Lifestyle
Tesla Model S, X P100D duo takes on superbike, supercars in drag race
A team comprised of two Tesla Model S P100D and one Tesla Model X P100D recently teamed up to battle a series of supercars and a superbike in a drag race.
The multi-class drag race was organized and shared on YouTube by Tesla Owners Italia. Apart from the two Model S P100D and the Model X P100D, the race also included supercars such as the Porsche 911 GT3, the Nissan GT-R, the Lotus Evora, and the Bentley Bentayga. As icing on the cake, a Ducati Panigale, one of the most iconic superbikes currently available in the market, was also included in the race.
The opponents of the Tesla team were no pushovers. The Porsche 911 GT3 boasts roughly 500 hp of power at 8250 rpm, thanks to its flat-six engine. The Nissan GT-R lives up to its Godzilla moniker, with its 3.8-liter twin-turbo V6 that makes 656 hp at 6800 rpm. The Lotus Evora is no slouch, either, with its 3.5-liter 24-valve V6 engine. Lastly, the Ducati Panigale is a powerhouse bike, with its 2018 iteration being equipped with a 1,103 cc liquid-cooled V4 engine.
As could be seen in the video of the race, the overall winner was ultimately the Ducati Panigale, which finished the race at 9.79 seconds. Less than a second after that was one of the Model S P100D, with a time of 10.86 seconds. The Model X P100D, one of two SUVs in the race, soundly beat its rival, the Bentley Bentayga (11.92 seconds), coming in at fifth with a time of 11.74 seconds. The Lotus Evora finished last, with a time of 13.42 seconds.
Overall, the instant torque provided by the Tesla team’s electric motors played a valuable part in giving the vehicles an early lead in the race. By the time cars such as the Porsche 911 GT3 (11.49 seconds) and the Nissan GT-R (11.60 seconds) hit their stride, the Model S P100D was already close to finishing its run.
The Tesla Model S P100D and the Model X P100D might not be specifically made for the track or the drag strip, but the vehicles themselves perform wonders in races. Back in February alone, the Tesla Model X P100D humiliated one of the fastest-accelerating ICE SUVs in the market today — the Hellcat-powered Jeep Trackhawk. During that particular bout, the Model X P100D walked all over its competitor, shooting off the line and finishing the drag race ahead of the Dodge-made ICE SUV.
Even the Model 3, Tesla’s least powerful vehicle in the company’s current lineup, is proving to be a notable force in drag races as well. Last month, we covered an informal race between the Model 3 and the Chevy Bolt. As could be seen in that particular battle, the Model 3 completely overwhelmed the Bolt in a straight line, leaving it completely in the dust. A Pontiac G8 GT with a 6.0-liter OHV V8 did not fare better either, with the gas-guzzling car falling behind the Model 3 in a street race.
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Watch Tesla Owners Italia’s Model S and X vs. Supercars and Superbike 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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