Lifestyle
Year In Review: 12 months of Tesla ownership
A year ago this month, my husband and I picked up our brand new Model S after a 108 day wait. It has been quite a ride and I wanted to share the experience for any potential owners who wonder if the “wonder” wears off, new owners who are still in the honeymoon phase and veteran owners who have plenty of stories of their own.
In May of 2014, I convinced my better half we should test drive a Tesla. He was looking to replace his 4-door Jeep Wrangler. In a bright “Mango Tango” orange paint with large wheels, it was right at home at both the beach or in the snow. It did not, however, know how to keep speed up a hill. Or go fast. At all. The decision process that brought us to that day in August when we finally ordered the car is for another post entirely. (Spoiler: The Tesla is a pretty expensive car and most owners really have to think about it before dropping that kind of cash.)
Thanks to delivery schedules, our east coast pickup location and the announcement of “the D” our order-to-delivery time was pretty darn long. And we felt every single day of it. So when the excitement of the day finally arrived, we could hardly contain ourselves. In fact, we were so excited that we forgot to hand over the check for the car and had to go back to the service center after having already left. That little gaffe aside, delivery went exactly as planned. The car was nearly flawless. A few scuffs we thought we saw turned out to be glue residue. They were quickly cleaned up while our delivery specialist gave us our tour. She was pleasant and knowledgeable, which was consistent with our experience with show room employees at the showroom location of our test drive 6 months earlier.
It was already dark for our ride home so we didn’t go for too much of a joy ride, but my husband pulled the car over halfway and let me finish out the drive. (He actually offered me the fob when we first left the service center, but I passed.) We set the regenerative braking to the higher level despite my initial plans to ease into it. For those on the fence, the one pedal driving is the best feature you didn’t know to look forward to. Trust me. The car performed exactly as we hoped and our cheeks were sore from smiling the whole way home.
3 weeks later, Christmas was our first trip away from home. We visit a town about 110 miles north of where we live for holidays. That 110 miles is over and past mountains so range always suffers. The Supercharger location we anticipated being built in Allentown, PA in 2014 never happened so we ended up charging with a combination of extension cord on a 110V outlet and a level 2 charger a 10 minute drive from where we were visiting. (Little did we know that we would end up having to deal without an eastern PA Supercharger for another 12 months.) We outfitted the car with all weather mats pretty quickly and would recommend them to anyone. The trip was great and the car has all the room one could need for two passengers, luggage, holiday gifts and a 55-pound pup.
Our first service center trip happened rather quickly. We never actually noticed that the rear passenger door handle didn’t present until we started showing off the car to family around Christmas. We scheduled the service visit for a future day that a loaner was available because this issue was very minor and we weren’t in a rush at all. Service was swift and without issue.
Two months in we had our first real road trip planned. Our ultimate destination was Savannah, Georgia with a one night detour planned in Charleston, South Carolina. As is always a risk with winter traveling where we live, a pretty sloppy snow and ice storm thwarted our plans to depart Philadelphia around midnight. We ended up waiting until closer to 5am but despite the horrendous road conditions that the City had not yet dealt with (it was a Sunday morning) the Tesla performed wonderfully. We took it easy of course and never felt unsafe. That trip is where my whole perspective on road trips changed. The requirement to stop and charge means you get plenty of rest room breaks, chances to stretch your legs and really convenient markers to swap driving responsibilities every 2 hours or so. Neither one of us felt tired and we both agreed that the trip felt much shorter than it really was. It was also on this trip that we began to look forward to the car’s potentially efficiency in warm weather. Getting the car in December we were in for a bit of a surprise at how much range suffered and regen was limited.
Though winter felt long as they often do, spring gave way to warm temperatures, better efficiency and lots of reasons to open the panoramic roof. Our initial disappointment over how much our electric bill went up the first month with the car leveled off as the car started driving much more efficiently. We made a few additional changes at home such as LED bulbs and a “smart” power strip for our basement entertainment center and now find ourselves using the same amount of electricity as we did before we replaced an old bar refrigerator and washer/dryer pair, which was also before we had the car.
Around the 6 month mark, my passion was every bit as strong as it was when we were waiting for delivery. I decided to do a local car show and can barely describe what a fun day that was. I spoke to hundreds of people non-stop and unexpectedly came away with a trophy after being softly scolded by a judge for not knowing the car show protocol of being required to have your trunk and hood open. One embarrassing problem was that our rear passenger door handle started to act up again. This time, the door was actually popping open when the car unlocked. It was a hassle because most days the car is driven solo and the driver had to walk all the way around the car to close it. On the day of the car show I had my fob on my person so walking back and forth around the car meant the door popped open many times. Curious onlookers raised eyebrows as the car’s “trick.” That issue also required a service visit, but again we waited until a loaner was available. Other than having to take it to service at all, the experience was great.
