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Tesla Model S P100D honors rematch against Dodge Demon in drag battle

[Credit: DragTimes/YouTube]

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Two drag monsters — the Tesla Model S P100D and the Dodge Demon — are back, and they just had a 1/4-mile drag race rematch.

The last time the Tesla Model S P100D battled the Dodge Challenger SRT Demon, the electric car walked all over the gas-guzzling muscle car. The video, uploaded by YouTube’s DragTimes, was quite painful to watch for ICE fans, considering that the 808 horsepower beast shredded its racing slicks and was utterly decimated by the P100D in both drag and rolling races

This time around, however, the Dodge Demon is back with tires that can actually grip the road. Instead of the Hoosier Slicks in the previous bout, the Demon’s driver opted to equip the muscle car with stock OEM drag radials that came with the vehicle.

On paper, the Dodge Demon is a gas-burning muscle car that appears to be specifically designed to take down the Model S P100D. The monster of a car is equipped with a 6.2-liter Supercharged V8 engine that produces 808 hp. The RWD car is also equipped with an 8-speed automatic transmission. When it was unveiled last year, Dodge made it a point to declare the Demon as the “quickest production car” in the world, with a 0-60 mph time of 2.1 seconds — a time that dethrones the Tesla Model S P100D’s 2.28-second 0-60 time.

Dodge went above and beyond when it designed the Demon. The result of a two-year campaign by a select team of 25 Dodge engineers, everything about the muscle car is designed to make it go fast in a straight line. Dodge was so keen on saving weight off the vehicle that the base Demon does not even have a passenger seat (one can be purchased for an extra $1, but the weight of the extra seat will affect the car’s speed). Under the right circumstances, though, the Dodge Demon is definitely, well, a Demon on the track.

On the other hand, the Tesla Model S P100D is a full-sized electric sedan that just happens to be ridiculously (or more accurately, Ludicrously) fast. Beating out supercars in the quarter-mile, the Model S P100D’s 920 ft-lbs of torque and 588 hp to its wheels allow the car to launch incredibly hard from a dead stop. The electric car’s AWD drivetrain also helps it stay planted on the ground.

As could be seen in DragTimes’ Model S P100D vs. Dodge Demon 1/4-mile rematch, the ICE monster still falls behind the electric car in a standing drag race. Brooks, the host of the YouTube channel, did multiple standing drag races, and in each one, the Dodge Demon ended up several car lengths behind the Model S P100D. The fourth race, conducted after the P100D suffered power limiting as a result of overheating its batteries, fared better for the Demon.

Fortunately for the Demon, it was able to beat the Tesla in a rolling race this time around. As noted by Brooks, however, it still took quite some time before the Dodge Demon caught up and overtook the electric car.

Watch the Tesla Model S P100D vs. Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 1/4-mile rematch in the video 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 Robotaxi gets a massive upgrade in Nevada

Nevada regulators just approved a massive expansion of Tesla’s robotaxi fleet across the entire county.

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Concept art of a Tesla Cybercab in Las Vegas Strip as rendered via Grok

Tesla’s robotaxi footprint in Nevada just grew by roughly 500 times in a single regulatory vote.

The Nevada Transportation Authority approved Tesla’s full Autonomous Vehicle Network Company permit on Thursday, clearing the way for the company to deploy up to 5,000 driverless vehicles across Clark County over the next 12 months. The decision came during a four hour general session meeting that Tesla investor Sawyer Merritt watched live and reported on X, noting the vote replaces the interim order that had limited Tesla to just 10 robotaxis on a narrow stretch of the Las Vegas Strip.

That earlier cap, covered here after it surfaced on August 13, came with restrictions that looked stricter than what Tesla runs in Austin: a 45 mph speed ceiling, no airport pickups, and a geofence confined to the Strip corridor. The new approval extends Tesla’s operating authority to all of Clark County, with room to request an even wider geofence across the state.

Tesla representatives at the meeting said they have no intention of putting 5,000 cars on the road right away. Commercial rides are expected to start within 30 days, pending vehicle inspections, insurance filings, and fare approval, the standard steps every robotaxi operator in Nevada has had to clear.

Tesla’s own Robotaxi account replied to the news with a short line, The golden future is upon us.

The timing lines up with Tesla’s broader robotaxi push this month. The company is preparing to open Cybercab rides to the public in Austin as soon as this month, and it opened a sweepstakes for riders to win a seat at the launch event. Tesla filed its original application for a 5,000 vehicle Nevada fleet back in June, a request regulators trimmed to 10 vehicles when they issued the interim order in July. Thursday’s vote effectively grants the number Tesla asked for from the start.

