Tesla has announced that it is starting the rollout of Track Mode, a feature of the Model 3 Performance that allows the car to perform better on a racecourse, today. In light of the feature’s release, Tesla has published a blog post outlining the science behind Track Mode, as well as the feature’s specifics.
While Tesla’s other performance-oriented upgrades like Ludicrous Mode for the Model S and X help a vehicle with straight-line acceleration, Track Mode helps the company’s electric cars handle corners better. Tesla’s blog post notes that Track Mode was designed specifically to be used on closed autocross circuits and racetracks. The company also pointed out that its goal behind the development of Track Mode was simple — they wanted to use the power of the vehicle’s electric motor and instant torque to “make cornering on the track feel just as natural as forward acceleration.”
Track Mode enables vehicles to precisely control whether torque goes to the front or the rear wheels. This allows the Model 3 Performance to instantly increase or decrease the car’s rotation in a corner. With such a system in place, racing enthusiasts would find that highly technical driving sessions on a closed circuit would be a lot easier.
Track Mode starts rolling out today
— Tesla (@Tesla) November 8, 2018
Unlike the usual Sport Modes of legacy carmakers, which usually involve the disabling of stability control, the Model 3 Performance’s Track Mode adds features to the vehicle. Tesla accomplished this by replacing the electric car’s stability control system with its own Vehicle Dynamics Controller — a software specifically developed for the company’s electric vehicles that acts as both a stability control system and a performance enhancement on the track. Tesla also provided a summary of the features that are employed by Track Mode when it is activated.
Motor Torque for Rotation
Our Vehicle Dynamics Controller continually monitors the state of the vehicle and all of the inputs from the driver to determine the driver’s intention and affect the rotation of the car in a matter of milliseconds. Track Mode relies heavily on the front and rear motors to control the car’s rotation, and we have the ability to command a 100% torque bias. When cornering, if rotation is insufficient to the driver’s request, the system controls a rear biased torque. Conversely, when rotation is excessive, we command a front biased torque.
Increased Regenerative Braking
Heavy regenerative braking may not be comfortable for day-to-day driving, but on a track, it has several key advantages. It gives the driver more authority with a single pedal, improves the endurance of the braking system, and sends more energy back into the battery, maximizing the battery’s ability to deliver large amounts of power. It also gives the Vehicle Dynamics Controller more authority to create or arrest rotation with the motors when your foot is lifted off of the accelerator pedal.
Track Focused Powertrain Cooling
The high output power required for track driving generates a lot of heat, so endurance on the track requires more aggressive cooling of the powertrain. We proactively drop the temperatures of the battery and the drive units in preparation for the track and continue to cool them down in between drive sessions. We can also allow operation of the powertrain beyond typical thermal limits and increase our refrigerant system capacity by overclocking the AC compressor into higher speed ranges.
Enhanced Cornering Power
We typically think of using brakes to slow down a car, but you can actually use them to make the car faster out of a corner. All Model 3s are equipped with open differentials, which send an equal amount of torque from the motors to both the left and right wheels. When cornering, the wheels on the inside of the corner have less load on them, which means they can provide less tractive force than the outside wheels. To prevent excess slip on this inside tire, we have to limit the torque for both wheels, leaving power on the table. In Track Mode, we simultaneously apply brake and motor torque to produce a net increase in tractive force while cornering. This is similar to how a limited slip differential works, except when using the brakes, the differential can be optimized for various driving conditions.
What is particularly exciting about the release of Track Mode is the fact that it is just the first version of the system. On its blog post, Tesla noted that Track Mode is set to improve further in the future through over-the-air updates.
When Elon Musk announced the Model 3 Performance on Twitter, he noted that the vehicle would be around 15% faster than a BMW M3 on the track. Considering the pedigree of the German-made performance sedan as well as the tendency of Tesla’s previous vehicles to throttle their performance on a track, Musk’s claims were met with a notable degree of skepticism from both avid car enthusiasts and critics alike. That said, initial reviews of the feature were notably positive.
Tesla conquered the drag strip with Ludicrous Mode. It remains to be seen if the company can do the same on the closed circuit with Track Mode. Considering the deliberate design of the feature, though, there is a pretty good chance that the Model 3 Performance would soon be just as formidable on the track as the Model S P100D is on the drag strip.
Elon Musk
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla confirmed HW3 vehicles cannot run unsupervised FSD, replacing its free upgrade promise with a discounted trade-in.
Tesla has officially confirmed that early vehicles with its Autopilot Hardware 3 (HW3) will not be capable of unsupervised Full Self-Driving, while extending a path forward for legacy owners through a discounted trade-in program. The announcement came by way of Elon Musk in today’s Tesla Q1 2026 earnings call.