By July, it was time for our second road trip. This time the plan was camping not far from Virginia Beach. We had been told many times that charging at RV parks is easy so we barely thought a thing about rolling into our destination with low mileage and no live Superchargers nearby. As it turned out, that RV park was rather old and our site had an older outlet. We needed an adapter, which the campground’s general store thankfully had. The adapter still led to disappointment as the car still wouldn’t take a charge from anything other than a 110v outlet. A trickle charge wasn’t going to work – we had two day excursions planned while we were in the area. After consulting the Tesla Forums, I learned enough about the outlet situation to ask the campground if they had 14-50 outlets at some of their larger sites. Fortunately they did and a camp employee gave me the old “you didn’t hear it from me but…” when describing their one site that they never rented out. We were able to park the car there overnight twice to get all the range we needed. If you do plan on RV charging, I suggest making sure they have the more modern hookups. You should also leave yourself extra time for picture taking. The Model S makes a beautiful addition to a scenic view.
Not very long after getting home from that trip I started charting out our next. I’ve never been to Chicago and really want to but figured out that trip would be a little longer than we were willing to take off work at that time. New England it was. The only three states I hadn’t yet been to on the East Coast were Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. I fully intend for the Tesla to carry me to all the states I haven’t seen. I have a long way to go. Our trip to Portland was easy enough on the supercharger network. We snuck an extension cord out the window from our second story AirBnB apartment to trickle charge overnight and got just enough juice to take us to our next charging opportunity on the way to Portsmouth, NH. Our last stop, Burlington, Vermont, had a public Level 2 charger just a block from where we were staying so we happily parked, checked into PlugShare and charged just enough to get us to the first Supercharger on the way home. Another Tesla was not so kind. We noticed a black Model S with New Jersey tags park there later that day and stay overnight. Even at 0 miles left on the battery, he couldn’t have needed to stay that long. I was very disappointed, as I saw not one but two other Teslas circling the area, presumably needing a charge. With the Burlington Supercharger since online, I imagine this won’t be an issue going forward. That’s the real beauty of the Supercharger network; it changes weekly. In fact, from the time we planned our route to the time we embarked, an additional charger popped up in New Hampshire. We didn’t need it but it was a nice surprise.
A full year after Autopilot was announced, it finally went live with an over the air update. The timing of our order was pure luck and our car was delivered with the hardware in place. The implementation of AP has been everything I expected and more. In fact, that very thing inspired me to make this video, which I never imagined would be watched by more than a few dozen Tesla forum members.
Further delays with an Allentown, PA Supercharger location meant we faced another potential winter where skiing at our preferred mountain near Scranton, PA would mean taking a gasoline powered car. I’m thrilled to say that as of this past week, ground has finally broken. And while we will still end up having to charge creatively over Christmas because it won’t be live yet, the end is finally in sight. 16 months after we ordered the car and were told a charger in that much-needed location would be built “soon,” it’s finally happening.
Did that particular charger, which was shown on the 2014 map sway our decision to buy the car? Absolutely. Did the long delay really grind our gears? You bet! Do we regret not waiting until it was built to get our hands on the greatest car ever built? Not a chance, so if you’re a potential owner on the fence, don’t wait. Every day you do is another day you are deprived the distinct pleasure of driving a car so amazing that it inspires me every single day.
By the numbers
- Miles in 12 months: 20,000
- Primary/secondary driver custody arrangement: 80%/20%
- Road trips over 500 miles: 3
- Lifetime Wh/Mile: 326
Elon Musk
India tells Elon Musk’s X to “Follow the Law” in latest censorship update
Elon Musk says X now exposes government censorship, but India’s secrecy laws complicate that promise.
Elon Musk’s promise to make government censorship requests on X “clearly visible” is running into a wall in India, where the law forbids the very disclosure Musk is promising.
On August 15, Musk responded to an update from X’s open-source algorithm team by writing “Any censorship required by governments is now clearly visible.” The claim referred to a change X pushed two days earlier to its public xai-org/x-algorithm repository, which now includes a controversial filter written directly into the code. The filter suppresses posts from 665 accounts flagged by Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court from appearing in the For You feed of any viewer located in Brazil, unless the viewer already follows the account. The election tied to the filter is scheduled for October 4.
India’s government wasn’t as impressed, and responded on Monday that “X will have to follow the law of the land,” in response to Musk’s transparency push covered by the Times of India. The problem is structural rather than political. India issues content blocking orders under Section 69A of its IT Act, and Rule 16 of the accompanying 2009 Blocking Rules requires those orders to stay confidential. Publishing an India equivalent of the Brazil filter, naming specific accounts and citing specific government orders, would itself violate Indian law. Government use of Section 69A has grown from roughly 6,000 orders a year between 2018 and 2023 to about 24,300 in 2025, according to a Tech Times report.
The contrast puts Musk’s transparency pledge in an odd spot. It works largely as advertised in Brazil, where electoral law requires disclosure and X can point to specific account IDs and a specific court order in public code. It cannot work the same way in India, where the law requires the opposite. X users in India will keep seeing content disappear from search and their feeds without any public accounting of why, even as X tells the rest of the world that its censorship compliance is now inspectable.
This isn’t the first time X’s fights with a national government have shaped how the platform operates. Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered X to suspend the accounts of sitting lawmakers and journalists in 2024, a standoff that cost X its Brazilian revenue for months and froze Starlink’s local accounts before the investigation into Musk and X was closed in March with no evidence of wrongdoing found. X also sued California over a state law requiring moderation disclosures, arguing the mandate itself violated the First Amendment.
