Lifestyle
Trip Planning in a Tesla Model S
A dear friend of my husband’s that we’ll call “Bob” sent a text message on Saturday April 1st. We were at the airport en route home from the Model 3 unveiling and he apparently heard the news about the growing number of reservations.
“Should I reserve a Model 3?”
Yes, Bob. Yes you should. If you have $1,000 to spare and think there is some small chance you may want the car, make a refundable deposit. This goes for anyone, by the way.
In the days to follow, Bob and my husband chatted about the car a bit. Bob just hoped for enough range to get to and from work a couple of times without having to charge and had declared that he would probably just take another car on longer trips. Why? He didn’t feel like having to think and plan for charging stops.
That’s when it hit me. A large portion of the 325,000 Model 3 reservation holders have never owned a long-range EV that can be powered with a fast charging network on long trips. To some of them, the idea of having to chart out your trip ahead of time is unappealing. To me, it’s actually fun. So fun, in fact, that after seeing someone ask about whether Pittsburgh, PA to Fort Myers, FL is doable – I charted this trip for them.
100% of the credit for the above trip, as well as every trip I’ve taken in my Model S, goes to the website EVtripplanner.com. This website lets you plug in your start and finish points, various other important pieces of information and route through Tesla superchargers. (At the moment, no other long-range EVs are on the market, nor are other nationwide fast chargers included in the price of your car.) The results take into account elevation information and everything you entered to project the time it will take to get to each charge stop and the amount of rated range you will probably use. This information is easily understood and can be used to jot down a little trip plan like the one above. While I was at it, I used google maps to check the location of each stop. That’s where I got the information included in the suggestion of what to do while charging for any of the above charge stops I haven’t personally been to. The whole plan above took me fewer than 20 minutes and that’s with a little extra formatting to make it easy for the new driver I was making it for to read.
Voluntarily charting the above trip out for someone else was a joy. I live in PA and have family in Fort Myers so I wouldn’t mind taking this trip myself, but primarily wanted to showcase how easy the trip could be. On my longest trip, I did Savannah, GA to Philadelphia, PA without an overnight stop. It was long but doable with two drivers. My favorite part of taking trips on the SC network is the forced stopping that encourages stretching your legs, keeping hydrated (not feeling guilty about the restroom breaks since you’re charging anyway) and switching drivers at each stop. Fatigue isn’t a problem when you have the ability to split the driving responsibility. Mostly everyone who has ever road tripped in a Tesla knows it’s great but back to the ease of planning.
Planning ahead, as shown above, is advisable but Tesla’s built-in navigation also trip plans on the go. In March of 2015, it was announced that a software update would effectively end range anxiety. This enhanced trip planning and range assurance considers real-time information and gives you guidance on getting to where you need to be. It will warn you if you’re in danger of running out, and will advise you to charge to avoid it. Of course, if you just get into the car and head in a direction that is not covered by Superchargers, your trip will end up a lot less convenient. That is why I like to go to EVtripplanner.com from time to time and find various potential trips I can make easily from my home in Philadelphia. I record them on a spreadsheet file, one tab per trip idea, and keep them in mind next time I’m ready for a vacation. It’s also a great idea to revisit it regularly, since new Supercharger locations pop up all the time.
This thread over on the Tesla forum gives excellent tips and reviews of various Supercharging locations and is a valuable resource that helped me to avoid some real confusion when I had to take a ticket to get into the paid parking garage at the Savannah airport, for example.
In the next few years, many more Tesla drivers will learn the joys of EV road tripping and understand that planning ahead is no sweat at all.
Where would you like to road trip in your future Model 3? Leave me a comment!
Investor's Corner
Tesla unfolded its first European “folding Supercharger”
Tesla’s folding Supercharger just arrived in Europe and it changes how fast charging expands.
Tesla’s Folding Unit Supercharger has officially landed in Europe, with the company teasing a new installation in its effort for a broader rollout targeting major motorway rest stops across the European continent in Q3 2026. The arrival marks a notable shift in how Tesla is thinking about network expansion, moving from hardware performance alone to engineering the logistics chain itself.
While Tesla did not reveal the exact location for the new folding Supercharger in Europe, the photo shared on X heavily suggests that this maybe somewhere in Norway. Historically, whenever Tesla rolls out an entirely new infrastructure architecture in Europe, whether it was the original Supercharger stalls years ago or these brand-new modular V4 “Folding Units”, Norway is almost always the designated launch pad because of its unmatched EV adoption rate and supportive infrastructure
The Folding Unit, introduced in March 2026, is a factory pre-assembled V4 charging station built on an industrial hinge system mounted to a heavy-duty concrete base. The entire assembly arrives on site ready to unfold and connect. Tesla confirmed the units feature telescopic light poles specifically designed for easy transportation and fast on-site deployment, a detail that signals how carefully the logistics chain has been engineered alongside the hardware itself. The design allows 33% more stalls per delivery truck, cuts installation time roughly in half, and reduces overall deployment costs by more than 20% compared to traditional installations.
Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet
Tesla also noted telescopic light poles which provide benefits over traditional Supercharger installations that require fixed-height poles that are awkward to ship, slow to position on site, and often require separate crews and equipment to erect before charging hardware can even be staged. By engineering poles that compress for transit and extend on arrival, Tesla has removed one of the quieter bottlenecks in the physical deployment process. Every hour saved on a light pole installation is an hour redirected toward getting stalls energized. At scale, across dozens of new sites per quarter, those hours add up to a meaningful acceleration in how quickly a location goes from approved permit to serving its first customer.
