Lifestyle
Taking the Tesla Model S for its 2nd Annual Service
Almost a year ago I had my first annual service for my Model S and wrote about the experience here. Given it took me 6 weeks to make the last appointment, this time around I called 6 weeks before the anniversary date and was surprised to get an appointment 2 weeks out. This was great to hear as I’ve had concerns about Tesla service being able to scale. I had my pick of days so I decided to do it on the same day as the Model 3 launch so I could drop my car off and go wait in line for the Model 3 which was a lot of fun.
The second service brought a number of good surprises and I wanted to share my experience.
Tesla Service Drop Off
I usually keep a running list of stuff that I want Tesla Service to look at the next time I go in for service (which isn’t often). Here’s the list of items that I’ve accumulated:
- Seat belt check from the service bulletin – I didnt swarm with the masses to have them checked and just had it checked during this service
- Loud jet engine like noise while Supercharging
- Exploded lug nut on front left wheel
- One of my 2 charger cables (UMC) had some intermittent charges last time I used it
- Annual service
As usual they gave me a Model S as a loaner. This one was a S85 like mine only slightly newer and sadly no Autopilot hardware to play with.
Tesla Service Cost
Service was done by the end of the day and I picked my car back up. The list of work they did was long and unexpected, and so was the price — but in a positive way.
I hope I don’t get anyone in trouble and that none of this was a mistake as the published prices below are higher, but i’m going to share the experience anyway.
My car was 50 miles short of 60,000 miles and I do not have the extended warranty. I have coverage on the battery and drive unit (unlimited miles/8 years for both) so my total cost for the annual service was $400.00.
My last annual service was 35,000 miles ago. The last time I had it in for service was for a (free) Drive Unit replacement at 43,000 miles.
Here’s a plot of my service cost against number of miles driven. The main cost is due to the annual service and then decreases with basic wear and tear maintenance such as replacing tires.
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I’m currently averaging $0.02/mile for service cost at 60,000 miles which is the same as my old Acura at the same mileage. The Acura started climbing in service costs right after 60,000 miles, but I’m expecting the Model S to remain flat. Only time will tell.
Should the service cost remain flat as expected, future Model 3 owners will come to realize that the cost of ownership for the vehicle is even cheaper than what they may normally pay with an ICE.
Serviced Parts
Now for the laundry list of things Tesla worked on:
- Inspect Front Seat Belt Pre-Tensioners for Correct Installation – No issue found (as expected)
- Replace Battery Coolant Heater Due To Potential Low Isolation
- Standard 62,500 mile annual service items:
- Check logs for errors
- Update to latest firmware
- New wiper blades (Boshe)
- New key fob batteries (2)
- Replace cabin air filter
- Top off washer fluid
- Check brake/coolant fluids
- Check other latches/doors for seals etc.
- Rotated tires (they didnt need this but no harm done)
- Customer states there is a jet engine sound when Supercharging – No issues found.
- Performed thermal test. No abnormal noises heard. Checked cooling fan operation, no motor or bearing issues found. Vehicle performing as intended.
- They said it was likely the amount of driving I was doing (I drove to FL and back) and the higher temperatures in FL. None of the other Teslas made the same sounds but everything did work as expected.
- Customer states UMC in bag intermittently fails to engage charge port – They gave me a completely new one!
- This was my second UMC replacement in 2 years. I have 2 one for home charging and one for travel. The new UMC has a newer design around the charge release button.
- Customer states lug nut on front left wheel is damaged – They replaced all 20 lug nuts!
- Bolt Contacting Front Suspension Fore Link – They decided they felt like making this better for some reason.
- Four wheel alignment – They said they did this verbally but it wasn’t on the receipt.
- Cold Weather Brake Package – They decided I needed better brakes and replaced everything!
- Install Rear Dust Shields, Install Front Rotors, Install Rear Rotors, Install Front And Rear HP1000-T Brake Pads
And of course they provided a free loaner, and charged up my car.
Annual Service Summary
While many joke about how little service they actually have to do on an annual service for the money they charge I think the value I got from Tesla for $400 was tremendous.
With my high mileage driving I essentially “skipped” many of their recommended service intervals and instead of penalizing me for that by adding them up and hitting me with a big bill as other manufacturers would do, they charged me the for the interval that fit the current mileage.
After the service was done I asked the service manager if I could keep doing just the annual services despite my high mileage and he said I could.
Thanks Tesla. See you again at 90,000 miles!
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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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