Lifestyle
Ticket to Ride: The Tesla Model S Limousine
Gino’s Model S on the tarmac waiting for a VIP
Gino Bernardi owns and operates Watts on Wheels, a personal limousine service that picks you up and squires you to your destination in a Model S.
You’re probably envisioning Gino driving up to some Silicon Valley executive’s home and driving her to SFO for a first class flight to close another billion dollar deal. Wrong. Watts on Wheels is in Chicago. Gino holds the unique distinction of being the lone chauffeur in the city of Chicago that drives a Tesla on the job. He’s one out of 9000+ registered livery and taxi drivers listed in the public database. Gino is definitely a pioneer with his EV, but we need to give credit where it’s due. The horse-drawn carriage, still in use today on the streets of Chicago, is the original gasoline free livery.
Watts on Wheels is the sole act of a Tesla enthusiast whose dream is to increase awareness of electric vehicles through building a livery business. I see this type of thought leadership in many Tesla owners. We are not just comfortable with change, we welcome and enjoy it. The green aspects of Tesla are naturally attractive, but there’s a thrill in knowing we are driving the future of personal transportation today.
Gino’s dream is to expand his business to ten or fifteen Teslas someday. To always have a Model S on the road providing transportation to the residents and visitors of Chicago. He has tagged himself an Eco Driver and wants to stimulate more discussion about reducing emissions and remind everyone that Chicago is a leading edge city. We are home to 1871 an entrepreneurial hub for digital start-ups and Built in Chicago, a community that enables inventors, founders, creators and investors to connect online.
I recently sat down with Gino to get more insight into how things are going and a glimpse into the future.
How long have you been a livery driver? How many cars do you have?
I became a livery driver because of Tesla. I received my Chicago license in May 2013, the same month my car arrived. Right now I have one car and I’m the only driver.
What sparked the idea? How does this experience mesh with your existing lifestyle?
I am a big fan of clean, renewable energy, but my intent all along was to build a business. I was working full time as a civil engineer, so at first I was a part time driver while continuing on my engineering career. Driving the Model S as a livery helps me pay for the car and has given me a ton of experience. Just last week I quit my job and am now driving full time.
Since you’re in your car for hours, how do you manage battery life?
I drive the 60 kwh battery pack and didn’t buy the supercharger, so I’m at the base for range. The reason for this is I wanted to start slow and see how it would work out. Spring through fall I had no issues at all with battery life or range. I charge it at home every night to about 85% which takes me through the morning shift. I charge over lunch which keeps me juiced for afternoon and early evening runs. Winter was quite different. This was the worst season in Chicago in 40 years. I would charge the battery to full capacity daily. There were days I wish I had the 85 kwh.
How do people react when you pull up in your Tesla? Do they recognize it?
I drive for Uber Black so if you order me through their app you will know a Tesla is coming. It’s interesting. My Model S is white, so some people get confused when a non black car arrives. When I first got the car last spring I’d say about 95% of my clients had no idea what kind of car it was. Now, almost a year later, that has dropped to probably about 5%. The awareness of the car has grown quickly.
Does any one trip stand out?
It was the end of the day and I was taking some clients to an event at Chicago Stadium. Upon arrival I was informed that I would have to take a passenger to Sugar Grove, then make the drive back to my then home in Highland Park. Total round trip over 100 miles. I didn’t have the range. While they watched the game I went to the Grand Avenue Tesla Service Center. They let me borrow an adapter so I could plug in and charge until pick-up time. It was a tough night and I pulled into my drive with one mile left on the battery.
Obviously a livery vehicle is put through the paces. How has the car held up?
Overall I’d give it high marks. I have had some minor problems. The rear curbside door handle got stuck in the extended position at one point and the door couldn’t be opened. That’s the door my clients use all day long, so it became a problem quickly. Tesla service has been very good. They fixed the problem in one day and I was back on the road. But if I can’t drive I don’t make money. I don’t treat my Model S any differently than any other car I’ve driven. It has normal wear and tear just like any other car.
How many miles are on your Model S? Do you drive livery every day?
I’ve just reached 33,000 miles in eleven months, so that’s a lot of road time. I livery drive five or six days a week, depending on what my clients need. Early on I was in the car up to ten hours a day. Now it’s closer to eight, maybe even a bit below that.
