Lifestyle
Tesla Model 3 faces Porsche 911 Carrera S in a gauntlet of intense races and tests
Teslas have been matched up with their high-performance gas-powered counterparts for a long time. In the latest test, the Model 3 Performance was pegged against the Porsche 911 Carrera S in three different quarter-mile drag races, a pair of “rolling start” races, and a brake test.
Comparing the two as far as specifications show, they should be pretty evenly matched on paper. The Model 3 Dual-Motor All-Wheel Drive Performance sports two electric motors and a 3.2 second 0-60 MPH time. The Rear-Wheel Drive 911 Carrera S, on the other hand, packs a 450hp, 3.0-liter 6-cylinder engine with a 0-60 MPH time of 3.5 seconds.
The test was performed by automotive YouTube channel carwow. It began with the three separate quarter-mile drag races, where the Model 3 won the first by completing the race in 11.8 seconds. The 911 Carerra S took 12.1 seconds to complete the race, narrowly losing to its electric counterpart.
However, the following two races would be won by the Porsche that completed the quarter-mile in 11.5 and 11.7 seconds. The Model 3 hit the 11.8-second mark in all three races, showing consistency in its performance.
The next two races required both vehicles to be rolling at 50 MPH and the first to reach 110 MPH would be considered the victor. The Model 3 Performance managed to win both of these races due to its exceptional acceleration rate. The Porsche was only able to surpass the Tesla when the vehicles were reaching speeds that were exceeding 125 MPH because the 911 Carrera S simply holds a higher top speed of 200 MPH. The Model 3 tops out at 162 MPH.
Finally, the two vehicles competed in a brake test to determine the car that could stop the quickest when traveling fast. The two drivers agreed to drive at 70 MPH and when each car crossed the finish line, the drivers would show the vehicles down until they reached a complete stop.
The results of this test were the toughest to judge as both cars stopped at almost identical distances. This indicates the Model 3’s braking system performs as well as a flagship high-performance vehicle. Interestingly enough, the Model 3’s braking performance was criticized by Consumer Reports in 2018. Tesla has evidently improved in the past two years as the car stopped in a safe and controlled fashion.
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The six tests showed the two vehicles were pretty similar in performance measurements. With the braking assessment being a tie, the Tesla won 3-2 in the six tests and proved to be the superior vehicle. The Tesla Model 3 Performance is also half of the cost, only setting customers back $56,990, while the Coupe variant of the 911 Carrera S runs for $113,300.
The Model 3 has regularly outperformed some of the most notable performance cars in the world, including the Lamborghini Huracan and the Ferrari F12. The winning track record of the Model 3 shows great performance does not have to cost six-figures, nor does it have to come from an internal combustion engine.
You can watch carwow‘s tests between the Model 3 Performance and 911 Carrera S 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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