Zoox, the Amazon owned robotaxi operator, has run in Nevada since 2025 and was capped at 100 vehicles before Thursday’s decision. Tesla’s new ceiling puts it well ahead of that comparison on paper, though the company has said its actual fleet size will depend on how quickly FSD v15 rolls out, the software update executives have called the gateway to scaling unsupervised robotaxi operations nationwide.

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India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update

Elon Musk says X now exposes government censorship, but India’s secrecy laws complicate that promise.

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Elon Musk’s promise to make government censorship requests on X “clearly visible” is running into a wall in India, where the law forbids the very disclosure Musk is promising.

On August 15, Musk responded to an update from X’s open-source algorithm team by writing “Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible.” The claim referred to a change X pushed two days earlier to its public xai-org/x-algorithm repository, which now includes a controversial filter written directly into the code. The filter suppresses posts from 665 accounts flagged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court from appearing in the For You feed of any viewer located in Brazil, unless the viewer already follows the account. The election tied to the filter is scheduled for October 4.

India’s government wasn’t as impressed, and responded on Monday that “X will have to follow the law of the land,” in response to Musk’s transparency push covered by the Times of India. The problem is structural rather than political. India issues content blocking orders under Section 69A of its IT Act, and Rule 16 of the accompanying 2009 Blocking Rules requires those orders to stay confidential. Publishing an India equivalent of the Brazil filter, naming specific accounts and citing specific government orders, would itself violate Indian law. Government use of Section 69A has grown from roughly 6,000 orders a year between 2018 and 2023 to about 24,300 in 2025, according to a Tech Times report.

Elon Musk shares details on X vs. Brazil conflict

The contrast puts Musk’s transparency pledge in an odd spot. It works largely as advertised in Brazil, where electoral law requires disclosure and X can point to specific account IDs and a specific court order in public code. It cannot work the same way in India, where the law requires the opposite. X users in India will keep seeing content disappear from search and their feeds without any public accounting of why, even as X tells the rest of the world that its censorship compliance is now inspectable.

This isn’t the first time X’s fights with a national government have shaped how the platform operates. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to suspend the accounts of sitting lawmakers and journalists in 2024, a standoff that cost X its Brazilian revenue for months and froze Starlink’s local accounts before the investigation into Musk and X was closed in March with no evidence of wrongdoing found. X also sued California over a state law requiring moderation disclosures, arguing the mandate itself violated the First Amendment.

Whether India’s government pursues anything beyond a public statement remains to be seen. For now, the mismatch between what X can legally publish and what different governments legally allow it to publish is the real story behind Musk’s seven word claim.

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Tesla’s driverless Cybercab just passed a big test with State Governor

Florida’s governor rode Tesla’s Cybercab at a closed test track and called the experience impressive.

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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rode in a Tesla Cybercab on a closed test track this week and came away impressed, posting on X that the vehicle “successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.” He called the ride “impressive.”

The stop was part of a broader event Monday at SunTrax, a 775 acre state owned proving ground in Auburndale that Florida built specifically to test autonomous and connected vehicles before they reach public roads. Standing next to a gold Cybercab, DeSantis described the car in plain terms: “You go in there and you just sit. You have a screen. There’s no steering wheel, no pedals. Clearly these things could be very beneficial.”

DeSantis paired the praise with a caveat that has followed autonomous vehicles since the category existed. “You don’t want to be in an autonomous vehicle and it drives you into a ditch. That would not be good,” he said, framing safety validation as the gate before wider deployment.

SunTrax, the 2.25 mile oval which the state calls the only high speed autonomous vehicle test track in the Southeast, can simulate rain, pedestrian crossings, hills and crowded urban conditions at highway speeds, letting companies push a car past what an early public rollout would risk. Tesla, Waymo and Beep all use the facility, and Florida’s regulatory approach, among the most permissive for autonomous vehicles in the country, doesn’t require a human operator inside a fully autonomous car.

Tesla has reason to want the blessing of Florida and states beyond, as the Cybercab entered volume production at Gigafactory Texas this spring and has since self certified as SAE Level 4 under Texas law. Public road testing so far has kept a safety monitor in the passenger seat, and Florida is where Tesla has been expanding its existing Model Y based Robotaxi service instead, adding Miami in July and then Orlando and Tampa two weeks later. A closed track endorsement from a sitting governor doesn’t change any of that, but it does put Tesla’s newest hardware in front of a state that has already shown it will move fast on rules.

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