Lifestyle
Tesla Model 3 Performance outruns 2018 Chevy Camaro SS in drag race duel
The Model 3 Performance might be Tesla’s most affordable P-branded vehicle to date, but the electric sedan still packs a lot of firepower. Unlike its more expensive siblings — the Model S P100D and the Model X P100D — the Model 3 Performance does not have a special “Ludicrous Mode” setting that optimizes it for straight-line launches. Instead, the high-performance midsize electric sedan makes do with its raw power.
As previous races involving the Model 3 Performance would show, though, even the raw power from the car’s dual motors is enough to make the vehicle a fierce competitor in quarter-mile races, and even more so in 1/8-mile runs. Thanks to the Model 3 Performance’s dual motors, which produce a combined 450 hp and 471 lb-ft of instant torque, the electric sedan is capable of propelling itself from 0-60 mph in just 3.3 seconds (Tesla’s initial estimates for the vehicle tagged it with a more conservative zero to 60 time of 3.5 seconds).
The raw power of the Model 3 Performance was put on display during a brief drag battle with a 2018 Chevrolet Camaro SS last month. A video of the race was posted on YouTube by SSDracer (the owner of the Camaro SS), who noted that he and the electric sedan battled it out in a 1/8-mile run. In the video’s description, the Camaro SS owner noted that his muscle car was completely stock during the race, and that he had an extra passenger. Based on the footage of the race, the Model 3 Performance also appeared to be completely stock.
The 2018 Chevrolet Camaro SS is the farthest thing from a slow vehicle. Powered by a 6.2-liter LT1 V8 engine that produces 455 horsepower and 455 lb-ft of torque, and paired with an 8-speed automatic transmission, the Camaro SS is capable of sprinting from 0-60 mph in 4.0 seconds flat. Just like the Model 3 Performance, the Chevrolet Camaro SS is also equipped with a special Track Mode, which optimizes the vehicle for closed circuit driving. With its Track Mode enabled, Chevrolet’s official website notes that drivers of the Camaro SS would be able to adjust their vehicles’ “suspension, throttle progression, shift feel, steering calibration, exhaust sound, and even available interior spectrum lighting” for the ultimate track experience.
Ultimately, though, even the Camaro SS’ roaring 6.2-liter LT1 V8 engine proved inadequate to topple the high-performance electric sedan. Similar to how the Model 3 Performance outran the downright frightening Dodge Demon in a previous 1/8-mile race, the electric car immediately took the lead over the Camaro SS as soon as the race started. The Tesla just continued pulling after that, leaving the muscle car behind.
In the comments section of his video, the Camaro SS owner noted that the Model 3 Performance completed the run in 7.8 seconds, while his vehicle crossed the 1/8-mile mark in 8.4 seconds. Both cars were reportedly traveling at around 91 mph when the race ended. While responding to a commenter who stated that it would have been better if the Camaro SS won, the muscle car owner lightly noted that the results of the race might have been different in the quarter mile, though “AWD is hard to beat.”
The impressive capabilities of the Tesla Model 3 Performance would soon be experienced by Tesla owners beyond North America, as the electric car maker is now pushing to deliver the vehicle to foreign markets. This first quarter, Tesla is aiming to start deliveries of the Model 3 Performance and the Long Range AWD variant to the international market, starting with Europe and China.
-
Watch the Model 3 Performance’s 1/8-mile duel with a 2018 Chevrolet Camaro SS in the video below.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
The Boring Company’s new tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units.
The Boring Company just introduced a new piece of hardware, and it runs on parts pulled straight from a Tesla showroom. Liner Truck 3, unveiled in a post from the tunneling company’s official X account, is an all electric vehicle built around Tesla Model 3 battery packs and drive units, purpose built to move concrete tunnel segments to the boring machine face without a single person underground.
Introducing Liner Truck 3 — our latest fully electric tunnel vehicle.
– Tesla Model 3 battery and drive units
– Transports 22,000+ lb of concrete segments to the boring machine
– 28 miles of range
– 12 mph max operating speed
– Remotely piloted from Global OCC in Texas, with… pic.twitter.com/XB7FgSXnpy— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) August 7, 2026
The job itself is unglamorous but critical. Each precast segment run weighs more than 22,000 pounds, roughly the load of a full cement mixer, and Liner Truck 3 hauls that weight repeatedly between the surface staging area and wherever the Prufrock machine happens to be cutting.
The Boring Company said Liner Truck 3 is piloted remotely out of its Global Operations Control Center in Texas, extending the Zero-People-In-Tunnel approach the company has spent years building toward. An earlier version of a ZPIT liner truck was already tested at the company’s Bastrop, Texas research tunnels, and a factory tour released last month showed an employee flying a fully loaded liner truck with a PlayStation controller. Liner Truck 3 looks like the production version of that same idea, cleaned up and pushed into daily use.
The timing lines up with a company digging in more places than it ever has before. The Boring Company now has multiple Prufrock machines active or arriving in Nashville, where Music City Loop construction has been accelerating since February, and its Vegas Loop network keeps adding tunnel mileage on a near monthly basis. Every one of those projects depends on getting concrete segments to the cutting face fast enough to keep the boring machine from idling, which is exactly the bottleneck Liner Truck 3 is designed to remove.
-
It also reinforces something Tesla owners have watched happen gradually across Musk’s companies: passenger car hardware finding a second life in heavy equipment. Model 3 drive units already move people through the Vegas Loop, and now the same components are hauling concrete underground in Nashville and wherever The Boring Company digs next. Whether that kind of component reuse extends further into TBC’s equipment lineup, or into other Musk owned industrial hardware, is the next thing worth watching.
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.
-
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most
