Lifestyle
Tesla tale: A man, his Model 3, his silver Aero Wheels, and serendipity
Peter Lafford owns a Model 3 with stunning silver Aero Wheels. While the electric car already draws the eye with its classic Tesla looks and the clever mod on its wheels, the story behind the vehicle is noteworthy. Here is a Tesla tale of a man, his Model 3, its modded Aeros, and serendipity.
Peter’s first hands-on encounter with Tesla happened in September 2013, when his father, Dr. Lindsay Lafford, who was then 100 years old, was given a special ride in his kidney specialist’s Model S. His father, who passed away in 2014 at the ripe age of 101, was a thoroughbred car enthusiast, keeping an online presence that chronicled his passion for automobiles. As could be seen in a video of the special day, Lindsay thoroughly enjoyed his ride in the Model S, praising the car and describing it as “unbelievable.”
While Peter and his wife were impressed by the full-sized luxury sedan, they were not really in the market for the upscale vehicle. That was why when Elon Musk finally decided to bring the mass-market Model 3 to the market, he and his wife immediately decided to join the Tesla family. Peter would be one of the Day 1 line-waiters at the Tesla showroom in Scottsdale Fashion Square, becoming one of the customers to place reservations at the store.
As Peter prepared to leave the Tesla showroom, serendipity struck. A Tesla employee from the store gave him some refreshments — a bottle of Crystal Geyser spring water — with a sell by date of 03/02/2018. Exactly 14 years from the date printed on the bottle, Peter and his father came upon the Crystal Geyser bottling plant in Olancha, California while road-tripping on Lindsay’s Honda Insight Hybrid, one of three vehicles in Phoenix.
“Every Crystal Geyser bottle I see reminds me of that trip, and with the Tesla connection I have with my father, I get the feeling he’s helping push things along,” Peter wrote in a blog post.
Peter’s Model 3 was ultimately delivered on March 16, two weeks short of two years from his reservation date. The Model 3 delivery carried another notable coincidence. As it turned out, Peter’s silver Model 3 was VIN 8757, which was strangely reminiscent of the numbers on his father’s Honda Insight Hybrid, which had a VIN ending in 867. On the way home a few days after taking delivery of his Model 3, Peter also glimpsed BA289, a British Airways 747 flight. That particular flight had a connection to his father as well, as Lindsay usually took the same trip back to Phoenix after frequent summer trips to England.
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- A Tesla Model 3 with custom-painted Aero Covers. [Credit: Peter Lafford/Facebook]
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- A Tesla Model 3 with custom-painted Aero Covers. [Credit: Peter Lafford/Facebook]
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- A Tesla Model 3 with custom-painted Aero Covers. [Credit: Peter Lafford/Facebook]
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- A Tesla Model 3 with custom-painted Aero Covers. [Credit: Peter Lafford/Facebook]
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- A Tesla Model 3 with custom-painted Aero Covers. [Credit: Peter Lafford/Facebook]
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- A Tesla Model 3 with custom-painted Aero Covers. [Credit: Peter Lafford/Facebook]
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- A Tesla Model 3 with custom-painted Aero Covers. [Credit: Peter Lafford/Facebook]
With a series of serendipitous connections to his father’s memories, Peter opted to make his Model 3 truly stand out. He initially decided to upgrade the car’s OEM wheels with 18-inch Turbine wheels from T-Sportline. Eventually, however, he decided to do something a little more unique for his electric car.
Tapping the expertise of Car Pro Collision Center, an auto body shop in the area, Peter opted to have his Aero Wheel covers painted silver. The results, as could be seen, are quite stunning, and it only cost $250. The silver Aero Wheels simply work with the Model 3, and judging by how well it blended with the car’s overall design; the mod could match the electric car’s other color options too.
Tesla is currently in the process of ramping up the production of the Model 3. In a recently leaked email from Elon Musk, it was revealed that the company is attempting to push Model 3 production to 3,000-4,000-a-week levels after a scheduled halt in the vehicle’s manufacturing. By the end of the second quarter, Tesla is aiming to produce 5,000 Model 3 per week, with options such as dual-motor AWD variants possibly being offered in July.
Watch Peter and his late dad’s first encounter with a Tesla in the video below.
Lifestyle
NTSB findings on fatal Tesla crash tell a very different story
The NTSB confirmed the driver, not Tesla’s FSD, caused the fatal Texas house crash.
The National Transportation Safety Board released preliminary findings Wednesday confirming that a Tesla driver, not the vehicle’s software, caused a fatal crash in Katy, Texas in June. The driver, 44-year-old Michael Butler, had engaged Full Self-Driving Supervised mode on Rose Hollow Lane, a residential street with a 30 mph speed limit, before manually overriding the system by pressing the accelerator pedal all the way to 100%. Data recovered from the 2025 Tesla Model 3 showed the vehicle was traveling over 70 miles per hour when it struck a home and killed 76-year-old Martha Avila, who was inside. Weather was clear, the road was dry, and it was daylight.
