Lifestyle
Tesla Model 3 performance put to the test on Laguna Seca raceway
The Tesla Model 3 got pushed to its limits at the world famous Laguna Seca Raceway recently, depicting what could very well be the electric car’s first real-world high-performance test.
Model 3 owner Matt Crowley decided to take his electric car to the Laguna Seca Raceway after his track car, a Porsche Cayman GT4, ended up in the shop for repairs before his scheduled run.
As noted by Crowley in his video description, his Model 3 was almost completely stock, with the electric car getting improved handling by way of 1.5-inch ‘moderate’ dual rate performance springs from Tesla aftermarket tuner Unplugged Performance.
In a post on the Tesla Motors Club, Crowley admitted that he expected the Model 3 to run full power for about two laps before the electric car’s software limits its performance. Much to Crowley’s surprise, however, the Model 3 ran nine laps (his entire session) without slowing down.
“The first session of the day had NO battery power limitations! Nine laps without slowing down! Yes!”
The fact that the Model 3 was able to handle nine laps on a racetrack without the car’s software limiting its performance is noteworthy. The Model S’ track performance, after all, has been limited greatly by the car’s software, as noted by professional race car driver Robb Holland when he took the full-sized electric sedan around the 12.9-mile Nurburgring.
Teslarati’s “48” Model S race car at Laguna Seca
During the nine laps that he ran on the Laguna Seca Raceway, Crowley noted that he used up 135 miles worth of range on his Model 3. His best lap was a conservative 1:57.50, which, according to rankings on FastestLaps.com, places it within the same range as a Porsche 911 Carrera (1:54.22) and Jeremy Clarkson’s Honda NSX (1:57.00), which the veteran auto host drove on Top Gear Season 7 Episode 6.
While the Model 3 managed to last Crowley’s entire Laguna Seca session without the car limiting its power, the vehicle’s brakes were compromised during the track session. According to Crowley, the car’s brake pads were completely used up by the time he was on his fourth lap. Determined to test his car’s capabilities, however, the Tesla enthusiast opted to continue pushing his Model 3, using the car’s regenerative braking to compensate for the vehicle’s lack of brake pads.
Overall, Crowley believes that if he had a better set of brakes, or if he had better driving skills, he could have easily managed to set a better lap time for his Model 3. The Tesla enthusiast asserted, however, that the car was perfectly balanced and its handling was superb during the entire track session.
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As we noted in a previous report, Tesla appears to be steadily hitting its stride with the production of the Model 3, delivering an estimated 4,360 units from January to February, making it the best-selling electric car in the United States in the year so far. Tesla seems to be preparing for the rollout of the dual-motor Model 3 as well, with an AWD variant of the mass market compact electric car spotted in the wild last week.
Watch Crowley’s Laguna Seca run on his Tesla Model 3 below.
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Firmware
Tesla unlocks in-car web conferencing to extend Google Meet, Teams and beyond
Tesla’s Summer Update lets owners join Google Meet, Teams, and Discord calls via cabin camera.
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, which just began rolling out to customer vehicles, now links the built-in web browser with the in-cabin camera feed and microphone input, thereby letting owners join video calls on nearly any browser-based service instead of just Zoom.
The change appears in Tesla’s own release notes for software version 2026.26 under “Web Browser,” which states that the vehicle can now use its interior camera and cabin microphone when a website requests access, with permission granted the same way a desktop browser handles it. As NotATeslaApp notes, this feature opens the door to Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and other webcam-enabled sites to activate the in-car cabin-facing camera. The feed automatically crops and zooms to center the driver in frame.
Tesla has offered in-car video calling before, but only through a dedicated Zoom app that launched at the end of 2022, a stripped-down browser preloaded with Zoom’s own web client and gated behind Premium Connectivity. Opening the full browser to any camera-requesting site removes that walled garden. Elon Musk first called video conferencing “definitely a future feature” back in 2020, when the pandemic pushed remote meetings into daily life, so this update effectively finishes something Tesla has been promising for six years.
Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features
The feature keeps the same restrictions that applied to Zoom on Tesla vehicles. It only works while the car is parked; shifting into Drive disables the camera feed, according to the release notes. It is also limited to vehicles running Tesla’s AMD Ryzen infotainment hardware, meaning older Intel-based Model S and Model X units, along with early Model 3 and Model Y builds, don’t get it.
Turning the browser into a general entry point for the in-cabin camera, rather than routing everything through one local app, widens the number of third-party sites that can ask for access, even though Tesla’s permission prompt.
With the Summer update only days into its rollout, be sure to stay with us on TikTok and X to see the latest video demonstrations.
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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.
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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
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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.
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