Lifestyle
First look at Tesla Roadster diecast: Unboxing video reveals close-up details
When Elon Musk unveiled the next-generation Tesla Roadster back in 2017, he stated that the all-electric supercar, for all its speed and specs, will be a practical vehicle. A recently-shared unboxing video of the new Tesla Roadster’s 1:18 diecast model suggests that Musk’s words may actually ring true.
Tesla owner-enthusiast Tesla Raj was able to get his hands on a friend’s next-gen Roadster diecast recently, and he was able to film a quick unboxing video for the scale model. Opening the item’s box, Raj pointed out that Tesla provided a certificate of authenticity indicating that the diecast model is an accurate representation of the real vehicle.
With Tesla’s statement in mind, one could infer that the design elements present in the 1:18 scale model of the new Tesla Roadster will be present in the supercar that’s expected to begin production sometime next year. This is where things start getting interesting.
A look at the exterior of the vehicle shows that this is definitely the case, particularly as aspects of the real car, such as its lack of side mirrors and large rear diffuser, are present in the next-gen Tesla Roadster 1:18 diecast scale model. The white seats and carbon-fiber interior are also represented in the Roadster diecast. A large rear trunk, which was previously hinted at in a photo of the vehicle, is also evident in the diecast car.
One aspect of the next-generation Roadster that has remained elusive since it was unveiled back in 2017 was its rear seats. During the vehicle’s unveiling, Elon Musk surprised the audience by stating that the Roadster will be capable of seating four people in a 2+2 seating setup. This is very unusual for supercars, as 2+2 setups are usually adopted by sports cars such as Porsches, not supercars like Lamborghinis.
As could be seen in the unboxing video, the Roadster has two seats that can fold down and up. Based on the scale model, these rear seats will not be white like the seats up front, and they will not be very large either. The Roadster’s jump seats, true to Elon Musk’s words during the unveiling event, will likely be best for small passengers. These seats, of course, will not be present in the Tesla Roadster’s SpaceX Package, which would use actual rocket tech to improve the performance of the already-insane supercar.
Another surprising aspect of the Roadster scale model is the fact that it does not have a frunk. The Tesla owner-enthusiast noted that the hood of the diecast car does not seem movable, which is pretty unusual considering that all cars that Tesla has designed from the ground up so far have very generous frunks. Elon Musk has also mentioned that the vehicle will have “tons of storage,” which suggests that the Roadster can carry a substantial amount of cargo. It would be interesting to see how Tesla can pull this off without a trunk.
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Overall, the next-gen Tesla Roadster diecast 1:18 scale model looks very much worth its $250 price. The attention to detail is second to none, and for a vehicle as stunning as the new Roadster, this is definitely a great thing.
Watch the first look at Tesla’s next-gen Roadster diecast model in the unboxing video below.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
The Boring Company’s new tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units.
The Boring Company just introduced a new piece of hardware, and it runs on parts pulled straight from a Tesla showroom. Liner Truck 3, unveiled in a post from the tunneling company’s official X account, is an all electric vehicle built around Tesla Model 3 battery packs and drive units, purpose built to move concrete tunnel segments to the boring machine face without a single person underground.
Introducing Liner Truck 3 — our latest fully electric tunnel vehicle.
– Tesla Model 3 battery and drive units
– Transports 22,000+ lb of concrete segments to the boring machine
– 28 miles of range
– 12 mph max operating speed
– Remotely piloted from Global OCC in Texas, with… pic.twitter.com/XB7FgSXnpy— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) August 7, 2026
The job itself is unglamorous but critical. Each precast segment run weighs more than 22,000 pounds, roughly the load of a full cement mixer, and Liner Truck 3 hauls that weight repeatedly between the surface staging area and wherever the Prufrock machine happens to be cutting.
The Boring Company said Liner Truck 3 is piloted remotely out of its Global Operations Control Center in Texas, extending the Zero-People-In-Tunnel approach the company has spent years building toward. An earlier version of a ZPIT liner truck was already tested at the company’s Bastrop, Texas research tunnels, and a factory tour released last month showed an employee flying a fully loaded liner truck with a PlayStation controller. Liner Truck 3 looks like the production version of that same idea, cleaned up and pushed into daily use.
The timing lines up with a company digging in more places than it ever has before. The Boring Company now has multiple Prufrock machines active or arriving in Nashville, where Music City Loop construction has been accelerating since February, and its Vegas Loop network keeps adding tunnel mileage on a near monthly basis. Every one of those projects depends on getting concrete segments to the cutting face fast enough to keep the boring machine from idling, which is exactly the bottleneck Liner Truck 3 is designed to remove.
It also reinforces something Tesla owners have watched happen gradually across Musk’s companies: passenger car hardware finding a second life in heavy equipment. Model 3 drive units already move people through the Vegas Loop, and now the same components are hauling concrete underground in Nashville and wherever The Boring Company digs next. Whether that kind of component reuse extends further into TBC’s equipment lineup, or into other Musk owned industrial hardware, is the next thing worth watching.
Firmware
Tesla unlocks in-car web conferencing to extend Google Meet, Teams and beyond
Tesla’s Summer Update lets owners join Google Meet, Teams, and Discord calls via cabin camera.
Tesla’s 2026 Summer Update, which just began rolling out to customer vehicles, now links the built-in web browser with the in-cabin camera feed and microphone input, thereby letting owners join video calls on nearly any browser-based service instead of just Zoom.
The change appears in Tesla’s own release notes for software version 2026.26 under “Web Browser,” which states that the vehicle can now use its interior camera and cabin microphone when a website requests access, with permission granted the same way a desktop browser handles it. As NotATeslaApp notes, this feature opens the door to Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Discord, and other webcam-enabled sites to activate the in-car cabin-facing camera. The feed automatically crops and zooms to center the driver in frame.
Tesla has offered in-car video calling before, but only through a dedicated Zoom app that launched at the end of 2022, a stripped-down browser preloaded with Zoom’s own web client and gated behind Premium Connectivity. Opening the full browser to any camera-requesting site removes that walled garden. Elon Musk first called video conferencing “definitely a future feature” back in 2020, when the pandemic pushed remote meetings into daily life, so this update effectively finishes something Tesla has been promising for six years.
Tesla Summer Update begins rolling out: a look at the new features
The feature keeps the same restrictions that applied to Zoom on Tesla vehicles. It only works while the car is parked; shifting into Drive disables the camera feed, according to the release notes. It is also limited to vehicles running Tesla’s AMD Ryzen infotainment hardware, meaning older Intel-based Model S and Model X units, along with early Model 3 and Model Y builds, don’t get it.
Turning the browser into a general entry point for the in-cabin camera, rather than routing everything through one local app, widens the number of third-party sites that can ask for access, even though Tesla’s permission prompt.
With the Summer update only days into its rollout, be sure to stay with us on TikTok and X to see the latest video demonstrations.
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.
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
Elon Musk and SpaceX shrugs off the trading day Wall Street feared most
