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Tesla Model S finally takes on Porsche Taycan in electric heavyweight battle

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The Tesla Model S Performance and Porsche Taycan Turbo S have finally gone head to head. Tesla’s flagship sedan which was first released in 2012 has been waiting for a worthy competitor, and it finally received a rival when Porsche unveiled the Taycan in September 2019.

Automotive publication Car and Driver pegged the two Dual Motor electric sedans up against each other to see what vehicle was superior. After testing everything from performance to comfort, they determined the winner was the Model S.

A neutral party was exactly what the electric vehicle community needed to determine which performance-level car was superior. Car and Driver noted that while the vehicles both had positives and negatives, neither truly disappointed overall. It was clear the reviewers were happy with both the 778 horsepower Model S “Raven” and the 750 horsepower Taycan, but only could be the winner.

The Taycan held the upper-hand during the performance test. The Porsche’s 30-to-50 MPH and 50-to-70 MPH acceleration rates were the fastest they had ever seen in a vehicle. The Taycan also offered 1.3 G-forces of initial acceleration, comparing it to what they thought a time-travel portal would feel like.

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Another point was given to the Taycan after charging the vehicles. The Taycan utilized 350-kW Electrify American chargers that were never occupied by another electric car during the duration of the Porsche’s charging session. It also charged at a consistently higher rate than the Tesla Supercharger C&D used for the Model S. “Tesla’s Supercharger network might have more stations, but it also has more users, and Tesla owners have faced long queues just to plug in during peak travel times.”

While C&D did state they feel the Taycan is a better vehicle “from the driver’s seat alone,” it was not enough to justify the drastic price difference between the two vehicles. The Tesla Model S Performance is available for $99,990 on Tesla.com, while the Taycan Turbo S is $188,960 on Porsche’s website.

The Model S offered the reviewers a fast, spacious, and comfortable driving experience. They recognize the vehicle’s catalytic effect on the growth of not just electric vehicles, but the automotive industry in general. The car’s interior, including its huge infotainment screens, which have spread to internal combustion vehicles, was just one of the reasons the Model S was superior.

While the Taycan outperformed the Model S in eight of the thirteen different speed tests that included a one-foot rollout, 0-60 MPH, 0-100 MPH, 0-130MPH, 0-150 MPH, 5-60 MPH rolling start, top gear tests from both 30-50 MPH and 50-70 MPH, a quarter-mile race, top speed, braking from both 70 and 100 MPH, and roadholding tests on a 300-foot diameter skidpad, the reviewers stated they missed other features when they started driving the Porsche. The biggest was Tesla’s “one-pedal driving” feature, “we missed it every time we hopped back into the Taycan,” Dave VanderWerp wrote.

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  • Porsche Taycan Turbo S
    • Rollout, 1 foot: 0.2 seconds
    • 0-60 MPH: 2.4 seconds
    • 0-100 MPH: 6.0 seconds
    • 0-130 MPH: 10.5 seconds
    • 0-150 MPH: 15.2 seconds
    • 5-60 MPH rolling start: 2.9 seconds
    • Top Gear, 30-50 MPH: 1.1 seconds
    • Top Gear, 50-70 MPH: 1.6 seconds
    • Top Speed (according to Porsche): 162 MPH
    • Braking, 70-0 MPH: 155 ft, 100-0 MPH: 306 ft
    • Roadholding, 300-ft-dia skidpad: 0.99 g
  • Tesla Model S Performance “Raven”
    • Rollout, 1 foot: 0.2 seconds
    • 0-60 MPH: 2.5 seconds
    • 0-100 MPH: 6.4 seconds
    • 0-130 MPH: 11.9 seconds
    • 0-150 MPH: 18.5 seconds
    • 5-60 MPH rolling start: 2.8 seconds
    • Top Gear, 30-50 MPH: 1.1 seconds
    • Top Gear, 50-70 MPH: 1.6 seconds
    • Top Speed (according to Tesla): 163 MPH
    • Braking, 70-0 MPH: 156 ft, 100-0 MPH: 313 ft
    • Roadholding, 300-ft-dia-skidpad: 0.92 g

One surprising portion of the comparison was range. The Model S boasts an EPA estimated 348 miles per charge, while the Taycan only offers 192 miles. However, a test where both vehicles traveled at 75 MPH for a total distance of 100 miles proved that the Model S only held a slight advantage with only 10 more miles of range after completion.

While both cars were impressive and offered something special, the nearly $190,000 price tag of the Taycan Turbo S was simply too high for what it offered. The Model S was a better car all-around as its virtues were simply undeniable and proven after eight years of continuous top-notch performance. “There’s no question which is the better buy,” they said, and it is the Model S.

