Lifestyle
Tesla Road Trip Battery Range Planning
My Tesla road trip down to NJ was a success, for the most part, but it didn’t come without some high stress range situations due to some poor planning on my part.
The Setup
Tesla road trips for me almost always takes place after a full day’s worth of work which includes 100 miles of driving, something I always have to factor in with my range planning. At the time of writing, there are no Superchargers anywhere near my home or work which makes Tesla road trip planning slightly more difficult.
On my first road trip I charged up to 225 miles at the Tesla store near my work before heading home and beginning my road trip. But this time around, I wasn’t so lucky since every charging spot at the Tesla store was taken.
Knowing this might happen, I had a “plan B” which involved leaving work early and charging at home to give me enough buffer range before heading out again on my Tesla road trip. Unforeseen circumstances at the business left me staying much later than I wanted to. It also happened to be the day leading up to a holiday weekend so traffic was terrible.
I got home with about 140 miles of range left – far less than what I started with on the prior trip. The family and I were in a rush since I got home late and we were all anxious to get out of town.
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EVTripPlanner indicated that I needed 122 rated miles to get to the first Supercharger in CT which meant that I had approximately 18 miles of wiggle room.
While I had another “Plan C” which would route us through the Greenwich, RI Supercharger, the downside was that it would take us into some high congestion areas and add additional time to the commute.
Time was ticking down and I needed to get out of town within a reasonable evening hour so I decided that 18 miles was plenty of buffer. We stuck to the original plan and went for it.
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The Countdown
Just like on our previous trip, we stopped at our favorite sushi place, Hanami, along the way. There was 44 miles of range left and 29 miles remaining before reaching the Supercharger.
The Model S was already getting cranky at this point due to the low state of charge along with the nighttime temperatures in New England. I didn’t think too much of it since we were just stopping for a quick dinner and the outside temperature was still above freezing point (32F).
My mind ran rampant over dinner and I couldn’t stop thinking about the remaining battery range. I knew there was a Level 2 charger nearby (but not walking distance) that could add a whopping 17 miles per hour had at the expense of waiting in the middle of nowhere only to make a small dent in range. It didn’t seem worth it so we got back in the car and decided to head directly to the Darien South Supercharger.
The next 30 miles would take us on a heralding ride as we watched the battery range countdown at a rapid rate, as we traversed hilly portions along the journey, and approach the actual miles remaining before reaching the Supercharger. In the back of my mind I knew the Model S has a 10-20 miles of buffer but I really didn’t want to count on it. I slowed my driving speed to stretch my range as much as possible.
As the range crept into the single digits the dashboard indicated that the Model S would begin trimming my energy usage (disabling unnecessary energy drawing features). This was just one more blow to my confidence.
The Arrival
We made it to the Supercharger with 2 miles of range to spare and with great sighs of relief from all.
While we only needed about 130 miles of range to get to our final destination of this Tesla road trip, the first leg of the journey left some battle wounds. My daughter literally refused to get back into the car until it had 200 miles of range left on it.
The rest of the journey along with the return trip was pretty uneventful but I think we’ll all remember this thrilling incident for a very long time to come.
Unlike ICE cars, there’s no quick fill for a Model S except for Superchargers. While there are alternative charging stations everywhere, they’re so slow in charging that it becomes nearly useless, in terms of practicality, especially as it relates to long-range Tesla road trips.
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Either way there was lessons learned: don’t take shortcuts and spend the time to charge; I should have given a large enough buffer by stopping at the closer Greenwich, RI supercharger or even slept at home and left early the next day with a full charge.
With new Superchargers popping up all the time hopefully we’ll have less and less opportunity to make poor decisions, but even Elon can’t protect us from our own mistakes.
Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”
The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”
Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.
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Cybertruck
Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love
Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.
Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.
The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”
The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.
Custom wraps via mobile app https://t.co/5OydZ26g9p pic.twitter.com/uexU0ZePxu
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
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It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.
Elon Musk
Tesla Diner is throwing a birthday party with a Franz-signed special treat
Tesla Diner turns one on July 21 with Optimus, roller skates, and a Franz-signed hat.
Tesla is throwing its Hollywood Diner a first birthday party on July 21 and the celebration comes with a guest list of unique items, including a limited run of Tesla Diner birthday hats personally signed by Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen for the first 50 customers who place an in-car order at midnight.
One year after lines wrapped around the block on Santa Monica Boulevard for a diner that most of the restaurant industry did not take seriously, Tesla is making the case that the concept was worth the years it took to build. The concept had been in Musk’s head since at least 2018, when he floated the idea of “an old school drive-in, roller skates and rock restaurant” on X, describing it years later as “‘Grease’ meets ‘The Jetsons’ with Supercharging.”
Tesla Optimus Gen 3 is coming to the Tesla Diner with new ambitions
What made the diner genuinely different from any restaurant that came before it was not the menu or the nostalgia. It was the ordering model. Tesla owners could place food orders directly from their vehicle’s touchscreen before arriving, a small feature that hints at something much larger on the horizon. As the Cybercab and unsupervised FSD expand across major cities, the diner model becomes a template for an entirely new kind of commerce. A robotaxi pulling in to charge does not need a human to walk up to a counter. The vehicle places the order, the food is ready on arrival, and the passenger never interrupts the experience of being driven somewhere else. It is the first glimpse of what drive-through commerce looks like when the car is doing the driving.
As Teslarati has reported, Musk signaled immediately after opening that the Hollywood location was only the beginning, posting that Tesla would expand the concept to major cities worldwide and along Supercharger corridors on long-distance routes if the first location proved successful. One year in, the birthday celebration on July 21 makes a strong case that it has. Tesla announced a full day of events including a Cybercab on display, a birthday menu, Optimus in attendance, face painting, a photo booth, roller skating servers, a light show, a Skypad DJ, and complimentary collectibles.
If Musk’s ambition holds, the Hollywood diner is year one of something much bigger. The birthday party is the proof of concept. The robotaxi fleet is the business model waiting behind it.
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Tesla Diner is turning 1 on July 21st, so we’re throwing a party
Come swing by for a day full of fun:
– Cybercab on display
– Birthday menu
– @Tesla_Optimus
– Face painting for kids & adults
– Photo booth
– Servers on roller skates delivering your order
– Light show
– Skypad DJ… pic.twitter.com/TD8pOjihYs— Tesla North America (@tesla_na) July 18, 2026
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