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Tesla Model Y power reading shows Model 3 Performance can get even quicker

Credit: YouTube | DragTimes

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Tesla Model Y Performance is higher than that of the Model 3 Performance, according to measurements of power output from the vehicle’s dual electric motors.

Brooks Weisblat of the DragTimes YouTube channel measured each vehicle’s power output through a Bluetooth-enabled OBD2 interceptor dongle and the “scan me Tesla” app.

Weisblat’s measurements of both motors on each vehicle reveal that both the Front and Rear motors on the Model Y have a higher energy output than that of the Model 3, despite them being the same. The front motor of the Model Y has a higher output by 18 kW, while the rear motor of the Model Y is producing 15.5 kW more energy. Why would Tesla decide to have the Model Y’s motors both produce more power than the Model 3’s? Weisblat has a theory.

“I’m thinking the motors [on both vehicles] are the same, and they’re just giving more power to the Model Y to make it a little bit quicker to compensate for the weight,” Weisblat implies. However, a higher horsepower doesn’t necessarily mean a faster vehicle, especially in a quarter-mile setting.

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Weisblat took the following power out reading on his Model Y with Performance Upgrade and Model 3 Performance:

Tesla Model Y Performance Power Output

  • Maximum Discharge Power: 433 kW
  • Maximum Battery Power: 402 kW
  • Maximum Front Motor Power: 198.5 kW
  • Maximum Rear Motor Power: 270.5 kW

Tesla Model 3 Performance Power Output

  • Maximum Discharge Power: 431 kW
  • Maximum Battery Power: 416 kW
  • Maximum Front Motor Power: 180.5 kW
  • Maximum Rear Motor Power: 255 kW

Based on the power output readings from both vehicles, it appears that Model 3 Performance is limited to approximately 579.215 horsepower, while the output from Model Y’s electric motors churn out roughly 44.56 more horsepower at a total 623.77 horsepower.

Recently, the Model Y Performance was pegged against the Model 3 Performance in a drag race performed by Tesla enthusiast Brian Jenkins of i1Tesla. The race found that the Model 3 Performance was the quicker of the two vehicles on a quarter-mile drag strip, however, 0-60 sprints proved very similar.

Tesla’s ability to increase power output in their vehicles isn’t something new to the Silicon Valley-based electric carmaker. The company released a 5% power boost via an over-the-air software update in late 2019, ahead of its regular “Holiday Update”. Because Model Y Performance shares the same electric motors as its sibling Model 3, yet determined to have higher power output, one can presume that Model 3 Performance may still have a few extra electrons that can be “uncorked” down the road.

Watch DragTimes’ Model Y Performance vs. Model 3 Performance power output test below.

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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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Elon Musk

Elon Musk’s Texas ranch to showcase the lifelong work that changed the world

Elon Musk is building a product gallery at his Texas ranch spanning his lifelong inventions.

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Concept art of Elon Musk Texas Ranch as rendered via Grok

Elon Musk took to X earlier today, noting “Am putting together a product gallery at my ranch in Texas.” in response to a resurfaced famous quote from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s wherein he draw parallels of the Tesla CEO to legendary physicist Albert Einstein.

Dimon made the remark at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland back in January 2025, telling CNBC at the time, “SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, I mean, the guy is our Einstein.” The remark seemingly ended a long-time feud between the two high profile execs.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has “hugged it out” with JP Morgan CEO

While details are thin about the exact location of Elon Musk’s Texas ranch and any pending projects that would serve as a gallery and homage to his portfolio of  revolutionary product inventions spanning from 1984 to 2025, land acquisition records point to roughly a location of several thousand acres in Bastrop County, east of Austin near the Colorado River and held through an LLC called Horse Ranch LLC that’s managed by Musk’s longtime personal friend and family wealth manager Jared Birchall. Birchall also serves as the CEO of Neuralink.

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Tesla’s “ecological paradise” in Giga Texas may be larger than expected

 

The broader Bastrop County footprint surrounding the ranch has grown significantly. Entities tied to Musk have accumulated approximately 2,000 acres in Bastrop County as of mid-2026, up from 700 acres earlier in the year, with possibly as much as 6,000 acres acquired in total across Bastrop and Travis counties based on deed records.

No completion date for the gallery has been announced and Musk has not confirmed whether it will be open to the public. As Teslarati has reported, SpaceX just completed the largest IPO in history raising $75 billion, a milestone that makes this particular moment in Musk’s career a natural inflection point for looking back at what he has built through the years.

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Starting with Blastar, a simple space shooter game Musk coded at 12 years old and sold to a South African magazine for $500. From there the timeline moves through a commercial career that started with Zip2 in 1995, a city guide software company sold to Compaq for roughly $300 million in 1999. That was followed by X.com in 1999, which merged with Confinity to become PayPal, acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. SpaceX came in 2002, Tesla in 2003, SolarCity in 2006, the Supercharger network in 2012, Neuralink in 2016, The Boring Company in 2016, OpenAI co-founded in 2015, X acquired in 2022, xAI in 2023, Optimus in 2024, the Cybercab in 2026, and most recently SpaceXAI following the SpaceX and xAI merger. The gallery will also likely include items that blur the line between product and cultural artifact, among them The Boring Company’s Not-a-Flamethrower from 2018, Tesla Short Shorts from 2020, and Burnt Hair perfume released under X in 2022.

