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Unplugged Performance now offers the ultimate Tesla suspension upgrade

Credit: Unplugged Performance

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Unplugged Performance has released its ultimate Tesla suspension upgrade, the all-new Ohlins X UP TTS performance suspension setup.

Suspension is currently one of the best upgrades you can make on an electric vehicle. Due to their generally higher curb weight, a good performance suspension setup can keep the car planted and controlled, no matter how big the bump or turn you take. Unplugged Performance has been one such place to get these upgrades for your Tesla for years. But they are taking it to another level with the Ohlins TTS performance suspension setup.

Stock Tesla Suspension –

This performance suspension setup works entirely differently from the stock suspension found on any stock Tesla. The stock suspension found on a Tesla Model 3 or Tesla Model Y is relatively rudimentary. A cylinder filled with liquid resists compression when the wheel goes up or down, and a spring pushes that cylinder down to reset after every bounce.

The suspension in the Tesla Model S and Tesla Model X is far more complex. These vehicles are equipped with air suspension, whereby a small rubber bag inside a spring on each wheel is inflated and deflated to control ride height and stiffness. And in the case of Tesla products, through camera sensing, these vehicles can even react to the road surface the car “sees.”

The Ohlins suspension works more similarly to the stock suspension found on the Tesla Model 3 and Tesla Model Y. The “coilover” suspension setup means that the spring is still placed over the cylinder to be compressed, but in this case, the rate at which the spring compresses, the rate at which the cylinder compresses, the ride height, and much more are both adjustable and perfectly designed for your car and the track.

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The $15,000 Difference –

Via their partnership with Ohlins, Unplugged Performance is now offering the “pinnacle” of Tesla performance suspension offerings. With this comes a very pinnacle price tag as well. But what makes these setups worth the $15,000?

First, it needs to be acknowledged that this suspension is not for driving around town or picking up the groceries. The focus on track performance was paramount in the engineering process. To quote Ben Schaffer, CEO of Unplugged Performance, “we made this [suspension] for ourselves and ultimate track use.” The suspension was designed with one car and purpose: to make the fastest Tesla around a track.

Adjustability is another critical difference for the Ohlins TTS setup. Unplugged Performance has ensured that the setup is 4-way adjustable; front and rear, high-speed and low-speed rebound and compression, which means that you can tune precisely how you want the suspension to react when you hit a bump or a corner at high or low speeds.

Concierge service is another distinguishing feature. When you buy the Ohlins X UP TTS suspension setup, the Unplugged Performance team is on call to ensure your car is as fast as possible on whatever raceway you find yourself on; Pikes Peak to Mt. Washington, Nurburing to Spa; they have you covered.

Finally, what the setup brings when looking outside of the numbers, is prestige and an unrivaled road feel. The level of prestige that Unplugged Performance brings to its Tesla products is unmatched. They supply the products and use them to set records, most recently at the Pikes Peak hill climb. Very few other companies have the same dedication to Tesla products. And the road feel that they have dedicated themselves to will likely prove to be the factor that influences the hyper-enthusiast or Tesla race team to purchase the upgrade.

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This shows, perhaps above everything else, that electric vehicles don’t have to mean the end of modification or “wrenchin”; in fact, they can be an incredible new platform that enthusiasts can use just like any other to create unique projects. CEO Ben Schaffer noted that electric vehicles don’t have to be the end of performance tuning but the start of a new chapter.

What do you think of the article? Do you have any comments, questions, or concerns? Shoot me an email at william@teslarati.com. You can also reach me on Twitter @WilliamWritin. If you have news tips, email us at tips@teslarati.com!

Will is an auto enthusiast, a gear head, and an EV enthusiast above all. From racing, to industry data, to the most advanced EV tech on earth, he now covers it at Teslarati.

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Tesla Semi lands the biggest electric truck deal in U.S. history

Tesla leads a record 2,500 truck order, but not every truck will be a Semi.

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Tesla has landed the largest electric truck order in U.S. history. ZET SCALE, a new alliance of shippers and carriers, named Tesla its primary manufacturer on Tuesday for an initial order of 2,500 electric Class 8 trucks. The deal alone would nearly double the number of electric heavy trucks operating in the country.

According to the press release from Catalyst Mobility, the nonprofit formerly known as CALSTART, Kenworth, RIDE and Volvo were also selected as secondary manufacturers that carriers can pick if their operations call for it. No split between the four brands has been published, so the exact number of Semis in the order is not yet known.

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Tesla won the top slot through a competitive request for proposals. The alliance, which Catalyst Mobility runs with the Smart Freight Centre, scored bidders on price, range, charging capability and production capacity. Pooling freight demand from founding shippers, including Microsoft and PepsiCo, let every truck maker bid lower than it would for a single fleet. “The Tesla Semi is designed for lower cost per mile operations than diesel,” said Dan Priestley, director of the Tesla Semi program, as noted in the press release.

The financing is built to pull in carriers who have avoided electric trucks. ZET Financial is issuing the purchase order for all 2,500 units and will place them with fleets through a fair market value lease. The trucks will be deployed over the next few years across 10 freight hubs in Los Angeles, Stockton, Bakersfield, Seattle and Tacoma, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Chicago, Atlanta, and the Newark and New York area. ZET SCALE says the first order is only the opening round, with a longer term goal of 10,000 trucks or more.