The full comparison of both vehicles from Car and Driver is available here.

Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”

Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.

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Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.

While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure

The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.

Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet

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Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.

Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.

As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.

Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.

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SpaceXAI just launched into your kitchen with their new app

SpaceXAI just powered its first consumer app and it predicts what you want to buy.

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SpaceXAI just made its first move into consumer AI, and it involves your grocery cart. On June 3, 2026, Gopuff and SpaceXAI announced the launch of Go, a Grok-powered shopping assistant built directly into the Gopuff app that predicts what you need before you even start searching for it.

Gopuff is an instant delivery platform that operates more than 400 micro-fulfillment centers across the U.S., delivering everyday essentials, snacks, drinks, and household items in as little as 15 minutes. It is not a restaurant delivery app or a marketplace. It owns its inventory, controls its warehouses, and handles its own logistics, which means it has built one of the most detailed consumer behavior datasets in retail over its 13-year history.

Go combines SpaceXAI’s advanced reasoning, voice, and image generation models with Gopuff’s dataset of hundreds of millions of orders and real-time cultural signals from X to prepare a suggested cart the moment a customer opens the app. It learns each shopper’s habits and automatically builds a personalized cart based on time of day, location, order history, and real-time indicators. Returning customers can check out with a single tap.


Rather than searching for specific items, users can describe a situation like a game-day party or the desire for a healthy breakfast and Go will assemble a cart automatically. It can also predict when shoppers are running low on items like coffee or paper towels and have them packed and delivered in under 15 minutes. Grok voice integration lets users talk to the app in plain conversational language and check out completely hands-free.

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Gopuff co-founder and co-CEO Yakir Gola said: “Today, we believe the greatest friction left in commerce is not delivery or instantaneous access to the essentials customers need. It’s the moment before: the thinking, the deciding, the remembering. We’re combining Gopuff’s demand intelligence with xAI’s frontier reasoning to create an everyday shopping experience that feels like a true extension of you.”

Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO

The timing carries context beyond the product launch. SpaceXAI was formed after SpaceX completed an all-stock merger with Elon Musk’s xAI earlier this year, folding one of the most advanced AI labs in the world into the same corporate structure as the company preparing what could be the largest IPO in history. SpaceXAI is dipping into consumer-focused AI just as it prepares for its public debut, and while Musk has openly discussed building an everything app, this launch uses Grok to power another company’s product rather than launching a standalone consumer platform. Every consumer-facing deployment of Grok ahead of the IPO roadshow adds tangible evidence that SpaceXAI is not just an infrastructure play but a direct competitor in the AI application layer where OpenAI and Google are already fighting for dominance.

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Tesla saves its passengers again – This time after a 300-foot cliff fall in Malibu

A Tesla Model 3 fell 300 feet off a Malibu cliff and both passengers survived.

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A Tesla Model 3 plunged roughly 300 feet off a cliff on Mulholland Highway in Malibu on Friday morning, May 29, 2026, and both occupants survived. The crash was reported at approximately 7:30 a.m. near the 2500 block of Mulholland Highway, triggering a multi-agency rescue operation involving Malibu Search and Rescue, the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the California Highway Patrol, and McCormick Ambulance.

When first responders arrived, the male driver was outside the vehicle shouting for help while the female passenger remained pinned inside the Tesla. Rescue crews rappelled down the cliffside on ropes to reach the wreckage. A flight medic was lowered by helicopter to begin treating both victims, and the driver was hoisted up to the roadway before crews used the Jaws of Life to free the trapped passenger. Both were airlifted to a local trauma center with moderate injuries despite a remarkable result for a fall that steep.

The outcome is not surprising, considering Model 3 earned an overall 5-star rating from NHTSA in every category and sub-category, and recorded the lowest probability of injury of any car ever evaluated by the U.S. New Car Assessment Program. The absence of a traditional engine in the front of the vehicle creates a longer crumple zone that absorbs impact energy before it reaches occupants, and the battery pack running along the floor gives the car an unusually low center of gravity that reinforces structural rigidity.

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This is not the first time a Tesla has kept passengers alive after going off a cliff. A Tesla Model Y carrying a family of four survived a plunge off a cliff at Devil’s Slide near San Francisco in January 2023, with two adults and two children walking away from a 250-foot fall. That incident drew widespread attention to how the structural integrity of Tesla’s electric platform performs in extreme crash scenarios that most vehicles would not survive.

Tesla Model Y driver who drove off cliff with family attempts to avoid criminal conviction

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