Connect with us

Lifestyle

Tesla Model 3 surpasses 600-mile mark in hypermile Guinness attempt

[Credit: Sean Mitchell/Twitter]

Published

on

Less than a couple of weeks since setting a hypermile run record for the Model 3, Denver Tesla Club president Sean Mitchell, accompanied by Erik Strait, a fellow Tesla owner and host to a popular YouTube channel, managed to push the compact electric car 606.2 miles on a single charge, possibly setting a new Guinness World Record in the process.

Sean and Erik’s hypermile run stands as the first time a Tesla Model 3 has breached the 600-mile barrier. The trip lasted 32 hours, almost double the 18 hours that Mitchell took during his previous hypermile attempt. According to the duo in their livestream of their Guinness Record attempt, their speed this time averaged around 20-35 mph, slightly different than the 30 mph that Mitchell adopted during his first run.

The Tesla enthusiasts posted updates to their social media accounts during the duration of the trip. On Saturday evening, Mitchell posted an update informing his Twitter followers that they have hit the 500-mile mark. During this time, the Model 3’s battery was down to 12%. The Model 3 had used up 55 kWh of its battery as well.

By late Saturday evening, the pair crossed the 600-mile barrier. The Tesla Model 3 ultimately ran out of battery 606.2 miles (975 km) into the trip. According to an update posted by Mitchell on his Twitter page after the run, the electric car averaged 110 Wh/mi and consumed 66 kWh during the long, 32-hour journey. This is considerably longer than the 515.7 miles driven by Mitchell in his previous hypermile attempt.

The journey did not come without its challenges. During dinnertime on Saturday evening, Mitchell and Strait did not even stop for a meal. Instead, one of the pair’s friends decided to do a special burrito delivery, which Mitchell received through a fishing net he stuck out from the vehicle’s window. The pair also did not turn on the Model 3’s air conditioning, causing temperatures in the vehicle’s cabin to reach 108F at one point during the trip.

Mitchell and Strait’s hypermile run was sponsored by Boulder-based solar energy funding firm Wunder Capital. Wunder covered the costs of the trip and the Guinness Record submission. Stuttgart Auto Body, Colorado Detail, & Fyin.com also supported the hypermile run. 

Advertisement
-

Guinness currently only has a listing for the longest distance traveled by an electric vehicle. The record, which was set in October last year, was established using a modified BMW 5-series that was specifically designed for the Guinness Attempt. A Tesla Model S P100D driven by Tesla Owners Italia managed to hit 670 miles on one charge last August 2017 as well — a feat that warranted a tweet from Elon Musk. 

In a statement to Teslarati, Mitchell and Strait described their experience during the recent hypermile run.

“It was amazing to me to see the support of the Tesla community. They were so supportive and encouraging of our efforts. They only did they support us by tuning into the livestream but they also, to our surprise, donated money through YouTube. The Model 3 is such a new car. This hypermile shows that not only is the Model 3 amazingly engineered for the masses, but EVs are a viable option for everyone,” Mitchell noted.

“It certainly brought attention to EVs in general and helped bring awareness about Teslas. We hopefully helped discourage range anxiety, even though we were an extreme case. We showed what Teslas are truly capable of. Also, by livestreaming the entire event, we had a lot of people tune in and ask a lot of good questions related to Tesla that we were able to help answer and clarify,” Strait stated.

Advertisement
-

The Model 3’s battery capacity and range have become some of the biggest advantages of the vehicle. Consumer Reports, which did not give the Model 3 a “Recommended” rating due to its braking distance, still stated that their car broke their records for range, managing to travel 350 miles on one charge.

Watch the final leg of Mitchell and Strait’s record-setting hypermile run in the video below.

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.

Advertisement
Comments

Lifestyle

Tesla Cybertruck targets job site crews with new Tailgate Utility Track and Bed Gear Box accessory

Tesla launched a $350 tailgate track and a $985 lockable Bed Gear Box for Cybertruck.

Published

on

By

Tesla Cybertruck construction site

Tesla’s Cybertruck team added two more items to the Tesla Shop, targeting job site crews and owners who use the truck bed for actual work rather than just showing it off. The official Cybertruck X account posted the Tailgate Utility Track and the Bed Gear Box within minutes of each other, part of a five item batch that also included a reflective jacket, a spray paint hat and an updated reflective tee.

The Tailgate Utility Track runs $350 and turns the folded down tailgate into another mounting surface. It’s a single aluminum track with a T-slot for sliding accessories and two L-track attachment points, plus two load stops included in the box. The pitch is straightforward: strap down oversized cargo, like lumber or a cooler, that hangs off the back of the bed without it sliding out mid-drive. It bolts onto the existing tailgate and works on every Cybertruck trim.

The Bed Gear Box costs $985 and is a different kind of accessory. It’s a lockable aluminum storage box, 55.78 inches long, 19.8 inches wide and 7.79 inches tall, that mounts to the bed’s L-track rails and comes with two internal bins for smaller items. According to Tesla, at just over 57 pounds empty, it’s meant to stay in place rather than come in and out with each trip, giving owners a factory-fit alternative to loose totes for tools, recovery gear or emergency supplies. Tesla’s listing notes that Long Range and Dual Motor AWD Cybertrucks need the L-Tracks accessory installed separately before the Gear Box will mount, since L-tracks come standard only on certain configurations.

