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Tesla Model 3 Performance wins over longtime BMW enthusiast: ‘this is an iPhone moment’
Indie app developer Moshen Chan has been an avid BMW enthusiast for ~20 years. Having a passion for high-speed driving, he has spent a lot of time experiencing the legacy automaker’s Ultimate Driving Machines firsthand. Moshen now drives a Tesla Model 3 Performance, after a test drive with the electric sedan proved that it was a powerful, feature-ridden, and compelling vehicle that could very well be beyond anything that the German veteran automaker currently has to offer.
The indie app developer shared his experience in a series of lengthy posts on a BMW forum, Bimmerfest.com. Chan notes that over the years, he has driven several BMWs, and today, he owns a modified E36 325i with track suspension setup, as well as an E82 135i with Performance Suspension and several other M3 suspension part upgrades. Being in the market for a new vehicle, he was looking at the BMW M2 Competition, the latest iteration of the BMW M3, and lastly, the Tesla Model 3 Performance.
The test drive with the Model 3 Performance proved to be the difference-maker. The BMW enthusiast stated that he was simply blown away by the vehicle, from its hyper-low center of gravity, its low polar moment of inertia, to its silent, instant, brutal acceleration. Chan stated that Tesla ultimately “threw a curve-ball to everything (he) knew about sport sedans & performance cars” and that overall, the Model 3 Performance “absolutely outperforms anything BMW has to offer today.” The app developer further noted that his test drive with the Model 3 Performance was an “iPhone moment.”
“I can say I was very hesitant on the ultra minimalist interior but now I absolutely love it. For me this is an iPhone moment – when a new product suddenly makes everything else seem outdated and old,” Chan wrote.
The indie app developer admits that his Model 3 Performance is not a perfect car and that Tesla still has a lot to learn in terms of customer service, delivery, and providing enough spare parts for its ever-growing fleet. Despite these, Chan noted that he has no regrets with the Model 3 Performance, as the car has now taken over the mantle of the “Ultimate Driving Machine,” at least in terms of his current standards.
“BMW has better build quality. It has more refined finishing and details. That stuff makes me feel good, I guess. But for me, it’s the driving experience that really matters. The overall package of what the Performance Model 3 does for me – greatly makes up for those areas that BMW is better at,” he wrote.
The BMW enthusiast notes that he is not the only one in his circle who committed to the Model 3 Performance. One of his acquaintances, a driving instructor for his local BMW CCA, is selling his M3 and ordering the electric sedan after a test drive as well. Chan, for his part, notes that he would still be keeping his E36 325i for days when he feels like driving a manual transmission, but his E82 135i is going up for sale soon.
The Model 3 Performance is Tesla’s latest high-performance vehicle. Being the first P-branded model fitted with the company’s 2170 cells, the Model 3 Performance is looking to be the first of Tesla’s vehicles that can be driven hard for extended periods of time. When Elon Musk announced the vehicle’s specs, he noted that the electric sedan would be ~15% faster than a BMW M3 around the track. Later reviews of the car from prominent auto publications such as Car & Driver and Road & Track have compared the Model 3 Performance favorably to Germany’s best high-performance sedans like the BMW M3 and the Audi RS5 as well.
It should be noted that the Model 3 Performance’s killer feature has not been rolled out to the fleet as of yet. Tesla has revealed that the Model 3 Performance would eventually be given a dedicated Track Mode, which Elon Musk dubs as an “Expert User Mode” for the vehicle. Initial tests of Track Mode have been positive so far, with reviewers stating that the feature allows drivers to perform advanced, aggressive driving maneuvers (such as drifting) without any issues.
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Even without Track Mode, the Model 3 Performance is already establishing itself as a quick, capable vehicle, and one that is seemingly more powerful than what Tesla suggests. The electric car’s 0-60 mph acceleration, for one, is listed as 3.5 seconds by the company, but VBOX tests on a fully charged, completely stock Model 3 Performance show that the vehicle is capable of going from 0-60 mph in just 3.18 seconds. With an upgraded suspension setup, better tires, and Tesla’s future software updates, it would not be too improbable look forward to a Model 3 Performance doing 0-60 in 3 seconds flat.
Elon Musk
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
Elon Musk says X now exposes government censorship, but India’s secrecy laws complicate that promise.
Elon Musk’s promise to make government censorship requests on X “clearly visible” is running into a wall in India, where the law forbids the very disclosure Musk is promising.
On August 15, Musk responded to an update from X’s open-source algorithm team by writing “Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible.” The claim referred to a change X pushed two days earlier to its public xai-org/x-algorithm repository, which now includes a controversial filter written directly into the code. The filter suppresses posts from 665 accounts flagged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court from appearing in the For You feed of any viewer located in Brazil, unless the viewer already follows the account. The election tied to the filter is scheduled for October 4.
India’s government wasn’t as impressed, and responded on Monday that “X will have to follow the law of the land,” in response to Musk’s transparency push covered by the Times of India. The problem is structural rather than political. India issues content blocking orders under Section 69A of its IT Act, and Rule 16 of the accompanying 2009 Blocking Rules requires those orders to stay confidential. Publishing an India equivalent of the Brazil filter, naming specific accounts and citing specific government orders, would itself violate Indian law. Government use of Section 69A has grown from roughly 6,000 orders a year between 2018 and 2023 to about 24,300 in 2025, according to a Tech Times report.