Each Folding Unit pairs a single V4 power cabinet with eight charging posts. The V4 cabinet delivers up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. Longer cables make every new station immediately usable by non-Tesla vehicles, a priority as Tesla continues opening its network to Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, Stellantis, and others.
As Teslarati reported when the Folding Unit was first unveiled, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet in March 2026 after more than seven years and 15,000 units, completing a full pivot to V4 production. The European arrival of the folding design is the next chapter in that transition.
Faster and cheaper deployment means Tesla can justify building in markets and corridors that were previously too expensive to serve, filling the coverage gaps that have slowed EV adoption outside major urban centers.
First Folding Unit Superchargers in Europe 🇪🇺 https://t.co/KNfYWJukkL pic.twitter.com/YR1udIpH1i
— Tesla Charging (@TeslaCharging) June 10, 2026
Elon Musk
SpaceXAI just launched into your kitchen with their new app
SpaceXAI just powered its first consumer app and it predicts what you want to buy.
SpaceXAI just made its first move into consumer AI, and it involves your grocery cart. On June 3, 2026, Gopuff and SpaceXAI announced the launch of Go, a Grok-powered shopping assistant built directly into the Gopuff app that predicts what you need before you even start searching for it.
Gopuff is an instant delivery platform that operates more than 400 micro-fulfillment centers across the U.S., delivering everyday essentials, snacks, drinks, and household items in as little as 15 minutes. It is not a restaurant delivery app or a marketplace. It owns its inventory, controls its warehouses, and handles its own logistics, which means it has built one of the most detailed consumer behavior datasets in retail over its 13-year history.
Go combines SpaceXAI’s advanced reasoning, voice, and image generation models with Gopuff’s dataset of hundreds of millions of orders and real-time cultural signals from X to prepare a suggested cart the moment a customer opens the app. It learns each shopper’s habits and automatically builds a personalized cart based on time of day, location, order history, and real-time indicators. Returning customers can check out with a single tap.
Rather than searching for specific items, users can describe a situation like a game-day party or the desire for a healthy breakfast and Go will assemble a cart automatically. It can also predict when shoppers are running low on items like coffee or paper towels and have them packed and delivered in under 15 minutes. Grok voice integration lets users talk to the app in plain conversational language and check out completely hands-free.
Gopuff co-founder and co-CEO Yakir Gola said: “Today, we believe the greatest friction left in commerce is not delivery or instantaneous access to the essentials customers need. It’s the moment before: the thinking, the deciding, the remembering. We’re combining Gopuff’s demand intelligence with xAI’s frontier reasoning to create an everyday shopping experience that feels like a true extension of you.”
Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO
The timing carries context beyond the product launch. SpaceXAI was formed after SpaceX completed an all-stock merger with Elon Musk’s xAI earlier this year, folding one of the most advanced AI labs in the world into the same corporate structure as the company preparing what could be the largest IPO in history. SpaceXAI is dipping into consumer-focused AI just as it prepares for its public debut, and while Musk has openly discussed building an everything app, this launch uses Grok to power another company’s product rather than launching a standalone consumer platform. Every consumer-facing deployment of Grok ahead of the IPO roadshow adds tangible evidence that SpaceXAI is not just an infrastructure play but a direct competitor in the AI application layer where OpenAI and Google are already fighting for dominance.
Lifestyle
Tesla saves its passengers again – This time after a 300-foot cliff fall in Malibu
A Tesla Model 3 fell 300 feet off a Malibu cliff and both passengers survived.
A Tesla Model 3 plunged roughly 300 feet off a cliff on Mulholland Highway in Malibu on Friday morning, May 29, 2026, and both occupants survived. The crash was reported at approximately 7:30 a.m. near the 2500 block of Mulholland Highway, triggering a multi-agency rescue operation involving Malibu Search and Rescue, the Los Angeles County Fire Department, the California Highway Patrol, and McCormick Ambulance.
When first responders arrived, the male driver was outside the vehicle shouting for help while the female passenger remained pinned inside the Tesla. Rescue crews rappelled down the cliffside on ropes to reach the wreckage. A flight medic was lowered by helicopter to begin treating both victims, and the driver was hoisted up to the roadway before crews used the Jaws of Life to free the trapped passenger. Both were airlifted to a local trauma center with moderate injuries despite a remarkable result for a fall that steep.
The outcome is not surprising, considering Model 3 earned an overall 5-star rating from NHTSA in every category and sub-category, and recorded the lowest probability of injury of any car ever evaluated by the U.S. New Car Assessment Program. The absence of a traditional engine in the front of the vehicle creates a longer crumple zone that absorbs impact energy before it reaches occupants, and the battery pack running along the floor gives the car an unusually low center of gravity that reinforces structural rigidity.
This is not the first time a Tesla has kept passengers alive after going off a cliff. A Tesla Model Y carrying a family of four survived a plunge off a cliff at Devil’s Slide near San Francisco in January 2023, with two adults and two children walking away from a 250-foot fall. That incident drew widespread attention to how the structural integrity of Tesla’s electric platform performs in extreme crash scenarios that most vehicles would not survive.
Tesla Model Y driver who drove off cliff with family attempts to avoid criminal conviction