Tesla Cybertruck bed gear box accessory

Tesla Cybertruck bed gear box accessory

Both accessories lean on the idea Tesla has been building toward since Elon Musk first described the Cybertruck’s third-party attachment strategy at the 2023 shareholder meeting, when he said the truck would ship with mounting points so outside companies, and Tesla itself, could keep adding gear without redesigning the bed. That’s the same L-track backbone underneath the tailgate shield and jumpseats Tesla launched last year, and the off-road armor package that arrived through the same X account in 2025.

Owners looking to round out the rest of the L-track ecosystem, cargo dividers, MOLLE panels, bed racks and similar gear, can find a wider range of options through our Cybertruck accessories collection.

Advertisement
-
Continue Reading

Elon Musk

Elon Musk says he knows how to save Earth for a billion years

Elon Musk says sentient AI satellites launched from the Moon could keep Earth livable forever.

Published

on

By

Elon Musk spent part of his weekend describing a plan to keep the planet livable for roughly a billion years, and it starts with satellites that can think for themselves.

In a post on X, Musk argued that swapping fossil fuels for solar and wind power will not be enough to protect humanity from what he called extremely severe extinction events, the kind that occur roughly every 100 million years. His fix is what he called sentient satellites, or solar-powered satellites, controlled by AI, that would sit in a fixed spot between Earth and the Sun after being launched off the Moon using a giant electromagnetic catapult instead of rockets.

The satellites’ onboard AI would make continuous, small adjustments rather than waiting on human instructions. The mass driver is Musk’s proposed way of getting the raw material there cheaply by using an electromagnetic launch track built on the Moon, where lower gravity and no atmosphere make it far easier to fling cargo into space than it is from Earth.

Musk shared a Grok generated estimate suggesting roughly 5 percent of Florida’s land, or about 1.68 million acres, could face regular flooding by 2070 under a high sea level rise scenario, and said humanity has about 50 years to act before coastal living looks very different than it does today.

Advertisement
-

This is not the first time Musk has floated the idea. He raised a similar concept in November, describing a solar powered AI satellite constellation that could make tiny adjustments to incoming sunlight to fine tune Earth’s temperature. Musk has also tied planetary risk to his broader vision at SpaceX, where his compensation package is explicitly linked to establishing a self-sustaining Mars colony, one he has described as an insurance policy against the kind of extinction event he referenced this weekend, and where he has said humans could set foot within five to seven years.

Continue Reading

Lifestyle

Police sergeant recounts his Neuralink journey with Elon Musk’s brain chip

Published

on

By

neuralink-patient-registry-volunteers

A former Vancouver police sergeant with ALS accounts his journey to become a patient for Elon Musk’s Neuralink wireless brain-computer interface technology.

“I’m texting you from my brain right now.” That was the first message Lee Marten sent after waking up from Neuralink surgery, five hours and one migraine after dozens of threads were stitched into his motor cortex.

Marten, a former Vancouver police sergeant, is one of the first Canadian ALS patients to receive Neuralink’s N1 brain implant, and the 26th recipient overall. He tells his story in a first-person account published by Maclean’s.

Marten recounts how he was a healthy, athletic Vancouver police sergeant until April 2022 when symptoms of muscle twitching and balance loss, were followed by a bad fall that broke his leg. He would eventually be diagnosed with ALS in early 2025 at the age of 47. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that progressively destroys the motor neurons controlling voluntary muscle movement, eventually taking away a patient’s ability to walk, speak, swallow and breathe. There’s no cure, and most patients live two to five years after diagnosis.

He describes the devastation of the diagnosis and how he began preparing for it while connecting with other young ALS patients through a WhatsApp group called Young Guns. Through that group he learned about a Neuralink clinical trial at Toronto Western Hospital and, after a roughly seven-month vetting process (physical assessments, psychiatric evaluation, a final interview with the Neuralink team), was accepted this past April as the trial’s 26th recipient and the first Canadian ALS patient to get the N1 implant. He recounts the May surgery in detail, including the robotic system that stitched 64 threads into his brain, and describes the app, Link, translating his neural signals into cursor control, which he was using within hours of waking up.

Marten walks through what daily use looks like, including weekly “brain training” exercises, a real-time neural-activity display, charging the implant via a beanie-mounted MagSafe charger, and using the implant for emailing, texting, social media, and gaming via a “Magic Box” that connects it to other devices. He also gives brief context on brain-computer interface history and quite candid about Musk, calling him “divisive” but saying he found him “easy to admire.

Advertisement
-

The piece closes on a heavier note, with Marten seeking to pursue medical assistance in dying as his symptoms progressed, noting that he’ll be able to communicate his final words to his family through Neuralink rather than facing a silent decline. He expresses hope the data from his case will help future ALS patients, even without a cure in his own lifetime.

Continue Reading