How do people find out about you? Do you have repeat clients?
Most people find out about me through word of mouth. My web site Watts on Wheels shows contact information right up front; phone, text and email. That’s another way I get business. If you do a Google search for Gino Tesla or Watts on Wheels, I index at the very top. I definitely have repeat customers. Chicago is a big city and so rides to and from O’Hare are common. I also have connections to entertainment companies who schedule me to transport their clients to events at United Center, Soldier Field, etc.
Are your rates competitive?
My pricing benchmark is Uber SUV. Usually I match their rates, but lately I’ve been charging a bit more. A Model S is not the usual ride to the airport. It’s definitely a unique experience and clients are frequently over the top satisfied. When I’m in the limo holding area at the airport the other drivers swarm the car with questions and big smiles.
The envy of all chauffeurs in Chicago
As we were wrapping up I asked Gino to share a bit about what’s on the horizon. He feels that there is pent up demand for drivers who would love to switch to a Tesla. The price of the car is obviously a barrier for many wanna be Tesla Chauffeurs, but a growing used Model S market may help. Gino obviously knows the financials by now and claims it is possible to turn profit as a Model S livery driver. The key of course is no gas charges and very low regular maintenance.
With an eye on the future Gino and a colleague are working on a mobile app that would allow people to request a Tesla ride right from their phone. It will be “Uber-like,” allowing a driver to accept the request and complete the monetary transaction all through the app. Ultimately he wants to make it available to Tesla drivers all over the world. Stay tuned for more on this.
The Tesla is built to seamlessly fold into everyday life. It’s not a weekend or show car. It’s the new form of Personal Transportation. When you visit Chicago and need a ride from the airport, give WattsOnWheels a call.
Photo Credits: Gino Bernardi, Tuan Bul.
Lifestyle
Tesla Cybertruck targets job site crews with new Tailgate Utility Track and Bed Gear Box accessory
Tesla launched a $350 tailgate track and a $985 lockable Bed Gear Box for Cybertruck.
Tesla’s Cybertruck team added two more items to the Tesla Shop, targeting job site crews and owners who use the truck bed for actual work rather than just showing it off. The official Cybertruck X account posted the Tailgate Utility Track and the Bed Gear Box within minutes of each other, part of a five item batch that also included a reflective jacket, a spray paint hat and an updated reflective tee.
The Tailgate Utility Track runs $350 and turns the folded down tailgate into another mounting surface. It’s a single aluminum track with a T-slot for sliding accessories and two L-track attachment points, plus two load stops included in the box. The pitch is straightforward: strap down oversized cargo, like lumber or a cooler, that hangs off the back of the bed without it sliding out mid-drive. It bolts onto the existing tailgate and works on every Cybertruck trim.
Tailgate Utility Trackhttps://t.co/PCAYXlFBvS pic.twitter.com/sCV2NVxf1W
— Cybertruck (@cybertruck) September 3, 2026
The Bed Gear Box costs $985 and is a different kind of accessory. It’s a lockable aluminum storage box, 55.78 inches long, 19.8 inches wide and 7.79 inches tall, that mounts to the bed’s L-track rails and comes with two internal bins for smaller items. According to Tesla, at just over 57 pounds empty, it’s meant to stay in place rather than come in and out with each trip, giving owners a factory-fit alternative to loose totes for tools, recovery gear or emergency supplies. Tesla’s listing notes that Long Range and Dual Motor AWD Cybertrucks need the L-Tracks accessory installed separately before the Gear Box will mount, since L-tracks come standard only on certain configurations.
Tesla Cybertruck bed gear box accessory
Both accessories lean on the idea Tesla has been building toward since Elon Musk first described the Cybertruck’s third-party attachment strategy at the 2023 shareholder meeting, when he said the truck would ship with mounting points so outside companies, and Tesla itself, could keep adding gear without redesigning the bed. That’s the same L-track backbone underneath the tailgate shield and jumpseats Tesla launched last year, and the off-road armor package that arrived through the same X account in 2025.
Owners looking to round out the rest of the L-track ecosystem, cargo dividers, MOLLE panels, bed racks and similar gear, can find a wider range of options through our Cybertruck accessories collection.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk says he knows how to save Earth for a billion years
Elon Musk says sentient AI satellites launched from the Moon could keep Earth livable forever.