🚨 Our LIVE updates on the Tesla Earnings Call will take place here in a thread 🧵
Follow along below: pic.twitter.com/hzJeBitzJU
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
The history here matters. HW3 launched in April 2019, and Tesla sold Full Self-Driving packages to owners on the understanding that the hardware was sufficient for full autonomy. Some owners paid between $8,000 and $15,000 for FSD during that period. For years, as FSD’s AI models grew more demanding, HW3 vehicles fell progressively further behind, eventually landing on FSD v12.6 in January 2025 while AI4 vehicles moved to v13 and then v14. When Musk acknowledged in January 2025 that HW3 simply could not reach unsupervised operation, and alluded to a difficult hardware retrofit.
The near-term offering is more concrete. Tesla’s head of Autopilot Ashok Elluswamy confirmed on today’s call that a V14-lite will be coming to HW3 vehicles in late June, bringing all the V14 features currently running on AI4 hardware. That is a meaningful software update for owners who have been frozen at v12.6 for over a year, and it represents genuine effort to keep older hardware relevant. Unsupervised FSD for vehicles is now targeted for Q4 2026 at the earliest, with Musk describing it as a gradual, geography-limited rollout.
For HW3 owners, the over-the-air V14-lite update is welcomed, and the discounted trade-in path at least acknowledges an old obligation. What happens next with the trade-in pricing will define how this chapter ultimately gets written. If Tesla prices the hardware path fairly, acknowledges what early adopters are owed, and delivers V14-lite on the June timeline it committed to today, it has a real opportunity to convert one of the longest-running sore subjects among early adopters into a loyalty story.
Elon Musk
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Tesla’s Optimus factory in Texas targets 10 million robots yearly, with 5.2 million square feet under construction.
Tesla’s Q1 2026 Update Letter, released today, confirms that first generation Optimus production lines are now well underway at its Fremont, California factory, with a pilot line targeting one million robots per year to start. Of bigger note is a shared aerial image of a large piece of land adjacent to Gigafactory Texas, that Tesla has prominently labeled “Optimus factory site preparation.”
Permit documents show Tesla is seeking to add over 5.2 million square feet of new building space to the Giga Texas North Campus by the end of 2026, at an estimated construction investment of $5 billion to $10 billion. The longer term production target for that facility is 10 million Optimus units per year. Giga Texas already sits on 2,500 acres with over 10 million square feet of existing factory floor, and the North Campus expansion is being built to support multiple projects, including the dedicated Optimus factory, the Terafab chip fabrication facility (a joint Tesla/SpaceX/xAI venture), a Cybercab test track, road infrastructure, and supporting facilities.
Credit: TESLA
Texas makes strategic sense beyond the existing infrastructure. The state’s tax structure, lower labor costs relative to California, and the proximity to Tesla’s AI training cluster Cortex 1 and 2, both located at Giga Texas and now totaling over 230,000 H100 equivalent GPUs, means the Optimus software stack and the factory producing the hardware will share the same campus. Tesla’s Q1 report also confirmed completion of the AI5 chip tape out in April, the inference processor designed specifically to power Optimus units in the field.
As Teslarati reported, the Texas facility is intended to house Optimus V4 production at full scale. Musk told the World Economic Forum in January that Tesla plans to sell Optimus to the public by end of 2027 at a price between $20,000 and $30,000, stating, “I think everyone on earth is going to have one and want one.” He has previously pegged long term demand for general purpose humanoid robots at over 20 billion units globally, citing both consumer and industrial use cases.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a miss on vehicle deliveries for the first quarter, delivering 358,023 vehicles and building 408,386 cars during the three-month span.
As Tesla transitions more toward AI and sees itself as less of a car company, expectations for deliveries will begin to become less of a central point in the consensus of how the quarter is perceived.
Nevertheless, Tesla is leaning on its strong foundation as a car company to carry forward its AI ambitions. The first quarter is a good ground layer for the rest of the year.
Tesla Q1 2026 Earnings Results
Tesla’s Earnings Results are as follows:
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.41 Reported vs. $0.36 Expected
- Revenues – $22.387 billion vs. $22.35 billion Expected
- Free Cash Flow – $1.444 billion
- Profit – $4.72 billion
Tesla beat analyst expectations, so it will be interesting to see how the stock responds. IN the past, we’ve seen Tesla beat analyst expectations considerably, followed by a sharp drop in stock price.
On the same token, we’ve seen Tesla miss and the stock price go up the following trading session.
Tesla will hold its Q1 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q1 2026 Earnings Call at 4:30pm CT https://t.co/pkYIaGJ32y
— Tesla (@Tesla) April 22, 2026
Tesla confirmed HW3 can’t do Unsupervised FSD but there’s more to the story
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
