News
Tesla Superchargers could be coming to a gas station near you
If you are in the business of selling gasoline and diesel fuel, why would you want to install chargers for electric cars, too? Gas stations today live and die on volume turnover geared to the roughly five minutes it takes to fill the tank. They make most of their profit on coffee, cigarettes and snacks that can be dispensed quickly. The electric car revolution may change all that and, once again, Tesla Motors is at the forefront of the change.
Sheetz operates a large chain of gas stations. It has hundreds of retail outlets located in six states, mostly in the mid-Atlantic region. It does nearly $7 billion in business every year. Eight of its stores already have charging stations where EV drivers can recharge their batteries. Sheetz is currently talking to Tesla about adding its charging infrastructure to the Sheetz locations.
“We’ve had discussions with them about putting their chargers in our stores,” confirmed Michael Lorenz, Sheetz’s executive vice president of petroleum supply, in an interview. “We haven’t done anything yet, but we’re continuing those discussions.” He declined to say how many Sheetz locations might be involved.
Tesla declined to comment on the negotiations with Sheetz, but acknowledged in a statement that it is actively courting gas stations, hotels and restaurants in its bid to install high-speed electric chargers across the country.
Sheetz may be ahead of the curve at this time, but the coming electric car revolution is getting bigger in the rear view mirror. Already, marketing experts are recommending that gas stations start thinking about adding chargers to their facilities. Bloomberg New Energy Finance estimates that within six years electric cars will be as affordable as traditional gasoline-powered vehicles. By 2040, roughly 1 in 3 new vehicle sales could be an EV, according to Bloomberg.
Gas stations routinely dig up and replace their fuel tanks. It makes economic sense to bury the conduits that will be needed for the chargers of the future while that work is being done, even if the actual chargers are not installed until later.
As average fuel economy rises and advances in clean transportation technology occur, traditional gas stations will soon face a difficult choice: adapt or die. Federal estimates suggest that by 2035, U.S. drivers could be consuming 20% less gasoline than they do today, says John Eichberger, executive director of the Fuels Institute, founded by the National Association of Convenience Stores.
“Those kiosks that just sell gallons and smokes are going to have to change,” says Eichberger. “They’re going to lose gallons. Plain and simple, no way around it.”
He adds that the typical gas station of the future will likely look completely different from the fast paced “get ’em in, get ’em out” stores of today. He thinks they will be more like restaurants or highway rest stops than convenience stores. Tesla is at the forefront of this paradigm shift in which customers stay longer and spend more. The more gas stations that move in that direction, the better for Tesla.
Tristen Griffith is the president of the Sacramento 49er Travel Plaza, a truck stop that spent the past year researching EV technology. Recently, Griffith made the decision to let a third-party company, NRG Energy, install a set of EV chargers on her commercial property.
“We want to sell gas and diesel, but our future is electric vehicles, and trucks are going to be driverless,” said Griffith. “Times are changing, and we need to keep up with that change as well, if we want to be smart and stay ahead of the game.”
Staying ahead of the game is Tesla’s greatest strength. The question Tesla fans should be asking themselves at this point is exactly what does Tesla have in mind for charging the millions of electric cars it says it will be building in a few short years? Is it thinking about a parallel system to its Supercharger locations? Will it have one system for Tesla owners and another for drivers of other electric cars?
We simply don’t know, and won’t until Tesla decides to let us in on its plans.
Source: Washington Post
Tesla just upgraded its headlights through a software update, making them even better without any physical or hardware upgrade.
Tesla’s latest software update is quietly improving nighttime driving for a small number of owners. Version 2026.38 includes a new capability called Dynamic Headlight Leveling.
The feature automatically adjusts the aim of the low beams in response to driving conditions and nearby traffic, with the goal of giving the driver more usable light on the road while reducing glare for oncoming vehicles and traffic ahead.
2026.38 just dropped.
Model 3 gets Dynamic Headlight Leveling — low beams auto-aim around traffic for max visibility, less glare. Model 3 / Y (AMD HW3) also pick up sharper Tesla visuals + an enhanced park scene on the center display.
Legacy Intel cars get Supercharger Site… pic.twitter.com/45ac4AH6Vs
— Frunk To Trunk (@FrunkToTrunk) September 30, 2026
Unlike Tesla’s matrix high-beam system, which selectively dims individual LED segments to create shadows around other cars, Dynamic Headlight Leveling physically tilts the low-beam projectors. Internal motors respond to changes in vehicle pitch.
When the car accelerates hard, climbs a steep grade, or carries extra weight in the rear, the headlights can otherwise point higher than intended. The software counters that movement in real time so the beam stays aimed at the road surface rather than into the eyes of other drivers.
Early indications reveal the update is reaching a limited set of vehicles, including certain Model 3 and Cybertruck examples in the United States and the United Arab Emirates. The rollout does not appear tied to a single hardware revision, and Tesla has not published a broader schedule. It is simply a common waiting game until your car receives it.
