Lifestyle
What is TuneIn Radio on the Tesla Model S?
TuneIn Radio on the Tesla Model S blends Slacker Internet music with AM/FM Radio. It brings some of the strengths of each while dropping the weaknesses. Similar to Slacker and AM/FM, TuneIn radio is a standard option on every Model S (at least in the US). There is another music/radio type option for the Model S with XM radio that comes with the premium sound system but I didn’t purchase that system and have yet to get a loaner with it activated.
As mentioned in my prior post, I’m not a huge radio or TV fan, but if you’re going to listen to Radio in the Model S, I’d recommend forgoing the AM/FM options and heading right to TuneIn Radio.
TuneIn Controls
The TuneIn interface in the Model S is really well done and prominently displays a huge listing of stations. You want to listen to country music from Norway? No problem! You could literally spend all your time in the Model S exploring station after station around the world in so many formats and languages. I find that amazing.
Select Internet from the music selection screen and then pick TuneIn. You have a set of choices of your favorites, local radio stations, stations by type (music, talk, etc.) and by location. Each area is rich with a ton of stations. For example, I couldn’t find a local AM or FM station I knew about that wasn’t also on TuneIn.
I could find stations that friends and family listen to all the time from different areas of the country that I’ve also come to love through my travels. I can listen to the same station that my in-laws are listening to in Pittsburgh when they ping me about a new song that just came on — you just can’t do that with normal radio. I can also pick up a Pittsburgh Steelers game which you won’t find broadcast in New England much. The Steelers don’t do much for me since I’m not a sports fan, but they sure make the wife less grumpy about not getting to drive!
After you’ve found that favorite country station in Tanzania (no kidding, there is one), you can favorite the station and come back to it later in My Favorites. For convenience the local stations are also gathered in a section. Once you pick a station the interface looks very much like the interface for standard radio. The forward/back controls skip you forward/back stations in the same category area (i.e. your next favorited station, or next local station). There’s album art and song information shown for the music playing most of the time or for the station when it can’t find anything. What’s also really nice is you can actually pause TuneIn radio for a call or a pit stop and then pick back up with the radio which you can’t do with AM/FM radio even in the Model S.
Internet Radio Benefits
Like standard AM/FM radio, these are radio stations and they have the DJs talking, radio ads, and all sorts of other stuff. If you’re looking for entertainment, traveling company or news and information then this kind of radio format over Slacker or your USB music library is going to be great for you and there’s a lot of choices available.
Other than the broad choices, another great option is that Internet radio sounds better. You need a working 3G connection (standard in every Model S) and be somewhat near civilization. For me 3G is generally more reliable than AM or FM in my area, but what contributes to this sense of reliability is its ability to buffer (or save up) a section of the music for those intermittent periods where it loses connectivity — music doesnt skip or fade in and out with Internet radio. This means all those stations you could barely receive on standard FM that frustrated you with HD/SD quality changes or that you got a ton of static with you can get through Internet radio and the quality and reliability is better.
Perhaps it’s me, but listening to static in the Model S just doesn’t seem right. Static on my sound system should be a thing of the past and it is with TuneIn Radio.
Better radio, but still radio
TuneIn radio is still radio and I’m not a huge fan of the format with ads, etc. But if I’m going to listen to radio on the Model S it’s going to be via TuneIn. The standard AM/FM radio area is a waste of time but for long trips when I’m looking for something to break up the monotony of book tapes or my (overly country!) music library. I could kill some serious time with TuneIn and the massive collection of stations and formats.
It would be interesting to see what the interface looks like for XM radio for those that have the premium sound system. I strongly suspect that TuneIn provides the best radio experience on the Tesla Model S.
Tags: new owner, sound system
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.
Cybertruck
Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love
Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.
Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.
The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”
The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.
Custom wraps via mobile app https://t.co/5OydZ26g9p pic.twitter.com/uexU0ZePxu
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.
Elon Musk
Tesla Diner is throwing a birthday party with a Franz-signed special treat
Tesla Diner turns one on July 21 with Optimus, roller skates, and a Franz-signed hat.
Tesla is throwing its Hollywood Diner a first birthday party on July 21 and the celebration comes with a guest list of unique items, including a limited run of Tesla Diner birthday hats personally signed by Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen for the first 50 customers who place an in-car order at midnight.
One year after lines wrapped around the block on Santa Monica Boulevard for a diner that most of the restaurant industry did not take seriously, Tesla is making the case that the concept was worth the years it took to build. The concept had been in Musk’s head since at least 2018, when he floated the idea of “an old school drive-in, roller skates and rock restaurant” on X, describing it years later as “‘Grease’ meets ‘The Jetsons’ with Supercharging.”
Tesla Optimus Gen 3 is coming to the Tesla Diner with new ambitions
What made the diner genuinely different from any restaurant that came before it was not the menu or the nostalgia. It was the ordering model. Tesla owners could place food orders directly from their vehicle’s touchscreen before arriving, a small feature that hints at something much larger on the horizon. As the Cybercab and unsupervised FSD expand across major cities, the diner model becomes a template for an entirely new kind of commerce. A robotaxi pulling in to charge does not need a human to walk up to a counter. The vehicle places the order, the food is ready on arrival, and the passenger never interrupts the experience of being driven somewhere else. It is the first glimpse of what drive-through commerce looks like when the car is doing the driving.
As Teslarati has reported, Musk signaled immediately after opening that the Hollywood location was only the beginning, posting that Tesla would expand the concept to major cities worldwide and along Supercharger corridors on long-distance routes if the first location proved successful. One year in, the birthday celebration on July 21 makes a strong case that it has. Tesla announced a full day of events including a Cybercab on display, a birthday menu, Optimus in attendance, face painting, a photo booth, roller skating servers, a light show, a Skypad DJ, and complimentary collectibles.
If Musk’s ambition holds, the Hollywood diner is year one of something much bigger. The birthday party is the proof of concept. The robotaxi fleet is the business model waiting behind it.
Tesla Diner is turning 1 on July 21st, so we’re throwing a party
Come swing by for a day full of fun:
– Cybercab on display
– Birthday menu
– @Tesla_Optimus
– Face painting for kids & adults
– Photo booth
– Servers on roller skates delivering your order
– Light show
– Skypad DJ… pic.twitter.com/TD8pOjihYs— Tesla North America (@tesla_na) July 18, 2026
Tesla’s Supercharger Diner probably just secured more locations
Tesla short sellers win big after shares fall after earnings
