Connect with us

Lifestyle

Tesla power limiting may also occur on extreme G-forces

Published

on

Streets of Willow 2

New racetrack discovery indicates Tesla power limiting may go beyond just temperature sensing.

We recently set out to conquer (once more) the Streets of Willow Springs racetrack, a technical, 1.6 miles long, with 13 turns, located approximately an hour north of Los Angeles. Being a short track with a lot of turns (most tracks are 2 to 3 miles long), it’s considered  a relatively low speed track. There’s opportunity to briefly reach 100+ mph on straightaways, but most of the time is spent within the 40mph to 80mph range.

Streets of Willow Springs is an excellent track for practicing turns at lower speeds. Unlike our race at Laguna Seca which proved to be one of the more difficult and dangerous tracks we’ve driven, this track had no retaining walls, smooth shoulders and overall a much less dangerous track to race on.

sow_map    _Streets of Willow

Tesla Model S Configuration

Tesla’s infamous power limiting feature to prevent overheating was not nearly as pronounced this time around because of the short bursty nature of the track. We could easily achieve a full five timed-laps without the dotted power limit line dropping below 160kw mark.

We used a set of new Toyo R888 racing tires (19″, 265 width) this time around as opposed to our usual BFGs. The Toyo’s held up exceptionally well in terms of wear and durability while also providing great traction. It was a cold day (temperature in the 50s) so we kept tire pressure higher than usual, aiming for 36 psi hot.

The Model S experienced a bit of  steering wheel lockup through turn 1 (known issue), but it was very short lived.

New Tesla Power Limiting Feature?

A new phenomenon was discovered on the Model S where the vehicle appears to cut power when experiencing high lateral G-forces along, and when the car is angled from flat level ground.

Case in point is the track’s #8 bowl turn which sports a 20 degree bank. This is where we experienced losing power for a brief second or two as we into the bank pushing nearly 1.2 Gs. The behavior can be seen in the video (2:20 min mark) where we were unable to accelerate past 40mph. We speculate that the combination of G-forces and angle from level ground (measured by the vehicle’s internal gyro) might be simulating an accident scenario, hence Tesla’s onboard system disables any additional use of power.

Advertisement
-

Performance

Best lap time was 1:31, which was a nice improvement over last year’s 1:39. Our Teslarati 48 ran within the Green (Advanced) group with Speed Ventures. The fastest time in the class came in at 1:26 (Formula Mazda) while the slowest was 1:36. We felt that there was still a lot of room for improvement and with a little more practice, we should easily break below 1:30 next time. If not for the power limiting features of the Model S our lap times could be at minimum five seconds faster.

The max lateral G came in at 1.2 G which is on par with what we experienced in the past (using G-Force Rival tires).

Green Group Entering Skidpad CDE_2786-110114 Green Group Exiting Skidpad CDE_2867-110114 Green Group Skidpad CDE_2893-110114 Green Group Skidpad CDE_2923-110114 Green Group Turn 2 CDE_4632-110114 Green Group Turn 4 CDE_4571-110114

Charging and Power Consumption

Track Avg Energy

Power consumption came in at 1.2 kw / mile which translates to approximately 4 rated miles used per 1 actual mile of distance travelled.

There is a set of RV stalls within a 5 minute walk from the Streets. Unfortunately, there was only one stall with a 50 amp outlet which happened to be taken. We ended up pitting one mile away by the garage at Big Willow which had a couple of 240v 50amp outlets.

Travel

There are several possibilities of getting to and from the track.

ALSO SEE: Interactive Tesla Supercharger Map

Advertisement
-

Superchargers WSFrom the South / East

  • Hawthorne Supercharger has been the charger of choice for us thus far. It’s 95 miles away, but because of significant elevation changes, coming to Willow Springs will consume over 110 miles of range, even when driving super conservatively. Coming back it will take only 90 rated miles.
  • Oxnard Supercharger just opened which is a little closer to the track at 87 miles away. Coming back will require only 66 rated miles making it a very attractive option.
  • Barstow Supercharger is 103 miles away from the track (EV Trip Planner estimated 105). The shortest route seems to be through Victorville, however it used 120 miles of range even while driving very conservatively likely due to the strong winds and elevation changes.
  • The Rancho Cucamonga Supercharger that’s currently under construction, appears to be a good option at 93 miles away.

From the North or West

And traveling from the North or West, Tejon Ranch Supercharger is the best option. 60 miles away, requiring 73 rated miles to get there but only 55 back.

Advertisement
Comments

Lifestyle

Tesla Cybertruck targets job site crews with new Tailgate Utility Track and Bed Gear Box accessory

Tesla launched a $350 tailgate track and a $985 lockable Bed Gear Box for Cybertruck.

Published

on

By

Tesla Cybertruck construction site

Tesla’s Cybertruck team added two more items to the Tesla Shop, targeting job site crews and owners who use the truck bed for actual work rather than just showing it off. The official Cybertruck X account posted the Tailgate Utility Track and the Bed Gear Box within minutes of each other, part of a five item batch that also included a reflective jacket, a spray paint hat and an updated reflective tee.

The Tailgate Utility Track runs $350 and turns the folded down tailgate into another mounting surface. It’s a single aluminum track with a T-slot for sliding accessories and two L-track attachment points, plus two load stops included in the box. The pitch is straightforward: strap down oversized cargo, like lumber or a cooler, that hangs off the back of the bed without it sliding out mid-drive. It bolts onto the existing tailgate and works on every Cybertruck trim.

