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Tesla’s 62-stall Supercharger project in Santa Monica gains new momentum

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Tesla’s 62-stall V3 Supercharger project will be a topic of discussion at this evening’s Santa Monica City Council meeting. The site of 1401 and 1421-1425 Santa Monica Boulevard was originally the planned location of Tesla’s largest V3 Supercharging station in the world. However, an Emergency Interim Zone Ordinance delayed the project. A Santa Monica City Council agenda for the March 30th meeting shows there could be a reconsideration in the Emergency Ordinance for the two lots where Tesla planned to install 62 of its fastest electric car chargers. The ordinance temporarily reserved the area for affordable housing.

On March 4th, the Santa Monica City Council chose to approve the 62-stall Tesla Supercharging station. Just days later, the City Council included the two lots that Tesla had chosen in an Emergency Interim Zoning Ordinance that reserved the land for condos and apartments. It didn’t scrap the project completely, but it would delay the Supercharging facility for a minimum of 45 days and could be extended to two years. The March 9th meeting effectively reserved unoccupied lots for prospective housing development. Tesla’s lot fit the bill, and the project lost its momentum.

Tesla’s largest V3 Supercharger facility is coming to Santa Monica

Now, revisions have been made to the Santa Monica City Council’s plan, and new areas are being considered for the affordable housing push. According to the Agenda available on the Santa Monica City Council website, the updates will be discussed at tonight’s meeting.

Instead of having housing be introduced in previously chosen areas, the City Council is now considering new regions of Santa Monica. In particular, regions that have not been used for affordable housing in the past are being considered heavily. This bodes well for Tesla’s Supercharger project on Santa Monica Boulevard because some of the listed areas in the Update show that housing could be pushed further north, several blocks away from the planned area for the V3 Supercharger lot.

The Update says:

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“In order to take steps towards addressing Santa Monica’s past history of housing segregation, the Commission supported introducing housing potential, particularly affordable housing, in areas that have historically not accommodated housing, such as Montana Avenue, the Office Campus zone, and Main Street, especially on city-owned properties such as surface parking lots.”

Montana Avenue runs nearly a mile north of Santa Monica Boulevard, just south of the wealthy Brentwood neighborhood. Main Street runs along the coastline of Santa Monica and is perpendicular to Santa Monica Boulevard. The Office Campus Zone is located in several different areas, and all are several miles East of Tesla’s proposed Supercharger location.

The highlighted areas are being considered for Affordable Housing locations. Tesla’s planned V3 Supercharger location is denoted by the Tesla logo and red dot. (Map: Santa Monica Community Development Department)

The City Council was also not supportive of introducing new housing potential in the Industrial Conservation Zone. This is denoted by the dark grey areas located about two blocks south of the planned Supercharger project. Several concerns, including historic racial inequities, existing overconcentration of affordable housing in proximity to the area, and “the need to ensure the City’s economic sustainability by retaining former industrial properties for businesses” make the area ideal for market-rate housing, but not affordable housing. Because of the Supercharger location’s proximity to the area, this bodes well for Tesla’s project, as affordable housing is already available in plentiful amounts and the City Council is more interested in moving housing opportunities to the highlighted areas.

The Update does mention that the “Commission was supportive of increasing housing potential on vacant parking lots associated with commercial uses,” but there are plenty of lots that fit those specifications in Santa Monica.

The Santa Monica City Council will hold a meeting tonight at 5:30 PM PST to discuss the new recommendations. The meeting could bring new momentum to Tesla’s Santa Monica Supercharger project if the area it has chosen is exempt from the Emergency Interim Zoning Ordinance.

The Update to the Santa Monica City Council’s Housing Recommendations is available below.

Santa Monica City Council Update by Joey Klender on Scribd

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Joey has been a journalist covering electric mobility at TESLARATI since August 2019. In his spare time, Joey is playing golf, watching MMA, or cheering on any of his favorite sports teams, including the Baltimore Ravens and Orioles, Miami Heat, Washington Capitals, and Penn State Nittany Lions. You can get in touch with joey at joey@teslarati.com. He is also on X @KlenderJoey. If you're looking for great Tesla accessories, check out shop.teslarati.com

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Starlink launches Communities Program for passive income through internet sharing

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(Credit: Starlink | X)

Starlink is launching a new beta path for ordinary property owners and local operators to turn a single Starlink kit into a small shared-access business for passive income.

Under the Starlink for Communities program, a host installs one dish and router setup in a location with nearby demand: an apartment complex, campground, rural crossroads, or event site. Neighbors or local users can buy short-term passes rather than full individual subscriptions, giving the Starlink provider a potential path to passive income.

Hour, day, and week passes cover one device. A month pass covers up to four. Starlink handles account creation, payments, access controls, and the satellite link itself. The host’s role is mainly placement, power, and basic upkeep, with earnings tied to each paid connection.

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The model echoes the passive-income vision long attached to Tesla’s Robotaxi plans, and it seems like it’s something Musk has hinted toward in the past as he believes AI will make the need to work relatively optional. In both cases, the platform owns the hard parts of matching, billing, and network management, while an individual supplies a physical asset that sits idle much of the time.

A Starlink host’s dish can serve multiple nearby users without each household buying and installing its own terminal. A Tesla owner, under the stated Robotaxi concept, would leave a vehicle enrolled in the fleet during unused hours so the car generates rides while the owner is at work or asleep.

Both arrangements convert under-utilized hardware into a revenue stream. They also let the company scale coverage or capacity without owning every endpoint.

Differences are practical. A Starlink kit is a fixed, relatively low-cost terminal whose main constraint is local congestion and line-of-sight. A Tesla Robotaxi is a mobile, high-value vehicle whose earnings depend on demand density, utilization rates, insurance, cleaning, and charging.

Starlink’s program is already accepting host applications in multiple countries and describes the revenue split as ongoing. Tesla’s owner-network version remains more aspirational.

The company currently operates a limited company-controlled robotaxi service in select areas and has solicited interest from fleet buyers for Cybercab vehicles, while private Full Self-Driving owners have not yet been able to dispatch their own cars for paid rides at scale.

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Tesla primes Cybercabs for 4K streaming and high bandwidth gaming with Starlink integration

Starlink is a satellite broadband service operated by SpaceX that uses a constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites to deliver internet to locations where terrestrial broadband is slow, expensive, or absent. It has grown to millions of subscribers worldwide by selling direct residential, mobile, and enterprise terminals, and have become widely available at a wide array at retail locations like Target and Best Buy.

The Communities program extends that reach by letting hosts resell short bursts of capacity to people nearby, while also providing high-speed internet access to those who are simply around a Starlink user.

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Tesla just made its headlights even better through a software update

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Credit: @jojje167 on X

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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