Lifestyle
Tesla Model 3 Performance hits 161.5 mph in high-speed track test
A few things are guaranteed in life: Death, taxes, and when the top speed of a Tesla gets an increase, there will be Tesla drivers seeking the opportunity to test it out.
During a visit to Transport Canada’s test facility and automotive research center in Blainville, Quebec, Ian Pavelko of XAutoWorld and Trevor Page of Tesla Owners Online had the opportunity to test a Model 3 Performance on the facility’s 4 mile-long (6.5 km) high speed track. Their result was successfully reaching 161.5 mph (260 km/h), nearly the rated maximum of the car’s 162 mph (261 km/h) before Ian opted to pull back on the throttle. The run started with 52% state-of-charge and used about 10% of the battery over the course of the test, according to Page.
The Model 3 Performance (along with all other Model 3 variants) received several firmware upgrades in February of this year, and one of the benefits was increasing its top speed from 155 mph (250 km/h) to 162 mph (261 km/h). The increase came alongside the announcement of the $35,000 Model 3 variant which has since taken a back seat to the Standard Range Plus with Partial Premium Interior as a ‘sweet spot’ of what Tesla customers typically order.
“We’d electronically limited the Model 3 Performance to 155 mph. That was not a physical limit but an electronic limit. After a lot of testing, we now feel we can increase that limit by 10 km/h or 7 mph, and that just ends up being an rpm increase in the motors. The two motors just spin faster. I think they’re going somewhere along the lines of 19,000 rpm,” explained CEO Elon Musk during a call with the press following Tesla’s announcement of the $35,000 Model 3.
Transport Canada’s test facility has 15 miles (25 km) of test tracks, including a low-speed oval, a high-speed oval, and a dirt road. “We can reproduce any surface condition such as rain, snow, ice and off-road depending on the season,” the facility’s website states. The area is run by PMG technologies and is dedicated to testing and researching all areas of transport, not simply race track performance.
Pavelko and Page’s high speed track rental for their runs, which included tire testing, reportedly cost around $1200 for a half-day session. Aside from nearly achieving the 162 mph top speed in their vehicle (Pavelko’s Model 3 named Magneto), some further knowledge was gained about its track performance.
The Tesla Model 3 Performance is known for its track performance, and many owners put their vehicles to the test in private events either for competitive purposes or just for fun. One event just for Tesla owners called Tesla Corsa was created to give owners the opportunity to experience the all-electric performance benefits of their vehicles in a safe, controlled environment. Of course, various Tesla models also regularly make headlines crushing gas-powered lineups such as the BMW M3. Top Gear magazine’s May edition famously declared that “Electric Beats Petrol” as a result of their own track and performance tests of the BMW M3 vs. the Tesla Model 3 Performance.
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Watch Pavelko’s and Page’s Model 3 Performance test track video below:
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.
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.
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