Even if Tesla ends up with only a majority share, it would still be the biggest Semi deal to date. Einride’s 500 unit order in August was the previous record, and WattEV’s 370 truck order in May was the largest California deal at the time. Einride’s CEO has since said he expects all 500 trucks delivered by the end of 2027.

The announcement lands two days before Tesla formally inaugurates its Semi factory in Nevada on September 24. The 1.7 million square foot plant sits next to Gigafactory Nevada’s 4680 cell lines and is designed for 50,000 trucks a year.

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Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant

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Credit: Grok

Tesla has expanded Grok from an in-car chatbot into a hands-free work assistant. On September 22, Tesla officially launched Grok Bot capability, confirming that drivers can now manage email, calendars, files, chats, and tasks by voice and then hand more ambitious errands to the AI-fueled productivity cheat code.

Grok itself is built by xAI. The new car features split into two layers: Connectors link Grok to outside accounts. Grok Bot, currently limited to SuperGrok Heavy subscribers, can complete multi-step tasks such as placing a usual coffee order, booking a reservation, or scheduling an appointment. It truly puts the driver in a nearly complete hands-free driving and productivity setting, with ironically the only task truly requiring your hands being to touch the “Start Self-Driving” button.

We were granted access to Grok Bot’s Tesla integration a few weeks back, and we’ve been able to do a handful of things with it. On a handful of occasions, we’ve used it to order food and have it ready for pickup slightly later into the evening; we’ve managed to pick up groceries after a day of errands with Grok Bot, and outside of the car, it’s helped with budgeting and even my fantasy football draft.

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Tesla shows another way to utilize it: in their demo, a driver says “Hey Grok,” asks the assistant to check an inbox, and hears that a message concerns a weekend reservation. Grok then scans the calendar, reports no conflicts, and confirms the Tahoe trip is clear. It can also add check-in details to a road-trip itinerary. The point is not novelty chat. It is keeping eyes on the road, or on Full Self-Driving, while the car handles the paperwork of a trip:

This Grok rollout is not a gadget add-on as much as it is Tesla’s thesis in software form: the car should stop being a machine you operate and start being a room you occupy.

Connectors and Grok Bot treat the cabin as an office that happens to move, and that has truly been Tesla’s intention for years now. The car has slowly become an extension of a home more than a vehicle. Inbox, calendar, groceries, takeout, and reservations become voice work, not dashboard chores that you need to do before you get in your car.

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Responsibility shifts from the driver to the stack, and as many Tesla owners rely on FSD for travel, Grok Bot now handles the monotony of dinner reservations or appointments.

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Elon Musk

X changed how everyone gets paid, and this lawsuit shows why

X sued a Bitcoin account network over fake payouts as its creator pay model shifts

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Elon Musk’s X has taken a Bitcoin-focused engagement ring to court, and the case doubles as a receipt for how differently the platform pays creators today. The company filed suit in the High Court of England and Wales against Vivek Kumar Sen and Zamyang Sherpa, alleging the pair ran six accounts, including @Vivek4real_, @Bitcoin_Teddy and @TrendingBitcoin, as one coordinated operation to fake the kind of engagement that used to translate directly into money.

According to the filing, first reported by Gizmodo, the accounts posted near identical “BREAKING” crypto headlines seconds apart, in one case 11 seconds, then had three more handles like, reply to and repost the material to manufacture what X called “a false appearance of genuine, human communication and interaction.” X says the scheme pulled in at least £207,384, about $278,000, and pegs its own investigation and remediation costs at another £75,000. The accounts were suspended August 18. X general counsel James Burnham announced the case on X last weekend, writing that the company “will act forcefully to protect our platform and the earnings of genuine creators.” Musk’s own reaction, posted shortly after, was three words: “Don’t mess with 𝕏.”

The timing lines up with a a recent update to how X pays its creators. The program these accounts allegedly gamed, Creator Revenue Sharing, launched in mid 2023 and paid out based on how much a post got engaged with. Originality was never part of the formula, which is exactly how the platform ended up flooded with recycled clips, copy pasted “BREAKING” posts and replies engineered purely to farm reactions from paying subscribers.

X tried patching the model more than once, including an April cut to aggregator payouts and a March regional weighting change that Musk personally paused hours after it was announced. X retired Creator Revenue Sharing for good on September 7 and opened its replacement, Original Content Rewards, the next day.

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The new math is stricter. Payouts now come only from qualified impressions, meaning unique Home Timeline views from Premium subscribers where at least half the post is visible, and replies no longer count toward eligibility at all. Copied posts, reuploaded media and reposts without meaningful changes are explicitly excluded. Allegra Jacchia, senior product manager for Creators at SpaceXAI, which now runs X’s product and AI work following xAI’s acquisition of the platform, put it bluntly, saying the goal is to reward creators who bring original ideas and perspective, “not those who have become best at gaming the system.”

Read that way, the lawsuit isn’t really about six crypto accounts. It’s X putting a dollar figure on what the old incentive structure cost, then suing to collect it right as the new one goes live. For live updates on how the case and the new rewards program shake out, follow @Teslarati on X.

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