Texas man charged in fatal Tesla crash where he blamed Autopilot
Butler told authorities he had passed out at the wheel. But security camera footage obtained by the NTSB told a different story, and showed the car accelerating through an intersection before leaving the road entirely. Police also found that Butler’s phone had Google searches including the terms “Tesla FSD not aggressive enough 2026” and “Tesla FSD too timid,” raising serious questions about how he was using the system before the crash. Butler has since been charged with manslaughter. The victim’s family has filed a lawsuit against both Butler and Tesla, alleging negligence.
The NTSB findings aligned directly with what Tesla VP of AI Software Ashok Elluswamy had already stated publicly on X in the weeks after the crash, writing that “the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100%.” The data confirmed his account.
Yup. In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area. They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash.
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 22, 2026
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Texas ranch to showcase the lifelong work that changed the world
Elon Musk is building a product gallery at his Texas ranch spanning his lifelong inventions.
Elon Musk took to X earlier today, noting “Am putting together a product gallery at my ranch in Texas.” in response to a resurfaced famous quote from JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s wherein he draw parallels of the Tesla CEO to legendary physicist Albert Einstein.
Dimon made the remark at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland back in January 2025, telling CNBC at the time, “SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, I mean, the guy is our Einstein.” The remark seemingly ended a long-time feud between the two high profile execs.
While details are thin about the exact location of Elon Musk’s Texas ranch and any pending projects that would serve as a gallery and homage to his portfolio of revolutionary product inventions spanning from 1984 to 2025, land acquisition records point to roughly a location of several thousand acres in Bastrop County, east of Austin near the Colorado River and held through an LLC called Horse Ranch LLC that’s managed by Musk’s longtime personal friend and family wealth manager Jared Birchall. Birchall also serves as the CEO of Neuralink.
Tesla’s “ecological paradise” in Giga Texas may be larger than expected
The broader Bastrop County footprint surrounding the ranch has grown significantly. Entities tied to Musk have accumulated approximately 2,000 acres in Bastrop County as of mid-2026, up from 700 acres earlier in the year, with possibly as much as 6,000 acres acquired in total across Bastrop and Travis counties based on deed records.
No completion date for the gallery has been announced and Musk has not confirmed whether it will be open to the public. As Teslarati has reported, SpaceX just completed the largest IPO in history raising $75 billion, a milestone that makes this particular moment in Musk’s career a natural inflection point for looking back at what he has built through the years.
Am putting together a product gallery at my ranch in Texas https://t.co/xQf5FRy4uz
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2026
Starting with Blastar, a simple space shooter game Musk coded at 12 years old and sold to a South African magazine for $500. From there the timeline moves through a commercial career that started with Zip2 in 1995, a city guide software company sold to Compaq for roughly $300 million in 1999. That was followed by X.com in 1999, which merged with Confinity to become PayPal, acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. SpaceX came in 2002, Tesla in 2003, SolarCity in 2006, the Supercharger network in 2012, Neuralink in 2016, The Boring Company in 2016, OpenAI co-founded in 2015, X acquired in 2022, xAI in 2023, Optimus in 2024, the Cybercab in 2026, and most recently SpaceXAI following the SpaceX and xAI merger. The gallery will also likely include items that blur the line between product and cultural artifact, among them The Boring Company’s Not-a-Flamethrower from 2018, Tesla Short Shorts from 2020, and Burnt Hair perfume released under X in 2022.
Lifestyle
Tesla makes the cut on California’s newest EV Rebate program
California just signed a $270 million EV rebate into law and it starts this summer.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 168 into law on Monday, July 13, 2026, creating a $270 million EV rebate program that delivers money directly at the dealership rather than as a tax credit applied months later. The program, called MyFirstEV, is funded equally by California’s state budget and participating automakers, with each contributing $135.5 million to make the math work.
The timing is directly tied to the loss of federal support when the $7,500 federal EV tax credit ended, removing the most significant consumer incentive that had driven EV adoption in the U.S. California, which accounts for roughly one-third of all EVs sold nationally, moved to fill that gap with a state-level replacement.
The rebate structure is straightforward. First-time EV buyers can receive $3,500 off any new battery-electric vehicle with an MSRP up to $50,000. Used EVs priced at $25,000 or below qualify for a $1,750 rebate. The credit is applied at the point of sale, which removes the friction of the old federal system where buyers had to wait for tax season to see the benefit. The program goes live later this summer, with the California Air Resources Board expected to release full participation details next month.
California hits Tesla Cybercab and Robotaxi driverless cars with new law
For Tesla buyers, the implications are mixed. The Tesla Model 3 RWD at $42,490 and the Model 3 Long Range at $47,490 both fall under the $50,000 cap and would qualify for the full $3,500 rebate for first-time buyers. The Model Y, which starts at $44,990 after Tesla’s recent price adjustment, also qualifies. The Model X, Model S, and Cybertruck all exceed the cap and receive no benefit. As Teslarati has reported, the program also includes a carve-out exempting California-based automakers like Rivian and Lucid from the price cap entirely, a provision that puts Tesla at a disadvantage since it relocated its headquarters to Texas in 2021.
Other qualifying vehicles include the Chevrolet Equinox EV, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, and Volkswagen ID.4.
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