Whether India’s government pursues anything beyond a public statement remains to be seen. For now, the mismatch between what X can legally publish and what different governments legally allow it to publish is the real story behind Musk’s seven word claim.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s driverless Cybercab just passed a big test with State Governor
Florida’s governor rode Tesla’s Cybercab at a closed test track and called the experience impressive.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rode in a Tesla Cybercab on a closed test track this week and came away impressed, posting on X that the vehicle “successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.” He called the ride “impressive.”
The stop was part of a broader event Monday at SunTrax, a 775 acre state owned proving ground in Auburndale that Florida built specifically to test autonomous and connected vehicles before they reach public roads. Standing next to a gold Cybercab, DeSantis described the car in plain terms: “You go in there and you just sit. You have a screen. There’s no steering wheel, no pedals. Clearly these things could be very beneficial.”
We took a ride on a robotaxi on the Suntrax course and it successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.
Impressive! https://t.co/FVAkzFLz3r
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) August 11, 2026
DeSantis paired the praise with a caveat that has followed autonomous vehicles since the category existed. “You don’t want to be in an autonomous vehicle and it drives you into a ditch. That would not be good,” he said, framing safety validation as the gate before wider deployment.
SunTrax, the 2.25 mile oval which the state calls the only high speed autonomous vehicle test track in the Southeast, can simulate rain, pedestrian crossings, hills and crowded urban conditions at highway speeds, letting companies push a car past what an early public rollout would risk. Tesla, Waymo and Beep all use the facility, and Florida’s regulatory approach, among the most permissive for autonomous vehicles in the country, doesn’t require a human operator inside a fully autonomous car.
Tesla has reason to want the blessing of Florida and states beyond, as the Cybercab entered volume production at Gigafactory Texas this spring and has since self certified as SAE Level 4 under Texas law. Public road testing so far has kept a safety monitor in the passenger seat, and Florida is where Tesla has been expanding its existing Model Y based Robotaxi service instead, adding Miami in July and then Orlando and Tampa two weeks later. A closed track endorsement from a sitting governor doesn’t change any of that, but it does put Tesla’s newest hardware in front of a state that has already shown it will move fast on rules.
Elon Musk
The real reason Elon Musk wants every car connected to space
Elon Musk says all cars will eventually need Starlink to handle massive AI bandwidth demand.
Elon Musk is making the case that satellite internet, not fiber or cellular towers, will end up wired into every car on the road. In a string of posts on X, the SpaceX CEO wrote that all cars will have Starlink in the future and called satellite connectivity the only way to get super high bandwidth to billions of vehicles.
The posts started with Musk endorsing a Cloudflare forecast that traffic generated by autonomous AI agents will soon dwarf traffic generated by humans browsing the internet, a shift he described as not a close call at all. From there he narrowed the argument to infrastructure, writing that the only system that can support the insanely fast bandwidth growth needed by AI is Starlink, before extending the logic to cars specifically.
AI agentic Internet traffic will obviously VASTLY exceed human usage. Not a close call at all.
Cloudflare’s forecast is accurate. https://t.co/VztgrinN5k pic.twitter.com/Wo4FiRKjPU
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 9, 2026
The timing lines up with Tesla’s own hardware decisions. On July 20, Tesla confirmed the Cybercab would ship with a Starlink V5 terminal built into its roof, the first time the company had put satellite hardware in a production vehicle. A day later, Tesla’s head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, explained the connection wasn’t there for safety and that Cybercab’s driving stack runs entirely on onboard cameras and compute, while the satellite link exists for navigation, customer service, and fleet management instead. Musk followed with his own post about the feature, saying riders would be able to watch 4K streaming video during rides.
By July 22, Musk had already said Starlink would extend beyond Cybercab to Tesla’s full lineup. Sunday’s posts push that same logic outward again, this time framed as a requirement across the industry rather than a feature specific to Tesla, and tied directly to the bandwidth AI systems are expected to consume.
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
The AI argument has been building on SpaceX’s side for months. The company has an FCC filing pending for a third generation Starlink constellation, and it has separately proposed Starmind, a constellation of up to a million satellites designed to run AI computation directly in orbit rather than just relay data. Musk has said he expects space to become the cheapest place to deploy AI compute within two to three years. Starlink and Starmind serve different jobs inside that vision, one moving data and the other processing it, but Sunday’s posts treat vehicles as one more category of hardware that will eventually need both.
None of this changes anything for Tesla owners today. Cars already on the road keep running on LTE and Wi-Fi, and Tesla hasn’t outlined a retrofit path for existing vehicles. The July 22 commitment applies to future production, not the fleet already delivered. What Musk added on Sunday is the reasoning: satellite connectivity isn’t a Cybercab novelty, it’s a bet that ground based networks won’t keep up with how much data cars, robots, and AI systems are about to generate.
SpaceX achieves incredible milestone with Starlink program
Tesla is opening Cybercab rides to a select few
