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Tesla Model 3 completely overwhelms Chevy Bolt in drag race

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8 years ago

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A Tesla Model 3 and an all-electric Chevy Bolt recently battled on the streets of Moscow. The short race, which was conducted on an open road by the Moscow Tesla Club, provided a good glimpse of the difference in the performance of both vehicles. As it turns out, the Model 3 completely outclasses its GM-made rival.

The Chevy Bolt, rebadged and sold in the European market as the Opel Ampera-E, is GM’s entry into the same segment as the Model 3. The two vehicles have been extensively compared in the past, considering that on paper, the base Model 3 and the Bolt EV were reasonably matched. The Bolt, after all, boasts decent performance and range that is comparable to Tesla’s vehicles.

Reviews of the Chevy Bolt have been highly favorable, with publications such as Car & Driver dubbing the 2018 variant of the electric car as a “pioneer among electric cars thanks to its affordability, practicality, and long driving range.” Equipped with a 60 kWh battery pack and a front-mounted electric motor, the Bolt is capable of sprinting from 0-60 mph in as little as 6.5 seconds, far quicker than other electric cars such as the Nissan Leaf and the Toyota Prius Prime. The Bolt’s EPA-rated all-electric range of 238 miles is also considered as one of the car’s most attractive features.

While it is easy to see that the Bolt is a superior vehicle compared to competitors such as the Leaf and the Prius Prime, the Model 3 is an entirely different animal. The Model 3 has far more modest specs than its supercar-dominating siblings like the Model S and Model X; with Tesla only selling the RWD, long-range version of the vehicle today. This particular variant is equipped with a range of 310 miles and a rated 0-60 mph time of 5.1 seconds.

As observed by YouTube’s DragTimes, however, the Model 3 is actually much faster than what Tesla claims. Brooks, the owner of the channel, managed to record the mass market compact electric sedan going from 0-60 mph in as little as 4.6 seconds. As we noted in a previous report, the Model 3 also defeated a V8-powered Pontiac G8 GT in a drag race, with the electric car dominating its ICE-based rival. 

As could be seen in the video from the Moscow Tesla Club through the KindelTech YouTube channel, the Chevy Bolt is not even in the same ballpark as the Model 3 when it comes to straight-line performance. The two vehicles briefly stopped to align themselves before flooring their accelerator pedals, but as soon as the race began, it was immediately clear which electric car was faster. From the start of the race, the Model 3 pulled away from the Chevy Bolt, and then it just kept going, and going.

Just a few seconds into the race, the Model 3 could be seen a few car lengths’ ahead of the Chevy Bolt EV. As noted by KindelTech, they recorded the Model 3’s 0-100 km/h (0-62 mph) time at 5.7 seconds and the Chevy Bolt’s 0-100 km/h run at 7.3 seconds. Interestingly, the Model 3 in this recent race did not even perform as fast the electric car in DragTimes’ test. Regardless of this, the Model 3 in the recent race still outclassed the GM-made electric car.

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Watch the Model 3 vs. Chevy Bolt EV race below. 

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Simon is an experienced automotive reporter with a passion for electric cars and clean energy. Fascinated by the world envisioned by Elon Musk, he hopes to make it to Mars (at least as a tourist) someday. For stories or tips--or even to just say a simple hello--send a message to his email, simon@teslarati.com or his handle on X, @ResidentSponge.

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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.

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2 days ago

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July 29, 2026

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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’s answer to Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey got way more specific

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1 week ago

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July 23, 2026

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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.


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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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.

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1 week ago

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July 22, 2026

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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.

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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