Lifestyle
Tesla Model S P100D wins over electric car skeptic after battling Germany’s best sedans
It is said that getting behind the wheel of a Tesla is the best way to become a believer in the power and capabilities of electric cars. This is something that a former electric car skeptic experienced after he raced the Tesla Model S P100D against three of Germany’s best high-performance sedans.
Celebrity car customizer Yianni Charalambous has been featured several times in auto-themed YouTube channel carwow, racing some of his personal vehicles like his Lamborghini Urus and Aventador S against the Tesla Model X P100D. In his previous races against the American-made electric SUV, Yianni is known to banter with carwow host Mat Watson about how vehicles like the Model X were “boring.” He has also poked fun at how electric cars need to heat up their batteries before they can perform their best.
In a recent four-way race involving the Tesla Model S P100D, the Mercedes-AMG GT, the Porsche Panamera Turbo S e-hybrid, and the BMW M5 Competition, the electric car skeptic asked the YouTube channel’s host if he could go behind the wheel of the electric sedan, just so he could experience the vehicle for himself.
Power-wise, the four cars were evenly matched. The Tesla Model S P100D features dual electric motors that propel the vehicle from 0-60 mph in less than 2.5 seconds. The Porsche Panamera Turbo S e-hybrid is equipped with a 4-liter twin-turbo V8 with an electric motor with a combined 680 horsepower. The BMW M5 Competition, on the other hand, features a 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 with 625 horsepower. Lastly, the Mercedes-AMG GT is equipped with a 4-liter V8 with 640 brake horsepower.
The celebrity car customizer went through a brief learning curve with the Model S P100D’s Ludicrous Mode settings, but once the race began, the electric car skeptic immediately realized why some of his vehicles like the Lamborghini Urus lost against a Tesla. In the 10.8 seconds it took the Model S P100D to finish the quarter mile, Yianni found himself becoming a full believer in electric cars.
The Tesla Model S P100D dominated in the quarter mile, followed by the Mercedes-AMG GT, which completed the race in 11.1 seconds, the Porsche Panamera Turbo S e-hybrid, which crossed the quarter-mile mark in 11.2 seconds, and the BMW M5 Competition, which finished the race in 12.4 seconds.
Following a rolling race and a brake test, Yianni became even more impressed with the electric sedan. So impressed was he that by the end of the races, the celebrity car customizer actually pulled the trigger and ordered his very own Tesla Model S P100D.
It’s quite fascinating to see the P100D, which was initially released in August 2016, is still capable of toppling some of the best high-performance sedans that Germany has to offer today. In a way, the performance of the Model S P100D with Ludicrous Mode is proof that Tesla succeeded in making not just a good electric car; the young carmaker succeeded in creating one of the world’s best-selling cars, period.
Watch the Tesla Model S P100D battle the Mercedes-AMG GT, the Porsche Panamera Turbo S e-hybrid, and the BMW M5 Competition in the video below.
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.
Elon Musk
Tesla Diner is throwing a birthday party with a Franz-signed special treat
Tesla Diner turns one on July 21 with Optimus, roller skates, and a Franz-signed hat.
Tesla is throwing its Hollywood Diner a first birthday party on July 21 and the celebration comes with a guest list of unique items, including a limited run of Tesla Diner birthday hats personally signed by Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen for the first 50 customers who place an in-car order at midnight.
One year after lines wrapped around the block on Santa Monica Boulevard for a diner that most of the restaurant industry did not take seriously, Tesla is making the case that the concept was worth the years it took to build. The concept had been in Musk’s head since at least 2018, when he floated the idea of “an old school drive-in, roller skates and rock restaurant” on X, describing it years later as “‘Grease’ meets ‘The Jetsons’ with Supercharging.”
Tesla Optimus Gen 3 is coming to the Tesla Diner with new ambitions
What made the diner genuinely different from any restaurant that came before it was not the menu or the nostalgia. It was the ordering model. Tesla owners could place food orders directly from their vehicle’s touchscreen before arriving, a small feature that hints at something much larger on the horizon. As the Cybercab and unsupervised FSD expand across major cities, the diner model becomes a template for an entirely new kind of commerce. A robotaxi pulling in to charge does not need a human to walk up to a counter. The vehicle places the order, the food is ready on arrival, and the passenger never interrupts the experience of being driven somewhere else. It is the first glimpse of what drive-through commerce looks like when the car is doing the driving.
As Teslarati has reported, Musk signaled immediately after opening that the Hollywood location was only the beginning, posting that Tesla would expand the concept to major cities worldwide and along Supercharger corridors on long-distance routes if the first location proved successful. One year in, the birthday celebration on July 21 makes a strong case that it has. Tesla announced a full day of events including a Cybercab on display, a birthday menu, Optimus in attendance, face painting, a photo booth, roller skating servers, a light show, a Skypad DJ, and complimentary collectibles.
If Musk’s ambition holds, the Hollywood diner is year one of something much bigger. The birthday party is the proof of concept. The robotaxi fleet is the business model waiting behind it.
Tesla Diner is turning 1 on July 21st, so we’re throwing a party
Come swing by for a day full of fun:
– Cybercab on display
– Birthday menu
– @Tesla_Optimus
– Face painting for kids & adults
– Photo booth
– Servers on roller skates delivering your order
– Light show
– Skypad DJ… pic.twitter.com/TD8pOjihYs— Tesla North America (@tesla_na) July 18, 2026
Lifestyle
NTSB findings on fatal Tesla crash tell a very different story
The NTSB confirmed the driver, not Tesla’s FSD, caused the fatal Texas house crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board released preliminary findings Wednesday confirming that a Tesla driver, not the vehicle’s software, caused a fatal crash in Katy, Texas in June. The driver, 44-year-old Michael Butler, had engaged Full Self-Driving Supervised mode on Rose Hollow Lane, a residential street with a 30 mph speed limit, before manually overriding the system by pressing the accelerator pedal all the way to 100%. Data recovered from the 2025 Tesla Model 3 showed the vehicle was traveling over 70 miles per hour when it struck a home and killed 76-year-old Martha Avila, who was inside. Weather was clear, the road was dry, and it was daylight.
Texas man charged in fatal Tesla crash where he blamed Autopilot
Butler told authorities he had passed out at the wheel. But security camera footage obtained by the NTSB told a different story, and showed the car accelerating through an intersection before leaving the road entirely. Police also found that Butler’s phone had Google searches including the terms “Tesla FSD not aggressive enough 2026” and “Tesla FSD too timid,” raising serious questions about how he was using the system before the crash. Butler has since been charged with manslaughter. The victim’s family has filed a lawsuit against both Butler and Tesla, alleging negligence.
The NTSB findings aligned directly with what Tesla VP of AI Software Ashok Elluswamy had already stated publicly on X in the weeks after the crash, writing that “the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100%.” The data confirmed his account.
Yup. In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area. They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash.
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 22, 2026
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
