Lifestyle
Tesla Model 3 surpasses 600-mile mark in hypermile Guinness attempt
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.
- The Tesla Model 3 used in the latest hypermile attempt. [Credit: Sean Mitchell/Twitter]
- The Tesla Model 3 used in the latest hypermile attempt. [Credit: Sean Mitchell/Twitter]
- The final stats of the Model 3 at the end of its hypermile run. [Credit: Sean Mitchell/Twitter]
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.
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.
Officially verified as the first production electric car to exceed 1000km on a single charge! Congratulations Tesla Owners Italia!! https://t.co/r8fFZIFEP2
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 5, 2017
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.
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.
Lifestyle
Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi’s real advantage won’t be the ride service
For a century, the car has asked the same thing of its owner, which is basically to pay attention. Even the best ride-hailing app like Uber or Lyft only moved the problem into someone else’s hands. You stopped driving, but you still sat in a stranger’s car, while half listening, and wondering whether to take a phone call in the car without being rude. The Cybercab has no wheel, no pedals and no driver. With Grok @bot now live inside it, it becomes something else entirely, and I think that matters more than the fleet count that everyone is tracking.
Grok @bot is an agent, not a voice assistant. A rider signs in once, and from then on can say what they need and watch it happen. Order dinner from a favorite restaurant. Fill the grocery cart. Move money, answer email, adjust a calendar, push a work project forward. Tesla engineer Yun-Ta Tsai confirmed it is enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y fleet, and Tesla’s own pitch is that Full Self-Driving handles the commute while Grok handles the errands.
Think about what that does to a thirty minute ride. Uber sells you a trip, while Waymo sells you the same trip in a more private setting. Tesla is selling the thirty minutes themselves, returned to you with an assistant attached. Errands that used to eat a Saturday get done between pickup and drop off. The ride stops being dead time between two places and becomes a place of its own.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
Best of all, your Bots follow you into any Cybercab, and presumably your own Tesla, then logs you out automatically when you step out. Anyone can bolt a chatbot onto a screen, but much harder to own the vehicle, the autonomy stack and the assistant at once. It also quietly ties SpaceX’s Super Intelligence business to Tesla’s fleet, after Tesla converted its xAI stake into SpaceX equity. The relationship between those two companies is getting harder to describe as separate.
This is also where the hard questions start, because an agent that can spend your money in a vehicle other people also ride in needs some answers. How does it handle a voice it shouldn’t trust? What gets recorded, who can see it, and for how long? What happens when a rider leaves halfway through a task?
If Tesla gets those answers right, the scoreboard changes. We have been counting Cybercabs and wait times. The more telling number may be what riders accomplish per trip. That is data almost no one else will ever have, and it is the real reason to watch Grok @bot.
What do you think? Leave me a comment.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
Tesla engineer confirms Cybercab update letting riders pull up rear and repeater cameras on demand.
Tesla is working on a Cybercab update that would let passengers pull up the vehicle’s rear and side cameras on demand, and the request came straight from a rider.
The exchange played out on X late Friday. Cybercab rider Dan Burkland shared photos of the two-seater’s cabin screen after an evening ride, praised the UI team’s work, and left one request: let riders open the rear and repeater cameras whenever they want, “especially for peace of mind.” Tesla UI software engineer Evan (@CarCoder) answered with two words: “In development.”
The Tesla UI team absolutely crushed it with the infotainment software. Nicely done @CarCoder!
One feature request: Allow folks to pull up the rear & repeater cameras on demand. This would be great especially for peace of mind. https://t.co/mNAOSLx6pE
— Dan Burkland (@DBurkland) October 10, 2026
The idea fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked since public rides began. Days after paid Cybercab service opened in Austin, Tesla sent riders a survey that asked them to rate the touchscreen, the app and the cabin, and to pick the features they wanted most. We reported on that survey in September, and a camera view is the kind of small software change Tesla can push quickly if riders keep asking.
It also speaks to something unique about the vehicle. With no steering wheel, no pedals and no driver, passengers have no mirror to check and no way to see behind them. The hardware is clearly built for camera awareness, from the repeater cameras to the rear camera. Letting a passenger look through those same cameras would give a nervous first time rider a way to confirm what is around the car.
The timing matters because the fleet is growing fast. Tesla’s Robotaxi account said on Saturday that more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days, and Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy named Dallas as the next city. More cars and more cities mean more people riding in a driverless vehicle for the first time, which is exactly when small trust features carry weight.
For now, the feature is confirmed only as in development. If Tesla follows its usual pattern with Cybercab software, riders could see it appear in a point release without any announcement, and Teslarati will watch for it.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s surprise addition to the X Takeover lineup has fans talking
Elon Musk will join Saturday’s X Takeover at Giga Texas for a live virtual interview.
Elon Musk will join X Takeover at Giga Texas on Saturday for a live virtual interview, according to Sawyer Merritt, who shared the news late Thursday. Musk will not be on stage in Austin. The conversation is set to stream for free on the @teslaownersSV account on X.
Organizers had kept expectations in check. In a September update, Tesla Owners Silicon Valley said Musk had appeared at the event twice before but was not promising a third appearance, even as fans hoped he would walk the Giga Texas grounds in person. A virtual spot matches 2024, when Musk gave a surprise interview of about an hour to the crowd in San Luis Obispo, as Teslarati reported at the time.
Wasn’t expecting this 🫡
— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) October 9, 2026
This year’s edition is a first in several ways. It is the first X Takeover held outside California and the first at a Tesla facility, with tickets selling out in eight days. Tesla provides the venue, but the event is produced independently by Tesla Owners Silicon Valley. The main event runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. CT, followed by a drone and light show at 9 p.m. Maye Musk is the keynote speaker, Franz von Holzhausen is set for a virtual keynote, and Nicki Minaj is the special guest. Joe Tegtmeyer, whose drone footage Teslarati used to track the Optimus factory steel frame at Giga Texas, is also on the speaker list.
Musk’s interview topics have not been revealed, but the backdrop is busy. Tesla doubled its Cybercab fleet in Austin in late September, and last week Musk explained why Robotaxi hours only moved from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m.. Merritt also reported Thursday that Texas DMV records now show 319 registered Cybercabs, up from 169. NHTSA’s deadline for Tesla’s sworn answers on Cybercab certification is October 30, and Tesla reports third quarter earnings on October 21.
Fans who cannot make it to Austin can watch the livestream on X. Musk tends to say more in unscripted settings than he does in prepared remarks, which is the reason this one is worth having open on Saturday.


