Lifestyle
Two Years of Blissful Tesla Model S Ownership
It happened in the blink of an eye. December 4th, 2016 came and went unceremoniously. Perhaps it’s the holiday shuffle or the dreary, cold days that took away some of my attention. More likely, it’s that greatness in this case breeds a sort of serene feeling of being content. Two years ago on that date, I took delivery of a shiny, Multicoat Red, Tesla Model S 85.
A lot has changed since then, but all for the better thanks to this amazing car.
Road Trips
I’ve taken a few, and racked up 19 states (plus 1 Canadian Province) and over 40 Supercharger locations. Each trip has somehow been better than the last, and always points toward the one truth: I need to drive to California. Never before would I have even joked about considering such a thing, but the ease and joy of driving a Tesla has made me want it badly.
Mileage
I certainly don’t shy away from driving this car to destinations near and far. The odometer read over 36,000 on our 2nd anniversary and I’m oddly proud of that fact. Doubly true since the car’s daily work commute is fewer than 20 miles per day.
Destination Chargers
Just over a year ago, I approached a restaurant about becoming a destination charger in Wilkes-Barre, PA, which at the time was the one place I had a heck of a time getting to and from due to a lack of Superchargers on the way. Despite no longer being in desperate need of juice while there, since a Supercharger has since been built along the way, I’m elated and somehow feel proud. Little old Wilkes-Barre, PA has not one but two non-hotel destination chargers.
Superchargers
Everywhere I need or want to go to is covered by Tesla charging locations these days. As it turns out, there is one under construction at the very ski area my husband had to take a gasoline car to get to just last winter! Round trip from our home to the mountain isn’t possible. Aside from intentionally visiting that area just to ski, it is also just 24 miles from my in-laws’ home and provides yet another decent charging option for when we visit. Their garage/driveway-less home is not one that would accommodate us installing an outlet, so we used to have to get creative with an extension cord across a sidewalk or borrowing a car to drop ours off at a Level 2 charger overnight.
Service
Tesla has always provided us with remarkable service. We have not yet experienced any major issues, but all minor issues have been taken care of swiftly, politely, and with the use of a loaner car. I recognize that this service may not be feasible in the long run, but I’m very happy to take advantage of it while I still can.
Social
If you told me when we picked up our car in 2014 that I would have chatted with dozens of fellow owners and enthusiasts in real life and online, met up with owners around the country, and spoken to hundreds of people at a local car show, I probably would have rolled my eyes. If you told me I’d be sharing my story on Teslarati and would have attended the unveiling event for the Model 3, I certainly would have told you that you were a few rivets short. The car isn’t just fun to drive; it’s massively fun to talk about.
Cost of ownership
Until last week, not one red cent had been spent on maintaining our car. The cost of electricity has been mostly off set by making a few efficiency adjustments at home, but if I had to estimate a true cost, I’d say we spend $50 per month on powering the car for non-road trip use. Last week, we took the car in for 2 year service. Admittedly, we skipped the first year service, since the car had been checked over twice when we brought it in for minor issues. This service came with a total bill of $742 including sales tax. For that fee, we got piece of mind and a “clean bill of health” so to speak. We know our investment is in good shape, will continue to keep us safe, and should operate for a very long time. For those wondering, it also included plenty of tangible items. They included cleaning and lubricating closures such as moving glass and doors, topping off washer fluid, measurement and rotation of tires, additional air, measurement of brake pad thickness, 4 wheel alignment, new wiper blades, new carbon filter, new key fob batteries, new desiccant bag – subcool condenser, and a quart of brake fluid.
We mentioned having started hearing a bit of a buzz while driving at low speeds, which prompted additional work at no additional cost. Tesla did what appears to be an extremely proactive move in replacing the powertrain and o-rings for the high voltage inverter enclosure.
A little bit of luck also came our way, in that the driver’s door handle apparently gave the service center issue while the car was there. A new assembly was installed and we were none the wiser until seeing our receipt. Our beautiful red car was back in our hands 48 hours later.
I can talk until I’m blue in the face about how great this car is but to me, there is only one true measure of how satisfied someone is with their car and that is whether or not you’d buy another car from the same manufacturer. I undoubtedly will – just the moment I am invited to configure my Model 3.
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
SpaceX wants to catch Starship for launch 14, Elon Musk says
Tesla to open source Model S and Model X designs and software
