Lifestyle
Tesla Model 3 Performance dominates Ford Mustang GT twice in double drag race
The Model 3 Performance is Tesla’s first track-capable vehicle. Designed to dominate high-performance sedans like the BMW M3 around a racecourse, the Model 3 Performance is built to be nimble around corners and lightning-quick when accelerating from a straight line.
What’s quite ironic about the Model 3 Performance is that it is not the quickest among Tesla’s offerings in straight-line races. Granted, the electric car is incredibly quick with a 0-60 mph time of 3.5 seconds (Tesla has since updated its specs to 3.3 seconds) and a top speed of 155 mph from its dual electric motors that provide a combined 450 hp and 471 lb-ft of torque, but it’s still outgunned by its larger P-branded siblings — the Model S P100D and the Model X P100D — in straight-line acceleration.
Despite not being Tesla’s quickest straight-line car, the Model 3 Performance is nonetheless developing a reputation for being a formidable force on the quarter-mile. With its subtle design cues, the Model 3 Performance is the perfect sleeper vehicle, particularly since the car’s other variants, such as the Mid Range RWD and the Long Range RWD, are a lot tamer with their 0-60 mph times of 5.6 seconds and 5.1 seconds, respectively.
Once such vehicle recently made an appearance in a quarter-mile meet at the Street Nights at New England Dragway, NH. The Model 3 Performance did not seem to have its carbon fiber spoiler and rear badging installed, though its red brake calipers were visible. A video of the Model 3 Performance’s race was uploaded on the Drag Racing and Car Stuff YouTube channel, where it was featured engaging a Ford Mustang GT in a double drag race.
The racing-themed YouTube channel did not list the year model of the Mustang GT that competed against the Model 3 Performance, but design cues from the vehicle suggest that it was a 2016 Mustang GT S550, an all-American front-engined RWD mass of muscle equipped with a 5.0-liter DOHC 32-valve V8 engine that produces 435-hp and 400 lb-ft of torque. In true muscle car tradition, the 2016 Mustang GT came with a manual transmission, which gave drivers full control.
The Model 3 Performance and the Mustang GT battled each other twice, and in both rounds, the electric-powered machine from Silicon Valley dominated the fossil fuel-powered beast from Detroit. The electric car’s instant torque immediately gave it an advantage in the first race, allowing it to complete the run in 11.86 seconds while traveling at 113.16 mph, faster than the Mustang GT’s 13.03 seconds and 110.26 mph pass. The second bout ended with the same results, with the Model 3 Performance hitting the quarter-mile mark in 11.92 seconds at 113.86 mph. The Mustang GT completed the race in 13.18 seconds at 109.27 mph.
What’s rather remarkable is that the Model 3 Performance is bound to get better with time. As of date, the vehicles are only shipping with stock software, and are winning drag races with raw power. In a recent announcement on Twitter, Elon Musk noted that Track Mode, a feature which the CEO fondly describes as an “expert user mode” for the Model 3 Performance, will be rolling out soon. What’s more, Elon Musk also announced that Track Mode would be enabled on all Model 3 Performance cars once the update gets released.
We will enable track mode for all performance cars
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 27, 2018
With Track Mode enabled, and with other, possible future updates (a Ludicrous Mode upgrade, perhaps?), the Model 3 Performance has all the makings of a monster on both drag strips and racecourses.
Watch the Model 3 Performance battle a Ford Mustang GT twice in the video below.
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.
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.
Tailgate Utility Trackhttps://t.co/PCAYXlFBvS pic.twitter.com/sCV2NVxf1W
— Cybertruck (@cybertruck) September 3, 2026
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.
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.
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.
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.
But we do need to act much faster than that if people still want to live where the beach is today. We have about 50 years or so to take action, which should be more than enough time for the space satellites to solve any heating problems. https://t.co/xhrVQALwQw
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 30, 2026
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.
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.
Lifestyle
Police sergeant recounts his Neuralink journey with Elon Musk’s brain chip
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.
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.