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Tesla makes the cut on California’s newest EV Rebate program

California just signed a $270 million EV rebate into law and it starts this summer.

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tesla fremont

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 168 into law on Monday, July 13, 2026, creating a $270 million EV rebate program that delivers money directly at the dealership rather than as a tax credit applied months later. The program, called MyFirstEV, is funded equally by California’s state budget and participating automakers, with each contributing $135.5 million to make the math work.

The timing is directly tied to the loss of federal support when the $7,500 federal EV tax credit ended, removing the most significant consumer incentive that had driven EV adoption in the U.S. California, which accounts for roughly one-third of all EVs sold nationally, moved to fill that gap with a state-level replacement.

The rebate structure is straightforward. First-time EV buyers can receive $3,500 off any new battery-electric vehicle with an MSRP up to $50,000. Used EVs priced at $25,000 or below qualify for a $1,750 rebate. The credit is applied at the point of sale, which removes the friction of the old federal system where buyers had to wait for tax season to see the benefit. The program goes live later this summer, with the California Air Resources Board expected to release full participation details next month.

California hits Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi driverless cars with new law

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For Tesla buyers, the implications are mixed. The Tesla Model 3 RWD at $42,490 and the Model 3 Long Range at $47,490 both fall under the $50,000 cap and would qualify for the full $3,500 rebate for first-time buyers. The Model Y, which starts at $44,990 after Tesla’s recent price adjustment, also qualifies. The Model X, Model S, and Cybertruck all exceed the cap and receive no benefit. As Teslarati has reported, the program also includes a carve-out exempting California-based automakers like Rivian and Lucid from the price cap entirely, a provision that puts Tesla at a disadvantage since it relocated its headquarters to Texas in 2021.

Other qualifying vehicles include the Chevrolet Equinox EV, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, and Volkswagen ID.4.

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Elon Musk

Tesla FSD is about to know your specific house and neighborhood better than any map

Tesla confirmed it is building a feature that lets you teach your car where to go.

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Tesla FSD 14.3 [Credit: TESLARATI)

Tesla is building a feature that will let drivers talk to their car in plain language and teach it exactly what to do, with the vehicle remembering those instructions for every future trip. Tesla VP of AI Software Ashok Elluswamy confirmed it this week on X after a user pointed out one of FSD’s most persistent real-world limitations is that the system has no way to receive contextual instructions the way a human driver would.

“FSD would be twice as useful in neighborhoods if I could actually talk to the car and tell it which driveway to pull into, the same way I would with a person driving me home. Right now, there isn’t really an input for telling Tesla what color the house is or giving it specific context like that. Google Maps is also notorious for putting pins on houses that aren’t actually yours.” Tesla owner Chris further noted, “It would be so cool if I could talk to the car while going down my street and say something like, ‘It’s the white house on the left, just past that SUV,’ and then have FSD remember that for next time.”

This feature would carry more weight than it might seem. Grok has been available inside Tesla vehicles since July 2025, expanded to European vehicles in February 2026, and gained a hands-free “Hey Grok” wake word with location-based reminders and natural-language navigation in the Spring 2026 update. But up to this point, Grok has had no authority over how FSD actually drives. Lane changes, braking, speed, and parking maneuvers remain entirely within FSD’s autonomous decision-making loop. What Elluswamy confirmed is that the next step pushes Grok into a supervisor role, one that translates spoken intent directly into driving decisions.

Tesla teases greater Grok FSD integration and ‘Banish’ feature ‘in about 3 months’

Elluswamy acknowledged at a January 2026 conference that while fully integrated voice control is on Tesla’s roadmap, “it opens up an entire area of testing that we have to do. For example, you shouldn’t be able to tell the car to crash, and it shouldn’t crash.” Elon Musk subsequently confirmed on June 23 that Grok voice commands will pass to FSD’s planning layer by September 2026, a three month timeline from confirmation to deployment.

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The deeper significance is what this does for Tesla’s AI training flywheel. Every time an owner corrects FSD with a spoken instruction and the car learns and remembers it, that interaction becomes a data point covering an edge case that no simulation or scripted test could have generated. A fleet of millions of Tesla vehicles crowdsourcing hyper-local contextual knowledge, which driveway, which gate entrance, which side of the street, builds a layer of geographic and behavioral intelligence that competitors without a comparable fleet simply cannot replicate at the same speed or scale.

As Teslarati has reported, Tesla’s Cybercab and robotaxi operations have expanded to Miami following the Austin launch, with rider profiles already collecting preference data. Voice-taught contextual instructions linked to individual rider profiles means a Cybercab could eventually know before it arrives exactly which entrance to use, where to wait, and how to navigate the final hundred feet of any trip it has made before.

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