Lifestyle
Tesla Model 3 gets pushed to its limits in real-world battery range test
Ben Sullins of YouTube’s Teslanomics recently conducted a real-world battery range test for his Model 3. Starting with a full, 100% charge in San Diego, CA, the YouTuber went on a road trip headed to Las Vegas, NV in an attempt to see how long the electric car’s battery would last.
The Teslanomics host stated during the beginning of his real-world Tesla Model 3 battery range test that the distance from his starting point to Las Vegas was almost exactly 310 miles — the rated range for the electric car. Thus, if the vehicle’s battery lasts as long as it was estimated for, the car should run out of battery just outside Vegas.
It did not take long before it became evident that the vehicle was using up more range than expected. By the time the car was near Joshua Tree, CA, Ben’s Model 3 had an estimated 133 miles left. The vehicle had only been traveling for 139 miles by then. The Model 3 was mostly on Autopilot during the drive, traveling at highway speeds.
Ben and his companion in the Model 3 opted to stop for lunch at the Twentynine Palms Supercharger, though they did not plug the car in. As noted by the Teslanomics host, the charging station was roughly the halfway point between Las Vegas and San Diego. At that point, however, the Model 3 only had 90 miles left. The total distance traveled then was just 189 miles. Due to Phantom Drain, the Model 3’s range went down further as Ben had lunch, going down from 88 miles to 67 miles.
The Model 3 ultimately gave up after traveling 281.1 miles. As noted by the Teslanomics host, the electric car used up 75 kWh of power with an average usage of 266.8 Wh per mile.
Overall, Ben Sullins’ Model 3 did not hit Tesla’s estimated 310 miles of range for the electric car. As noted by the YouTuber, however, the modifications on his vehicle, such as Model 3 20-inch Turbine-style wheels, larger tires, and modified suspension, might have affected the endurance of the long-range electric car. This was echoed by several commenters on Ben’s video, many of whom noted that if Ben used his Model 3’s 18-inch Aero Wheels, which are designed to maximize range, the car could have lasted longer.
So far, Tesla is only producing the long-range RWD version of the Model 3. The standard-range version, which costs $35,000, is estimated to last 220 miles on a single charge. While Tesla is only manufacturing one variant of the Model 3, however, other versions of the car are set to be unveiled soon. Just recently, CEO Elon Musk stated on Twitter that the dual-motor AWD version of the electric car would probably be released July this year, after the company achieves a production rate of 5,000 Model 3 per week. Other options, such as white seats, will probably be available July as well.
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Watch Ben Sullins’ Model 3 real-world battery range test in the 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.
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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.
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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
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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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