have them packed and delivered in under 15 minutes. Grok voice integration lets users talk to the app in plain conversational language and check out completely hands-free.
Gopuff co-founder and co-CEO Yakir Gola said: “Today, we believe the greatest friction left in commerce is not delivery or instantaneous access to the essentials customers need. It’s the moment before: the thinking, the deciding, the remembering. We’re combining Gopuff’s demand intelligence with xAI’s frontier reasoning to create an everyday shopping experience that feels like a true extension of you.”
Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO
The timing carries context beyond the product launch. SpaceXAI was formed after SpaceX completed an all-stock merger with Elon Musk’s xAI earlier this year, folding one of the most advanced AI labs in the world into the same corporate structure as the company preparing what could be the largest IPO in history. SpaceXAI is dipping into consumer-focused AI just as it prepares for its public debut, and while Musk has openly discussed building an everything app, this launch uses Grok to power another company’s product rather than launching a standalone consumer platform. Every consumer-facing deployment of Grok ahead of the IPO roadshow adds tangible evidence that SpaceXAI is not just an infrastructure play but a direct competitor in the AI application layer where OpenAI and Google are already fighting for dominance.
Tesla has introduced an enhanced visualization in its Supercharger navigation system, building directly on the Site Maps feature rolled out a few months ago.
This latest software update adds detailed 3D icons that represent specific vehicle models parked at charging stalls, offering drivers a more precise view of site occupancy and layout.
The Site Maps debuted in Tesla’s 2025 Holiday Update, providing 3D overviews of select Supercharger locations with real-time stall availability.
Tesla supplements Holiday Update by sneaking in new Full Self-Driving version
Drivers could see which spots were open, occupied, or out of service when navigating to supported stations.
Now, the system takes this capability further by rendering accurate representations of Tesla vehicles, including distinctions between models such as the Model 3, Model Y, Model S, Model X, and Cybertruck. These icons appear as lifelike 3D renderings, complete with recognizable shapes and proportions that match the actual cars charging at the site:
Supercharger update now shows type of Tesla at charger as well.
Pretty cool. pic.twitter.com/J3NRSIgM0m
— DennisCW | wen my L (@DennisCW_) June 2, 2026
This refinement improves the user experience during road trips and daily charging stops. As drivers approach a Supercharger, the navigation display now shows not just generic occupied markers but identifiable vehicle types plugged into each stall.
Blue indicators highlight active charging sessions, while other visual cues denote availability or maintenance status. The feature integrates seamlessly with the existing map interface, allowing quick assessment of the best available spot based on vehicle size and positioning.
Tesla continues to expand the availability of these detailed Site Maps across its global network. Initially piloted at a limited number of locations, the rollout has progressed steadily, with more stations gaining support in recent software versions.
Owners benefit from better planning, as the system helps identify compatible stalls and reduces uncertainty upon arrival. The update reflects Tesla’s ongoing commitment to refining its navigation and charging ecosystem through iterative software improvements.
In addition to model-specific icons, the enhanced maps maintain all prior functionalities, such as integration with nearby amenities and energy usage predictions. This ensures a comprehensive tool for efficient Supercharging.
As Tesla’s fleet grows and the network scales, such features play a key role in optimizing the overall ownership experience. Future updates may extend similar visualizations to additional sites and incorporate even more data points for drivers.
With this piggyback enhancement, Tesla demonstrates how small but thoughtful additions can elevate an already useful tool, making Supercharger visits smoother and more informed for its customers. The company is expected to broaden the feature’s reach in upcoming releases, further solidifying its leadership in EV charging infrastructure.
Tesla Hardware 3 owners could be made whole this month
SpaceXAI just launched into your kitchen with their new app