The change arrives against a backdrop of wider complaints about headlight glare. Some earlier Model 3 and Model Y vehicles were the subject of an NHTSA recall related to excessive low-beam glare; the software adjustment offers a potential mitigation for cars equipped with the necessary leveling hardware. It does not replace adaptive high beams where those are already available, nor does it alter the basic low-beam pattern itself.
Instead, it keeps an existing beam pointed where it is most useful.
For drivers who have received the update, the system requires no new settings or user input. The headlights simply respond as road conditions and traffic change. As the feature reaches more vehicles, it adds another example of Tesla using over-the-air software to refine existing hardware rather than waiting for a new model year. Nighttime visibility and reduced glare for others are the practical results owners are expected to notice first.
Lifestyle
Tesla teases “Halloween Mode” update with Optimus rising from a graveyard
Tesla’s Halloween teaser hides a covered vehicle and an Optimus hand rising from the ground.
Tesla has started teasing a Halloween software update for its vehicles, with a short clip on X that reads, “Halloween is coming.” The clip opens on a glowing pumpkin before pulling back to the car’s center touchscreen, where the usual parked visualization has been replaced by a graveyard scene, and the vehicle draped with a white sheet so it reads as a cartoon ghost.
Halloween is coming pic.twitter.com/lM3ASUeOqX
— Tesla (@Tesla) October 1, 2026
The second detail is a robotic hand clawing its way out of the dirt like a zombie, which looks to be the hand of Tesla’s latest Optimus V3 humanoid robot. While Tesla still has not formally shown Optimus Gen 3 walking around in service, renders pulled from Tesla’s Android app last month gave the clearest look yet, including far more refined hands that Tesla has said carry 22 degrees of freedom. The hand has been the hardest part of the program. Musk has called it the majority of the robot’s engineering difficulty, and Tesla’s patents describe a design driven by tendons with the actuators moved into the forearm.
Tesla Optimus V3 hand and arm details revealed in new patents
Optimus also has a Halloween track record. Last October the robot handed out candy in Times Square, and a costumed “zombie” Optimus shuffled around the Tesla Diner in Los Angeles on Halloween night.
On the software side, Tesla’s 2025 Holiday Update expanded Santa Mode with a Santa sleigh, snowmen, snow effects, and a festive lock chime, so it wouldn’t be too far fetched if we saw something similar but themed for a Halloween Mode.
Tesla Full Self-Driving is set to receive improvements to address its two biggest issues, according to a company engineer.
Director of Engineering at Tesla AI, Phil Duan, revealed in a post on X that improvements to both pothole avoidance and navigation “are coming,’ something we have heard many times in the past. However, there are a few things that seem to hint that things might be different this time around.
Improvements on both are coming.
— Phil Duan (@pduan) October 1, 2026
Pothole avoidance, navigation, speed control, and left lane camping are some of the most prevalent and frequently mentioned shortcomings of the Full Self-Driving suite. These are a few of the biggest issues that have kept Tesla Full Self-Driving as a Supervised suite, meaning drivers must remain attentive during operation.
Pothole Avoidance
Pothole avoidance was first mentioned as an “Upcoming Improvement” with the Tesla Full Self-Driving v14.3 update back in early April of this year. It was listed alongside “Expand reasoning to all behaviors beyond destination handling.”
It’s been six months since we first saw pothole avoidance explicitly mentioned, and it has not moved beyond that and joined the main release notes yet.
Tesla has not shed any light on why pothole avoidance has been such an issue for it to solve, but it also has issues identifying large bumps much of the time, so its modeling of sudden changes in road conditions is likely pretty weak at this particular point. I’ve had more issues with large bumps than potholes, personally, but both are issues that need to be resolved.
This is that big bounce that I mentioned in the quoted post.
It’s just a tad too drastic to take at the speed FSD wants to go over it. You can see me quickly swipe down into Sloth, but I intervened. https://t.co/K20PK9ysBg pic.twitter.com/81Oc82ZJcZ
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) August 2, 2026
It makes sense that things might be pretty close to being released to the public, as we are going on such an extensive period of time between it being mentioned and it actually being deployed.
Navigation
Navigation is likely the most painful part of using Full Self-Driving, as it routinely takes strange routes, has trouble with local rules (like Except Right Turn Stop Signs in Pennsylvania), and sometimes does not realize that maneuvers it is suggesting are against the law. Turning out of my neighborhood, you cannot turn left, yet my Model Y still suggests it roughly 70 percent of the time when I’m leaving.
However, Tesla might be close to a breakthrough on this. With the Summer Update, Tesla added “Preferred Routes” alongside “Automatic Navigation.”
Preferred Routes prioritized roads that the driver had actually taken before, instead of always defaulting to what the vehicle believes is the most efficient path. This has already solved many of my issues. Formerly, I would turn off the Online Routing setting, and that would eliminate most of my complaints with routing, but then you lose out later on the Live Traffic Visualization.
Tesla’s Navigation has improved tremendously thanks to the Preferred Routes release with the Summer Update, but it still could use some polishing, as it still suggests strange routes from time to time, and it also has a lot of issues getting out of a parking lot. I find that those truly confuse FSD sometimes.
Tesla just made its headlights even better through a software update
Tesla teases “Halloween Mode” update with Optimus rising from a graveyard