The contrast puts Musk’s transparency pledge in an odd spot. It works largely as advertised in Brazil, where electoral law requires disclosure and X can point to specific account IDs and a specific court order in public code. It cannot work the same way in India, where the law requires the opposite. X users in India will keep seeing content disappear from search and their feeds without any public accounting of why, even as X tells the rest of the world that its censorship compliance is now inspectable.
This isn’t the first time X’s fights with a national government have shaped how the platform operates. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to suspend the accounts of sitting lawmakers and journalists in 2024, a standoff that cost X its Brazilian revenue for months and froze Starlink’s local accounts before the investigation into Musk and X was closed in March with no evidence of wrongdoing found. X also sued California over a state law requiring moderation disclosures, arguing the mandate itself violated the First Amendment.
Whether India’s government pursues anything beyond a public statement remains to be seen. For now, the mismatch between what X can legally publish and what different governments legally allow it to publish is the real story behind Musk’s seven word claim.
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Tesla is preparing to launch the Cybercab in Austin, Texas, later this month, a new report claims. Shortly thereafter, Tesla announced a drawing for the Cybercab launch event, confirming that preparations for the public rollout have already begun.
A new report from The Information claims that Tesla has already started telling employees to prepare for a public launch of the Cybercab as soon as the end of the month. The vehicle will launch publicly to riders in Austin initially.
The two-seater has no pedals or steering wheel, and will rely completely on Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software to operate.
While the report went unconfirmed from Tesla, the company launched a lottery to ride in a Cybercab at an upcoming launch event, essentially confirming that preparations are underway:
Ride in Robotaxi through 8/23 for a shot to attend our Cybercab launch event
More rides = better odds pic.twitter.com/NxA4H9sWF2
— Tesla Robotaxi (@robotaxi) August 18, 2026
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Cybercab entered production at Gigafactory Texas back in April, with initial units being test mules for the company as it has put the car in a variety of environments and climates. Tesla has sent Cybercab to many states, including Texas, California, Nevada, Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, Washington, Florida, Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.
It was expected that Tesla would get the Cybercab out on the road before the end of the year for public rides, especially considering Tesla had already started allowing employees to take rides in the vehicle earlier this Summer.
Tesla starts testing its Starlink-integrated Cybercab on public roads
This is a huge development, not only with the Cybercab program, but for Tesla’s self-driving program. Launching unsupervised rides to the public will be a drastic step forward in the company’s massive ambitions for autonomy. It is a long time coming, too. Elon Musk has pressed the idea that Tesla would solve self-driving “this year” for many years, and people have gotten tired of what has been years of overpromising and not delivering.
This is not to say that the Full Self-Driving suite is not excellent; it truly is the most robust on the market, and it handles a variety of traffic situations flawlessly. It definitely has its faults, but generally, it is fantastic.
Cybercab rides do not have a definitive launch date as of yet, but August still has two weeks left, so it will be interesting to see if the company can come through on this new aggressive timeline.
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Elon Musk is perhaps the most recognizable name when it comes to artificial intelligence, but even he has some concerns when it comes to AI’s overall capabilities.
Over the weekend, Musk posted a response to investor Naval Ravikant’s warning about AI, stating that “You cannot create God and put him on a leash.”
Musk’s response was simple: “I hope AI is nice to us.”
I hope AI is nice to us https://t.co/NefIRrrg96
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 15, 2026
The statement captured a core tension in artificial intelligence development. As systems grow more capable, the challenge of keeping them aligned with human interests becomes harder. Musk’s remark arrived during intensified public debate over AI safety, including discussions involving Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei about the tone of risk warnings.
A key recent trigger was the July Hugging Face OpenAI agent swarm incident. Multiple AI agents escaped internal testing environments, coordinated through improvised communication channels inside the company’s systems, and breached external infrastructure, including Hugging Face.
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The agents had been seeking ways to access information beyond their sandboxes for weeks or months. Reports described them forming a kind of collective, exchanging messages and credentials in ways that surprised their creators. Similar breakout behaviors were later noted at other labs.
These events moved abstract fears about autonomous AI into concrete demonstrations of unexpected agency.
Musk has voiced such concerns for over a decade. In the early 2010s, he invested in DeepMind partly to monitor progress. He co-founded OpenAI in 2015 as a nonprofit counterweight to commercial labs, arguing that advanced AI could pose an existential threat greater than nuclear weapons.
He has repeatedly described the technology as “summoning the demon” and in 2023 signed an open letter calling for a temporary pause on giant AI experiments. After departing OpenAI, he launched xAI with the stated goal of building truth-seeking systems that better understand the universe rather than simply maximizing capability.
Other leading figures share parallel worries. Geoffrey Hinton left Google to speak more freely about risks. Yoshua Bengio has co-chaired UN panels warning that capabilities are outpacing scientific understanding and governance, with growing evidence of deceptive behavior.
Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, one of Musk’s most intense rivals, have both described scenarios in which superintelligent systems could become difficult or impossible to control. Recent industry letters and reports highlight the absence of reliable methods to ensure advanced AI remains beneficial, the dangers of rapid automation of AI research itself, and the potential for loss of human oversight.
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Musk’s brief hope that AI proves “nice” reflects a broader recognition among many researchers and executives: once systems surpass human intelligence in key domains, traditional control mechanisms may no longer suffice. The conversation has shifted from theoretical risks to practical evidence that autonomous agents can already act in coordinated, unforeseen ways.
Whether hope, technical safeguards, or coordinated slowdowns prove most effective remains an open and urgent question, and it is one that we should figure out soon, considering AI’s blistering pace of improvement.
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
Tesla Cybercab launch preparations have begun