Elon Musk spent part of his weekend describing a plan to keep the planet livable for roughly a billion years, and it starts with satellites that can think for themselves.
In a post on X, Musk argued that swapping fossil fuels for solar and wind power will not be enough to protect humanity from what he called extremely severe extinction events, the kind that occur roughly every 100 million years. His fix is what he called sentient satellites, or solar-powered satellites, controlled by AI, that would sit in a fixed spot between Earth and the Sun after being launched off the Moon using a giant electromagnetic catapult instead of rockets.
The satellites’ onboard AI would make continuous, small adjustments rather than waiting on human instructions. The mass driver is Musk’s proposed way of getting the raw material there cheaply by using an electromagnetic launch track built on the Moon, where lower gravity and no atmosphere make it far easier to fling cargo into space than it is from Earth.
But we do need to act much faster than that if people still want to live where the beach is today. We have about 50 years or so to take action, which should be more than enough time for the space satellites to solve any heating problems. https://t.co/xhrVQALwQw
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 30, 2026
Musk shared a Grok generated estimate suggesting roughly 5 percent of Florida’s land, or about 1.68 million acres, could face regular flooding by 2070 under a high sea level rise scenario, and said humanity has about 50 years to act before coastal living looks very different than it does today.
This is not the first time Musk has floated the idea. He raised a similar concept in November, describing a solar powered AI satellite constellation that could make tiny adjustments to incoming sunlight to fine tune Earth’s temperature. Musk has also tied planetary risk to his broader vision at SpaceX, where his compensation package is explicitly linked to establishing a self-sustaining Mars colony, one he has described as an insurance policy against the kind of extinction event he referenced this weekend, and where he has said humans could set foot within five to seven years.
A former Vancouver police sergeant with ALS accounts his journey to become a patient for Elon Musk’s Neuralink wireless brain-computer interface technology.
“I’m texting you from my brain right now.” That was the first message Lee Marten sent after waking up from Neuralink surgery, five hours and one migraine after dozens of threads were stitched into his motor cortex.
Marten, a former Vancouver police sergeant, is one of the first Canadian ALS patients to receive Neuralink’s N1 brain implant, and the 26th recipient overall. He tells his story in a first-person account published by Maclean’s.
Marten recounts how he was a healthy, athletic Vancouver police sergeant until April 2022 when symptoms of muscle twitching and balance loss, were followed by a bad fall that broke his leg. He would eventually be diagnosed with ALS in early 2025 at the age of 47. ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a fatal neurodegenerative disease that progressively destroys the motor neurons controlling voluntary muscle movement, eventually taking away a patient’s ability to walk, speak, swallow and breathe. There’s no cure, and most patients live two to five years after diagnosis.
He describes the devastation of the diagnosis and how he began preparing for it while connecting with other young ALS patients through a WhatsApp group called Young Guns. Through that group he learned about a Neuralink clinical trial at Toronto Western Hospital and, after a roughly seven-month vetting process (physical assessments, psychiatric evaluation, a final interview with the Neuralink team), was accepted this past April as the trial’s 26th recipient and the first Canadian ALS patient to get the N1 implant. He recounts the May surgery in detail, including the robotic system that stitched 64 threads into his brain, and describes the app, Link, translating his neural signals into cursor control, which he was using within hours of waking up.
Marten walks through what daily use looks like, including weekly “brain training” exercises, a real-time neural-activity display, charging the implant via a beanie-mounted MagSafe charger, and using the implant for emailing, texting, social media, and gaming via a “Magic Box” that connects it to other devices. He also gives brief context on brain-computer interface history and quite candid about Musk, calling him “divisive” but saying he found him “easy to admire.
The piece closes on a heavier note, with Marten seeking to pursue medical assistance in dying as his symptoms progressed, noting that he’ll be able to communicate his final words to his family through Neuralink rather than facing a silent decline. He expresses hope the data from his case will help future ALS patients, even without a cure in his own lifetime.
Tesla Cybercab launch catches NHTSA’s attention who wants to know more
Tesla Cybercab is coming to Asia this month as US service officially begins