The Bed Gear Box costs $985 and is a different kind of accessory. It’s a lockable aluminum storage box, 55.78 inches long, 19.8 inches wide and 7.79 inches tall, that mounts to the bed’s L-track rails and comes with two internal bins for smaller items. According to Tesla, at just over 57 pounds empty, it’s meant to stay in place rather than come in and out with each trip, giving owners a factory-fit alternative to loose totes for tools, recovery gear or emergency supplies. Tesla’s listing notes that Long Range and Dual Motor AWD Cybertrucks need the L-Tracks accessory installed separately before the Gear Box will mount, since L-tracks come standard only on certain configurations.

Tesla Cybertruck bed gear box accessory

Tesla Cybertruck bed gear box accessory

Both accessories lean on the idea Tesla has been building toward since Elon Musk first described the Cybertruck’s third-party attachment strategy at the 2023 shareholder meeting, when he said the truck would ship with mounting points so outside companies, and Tesla itself, could keep adding gear without redesigning the bed. That’s the same L-track backbone underneath the tailgate shield and jumpseats Tesla launched last year, and the off-road armor package that arrived through the same X account in 2025.

Owners looking to round out the rest of the L-track ecosystem, cargo dividers, MOLLE panels, bed racks and similar gear, can find a wider range of options through our Cybertruck accessories collection.

Advertisement
-
Continue Reading

Elon Musk

Elon Musk says he knows how to save Earth for a billion years

Elon Musk says sentient AI satellites launched from the Moon could keep Earth livable forever.

Published

on

By

Elon Musk spent part of his weekend describing a plan to keep the planet livable for roughly a billion years, and it starts with satellites that can think for themselves.

In a post on X, Musk argued that swapping fossil fuels for solar and wind power will not be enough to protect humanity from what he called extremely severe extinction events, the kind that occur roughly every 100 million years. His fix is what he called sentient satellites, or solar-powered satellites, controlled by AI, that would sit in a fixed spot between Earth and the Sun after being launched off the Moon using a giant electromagnetic catapult instead of rockets.

The satellites’ onboard AI would make continuous, small adjustments rather than waiting on human instructions. The mass driver is Musk’s proposed way of getting the raw material there cheaply by using an electromagnetic launch track built on the Moon, where lower gravity and no atmosphere make it far easier to fling cargo into space than it is from Earth.

Musk shared a Grok generated estimate suggesting roughly 5 percent of Florida’s land, or about 1.68 million acres, could face regular flooding by 2070 under a high sea level rise scenario, and said humanity has about 50 years to act before coastal living looks very different than it does today.

Advertisement
-

This is not the first time Musk has floated the idea. He raised a similar concept in November, describing a solar powered AI satellite constellation that could make tiny adjustments to incoming sunlight to fine tune Earth’s temperature. Musk has also tied planetary risk to his broader vision at SpaceX, where his compensation package is explicitly linked to establishing a self-sustaining Mars colony, one he has described as an insurance policy against the kind of extinction event he referenced this weekend, and where he has said humans could set foot within five to seven years.

Continue Reading

Lifestyle

Police sergeant recounts his Neuralink journey with Elon Musk’s brain chip

Published

on

By

neuralink-patient-registry-volunteers

A former Vancouver police sergeant with ALS accounts his journey to become a patient for Elon Musk’s Neuralink wireless brain-computer interface technology.

“I’m texting you from my brain right now.” That was the first message Lee Marten sent after waking up from Neuralink surgery, five hours and one migraine after dozens of threads were stitched into his motor cortex.

Marten, a former Vancouver police sergeant, is one of the first Canadian ALS patients to receive Neuralink’s N1 brain implant, and the 26th recipient overall. He tells his story in a first-person account published by Maclean’s.

Marten recounts how he was a healthy, athletic Vancouver police sergeant until April 2022 when symptoms of muscle twitching and balance loss, were followed by a bad fall that broke his leg. He would eventually be diagnosed with ALS in early 2025 at the age of 47. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that progressively destroys the motor neurons controlling voluntary muscle movement, eventually taking away a patient’s ability to walk, speak, swallow and breathe. There’s no cure, and most patients live two to five years after diagnosis.

He describes the devastation of the diagnosis and how he began preparing for it while connecting with other young ALS patients through a WhatsApp group called Young Guns. Through that group he learned about a Neuralink clinical trial at Toronto Western Hospital and, after a roughly seven-month vetting process (physical assessments, psychiatric evaluation, a final interview with the Neuralink team), was accepted this past April as the trial’s 26th recipient and the first Canadian ALS patient to get the N1 implant. He recounts the May surgery in detail, including the robotic system that stitched 64 threads into his brain, and describes the app, Link, translating his neural signals into cursor control, which he was using within hours of waking up.

Marten walks through what daily use looks like, including weekly “brain training” exercises, a real-time neural-activity display, charging the implant via a beanie-mounted MagSafe charger, and using the implant for emailing, texting, social media, and gaming via a “Magic Box” that connects it to other devices. He also gives brief context on brain-computer interface history and quite candid about Musk, calling him “divisive” but saying he found him “easy to admire.

Advertisement
-

The piece closes on a heavier note, with Marten seeking to pursue medical assistance in dying as his symptoms progressed, noting that he’ll be able to communicate his final words to his family through Neuralink rather than facing a silent decline. He expresses hope the data from his case will help future ALS patients, even without a cure in his own lifetime.

Continue Reading