Lifestyle
Tesla owner takes Model 3 on the ultimate 115,000-mile road trip across US
One Tesla Model 3 owner recently hit a milestone after taking his Long Range rear-wheel drive electric sedan on an epic six-month-long, 115,000 road trip throughout the United States.
Los Angeles-based Tesla owner Arthur Driessen documented his journey across the U.S. in his blog Maiden Voyage: A Voyage Without Carbon and recently shared his thoughts after covering a distance that could be the farthest one done in a Model 3.
Driessen has used and practically abused the electric vehicle on almost all kinds of terrains through different seasons. According to Driessen, he drove the vehicle through sand, snow, streams, creeks and all and the car has got him through challenging terrain and weather every single time.
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- Tesla Model 3 – Maiden Voyage 3(Source: @MCarbon via Twitter)
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- Tesla Model 3 – Maiden Voyage 2 (Source: @MCarbon via Twitter)
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- Tesla Model 3 – Maiden Voyage 1 (Source: @MCarbon via Twitter)
“I’ve seen tons of different types of terrain. You go off into the mountains. You go to Native American reservations and you’re gonna see roads that really are supposed to have 4×4 vehicles,” he said.
Through his adventure riding the Model 3 he actually only had two control arms and a door hinge replaced but they were practically self-inflicted damage. He also changed tires when his set of OEM shoes went bald after 10,000 miles and every 20K to 25K miles after that but he confessed that it was expected as he drove heavy and drove off-road.
“I think that’s pretty amazing. Over 115,000 miles, you know no oil changes, no nothing,” he exclaimed.
Probably most people would ask how much Driessen spent to operate the Model 3 during the road trip and how the electric car’s battery might have degraded.
“The savings have been just phenomenal and then you can factor in, you know, gas savings comparatively… with supercharging. I average everything out at about six cents per mile which means $6,000 over a hundred thousand miles and you can take that number and you can apply it to whatever car you would be driving,” he said. The Model 3 owner estimated that he saved around $10,000 on gas, comparing the cost if he drove his Civic.
With regard to battery range and degradation, the EV adventurer said he did not lose much battery at all. He also praised the charging infrastructure of Tesla throughout the country as he only struggled when he was near the Texas border and up along the Canadian border.
“The last time I charged 100 percent, which was a couple of weeks ago, I still had 308 miles.. and I think that’s pretty good,” he revealed. For context, Driessen’s Model 3 had an original rate range of 310 miles.
In terms of Model 3 storage, this snapshot from his vlog when he emptied out the car’s passenger cabin, trunk, and frunk sum up how much you can carry on Tesla’s mass-produced electric sedan.
Driessen also brought up issues he encountered with the vehicle such as the Autopilot choosing the slower left lane during some points of his trip, forcing other vehicles to pass through his right. He also shared the problems he had with Smart Summon, seeing the feature as a rushed piece of software after encountering issues with it at some parking lots. The Model 3 owner also raised an issue about the car’s navigation not working when one’s not online. Nevertheless, the Model 3 owner acknowledges the capability of Tesla in pushing software updates to improve the ride to address such issues.
Driessen’s adventure across the United States on his Tesla Model 3 is not just a testimony, but his experience is concrete proof that the popular electric sedan can deliver beyond its perceived limits.
Check out the video footage of Maiden Voyage: A Voyage Without Carbon below:
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.
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 https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
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.”
Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.
Cybertruck
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.
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.
Custom wraps via mobile app https://t.co/5OydZ26g9p pic.twitter.com/uexU0ZePxu
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
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.
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.
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.
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.
Tesla Diner is turning 1 on July 21st, so we’re throwing a party
Come swing by for a day full of fun:
– Cybercab on display
– Birthday menu
– @Tesla_Optimus
– Face painting for kids & adults
– Photo booth
– Servers on roller skates delivering your order
– Light show
– Skypad DJ… pic.twitter.com/TD8pOjihYs— Tesla North America (@tesla_na) July 18, 2026
SpaceX wants to catch Starship for launch 14, Elon Musk says
Tesla to open source Model S and Model X designs and software
