Lifestyle
The New Emissions Rollback: The Worst Move at the Worst Time
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While many of us are dealing with the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that continues to sweep through countries across the world, the virus is, unfortunately, one of many things that humans are forced to deal with daily. While an invisible sickness rips through much of the world, the global climate crisis is an issue that people across the globe have been dealing with for years, even though it is a relatively “new” issue in the big picture of time.
Former U.S. President Barack Obama implemented a set of rules in 2012 that required automakers to improve fuel economy standards by at least 5% every year. This standard would have led to vehicles with the “2026” Model year averaging 54 miles per gallon.
However, this rule was recently revised and subjected to a rollback, making it 3.5% less than its intended, and environmentally-beneficial, 5% rating. This new standard brings the average rating for vehicles in 2026 to just around 40 miles per gallon, a result that will eventually burn more poisonous gas into the atmosphere. A far cry from what the previous emissions standards were, the rollback entails that a new and dangerous level of carbon emissions will be allowed to be released into the air. This amount of emissions being released into the atmosphere could set back massive amounts of environmental progress that our country has made. Meanwhile, the changes negatively affect the entire world, not just our country.
According to an article from the Verge, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) estimates the old standard of 5% improvement over fuel efficiency year-by-year has cut CO2 emissions by half a billion metric tons and saved drivers $86 billion dollars at the pump. These numbers are according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Meanwhile, the rollback is expected to release an additional billion metric tons of CO2 into the Earth’s atmosphere and increase oil consumption by 2 billion barrels, along with an extra 80 billion gallons of gasoline thanks to lower MPG standards.
The time to create less efficient fuel standards for our gas and petrol-powered vehicles is not now. In all honesty (and in my personal opinion), there is not a time to do it. Our Earth is at absolute an absolute crisis, or what Michael Scott would call “Threat Level Midnight.”
The arguments for the lower emissions standards: better fuel economy creates more expensive cars at purchase, which leads to many people sticking with their current vehicles or buying used cars. These older cars usually have lower safety standards, making them less safe to drive. Apparently, lowering the fuel standards will eliminate $1,000 from the cost of a new vehicle, making more cars on the road more reliable, while providing an added boost to the economy through vehicle purchases.
The problem is, a lower sticker price does not necessarily mean less money spent throughout the life of a vehicle. A Consumer Reports study showed that if gas prices were $1.50 for the next 30 years, the newly introduced rollback “would still increase new vehicle total cost of ownership for consumers.”
Here’s the thing: It is a great idea to make new cars cheaper. Sure, everyone loves the excitement (and smell) of a brand new vehicle. I think a new car is one of my favorite things, along with a high-quality sushi meal, Good Will Hunting on a low-key Friday evening, and a great workout. However, I also like living on Earth, and I appreciate the fact that my small, rural area of Southern York County, Pennsylvania does not have too many environmental issues. Of course, there is always the occasional “coal roll” I get from someone for driving an environmentally-friendly car.
The issue is the fact that no evidence suggests this new rollback will save money in the long term, and the new standards will hurt the environment. You would think analysts, or statisticians, or number crunchers would do some sort of research regarding the long-term economic effects on this subject. Just because someone is saving $1,000 upfront on the purchase of a car, it doesn’t necessarily mean things are going to be cheaper in the long run.
The responsibility of humans to do their part to decrease environmental damage at this point is absolutely imperative. There is no reason to continue the rollback of emissions standards when climate change is a scientifically proven issue. Vehicles need to become cleaner and cleaner, and to do this, automakers need to be held responsible. They’re making enough money, and it is an absolute necessity to begin transitioning to cleaner forms of transportation.
Join me next week as I go ‘Beyond the News’ and give you my take on the current state of the industry and beyond.
While many automakers have initiated this step into their future plans, the way to put pressure on some of the larger carmakers is to make emissions standards more strict. Eventually, it would be ideal to get all cars to run off of sustainable forms of energy. It would be best for the environment, and better for our pockets. After all, the amount of clean air that has come from gas-powered cars being off the road is evident. Skies are clear in Los Angeles, and water is cleaner in Italy.
What do you think about the new emissions rollbacks? Do you agree with the new standards, or do you think they should have been left the way they were? Let me know on Twitter or through email!
I use this newsletter to share my thoughts on what is going on in the Tesla world. If you want to talk to me directly, you can email me or reach me on Twitter. Reach out!
-Joey
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
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